Nice Work

This week on Nice Work we talk with writer Karol Lagodzki about his novel Controlled Conversations, set during a period of martial law in Poland in the early 1980’s. We check in with one of WFIU’s Local Favorites from the NPR Tiny Desk Contest: Bloomington band The Foolins, and we preview the Mini Midwest Print Fest.

Here’s a premise for a story. A 66-year-old woman,let’s call her Celeste, has been divorced twice and has basically given up on love. Then she meets Max. He helps with her taxes, gives her gardening tips, and then she falls in love with him. The first twist is: Max is an AI Chatbot. The second twist is that Celeste is a real person, in a story published by the New York Times just a few weeks ago.Relationships with chatbots, with AI, with robots, whatever we want to call them – these are situations we have to face right now. And Jewish Theatre Bloomington will be helping us think through that with their latest production. It’s calledYour Name Means Dream. It runs May 7 through 17 at the Waldron Rose Firebay.We spoke with the director, Martha Jacobs, and one of the two actors, Diane Kondrat, about the upcoming production.

Jesse Thorn has been interviewing comedians and hip-hop artists and other creative people for over twenty-five years. He started with a college radio show and he just kept going. His show, The Sound of Young America, got picked up by public radio stations, and he eventually changed the name to Bullseye, probably because he was no longer quite so young. One of the effects of having started a radio show in college and turning it into a career is that Jesse Thorn never went to journalism school. Because of that, in 2017 he decided to do a series of interviews with interviewers about interviewing. That’s his description. It’s called The Turnaround, and he talked with a lot of legends, including public radio favorites Terry Gross and Ira Glass.  In this conversation, Jesse and Alex discuss what he’s learned about interviewing—from those interviews and from doing it for a quarter century. Kismet, Bloomington’s Newest Literary Magazine (as far as we can tell) Kismet started because its publishers—specifically M.J. Woods and Bry Best—had noticed a lacuna in the world of speculative fiction magazines. They longed for a magazine that did a few specific things, which they listed in their first issue:  Intentionally created a community of its own  Focused on frequently marginalized voices, non-Western perspectives, transgressive ideas, etc.  Functioned between media and academia, both putting out the content and discussing it critically.  Then they realized: they could make that magazine. The Kismet is what resulted. We talk with Editor-in-Chief M.J. Woods, Co-Founder and Developmental Editor Bry Best, and Managing Editor and Oracle Sarah Johnson LaBarbera about the story of its founding, what they hope to accomplish, and why developmental editing is such an important part of their mission. The Personal Made VisibleAt the end of every academic year, the Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design presents a thesis show including work from each of the graduating Master of Fine Arts students. The show is a professional exhibit in the Grunwald Gallery in the Fine Arts Building on the IU campus in Bloomington. To accommodate the graduating students, and to give their work room to breathe, they divide them into two shows.  In the second round this spring was an exhibition by Sookyung Augustin called (in)Visible Identity: All the Little Things. Moved by Augustin’s work, Kayte Young reflects on art and connection.   Your Name Means Dream Preview Relationships with chatbots, with AI, with robots, whatever we want to call them – these are situations we have to face right now. And Jewish Theatre Bloomington will be helping us think through that with their latest production. It’s called Your Name Means Dream. It runs May 7 through 17 at the Waldron Rose Firebay.  We spoke with the director, Martha Jacobs, and one of the two actors, Diane Kondrat, about the upcoming production. Kayte Young, Alex Chambers and Tyler Lake, produce the show and we get production help from Danny William, Karl Templeton, Jillian Blackburn and Jonah Ballard. Our theme music was composed and performed by Alan Davis. Additional music from Universal Production Music. The executive producer is Eric Bolstridge 

Jesse Thorn has been interviewing comedians and hip-hop artists and other creative people for over twenty-five years. He started with a college radio show and he just kept going. His show, The Sound of Young America, got picked up by public radio stations, and he eventually changed the name to Bullseye, probably because he was no longer quite so young. Maybe you’ve heard of Bullseye. Maybe, as a WFIU listener, you’ve heard it on the radio. It runs on WFIU2 at 7:00 on Saturday evenings. We started carrying it in October 2025, which is when he and Nice Work host Alex Chambers spoke.One of the effects of having started a radio show in college and turning it into a career is that Jesse Thorn never went to journalism school. Because of that, in 2017 he decided to do a series of interviews with interviewers about interviewing. That’s his description. It’s called The Turnaround, and he talked with a lot of legends, including public radio favorites Terry Gross and Ira Glass.In this conversation, Jesse and Alex discuss what he’s learned about interviewing—from those interviews and from doing it for a quarter century.

At the end of every academic year, the Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design presents a thesis show including work from each of the graduating Master of Fine Arts students. The show is a professional exhibit in the Grunwald Gallery in the Fine Arts Building on the IU campus in Bloomington. To accommodate the graduating students, and to give their work room to breathe, they divide them into two shows.  In the second round this spring was an exhibition by Sookyung Augustin called (in)Visible Identity: All the Little Things. Through her intricate personal adornment objects, the artist explores several personal issues including: illness, misdiagnosis, navigating the medical system and confronting the effects of early trauma as a Korean adoptee raised in the US in a white American family. Moved by Augustin’s work, Kayte Young reflects on art and connection.

