In the third consecutive episode with updates on major stories from the past year, this week's IBJ Podcast features IBJ’s Mickey Shuey, who covers real estate, hospitality and the business of sports.

In the first half of the episode, Shuey reveals what’s been going on behind the scenes in Westfield as cities across North America prepare to host matches this summer for the 2026 Men’s World Cup. Central Indiana is out of the running as a match site, but Shuey reports in the latest issue of IBJ that Westfield’s gargantuan Grand Park Sports Campus has been named one of the available base camps for teams competing in the Cup. On the podcast, Shuey discusses the logistics of being the home base for a World Cup team, what the teams are looking for and what attribute of Grand Park might make it less appealing.

In the second half of the episode, Shuey digs into his notebooks to give us progress reports on many of the major construction projects downtown, including the $600 million overhaul of Circle Centre Mall and the $4.3 billion IU Health hospital campus. Even more intriguing, he addresses significant downtown projects still in the proposal stage: a stadium for the Major League Soccer team the city wants to establish and a casino that would use the gaming license of the Rising Star Casino in southeast Indiana.

IBJ Podcast host Mason King first interviewed Jamal Smith late in 2024 about an ambitious initiative to do no less than increase the life expectancy of residents in a set of historic neighborhoods in Marion County. You know the neighborhoods as Crown Hill, Historic Flanner House Homes, Highland Vicinity, Meridian Highland and Ransom Place. They contain in total more than 9,000 residents who, due to a number of socio-economic factors, have a much lower life expectancy than other Indy residents.

The neighborhoods are immediately north, west and south of the $4.3 billion IU Health hospital campus under construction downtown. Smith is the executive director of the nonprofit group Indy Health District, which was formally launched a year ago by IU Health in collaboration with several adjacent community-minded organizations and representatives of the neighborhoods. Its most immediate goals include providing access to healthy food and quality education, investing in trails and other infrastructure, partnering on projects that create affordable housing and helping residents find gainful employment.

Coordinating the many elements of the initiative with a staggering number of stakeholders requires elite powers of persuasion, communication and humility. Smith returns to the podcast this week with a one-year progress report, including updates on strategies that succeeded and situations where he needed to ask for grace and go back to the lab. And he shares the four main goals of the district’s newly composed strategic plan—the next steps toward the district’s ultimate goal.

We’re in the midst of the holidays—always a good time for reflection. And this week that means holding Pete the Planner accountable for bold predictions he made in January about the economy and U.S. fiscal policy in 2025. Pete hit a bunch of these out of the park—especially those related to Trumponomics—and he whiffed on several others. Because he’s a big-hearted guy not afraid of making mistakes, Pete this week presents his predictions for 2026, including positive portents for nuclear energy, his advance whiff of a stale housing market and a tough prognosis for higher education.

2025 will probably go down as the year artificial intelligence became an inevitable aspect of our lives. Anyone wishing to use it as a research tool, business strategist, data filter, personal coach or just a chatty companion has easy access to the technology. Indeed, most of the biggest companies in the world have been implementing AI in one way or another. AI can help automate tasks, interpret data, predict needs, improve efficiency, assist customers, assist coders, generate social media content, manage communication and translate it into any known language. If your company isn’t at least investigating how it can integrate AI, leaders should at least have a compelling case for sitting on the sidelines.

There are many reasons why companies are hesitant to take the plunge—or even get their feet wet. But those obstacles—including cost, employee resistance and lack of technical expertise—are easier to leap than you might think. In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King presents a series of scenarios from the point of view of an AI skeptic and asks a business education expert to respond to them. Our guest is Carolyn Goerner, faculty chair of executive education programs at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, which among many things teaches executives and other company leaders how to implement and use AI. She also goes into greater depth on how to coax reluctant employees to become AI adopters.

Convenience stores are having a cultural moment. It’s more than a moment, actually—but they do like to emphasize speed. And after decades of being the butts of culinary jokes, they now like to emphasize fresh, ready-to-eat food—as well as plenty of gas pumps, product inventories that could rival a small Walmart and sophisticated branding strategies that market them as immersive experiences instead of roadside quickie-marts. We soon should have a chance to sample a few of the biggest names. Buc-ee’s, Wally’s and Wawa are converging on the Indianapolis area—as would befit the crossroads of America.

Wawa was the first to the Indy market with a store that opened in May, followed by several more local stores and plans for about a dozen in total. In terms of size, they’re definitely bigger than your typical 7-Eleven. IBJ recently broke the story that iconic Texas-based chain Buc-ee’s was close to sealing a deal for an Indy-area store potentially larger than a football field. And Illinois-based Wally’s, with a model strikingly similar in some ways to Buc-ee’s, recently provided an opening date for its 54,000-square-foot store under construction in Whitestown.

