The IBJ Podcast with Mason King

It has been a week since Indiana University won the College Football Playoff national championship and Hoosier fans are still celebrating. On the podcast this week, guest host Lesley Weidenbener talks with two people with different perspectives on the game between IU and the University of Miami at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. First up will be Nate Feltman, the owner and publisher of IBJ Media. He’s an IU graduate—with three degrees, in fact—and very active with the university. He went to the Rose Bowl in California, the Peach Bowl in Atlanta and the title game in Miami. Nate tells us about those experiences and explains why he decided that IBJ should send a reporter to Miami. And then Lesley talks with that reporter—Dave Lindquist—about his experiences at the game. Dave is not an IU grad and has not been to IU football games. But he has covered the hoopla surrounding many of the biggest sporting events that have taken place in Indianapolis. So he has an interesting perspective on the events in Miami. Click here to see some of the photos that Dave took during his trip to Miami. And here’s the link to the video Dave mentions that shows IU coach Curt Cignetti on the Big Ten Network’s Postgame Show. You can spot Dave in a dark jacket in the background of the shot at the beginning of the video.

The Colts are done for the year, but news is heating up about the potential for the Chicago Bears to move their stadium to Indiana, Here’s the scouting report: The Bears want a new stadium. They say Soldier Field isn’t cutting it anymore. They’ve purchased a huge site in one of Chicago’s suburbs that formerly was home to a racetrack. The team says it's willing to pay for stadium construction, but the team needs the Illinois Legislature to help pave the way with about $855 million in infrastructure improvements and by approving a bill that would enable a long-term property tax deal. In December, Bears President and CEO Kevin Warren announced that the team wasn’t getting anywhere with the Illinois Legislature and that it was expanding its search for a new stadium site to include northwest Indiana. Indiana Gov. Mike Braun and local officials in the area immediately jumped at the opening and the chance to get the ball rolling. There was a healthy amount of skepticism that the Bears were namechecking Indiana simply to get leverage with Illinois. But several surprising developments in the last two weeks show that Indiana is moving quickly to lay the groundwork for a stadium, the Bears are giving the state serious consideration and that some Illinois officials are seriously concerned about losing the team. In this episode of the IBJ Podcast, we’ll review the moves made by the Bears and Indiana officials that have brought us to this point. We have two guests: We’ll first hear from Marc Ganis, a consultant for pro sports teams who has lived in Chicago for three decades; and then we’ll hear from Mickey Shuey, who covers real estate and sports business for IBJ.

We’re all familiar with the way city and state officials have hitched central Indiana’s economic wagon to sports and tourism. Arts and entertainment have received less focus over that time, but the sports/tourism strategy has paid fringe benefits by making Indy a more viable option for A-list stars on tour and helping to elevate the city’s profile. It also has provided many opportunities for local artists and performers.    The latest case in point is Indy’s hosting gig for the NCAA’s Final Four in April, which will include a series of concerts for big stars and smaller shows for homegrown talents. Meanwhile, a local actor has made a dramatic entrance on the Hollywood awards circuit—Chase Infinity from “One Battle After Another”—which in its way helps plug Indy as a conduit for top talent. Indianapolis also plays a role in a new movie from two-time Oscar-nominated director Gus Van Sant about the Tony Kiritsis hostage crisis in 1977. And the city is about to get several new arts venues, providing more opportunities for expression and inspiration.   IBJ arts and entertainment reporter Dave Lindquist recently crafted a list of some of the best ways Indy-area residents can soak in culture in 2026. He’s the guest on this week’s IBJ Podcast to talk about “Dead Man’s Wire,” David Byrne, the Contemporary Art Museum of Indianapolis, cowboy couture, listening rooms and more.