The Kismet Magazine put out their first issue in September, 2024. The physical copy is a booklet stitched together with black thread. On the cover is a black and white image of planet Earth with roots or tentacles coming out of the South Pole, a couple of orbital rings, and a pagoda-like building on the North Pole. Other, smaller, tentacular Earths float around it in space. Open it up and you’ll see, in large letters, “DEAR EARTHLINGS...”Kismet started because its publishers—specifically M.J. Woods and Bry Best—had noticed a lacuna in the world of speculative fiction magazines. They longed for a magazine that did a few specific things, which they listed in their first issue:1. Intentionally created a community of its own2. Focused on frequently marginalized voices, non-Western perspectives, transgressive ideas, etc.3. Functioned between media and academia, both putting out the content and discussing it critically.Then they realized: they could make that magazine. The Kismet is what resulted. We talk with Editor-in-Chief M.J. Woods, Co-Founder and Developmental Editor Bry Best, and Managing Editor and Oracle Sarah Johnson LaBarbera about the story of its founding, what they hope to accomplish, and why developmental editing is such an important part of their mission.

Rania Matar’s photography is shaped by Lebanon’s history; Common Ground Films makes movies that are hard to fund; and old Atari games turn up in a landfill.

In 2014 a documentary crew, an academic, and some gaming legends unearthed video game history from a landfill. Actually, it was probably a mix of archeologists and backhoe operators that did the unearthing, but they were all there in Alamogordo New Mexico to find a treasure trove of Atari ephemera. Writer and educator Raiford Guins tells us the story of how a ton of gaming cartridges from the early 80’s ended up in a landfill in the southwest. In typical Guins fashion, he makes the point that the story that has been repeated, often involving the failure of one game, is more complicated than that.

Bloomington filmmakers Kevin Weaver and Mitch Hannon ran into an issue when pitching their newest documentary, Beyond Vision, about blind kayaker and adventurer Lonnie Bedwell: it wasn't commercial enough. That's why the two of them, along with other local filmmakers, created Common Ground Films, a nonprofit organization centered around telling the stories of individuals who otherwise would not have their stories told. Associate Producer Jonah Ballard sits down with Kevin Weaver and Mitch Hannon to discuss the founding of Common Ground Films, the story of Lonnie Bedwell, and how to make films when there is no one there to fund them. 

Rania Matar has been photographing women and girls for most of her career. It started with images of her children and expanded into an artistic practice that includes women from Lebanon, her home country, and women in the United States where she has lived since the 1980s. After 9/11, she wanted to express the shared humanity of people from both cultures, in a tangible way, through her photographs.  She has explored the lives of teenage girls through portraits in their bedrooms, surrounded by the things they’ve chosen for their personal spaces as they are forming their independent identities. She did a project featuring 12-year-old girls, capturing the awkward beauty at the edge of puberty.Her latest project is called “Where do I go?” It is an exhibition and a book featuring portraits of women in Lebanon in their early twenties, around the age she was when she left her home country. The portraits are staged in abandoned buildings around Beirut and in natural landscapes like apple orchards and fields of poppies.  Rania collaborates with the women to choose locations of personal or social significance.  The project was timed to be released at the 50-year anniversary of the start of Lebanon’s civil war. The exhibition opened in March, 2026 at the Sydney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University. The photographs are on display through August 02, 2026 in the Rhonda and Anthony Moravec Gallery, Center for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs on the third floor. The book, Where do I go? Is available in the museum gift shop and it features essays about Rania’s work, including a piece by Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert. Leila is the Curator of Contemporary Art at the Eskenazi Museum, and the curator for this exhibition. Kayte Young spoke with Leila and Rania about the exhibit, their collaboration and about the joys and challenges of working and creating in such a complicated place.

Gabriel Jenks has a new album out. It’s called Lonesome, and it’s a collection of songs in folk and bluegrass traditions. It’s a bit of a departure. Jenks is an associate professor of music composition at the Jacobs School of Music, and the project he did before Lonesome involved writing counterpoint to understand 16th century polyphony while also deconstructing music theory writing from various points in the past few centuries. Not a bluegrass album.Alex Chambers invited him to come in and tell me about how he got from one to the other. They talked about the social context of music theory in the Enlightenment and early twentieth century Europe, being maybe the biggest music nerd at a music conservatory, and what working in a cow barn has to do with becoming a harpist.Make Art, Make CommunityHeather Farmer and Maureen Langley are Besties. And Maureen now hosts Zine Club at Heather's art supply store, Bloomington Fine Art Supply. Thursday evenings are dedicated to Art in Common sessions, which are free art-making gatherings in their spacious studio.Bloomington Fine Art Supply is much more than an art supply shop. They host regular workshops with skilled artisans in the community teaching book binding, drawing, painting and so much more. They also host Art in Commons on Thursday evenings—free drop-in programs such as Zine Club, Collage Collective and meetings of the Indiana Gourd Society. Kayte spoke with BFA Supply owner Heather Farmer and Zine Club founder Maureen Langley.The Grunwald Gallery MFA show invites you in The 2026 MFA exhibit for students at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design fills the Grunwald Gallery with the work of a next generation of artists.In the studio art department at Indiana University, 13 graduate students are preparing for their thesis shows at the Grunwald Gallery of Art. They have worked for 3 years exploring and mastering their crafts. This show is a cumulation of the effort and time they have put into their degree. Each artist has a concentration in a specific medium – ceramics, painting, sculpture, digital art, graphic design, metal, and photography. During the last few weeks of their preparation for their show, each artist sat down with Olivia Trevino for an interview to talk about their show.

