Rural Remix

In this episode of Beyond the Clock , Ash and Anna are joined by Adrian Molina, aka Molina Speaks, an artist, poet, and creative organizer with Warm Cookies of the Revolution, and Jessica Chacon, a psychotherapist, movement educator, and healing arts practitioner based in Colorado's San Luis Valley. Through their work with Future Town, an initiative of Warm Cookies, a civic health club, Molina...

In this episode of  Beyond the Clock , Ash and Anna are joined by Allie Redhorse Young, a Diné activist, storyteller, and founder of Protect the Sacred, a movement dedicated to empowering Native youth, strengthening civic engagement, and protecting Indigenous culture, rights, and sovereignty. Over the last six years, Protect the Sacred has grown into a movement that places culture, ancestral knowl...

This spring, the community media organization Black By God: The West Virginian challenged West Virginia artists to write a lyrical love letter to the state, breathing new life into the state’s hip hop scene. You can check out more of the Dear West V. song submissions at this link.

In the final episode of this Rural Faith Initiative, Rev’d Claire Brown and Rev’d Whitney Kimball Coe discuss how diversity and celebration of gender and sexuality fit into the bigger picture for affirming churches in the rural South. This research and these stories have been collected by Brown, an Episcopal priest in rural Tennessee. Host Whitney Kimball Coe is the director of the Rural Faith Ini...

This episode explores points of conflict and areas of collaboration between affirming churches and those neighboring faith communities that might not agree on human sexuality and gender. How do these communities find each other, come into conversation, or not with each other? The Rev’d Claire Brown and The Rev’d Whitney Kimball Coe discuss observations from Rev. Brown’s research and visits to LGBT...

This month marks the four year anniversary of the 2022 flood that devastated parts of southeast Kentucky. In Letcher County, the memory of the flood still cuts deep. It was one of the hardest hit counties, where residents experienced widespread damage and even loss of life. To commemorate the flood, community members are creating a public mosaic. The project is proving to be an opportunity for sto...

This episode explores the considerations of care, safety, and visibility for welcoming congregations and looks at how they share their community welcome in often oppositional cultural and political climates. Rev'd Whitney Kimball Coe talks with Rev'd Claire Brown about what she observed in her research and church visits with LGBTQ+ affirming churches in the rural South.

How are the values of Southern hospitality and Christian welcome practiced in LGBTQ+ affirming churches in the rural south? Drawing on real-life examples from churches in Mississippi and North Carolina, The Rev’d Claire Brown shares stories and observations of hospitality and welcoming for LGBTQ+ people in churches she visited during her research on affirming churches in the rural South. Rev’d Bro...

What does it look like to build and sustain an LGBTQ+ affirming church in the rural South? The Rev.’d Claire Brown visited and spoke with more than a dozen such churches to find out. More LGBTQ+ people live in this region than any other part of the country, and in this first episode of a series of conversations, Rev’d Brown talks with the director of the Rural Faith Initiative, Rev’d Whitney Kimba...

In this episode of  Beyond the Clock,  Ash and Anna are joined by Tim Z. Hernandez, an award-winning author, poet, and filmmaker whose work has spent decades recovering stories that history tried to forget. Raised in California's San Joaquin Valley by migrant farmworker parents, Tim describes himself as a "shepherd of stories," someone called to follow narratives wherever they lead....

When weather-related disasters occur, communities are affected in uncountable ways. We know all too well how climate disasters physically impact communities. Events like hurricanes and wild fires can destroy property, devastate the landscape, and claim lives. What might be less obvious is how a community’s cultural practices are affected. When Hurricane Helene tore through western North Carolina i...

Sig Pugrud’s ranch sits on a high bench above Flatwillow Creek, in one of the least-populated counties in the U.S. Her family homesteaded in Petroleum County, MT in 1910, surviving the Dust Bowl, the '80s farm crisis, and decades of economic uncertainty with a combination of grit and creativity.

