WMU

Matt Grocoff says today’s children may grow up in a world without power outages. The founder of the Ann Arbor based Thrive Collaborative says that’s part of the promise of “net-zero” buildings.

Johnny Rodgers began his life as a performer in theatre - singing, writing songs on piano, and dancing - when he was a boy growing up in Florida, egged on by his music-loving grandmother.  But he credits Western Michigan's Gold Company, and director Steve Zegree, with some of the most critical training for his career. Today he is an acclaimed one-man-band performer about whom the Chicago Tribune wrote: "He plays piano better than most singers. He sings better than most pianists. And he writes songs better than most singer-pianists." (Reich, Howard. "Johnny Rodgers: A Singer-Pianist For All Seasons." Chicago Tribune. Nov 25, 2014).  

Rodgers joined Jazz Currents host Keith Hall in the studio at WMUK during a visit to his alma mater in December 2017. He plays his own songs, "Home To Mendocino," "The Best of You And Me," and "Mid-Day Moon," as well as the popular song, "What a Wonderful World."

You may not know it but you're left-handed. We're not talking about the hand you use the most but rather the amino acids in the molecules in your body. All life in earth uses "left-handed" molecules as building blocks. And a research team led by associate Western Michigan University physics professor Michael Famiano is trying to find out why that's true, and whether the "stuff of life" was forged in the depths of space.

Western Michigan University cultural anthropologist is a member of the Sault Saint Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Living among the tribe, also known as the Ojibwa, while pursuing a master's degree at WMU, Allard came to the troubling realization of just how big a problem youth suicide is among Native Americans. He wrote a book about it: Guided by the Spirits: The Meanings of Life, Death, and Youth Suicide in an Ojibwa Community (Routledge, 2018).