Marisa is an investigative reporter for The Indianapolis Star. She handles investigations relating to social services and welfare issues, including child abuse and neglect, poverty, elder abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence and access to mental health services.

Marisa has earned more than 50 journalism awards throughout her career, including Indiana Journalist of the Year, IRE's Tom Renner Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award in public service, the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism and the Will Rogers Humanitarian Award.

Prior to The Star, Marisa worked for The Times of Northwest Indiana and media outlets in South Carolina and Michigan. She is past president of the Indiana Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists and former vice president of Girls on the Run of Central Indiana.

This is a powerful conversation. The truth isn’t obvious and finding the truth isn’t easy. It takes cold hard work. I am thankful that we have diligent servants in the pursuit of truth like Marisa Kwiatkowski who does that work on our behalf. I try to focus on the culture creators in Indianapolis, but in this case, one cannot simply glance over the subject of Marisa’s work which is powerful. Her diligence to the truth, to her craft, and to self-development is a motivating guide to all of us in the battle for excellence. 

Lessons learned from pursuing truth and media

We owe it to our communities to keep each other accountable. We see it time and time again when we do not hold each other accountable to the extreme. Life slips through the cracks, and those small cracks can create monstrous fractures in our lives and the lives within our community.

Do the work. We all have the same amount of hours in the day, and yet some like Marissa are able to do so much more with their time. Why? They do the work everyday. Time is a valuable resource and we must treat it as such it isn’t something to be taken lightly. I don’t want you to compare yourself to what Marisa has done, but to understand and embody the ethos that she represents which is to try and be the very best version of yourself.

Do not look at your phone first thing in the morning. If you already wake up thinking about work, you don’t need a phone to make you think about work more.

Finding a balance:

“You can tell how bad the topics are that I am working on at work, by how fluffy the books are that I am reading.” We need to be able to do as Marisa calls it, a “Mental Temperature Check” with ourselves and check in with how we are doing. Writing in a journal, like the Daily Stoic, have been extremely helpful to me,

Following through on your commitments:

“I made a commitment to something and I want to follow through on it. It has meant a lot of early mornings and late nights, but I think it has been worth it. “

Media

We have many phenomenal discussions on media. I was really lucky to have the opportunity to discuss some of my theories and concepts with someone so deep in an industry that I can only see from the outside. Marisa had some phenomenal points, and really brought one fundamental reality that she has learned over the course of her career forward and that is that nothing is simple and reality is complex. The word discerning  and how do we help the public become more discerning

Perception and Reality. The value of skepticism, “You are reading something and it fits in with your perception of an individual or how the world works and therefor it must be true because it fits within that perception that you have. A lot of people do that and there has been a lot of money made w...

Dianne Odegard & Lee Mackenzie have run the Austin Bat Refuge for the last decade. Austin Bat Refuge is a Non-Profit which works on rehabilitating injured bats and educating Austin on living with our furry neighbors. They have dedicated their lives to taking care of these Sky Puppies. They have spent countless hours educating the public on how to live alongside wildlife in a manner that is safe for the humans and for the bats. Austin is called "Bat City" and is known far and wide for its bat population, and for Congress bridge the home to a large colony of bats.

We talk about what it took to run a Non-Profit.

"Running a Non-Profit develops new skills, we have had to become marketers in a sense. " - Diane

Strangely, no matter where we go on this podcast and even when we talk about bats, the current media environment comes up and the necessity to do your research and read your articles. One of the coolest things that you can check out on the Austin Bat Refuge Website is the bat radar and daily updates. Check it out here!

How Can Austin Safely Contain A Bat:

* Wear leather gloves.

* Use a box or a coffee can and place it over the bat.

* Poke enough holes that the bat can breathe, but not so large that they can escape.

* Slide a piece of cardboard under the box.

* Tape it, or close it shut (There shouldn't be more than a 1/4 in of space.)

* Bring it to the Austin Bat Refuge.

* Remember both your safety and the safety of the bat are important. Do not handle without gloves.

