Alejandra Sandoval-Montañez is a mezzo-soprano and Holland Community Opera Fellow . The fellowship brings community-focused artists to live and work in Omaha. Sandoval-Montañez grew up in Mexico and received her Masters in Vocal Performance and Literature from the University of Illinois. Her stage credits include roles in productions of “Carnaval!,” “A Little Night Music,” “Pirates of Penzance” and “Patience.” Sandoval-Montañez is also an educator and social media manager. She runs the Instagram...
May 31, 2025•49 min
Maggie Wood is executive director of the nonprofit, arthouse cinema Film Streams. This year, Film Streams is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its Dundee Theater with the Dundee Hundee series . The yearlong program includes 10 films, one for each decade of the theater’s history. The next screening is at 7 p.m. this Saturday, May 24, featuring the 1948 Technicolor film “The Red Shoes.” Maggie Wood was born and raised in Bloomington–Normal, Illinois. Since moving to Nebraska in 1997, her nonpro...
May 17, 2025•49 min
For Mother’s Day, today's episode features pediatrician Arlana Phillips, mother of host Michael Griffin. She attended medical school at the University of Kansas and completed her residency at University of Nebraska Medical Center. She has been practicing at Charles Drew Health Center for over 20 years. Charles Drew Health Center is a Federally Qualified Health Center, meaning they serve at-risk community members that are frequently uninsured. In our conversation, Phillips and Griffin discuss her...
May 10, 2025•50 min
Hana Baba is creator of the new audio series “Folktales From Sudan.” The series is a passion project inspired by the stories Baba grew up hearing when visiting relatives in Sudan. Each episode is a single story narrated by Baba with music and sound effects. Baba says the series marks the first time the tales have been recorded in English. “Folktales From Sudan” premiered in March and is now available wherever you get your podcasts. Baba is an award-winning journalist with KALW in San Francisco, ...
May 03, 2025•51 min
Mayor Jean Stothert is running for reelection against John Ewing. The election is Tuesday, May 13. We spoke to Ewing on last week’s show, and you can find that episode wherever you get your podcasts. This is Stothert’s fourth campaign for mayor. Before she entered politics, Stothert was head nurse at St. Louis University Hospital. She moved to Omaha with her family in 1993 and has served on the Millard Board of Education and the Omaha City Council before she began her first mayoral term in 2013....
Apr 26, 2025•54 min
It’s election season in Omaha, and today's guest is John Ewing, who’s running for mayor against incumbent Jean Stothert. We’ll hear from Stothert in next week’s episode. Ewing spent 25 years as a police officer before assuming office in 2007 as Douglas County Treasurer. He holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and criminal justice and a master's degree in urban studies from the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Ewing and Michael Griffin are talking about Ewing’s decision to seek ma...
Apr 19, 2025•51 min
Phillip McClain is founder of the real estate company the Mensch Group. Through the Mensch Group, McClain spearheads affordable housing developments in North Omaha. The company broke ground on its first project last year: nine single-family homes at 49th and Curtis Streets, an area known as Curtis Corner. McClain sold the houses to families for below market value thanks to assistance from local organizations like Spark Capital and Habitat for Humanity. Tax-increment financing helped cover develo...
Apr 13, 2025•53 min
Kaleb Michaud is a professor of rheumatology at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the director of Spielbound Board Game Cafe. Michaud grew up in Kansas, where he developed a passion for music and astrophysics. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of Rochester and a PhD from Stanford University. When he was 3 years old, Michaud was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease causing painful swelling and stiffness in joints and connective tissues. ...
Apr 05, 2025•54 min
Karen Russell's “The Antidote” follows five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their fictional small town of Uz, Nebraska. Together, the group of outcasts join forces to reveal the town’s secrets and show the importance of remembering and acknowledging injustices to create a better future. Russell has received MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her debut novel “Swamplandia.” She has taught literature and creative writing ...
Mar 29, 2025•50 min
Joel Damon is an artist, curator and co-founder of the Project Project gallery space in South Omaha. Damon was previously on the show in 2022, in conversation with Tom Knoblauch. Damon is a painter and designer who gained recognition for organizing independent visual art exhibitions for local artists. He was the curator of the Bemis Underground, the Bemis Center’s former space dedicated to regional artist exhibitions, before its closure in 2014. The experience pushed him to open Project Project ...
