A Seymour native has been podcasting for the past three years and now has big hopes of where it might lead.
DeeDee “Indiana” Adams wants to have a narrative-style show called “Everyone I’ve Ever Known” to interview people she knew growing up.
“After working for a nationally known podcast for two years, I am now the owner, producer and sole host of a podcast for mothers called ‘Today By the Way,'” Adams said. “It’s a short and sweet podcast created for busy moms and is quickly becoming a mom’s best friend.”
Adams said she sees podcasting as the perfect marriage of all of the things she honed as a child in Seymour, such as performing, writing and always being supported by her friends and family.
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“Today By the Way” is doing well and based in Atlanta, Georgia, where Adams lives with her husband, Chris Adams, and their three children, Jude, 9, Caroline, 7, and Lucy, 6.
Her husband is a software development manager, and they met in college. This year, they will celebrate 16 years of marriage.
Adams attended Seymour High School until 1998 and then transferred to Jennings County High School her senior year after her grandfather, who was her guardian, had a stroke.
“I was raised in Seymour by my grandparents, Grover and Amelia Brewer, both of whom have passed away,” Adams said. “Then I lived with my aunt and uncle, Wanda and David Spall, in Hayden in high school, and they now live in Orlando, Florida.”
Seymour is a close-knit community, so Adams grew up with everyone knowing her family’s background, she said.
“My dad died in the Army when I was 3, so I was being raised by his parents, and I was an only child,” she said. “Knowing that everyone knew a lot about me caused me to be very comfortable sharing my life stories in a public forum.”
In the late 1990s, the Seymour High School newspaper adviser, Teresa White, gave Adams a personal column in the school newspaper when she was a freshman.
“Dan Davis and The Tribune gave me a scholarship to attend journalism camp at Indiana University the summer after my junior year of high school,” Adams said. “I was a member of the Quill and Scroll, an honor society for high school journalists.”
Adams won a feature writing contest at the Indiana High School Press Association competition, so White encouraged her to check out Indiana University’s journalism program.
“I stayed on campus for a couple of weeks, and funny enough, this is how I learned that I did not want to be a journalist, and I’m thankful I learned this before college,” Adams said. “The deadlines at the Indiana Daily Student were hours instead of days.”
Adams then realized she was a storyteller and a personal narrator, not an investigative journalist or reporter. Her desire to write more autobiographical material instead of news pieces was solidified.
“When a teacher believed in you, she’d tell you, and Mrs. White loaned me a computer so I could write at home,” Adams said. “Then my high school speech teacher called her alma mater to give me a personal recommendation when I missed the application deadline because I wasn’t initially planning to go to college.”
Adams said Seymour is a town where people are rooting for you. She believed in herself because she felt other people believed in her, too.
“I started off studying religion at Olivet Nazarene University because I had just become a Christian right before college,” Adams said, “I thought it would be a healthy place for me to get rooted in my new faith.”
Shortly after starting at Olivet, Adams read a book called “Roaring Lambs” about the importance of Christians working in entertainment and news media instead of simply taking jobs in professional ministry.
“So after three years at ONU, I realized that I did truly want to write and perform,” Adams said. “So I transferred to California State University Monterey Bay and studied writing and acting.”
She enjoyed being an actor for a while, and then worked for a few years as a professional blogger and was at the helm of a nationally known lifestyle bloggers conference for five years.
Being the only student from Indiana enrolled at Cal State at the time, Adams got the nickname “Indiana,” which she uses professionally now.
“I used to co-host a show called ‘Mom Jeans and Dad Jokes’ with my husband, Chris, before we had to set it aside due to his busy work schedule,” Adams said. “After that, I started working for two other podcasts.”
She was hired to host an established, very well-known podcast for moms and ran social media for another long-running podcast.
“I’ve been in the industry for a few years, but I started ‘Today By the Way’ because I saw a need for it,” Adams said. “There’s not another show like it.”
One day, after Adams dropped her kids off at school, she started scrolling through her podcast app to see if she could find a short, commuter’s podcast for moms that wasn’t interview-based or wasn’t run by a person who was trying to sell her services.
“When I couldn’t find one like that, I started asking my friends if they’d listen to a short show that felt more like a chat with a friend and less like a talk show or TED talk,” Adams said. “Everyone said yes, so I worked really hard to refine the show’s concept and took that opportunity to start something completely new and different from the other podcasts I had worked on before.”
Adams’ podcast airs on Mondays and Fridays, although she would love it to be a daily show someday. For that, she would need to hire a producer for the additional days because about five hours of work goes into one episode.
“I co-own a social media and digital consulting company, so I am able to ‘work from phone’ and have a very flexible schedule,” Adams said. “The podcast is a job. My content is underwritten by advertisers.”
Adams has a dream of doing a highly produced, narrative-style podcast “Everyone I’ve Ever Known,” similar to something that National Public Radio would make.
“I believe that everyone has a story to tell, and as much as I like hearing from celebrities on talk shows, what I really want to hear are the stories from everyday people,” she said. “When someone random from my childhood pops into my mind, I look them up on Facebook or Instagram to see what they’ve been up to since I last saw them.”
Adams wants something that would feel like an audio documentary answering questions, like whatever happened to the one who got away or the kid who joined the military.
“I’d love to interview anyone whose life path has crossed mine to hear about their own life — what has been good, what has been hard or what has been unexpected — and I’d like to start with some of my classmates from SHS,” she said.
Adams originally planned to come to Seymour in June to start interviews because she was already going to be in Indianapolis hosting an event for The Gospel Coalition for Women, but that was postponed until April 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“My backup plan was to come back to Seymour for the Oktoberfest, but that’s canceled this year, too,” Adams said. “Hopefully in the spring, I’ll be able to come back for a week or so to knock out some interviews.”
During the pandemic, Adams said her family has been healthy, and their jobs have not been gravely affected.
“It has been a really sweet season with Chris working from home and being able to spend more time with the kids,” she said. “I know this is not the case for a lot of people, so we have no complaints.”
One way to help Adams’ podcast be heard by more people is for women to listen to her current show, “Today By the Way,” and tell others about it, she said.
“The more subscribers my current show has, the more serious networks will take me when I begin to pitch my new show,” she said. “I want to thank my hometown for always being so supportive of my creative endeavors over the years and would love to encourage other young people in Seymour.”
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Indiana Adams’ website is todaybytheway.com, and people also can connect with her on Instagram @IndianaAdams.
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