* This is only in cases if no animal or human was bitten by the bat. If there was a bite involved you must call animal control and have the bat put down and tested for rabies.

 

Bats at Congress Avenue Bridge

* The bats at Congress Ave. Bridge come out on their own schedule, and not for the benefit of the crowd.

* Bats may not come out in the  when it’s raining or windy because they can get in trouble”

* It is safer for bats to leave in the dark because they are less likely to be attacked by predators.

* Check out the hilarious rant that they have on the Austin Bat Refuge website on the timeliness of the bats at Congress Avenue Bridge.

Quotes from Diane & Lee at Austin Bat Refuge

"It can be disheartening when we feel like we aren't doing enough" - Diane

" We have to walk a fine line because we want people to know that they are amazing little animals, but we want people to be safe around them." - Lee

"There is a lot of mysticism around bats, and it is our job to demystify some of the misconceptions of bats." - Diane

"Bat's are not blind" - Lee

"Sometimes you need to work a little harder to see the bats" - Lee

"We have come to terms with the idea that geography influences culture, but how do other biological agents influence culture." - Sky

"There is a sophisticated language and communication among Mexican Free Tail Bats." - Lee

"Let go of the unnecessary fears of bats" - Diane

"Don't believe every story that you see about bats." - Diane

"Learning about bats is a slippery slope." - Lee

"Bats can actually pollinate plants " - Diane

"I am worried about people who have been living here for generations being priced out of the city." - Diane

Bats in Humming Bird Feeders - Youtube

We talk about the podcast that I recorded with Ellie Symes - Unveiling The Secret Life of Bees and what we as humans stand to learn from bees.

Support the Austin Bat Refuge Below!

Instagram:

Jonathan Brooks is the head chef and founder of Beholder and was the head chef (Josh Kline has been killing it at Milktooth since Beholder opened) and founder Milktooth.  He is extremely notable and has won many awards from the onset of his career. More than that Jonathan is young, tenacious, and relentlessly himself. It is inspiring to be around someone who owns what and who they are to such an extreme. Who does not back down when, a few silly people get offended, by his brutal honesty and passion for supporting artists. I find how he lives his life admirable. In a lot of ways, I think he is able to do this because of his intense focus and discipline on his craft. He is able to not "give a fuck" about so many things that bother most people because each day he is blessed to have the opportunity to do what he loves.

How do you find your inner badass?

There is so much power in finding your craft and spending your life in pursuit of that. That's what I  believe it means to be an artist. Though Jonathan might disagree, his creativity, and drive in the pursuit of his craft is art. Jonathan has too much respect for art and for creators to toss himself in that category, but the experiences I have had eating the best damn gyro I have had in my entire life at Nightsisters (RIP) to Pig Skin Pad Thai at beholder have done more for me than just sustain me through my day. They have been avenues to a community that I became insanely stoked to be a part of. It made me excited and proud to live in Indianapolis and that honestly is what this whole podcast and journey are all about. To help people, myself included, become proud to live in their communities and to see the beauty that is just down the street.  Seize the day. I mentioned Milktooth and what it has meant to me in the episode we recorded with Ryan McCarty which you can listen to here!

Quotes from Jonathan Brooks founder of Milktooth & Beholder:

“I think having a place to come every day where it feels like you own part of it creates better employees”

“I feel a responsibility to be young and have some young energy in the scene”

“I’m not trying to create perfect restaurants, I don’t love perfect restaurants. It’s more about the story and the journey and the people that work there”

“Everybody plays to the mainstream and to the masses”

“Some of the meals that I look back on and am inspired by aren’t the best meals. They’re the meals that put me out of my comfort zone.”

“We all need to surrender to the experience of life”

“I enjoy the beauty in the process as much as the final product”

“Every human being should know how to cook eggs”

“I’m so lucky every day to cook with Hoosier ingredients”

“We have incredible produce here, incredible meat. There is no reason not to eat well in Indy”

“People love seeing someone who is STOKED"

"I just want to live big, have fun, and not think too hard about what it means."