In the studio art department at Indiana University, 13 graduate students are preparing for their thesis shows. They have worked for 3 years exploring and mastering their crafts. This show is a cumulation of the effort and time they have put into their degree. Each artist has a concentration in a specific medium – ceramics, painting, sculpture, digital art, graphic design, metal, and photography. During the last few weeks of their preparation for their show, each artist sat down with Olivia Trevino for an interview to talk about their show. 

Gabriel Jenks has a new album out. It’s called Lonesome, and it’s a collection of songs in folk and bluegrass traditions. It’s a bit of a departure. Jenks is an associate professor of music composition at the Jacobs School of Music, and the project he did before Lonesome involved composing from historically stylistic standpoints as part of a multifaceted project titled A Journey Through the Underworld: Counterpoint, which bridges book, play, opera, and musical composition, interrogating music theory from various points of views in the past few centuries. Not a bluegrass album. Alex Chambers invited him to come in and tell me about how he got from one to the other. They talked about the social context of music theory in the Enlightenment and early twentieth century Europe, being maybe the biggest music nerd at a music conservatory, and what working in a cow barn has to do with becoming a harpist. 

Bloomington Fine Art supply is much more than an art supply shop. They host regular workshops with skilled artisans in the community teaching book binding, drawing, painting and so much more. They also host Art in Commons on Thursday evenings—free drop-in programs such as Zine Club, Collage Collective and meetings of the Indiana Gourd Society. Kayte spoke with BFA Supply owner Heather Farmer and Zine Club founder Maureen Langley.

On a weekend afternoon in late winter, the hosts of Nice Work decided to go to the Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum in Greene County. It’s been on our list of culturally interesting spots in Southern Indiana that we want to do stories about.  The trip didn’t quite turn out as we planned. But it did get us thinking about how we spend our time. 

Bloomington has plenty of visual and studio art that will get you thinking, from the I Fell downtown to the Eskenazi and Grunwald galleries on campus. There’s also music that pushes boundaries, from the Back Door and the Blockhouse to the Jacobs’ New Music Ensemble. We’ve encountered less thought-provoking theatre – although not none. The Jewish Theatre of Bloomington’s production 4000 Miles, from a few months before Nice Work launched, was one example of a play that was both well-produced and left us thinking. It wasn’t avant-garde, but experimentation is only one way of being thought-provoking. And it’s no guarantee. Another place we’ve seen thought-provoking theatre in the past year? Bloomington High School North. They did an impressive production of the new(ish) musical Hadestown in the spring of 2025, and then, that fall, they put on Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. Rhinoceros is not the first absurdist play, but it was one of the most influential. It was written in 1959, and it’s as weird as ever. So Alex Chambers went over to North High School to talk with their new theatre director, Noel Koontz, about why he had his students put on a play a lot of theatre majors don’t even read until grad school. BHSN’s spring musical is God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It’s based on the Kurt Vonnegut novel, and it’s one of the first musicals written by Alan Menken, who would go on to write the music for Disney’s Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and more. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater runs April 17-19 at Bloomington High School North. 

Art is everywhere, according to Nice Work host Tyler Lake who cannot help but dwell on the materials, forms, and graphic treatments of the endless supply of consumer products that surround us all. Clothes, furniture, transportation, even the mundane like packaged food and cleaning supplies all come uncomfortably wrapped up inside of some form of art. Designers, often artists in their own right, create products that are rooted in a greater artistic ideals in mind while the commercial world finds its place in art through commentary, recontextualization, and direct aesthetic imitation.  What separates art from commerce has often been the crass commercializing that art was meant to rise above; that line is so fuzzy now, maybe always has been, that it may well be what really separates them is quantity. Turning a designer’s good idea into a real-world product, manufactured in dizzying quantities, meeting the requirements of legislators, quality control, the customer, and the C-suite is the hard work of a product developer. There is even more to it, and Debra Pearson, Co-Director of the Center for Innovative Merchandising, Co-Faculty Advisor for the Retail Studies Organization, and Senior Lecturer in Merchandising at Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design at Indiana University, tells Tyler all about how our favorite products go from idea to inventory. 

