Big Talk

Alex chatted with Jeremy Gotwals two weeks ago on Big Talk. Their conversation ranged far and wide and went way over our 28-minute program length, so today we present Part 2 of that tête à tête. Gotwals grew up in Bloomington and made a name for himself as a performer, creator, and idea person. He moved to Cincinnati where he …

He and his wife Barbara started Harmony School in a vacant, dilapidated house on Grant Street in 1974. The couple hoped to recreate for students the strong familial and community ties that Roc Bonchek recalled from his youth in Cleveland. Harmony now serves as a model for similar independent schools around the nation. Serving pre-schoolers through high schoolers, Harmony approaches …

When he was a teenager, Bloomingtonians might have happened upon him at any time of the day or night walking down the street and bursting into song. Jeremy Gotwals never stopped singing even after he grew up, moved to Cincinnati, and started his own publishing and marketing companies. A person of unlimited energy and immeasurable dreams, Gotwals taught himself how to …

Now that the United States military has withdrawn fro Afghanistan, we felt it was time to present a re-edited and expanded version of the entire 2017 interview we did with embedded journalist Douglas A. Wissing. Wissing warned us at that time that the US was bankrolling the Taliban and the group already controlled 90 percent of the country. Hosts Michael …

Both are high-ranking members of the Biden Administration and both have visited Bloomington on a number of occasions. Power, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, is now head of the US Agency for International Development. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and a 2020 presidential candidate, is the current Secretary of Transportation in the Biden cabinet. …

Only the second music director in the history of community radio WFHB, Christine Brackenhoff took the mantle of command from Jim Manion, who retired this past spring. Brackenhoff brings fresh qualities to the job as well as to the station as a whole: she’s young, eager, and represents WFHB’s goal of reaching as many diverse demographics as possible. We hope …

He dreamed for years of opening an independent bookstore in Bloomington. Finally, in 1996, he realized his dream. Within five years two national bookstore chains opened locations near his and he was out of business. Now that the big box stores are gone, Rick Morgenstern is back in business with a new bookshop/cafe/events center on the East Side. [Hosts Michael …

He embarked on a new career when he came up with the idea to interview local characters on the opposite end of a see-saw in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Dave Askins and his wife, Mary Morgan, then launched a news and civic service website in that college town. By then, he was hooked on journalism. The couple ended up in another …

Big Talk co-host Alex Ashkin continues his conversation with “the Father of Green Cleaning” (and, incidentally, his own father), Steve Ashkin, in the finale of this two-parter. Part 1 aired Thursday, July 29, 2021. [Hosts Michael Glab and Alex Ashkin chat with Bloomington’s most fascinating people.]

Working in the cleaning products industry, Steve Ashkin hit upon the idea that our efforts to sanitize our home and work environments needn’t foul our global environment. Moreover, he posited that our scrubbing, scouring, and wiping liquids and utensils shouldn’t make us sick in our own homes. Many in his industry scoffed at Ashkin’s suggestions but he kept working to …