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Check 'em out, if you want

A collage with images of a vibrant desert landscape from the book cover of The Rose Field, a person with a backpack facing into the landscape and a black and white illustration of a man in a suit falling from the TV show Mad Men.
Collage by Holly Wilkerson
Nice Work hosts, Alex Tyler and Kayte talk about one thing they are each reading, watching or listening to, in a new segment we're calling "check 'em out, if you want."

In a new and recurring segment called, check ‘em out, if you want, hosts Kayte Young, Alex Chambers, and Tyler Lake recommend some things for you to check out, if you want. This installment features Alex telling us about The Rose Field, book three in Philip Pullman’s trilogy called The Book of Dust.

Kayte buys into the hype around the AMC series Mad Men. A slick and thoughtful serial about ad execs on Madison Avenue in the 60’s. It examines masculine fragility in ways that feel just as relevant now as they did back in 2007 when it debuted.

Tyler goes rummaging through the Army Surplus store to find a recent series of the podcast Articles of Interest. I n the series called “Gear,” host Avery Trufelman goes back to the 19th century to look at the long and inter woven relationship between outdoor outfitters and the United States military that is still as strong (and now more breathable!)

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Alex Chambers runs WFIU’s arts desk, and produces and hosts WFIU’s Inner States, a weekly podcast and radio show about arts, culture, and ideas from southern Indiana and beyond. He’s the co-creator of How to Survive the Future, a podcast about the present, produced in partnership with Indiana Humanities. He has a PhD in American Studies, with a dissertation called Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge, and a book of poems called Bindings: A Preparation, about domestic life and empire. In his spare time, he teaches audio storytelling at the IU Media School. When he’s not in the woods gathering sound, you might see him out for a run on the streets of Bloomington.
Kayte Young discovered her passion for growing, cooking, foraging and preserving fresh food when she moved to Bloomington in 2007. With a background in construction, architecture, nutrition education and writing, she brings curiosity and a love of storytelling to a show about all things edible. Kayte raises bees, a small family and a yard full of food in Bloomington’s McDoel Gardens neighborhood.