Riverside Chats

BFF Omaha, formerly known as Benson First Friday, is a nonprofit arts organization whose mission is to build community through art engagement. BFF started in June 2012, and was named the first official Creative District in Nebraska in 2022. On today's show, Michael Griffin is in conversation with Annie Butler, production manager and the advocacy chair, and Petfest founder Zach Schmieder about...

The HALLINS Corporation is a nonprofit whose mission is to stimulate constructive change in underserved communities through art and culture. It was founded in 2016, and puts on both the Omaha Jazz Experience and the LOVAM Jazz Festival. The Omaha Jazz Experience is a ticketed jazz concert that raises for the Hallins Corporation. This year’s show is this Saturday, July 22 at Stinson Park and will f...

Think of the last fruit or vegetable you ate. Do you know where it was grown? Who cultivated it? Harvested it? Transported it to the grocery store? Could you begin to guess all of the people and places involved in making sure that apple or celery or bok choy made it to your plate? When the food production system is global, it can be easy to forget that it’s possible to grow produce right here at h...

In the Midwest, we love our cars: fast cars, big cars, small cars, loud cars, quiet cars, different cars for different occasions like shoes. Car culture, in other words, is often indistinguishable from Midwest culture, and has been for so long that it feels natural. But what if it's not? On today's show, Daniel Knowles makes the case that cars are ruining the world while making us unhappy...

In China, the phrase “to eat bitterness” means to persist through hardship without complaint. Artist Jennifer Ling Datchuk used the idiom to title her collection of new and recent work, comprising ceramics, textiles, video and other mediums. Datchuk is a Texas-based artist of Irish and Chinese ancestry. In this conversation with Maria Corpuz, she discusses her work, which explores the intersection...

Chalis Bristol, AKA Crabrangucci, was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She has been actively involved in the music community for years, and has played over 250 shows since 2021. She features an eclectic mix of genres from indie rock to Top 40, to house music, and K-Pop. Bristol also won the 2022 and 2023 Omaha Entertainment & Arts award for “Outstanding DJ.” Additionally, she is the Assista...

Alajia McKizia was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She’s had varied experiences in the local arts community, including as a studio assistant at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at multiple Nebraska galleries including the Union for Contemporary Art, Kaneko and the Tugboat Gallery. She’s also performed with African Culture Connection a...

Because Nebraska has been the birthplace of a relatively small number of Hollywood legends, you end up hearing the same names over and over again. And one name anyone listening to this has likely heard of, whether or not they've watched the movies, is Fred Astaire. Astaire was born in Omaha in 1899 and went on to star on stage and screen in a number of highly acclaimed musicals and Hollywood&#...

In 1919, Nebraska enacted a statute known at the Siman Act, which restricted the use and study of foreign languages in the classroom. A year later in Hampton, Nebraska, a parochial school instructor named Robert Meyer was convicted under the law for teaching German to a 10-year-old boy. The case made it all the way to the United States Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska, which ruled in Meyer’s fav...

Marcey Yates is a hip hop artist and community advocate who was born and raised in North Omaha. He won the 2021 and 2022 Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards album of the year for “Culxr House: Freedom Summer," released on Omaha’s Saddle Creek Records. On today's show, Yates is in conversation with Michael Griffin about the role of culture in establishing a relationship between art and adv...

Audiences are very concerned with genres–is it a comedy? Is it drama? Is there sci-fi? Especially when it comes to works of art that emulate life, it can be difficult to say our lives fit into neat genres. Life is often difficult, funny, scary, and sweet–sometimes within a few hours. Today Megan Tady is in conversation with Tom Knoblauch about her new book, Super Bloom , which balances tragedy, hu...

Paul Thomas Anderson may be one of the last American auteurs. The term, which means author in French, grew out of the French New Wave and eventually made its way to America by the 1960s where the director asserted control and authorship over his–and it often was his–films. The concept has come to represent a kind of rebellion against the corporate content machine, a lone, independent cowboy of aut...

It's not unusual among educated Nebraskans to hold the expectation that, if you’re an ambitious young person in this state, you’ll leave. This is within a moment where, over the past decade, the Nebraska Examiner has reported that “more people have continued to leave than enter Nebraska from other states, and the loss is heavily those with an education level of at least a bachelor’s degree.” T...

