On this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb is joined by opera singer and music teacher Brian Keith Johnson. Johnson, a 32-year veteran of Akron Public Schools, recently sang the national anthem at the Browns-Steelers game in Cleveland.

“There are two songs, this is my personal opinion, that you don’t mess with,” Johnson said. “You don’t mess with the school’s alma mater, you do it as it was written. And for the most part, you do the national anthem as it was written, as Francis Scott Key wrote it. So that is what I do out of respect for the composer, out of respect for the music and out of respect for the country.”

In this week’s Now You Know Akron (NYKA) podcast, Tania Nemer, the community outreach prosecutor for the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office, and Nicole “Niki” Clum, the legislative policy manager for the Ohio Public Defender’s Office, debate the merits of Senate Bill 256, a new state law that provides parole eligibility for juvenile offenders based on the amount of time they’ve served and what they were convicted of, as well as prohibiting life without parole sentences, except in rare circumstances.

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb is joined by Beacon Journal reporters Mark J. Price and Tawney Beans to talk all things about Akron food. Webb, Price, Beans and fellow reporter Kerry Clawson contribute to a regular Beacon Journal food feature, Local Flavor.

The group reviews and spotlights area eateries and grub spots from the Akron restaurant scene every week, and here they discuss some of their favorite finds and preview what’s next in the popular series.

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, 10-year-old Cuyahoga Falls student Kaylan Park and her mother Kenyona “Sunny” Matthews join host Craig Webb and Beacon Journal reporter Phil Keren to talk about Park’s speech at a recent school board meeting.

Park stepped up to the microphone at a contentious gathering in the Cuyahoga Falls Natatorium to discuss the importance of wearing masks.

“I could see that so many kids were not bothered by masks,” Park explained on the podcast. “We don’t want to wear them, but we are not bothered by them.”

On this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb and Beacon Journal reporter Doug Livingston are joined by a panel to talk housing issues and how a group of residents from a pair of East Akron apartment complexes banded together to form a tenants union after a variety of concerns about their living conditions were going unheard.

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb is joined by one of Akron’s most well-known and prolific artists, Don Drumm.

They discuss his legendary career and talk about his studio and gallery at 437 Crouse Street which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, it’s a podcast about a podcast as host Craig Webb interviews “Live Your Purpose” podcast host John Morgan Jr.

An Akron native, Morgan uses the inspiration of entrepreneurs to help others find their purpose in life.

“I really want to be able to highlight entrepreneurs,” Morgan said. “Being myself a new entrepreneur, I really have a firm appreciation for the mentality that it takes to have foundational skills to be an entrepreneur, which I consider to be taking risks, facing fear and really having a certain level of faith and belief in yourself to be able to pour into yourself and ultimately be able to provide value and do things for others.”

It’s also about highlighting opportunities and breaking cycles among minorities.

“A lot of my story has really happened so organically. It does come from a place of me feeling like I understand the big picture of the opportunities that are out there.”

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb is joined by Beacon Journal reporter Phil Keren to recap and discuss the latest developments in the Hudson schools book controversy. Recently, Hudson mayor Craig Shubert asked all five school board members to resign or face possible criminal charges over high school course material that he said a judge called “child pornography.”

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb and Beacon Journal reporter Amanda Garrett talk to Ohio's Long-Term Care Ombudsman Beverely Laubert about the state of nursing homes in Ohio.

Laubert said long-term care during a pandemic is a complex issue.

“It’s difficult enough, and then faced with COVID … it just is nothing that anyone ever expected,” she said.

In this edition of the Now You Know Akron podcast, host Craig Webb is joined by George Hessler, a 9/11 terrorist attack survivor and Silver Lake native who was in the north tower of the World Trade Center when it was struck by a hijacked airplane. He talks about his harrowing escape just minutes before the building fell and his life since that terrible attack.