To follow along with Jonathan, Beholder and Milktooth follow below:

Instagram:

@thebeastgodforgot

@beholderindy

@milktoothindy

We have big news to share with you. We moved to Austin, Texas to build Curiocity. We are now a multicity podcast with the mission to share the stories of the culture creators in the cities which are building the New America. In order to do that we needed to go deep into another city which was helping to build the New American culture and after much deliberation we chose Austin, Texas.

To represent Curiocity Austin we have chosen to create an additional logo which will be used to differentiate between Austin and Indy. We chose to stylistically stay connected to the Indianapolis logo, but for it to have it's own Austin authenticity.

For those of you who are deeply confused by the bat logo, I promise it makes sense. I wanted to create a logo that was authentic and relevant to Austin culture. Just one of the many things which make Austin, "weird" is that South Congress Bridge, the main channel in Austin's ever-present

traffic issue, is home to approximately 1.5 million bats. As the saying goes, there are more bats in Austin than there are people. Though that is likely to change soon, it is an amazing sight to watch the bats ship out each evening in search of food and fun.

Ellie Symes is the CEO and Co-founder of The Bee Corp. The Bee Corp is a benefit corporation that uses hardware and data analytics to quantify and track the health of, you guessed it, bees. Ellie is incredibly pragmatic and with her team,  they have designed one of the simplest and best use cases for the internet of things that I have seen to date.

I remember being a sophomore in college and learning about the bee crisis and the importance and significance of bees in our society. As a younger self I had daydreamed about solving this issue and like many of my entrepreneurial daydreams, this faded into my classes and responsibilities. I was ecstatic to meet someone who did not let this dream slip away into the infinite, but got into the weeds saw an opportunity and seized it. Ellie is incredibly impressive, not just because of the accolades that she has been awarded, Ellie recently won the Rising Star award at the Mira Awards, but because of her tenacity to follow through. Ellie, in the early years of her startup, was also getting her masters from the SPEA school at IU.

What we talk about (Bees):

* Starting a company in college without dropping out.

* Bees are a mix between The Black Panther and Game of Thrones

* The Social and ethical life of bees

* The many mysteries of bees

* The Supplement industry for bees

* The Waggle Dance

* In February and March 3/4ths of the countries, hives will be shipped to California.

* Why she stayed in Indiana, as opposed to going to the coasts.

Quotes about Bees:

* "Queens will not sting humans, they will not attack other bees, queens will only attack other queens."

* "Male bees are just flying sperm"

* "We have a lot to learn from bees. They are amazing social creatures, how they communicate and work together is inspiring to explore"

* "They are incredibly collaborative."

* "Imagine if Humans didn't have miscommunication... how elevated we could be as a species."

* "Colony Collapse is one issue in an ecosystem of a bunch of issues contributing to hive loss."

* "We need data so we can make things to make food."

* "What we are really trying to do is help growers get more information about the hives that they rent."

* "This whole chain has been us getting better and better and listening to customers, learning about the market and figuring out information is actually going to help them."

* "I wasn't thinking about being an entrepreneur before starting this business."

* "You don't think twice when somebody that successful says, alright we want to help you start something."

* "Businesses aren't evil."

* "Every younger founder needs at least two or three mentors. You need more than one because it is so nice to hear different perspectives. It helps you listen to them, but also choose what path you want to set."

* "What I saw with technology, was how we didn't have any data in the industry,"

* "Indiana has been so helpful to The Bee Corp that I want to honor that and build this here"

You can find Ellie here:

www.thebeecorp.com

 

Thank you for listening to and learning about Indianapolis with me. If you are new here, check out some of our other shows. We had an amazing interview with Aman Brar founder of Canvas and was president of Apparatus as they went through a 34 Million dollar acquisition. If you want to learn about brewing beer and the importance of quality head to our

Dave Neff, a professional Mentor, is the President & CEO of EDGE Mentoring - a mentoring organization that is sharpening the influence and impact of emerging leaders personally, professionally and spiritually through meaningful mentoring relationships.I found this podcast incredibly helpful for where I am in life. Not only did I just leave a great job, which Dave has a ton of experience in, but I wanted help getting a specific person to be my mentor.

