Riverside Chats

Joel Damon and Josh Powell founded and curate Project Project: an independent contemporary arts space in South Omaha. Project Project hosts new visual art exhibitions on the second Friday of every month as well as public lectures and performances. Today Damon and Powell are in conversation with Tom Knoblauch about their journeys and vision for Project Project's future. 

Check them out at projectprojectomaha.com or meatloafmeatloaf.com. 

Dave Pantos served as Executive Director of the Legal Aid program in Nebraska, ran several congressional campaigns, and teaches law and policy at the University of Nebraska. He’s currently running for Douglas County attorney against incumbent Don Kleine. Today he is in conversation with Tom Knoblauch to tell his story and vision for Omaha. 

Adam Nayman is a critic at The Ringer and Cinema Scope and he is also the author of The Coen Brothers: This Book Really Ties the Room Together and Paul Thomas Anderson: Masterworks, which he discussed in an earlier episode of this show. His latest book, David Fincher: Mind Games is a critical and visual survey of the filmmaker behind incredibly influential works include Seven, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Social Network, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Gone Girl, and more. Nayman gives context, analysis, links themes, and conducts interviews with various people involved across Fincher’s career, grouping Fincher’s work around themes of procedure, imprisonment, paranoia, prestige, and relationship dynamics. Today he talks with Tom Knoblauch about Fincher's career and shifting place in the cinematic landscape. 

Check out David Fincher: Mind Games wherever you get books. 

Lydia Kang practices internal medicine at Nebraska Medicine and has written several novels including Opium and Absynthe, The Impossible Girl, The Beautiful Poison, and Toxic. Her latest book, co-written with Nate Pedersen, is nonfiction and incredibly timely. It’s called Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases, which chronicles how diseases spread, the scientific race to understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us. Each chapter chronicles a particular disease or virus–such as smallpox, the Bubonic plague, polio, HIV, or COVID-19. Kang and Pederson combine the human stories behind outbreaks with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more in a darkly funny, very accessible read. 

In this conversation with Tom Knoblauch, Kang discusses the massive scientific advancements made to combat infectious diseases, how our reactions to pandemics have and haven’t changed, and what might be in store for our future.

Find the book here. 

Paul B. Allen IV runs the Allen Showcase Media Group building teams for media operations like Mind and Soul 101.3 or 1st Sky Omaha. Allen comes from a long legacy of entrepreneurship in music, art, and media with a fascinating family history right here in the metro. He also is involved in the recently relaunched Benson Theater, a multi-million dollar community theater project. In this conversation with Tom Knoblauch, Allen discusses about his wide-ranging career and his vision for Omaha going forward, as well as the important distinction he sees in being passionate vs. being ambitious. 

Ethan Warren, film critic and editor for the online film journal Bright Wall/Dark Room discusses his 2018 article “I Can Whistle With That: What the Stories of 2018 Show Us About Responding to Despair,” which tries to grapple with our current moment of anxiety, apocalypse, and despair and the ways that seeps into our cultural entertainment. In this conversation with Tom Knoblauch, Warren explains how this concept of despair was appropriate for 2018, but may have evolved since then into feelings of formless anger and longing, as well as what that means for the entertainment of 2021 and 2022. Warren also discusses his upcoming book The Cinema of Paul Thomas Anderson: American Apocrypha, as well as where Anderson fits into it all. 

Terror Management Theory originates in the book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life by Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszcynski. 

Omaha World Herald reporter Paul Hammel explains the recent federal indictment against Representative Jeff Fortenberry. Forteberry has represented Nebraska’s first congressional district in the House of Representatives since 2005. On October 19, 2021, it was announced that Fortenberry was being investigated over illegal campaign contributions that his 2016 campaign received from the Nigerian-born, Paris-based billionaire Gilbert Chagoury. A federal grand jury in Los Angeles indicted him on one count of scheming to falsify and conceal material facts and two counts of making false statements to federal investigators. Paul Hammel has been covering the story for the World Herald and he’s here in conversation with Tom Knoblauch today to walk us through who Fortenberry is and what is going on with the case. 

Later in the show, The Burrow Review’s film and TV critic Jared Charles gives a preview of upcoming movies to keep an eye out for this holiday season including Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, Don't Look Up, The Humans, and more. Read Charles's writing on film and TV here. 

Nebraska State Senator Tony Vargas, who is currently running to represent Nebraska’s Second Congressional District in the House of Representatives, talks with Tom Knoblauch about his upbringing, how teaching influenced his worldview, and his vision for the country. 

Matthew Wurstner, our resident historian, returns to the show to talk with Tom Knoblauch about the history of legal challenges to school curriculum and its implications for the future of education in America. 

Matthew Hansen chats with Tom Knoblauch about his journey in journalism, from interviewing Dick Cavett to his column at the Omaha World Herald to now founding and executive editing the Flatwater Free Press as an independent, local press in Nebraska.