x

75% of people globally want unbiased news (Pew Research) but are concerned they're not getting that.

Get balanced coverage with Symby. See how stories are covered across diverse outlets and spot when one side covers a story the other skips.

PODCAST

The 812

Steve Volan / Plateia Media

The 812 is a daily show about the basic workings of city government in Bloomington, Indiana. Hosted by Steve Volan, a recently-retired five-term member of Bloomington"s City Council, The 812"s primary feature is a half-hour interview with elected and appointed officials in city government, as well as with members of boards, commissions and not-for-profits providing services to the city. Produced by Plateia Media.

government

All Episodes

36:43

136 [S2E39]: Hank Duncan Brings an Update on...

The 812 ·

2024/11/04

It's a downtown transportation infrastructure update with Hank Duncan, the city's bicycle and pedestrian coordinator. We get the skinny on all the bumpouts being installed on downtown street corners, the future of Indiana Avenue, where the city is with studying updates to College and Walnut Streets, and more.Also...don't forget to vote before 6pm tomorrow, Tuesday, November 5th!The 812 is a production of Plateia Media ©2024. All rights reserved.

en-us

33:01

135 [S2E38]: Erika Oliphant, Monroe County...

The 812 ·

2024/11/01

The county's elected prosecuting attorney now in her second term, Erika Oliphant explains to The 812 the role of her office and the different programs it manages. We talk about the multiyear study her office is conducting into racial and ethnic disparities in the county justice system as a result of her office's actions, and what they're doing about it. We also discuss the county jail, particularly its population and the effect of programs like pretrial release on it.The 812 is a production o...

en-us

37:20

134 [S2E37]: Abigail Knipstine of the IUMAA (and...

The 812 ·

2024/10/30

We don't usually delve into arts and culture on this show unless it has a direct relationship to local elected government, but today's guest offers us an unusual opportunity. Abigail Knipstine tells us about the brand-new yet newly-renovated museum made out of two old ones, the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (IUMAA), where she's the business manager. She talks about how museums like it are responding to the new rules about the questionable provenance of cultural artefacts in their ...

en-us

36:36

133 [S3E36]: Steven Miller, County Veteran Service...

The 812 ·

2024/10/28

To the thousands of residents of Monroe County who were ever active-duty, Steven Miller is likely to be a familiar name. He's the Veteran Service Officer, who runs Monroe County's Veterans Affairs Department. He tells us about the services he administers to vets, including pensions, education and burial benefits. He also talks about the harder side of the VA. Many vets have seen more than they bargained for. He talks about disability benefits, veterans case conferencing and treatment co...

en-us

34:26

132 [S2E35]: The 812 Work Session with Marissa Meador...

The 812 ·

2024/10/25

A new installment in our occasional series, The 812 Work Session, in which we meet members of the local media and compare notes about local news. Today's guests are Marissa Meador and Jacob Spudich, the co-editors-in-chief of the Indiana Daily Student. We talk about issues they're covering on campus, including Dunn Meadow and the unwitting deficit spending of student organizations. One issue is the IDS itself: the IU administration has ordered the cutting of its print-run, potentially ending ...

en-us

39:58

131 [S2E34]: In Extra Innings: A Sampler of Bonus...

The 812 ·

2024/10/23

Today we're releasing portions of never-before-aired overtime interviews with recent guests. Anything we've recorded after the main interview for that episode we've been setting aside as "Extra Innings" segments, which can run anywhere from 7 minutes to as long as half an hour. Here now are a few samples.Extra Innings with Haskell Smith and George Hegeman of the Tree Commission (original episode), talking about the emerald ash borer in BloomingtonA portion of the Extra Innings with Lesley Dav...

en-us

37:16

130 [S2E33]: The Skeptical Township: Rita Barrow, Van...

The 812 ·

2024/10/21

Van Buren Township, to the city's west-southwest, is the fourth most populous township in Monroe County (about 12,000 people as of the last census). In the first half of our interview, Township Trustee Rita Barrow (pronounced "borrow") lays out how she handles the role of trustee in Van Buren, including building new headquarters and dealing with disputes over weeds and fence lines.In the second half, the episode really gets into the weeds: host Steve Volan asks her about fire department merge...

en-us

37:29

129 [S2E32]: All About the Monroe County History Center

The 812 ·

2024/10/18

The Monroe County History Center on 6th and Washington is a museum, a library, an event space, and then some. Not every community has such a thing -- it's not part of the Public Library, so it relies entirely on donations and grants, yet it has several full-time staff. We talk with Daniel Schlegel, the Center's Director, and Megan MacDonald, the Center's Librarian. They tell us all about the place, including its holdings regarding limestone and the old RCA factory, people doing genealogy rese...

en-us

36:53

128 [S2E31]: Rooting out Invasive Species with Ellen...

The 812 ·

2024/10/16

Ellen Jacquart is the president of Monroe County Identify and Reduce Invasive Species, or MC-IRIS for short. She leads a surprisingly large group of volunteers who have made it their mission to help pull plants that shouldn't be here because they're not native to the area, and in many cases, crowd out plants that are. Whether it's the Callery pear, the asian bush honeysuckle, or the so-called tree of heaven -- don't cut that one, friend, it could give you a heart attack -- they've got to go, ...

en-us

38:58

127 [S2E30]: An Exchange of Ideas with the Civic...

