The valley's history creator: Round the Bend Now and Then, seated across the river

Podcast and channels since 2023 · a South Bend project about both cities

The show: the creator who documents Mishawaka most, in any medium, is Matt Emery, "local history nerd" by his own billing, whose Round the Bend Now and Then has since April 2023 told "the story of South Bend and Mishawaka" through interviews with historians, officials, business owners and residents — more than sixty episodes by the autumn of 2026, on a roughly fortnightly rhythm, with companion video channels (@RoundtheBend574) carrying on-location pieces and his "History Right Under Our Noses" shorts. Mishawaka is not garnish on the show; it is half the subject. Its Mishawaka episodes include the Mishawaka Historical Museum and its curator Pete De Kever, repeatedly; the Twin Branch dam and the Power City chapter of De Kever's Lost Mishawaka; the Hooligan Heights and Belgian West End neighborhoods; Mishawaka High School at one hundred; the lost downtown skyscraper that was never built; and, in August 2026, the story of Elizabeth Richardson's footlocker — the Mishawaka Red Cross captain of this build's people file, whose effects came home eighty years after her death.

The seat, as documented: for all that, the show is not Mishawaka's on paper. The Awesome Foundation, which funded it with a grant in March 2026, lists it as a South Bend, Indiana project, created by Matt Emery, and its own descriptions name the two cities in one breath as a single subject — "how intertwined the South Bend and Mishawaka area's past is to our present." It is entered here at full fairness and boundary size: the valley's one-man history network, seated in South Bend on the funding record, whose beat is the two cities together and whose Mishawaka archive grows episode by episode. A Mishawaka-seated counterpart does not stand in the record.

Sources

1. The Awesome Foundation, project page for Round the Bend Now and Then — "South Bend, IN project created by Matt Emery"; funded by the South Bend chapter, March 2026; the show's own statement of purpose as quoted in substance.
2. Round the Bend Now and Then, the show's published descriptions and episode lists (Listen Notes; Pocket Casts; Podcast Republic), read November 2026 — episodes since 15 April 2023; more than sixty episodes; the Mishawaka episodes enumerated, with their dates.
3. Round the Bend 574, the show's TikTok and YouTube channels — the Battell Park band shelter and companion Mishawaka pieces as published.