Stateside Daily Archive

Ford introduced the world to the Maverick hybrid truck last week. Smaller than the electric F-150 Lightning, the Maverick suggests some new possibilities for an iconic Michigan brand, and the global leader in light trucks. Today, what the little truck means for Ford and its hope for expansion.  GUEST:  Sonari Glinton, host of Now What’s Next podcast. He worked for years covering De...

Walk into the children’s section of pretty much any bookstore or library in Michigan and you’re likely to find Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen’s work staring back at you from the shelf. The illustrator of The Legend of Sleeping Bear has a new book out titled Our Michigan! We Love the Seasons, which celebrates all that makes Michigan uniquely beautiful throughout the year. On today's e...

A lot of musicians experience some kind of stage fright. Grand Rapids multi-instrumentalist, Jes Kramer, is no different. But for Jes, there’s a therapeutic quality of performing. While she’s on stage, she practices something called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing - or EMDR. It’s a psychotherapy tool used to process anxiety and trauma. On today’s pod, we're ta...

The adopted son of storied U-M football coach Bo Schembechler went on record today as a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of University of Michigan doctor Robert Anderson. And Matt Schembechler says his dad knew of the abuse and did nothing. GUESTS: David Jesse, Detroit Free Press Brian Cook, M Go Blog   Looking for more conversations from Stateside ? Right this way . If you like what you...

Warda Bouguettaya’s pastry creations, influenced by Algerian, French, and other traditions, bring together flavor and texture in exquisite ways. Next weekend, Bouguettaya will welcome customers to a new location for her much-lauded bakery, Warda Pâtisserie . On today’s show, we’ll talk to Bougettaya about her love for patisserie and what it means to be part of a larger...

Have you looked at the heat map of Michigan COVID cases lately? It’s blue.  Not to say we don’t still have some areas of concern and hospitalizations, but we’ve come a long way from the days when our funeral homes and ICUs were bursting.  Today, we discuss Michigan’s low COVID rates and how pandemics peter out and don’t conclude with a satisfying thud as app...

When artist Arthur Radebaugh put his pen to paper in the 1950s and 60s, the resulting vision of the future dazzled millions of people every week. Radebaugh was an illustrator, and a visual futurist whose work appeared in a syndicated Sunday Comics section called “Closer Than We Think”. GUEST: Rachel Clark from the Michigan History Center Looking for more conversations from Stateside ?...

Michigan-based poet, Petra Kuppers, writes a lot about bodies. She writes about the strangeness and beauty of them; how we live in them. Her work is deeply personal. Partly because Petra is disabled and thinks a lot about disability culture. For her, the process of poetry - observing and distilling her experiences through writing - is a healing one.  Her latest collection is Gut Botany . On t...

If you’ve taken an interest in the Michigan real estate market, you know how wild things are right now. Potential buyers can expect to pay above asking price, if they can even make a competitive offer. Meanwhile, from a buyer’s standpoint, houses are “flying off the shelves,” says one of our guests. Today, we talk with a real estate agent and an urban planner about just wha...

The U.S. State Department is stepping up pressure on the military government in Myanmar to release journalist Danny Fenster. The Michigan native was detained by authorities at the airport on his way to see his family 10 days ago. He is one of dozens of journalists human rights organizations say have been detained under the country’s military junta. On today’s episode, we’ll talk...

A bipartisan package of police reform bills are in the state Senate. Advocates are aiming for a broader approach to major systemic failures in policing. But the sponsors of these bills say incremental progress may be fundamental progress in 2021. But does it go far enough? Today, we’ll hear from two state Senators, who are Black, about what’s in the proposed legislation and where their...

In the 1934 game against Georgia Tech, the University of Michigan athletic director, Fielding Yost, benched the football team’s best player, Willis Ward. Not because of an injury or anything Ward did, but because Ward was Black - the only Black player on the team. Fast forward to today, an advisory committee to the University of Michigan is recommending the name Fielding Yost be removed from...

It is not your imagination, ticks are beyond plentiful in Michigan this year. So, what’s behind this boom in population? And what can we do to keep ourselves safe from the disease-spreading pests? On today's episode, we get a couple of tick experts to answer your questions.  GUESTS:  Howard Russell, entomologist at Michigan State University Jean Tsao, associate professor in MSU&rsq...

