Season 2. Episode 5
”Nik and Doug’s America”
This is a wide-ranging episode where we start with an in-depth discussion on Nik’s growing platform, The Seven Times. It spotlights small Black-owned businesses around the nation with a focus on Iowa and California. Some recent pieces have developed in the Twin Cities.
Please, please, donate or subscribe to The Seven Times to see the documentary short series and other content Nik and his collaborators develop on businesses like Line Out Watches. That is a business owned by a military veteran — and Doug and Nik both own several of the finely crafted, durably fabricated watches.
The Seven Times is the production company behind the feature-length documentary “The Negro Artist,” which is now in the second year of a national run. The small-business doc series continues with some outstanding work from Nik and the team at The Seven Times.
In this episode, we also delve heavily into films involving military veterans, notably “In Waves And War.”
Nik interviews Doug about some of the recent coverage and guest columns in The Iowa Mercury.
We talk about the arrival and potential impact of artificial intelligence and jump into the topics of Universal Basic Income and Data Dividends for Americans.
Nik references the journalistic work on a nurses vote on unionization in Des Moines that involved several members of The Iowa Writers Collaborative besides Doug —Jason Walsmith, Phoebe Wall Howard and Bob Leonard.
OUR RESTAURANT SHOUT OUTS OF THE EPISODE!!!
Shawniecakes in Cedar Rapids. Learn all about it on The Seven Times.
Green Dot Stables in Detroit — The best sliders and poutine in the world, maybe! Both Nik and Doug have eaten here. Twice each!
Thank you Rachelle Chase, Rural Routes, Susan Beckman, John Anter, and many others for tuning into this live video with Nik Heftman
CATCH MORE OF NIK AND DOUG’S AMERICA:
ABOUT THE IOWA MERCURY
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
