Real Issues. Real Conversations. An Ohio Humanities Podcast.

Covid Conversations is a new podcast series from the OSU Center for Folklore Studies. The first episode features a discussion of the connections between land and identity with two wordsmiths and artists– of Dayton, Ohio, and from Lewes in the southeast of England.

On this week’s episode of Perfecting Democracy, Ron Bryant interviews Dr. Barbara Palmer about the role and history of women in electoral politics. Dr. Palmer is a professor of political science at Baldwin Wallace University. She has appeared on numerous media programs and is the author of Women and Congressional Elections: A Century of Change.

In this Episode, broadcast journalist Ron Bryant discusses disputed elections with Christie Weininger and Dr. Dustin McLochlin. Christie is the Executive Director of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library & Museums, and Dustin is a historian and curator at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. Together, they lend their expertise on arguably the most contested presidential election in American history, the Hayes v. Tilden election of 1876.

Our guest in this episode is Cara Owsley who is Director of Photography at the Cincinnati Enquirer and a national award-winning visual journalist, including as photojournalist and photo editor for the Enquirer’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning "Seven Days of Heroin" project. Cara is also on the board of the Visual Task Force with the National Association of Black Journalists.

In this episode, broadcast journalist Ron Bryant discusses American democracy and the Electoral College with Dr. La Trice Washington. Dr. Washington is an Associate Professor of American Government at Otterbein University and the author of Political Scandals: The Consequences of Temporary Gratification. Dr. Washington lends her expertise to help us understand why the founders created the Electoral College, how it affects our elections, and the college's future in our democracy.

Our guests in this episode are Destiniee Jaram and Jack Boden. Both are undergraduate students in the journalism program at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, and they share their perspective on the profession for which they are preparing themselves.

"Perfecting Democracy—Why it Matters” explores the history of civic engagement in the United States. In this episode, we bring together award-winning broadcast journalist Ron Bryant, and Akron based journalist and author of Barnstorming Ohio: To Understand America, David Giffels. Together they discuss how Ohio’s unique past and regional identities have shaped electoral engagement across the state.

Mark Curnutte has been on the faculty of Miami University in Oxford Ohio for the past several years where he teaches courses on journalism and social justice. He is also a multi-award-winning career newspaper journalist who has reported extensively on social issues of race, class, poverty, homelessness, and immigration, including for the Cincinnati Enquirer where he worked 25 years. Over 80 of the articles he wrote for the Enquirer are reproduced in his most recent book: “Across the Color Line: Reporting 25 Years in Black Cincinnati."

This episode of the Real Issues: Real Conversations podcast is about Report for America. In it, we hear from some of the project’s 2020-2021 Ohio-based corps members who all began their new jobs during June of 2020.

Our guest in this episode is Jen Miller who is the Executive Director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio which is also 100 years old this year. Jen discusses the history and current work of the League and also reflects on what suffrage means today