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Joe Houston Jr. arrived at the D.C. Jail after 1 a.m. He passed rows and rows of cell doors until he reached his own. At 16, this was his first real taste of incarceration. As he walked to his assigned cell, other juveniles taunted, fueling the aggression that landed him there in the first place. When he stepped inside and the door slammed shut, Houston noticed that there was no mattress, but that didn’t bother him. Rather than go to sleep, Houston started doing push-ups.

“I was preparing to fight and defend myself,” he tells three other men sitting with him around a table in the basement of a row house in Northeast. Each of them replies with knowing nods.

Michael Dickerson-El, Charles Hopkins, and Dietrich Trent are with Houston at a house on Massachusetts Avenue NE, the headquarters for the nonprofit Voices for a Second Chance. Collectively, they’ve spent about 100 years behind bars.

On this September evening, they’re sitting behind microphones and sharing pieces of themselves that they hope will create understanding among those who haven’t been locked up and solutions for those who have. When they’re done, Jim Watkins, a retired general manager for WHUR-FM, will turn the recording into an episode of the podcast Solutions from the Yard, a new project produced by VSC. Dickerson-El, Hopkins, and Trent are all now employees there and take turns hosting the show.

They’ve invited Houston as their guest this week to talk about entrepreneurship and rebuilding a life after incarceration. They each take turns asking him questions about his upbringing, his life, and his business.

To read more about Houston’s life, how he opened his own gym, and how the three podcast hosts seek to educate listeners about life behind bars, read our latest installment of Inside Voices.

—Mitch Ryals (tips? mryals@washingtoncitypaper.com)

• Business and arts leaders are upset about Metro’s plans to close a portion of the Red Line that runs through downtown during the final two weeks of December. Metro says it needs to do some long overdue safety repairs, and ridership declines in December. But Ford’s Theatre Director Paul Tetreault is worried theatergoers won’t attend the annual production of A Christmas Carol. [Post]
• How to get rid of your pumpkins without destroying the environment. [Washingtonian]
• Longtime WJLA anchor Alison Starling is leaving the ABC affiliate later this month. [WTOP]

By City Paper staff (tips? editor@washingtoncitypaper.com)

• The recent arrests of several teenagers for carjacking has led to a messy round of finger-pointing among Mayor Muriel Bowser, superior court judges, and Attorney General Brian Schwalb over who’s really at fault for the release of one of the teens on previous charges. Bowser apparently confused the case involving the death of a 16-year-old girl with the shooting of a 13-year-old boy in some of her public comments, amping up tensions. [Post, NBC Washington]
• Schwalb recently secured a $450,000 settlement with personal training company UP Fitness in a wage theft case. [Informer]
• D.C.’s tax collectors have designated a prominent downtown office building as vacant after its main tenant moved out, meaning its owners (the influential firm EastBanc) now owe millions more in property taxes. The District “is just wrong on this issue,” says EastBanc CEO Anthony Lanier. [WBJ]

By Alex Koma (tips? akoma@washingtoncitypaper.com)