When Jake Fritz moved back home at 19, four generations were trying to make a living off the same piece of ground near Chester, Montana. This episode follows Jake and his mom Dena through an era of transition across multiple generations

Determined not to repeat the past, Ryan and Abbey Bruski paired ecological regeneration with a new approach to family planning, creating clear roles, business structures, and a succession plan designed to give future generations clarity.

Reframing Rural-Season 4, Episode 1 Reframing Rural is a documentary podcast that challenges mainstream stereotypes about rural places by introducing listeners to people, history and culture that don’t always get the spotlight.  In Season One, creator Megan Torgerson, journeyed back to her home community of Dagmar, Montana (population 10) to tell stories from the farmers, ranchers, preachers, teac...

When it came time for Gene Curry to pass his operation to the next generation, he found himself facing a challenge that demanded something ranch life had never asked of him before: softening his dominant personality and learning to let go.

In this episode of Beyond the Clock, Ash and Anna are joined by Brigid Reedy, musician, poet, storyteller, and artist from southwest Montana whose work is deeply rooted in the rural American West. In this conversation, they explore what it means to be of a place in a time of mobility, polarization, and cultural fragmentation, and how place lives not just in geography, but as something carried with...

In the United States, people have a complicated relationship with guns. For some, they’re fondly associated with family traditions, like hunting. For others, they’re reminders of pain and violence. In Western North Carolina, one organization is bringing together gun owners, faith communities and blacksmiths to turn guns into jewelry and garden tools. The goal?: Reducing gun violence. Reporter Rebe...

In this first episode of the 2026 Beyond the Clock (BTC) season, Anna and Ash are joined by Nikiko Masumoto, this year’s BTC Resident Artist, farmer, and memory keeper who invites us to explore memory as a living practice. In this episode, we reflect on the quiet rituals (personal and public) that carry culture forward and how, across rural communities, artists and cultural workers are tending som...

Weaving has a storied history in Appalachia. Indigenous groups like the Cherokee and Shawnee developed robust weaving traditions using plant fibers. When European settlers colonized Appalachia in the 18th century, they brought their own styles of weaving. These days, fiber artists in Appalachia are noticing an increased interest in weaving, and so they're making the craft more accessible to be...

All across Appalachia, communities have historically leaned on music to help get work done. Whether tending the garden or marching along the picket line, music has been a way to keep people motivated and rally them around a cause. In the small town of Lansing, North Carolina, community organizers recently hosted the first annual Fly Around Music and Arts Festival. The event was a celebration and c...

In this final episode of the 2025 season, Ash Hanson and Anna Claussen dive deep in conversation with Kyle Mesteth. Kyle is the founder of Ground Control, a skate park and community center in Pine Ridge, SD, whose mission is to provide a space where skateboarders, artists, and creators come together to dream, collaborate, and bring their visions to life. Ground Control works to inspire self-expres...

Este episodio explora los sentimientos de soledad comunes en la experiencia de los inmigrantes rurales y presenta estrategias probadas para su inclusión. Las historias que se presentan en este episodio ofrecen una vía para alejarse de las políticas y prácticas de exclusión y avanzar hacia culturas de pertenencia que fortalezcan a toda la comunidad.

Este episodio analiza las diferentes barreras lingüísticas que enfrentan los inmigrantes al adaptarse a la vida rural estadounidense. Las historias que presentamos muestran cómo, al añadir el idioma a las dificultades de acceso que enfrentan casi todos los estadounidenses rurales, los desafíos de la vida se intensifican. Estas historias también ofrecen perspectivas sobre la fortaleza que se puede...

Este episodio explora el proceso de adaptación a la vida en un nuevo lugar, conservando las costumbres que nos hacen sentir como en casa. Las historias que se presentan en este episodio abordan los desafíos de la asimilación y ofrecen ejemplos de una mejor manera de hacerlo: preservar las culturas personales, aprender de otras y encontrar oportunidades interesantes para combinar lo antiguo con lo...