To hear this interview, click here:
November 2, 2011: Tom Mahnke and Me

My husband Tom (whom you may know as the host of Fais Do Do) and I met at KOOP Radio 91.7 FM in late 2004 and started dating 6 months later. He was also my very first guest on Inner Views in 2005. After the guest I had lined up called me at 5:30am the morning of the interview to cancel, I called Tom in a panic and begged him to come on the show, already knowing that he had been attacked by a serial killer at age 19. I didn’t know any of the details so I had to wing that interview, but Tom is a great storyteller and didn’t disappoint.

I’ve had Tom back on as a guest twice more to share that story, as recently as a year ago. I was excited to learn just the other day that KUT 90.5 has purchased that episode and will air it on their show “O’Dark 30″ on Sunday night, October 30 at midnight! (A perfectly ghoulish story for Halloween.)

So, here’s the news. Inner Views has been on the air for 6 years and, as much as I love the show, I am going to take a season off from it. I love KOOP and love hearing people’s stories, but I’m going to focus on some other things over the next 6 months and don’t want the show to suffer.

In considering who to have on for the last show, Tom suggested it be him—he was my first guest and he would be my last (for a while). Tom is certainly never one to shy away from the spotlight nor a good story. I decided that it would be fun to have him on, not to talk about the serial killer, but instead to talk about our story together. We were the first couple from KOOP to marry and our lives are very much intertwined with KOOP, radio, music and stories.

We’ll allude to the serial killer story but won’t focus on it, so if you haven’t heard it, I recommend you listen to the interview before November 2nd. Alternatively, and probably even more fun, you can listen to “O’Dark 30″ on KUT the night before Halloween. (As I understand it, the focus will be real life scary stories.)

This won’t be a typical interview where my guest does all the talking; in this case, it will be more of a conversation between Tom and me. By the time of the interview, we will have just gotten back from our 5th wedding anniversary trip!

Katherine is the Executive Director of Conspire Theatre, a non-profit organization offering theater programs for incarcerated women at the Travis County Correctional Complex. The goal is to address the specific needs of women, who have often been physically and sexually abused in their lives. Such programs exist in other parts of the United States and abroad and have been successful at bringing down recidivism and disciplinary actions.

Click to listen:
October 12, 2011: Conspire Theatre

Casey had been accepted to Cambridge University in England for a graduate studies program but was turned down for a scholarship. And, yet, her acceptance was contingent upon proving that she had 17,000 pounds to attend, money she did not, in fact, have. Then, a miracle occurred: she saw an ad in the paper for a game show called Word Slam that was offering the grand prize winner $35,000, pretty much exactly the amount she needed for Cambridge. Amazingly enough, Casey won that grand prize and got to attend Cambridge. We’ll hear more about the game show and the whole process that led up to it.

Click to listen:
October 5, 2011: Casey Butterfield