Mar 22, 2025•51 min
Christopher German founded the Omaha-based fragrance company Evodia in 2020. With the tagline, “where memories make scents,” Evodia comes from German’s lifelong fascination with fragrance. The company sells bottles of unisex perfume and offers clients the opportunity to create custom scents with German’s help. It’s been recognized by the Omaha’s Choice Awards four years in a row, winning first place in the Beauty & Wellness category in 2021 and 2022. Last December, Evodia opened its first st...
Mar 15, 2025•50 min
Quinn Metal Corbin is manager of the Great Plains Theater Commons. Corbin has spent more than two decades in the performing arts. She’s worked as a casting intern in New York, a script production assistant on a Broadway musical, an assistant to a powerful entertainment agency executive, and an event coordinator for the National Theatre in London among other roles. In addition to her industry jobs, Corbin founded C+C Mini Factory alongside Chelsea Cates. C+C is a photography project featuring min...
Mar 08, 2025•51 min
Shaq Jones, aka Scottie Pigeon, is a dancer and DJ. Jones uses his platform to center the experience of Black men in the arts. He grew up in North Omaha and attended Lincoln University of Missouri, a historically Black college, where he led the school’s dance troupe before graduating in 2017. He returned to Omaha and began collaborating with various performing arts organizations around town, including AP’s Legacy Dance Studio, the annual Omaha Beautillion event, Omaha Performing Arts and Opera O...
Mar 01, 2025•50 min
Kevin Clouther is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Omaha Writer’s Workshop, where he serves as program coordinator of the Master of Fine Arts in Writing. Clouther is also the author of the story collections “Maximum Speed” and “We Were Flying to Chicago.” His stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Joyland, New Orleans Review, Ruminate and StoryQuarterly, among other journals. He holds degrees from the University of Virginia and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and ...
Feb 22, 2025•51 min
Dirty Birds, located in the Flatiron building at 17th and St. Mary’s Avenue, is known for its fried chicken and cocktail menu. Matthew Moseley and Dan Whalen opened the restaurant in early 2021 with a goal of serving quality food in a community-oriented space. Business partner Mike West joined the team shortly after. Guy Fieri visited Dirty Birds in 2023 for an episode of “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.” In this episode, Michael Griffin is talking with Moseley and Whalen about their culinary hist...
Feb 10, 2025•51 min
Brenton Gomez is a fixture of Omaha’s rap and skateboarding scenes. You may know him as Conny Franko, the name under which he’s been releasing music for the better part of two decades. He’s half of the hip-hop duo M34N STR33T with producer Adam Haug. Skateboarding was Gomez’s first love. His experiences street skating as a kid inspired him to spend much of his adult life advocating for skate park construction. In 2018, Gomez and his friends built ramps and rails on the unused tennis courts of Ly...
Feb 01, 2025•52 min
Xavier Jackson is founder and CEO of Local Art Plug. An Omaha native, Jackson started the business in 2017 to connect artists with art lovers. Musicians and artists can find audiences through the organization’s website, which has pieces for sale, and a gallery space in the Flatiron Building downtown. Local Art Plug’s services also include subscription plans for individuals and businesses. Subscribers can lease a work to “test drive” before buying it, or they can pay to have their collection rota...
Jan 25, 2025•49 min
Carmen Winant is an artist, photographer, writer, and art professor at The Ohio State University. Her work involves installation and collage work to examine survival and revolt through a feminist lens. Her traveling exhibition “The last safe abortion” opens Jan. 18 at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts. “The last safe abortion” is an exploration of women’s health clinics and abortion providers, with a particular focus on the Midwest. The installation is composed of photos of behind-the-scenes wo...
Jan 11, 2025•51 min
It's our 200th episode, and we're doing something a little different this week. In this episode, Michael Griffin is in conversation with producer Courtney Bierman. A quick note on episode numbers: if you’re listening to the podcast version of this show, you’ll notice it lists this episode as number 218. That’s because show creator Tom Knoblauch started the count when Riverside Chats was a series of live conversations in Benson. We’re counting from the first episode that played on KIOS airwaves i...
Jan 04, 2025•51 min
Todd Lemke is the founder and publisher of Omaha Magazine, a 42-year-old regional publication covering the arts, lifestyle, entertainment, food and more. Lemke grew up in Papillion and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1981 with a degree in journalism. In 1983, he started a print publication called Omaha Today, which eventually became Omaha Magazine. Omaha Magazine is behind the annual Best of Omaha list, Faces of Omaha, Faces of Lincoln, the new North Omaha First, and other s...