Opening a restaurant in the middle of a pandemic might seem like a risky choice. But for Mamba Hamissi and his wife Nadia Nijimbere, it was the only one that made sense. The couple are refugees from Burundi, and their new restaurant Baobab Fare is one of Detroit’s most buzzed about establishments. On today’s episode, we’ll talk to Mamba about serving up his home country’s c...

One year ago today, George Floyd’s murder at the hand of a Minneapolis police officer, spurred a movement against police brutality that reached across the world. It has brought a lot of people to dig into the ways inequality touches their lives. One of the people seeking answers is Alexandria Hughes, a black woman and activist. She tells about her family’s experience of racial profilin...

It’s never fun to get caught doing something you told someone else not to do -- like over the weekend when Governor Whitmer stepped outside of her own COVID social distancing guidelines and met up with 12 people at a bar for pizza. Will Whitmer’s gaffes damage her political reputation and her chances for re-election? We talk through this and some other matters in state government with...

Fifty years ago, Marvin Gaye made a creative leap of faith, and gave us one of the most enduring works of the 20th century: his 1971 album, “What’s Going On?” But a little known fact is that he had a little help from his friends -- Mel Farr and Lem Barney of the Detroit Lions. Today, we hear about the circle of  friends who helped Gaye turn his disillusion about the world in...

After more than a year, Governor Gretchen Whitmer has set a clear date for the end to the state’s pandemic restrictions: July 1. On this episode, we hear about why the business community says they still need more clarity from the state in order to fully reopen. We'll also speak with a bar owner about the struggle to get enough workers to return to business as usual.   GUESTS: ...

Ford is revealing it’s fully electrified version of a classic. It’s the subject of much curiosity both for F-150 fans and the wider industry. This week, President Joe Biden was in Dearborn, Michigan to get a look. Can America’s best selling vehicle leave its history of fossil fuel behind? GUESTS:  Michelle Krebs, senior director of automotive relations for Cox Automotiv...

The Trumpeter Swan is a native species that once numbered in the tens-of-thousands in the Great Lakes region, but was wiped out in Michigan more than 100 years ago. But thanks to the decades-long efforts of the W.K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary at Michigan State University, the species is gaining ground in Michigan. GUEST: Sara DePew-Baby, avian caretaker at the W.K. Kellogg Bird Sanctuary at Michi...

When the CDC announced last week that masks were no longer necessary for vaccinated individuals, we saw images and stories of people taking their masks off at the highest levels of government -- in the halls of the Capitol and White House. It felt like a moment. Could the pandemic be over? But epidemiologists remind us we’re still in a pandemic, and masks indoors and with groups of people ar...

Today Governor Whitmer announced she will follow the CDC and end the mask mandate for vaccinated Michiganders. Many of the details about what this means for gatherings and workplaces are still forthcoming, but things ARE changing rapidly. But the end of the mask mandate isn't all that happened in Michigan politics this week. There's also a gubernatorial race coming up. Today, a roundup of Michigan...

For a long time, psychedelic drugs brought to mind tie-dye, free love, and 1960s counterculture, but that’s changing. Now, there’s a push to decriminalize psychedelic drugs in Michigan, both for medical and recreational use. On today’s episode, we talk to someone who has made a career out of teaching other people how to use microdoses of psychedelic drugs to improve their lives....

Last November, Governor Whitmer ordered Enbridge Energy to close the Line 5 twin pipelines in the Straits of Mackinac this week -- as in before midnight tonight. But Enbridge says they have no plans of doing so. Neither side is budging, environmentalists and native tribes are protesting, and this whole dispute is seemingly now happening on a much larger stage. Today we talk about the stance on eac...

In 1879, a botanist named William Beal was conducting his research at State Agricultural College - the land-grant college that would one day become MSU. The school focused on agricultural studies, and Professor Beal wondered how long seeds could remain viable underground. He buried 20 unsealed bottles of seeds mixed in a sandy soil, to be dug up several years apart. Beal knew the answer to this ex...