High school theatre director challenges students (and audiences).Art is everywhere, according to Nice Work host Tyler Lake who cannot help but dwell on the materials, forms, and graphic treatments of the endless supply of consumer products that surround us all. Clothes, furniture, transportation, even the mundane like packaged food and cleaning supplies all come uncomfortably wrapped up inside of some form of art. Designers, often artists in their own right, create products that are rooted in a greater artistic ideals in mind while the commercial world finds its place in art through commentary, recontextualization, and direct aesthetic imitation.   What separates art from commerce has often been the crass commercializing that art was meant to rise above; that line is so fuzzy now, maybe always has been, that it may well be what really separates them is quantity. Turning a designer’s good idea into a real-world product, manufactured in dizzying quantities, meeting the requirements of legislators, quality control, the customer, and the C-suite is the hard work of a product developer. There is even more to it, and Debra Pearson, Co-Director of the Center for Innovative Merchandising, Co-Faculty Advisor for the Retail Studies Organization, and Senior Lecturer in Merchandising at Eskenazi School of Art Architecture and Design at Indiana University, tells Tyler all about how our favorite products go from idea to inventory. The nice work hosts take their timeOn a weekend afternoon in late winter, the hosts of Nice Work decided to go to the Sculpture Trails Outdoor Museum in Greene County. It’s been on our list of culturally interesting spots in Southern Indiana that we want to do stories about.  The trip didn’t quite turn out as we planned. But it did get us thinking about how we spend our time. CREDITS This episode was produced and edited by Kayte Young. We get production help from Danny William, Holly Wilkerson, Karl Templeton, Leo Paes, Jillian Blackburn and Jonah Ballard.   Our theme music was composed and performed by Alan Davis. Additional music from Universal Production Music. The executive producer is Eric Bolstridge 

Girls Rock Bloomington: how it started, how it’s going. How Voces Novae expands what choral music can be.And an R.E.M. cover band that’s better than a cover band.

This week on Nice Work we take a deep dive down the coin slot with author Raiford Guins and his new book about Pong, we check out an unconventional artist’s talk, and we preview the Bloomington International Film Festival just in time for this year’s screenings.  

Alice Wong, who passed away in November of 2025, was a writer, an editor, an organizer, a fan of nerd culture, a foodie, and a self-described disabled oracle.  She founded the Disability Visibility Project with StoryCorps to collect oral histories of disabled people and share them through tweets and podcasts and images and more. She was an advocate for disabled people throughout her life. President Obama appointed her to the National Council on Disability and, in 2024, she was awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant.  She was also from Indianapolis, where she grew up as a close friend Ellen Wu, who is an associate professor of history at IU Bloomington, and the associate director of the College Arts and Humanities Institute – CAHI.  CAHI will be hosting a celebration of life for Alice Wong at Wednesday, March 25, starting at 1pm. Alex Chambers invited Ellen Wu into the studio to talk about Alice and their friendship.The Monroe County History Center RemembersIn a town with a disproportionate number of museums, be it art, history, textiles, rare books, etc. it can be easy to overlook a place like the Monroe County History Center – don't do that! The History Center is housed in a regal limestone building on 5th street just west of the public library. The building and the building site are worthy of historical note. It was the location of one of the earlier schools in Monroe County, before becoming home to the first “Colored School” in Bloomington in the late 19th century. That was all before the current building was erected as one of more 1600 Carnegie Libraries that opened across the United States just over 100 years ago.  The Monroe County History Center has several galleries on the top floor, a space of mostly permanent pieces that detail Monroe County’s history through the objects and artifacts, as well as galleries that rotate regularly telling stories about the people, movements, and institutions from both the past and present. The Genealogy and Research Library is a glimpse into documents from county’s past; court records, marriage records, family histories, and a lot more from the history of Monroe County. IU Theatre's Queer MidsummerEven if you’re not a Shakespeare fan, the comedy in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is hard to knock. Samwell Rose, an MFA directing student, directed IU Theatre’s latest take on the play, and when he heard that it focused on queer liberation - and had a circus theme, too? - Alex Chambers decided he had to go. He wrote a review of the production, for Nice Work.First Friday Fiber FestGallery Walk on the first Friday of each month is now a Bloomington tradition. It’s a great way to see what artists in Bloomington are making and get out and meet the folks in this community. Nice Work host Tyler Lake went out on the first Friday on March to see a bit of what was on offer. He found a lot of fiber work, some at Backspace Gallery, John Waldron Arts Center, and The I Fell Gallery and Studios. He spoke with the Curator of the exhibit there this month, David Sloma. The show is called Layered Conversations: Dialogues Between Cloth and Hand. The show is worth a look and will stay up through the end of March. 

cross-genre artists Essence London about her new game Yet Another Lit Mag, we turn up the lights on the IU Library’s Moving Image Archive and hit the hard court to hear all about bike polo.  

Tyler Lake talks with Althea Crome about knitting tiny sweaters, tinier gloves, and only-slightly-larger sweaters for the 2009 film Coraline. Alicia Kozma gives us the who, what, when, and where of spring at the Cinema. Steve, of Steve’s Book-O-Rama, gives us his shop’s origin story. And Bethany Habegger reflects on nostalgia and painting objects as self-portraits. 