Originally aired 8-25-2025. Cindy Schum grew up in a troubled family situation and, as she describes herself today, was terribly shy and awkward. Still, she found ways to put herself in situations that could help her be more outgoing. She was great at working with numbers, and she gravitated to a career in commercial lending that put her in front of business owners who loved to talk about how they made things work. She picked a heck of a time to jump from banking to buying a 104-year-old small business. She felt something vital was missing from her career, and her husband, Brad, persuaded her to purchase a company in 2019 in the less-than-glamorous janitorial-supply industry. She knew from her experience evaluating company financials and acquisitions that the numbers looked good. And when the pandemic hit several months later, Schum found herself in a position to help customers struggling with the sudden disruption. Still, Schum’s plans to grow A.G. Maas Supply Co. were delayed. But its headcount has swelled from two employees to 10 over the past six years, and its annual revenue has jumped 250%. Its core business is procurement—connecting customers in the utility, education, manufacturing and hospitality industries with the right suppliers of cleaning and safety products, office tools and facility furnishings. After some early trepidation, Schum learned that her career in banking perfectly prepared her for entrepreneurship. Whether you’re talking about banknotes or toilet paper, she says in this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast that it all comes down to relationships.

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. His pick for the biggest story of 2026 might require some advance explanation. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide soon whether President Trump’s emergency tariffs levied earlier this year are invalid. If the justices find that the president exceeded his authority by using emergency powers to impose tariffs on nearly every U.S. trading partner—which, to review, were paid by the companies that imported the products, not the countries or companies from which they came—the importers could be entitled to big refunds. As The Washington Post has reported, unwinding almost a year of Trump’s core economic policy likely could have serious consequences for the government’s finances and on the bottom lines of companies throughout the U.S. economy. It’s impossible to know how much money ultimately would be in play, but estimates of how much the U.S. had collected in emergency tariffs were close to $90 billion when the court heard arguments in early November.

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.   Our guest this week on the IBJ Podcast is a great example of the surging interest in ETA—shorthand for entrepreneurship through acquisition. Pat East and his wife founded a digital marketing company from scratch in the early 2000s and turned it into a behemoth with 75 employees and $10 million in annual sales. They sold it in 2020, which allowed East to focus more on his other role as executive director at The Mill, a nonprofit Bloomington co-working space and entrepreneurship center. He recently stepped down from The Mill in hopes of getting back into business for himself, and he discovered that Indiana doesn’t have a very robust community for aspiring entrepreneurs interested in ETAs. So he’s hosting meetups across the state to help fill that gap while he searches for his opportunity. In this week’s podcast, East discusses his exit from Hanapin Marketing, provides tips for those considering ETAs and breaks down the warning signs entrepreneurs should beware.

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.

Gov. Mike Braun’s administration last week released an audit the governor ordered last spring of the Indiana Economic Development Corp. — the state’s job creation agency — and related organizations, including the IEDC’s foundation as well as Elevate Ventures, the Applied Research Institute and other groups. From the beginning, the governor and Commerce Secretary David Adams referred to the review as a “forensic audit,” a term generally used when fraud or legal irregularities are expected. But the Governor’s Office said the review uncovered nothing criminal. Still, the auditors included dozens of findings in their report, including situations involving conflicts of interest, poor documentation and a lack of transparency. IBJ Editor Lesley Weidenbener talks with IBJ reporter Susan Orr, who has been following the issue for months, about what the audit found and what the results mean for several organizations. You can read more coverage of the audit at IBJ.com.

Kent Kramer registered an inkling of his calling early in high school when he started working for a supermarket in his native Muncie. He loved helping customers, getting to know them better, examining what they were buying and seeing how they stretched their food dollars. After college he jumped onto the store management track with Sam’s Club, deep in the heart of American consumer culture. This ultimately led him to his dream job with the global nonprofit Goodwill Industries, best known for the thrift stores that help power a wide variety of programs that help people become economically self-sufficient.   Kramer became president and CEO of Goodwill of Central Indiana in 2015 and has captained aggressive expansion of its programs and footprint. Now known, at least for the time being, as Goodwill of Central & Southern Indiana, the organization serves 40 Hoosier counties and 21 counties in central Illinois, while it establishes its model in Puerto Rico. Kramer has overseen impressive expansion of his organization’s employment, education and health services. That includes growing its maternal and natal care program to all 92 Indiana counties and scaling up its Excel Center program for adult education on a national level. Over the summer, IBJ Media recognized Kramer as the first recipient of its nonprofit executive of the year award, and he is our guest for this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast discussing his early love for retail, how central Indiana’s Goodwill extended its influence to a U.S. territory and how the organization has handled the challenges of several mergers with like-minded nonprofits.