In Nebraska, it’s extremely common to be late to the party as far as pretty much all social trends go--or to miss the party entirely. But medical uses of marijuana have been legalized in 37 states, and it looks like the movement has a kind of national momentum that Nebraska will continue to grapple with in the years to come. We’ve seen proponents of medical marijuana produce ballot measures and in...

A lot of media is not especially interested in discourse. You see a lot of dramatic headlines and hours of “What’s the guy mad about today?” but today Jay Jackson, attorney and author of the new book Decent Discourse: Saving Your Country By Loving Your (Wrong) Neighbor , is in conversation with Tom Knoblauch about the value of true conversation. Jackson sees a way to solving our polarized climate,...

Eli Rigatuso was born and raised in Omaha and has more than 30 years of experience as an artist, photographer and videographer. He’s also an activist who has spent decades fighting for civil rights in Nebraska. He helped found Heartland Pride in 2010 and serves on Mayor Stothert’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Board. More recently, Rigatuso founded 'Frankly Speaking,' a virtual show he hosts with Avalis...

In 2023, journalism exists in this precarious space, driven by clicks and corporate ownership and punditry–none of which are new, but, in the social media age, what constitutes news at all has become a source of conflict. On today's show, Matt Wynn, who previously worked at the Omaha World Herald and USA Today and more recently co-founded the Flatwater Free Press , is in conversation with Tom...

It’s been two-and-a-half years since Metro Transit began operating the ORBT bus system on Dodge Street. Now, the service is approaching a milestone: its one-millionth rider. The occasion comes at an interesting time for public transit, as younger generations become more vocal about their desire for a high-speed national rail system, and Omaha embarks on the controversial streetcar project. Today M...

Music is everywhere. It’s hard to imagine that there was a point where you couldn’t constantly listen to music, a time before recordings of music even existed. But there’s something in our brains that can’t resist rhythm and harmony and the way music makes us feel. Today director of the Omaha Symphony Maestro Ankush Kumar Bahl and VP of Artistic Administration Dani Meier are in conversation with T...

Meridith Dillon is the executive director of Front Porch Investments, which was founded in 2021 to work toward affordable housing solutions in Omaha. In this conversation with Maria Corpuz, Dillon talks about how housing injustice shapes the city, how systemic racism has played a role, and how we can curb its effects. She also shares her vision for a brighter future for Omaha with safe housing for...

The Nebraska State Legislature is back in session. This is often a chaotic moment where it can be difficult have a good sense of what the agendas at play really are–what is being debated, how initial proposed legislation evolves over the course of a session, or what all of the implications are of what is passing. So Wes Dodge is back today in conversation with Tom Knoblauch to parse through the cu...

This show is ostensibly about the Midwest. The culture we create. The culture we consume. The way culture leads to art, to politics, and to history. But the Midwest can be a squishy concept without obvious shape or definition. Jon Lauck hopes to change that through his work contextualizing the overlooked cultural story and influence of the Midwest. He teaches history and political science at the U...

Keith Rodger is a musician, producer and audio engineer who performs as Kethro. Rodger has made a name for himself in the music industry while based in his hometown of Omaha. In 2014, he started touring as an engineer with The Faint, Tuxedo, and CeeLo Green. He honed his craft as a DJ and sound designer at local outlets including eighty-nine-seven The River, Make Believe Studios and Bemis Center f...

Mixed media artist Jeff Sedrel has a series of floral paintings in an exhibition at the Garden of the Zodiac Gallery through January 29. He was a 2017 Fellow at the Union for Contemporary Art under a collaborative multimedia project with Noah Sterba called Slowed Soul. Sedrel was nominated for two Omaha Entertainment and Arts Awards in 2020. His recent work has also been featured at Project Projec...

If you’ve been listening to Riverside Chats for a while, you’ve heard conversations with a lot of people running for office. Some of them got elected. A lot didn’t. The kind of people who want this platform, to have an hour on the radio, are often ones looking to break into the political scene or to move from a lower level to something more prominent. But Nebraska, just like the country at large,...