Carrie Hott likes to tinker. She takes apart electronics and tries to figure out how they work. She once did a residency at the UC Davis Center for Spaceflight Research. A recent project involves a pocket-sized, solar-powered internet server that hosts a website that she coded herself.  Researching Carrie Hott’s work got me wondering, what is it that artists do? How is their inquiry different from—or the same as—scientific or technological inquiry? We touch on those questions and more in our conversation. Carrie Hott is an artist, designer and educator. She is Assistant Professor of graphic design in the studio art department  in the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design at Indiana University, Bloomington.  Her current project, How to Slow Internet, focuses on, “collaborative experimentation with small scale communication technology in order to better consider the large scale communications infrastructure on which we increasingly depend.” You can explore past projects (including Lamps That Sense Us, and Our Shiver) on her website.   Kayte recommends watching a series of videos from a project called Room of Edges, here.Raising the roof at an underground barThe Blockhouse Bar is tucked under another staple of the Bloomington arts scene; The Back Door. Like the best kind of joints that live under other good spots, it’s not the most easily found place. But once you find it, there’s pretty much always something going on. The number of record release events for local bands that have taken place at the Blockhouse somehow averages out to be far higher than the actual number of albums releases in that same amount of time. Nobody knows how they do it.  They also keep a regular calendar of nice and predictable events notched between comedy shows, touring bands, benefit shows, and all the other kinds of things that go down at the Blockhouse. We spoke with Kaiya Grundmann, the Booking & Promotions Manager about all the ways they stay busy over at The Blockhouse Bar. An underwater world made of yarnOver at the Sydney and Lois Eskenazi of Art a new show by one artist has taken over the entire Featured Exhibitions Gallery. It’s a magical textilescape of knitted and crocheted coral reefs and other sea creatures, both real and imagined. The artist, Mulyana uses recycled yarn, and shredded plastic bags to depict the sea floor in different stages of life. Bright and colorful coral in the bloom of life occupies one corner of the gallery, while coral that has been bleached white sits in limbo between all that color and similar seascapes darkened into shades of gray and black. The show is called Mulyana: Vital Ecosystems, and it features dozens of intricate knitted and crocheted scenes, thousands of yellow fiber fish that hang from ceiling and an unavoidable environmental message. As you move through the space you see the effect of environmental damage, colorful coral fades to bleach white and finally to black and grays that seem to signal death and decay. The show up now through Sunday, June 28, 2026. CREDITS This episode was produced and edited by Kayte Young. We get production help from Danny William, Holly Wilkerson, Karl Templeton, Leo Paes, Jillian Blackburn and Jonah Ballard.   Our theme music was composed and performed by Alan Davis. Additional music from Universal Production Music. The executive producer is Eric Bolstridge 

On Nice Work, we take a second look at how we remember with poet Daniel Lassell and his new book of poetry, “Frame inside a Frame.” We go contra dancing with the Bloomington Old Time Music and Dance Group, paint a picture of artists Jack Owens, and preview an upcoming experimental music event called Overtuned Fest. 

The directors of a new documentary, WTO/99, on how they laid out a chronology of the events. Producer Mary Forrest asks an important question about love. It's time to start thinking about summer (arts!) camp. And Alex Chambers reviews Constellation’s new show, Séance: The Board Awakens. 

On Friday November 7, 2025, six student producers descended on a beloved local restaurant, mics in hand, to record a day in the life of the place. The fact that the Runcible Spoon would be celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2026 hadn’t occurred to the students in Alex Chambers’ podcasting class, but it was the locally beloved nature of the restaurant that brought them there. Over the course of twelve hours, from the morning shift until closing, they talked with the workers, the owners, and the customers. They heard teary goodbyes, near-death experiences, jokes, and the history and lore of the Spoon itself. In a project inspired by This American Life’s classic 24 Hours at the Golden Apple and Brave Little State’s Twelve hours at the Richmond park and ride, we bring you a day in the life of the Runcible Spoon. This story was produced by the students in Alex Chambers Fall 2025 Advanced Audio Storytelling class: Lily Marks, Owen Koehler, Ben Burns, Audrey Ouillette, Clara Licklider, and Joe Ringer. Thanks to Regan O’Neill, co-owner of the Runcible Spoon, for helping to coordinate this and welcoming us in, and thanks to everyone who shared their stories. University Collections at Indiana University started back in 2018. Then President Michael McRobbie wanted to bring what turned out to be hundreds of disparate collections of objects, document, artwork, sculpture and more, under one umbrella. It's a vast and varied collection of collections, and there is a dedicated gallery space, spaces actually, to exhibit pieces from not only the collection but pieces from all over the world. In a new and recurring segment called, check ‘em out, if you want, hosts Kayte Young, Alex Chambers, and Tyler Lake recommend some things for you to check out, if you want. This installment features Alex telling us about The Secret Commonwealth, book two in Philip Pullman’s three book series collectively called The Book of Dust.  Kayte buys into the hype around the AMC series Mad Men. A slick and thoughtful serial about ad execs on Madison Avenue in the 60’s. It examines masculine fragility in ways that feel just as relevant now as they did back in 2007 when it debuted.  Tyler goes rummaging through the Army Surplus store to find a recent series of the podcast Articles of Interest. In the series called “Gear,” host Avery Trufelman goes back to the 19th century to look at the long and interwoven relationship between outdoor outfitters and the United States military that is still as strong (and now more breathable!) as ever.   

This week on Nice Work, Bloomington journalist and author Steve Higgs tells the story of environmental activist Andy Mahler’s extraordinary life. We spin a yarn about White Violet Center for Eco-Justice in Terra Haute, and we hear from Gabriel Jenks and the New Music Ensemble. 