Two months ago, one of America’s most prominent rugby players—both on the professional and international level—announced he was retiring at the age of 30. As a news event, this wasn’t on the level of an NBA All-Star retiring. But if you were a rugby fan or an alumnus of Indiana University, you probably knew the name Bryce Campbell, who had the distinction of being named the nation’s top collegiate rugby player while competing for IU’s team. Campbell’s new goal is to significantly raise the profile of Indianapolis in the rugby world and turn the city into a hub for the sport at the amateur, professional and national levels.   Campbell is a partner in Riverside Sports Properties, which recently signed a 20-year lease with Indy Parks and Recreation to manage and operate Kuntz Stadium on West 16th Street. It’s in the midst of millions of dollars in improvements to upgrade the field and stadium proper, prior to construction of a training facility, garage and plaza. In this week’s edition of the podcast, Indianapolis-native Campbell recounts his years as a Cathedral High School and IU phenom as well as his distinguished career as a pro and a member of the U.S. national team. He is using those experiences and connections to advance his goal of making Indianapolis the center of the rugby world, including landing a Major League Rugby franchise and carving out a role for the city in the 2031 and 2033 World Cups. And don’t be surprised to see toddlers learning the basics at Kuntz Stadium.

The gap between women and men attending college in Indiana continues to grow in favor of women. In raw numbers, 72,419 more girls than boys who graduated from Indiana high schools from 2009 to 2023 went on to higher education. Another head-jerking trend: The overall percentage of high school grads in Indiana who enroll in higher education stumbled from 61% in 2018 to 52% just five years later in 2023. Richard Fry, senior researcher at Pew Research Center, joins IBJ to discuss the widening gender gap in U.S. college enrollment. Fry analyzes federal data from 2011 to 2022, highlighting a sharp drop in college attendance among young men, shifting public views on the value of a degree, and rising wages for workers without one. He also examines racial and ethnic differences, workforce participation trends, and challenges in tracking training programs.

Each year, IBJ publishes an A&E Fall Preview guide. And for the past two years, reporter Dave Lindquist has packed that guide full of can’t-miss events for the fall, winter and even into the spring. Dave pours over the schedules of dozens of organizations and event spaces in town to make his picks, which include big-time performances as well as the kinds of events that might otherwise fly under the radar. For this week’s episode of the IBJ Podcast, IBJ Editor Lesley Weidenbener talked with Dave about how he decides what makes the list and which events he’s most excited about. You can see the A&E Fall Preview here.

Home ownership is viewed in many circles as a standard rite of passage for young adults. It indicates a certain financial wherewithal and the understanding that buying a home is an early key to building wealth. It’s supposed to be one of your most important investments. It’s the prime ingredient in what we consider the American Dream. And to be frank, if you are in your 30s or 40s and you don’t own a home, you’re very likely to get frequent reminders that you’re burning money on rent without building any equity.    But is home ownership always a smart move? Are the millennials and members of Generation Z who are struggling to afford homes due to debts and the rising cost of living in dangerous economic territory? In this week’s edition of the IBJ Podcast, personal finance expert Peter Dunn—aka Pete the Planner—breaks down the orthodoxy of home ownership and discusses when it makes the most sense. He says that while owning a home does solve a couple of major financial problems, it can create many more. It’s not at all necessary to get started right away, and there’s a navigable path for renters in the 40s to end up in a very comfortable situation by retirement.   Start your dollar a week trial now at ⁠⁠IBJ.com/trialoffer⁠⁠ Check out our event lineup and register now at ⁠IBJ.com/RSVP⁠ Discover which programs are accepting nominations now at ⁠⁠IBJ.com/Nominate⁠