Big Talk

Previously un-aired conversation with six guests who’ve appeared on Big Talk during the last year. They’re passionate and committed. They give of their time and energy. They want to make their local community and the world better places. They are Tracey Hutchings-Goetz of Hoosier Action, Kassandra Botts of the Indiana Recovery Alliance, Dr. Rob Stone of Medicare for All: Indiana, …

The nonprofits Hoosier Action and the Indiana Recovery Alliance are working together to raise awareness about the state’s work requirement for Medicaid recipients. Bloomington organizer Hutchings-Goetz and the Alliance’s interim executive director Botts hope to send a message to the Indiana state legislature from people  all over the state that the requirement is a needless burden on health care aid …

As she approaches her third year at the helm of the Cardinal Stage Company, artistic director Kate Galvin talks about South Central Indiana’s premier regional theater company as well as how she wound up in Bloomington. The Cardinal’s 2019-20 season begins in two weeks with its production of “The Great Gatsby.” Galvin was an award-winning director in Philadelphia before taking …

He’s our town’s doctor, having spent some 28 years working in the Bloomington Hospital emergency room. Now he tends to people in palliative and hospice care programs, helping them through the last stage of life. Rob Stone is a loud and insistent voice for health care reform in this country. A strong advocate for universal, single-payer health care, he’s the …

Big Talk is back for a new season of original shows! This week’s guest is songwriter, busker, traveller, philosopher, puppeteer, off-the-gridder Travis Puntarelli. He’s an ambassador for music, both for the ear and the heart. Simultaneously soft-spoken and determined, he’s gone from high school dropout to husband, father, and self-supporting balladeer. Fellow street-music-maker Marc Haggerty compares him favorably to Nobel …

Diagnosed as a small child with a learning disorder, Adria Nassim experienced problems with spatial recognition and social interactions through her late teens. Then she was told by her doctors she was on the autism spectrum. That inspired her to learn as much as she could about the neurodevelopmental disorder. Now she lectures and instructs groups, classes, and curious people …

Searching for direction after college, Wes Martin volunteered at WFHB at his father’s urging. Seven years later, he became the station’s fourth news director. Before taking the job, Martin had left Bloomington to earn his master’s in journalism and then to serve as editor of an English language daily newspaper in Thailand. Now he’s leaving WFHB and Bloomington and will …

Another helping of stories, flights of fantasy, gags, recollections, and observations from the two surviving members of the Firesign Theater, Phil Proctor and David Ossman. The pair came to town for the spring 2019 edition of WFHB’s Firehouse Follies, “Fireheads & Tales.” Thanks to Richard Fish for helping set up this conversation. Host Michael Glab goes one-on-one with Bloomington’s most …

The Firesign Theater created sketch comedy; fantastic, psychedelic, associative improv; and absurdist performances beginning in the mid-1960s. Four talented, imaginative friends began fashioning their own audio world at a Los Angeles listener-supported radio station. They graduated to albums, movies, and television through the years. Now only Phil Proctor and David Ossman survive. They bill themselves “What’s Left of the Firesign …

After Adam Nahas and his art school friends graduated from Indiana University they found themselves without the school’s physical resources and human network. So he and a few other artists started up a shared work space — akin to a clubhouse — for creative types here in Bloomington. Their seminal locus has evolved into a support and education resource, social center, …