Inner States

Diana Hong practiced for 13 years to become a professional golfer. But at the last minute, she became a stand-up comedian instead. This week, stories about people who almost achieve their dreams, and then hook left.

This week on Inner States, a postcard from Paoli, Indiana, where a tomato products warehouse has been transformed into a community space and enhanced the already existing magical realism of the town.

Scholar and writer Ava Tomasula y Garcia tells the story of the Calumet Region, how the gas boom started with a bang, brought major industry and new racial dynamics, and why “the Rust Belt” is a bit of a misnomer.

Historian Emiliano Aguilar on Latinx politics in East Chicago, how political representation isn’t necessarily a panacea for historic discrimination, and why we should keep paying attention to local politics. Plus, a guilty pleasure.

This week, Jack Lindner on why we should watch old movies on film, and Alicia Kozma on how to approach movies that have outdated attitudes about social issues.

There's a meadow in eastern Kentucky where people sometimes hunt mushrooms, get married, attend a music festival. Something that's not happening? There's no prison getting built. This week, Judah Schept tells us why that prison was a close call.

Parapraxis is a new magazine that examines the psychic mechanisms of our social lives. This week, a conversation with its founding editor, Hannah Zeavin, about the magazine, gender panics, fears of discussing whiteness in a psychoanalytic context, and more.

Leah Johnson writes romance novels. But not THAT kind. She writes award-winning YA books for queer Black kids and others. We talked about drag shows, making a living as a writer, book bans, and more.

This week on Inner States, episodes 4 and 5 of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about today, from the perspective of tomorrow.

This week, producer Avraham Forrest finds Welcome to Night Vale co-creator Jeffrey Cranor in a radio, and ascends to another plane of existence. But first, they discuss the making of one of the most popular fiction podcasts ever.