If you've just stumbled across The 812 Show, welcome! It's a snapshot of the establishment in Bloomington and Monroe County, Indiana. In our more than 200 episodes, we've tackled issues like housing, transportation, animal welfare, economic development, and tax assessment. We've interviewed elected officials -- everyone from the mayor to the coroner -- we've talked with, appointed officials, members of boards and commissions, members of nonprofits, and then some. Throughout 2024 and 2025, we learned an awful lot from an awful lot of people.

We're going on an extended hiatus; more on that in this last mini-episode of Season 4. But we remain proud of our work. Subscriptions have been turned off, but episodes continue to be available on our website at the812show.org, as well as wherever you get podcasts. Thank you for trying our show, and for wanting to learn what makes your community tick -- to hear about the officers, public bodies, processes and organizations that make Bloomington and Monroe County the decent places to live that they are.

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

We're still trying to wrap our heads around CDFIs -- community development financial institutions -- and this time we think we've cracked the code.

We welcome back John Zody, the executive director of CDFI-Friendly Bloomington. He was last on the show in May 2024; for his followup he's brought along their program coordinator Emma Yoder, to further break down the concept of mission-based lending.

CDFIs are not like regular banks; they don't hold people's money. They only loan money to individuals and entities whose projects fulfill their often non-profit missions. Our guests at CDFI-Friendly Bloomington, are a non-profit-lender-wrangling organization, a kind of coordinator for financing for that community project you're so eager to get off the ground.

And there's a lot of money out there being offered by mission-based lenders, who are often far from Bloomington -- but our guests also have money direct FROM the city of Bloomington to loan out. All that money wants to be applied to good works to be done here in town. 

We talk about why banks can be a bottleneck to the physical development of a city despite the wishes it may have expressed in its comprehensive plan. And we talk about borrowers that CDFI-Friendly Bloomington is working with: housing providers like Bloomington Cooperative Living, small businesses, and providers of childcare.

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Bloomington has won two Gold Medals for its Parks Department. It's not just because of nice facilities like Switchyard Park or the B-Line Trail. Sure, a city needs to set aside physical places for greenery et al. But land doesn't program itself. 

Hence the phrase "Parks...AND Recreation." Today we speak with Leslie Brinson, the director of the Recreation Division of the city Parks and Recreation Department. She tells us about the several venues that the division programs, and its many types of programs, including community gardens, concerts, movies, the Fourth of July parade, kids' programs, and the long-running Farmers' Market.

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Our Extra Innings segments feature bonus interview material that didn't make it into our regular episodes. We haven't shared these Extra Innings with you yet, and it's about time we did. 

John Connell, the General Manager of Bloomington Transit, and Shelley Strimaitis, their Planning & Special Projects Manager, were on the show in May 2025 (to talk about new bus service to Ivy Tech and Cook and their new raft of all-electric buses). They stuck around to discuss the several new apps people can use to book rides, track buses and pay fares, as well as their talks with IU Campus Bus and a comparison with Lafayette and Purdue.

We also have more of our interview with Elisa Pokral, the community outreach coordinator of the Waste Reduction District of Monroe County, who stuck around after her January interview to discuss WRD services like the Green Business Network, which helps businesses recycle more easily and cost-efficiently; how they help businesses with waste audits; where exactly plastic goes now; how you can get rid of bulky items too big to fit into a trash bag; and the Adopt-A-Road program.

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Since 2015, the online magazine The Limestone Post has held a kind of middle ground among Bloomington publications, combining the arts, the outdoors and other lifestyle features with longform investigative journalism. We talk with Dason Anderson, the executive editor, about how the Post works and the challenges it faces in an era of local journalism all but consumed by social media. Their response in 2019 was to switch from a for-profit to a non-profit publication model, which has helped them survive and thrive.

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Today is another feast of Extra Innings -- extensions of interviews with past guests that we've never made available before. Two guests who have been involved in art as a public matter also had more to say than we could fit into our regular half-hour interview format. In September 2024, (hear the original interview here), Holly Warren, the city's assistant director for the arts, talked in Extras about her back history in the arts; her interest in the city going beyond having a public arts plan to developing a cultural plan, and explaining what that is; and the importance of facilities like the John Waldron Arts Center and the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre.