Dec 07, 2024•53 min
Joshua Brown is the program coordinator at the Nebraska Arts Council, a state organization whose mission is to promote, cultivate and sustain the arts through programming, grants and opportunities to foster creative innovation statewide. At the Arts Council, Brown manages grants related to arts education and accessibility. Outside of his work with the Arts Council, he also serves as a visual artist and musician, exhibiting paintings and sculptures at community galleries in Omaha and organizing s...
Nov 23, 2024•52 min
Jahmai Brown is a painter, photographer and Hot Shops Art Center resident. An Omaha native, Brown attended North High School and graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute. His paintings are often works of bright colors, bold patterns and less traditional materials like glitter and magazine clippings. Brown was also among the artists who created the “Black Skies” mural in 2018 at 24th and Grant Streets, which highlights the experiences of the Tuskegee Airmen. Brown was only 17 when the mural w...
Nov 16, 2024•52 min
Erin Feichtinger is policy director of the Women's Fund of Omaha. In this episode, she's in conversation with Tom Knoblauch about history (in which she has a Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago) and politics, including Governor Pillen's vision for Nebraska and how it's panning out after a contentious state legislative session. This episode was recorded before the 2024 general election.
Nov 09, 2024•52 min
Working in poetry, glass and installation, Aspen Monet Laboy’s art explores concepts of environmentalism and identity. In the summer of 2022, they implemented and co-hosted Corner’s Space at KANEKO, a public program exploring poetry through creative experimentation and collaboration. Laboy has published three books of poetry with a fourth on the way. Several of their selected poems were aired on Friday Live with Nebraska Public Media through NPR in 2023. Their writing has also been featured in l...
Nov 02, 2024•49 min
Sean Kelly is a candidate for Douglas County Commissioner, District 5 against Brian Fahey. An Omaha native and Dundee resident, Kelly attended Creighton Prep and went on to receive an undergraduate degree from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. Outside of his run for office, Kelly works as a local investor and agricultural real estate professional. In this episode, Kelly and Michael Griffin discuss how Kelly's business background inspired his r...
Oct 28, 2024•50 min
Brian Fahey is a local attorney running for Douglas County Commissioner, District 5 against Sean Kelly. An Omaha native and nephew of former mayor Mike Fahey, Brian Fahey attended Central High School and went on to receive a law degree from the University of Nebraska College of Law. Fahey is also a member of the River City Mixed Chorus Board of Directors, vocalist for the Omaha Chamber Singers and artistic director of the Capitol Avenue Baroque. Fahey and Michael Griffin discuss how caring for e...
Oct 26, 2024•51 min
David Levy is a candidate for the Regional Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Board of Directors in District 2. The Transit Authority, also known as Metro, is responsible for running Omaha’s bus system, including ORBT and MOBY services. Levy is running against Clarice Dombeck, who was on this show in June. You can hear my conversation with her wherever you get your podcasts. The first elected transit board will have seven nonpartisan members, one for each district. Prior to this year, seats were a...
Oct 12, 2024•51 min
Ameen Wahba is a licensed mental health practitioner whose work is grounded in the belief that psychotherapy can be a liberatory practice, both individually and institutionally. Wahba is also a multidisciplinary artist, writer and musician. In 2018, he published a book of poetry titled “Bear Witness to That Which Is.” He’s been part of various gallery installations around town and was a 2023 Fellow at the Union For Contemporary Art. Wahba also plays guitar and sings in the bands Thick Paint, Sgt...
Oct 05, 2024•49 min
Zedeka Poindexter and Gina Tranisi are co-executive directors of the Nebraska Writers Collective. NWC is responsible for the annual All Writes Reserved Youth Spoken Word Festival, formerly known as Louder Than a Bomb, which reaches more than 30 schools and 500 students across Nebraska and Iowa with free spoken word poetry lessons, workshops with local writers, open mics, and a space to be heard. NWC will also host National Youth Poet Laureate Stephanie Pacheco for a performance on Oct. 12 at Dry...
Sep 30, 2024•53 min
Astrid Munn is a lead attorney at CIRA, the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement, where she represents immigrant clients who have survived violent crime, domestic violence and trafficking. CIRA was previously known as the Immigrant Legal Center and Refugee Empowerment Center. Munn is also a comedian who performs improv and standup at clubs around town. Munn was born in Scottsbluff and received an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln before attending ...
Sep 21, 2024•52 min
