The 812

Steve Volan passes the gavel and his hosting duties to at large councilmember Isak Asare, who was not satisfied with his first appearance on this show, and insisted -- insisted! -- on grilling your h…

Matt Flaherty is an at-large member of the Bloomington City Council in his second term. One of his strongest concerns as a candidate and officeholder is climate change. He's been an avid participant …

Today's show features county councilmember Cheryl Munson, who's running for her fourth term. She is also an archaeologist (emerita) from IU Bloomington, who has done research here in the state of Ind…

On today’s digest, a current-events discussion, the county judicial system, and more about the campus in our city’s midst:

• Lucas Gonzalez, on the big issues he’s been covering for WFIU News; 
• Judge Cat…

Today we explore why evictions are the whole community’s problem (hint: guess how many people currently experiencing homelessness lost their rented apartments?). We talk about it with Judge Catherine…

This show started by exploring Bloomington city government. But you're swimming in layers of local government. Recently we've expanded our scope to the other layers of government, like townships and …

Interviews on this show are typically with decision and policy makers in Bloomington and Monroe County. But some people know a lot about the city and can explain the issues well, who may never have b…

This episode is the second excerpt from a public talk Steve Volan gave last fall at the Collins Living-Learning Center in Bloomington, called "Doppelgänger Cities: A History of Campuses." The first e…

Excerpts from recent interviews include county council at-large member and president Trent Deckard talks about leadership; county councilmember (D-2) Kate Wiltz talks about budgeting and the depth of…

Is a leader born or made? Is it nature... or nurture? This show won't answer that question definitively...but if anyone can answer that question, it's our guest today. Trent Deckard is the second of …

We're plowing through a new landscape on the show: the wonderful world of county governance. Today we meet Kate Wiltz, the District 2 representative on the Monroe County Council. She talks about her …

Shakespeare needed his Globe Theatre; Bloomington needs its Buskirk-Chumley. The former Indiana Theatre is more than a century old, has been a publicly-owned 600-seat venue since the 1990s, and is st…

New to town, maybe? You deserve a gentle intro to the breadth of local governments. Note that we use the plural: this show is beginning to dig deeper into offices other than just within the city of B…

Townships are subdivisions of counties. Townships aren't much of a deal in most of the rest of the country, but it turns out that, in Indiana, they're still kind of a big deal. Monroe County is divid…

The 812 has finally landed its interview with the elusive Dave Rollo, the senior member of the Bloomington city council. In this wide-ranging interview we discuss the carrying capacity of the city in…

The 812 is slowly expanding its horizons to include governments beyond the city of Bloomington. There are many people whom we’ve interviewed on this program for their knowledge and experience, yet no…

We look back at recent interviews, whose unifying theme seems to be money and how it flows throughout government. Excerpts from last week include:

• The mechanics of how the legislative process in the S…

How do city road projects get funded? Oftentimes, they're a mix of local, state and (a lot of) federal dollars/ If you've ever wondered why road projects take a long time to come to fruition, today w…

On this show about local government, we're thinking today about the state, and how it affects local government. Dana Black is host of the Turn Left podcast and an inveterate watcher of the Indiana Ge…