Episode 38 - Nate Spangle: Indiana's Data Center Boom, Explained by the "Indiana Guy"

Episode 38 of The Intrigue Podcast features Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana and host of the Get IN. podcast, who built a statewide media company out of a Broad Ripple studio and became, improbably, "the Indiana guy." His whole project is one idea: to change how people see a place, you have to physically show up in it, all 92 counties, while everyone else phones it in from a laptop in L.A. The bit that made him famous started by accident, alone in a free WNBA suite with a friend filming him from across the arena; now strangers do it unprompted. But the persona hides a full media operation, not a one-man influencer act, built to chase the small-town stories the national accounts never bother to visit. The meat of the episode is data centers, the most radioactive topic in Indiana, and Nate refuses the easy applause line. Nobody's dying to be pro-data-center, he says, but the loud "no" crowd is skipping the math. He walks through LaPorte, the deal he knows best: Microsoft moving in, the municipal budget projected to climb from $30 million toward $60-90 million in two decades, with property taxes routed straight to the school corporation. Turn it down, he argues, and the next county over takes it and builds the better schools and parks. His sharpest jab: you can't rage against data centers from a phone and lean on AI all day. He's not calling it right, just honest; time, he says, will tell. After a funny GLP-1 detour, the back half lands on the question the episode kept circling: what do city people get wrong about small-town Indiana? This is the emotional core of the show. Be curious, not judgmental, Nate says. A 161-year-old family farm, a house a grandfather built by hand in 1925, a regular who's come to the same bar for 45 years because it's where he and his late wife had date night, none of it survives a "what do you even do there" sneer. His real thesis: Indiana, big city or small town, rewards people who get energy from making an impact. Asked to sum up the state in one word, he skips the description and picks his mantra: impact. People, he insists, matter more here than buildings or beaches, and the ones who last are those who show up for it. EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: *CONTENT: Why boots-on-the-ground beats national accounts spinning a Google Earth shot into a fake stat about a town they've never seen. *"You can't have your cake and eat it too," Nate on people who fight data centers while using AI every day. *DATA CENTERS: The number nobody posts, LaPorte's budget projected to jump from $30M to $60-90M in two decades as Microsoft skips local tax breaks. *THE GRIND: 113 videos before one cracked 10,000 views, and why testing beats posting the same clip 100 times. *Not an influencer, a media company: a network of podcasts, statewide plus South Bend and Fishers newsletters, and eight Hoosier contractors. *TAKEAWAY: "Be curious, not judgmental," the line Nate lives by when city and small-town people write each other off. *Plus: the fact-check that kills a viral clip, there's no "Linton County" in Indiana (it's Linton, in Greene County). Nate makes the case that you change a place by showing up for it, and that the storytellers who last, like the towns that do, are the ones people care about. Find him at getindiana.com, @natespangle, and the Get IN. podcast. Hit subscribe, tap the notification bell, and we'll see you next week.