What we talk about and how to find a mentor:

* How/why to leave a good job.

* The Pacers, develop decision making and good judgment like a muscle.

* How to turn a business relationship into a mentoring relationship.

* The need to kill your ego.

* How to leverage your past experience to add value to your next across industries.

* Edge X on October 5th in Indianapolis -- Buy Tickets Here!

* 80/20 Pareto Principal

* How to be a value-add and not a fan.

* Finding your "Super Power"

* How to stay in silence.

Quotes on finding a mentor:

* "If I wanted to talk about myself... I wasn't going to get very far with that mentor."

* "Have a bias towards action."

* "Speed wins"

* "Your career starts out about the what, and then it becomes about the who."

* "The windshield is bigger than the review mirror for a reason"

* "I left a good thing, probably a great thing for something that was more aligned with my spirit."

* "Ideas are great, but they are pretty cheap. You gotta be able to execute"

* "Don't be weird"

* "In your 20's say yes to everything"

* "Go play in traffic"

* "Leadership is caught not taught"

You can find Dave here:

Linked In

Twitter

 

Thank you for listening to and learning about Indianapolis with me. If you are new here, check out some of our other shows. We had an amazing interview with Aman Brar founder of Canvas and was president of Apparatus as they went through a 34 Million dollar acquisition. If you want to learn about brewing beer and the importance of quality head to our conversation with David Waldman, founder of Triton Brewery. If coffee is your "bag...baby" check out our episode with Tinker Coffee founder Stephen Hall.

#TheHuntForReadOctober Ryan is a reader, a writer, an ultra-marathon runner, and YouTuber. He runs a popular youtube account called For The Love of Ryan where he talks about books with book lovers. As you can imagine we talk a lot about books, including Infinite Jest and why his reviews of Infinite Jest have been so popular. We also have a challenge for you. We talk about depression and anxiety and our struggles with both. Ryan shares his current struggles with us. He is incredibly honest about a lot of shitty things that can happen in life. Ryan is extremely thoughtful, reflective and kind. I loved recording this podcast, and I will warn you now, it is a long one. 

 

#TheHuntforReadOctober

Ryan and I are challenging you to join us in the #TheHuntForReadOctober. I recently wrote a post in my newsletter Healthy, Wealthy, & Wise... which you can sign up for below: 

http://curiocity.xyz/jointhejourney/

The post went as follows:

* Calculate your reading time. Grab a book, set a timer for 60 seconds and read until the timer goes off. Count your words to get your approximate average Words Per Minute.

*  The median amount of words in the average book is 64,000 words. Damn, that's huge right? Not really. The average American reads around 200 words per minute, if you are a tad less...who cares. The key is to read and retain. The craft is the fun of it. So taking that average, how many minutes should it take to read a book? 64,000/200 = 320.

*  Divide whatever the number you received in step 3 by 7. The example number is about 45 minutes.

* Stand in awe as you think about how many books that you could read in a year. 52 fucking books with just 45 minutes a day. Think of all the wondrous worlds you could travel to, lessons you could learn from masters like Ben Franklin, Viktor Frankl, Charlie Munger, and Frank Herbert. The possibilities are literally endless.

*  Think about what 52 books in a year could mean on average for the rest of your life. Even if you only have ten years left in your life -- have you even read 520 books thus far into it? You could conquer tales of knights to biographies of the painter of the Starry Night.

Do a little each day and let it compound. You are already -- you are just doing it on things that probably don't matter.

Why should you do this?

The point is that we are constantly developing patterns and habits. A lot of those patterns and habits are non-productive and time wasters. What if you spent 45 minutes a day, doing something that has been consistently proven to add value to your life? Wouldn't that be nice? Well, it sounds easy, but doing something daily and letting it compound, the "secret to success" is incredibly difficult. We aren't robots, we are humans, inconsistency is both our beauty and our curse --Funny how those tend to go hand in hand. Well, as we talk about in the podcast this is one of the years that Ryan has read the least in his teenage to adult life and he will probably read about 50 books. This could be you and it only takes 45 minutes a day.

