NATE SPANGLE talks really fast. So fast that fans of his podcast, Get IN., regularly beg him to slow down. But talking slowly—especially when he’s talking about Indiana—is probably impossible for the 28-year-old, Broad Ripple–based podcaster. “I’m just an energetic, excited person in general,” Spangle says. “It’s who I am, and it’s cool to get to be myself on the internet and have people want to watch it.”
Besides, his current work schedule would likely grind a more laid-back person to dust. He and his crew regularly crisscross the state, profiling one tiny Hoosier municipality after another. They air three new podcast episodes every week and perform one-off stunts like running the entire 31-mile length of the Monon Trail in one go and consuming four tenderloins from four different eateries in one day.
Spangle isn’t sure which of those last two ordeals was the most physically taxing. “The next day after eating the tenderloins, I basically had to fast,” he recalls. “But if I’d eaten just one tenderloin, that’s not viral content. Four in a day has the potential to go viral. People are going to like that.”
Spangle, who’s very much in “founder mode,” is more than willing to sacrifice both his knees and his GI tract to focus more eyeballs on his nascent media company, Get Indiana. The Get IN. podcast is its flagship project, but the company also maintains a website featuring stories about little-known Indiana gems and oddities and puts out countless short-form pieces on platforms from Instagram to YouTube.
All the small-town visits, personality profiles, and publicity stunts have one thing in common—they celebrate Indiana, whether it’s a thing, a place, or a person who’s done something great (or at least quirky). Think of Spangle as a regional Mr. Beast dedicated to encouraging Hoosiers to take greater pride in their state. “I think a lot of us undersell this place,” he says. “If you go to Chicago and someone asks you where you’re from, you’ll say, ‘Oh, I’m just from Indiana.’ You’re humble about it. That’s in our DNA. But I get to be the hype man for other people’s successes—the things that make this state amazing.”
The Bourbon, Indiana, native didn’t become Indiana’s human bullhorn until recently, however. His last regular job was at the local tech company incubator Powderkeg, where his podcast began. It drew little interest until Spangle staged a live event during which he tried to become the first person to drive his truck into the infield at the 2024 Indianapolis 500. The stunt earned the show roughly 15,000 new followers. A few months later, Spangle bought the rights to the podcast from Powderkeg and set out to create his own Indiana-centric media company. “I’d always wanted to build something,” Spangle says. “I didn’t call it entrepreneurship back then. I just knew I wanted to make an impact.”
The gamble seems to be paying off. Within three months of taking over Get IN., Spangle secured enough advertisers and sponsors to allow him to turn his side gig into a full-time job. By early 2025, he’d acquired 20,000 monthly podcast listeners, 14,000 newsletter subscribers, and thousands of hits on his Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube videos and reels. He has three full-time employees and another four part-timers.
That team is spread out across Indiana, with a core group working out of the company’s Broad Ripple office and contributors feeding Spangle stories from all over the state. “I get way too much credit,” he says. “I’m the face, but there’s a system and a machine behind the scenes pumping out all this content.”
Much of that information focuses on people Spangle calls “Hoosiers by birth or Hoosiers by choice.” He defines an ideal subject as anyone connected to the state who’s doing something interesting, inspiring, or just plain strange. A recent episode featured Stephanie Daily of Send a Friend Lasagna, who quit her digital marketing job to launch a hyper-specialized lasagna delivery service. He’s covered professional athletes, grassroots entrepreneurs, and small-town festivals with equal, sometimes over-the-top enthusiasm.
“The coolest thing I do is travel around the state, meet hundreds of people, and figure out how to deliver their stories,” Spangle says. “It’s not, ‘Look at us, we’re a big media company.’ It’s, ‘Look at this person who built something amazing.’ That’s what people connect with.”
In addition to churning out podcasts, two newsletters, and around a dozen social videos each week, the company also shoots Small-town Breakdown—a series of shorts taking a microscope to communities such as Ferdinand, Huntingburg, and Jasper to document the local history, food, and attractions. “We’ll tour the downtowns, talk to business owners, eat at restaurants, and package it all so that when you go, you already know what to check out,” he says.
And then there are the one-off stunts. In addition to his epic Monon Trail run and the tenderloin extravaganza, he spent four hours downing eight orders of St. Elmo’s famously incendiary shrimp cocktail in one sitting. “I thought that by the fourth one, my mouth was going to fall off,” he says. “I’d rather run the Monon again than do that.”
At least he suffered for a good cause. He pounded all those shrimp cocktails during a fundraiser called Bourbon for Bourbon after his hometown of Bourbon was hit by tornadoes last April, teaming up with Rare Saint Fine & Rare Whiskeys, which is owned by St. Elmo’s parent company Huse Culinary. The event raised $27,000 to help rebuild the town’s Little League stadium. “The entire town showed up,” Spangle says. “People drove 30, 40 minutes to be part of it. That’s when you realize this platform can do more than entertain. It can make a difference.”
On another occasion, a Get IN. video about the Marengo Tavern, a small Crawford County bar, racked up more than 500,000 views on social media. Within days, the owners were swamped with phone calls and carryout orders. “Marengo’s in one of the poorest counties in Indiana,” Spangle says. “To see one video drive that much business there is pretty cool.”
Not surprisingly, about 85 percent of his audience lives in Indiana. Much of the rest is composed of snowbirds, expats, and a smattering of out-of-staters who for some reason enjoy an occasional slice of Hoosier-flavored, small-town goodness. Spangle wants his audience to grow, but he remains focused on the central mission of boosting Hoosiers’ opinions of their state and themselves. “The goal is helping people in the city appreciate the countryside and people in the countryside appreciate the city,” he says. “We’re trying to build that connection.”
Spangle says he wants to keep expanding the platform and its reach while holding on to the storytelling ethos that got him here. For now, though, his attention is on the next podcast, the next video, the next trip.
He has another stack of stories to tell. “This doesn’t feel like work to me,” Spangle says. “I get to travel the state, meet amazing people, and tell their stories. I’m so fortunate I get to wake up and do this every day. And if I have to eat four tenderloins or run 31 miles to get you to watch, well, I’m probably going to do it.”