We celebrate two key figures from Indiana: screenwriter Angelo Pizzo, whose latest film is his most personal yet, and AIDS activist Ryan White, who will be memorialized by a new statue by sculptor Melanie Cooper Pennington.

When I invited Antonia Matthew for an interview on our show, she agreed but insisted that there were other local writers who were more deserving of the attention. Over the next couple of weeks, I received several messages from her with suggestions of writers we should interview. I was grateful and we’ll follow up on that, but I also think it says something about our guest today. Tonia is originally from England, and she was a young child during World War II. She’s lived in Bloomington since 1968. She’s been involved in many artistic groups and organizations in Bloomington, including: Five Women Poets, Writers’ Guild at Bloomington, Aquarius Books for a Feminist Future, The Venue Fine Arts and Gifts Ekphrasis Readings, Women Writing for (a) Change and Puck Players Puppet Theatre. She wrote an audio play called Homefront, based on her experiences as a young child growing up in England during World War II, which Richard Fish helped to produce and distribute to WFHB and other stations, including stations in England, where it was produced with British actors.  Tonia talks with Kayte Young about her writing life and her role in Bloomington’s art scene. Weird AcademiaFans of the Weird Studies podcast co-hosted by IU professor Phil Ford rejoice! Phil and co-host J.F. Martel will descend on the Buskirk-Chumley Theater on January 29th, and they are bringing a host of intellectuals, creators, and thinkers along with them.  Weird Academia, started out as a night of conversation about the unexplained, the occult, and the mystic arts is now a festival of sorts. Alongside the evening of discussion about all things strange, there will be a screening of the colossally weird film Altered States, followed by a live recording of an episode of Weird Studies that will take place on January 28th at the IU Cinema. To kick it all off will be an exhibition of photographer  The People’s Yarn Mary Ramsey didn’t know a thing about yarn or knitting when she moved to Bloomington, about 15 years ago. She also didn’t know very many people, so a coworker at her temp job invited her to a knit group, and she had a great time. She learned to knit, then she learned to dye yarn, and she started selling it online and at conventions. As much as she liked the yarn, the people have always been her favorite part. So when she opened Rebel Purl, a yarn shop on Bloomington’s west side, she made sure that community events were a central part of the business. 

The eye-catching red abstract sculpture by artists Alexander Calder on the IU campus gets a brand-new coat of paint. We head downtown to experience authentic movement and the ideas behind a public performance called Ordinary Pilgrimage. Poet Divya Victor spins poetry out of the “noise” of official documents, and some Rubik's cubes get solved. 

We hear from a style icon about vintage style vs vintage values. The director of our local library reflects on libraries as public trusts. And the head of curatorial services at IU’s special collections library describes the similarities between a library and a seance.

Scholar and curator Faye Gleisser’s book Risk Work: Making Art and Guerrilla Tactics in Punitive America, 1967-1987 won the 2025 Charles C. Eldredge Prize from the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The award recognizes outstanding scholarship in the field of American art, and the 2025 committee called Gleisser’s work “gamechanging.” Risk Work is about artists in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, who started using new tactics in response to changes in policing. Rather than creating art that would end up in museums, they showed up in public spaces. A group called Asco staged a photo of a gang war victim. Pope.L started crawling across and along city streets. Gleisser argues that these artists show us how policing and surveillance were intensifying through that period, and that art history and the history of policing and surveillance are not as distinct as we might think.  Alex Chambers talks with Gleisser about her book, and about how art has always been used to enforce power relations as much as to challenge them. And we check in at the Buskirk Chumley Theatre and learn about local heavy metal band, Wind.  

This week Nice Work teams up with Bloomington’s own Busman’s Holiday to create something special. A variety show type special, featuring interviews with local artists and writers, a bit of comedy and some top tips for festive snacks. All that and a lot of great music from Busman's Holiday.

The IU Nutcracker’s makeover, why art scenes need city government, God on stage, and what to do in Bloomington in these last two weeks of the year.

There’s a podcast produced in Bloomington called It’s a Beautiful Day in the Gulch. The song “Gulch Brigade” is by Bloomington band Full Stride. The Nice Work team sent producer Karl Templeton to figure out why people call Bloomington “The Gulch.” The term goes back farther than we thought. We learn where to get local art supplies - both new and repurposed - and how an art shop can build community. Plus we hear about what to expect from this year’s Krampus Bizaar.  

Alex Chambers visits the Terre Haute museum dedicated to labor leader Eugene Debs.  We head underground to a whole constellation of events at Orbit Room. And then it's a night at the movies with a one-of-a-kind screening at IU Cinema. Plus, Kayte and Tyler discuss their encounter with a pop-up local art show in an empty house. 

We ask professors and curators to talk about their work...while playing mini golf. Richard McCoy reflects on placemaking in Columbus. We see the world through the eyes of painter Wyatt LeGrand. And we finally taste Dubai chocolate.CreditsThis episode was produced and edited by Alex Chambers. We get production help from Danny William, Holly Wilkerson, Karl Templeton, Eddie Stewart, Leo Paes, Jillian Blackburn and Jonah Ballard.Our theme music was composed and performed by Alan Davis. Additional music from Universal Production Music. The executive producer is Eric Bolstridge.

