The Indiana Century Podcast
What if Indiana didn't just participate in the next century... but built it?
Join the conversation as we transform Indiana from a crossroads into a command center of American innovation. This isn't left versus right. It's forward versus stuck.
Each week, we explore practical, sovereign solutions to our most pressing challenges: from energy independence through next-generation nuclear power, to revitalizing our heartland with high-speed rail and a circular hemp economy, to guaranteeing healthcare access in every county.
This is more than a podcast. It's a blueprint for Hoosier Sovereignty: a vision of state-led investment in public-owned infrastructure that creates permanent competitive advantage. We're talking concrete engineering, detailed financing, and a workforce trained to build what we'll own.
Forget partisan politics. We're building the Indiana Innovation Triangle. Join us as we chart the path from extraction to ownership, from dependence to sovereignty.
Subscribe to hear how we build the next century of Indiana, on our terms.
Topics include: Energy Sovereignty (SMRs/Nuclear) • High-Speed Rail & Connectivity (Fiber Optic Network) • Agricultural Renaissance (Hemp/Carbon Farming) • Healthcare System Overhaul • State Banking & Finance • Workforce Development (Indiana Century Corps) • Community Benefits & Anti-Corruption
For listeners of: Practical infrastructure policy, state politics innovation, energy independence, heartland economic development, and anyone who believes solutions should be built, not just debated.
The Indiana Century Podcast
The Crossroads Trap | Indiana Century S1E2
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We call ourselves the "Crossroads of America." It sounds strong. Central. Essential. But what if that identity has become a trap?
In Episode 2 of The Indiana Century Podcast, host Kory Easterday builds on the diagnostic foundation from 1,067 conversations and follows the money ($5 billion of it) to show exactly how wealth created by Hoosiers leaves our state every single year, never to return.
You'll learn about the four extraction tolls draining Indiana's future:
- The Energy Toll: $850 million in utility profits sent to shareholders in North Carolina and Ohio
- The Harvest Toll: $2.8 billion in agricultural value-add we never capture because we ship our grain out as raw feedstock
- The Health Toll: $1.1 billion in hospital and insurance profits funding corporate offices in St. Louis and Tennessee
- The Financial Toll: $275 million in bank dividends sent to Wall Street
This episode explores the ideology that made this extraction possible, the "shareholder value myth" that transformed corporations from community institutions into financialized engines with one purpose: maximizing returns for distant investors, no matter the cost to places like your Indiana hometown.
We trace how this doctrine turned our "Crossroads of America" identity from a geographic fact into an economic mandate: be the low-cost node. Provide cheap power, cheap land, cheap labor. Let the value pass through. Collect the toll. And watch the communities along the highway slowly hollow out.
But diagnosis is only half the work. Episode 2 ends with the pivot: from extraction to ownership. From being a low-cost node in someone else's supply chain to becoming a high-value hub in our own sovereign network.
Featured Book: The Shareholder Value Myth by Lynn Stout
This episode is the economic groundwork for everything that follows. Listen to understand who's been cashing Indiana's checks, and how we can start cashing our own.
IndianaCentury.org