For this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, we’ve invited an expert in the industry to discuss the sea change in the C-store marketplace and delve into the specific calling cards of each of these three brands. Jeff Lenard of the National Association of Convenience Stores tells us what to expect, where they make their profit, how they’re building devoted fan bases and why they see opportunity in central Indiana.

If you’re someone who believes the drummer is more than someone at the back of the stage who keeps time, this week’s Percussive Arts Society International Convention, otherwise known as PASIC, is your kind of event. Joshua Simonds, executive director of the Indianapolis-based Percussive Arts Society, says the artistry of drummers is celebrated at the four-day event.

While Indianapolis is locked in to host PASIC through 2028, this year’s gathering carries landmark significance because it’s the 50th annual edition. Nearly 7,000 attendees, on target to set a new record, are expected to check out concerts, workshops and an exhibition hall.

Drummers who play in the touring bands of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé will attend, but PASIC isn’t confined to mainstream sounds. The lineup spans world music, jazz, marching percussion and contemporary classical.

In this week’s episode, IBJ arts reporter Dave Lindquist talks with Joshua Simonds about the event, scheduled Wednesday through Saturday.

Gov. Mike Braun has called a special session of the Indiana Legislature, set to begin Monday, Nov. 3, that could make Indiana one of states to redraw its congressional maps before next year’s midterm elections. The Trump administration has lobbied Braun and Republican lawmakers since at least August to reapportion the state’s nine districts in hopes of engineering a GOP sweep next year. Indiana’s congressional delegation already is dominated by Republicans, but two of the state’s nine seats in the U.S. House of Representatives currently are held by Democrats.

Braun called the special session despite a definitive report from Senate President Pro Tem Rodric Bray’s office that there wasn’t enough support in the Indiana Senate to redraw the maps. But Braun believes the votes will be there. In this edition of the IBJ Podcast, host Mason King is joined by two local journalists with significant experience covering the legislature to dissect the events that led to the special session and explain how it could play out. They also discuss the history of redistricting in Indiana and the decades-long battle to expand political power by changing boundaries on a map. 

We’ve developed a romantic ideal of entrepreneurism in recent decades closely connected to startup culture and the brave souls who want to create something that can disrupt a product type or even a whole industry. But for a variety of reasons, a growing number of aspiring entrepreneurs of all ages are choosing to become business owners by acquiring a company rather than starting one from scratch. Among the benefits: Folks who acquire companies are working with products or services that already are proven in the marketplace. They can immediately start paying themselves from existing sales. And getting financing can be easier when your business has an established track record.

As the federal government shutdown drags on and thousands of federal workers are going without paychecks, we thought it would be a great time to check in with Peter Dunn about what to do if you’re suddenly laid off or facing a loss of income.

Peter writes the Pete the Planner column and hosts the Pete the Planner podcast where he talks about money. He’s also the founder and CEO of Your Money Line, which provides workplace financial advice for companies across the country.

He talked with IBJ Editor Lesley Weidenbener about the challenges facing federal workers for whom the future remains murky. And they discuss what those and other laid off or furloughed workers can do – and what they shouldn’t do – to address the situation.

Anderson native Benjamin Nagengast comes by his bent for entrepreneurism and artistic design naturally. His mother founded a prominent design and engineering firm in the Anderson area, and his father was involved in several enterprises, including his own ceramic pottery business. When Ben was 10, his mother suggested the family start a pumpkin patch on their 75-acre farm. The lessons learned there helped Ben start an enterprise at the age of 13 that would become White River Paintball. Eleven years later, in 2010, he co-launched the haunted house attraction Indy Scream Park, also in the Anderson area.

Ben and his wife, Mariah Nagengast, went on to create three more family-fun theme parks, all located in Dade City, Florida, a short drive east of the Tampa area. The five parks in Florida and Indiana fall under the umbrella of the entertainment development firm Point Summit. Ben is the CEO, and Mariah is the chief acquisitions and financial officer. They now live in Florida, but they still have their fingers on the pulse of the Anderson attractions and recently invested $300,000 to upgrade elements of Indy Scream Park. They also are looking at creating new attractions on land they own next to the Scream Park and paintball business. Ben and Mariah are our guests this week to explain what it takes to operate a sprawling fear factory. The Scream Park is a serious seasonal business requiring nearly 200 employees on a busy night to create a sense of impending doom—but not danger.