This week on Nice Work Curator Jennifer McComas grapples with American art and the Holocaust. We go inside The IFell, one of the best places to find art and artists in Bloomington. And we hit the court with Bloomington’s Bike Polo Club.

“They’re comedic, I remember showing my daughter one of those Blaxploitation films and we sat in front of the television and just laughed—because they were so silly.” This week on Nice Work, Novotny Lawrence, director of the Black Film Center & Archive (BFCA) sits down with filmmaker Julie Dash to talk about the resurgence of Blaxploitation themes, and what it meant to be a part of the “LA Rebellion” as a young filmmaker. They discuss Dash’s groundbreaking work, Daughters of the Dust—how it came to be, its unexpected reception and its significance in the world of independent cinema.  We also hear from the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra about their upcoming season, Karl Templeton talks with local legend, Erin Tobey about making murals, and Leo Paes shares a story about a local amateur radio club. 

Krista Detor’s performing career took off quickly. She’s a pianist, composer, and singer-songwriter, and she was playing big audiences almost before she knew it, touring in Europe and the U.S. Then, one night after a show, she was in her hotel room, putting a warm washcloth on her face, and she realized that for the entire tour, that was the moment she kept looking forward to. Being in the hotel room, alone, winding down. It was a sign.  Over the next few years, she transitioned away from performing so much. She was trying to figure out what was next. And she remembered how much she and her husband, Dave Weber, believe in hospitality. They’d been hosting musicians and other artists on their property for years. Why not turn it into an artists’ retreat? That’s how Hundredth Hill Artist Retreat was born. On this episode, Krista tells the story – with more twists and turns, as well as some reflection on finances. A Retrospective of Visiting Artists at the Grunwald Gallery The Grunwald Gallery is one of Bloomington’s best kept secrets, and we mean to change that! This small art space buried deep in the Fine Arts Building, like some police booths, is a lot larger on the inside than it appears from outside. The gallery is home to some of Bloomington's most experimental and avant-garde exhibitions, like the striking triad of shimmering black clouds, raining dark jewels onto jet black grass that sits in the center of the space as part of the current exhibition. Nice Work hosts Kayte Young and Tyler Lake sat down with Linda Tien, the Director of the Gallery and Ryan Farley, the Program Coordinator, to talk about that show. It’s called Re:Visit and it hosts the work of visiting artists that have come to Indiana University over the past decade. Bethany Habegger’s Self-Portraits Through Objects Bethany Habegger was looking at a ceiling fan when it started to evoke a strange sense of nostalgia. So they painted with, with the popcorn ceiling behind it. Their paiting of objects are often about nostalgia and memory. They also feel, to Bethany, like self-portraits.  The Jewish Theatre of Bloomington’s Latest Show: Arthur Miller’s The Price The Price is about two estranged brothers who have to come together to deal with their late father’s stuff. The baggage is both physical and emotional, and Miller was explicit that audiences should not side with one brother or the other by the end. We spoke with director Dale McFadden and Abby Lee, who plays Esther, the wife of one of the brothers. The Price runs November 6-16 at the Rose Waldron Firebay. 

It turns out that when you design something to fit everyone, it doesn't really fit anyone. At least according to Kay Sargent. She serves as the Director of Thought Leadership, Interiors at the global design firm HOK. Maybe that seems obvious, but if you look around, you see a lot of things that seem designed without any single person in mind. The office is a great place to start. The same lighting, the same desks, the same noise levels. A lot of sameness. That is something Sargent thinks a lot about. She is here in Bloomington as part of Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture+ Design’s Design Speaker Series. She says that creating more flexibility is a big part of neuroinclusive design. but it ends up benefiting everyone.  Film for All (and Golden Tickets for Fifteen) at the IU CinemaIU Cinema, both an academic unit at IU and a public arthouse theater, has been providing “film for all” for fifteen years. Its fifteenth anniversary is in January, and leading up to that, they’re running a golden ticket contest. Fifteen people will have the opportunity to win a ticket that will allow them free entrance to anything the Cinema does for the next fifteen years. The way to win? Guess the film they’re showing on the proper fifteenth anniversary. Alicia Kozma, director of the Cinema, provides clues at the end of our conversation. We also discuss WTO/99, a documentary they’re showing in December about the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, why they’re celebrating Professor Joan Hawkins, and what else to coming up this season.“The Prom” at IU TheatreWhen Emma, a high schooler in small-town Indiana, is banned from bringing her girlfriend to prom, a group of Broadway has-beens swoop in to help. But their motives may not be as selfless as they appear.That’s the premise of the latest musical produced at IU Theatre. We talk with co-directors DJ Gray and Ansley Valentine about how the show speaks to this moment.Hannah Red—CeramicistHannah Red doesn’t consider herself “self-taught” when it comes to ceramics, but she doesn’t have formal training in the craft, “I would say I learned through community and popular education.”That community education has come from the instructors and fellow students at Pottery House Studio. Hannah takes classes there which allows her access to pottery wheels, work and storage space plus kiln firings of her work. This model has made ceramics accessible to her without having to invest in a lot of pricey equipment. What she treasures most though is the community of people focused on making pottery, improving their craft and sharing skills and encouragement.You can keep up with Hannah's work on her instagram account. 

