Our regional NPR affiliate, WVPE, brought the live taping of this week's episode of Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me! to an overflow crowd in Elkhart, Indiana's beautiful Lerner Theater. If you enjoy the show, I'm sure you would enjoy seeing a live taping in Chicago or on one of their frequent road trips. It moves fast, responds nimbly to current events, to the locale where the taping is taking place, and to the unpredictable turn of conversation moment-by-moment in the performance. How much is scripted? It's hard to say, surely a fair amount, but it moves too quickly to feel like a full script exists. Dunno.

A couple of colleagues who are among the leading investigators into string theory were giving a talk at the same time back at IU South Bend, for a general audience, on the nature of black holes. And in another university building simultaneously, a poetry reading, part of a continuing literary series hosted by the creative writers in the English department. How good is the series? Well, for example, Mary Szybist was a recent reader in the series, but this week she won the National Book Award for poetry. Who knows, maybe something interesting was happening at that other university in town, too.

The point? There are too many cool things going on in the wider South Bend area for people to take advantage of. The area still struggles, and the reputation is not always stellar, but if you look in the right places you see a dynamic region (admittedly, with work still to be done). The story needs to be told--more loudly, more proudly, more often.

And the people for whom the area's economy does not provide opportunities, their voices, those stories, too.