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2017 - present
South Bend's Own Words: The first sustained South Bend podcast this record can fix is not a creator's show but an archive's. South Bend's Own Words, from the Civil Rights Heritage Center at Indiana University South Bend, edits the center's Oral History Collection, held at the IU South Bend Archives, into episodes telling the civil rights history of the city and the experiences of its Black, Latinx, LGBTQ and other marginalized residents. The show was created by Kevin Tidmarsh and George Garner; Garner, the center's assistant director and curator, writes and hosts it, and students from the university's Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts produce it. The show's own announcement, carried in its feed, dates the run: since 2017 it had published 54 episodes when, in June 2024, it changed format, promising the same stories in a new shape from 12 June 2024, and it was still publishing in the autumn of 2026. No audience figure for the show has been published in the sources found, and this section records the founding and the run, not a reach it cannot prove. [The center describes its remit as South Bend and its surrounding communities; the neighboring communities' stories in the collection are theirs, and this section claims only the South Bend institution.]
A Bend in Time: The History Museum, South Bend's museum of record, followed in the next decade's wave. Its podcast A Bend in Time, hosted by Aaron Helman, launched on 7 October 2024 in a serial format, each series a single subject told across eight episodes, the first on the dawn of the city of South Bend. The directory record fixes its early size: 40 episodes by the end of September 2025, as Listen Notes listed it. The series kept coming: a fourth series on Schuyler Colfax, a seventh on early South Bend, and an eighth, on the early years of Notre Dame football, running in October and November 2026. A museum that once reached its public through exhibits and a newsletter now publishes its history in seasons, on the same feeds as the true crime networks.
The chamber's microphone: The third institutional voice is the business community's. Rooted & Reaching, the South Bend Regional Chamber's podcast, hosted by Marty Mechtenberg, interviews the region's founders on how they built where they built, and its November 2026 episode on Brandon Reed is the single richest document in this section: the business establishment of the region sitting down, microphone on, with the animator its newspaper had not profiled. Between the civil rights center, the museum and the chamber, South Bend's institutions adopted the podcast as their publishing form within a decade, each for its own archive. None of the three published audience figures in the sources found. Their significance is the same as the Fort Wayne podcast wave's: by the mid 2020s the city had a shelf of its own voices, made without a transmitter, a press, or anyone's permission.
Sources:
- Indiana University South Bend, College of Arts and Sciences, Civil Rights Heritage Center, "Local History and Archives": South Bend's Own Words edited from the Oral History Collection at the IU South Bend Archives, produced by students of the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, written and hosted by George Garner, created by Kevin Tidmarsh and George Garner.
- South Bend's Own Words, show feed announcement (Spotify for Creators listing): "Since 2017, for 54 episodes"; the new format from 12 June 2024; episodes still publishing September 2026, with student producers Caleb Matz and Jon Watson named in episode credits.
- Listen Notes directory listing, A Bend in Time (The History Museum), last updated 30 Sept 2025: hosted by Aaron Helman, 40 episodes since 7 Oct 2024, serial format; Podbean feed: Series 4 (Schuyler Colfax), Series 7 (Early South Bend), Series 8 (The Early Years of Notre Dame Football), October to November 2026.
- South Bend Regional Chamber, Rooted & Reaching, Nov 2026: host Marty Mechtenberg; the Reed episode as cited in his entries.