When you think of entertainment, you may not think of local municipality meetings. The biweekly podcast by City Manager Steve Schoeny and City Attorney Darren Shulman, however, may make your morning commute more interesting.
The first episode of Won’t You Be Our Neighbor premiered in January 2022 after Schoeny and Shulman had the idea to humanize and put some faces – or voices – to the people making decisions in Upper Arlington.
The idea was conceived several years ago, but it didn’t get off the ground until Brian Hedge joined the team as community affairs manager.
Shulman says “it started with a dream” when he was city attorney in Delaware, Ohio, always working his way onto the city’s radio show, Delaware City Digest.
“I’d been thinking about it because it’s really hard to get people connected to the city,” says Schoeny, “and in particular, when you’re talking about coming out of the pandemic, we’d forgotten how to talk to each other.”
Hedge was the most tech savvy of the group, so he bought and set up the equipment to make Schoeny and Shulman’s dream a reality.
“So often (the) government’s just putting out a press release that tells you where to pick up your trash, or a zoning notice, or a parks brochure, and the residents don’t get to understand who’s behind that and some of the thought level that goes into that,” Schoeny says.
Won’t You Be Our Neighbor reveals that there are people behind the city’s actions, like community development manager Chad Gibson.
“We did a thing called Everybody Hates Chad about our community development manager, who’s responsible for saying no to people when they want to put an addition on their house and it doesn’t fit with the zoning, or when someone does put an addition on their house and the neighbors don’t like it, so everybody hates Chad,” Schoeny says.
The pair’s unique sense of humor makes the podcast entertaining. They say that part of choosing a good guest is finding somebody that can laugh at themselves.
“The initial brainstorm was sitting in here going, ‘OK, who lives here? Who has a connection to UA? Who would be interesting?’ and it’s fascinating for me because we have some big names who are interesting to talk to, and then some of the names I didn’t know I’m like, ‘Wow, this is somebody who’s really cool,’” Hedge says.
Some of the “big names” include The Ohio State University men’s basketball head coach Chris Holtmann and Jeni’s Ice Cream founder Jeni Britton Bauer.
It has become a running joke on the podcast that Schoeny brings all the guests to the mic.
“I didn’t even book my own dad. And he was a guest,” Shulman says.
Gary Shulman was a surprise guest on the podcast for Shulman’s birthday, creating a sweet moment on air as they had not seen each other since the outbreak of COVID-19.
Interpersonal chemistry and a friendly, humble disposition are key features of why the podcast works.
“It’s almost like two brothers from my perspective,” Hedge says. “That’s what does it, is you have two guys with similar interests, who actually like each other, on a common mission and it works.”
Shulman and Schoeny are constantly poking fun at one another on the podcast. Shulman says they have a good sense of knowing whose turn it is to talk and a subconscious awareness of how to steer the conversation together.
Spontaneity is another element of the podcast that the pair cherishes and that they take quite seriously.
“We’ve had a couple of guests be like, ‘OK, what kind of questions are you gonna ask?’” Shulman says. “Well, first of all, we don’t prep like that, so we don’t know. And secondly, we don’t want you to prepare stuff, we want to get it in the conversation.”
“There’s been so many times where someone has said something that blew our minds that I don’t want to ruin it,” Shulman says. “After you’ve blown our minds you can’t blow our minds again.”
Shulman and Schoeny pull from a wide range of interests, from sports to superheroes, to help them poke around and find the topics that will help guests open up and share their personalities.
The title is clearly inspired by, though legally different enough from, Shulman says, Mister Rogers’ famous song and invitation, “won’t you be my neighbor?”
The pair don cardigans over their office clothes for the thumbnail image of each episode, setting the welcoming and warm tone of the series.
They even designed T-shirts, which Shulman says are inspired by stadium rock tour apparel of the ’80s. The shirt design is tongue-in-cheek, as they display an Upper Arlington water tower standing tall over a city being destroyed by a giant monster.
“Because how can you have a rock tour T-shirt without Godzilla on it?” Shulman says.
While the podcast sets out to brighten listeners’ days and acts as a fun way to get to know city representatives, Schoeny and Shulman use it to progress the city’s mission.
“Our overall purpose is making government work for its residents so that they’re not worried about stuff that should just happen if government functions well,” Schoeny says.
Shulman adds that since he joined the staff in 2020, there has never been a time when he has been told to work a certain way “because that’s the way it’s been done.”
“I hope the podcast is a little bit of an example of this, that Upper Arlington is a city that’s not afraid to take a new idea, batter it around for a while and see if we can make something work from it,” Schoeny says. “So the fact that the two of us are willing to get on a podcast and talk about the intersection of string theory, Marvel Comics and Harry & Meghan with an Episcopal priest, that should, I hope, be a symbol to people that we’re willing to take risks and try things that are different.”
You can catch Schoeny and Shulman on Won’t You Be Our Neighbor on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and more, as well as on www.upperarlingtonoh.gov.
If you enjoy the podcast, you can email them at fanmail@uaoh.gov. If you don’t, you can email them at hatemail@uaoh.gov, too!
Tyler Kirkendall is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at rkaras@cityscenemediagroup.com.
