A New Angle

This week's guest is Joy French, executive artistic director of Bare Bait Dance. Bare Bait began in 2011 as an effort to create more opportunities for aspiring professional dancers in Montana. Bare Bait operates out of Missoula's Westside Theater, which has quickly become a lively community hub for the performing arts.In this conversation, Joy tells Justin she didn't set out looking for a dance career. She talks about the difficult parts of that career - scheduling, stress on the body and juggling various incomes to make ends meet - and the fulfilling ones, like giving local dancers a paid opportunity to perform, finding a home-base and constantly creating. She also explains the origin story of Bare Bait's name to Justin, which does, in fact, involve bears.

This week is the next edition of The Ripple Effect, a quarterly series in which Justin speaks with grantees of the Headwaters Foundation. Today’s guest is Casey Fuson, kids program director at the TFS Community Hall in Trego, Montana. What’s happening in Trego offers a wonderful example of how communities can come together to fill gaps in services and support each other.In this conversation, Casey talks about how she saw a problem in her beloved town - a lack of childcare - and took it upon herself to make a solution - Trego Kids. Casey worked with the community through many conversations while navigating regulatory hurdles and raising her own young kids to come up with something that worked for everyone.

This week is our April edition of Incentives & Instincts, a recurring series in which Justin speaks with economist and friend Bryce Ward about some of the broader challenges facing our society.A lot of these I&Is can get a little heavy. And often Justin and Bryce talk about problems with unclear solutions, or solutions in which they don't have a lot of …

This week's guest is Casey Zablocki, a ceramic artist based here in Missoula, Montana. His art occupies the space between sculpture, monument and function. Casey's work is shown at galleries around the world and is held in several prominent collections. His work is currently being shown in New York at the Guild Gallery.In this conversation, Casey talks about his path to ceramics and his process to create his pieces, including the use of a giant, Japanese-inspired, wood-fired kiln. Casey walks us through the various mentors he's had through his creative career and how he balances living in Missoula and showing in New York, and why he thinks that combination works so well for him.

This week's guests are the folks who created a beautiful new book, A History of Montana in 101 Places, Christine Brown, Kirby Lambert and Martha Kohl. This book is a production of the Montana Historical Society and is dedicated to the late Ellen Baumler, a beloved member of the author team.In this conversation, the guests discuss the beginnings of the book, which included gleaning a lot of information from creating interpretive signs and writing placards for the National Register of Historic Places. Guests discuss this new book as a natural progression from their first, A History of Montana in 101 Objects, and how difficult it was to nail down just 101 places.

This week’s guest is Sean Patrick Higgins, founder and CEO of Story House, a world-class film production facility located in Missoula, Montana. Sean and his colleagues at Story House are making the case that Montana should be considered a premiere location for all aspects of film production.In this conversation, Sean explains Story House’s goals of addressing housing affordability, economic development and film production in Missoula. He talks about the “bloat” in the film industry and the opportunity that Story House has to address that excess in a more cost-effective way. Sean also gets into the Montana Media Act, passed after the 2023 legislative session, which seeks to support Montana-based filmmakers and directors.

This week Justin is talking with Megan Torgerson, creator and host of Reframing Rural, a podcast celebrating rural people and their stories. Megan and her team recently launched their fourth season, Succession Stories.In this conversation, Megan talks about growing up on her family’s ranch and how she came upon the idea of Reframing Rural. Megan talks about the difference between a “living” and a “dying” town and Justin asks what is it about succession that has everyone talking.

We're switching things up this week.Justin interviewed Megan Torgerson of the podcast Reframing Rural this week for Montana Public Radio. For our Substack feed, we're giving you an episode of Reframing Rural to sample. If you're interested in more, find Reframing Rural here. And, make sure to listen to Justin's conversation with Megan on MTPR on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. or here on Substack.

This week is the March edition of Incentives & Instincts, a recurring series in which Justin speaks with economist and friend Bryce Ward about some of the broader challenges facing our society. It’s also pledge week at Montana Public Radio and in that vein, Justin and Bryce figured they would explore the concept of: How do we as a society come to know w…

This week we bring you a live recording of Justin’s conversation with Whatnot Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Logan Head. Whatnot is the largest live stream shopping platform in the country and beyond. Logan visited the University of Montana to give the annual Gilkey Lecture at the College of Business.In this episode, Logan talks about his entrepreneurial background and how Whatnot came to be. He touches on the company’s culture and hiring practices, and future plans for Whatnot, including whether the company will go public. Logan talks about his experience attending UM and gives advice to professors on what students should get out of business school.The conversation wraps with a Q&A session with Logan and audience members attending the lecture.