Riverside Chats

Inclusive Communities is a nonprofit that uses human relations work to promote diversity and inclusion among individuals, workplaces and communities. The organization also holds public events to encourage cross-cultural dialogue, including the Jane H. & Rabbi Sidney H. Brooks Conversations for Change series. The series brings in prominent entertainment industry figures for conversation to buil...

Congressman Don Bacon has represented Nebraska's Second Congressional District since 2017. He is running for re-election again this year against Nebraska State Senator Tony Vargas. Today, he recounts his experience during the January 6th attack, why he thinks Republicans should regain control, and what he makes of Donald Trump's enduring influence over the Republican Party.

If you follow Omaha politics, you likely know Dr. Erin Feichtinger--or at least her tweets. Feichtinger has a PhD in history and currently serves as policy director at the Women’s Fund of Omaha, and she has made it a mission to shine a light on the details, drama, and triumphs of our local power structures. In this time of political dysfunction, often at the national and the local level, Feichting...

Filmmaker Tony Bonacci previously appeared on the show when his acclaimed short , The Headliner, made festival rounds in 2018. Even then, he was adamant that he would turn that story into a feature alongside the short’s writer, Christine Burright, and its star, Darrick Silkman. Several years and one global pandemic later, he has. Bonacci’s feature film debut, also titled The Headliner, is premieri...

Machaela Cavanaugh represents Nebraska's 6th District in the Unicameral. She was re-elected to a second term in 2022 and in 2023, Cavanaugh made national news when she filibustered LB574, also known as the Let Them Grow Act, which bans gender-affirming care for Nebraska children. Cavanaugh spoke on the bill up to 12 hours a day for 11 weeks. LB574 was passed by the Legislature in May and went...

Keyonna King is an associate professor in the UNMC College of Public Health. She holds a doctorate in public health from Loma Linda University. King specializes in community-based participatory research, or CBPR, an approach that works with community members to make public health programs more equitable and inclusive.  King is also a co-investigator in UNMC’s BEAT Cancer study. BEAT Cancer, which...

Josh Tague was born and raised in Omaha and has a business degree from UNO. He’s played guitar in various bands and is a regular audience member at local concerts — including performances by the biggest local band in town, the Omaha Symphony. As director of marketing and communications at the Omaha Symphony, Tague is responsible for building and cultivating the group’s audiences and brand. Today,...

Jaden Perkins is grassroots community organizer from Omaha who specializes in coalition building. He currently works for the Heartland Workers Center as a policy fellow. Perkins has also worked on campaigns for local political candidates, including Dave Pantos, Cammy Watkins, and Jasmine Harris.  His event, "Politically Speaking… It’s a Drag," uses performing arts to help audiences under...

Mia Perales is a freshman at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Last year she won an environmental achievement award from the Nebraska chapter of the Sierra Club after leading climate work with the city-wide group Students for Sustainability and starting a lunch composting program at Omaha South High School that’s since been adopted at Central High School. David Corbin is a longtime environmental...

Lee Emma Running is an artist who sculpts with animal bones, glass and precious metals. She uses her work to engage audiences in conversations about the impact of human-built systems on the natural world, and explore the intersection of art and science. Running’s work “Opera Coat” was unveiled on Nov. 11 at Kaneko, the culmination of her year-long residency with Opera Omaha. “Opera Coat” is an ena...

Jen Landis is an artist, author, and assistant professor of practice in graphic design at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Her organization, Pincurl Girls , started in 2009 and creates products and services to help young girls find their confidence--including a podcast, art classes, a scholarship program, and a text club that sends daily words of affirmation to members. In July, Landis publi...

Omaha native Aissa Aset Bey is a loctician, artist, and entrepreneur. Her business, Loc Legacies , offers services related to Black haircare as well as education and training for aspiring locticians. Bey is in conversation with Michael Griffin about the culture and science of hair.

Problems today rarely originate in our present context. Some problems are so deeply rooted in human history and maybe human nature that it’s a tall order to try to diagnose, let alone solve them in an hour on the radio. But we try! Today, attorney and Common Cause Nebraska advisory board member Wes Dodge is back on the show to discuss the thorny issue of religion in our political discourse–how Ame...

