I recently took a cab from Fairview Park to Oberlin. The driver was a high school classmate and although we connect on Facebook, we hadn’t really talked in years. By the time 45 minutes had gone by, we had gotten to a place of describing Oberlin as a microcosm of the country.

If I had a nickel for every time I had heard that.

That sense of things was in the back of my mind a year ago when I started a briefly lived radio show on WOBC at Oberlin College, looking to interview people from town. I wasn’t looking for the news makers, just the people I knew who had interesting stories to share.

I wasn’t the first one to think of it. I wasn’t the only one doing it. But with 20 years in print journalism, an interest in live interviews and a lifetime of growing up in Oberlin, I hoped the interaction would be interesting for listeners.

Twelve months after starting with a radio show, I am six months into producing these interviews as long-form journalistic podcasts. I’m still interested in hearing these stories and I hope you are too.

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