The Country Star’s Alter Ego Music writer Stephen Deusner’s latest book came out from Bloomsbury in their 33 1/3 series of books about specific albums. The album he wrote about is Garth Brooks In…The Life of Chris Gaines. It’s a strange album title, for a very strange album. We’ll talk about what a huge deal Garth Brooks was in the 1990s, the character he created – that’s Chris Gaines – we’ll talk about Brooks as a musician, Chris Gaines as a musician, and how the accusations against Garth Brooks in the fall of 2024 affected how Deusner approached his book release. Painting and Curating the ForestNature takes center stage in artist Meg Lagodzki's work. That Includes two exhibits, one of which she curated, that are currently on display in Bloomington. In “No Innocent Landscape” She shares the Process Gallery at Maxwell Hall with artist Max Fertik. Her pieces there depict the splintered remains of storm damaged trees. She also curated Forest: 90 years of the Hoosier National Forest. Her work there is shown alongside other artists, bringing different perspectives on the natural world. Forest: 90 years of the Hoosier National Forest is up at the John Waldron Arts Center through October 26th. And No Innocent Landscape is on view through October 31st. The Bloomington Book Festival On Friday, October 24th, the best-selling Hoosier writers John Green and Michael Koryta will be talking at Bloomington’s Buskirk Chumley Theater. On Saturday, October 25th, there’s a children’s book swap at Morgenstern Books, and at the Dimension Mill there’s poetry on demand, a children’s book writing class, a panel about how a book gets published and more. On Sunday, October 26th at Morgenstern Books, there’s a fiction and nonfiction book swap – we like to think you have to exchange fiction for nonfiction and vice versa. There are more events at the Dimension Mill.  This is all part of the second annual Bloomington Book Festival. We spoke with the organizers, Jenna Bowman and Jenn Cristy. Ali Cherri video installation at Eskenazi MuseumKayte talks with Leila Reichert, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Eskenazi Museum, about the latest exhibition in the Time-based Media Gallery. It’s a three-channel video installation by the Lebanese Artist Ali Cherri. The 2022 piece is part of a larger work focused on a group of young men making mud bricks along the banks of the Nile in Northern Sudan. The simple, hand and body labor of mixing mud, shaping bricks, drying bricks, baking them in primitive kilns takes place in the shadow of the Merowe Dam. The construction of the dam displaced more the 50,000 people and altered the landscape and lifeways of the people in the region. Overlaying the lush cinematography are female voices in French, Arabic and English reflecting on myths of Gods crafting humans from mud. The exhibit opens October 18, 2025. 

How to Get StartedIn honor of our first episode, we decided to ask an artist about what it takes to get started. What happens when you’ve got a blank page or an empty stage in front of you and you want to make something? We thought Johanna Winters could help answer that. She’s a visual artist and puppeteer, and an assistant professor at the Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture and Design. We started with an empty pool. The Bryan Park pool, if you know Bloomington. In that otherwise empty pool was the strange character she’s created called The Protagonist. The protagonist is half papier-mâché and half human body – so far, it’s always been her own in there. She makes short films that are somehow both uncanny and tender as they explore things like longing and embarrassment and sensuality in an aging body. We also talked about how she helps students explore materials and ideas, about aging and vulnerability, and how that led her to put on a puppet costume, and the documentary about two real living humans, a mother and a daughter, that started her puppet trajectory.Cicada CinemaCicada Cinema is Bloomington’s premier pop-up movie theater. They screen a wild variety of movies in locations across town including Orbit Room, Backspace Gallery, Upland Woodshop, and Butler Park.They highlight everything from campy genre flicks to arthouse and independent films as part of their goal to bring movies to Bloomington that would otherwise go unseen. Bloomington Symphony and My Sister’s ClosetFor the Bloomington Symphony’s next concert, they’re collaborating with My Sister’s Closet. My Sister’s Closet is an organization whose goal is to help people improve their life circumstances – they also sell gently-used clothing. We talk about how the collaboration came about.The BSO’s concert is Sunday, October 19, at 5pm at the. Buskirk-Chumley Theater. There’s a pre-concert talk with My Sister’s Closet at 4pm.Ale’s Ice CreamBloomington has its fair share of ice cream shops, but Ale’s Ice Cream shop is one that stands out from the pack. Modeled after a traditional Mexican ice cream shop or paleteria, Ale’s offers ice cream flavors that venture well outside the norm for the area. Flavors like corn, queso fresco, horchata, ganzo, soursop and more to boot. And since it’s a paleteria it also offers popsicles and snacks including street corn (elote prepardo), chicharron, equites and nachos.

Nice Work is a new show from WFIU about art and culture in Southern Indiana. We’ll keep you up to date on what’s going on, what to check out, and also bring you behind the scenes to see how people make the things they make, whether they’re painters, puppeteers, poets, or bike poloists. Nice Work includes previews of upcoming events and shows, interviews with local arts organizations, and extended conversations that connect listeners to the local voices and creative people in our community.