Radio Made in Michigan

Tom Izzo held his season wrap-up press conference this week, and the question on many Spartan fans minds as they look forward to next season is who on the MSU roster will stay and who will enter the NBA draft, particularly Adreian Payne.

  MSU Opera Theater presents the Stephen Sondheim classic "A Little Night Music," Friday-Sunday April 5-7.  MSU Opera Theater director and Associate Professor of voice Melanie Helston speaks with WKAR’s Peter Whorf.

Today on Current State:  MSU economist Charlie Ballard unveils the annual "State of the State Survey"; jazz singer Carolyn Leonhart; Neighbors in Action features LAP Respite Center; and survivors of American H-bomb attacks on Japan during WWII. 

Charlie Ballard on the State of the State survey; Jazz singer Carolyn Leonhart; The LAP Respite Center; and a collection  of interviews with atomic bomb survivors. 

  Jazz singer Carolyn Leonhart  will turn Wharton Center’s Jackson Lounge into a jazz club next Wednesday. She’ll be putting on two performances that night to benefit East Lansing’s Summer Solstice Jazz Festival. WKAR’S Melissa Benmark caught up with her this week to ask what kinds of material she’ll be performing at her Wharton gig.

For this week’s Neighbors in Action segment we feature LAP Respite Center, a non-profit organization that offers different respite programs for families living in tri-county area of Clinton, Eaton and Ingham Counties. These programs provides caring services for parents of children with disabilities.

John Stauffer, executive director of the LAP Respite Center, and Nancy Guettler, who has been taking her son to the LAP for 20 years, discuss their experience with the program.

MSU’s G. Robert Vincent Voice Library is now home to the largest collection of of interviews with people in the Americas who survived the bombings in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The interviews provide insight into the global network of survivors and the issues which they continue to face.  Dr. Naoko Wake has a joint appointment in MSU’s Lyman Briggs College and the Department of History. Naoko, who helped bring the collection to the library, discusses  the interviews and what she’s learned from listening.

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Every year, MSU Professor Charlie Ballard leads a team that asks Michigan citizens how they feel about the economy, government and issues like Right to Work. After more than 1,000 such sessions to start 2013, Ballard reveals the results of his annual “State of the State” survey on Current State.