This conversation with Ed Richardson, President & CEO of Thomas & Skinner, Inc., is a detailed discussion about management of a business, in this case, a manufacturer of ALNICO magnets.

The magnets are used in satellites, missiles, aircraft, and even watt meters in homes.  

Subjects are skilled and unskilled labor, Indiana's business environment, hiring and creating U.S. citizens, tariffs, and dealing with a static market.

With thirty six years of advocacy, The Hoosier Environmental Council has protected our state's most valuable asset, the place where we live.

Led by our guest, The Council has worked to protect rural areas from animal factory pollution, inventoried and proposed methods to limit the dangers of coal ash dumps (Indiana has more than any other state), worked for more protected land and for sustainable energy.

With pending termination of a national forestry act, The Indiana Forest Alliance is advocating protection and reforestation.  

Trees, it says, begin to solve the problem of climate change because they remove offending particles from the air.  Urban forestry both lowers temperatures and raises home values.  

And a program of classified forests, areas of 10 acres or more, privately held, pay taxes on only $13 of assessed value if owners protect the trees.

Listen to the end, where you will hear a piano solo by Emmet Cohen, the 2019 American Pianists Award Winner.  For this, we thank our guest, Joel Harrison, President, CEO and Artistic Director, from whom we learn about The Jazz Competition, The Classical Competition, and his personal history managing the association since 2001.  

Joel has a big job:  organizing, raising funds, managing money, and playing that Steinway Grand sitting comfortably in his home.

Experienced opinion-gatherer Jeff Lewis talks about two Indiana statesmen, Senators Bayh and Lugar, both having recently passed away.

Among topics are challenges facing polling organizations, how salience affects responses, whether the census (and, by extension, polling organizations) will find utility by using the internet, and dysfunction in present-day Washington, D.C.

Ray Moistner is Executive Director of The Indiana Hardwood Lumbermens Association which represents wood from start to finish:  planting, extracting, replacing, cutting, shipping, protecting and manufacturing into finish products.

Much here that John and Morton did not know:  that Indiana, for example, replaces 2.3 trees for every tree removed, that we are not deforesting like Brazil, that out-of-state marauders stole Indiana timber until Ray's association lobbied to make such thefts a felony.

Carol Rogers helps to manage Stats America, used by more than 1 million persons a year to quickly find practical data for decision making.  

In Indianapolis, even up-to-the-minute pot hole data is available.

Data provides information, but not always answers.  Why, for example, is Indiana in the top three states attracting incoming college freshman, but most of them leave us?

This conversation also includes information about the 2020 Census.

Our guest, Glen Kwok, CEO of The International Violin Competition of Indianapolis, is a world leader in developing and promoting the finest emerging violinists.

In this stimulating interview he talks about careers of violinists,  modern violins which duplicate the sounds and effectiveness of those made by the old masters, as well as the unique phenomenon that the Indianapolis competition, scheduled every four years, is the best in the world, though not always seen as such by the home town.

James Glass has spent most of his life studying and protecting historic buildings.

As one of the first staff members of The Indianapolis Historic Preservation Commission, and as a doctoral student whose thesis topic was the history of one of the first preservation acts of Congress, James knows his stuff.

Naturally, Morton challenges assumptions about the value of ol

Tom Akins was principal timpanist of The Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra from 1965 to 1991.  He wrote a history of the ISO called "Crecsendo"  (1930-2005) and "Behind The Copper Fence" about the dynamics of an orchestra, playing his instrument, working with other musicians, tuning, and even the ISO softball team.

He told us how a person with only two arms and two legs manages four drums in a concert, especially in a concerto for timpani.