On today's show, Nebraska State Senator Tony Vargas talks with Michael Griffin about the issues on his mind as he runs against Congressman Don Bacon to represent Nebraska's Second Congressional District in the 2024 election.

Kristine Langley Mahler is a local author who grew up all around the country. The lack of a permanent home in her childhood informs much of her current writing. In her most recent book, ' A Calendar is a Snakeskin, ' Mahler excavates personal meaning from astrology, tarot, motherhood, and the past, present and future. On today's show, Mahler is in conversation with Michael Griffin abou...

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed last year, is said to be the largest bill ever to address the climate disaster. The legislation includes about $30 billion for homeowners to make energy-efficient upgrades to their houses, such as installing solar panels or a heat pump. Sounds great, right? But it’s daunting for the average taxpayer to navigate the byzantine world of tax credits to access IRA fu...

On today's show, Maria Corpuz is in conversation with Andy Saladino, development director of Youth Emergency Services. Youth Emergency Services, or YES, assists youth ages 16 to 21 experiencing homelessness and near homelessness by meeting immediate needs for food, shelter, clothing and safety. YES has a street outreach team whose members distribute supplies out of backpacks and provide immedi...

The Flatwater Film Festival is an annual event committed to bringing together established and first-time filmmakers from across the state of Nebraska to celebrate their art by providing a non-competitive platform that showcases their work, to develop a strong community that promotes inspiration and support, and ultimately to foster the next generation of Nebraska filmmakers. The 2023 festival will...

On today's show, Maria Corpuz is in conversation with Jewel Rodgers - a poet, artist and placemaker from North Omaha. She was a Buffett Scholar at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and went on to receive a Master’s in Real Estate Development from New York University. She was nominated for best performance poet at the 2022 Omaha Entertainment and Arts Award. Her multi-sensory poetry collection...

Money is nice, right? It’s fun to buy things. But there are contexts where you’d hope that the equation is more complicated than dollar equals result, like medicine or politics. In particular, Nebraska has been the focus of several concerns about the line between money and political results. Today Jack Gould from Common Cause Nebraska is in conversation with Tom Knoblauch about the influence of lo...

Drew Shuck sings and plays the drums in local punk band Bug Heaven. Adam Haug produces beats as Haunted Gauntlet for emcee Conny Franko in M34n Str33t. The bands recently collaborated on the remix of the song “Survived By,” written by Shuck and performed by Bug Heaven. The song, off Bug Heaven’s debut album “We Love to Live in Hell,” is about the pain of losing loved ones to suicide. Bug Heaven an...

Last year, author, screenwriter, and host of Studio 360 Kurt Andersen joined Riverside Chats to discuss his two volume explanation of America, Fantasyland and Evil Geniuses . In that conversation, he mentioned that he was working on a third part to this series, which would be fictional. He wouldn’t give away any details at the time, but it turns out that he was working on Command Z , a new 8 part...

If you’ve ever had Adult Swim on at night and wondered what in the world you’re watching, there’s a good chance you’ve seen something created by Tim Heidecker. He got his start making bizarre sketch series like Tim and Eric’s Awesome Show, Tom Goes to the Mayor, and On Cinema. Since then, he’s appeared in several movies, such as Us, Bridesmaids, and The Comedy and he’s extended his On Cinema unive...

Nebraska prides itself on its Unicameral, which in theory reduces partisanship by forcing cooperation and moderation. That is, unless it doesn’t. In the headlines from this year’s legislative session, a common concern was whether partisanship had finally overtaken the body. Was this a breaking point? A sign of the future? Just a fluke year? It can be difficult to tell in a vacuum, so today's s...

Satire uses exaggeration to critique something about the world we live in, but what happens if the world is crazier than any satirist can come up with? How does one parody, as Kurt Andersen has put it, "the greatest self-parodists of all time"? On today's show, Tom Knoblauch is in conversation with Geitner Simmons, author of the new book, Android Run , a sci-fi thriller with a heavy...