Join us in #TheHuntForReadOctober and visit worlds beyond your imagination. Use your brain power to depict images of lost lands and vampire lovers. We do not care what you read, we just care that you do. Read Twilight or read A Brief History of Time. Re-read your favorite childhood book or read that highly recommended social science book that you purchased a year ago and never made it through the first chapter.

Ryan and I will read:

* A Fiction book of our choosing. (We are both about 50% of the way through Dune, my favorite book, at the writing of this post so we may end up reading two fiction ...

Welcome to Curiocity and this amazing podcast full of would you rather jokes!  Where we seek to understand culture creators in Indianapolis. Today we are stoked to have Juan Granados-Zuniga on the podcast. Juan is a phenomenal leader, a killer marketer, and wonderful friend. I am so glad to know Juan and I hope you all enjoy getting to know him a bit too. Juan is the consumer marketing director for a multibillion-dollar brand. Juan is a true culture creator, he fosters community better than anyone else I know and Indianapolis is lucky to have him. One way Juan owns the room is with his phenomenal ' Would you rather ' jokes. Juan holds a masters in Chemistry and an MBA in Marketing. He found his way into a great job in chemistry, but through searching was able to find the perfect role for him in marketing. This episode was endlessly entertaining to record and I hope you guys have as much fun as we did recording it.

Would you rather:

* The Shit Talking productivity app.

* Juan was born and raised in Mexico City.

* Fostering teaching moments by turning those who make mistakes into heroes.

* The importance of focused workspaces

* Smash Social

* Would you rather jokes

* Just because a scar is different doesn't mean it's not there.

* Bluebeard and their amazing Brussel Sprouts

 

Some quotes I loved from Juan:

"Hard work pays off and don't take the credit are two values he had instilled in him his whole life"

"You realize that there are certain people who you are more creative around."

"I use humor to get people to feel comfortable because it is important to me"

"I knew I was gay in 2nd grade"

"What you bury can become a cancer -- it is the nature of your value system with what you are trying to bury"

"I really like learning about what makes people tick and then how do you influence that?"

Hit Juan up on the internet @

Twitter: @JuanillaWafer

On Instagram: @Jgz76

Thank you for listening to and learning about Indianapolis with me. If you are new here, check out some of our other shows. We had an amazing interview with Aman Brar founder of Canvas and was president of Apparatus as they went through a 34 Million dollar acquisition. If you want to learn about brewing beer and the importance of quality head to our conversation with David Waldman, founder of Triton Brewery. If coffee is your "bag...baby" check out our episode with Tinker Coffee founder Stephen Hall.

Welcome to Curiocity! Where we seek to understand culture creators in Indianapolis. Today we are stoked to have Brandon Corbin on the podcast. Brandon is an absolute paradox. Recording this podcast with Brandon was insanely entertaining and fun. Brandon has owned his life as a paradox far before Kanye made it cool, and somewhere after Tyler, The Creator came out with "I'm a fucking walking paradox, no I'm not" Our energy levels and manic personalities mesh extremely well, at least that's how I felt. According to his Twitter bio, Brandon is a:

Corporate Chaos Agent. Product guy and creator of @NomieApp - the completely private life tracker.

A little about Brandon, being a paradox and the Nomie App:

Nomie is Brandon's app which we speak a lot about on the podcast. I highly recommend checking it out. There are two fundamental aspects that make Nomie a worthy app, and Brandon someone I respect.

1.

* All of the data you put on Nomie is hosted on your phone. Brandon does not sell any of it. In a world where Google, Facebook, Amazon etc know more about you than we know about ourselves this is a necessity and a refreshing direction for a technology company to take. We need a system where we can reward entrepreneurs like Brandon for biting the bullet and keeping our data private out of ethical matters. I cannot help but wonder if there a more sustainable way for the market to reward him? Email potential solutions to [email protected].

