The Metro

In 2020, Detroit DJ and producer Carl Craig was tapped by the Dia Art Foundation in New York City to construct Party/Afterparty—a deeply personal sound and light exhibition that captured the euphoria of the club environment and the loneliness after parties ended. Now, Carl Craig is mixing it up as the Arts Power Up artist in residence at Michigan State University.

Craig is working with a nuclear physics lab called the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) to help explain what they do through an art installation so people like you and me can experience it. Carl Craig joined the show to explain his approach and why he has taken on these art projects.

Penelope Tsernoglou is a Democrat representing East Lansing in the state House who has been regulating AI. She helped to outlaw the use of AI to create deepfakes, and supported legislation that would ban employers from using AI to make decisions about wages, and hiring and firing workers. Tsernoglou also wants to prevent AI from determining claims in the healthcare marketplace. But she sponsored legislation to make it easier to construct data centers in Michigan.

For someone skeptical of artificial intelligence, how should we be considering the construction of data centers, which would greatly advance the technology? Rep. Tsernoglou spoke with The Metro's Robyn Vincent about this and more. 

Dennis Scott, a long-time theater organist and composer joined the show alongside historian and organist John Lauter. Scott will compose for a screening of the silent film “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” live at the Senate Theater. He will also host a hands-on workshop for anyone interested in learning how to play the organ. 

Women have been playing baseball for over a century. Some of the earliest teams can be traced back to the 1890s. Those teams expanded and created their own league called the All American Girls Professional Baseball League during World War II. It lasted eleven years, and since then, all other attempts to start one have fallen short.

Will the new women's league expected to start this summer change that?

Leslie Heaphy, president of the International Women’s Baseball Center and associate professor of history at Kent State University, joined the show to discuss the past, present, and future of women's baseball.  

One of the most popular programs in the City of Detroit is community violence intervention. It’s a policy that tasks neighborhood residents with intervening in disputes to reduce gun violence and mitigate harm.  It’s attributed with helping to significantly reduce homicides — which continue to fall in Detroit.

Now, the city is trying to institutionalize community violence intervention work and programs like it with the creation of the Office of Neighborhood and Community Safety. What is the scope of the office’s responsibilities? And, how does it believe it can target and alleviate the roots of violence?

Teferi Brent is the office’s first director. He spoke with The Metro's Robyn Vincent.

 Drone researcher and author Arthur Holland Michel joined The Metro to discuss. He founded the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College and wrote the book "Eyes In the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How it Will Watch Us All."

Adrian Tonon is a former night mayor of the city of Detroit and co-producer of Detroit 313 Selects—a local organization that puts Detroit's artists in front of global audiences while growing the city's creative economy. Neisha Nashae is a recording artist and a featured artist in this year’s SXSW showcase. 

Both Adrian and Neisha stopped by the studio to talk more about Detroit’s hip hop community, being an independent artist and the excitement surrounding this year’s SXSW showcase. 

The federal government is producing viral content out of immigration raids while subpoenaing ordinary people who criticize ICE online. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa — host of Latino USA and founder of Futuro Media — joins Robyn Vincent to break down the information war, what it took to get inside an ICE detention facility to interview activist Jeanette Vizguerra, and what it means when silence becomes the rational choice. 

The Detroit Historical Society is honoring Sinclair’s extraordinary legacy with a year-long exhibition, “Leni: Looking Through the Lens”.

The celebration kicks off March 12 at the Detroit Historical Museum. The evening will be moderated by WDET’s Ann Delisi with an ensemble performance led by Kasan Belgrave, son of legendary trumpeter Marcus Belgrave.

Leni Sinclair joined The Metro’s Tia Graham to chat briefly about her career and upcoming event.

The war in Iran — and the regional fallout — is continuing. Without Congressional authorization, President Donald Trump and Israel launched strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader and other military leaders of the current regime. And now over a thousand people have died in this war. 

There is no clear path to peace. Neither Israel nor America have signaled that either have much interest in creating stability or democracy in Iran.

Yesterday, we spoke with a Middle East scholar about what’s happening in Iran, and some of the different perspectives of the 92 million people living there. But there are a lot more voices to consider. What do folks from the diaspora who live in our region make of the situation?

Layla Saatchi is an assistant Professor of Teaching at Wayne State University. She spoke with The Metro's Robyn Vincent.

Romance books have been growing in popularity over the last few years. Now bookstores are following suit.

Carolyn Haering opened Mon Coeur, a romance bookstore, in Canton, Michigan just last year. The name means “my heart” in French. Haering says she started the store because she believes the genre allows her to escape into a fun and typically happy story.

Haering joined The Metro to talk about her store and recommend books about love.

Since late last year, “Heated Rivalry”—a series about two male hockey players who fall in love— has taken the country by storm. Now the novel turned HBO series represents the cultural moment we are in now: Romance books exploded in popularity after the pandemic and LGBTQ+ romance stories are becoming more prevalent.

To encapsulate the moment, we want to spotlight the queer love stories that came before it. Erin Bell, the director of the Writing Center at the University of Detroit Mercy who studies women’s writing and literature joined to help us pull back the layers of non-traditional love stories. 

Tens of thousands of Detroiters live in substandard housing. The stock often has leaky roofs, electrical problems — things that, if they’re not functioning, make a home unlivable. The city has spent tens of millions of dollars on home repairs. But that number is not nearly enough to meet the need, which totals over $1 billion.

What is the scale and scope of the home repair needs? And, how did we get here? Briana Rice is a civic life reporter at Outlier Media. She’s among the reporters who worked on Outlier’s “Beyond Repair” series. It explores Detroit’s home repair crisis.

Change is happening in many spaces, including those related to public health. In Michigan, and across the country, fewer people are getting vaccinated, more people are sick, and fewer individuals have health insurance. Life is also different for people who lead local public institutions. 

Kate Guzman is the Oakland County Health Officer. She spoke with The Metro's Robyn Vincent about the current measles outbreaks, the rise in flu cases, and what she's doing to try to keep people healthy during President Trump’s second term in office. 

This month, the Michigan Department of Corrections hit a milestone. Since 2020, they've distributed 30,000 government-issued IDs to incarcerated people. That matters because without an ID, you can't get a job, sign a lease, open a bank account — you can't even prove you’re you.

One in five people who leave Michigan prisons end up going back. The state says that's the lowest it's ever been. But what does a second chance actually look like when you walk out the door with so little?

Rick Speck knows this firsthand. He came home in 2014 after 15 years in prison. He didn't have an ID. Now, he's deputy director of Nation Outside — a Michigan reentry nonprofit run by formerly incarcerated people. He spoke with Robyn Vincent about his experiences, and what our state and culture would look like if we believed more deeply in second chances.

When someone is in distress, who should respond to the call for help? Police officers or social workers? The question of who should take the lead on distress calls has become all the more pressing. It was thrust into public discourse again last month when Ypsilanti residents witnessed a SWAT team have a 30-hour standoff with someone who they say was experiencing a mental health crisis.

Hillary Nusbaum is a co-responder supervisor for the Oakland Community Health Network. Producer Sam Corey spoke with her about what a co-responder does and when they should be called to take action on a 911 call.