The Indiana Century Podcast

What if the thing everyone is afraid of—spent nuclear fuel—is actually Indiana's greatest economic opportunity? The United States has approximately 90,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting at 76 sites across 34 states. No permanent repository. The federal government promised to take it in 1998. They broke that promise. They have been paying billions in damages ever since. Total liabil...

The United States is dependent on foreign sources for nuclear fuel. We import most of our uranium. We depend on foreign enrichment. Russia is currently the only commercial supplier of HALEU, the fuel needed for most advanced reactors. That is a national security vulnerability. Indiana can fix it. In this episode, host Kory walks through the nuclear fuel cycle from uranium mining to enrichment to f...

What if the solution to America's nuclear waste problem has been sitting under our feet for millions of years? The United States has 95,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting in dry casks at 79 reactor sites across the country. No permanent repository. The federal government has paid billions in damages for failing to take the fuel, with total liability expected to reach $62 billion by 2030....

The United States Navy has operated nuclear reactors for 70 years. Hundreds of submarines and aircraft carriers. Thousands of reactor years of operation. Zero reactor accidents. Zero meltdowns. Zero releases of radioactive material that caused harm to the public. That record is not luck. It is the result of a safety culture built from scratch by Admiral Hyman Rickover, a culture so powerful that e...

What if a nuclear reactor could fit in a shipping container? What if it could be built in a factory, shipped by truck or rail, and assembled on site like a giant battery? That is not science fiction. That is the small modular reactor, and it is happening now. In December 2025, the Department of Energy awarded the Tennessee Valley Authority 400 million dollars to build a GE Hitachi BWRX-300 at the...

Before the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Tennessee Valley was one of the poorest regions in America. Only three percent of farms had electricity. Floods destroyed crops every spring. Malaria was rampant. The people who lived there had been left behind. Then, in 1933, the federal government did something remarkable. It created the TVA. A public corporation. A state-owned utility at a regional sca...

We've spent eleven episodes building something. Reactors that pay counties ten million dollars a year. Rail lines that turn a region into a neighborhood. Fiber that connects every Hoosier. A bank that keeps our money here. A corps that trains people who were written off to become builders. Once you build something valuable, someone will try to take it. Not with violence. With legislation. Wit...

Special: In today's episode, I discuss the animals my family adopted and what they mean to us! Animal welfare isn't separate from human welfare. It's the same thing. Stray dogs spread rabies. Feral cats spread disease. Overcrowded shelters become breeding grounds for infection. When we protect animals, we protect people too. This is called One Health, and it's the foundation fo...

There's a nuclear plant in Illinois, just across the state line from Indiana. It's been running for decades. Every year, it generates billions of dollars in value. Clean power. Good jobs. Tax revenue. None of that money comes to Indiana. The jobs are in Illinois. The tax revenue stays in Illinois. The economic activity happens across the river. Indiana has power plants too. Coal plants,...

We're already paying. Five billion dollars leaves Indiana every year. Every time you flip a light switch, fill your tank, buy groceries, see a doctor, deposit a paycheck. The money leaves. It doesn't come back. The question isn't "Can we afford to build the Indiana Century Project?" The question is "Can we afford to keep watching our money leave Indiana?" This ep...

Who builds America? The roads, the bridges, the power plants, the rail lines. Who pours the concrete and turns the wrenches? Who shows up every day and does the work that makes everything else possible? Right now, the answer is complicated. We rely on private contractors, out-of-state crews, a patchwork of trades that varies by region and project. The average age of a skilled trades worker in Indi...

There's a kid in a library parking lot tonight trying to do homework. There's a farmer who can't get the data he needs to make decisions about planting. There's a small business owner losing customers because her website won't load. There's a grandparent who hasn't seen their family in months because video calls keep dropping. The digital divide isn't abstra...

The interstate highway system was a marvel. It moved goods faster than ever. It connected cities. It made America an economic powerhouse. It also bypassed every small town it touched. Main streets emptied. Downtowns hollowed out. The places where people used to run into each other couldn't compete with exit ramps. We optimized for moving things. We forgot about connecting people. This episode...

The nuclear power your parents feared and the nuclear power we're building are related in name only. In Episode 5 of The Indiana Century Podcast, host Kory Easterday kicks off the deep dive on Pillar 1: Energy Sovereignty. This is an honest look at why nuclear, why now, and why Indiana is perfectly positioned to lead. You'll learn: 🔥 The fire we're all standing in – Why getting off...

We've been told there are two paths for a place like Indiana. The first: beg corporations to build here with tax breaks and subsidies. Cut the ribbon. Celebrate the jobs. Then watch, a decade later, as they leave for a better deal somewhere else. The second: accept decline. Watch the young people leave. Watch the Main Streets empty. Tell ourselves this is just how it is. Both paths lead to th...

We call it the Crossroads of America. But what happens when a place optimized for moving goods forgets how to connect people? In Episode 3 of The Indiana Century Podcast, host Kory Easterday follows the $5 billion extraction from Episode 2 to its final destination: not a spreadsheet, but a feeling. The emptiness of a downtown that used to be something. The silence at a dinner table where a parent...

We call ourselves the "Crossroads of America." It sounds strong. Central. Essential. But what if that identity has become a trap? In Episode 2 of The Indiana Century Podcast, host Kory Easterday builds on the diagnostic foundation from 1,067 conversations and follows the money ( $5 billion of it) to show exactly how wealth created by Hoosiers leaves our state every single year, never to...

How do you build a new future for Indiana? You start by listening to the people who live here. In this foundational episode, host and Navy nuclear veteran Kory Easterday shares what he learned from 1,067 recorded conversations across all 92 counties; from factory floors to family farms, from small town diners to college campuses. You’ll hear the three universal patterns that emerged from these con...