Those buildings were also the topic of our conversation in Extra Innings in May 2025 with a predecessor of Warren in the city arts director role, Miah Michaelsen, (hear the original interview here) who now is the director of the Indiana Arts Commission. Michaelsen talked about those buildings that were rededicated to the arts, and the history of the organization that rehabbed them, the Bloomington Area Arts Council, which she directed in the 2000s. 

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Lately we've been diving into our hoard of Extra Innings interviews with prior guests. Today, two new never-before-heard clips with guests from nonprofit entities between Kirkwood and Sixth Streets whose names begin with "Monroe County."

The first two-thirds are devoted to our Extra Inning with Sara Laughlin, who visited in September 2024 to talk about her volunteer work with Teachers' Warehouse. In her Extra Inning she talks about her former job, as director of the Monroe County Public Library system, and the now-open Southwest branch library, which was in the planning stages before her retirement in 2015. She also talks about how the Library gets and manages its funding. 

The final third of this episode with Megan MacDonald, librarian and Daniel Schlegel, director of the Monroe County History Center. After the main episode they recorded in October 2024, they stuck around to talk about the effect of the pandemic on the History Center, and how some people think the old Carnegie Library building that they occupy is haunted. Not to mention their run-ins with cryptids (or at least, their overzealous fans).

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

[Charlotte Zietlow passed away Wednesday at the age of 91. She was a pillar of the community who will be greatly missed. This is an encore presentation of our interview with her, recorded in January 2024.]

Charlotte Zietlow is well-known in Bloomington and Monroe County for many reasons. This episode focuses her time on the Bloomington City Council in the early 1970s -- the subject of her second book, "1971: How We Won". She talks about how the previous council was unresponsive to public input and concerns, motivating her to run for office. She campaigned on issues like zoning changes and lack of transparency. By 1972, she was one of ten newly elected city officials who had swept all but one incumbent out of office.

As the new council president, she led reforms to open up government and increase public participation. The new council addressed a long backlog of issues through committees and initiatives focused on social services, infrastructure, and the environment. After one term, Charlotte decided not to run for reelection when she disagreed with the mayor on an issue, instead running for mayor herself.

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

This week we're exploring our archive of extra interview segments that we didn't have room for in the original episodes, segments that we call "Extra Innings". It's new material, never-before aired, that gives further insight into the way decision-makers think. In these Extra Innings segments:

• David Hittle, the director of the Planning & Transportation Department for the city of Bloomington (originally interviewed in Episode 123), focuses on the Transportation portion of his unusual title, the car-centric mentality of the state department of transportation, and the types of thoroughfares that dominated planning and development in the last century that the city is striving to correct.
• Megan Betz, the CEO and executive director of Mother Hubbard's Cupboard (originally interviewed in Episode 110), talks about her background in agriculture that led to her current role trying to reduce food insecurity. She reminisces about, before she was at the Hub, the Bloomington Community Orchard and her experiences there — including the day the Orchard discovered it was the victim of peach thieves — and how it all shifted her focus from individuals to the systems that determine who gets to grow things in our community. 

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.

Switchyard Park opened in 2019, during the administration of Mayor John Hamilton. It's a stop on the B-Line Trail, another beloved amenity, which opened in 2009, during the administration of Mayor Mark Kruzan. But those places didn't happen by magic or overnight. They were only made possible by decisions made all the way back in 1998, during the administration of Mayor John Fernandez.

Our guest today is Randy Lloyd, who was the city's first director of economic development from 1996 to 2001. He was getting the feel of the city's new position when on his watch occurred the greatest negative event in the history of Bloomington's economy: the cessation of all manufacturing at the 58-year-old RCA television plant in 1998, which at its peak employed 8000 workers. We get into the situation at the time, how the Fernandez administration reacted to the news of the plant closure, how the railroad land right-of-way that had been serving the RCA plant could easily have just disappeared, and how it was preserved for use as a park.

[Note: this is a longer episode than usual. We'll resume our normal 30-35 minute shows next week.]

Support the show

A production of Plateia Media ©2024-5. All rights reserved.