Denison University anthropology professor John Soderberg dug himself into a hole.
Well, it was a trench that Soderberg and his team hoped would provide evidence of a long-lost earthen circle built by Indigenous people thousands of years ago.
The United Titanium Bug Zoo at Ohio State University's campus in Wooster is full of creepy, crawly critters in extra large sizes: hairy tarantulas, cave cockroaches and giant millipedes.
But at least one bug among them is much smaller.
"What do you say, maybe two inches long? An inch and a half?" Jeni Filbrun estimated.
When Jalyn Thacker was growing up in southwest Ohio's Adams County, he had to travel over an hour to Cincinnati, Yellow Springs or Portsmouth to get to a Pride event.
But this year, the celebration is much closer to home.
Sweat drips down Gavyn Shumard's forehead as he leans over a Hampshire Down sheep.
He does his best to keep the animal calm, despite the razor moving around its body.
"Sheep shearing is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, like I've done concrete work, I've done commercial roofing," he said.
Staying busy, though, is easy.
For decades, Midwestern cities have struggled to retain residents. As manufacturing jobs left, so did people.
The city of Akron lost one third of its population from 1960 to 2020. In the city of Cleveland, it was 60%. Dayton faced a similar plummet in population – leaving behind shuttered factories and empty storefronts.
Lab analyst Diana Wendelin gently adjusts a slide under a microscope. An enlarged image of a tick comes into focus on her computer screen.
"So, the first thing I'm looking at is called the scutum. This will tell me whether I'm looking at a male tick or female tick," Wendelin explained. "So, because this one only goes about a third of the way down, this is a female tick."
Ohio's agriculture sector is an incredibly diverse field, across a range of crops and supported by Indigenous, immigrant and small, family farms.
That diversity is the focus of a new photo and video exhibit at Miami University.
Bonnie Proudfoot was born a New Yorker: She worked as a taxi cab driver in college.
But she moved to Central Appalachia in her 20s, first to a homestead in West Virginia and later to Athens, Ohio.
Her new book of poetry, "Incomer," explores what it was like to make the region her home through verse like this:
The 2026 lacrosse state championships will take place this weekend at the Historic Crew Stadium in Columbus. It's the Ohio High School Athletic Association's ninth state tournament for the sport.
For years, there's been a push to create better broadband infrastructure in rural areas, where access to high speed internet can be hard to come by.
Now, Wright State University is tackling a new digital frontier: artificial intelligence.