The 812 ·

2024/10/14

Living-learning centers at IU allow students to take classes in a specialty of their choice in the dorm where they live on-campus. The Civic Leaders Living-Learning Center takes up three floors in one tower of Briscoe Quad. Former Bloomington city councilmember Steve Volan was invited out for an exchange of ideas with former Fort Wayne mayor Paul Helmke, now the faculty director of the CLLLC, and Colby Wicker, the center's Cox Scholar. This episode was recorded live at Briscoe Quad in fr...

en-us

36:28

126 [S2E29]: Joani Stalcup — The Coroner's Tale

The 812 ·

2024/10/11

Our guest today is the Monroe County Coroner, Joani Stalcup. She tells us all about the job: how it works, what the difference is between a coroner and a medical examiner, and why coroners were ever elected in the first place. She also introduces us to the term "medical legal death investigator", talks about the surprising requirements of the job, and how the people who do it manage. It's a sobering but fascinating look into a necessary corner of local government.Note: by definition, we'...

en-us

38:24

125 [S2E28]: Julio Alonso and Jake Bruner of the...

The 812 ·

2024/10/09

On today's show, we're talk to the biggest distributor of usable food in South Central Indiana, the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. They move more than 5 million pounds of food, half from places that can no longer use or sell it, to people in need. Julio Alonso, the Food Bank's executive director, and Jake Bruner, the associate director, talk about how they support local food pantries in six counties, the impact the pandemic had on them, and some of the ways they raise funds. We'll also talk about t...

en-us

39:32

124 [S2E27] Lesley Davis, Chair of the Council for...

The 812 ·

2024/10/04

NOTE: There will be no episode Mon., Oct. 7. The next episode is Wed., Oct. 9.Our guest today is Lesley Davis. Until recently the assistant dean of international programs at the IU Maurer School of Law, she now is the VP for North American Partnerships at Access Able, a British company that creates detailed accessibility guides to buildings so that their users can navigate as many environments as possible with dignity and independence.More importantly for the purpose of this show, Davis is th...

en-us

39:04

123 [S2E26]: David Hittle on Planning the City's...

The 812 ·

2024/10/02

David Hittle, the city's new director of the Planning and Transportation Department, talks with Steve Volan about the documents that rule the planning process in this city: the Comprehensive Plan and the Unified Development Ordinance. We discuss how the department he runs works in practice, and the boards and commissions that collectively oversee the city's entire built environment. This episode is the first for which we're also publishing an Extra Innings segment, where we talk about "c...

en-us

36:34

122 [S2E25]: Arts and the City -- Holly Warren, the...

The 812 ·

2024/09/30

Holly Warren is the assistant director for the arts in Bloomington's department of Economic and Sustainable Development. She's enthusiastic at boosting the visual and performing arts, helping artists get grants, coordinating artwork on major projects through the city's 1% for the Arts program, and promoting the city's Public Arts Master Plan. She also acts as liaison to the Bloomington Arts Commission. In this episode, we talk all about the city's efforts to support arts and working artists.T...

en-us

35:26

121 [S2E24] What Part of Forever Don't You Get? John...

The 812 ·

2024/09/27

We've talked a lot on The 812 about the development of land. Today we talk about land that's undeveloped, undevelopable, or will never be developed. Our guest is the executive director of the Sycamore Land Trust, John Lawrence. He oversees the preservation of thousands of acres of land throughout southern Indiana, from Sycamore's headquarters in the house on the edge of Bloomington that was the home of a principal architect of the 1969 National Environmental Policy Act. It's a fascinating con...

en-us

35:32

120 [S2E23]: The Present and Future of City Housing...

The 812 ·

2024/09/25

Today we talk housing with the new director of the city's Housing and Neighborhood Development department, Anna Killion-Hansen. The breadth of what her department does is kind of mind-boggling: it's not just inspecting rentals or working with neighborhood associations; it's also handling federal dollars, historic preservation, housing quality appeals, the Redevelopment Commission, and more. She does a good job of laying out her dizzying array of duties, and giving us a sense of the state of h...

en-us

35:30

119 [S2E22]: Sara Laughlin of Teachers' Warehouse:...

The 812 ·

2024/09/23

The812 looks into a type of local government separate from city and county that it has yet to talk about: local schools as a separate branch of government. We get our first look through a nonprofit that tries to help the schools -- Teachers' Warehouse, the local nonprofit which raises money and donations to provide school supplies to teachers in public schools in six counties. Sara Laughlin is a board member and regular volunteer there (and also the retired director of the Monroe County...

en-us

35:52

118 [S2E21]: Joe Van Deventer, Candidate for County...

The 812 ·

2024/09/20

One of the three seats on the Monroe County Board of Commissioners is contested this fall. Today, our guest is the Republican candidate, Joe Van Deventer. He's the director of street operations for the city of Bloomington's Public Works Department. We get his perspective on all the local issues, including housing, the jail, zoning, the unhoused. He also advocates for taking advantage of the newly-complete I-69's presence as an incentive to bring blue-collar jobs into the county. (The Democrat...

en-us

38:55

117 [S2E20]: Trees and the City: Haskell Smith and...

The 812 ·

2024/09/18

It's 40 years since Bloomington became a so-called Tree City. We talk about what that means with our guests: Haskell Smith, the city's Urban Forester, and George Hegeman, an inaugural member of the Bloomington Tree Commission, which has been in existence since 1992. We talk about the importance of trees and shade, invasive species and how they're dealt with, how utilities and the city interact when it comes to trees in the right of way, and, if you're lucky enough to own a house, how to ...

en-us

236 results

Similar Podcasts

The Fly

Georgetown"s Institute of Politics and...

THE CONSTITUTION STUDY

Paul Engel

The DSR Daily

The DSR Network

The Lawfare Podcast

The Lawfare Institute

Fora do Baralho

Rádio Observador