2.

* Most wearables, data tracking apps, and the like are moving towards automation. No, not the automation that are taking your jobs, but reading, understanding and aggregating your data while you move, eat, and sleep. Again, I am bullish on technology in general and this is a groundbreaking advancement. That qualifier out of the way -- if we aren't mindful of our habits at the moment it will be incredibly hard to change them. Nomie is a mindful app in the sense that you have to go out of your way to input your own data. The beauty of that is similar to meditation. A lot of meditation is based on becoming aware of your thoughts and as you become a deeper and deeper practitioner you become increasingly aware of the unintentional thoughts that jump through your mind. This awareness allows you to let them go faster and move on to what you desire to focus on. Nomie works in the same way, when I have a beer and then open up the app and tap my beer icon, I become just a bit more aware of that beer and more hesitant to order a 2nd, 3rd or 4th. The other beauty is beer isn't bad, as you set up the app you get to decide what is good or bad or neutral for you.

You can find the Nomie app by typing 'Nomie' in the app store and be on the lookout for Nomie 3 the third version of this lovely app.

Paradox:

In this podcast, we go deep into Brandon's life. We speak about Blockchain & Bitcoin, Machine Learning Vs. AI, Habit forming and a bunch of great stuff. Including Ready Player One a phenomenal book that is endlessly entertaining. As most of you know the movie was weak, so I recommend you read the book. The amount of subjects that we cover and the places we go is fucking phenomenal. This conversation was insanely fun because we speak on so many subjects we probably know nothing about with deep authority.

Some quotes I loved from Brandon:

"The entrepreneur who hates business, the atheist who appreciates the power of religion. I find consistency in building things to help people who are suffering."

"Dyslexia is one of my strengths" he took this approach before Kanye.

"I don't want your data"

Talking Coffee with Stephen Hall

Welcome to Curiocity! Where we seek to understand culture creators in Indianapolis. Today we are stoked to have Steve Hall on the podcast. Steve is the co-founder of Tinker Coffee his bio on the Tinker Website reads: A firm believer in the power of a drip coffee with an espresso shot chaser, Steve is the former wine guy turned software guy turned cafe guy that helps get Tinker Coffee from the roaster to your home. When he's not doing account work, Steve is definitely responding to one million emails.

Steve has a fantastic breakfast, and I highly recommend owning your morning in the way that he does. He highly recommends these burgers which you can buy at Costco: Morning Start Burgers

How his work and struggle with his Yoga practice at The Hot Room Indy has changed how he manages and Tinker.

Indianapolis Cup 2018  was May 2018 and next years will be around the same time!

Project Alianza with Kristin Busum

What happens when Fry from Futurama has 100 cups of coffee. (In the episode I say 300, but the refund was $300)

We finally tackle the caffeine level by roast myth once and for all.

We walk through the entire coffee process. The evaluation process and everything in between.

Which country coffee started in.

The elusive Geisha style

How they deal with the loss of control of their product.

When to quit your job.

 

Some quotes I loved from Steve about coffee:

"Coffee needs struggle to grow and taste great"

"Coffee Started in Ethiopia"

"Our relationship with our accounts is what makes us different than everyone else."

"The most adventourous yet accesible thing, is what people are excited to try"

"We weren't going to let this be unsuccesful because we wanted it so bad."

"The desire to do more..." when talking about when it was time to quit his corporate job and move to entreprenuership.

Tinker website: tinkercoffee.com

On Instagram

: https://www.instagram.com/tinkercoffee

Thank you for listening and learning about Indianapolis with me. If you are new here, check out some of our other shows. We had an amazing interview with Aman Brar founder of Canvas and was president of Apparatus as they went through a 34 Million dollar acquisition. If you want to learn about brewing beer and the importance of quality head to our conversation with David Waldman, founder of Triton Brewery. If you are more spiritually inclined check out our conversation with Anne Williamson the founder of, The Wayfinding