the underview.

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains the tragedy of gun violence and suicide. Listener discretion is advised. First United Methodist Church Bentonville has stood on the same corner since 1832 before Arkansas was a state, before the Civil War, and through nearly two centuries of transformation. In part one of this two-part conversation, lead pastor Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris shares her personal...

Saint Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville was organized on May 23, 1848, making it one of the oldest surviving church in the city. In this episode, Reverend Evan D. Garner , the church's rector, traces a tradition rooted in the Church of England's belief that a parish exists to serve everyone within its boundaries, not just its members. From the founding documents that carry the...

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains references to the enslavement of Black communities and the impact of immigration enforcement on immigrant families. Listener discretion is advised. St. Joseph Catholic Church in Fayetteville has been part of Northwest Arkansas since 1844 — eight years after Arkansas statehood, before the Civil War, before the university. The earliest recorded baptisms in F...

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains references to Indigenous removal, the history of enslavement, and the dehumanization of Black communities in the Arkansas Ozarks. Listener discretion is advised. In the conclusion of a two-part conversation, historian Rachel Whitaker of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History moves from the Civil War era into the twentieth century and the present day. Whitaker...

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode contains references to Indigenous removal, the history of enslavement, and the dehumanization of Black communities in the Arkansas Ozarks. Listener discretion is advised. In the first part of a two-part conversation, historian Rachel Whitaker of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History traces the arrival of faith in Northwest Arkansas from the 1820s through the Civil War...

In Season 3 of the underview, we begin where every honest conversation about faith has to begin with a starting point. Monica Kumar joins as co-host for "the faith of Northwest Arkansas," and this episode is the Monica's story, the work of naming who we are, what we carry, and what we are afraid of as we step into a season-long exploration of how faith shapes place and belonging acr...

Before Season 3 moves further into the faith of Northwest Arkansas, this interstitial pause defines the five words the season is built on faith, religion, theology, church, and ideology and asks what happens when their differences are not fully understood. Faith is interior, personal, not available for public examination. Religion is what a tradition carries across generations. Theology is the pub...

In the opening episode of Season 3, the underview begins its most ambitious exploration yet: the faith of Northwest Arkansas. From the seat of a gravel bike on a quiet Sunday morning in Benton County, the episode traces the religious history of the Ozarks from the earliest circuit riders and Cumberland Presbyterians at Cane Hill to the founding of Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, and Episcopal congre...

Season 3 of the underview traces the faith that built Northwest Arkansas, from frontier revivals to megachurches, from the invisible church of enslaved people to the Spanish-language masses reshaping our region today. This season asks hard questions about religion as both meaning and power. Circuit riders crossed 600 miles to preach personal transformation. Cumberland Presbyterians established Cai...

This bridge episode sits in the tension of the current moment. Across two seasons, the underview has traced power in Northwest Arkansas from indigenous removal through racial terror to the displacement happening right now, asking what our institutions resisted and what they accommodated. The answer, consistently, has been accommodation: going along, choosing comfort over confrontation, narrowing t...

What happens to a community when no one is paying attention? Since 2005, America has lost more than 3,200 newspapers and the number of journalists per capita has dropped from 40 to just 8 per 100,000 people. The consequences are measurable: voter turnout drops, fewer people run for office, and communities lose the capacity to know what's happening to themselves. Bentonville had local journali...

In Northwest Arkansas, where housing affordability was once the region's greatest draw, working families are increasingly being pushed to the edges. Women with children in their cars are showing up at church doorsteps asking a question congregations struggle to answer: "What do I do? Where do I go?" When Christ and Neighbor Church in Rogers was approached about the Urban Land Instit...

In a region where home prices have jumped 70.9% in five years and median rent has increased by double digits across every major city, affordable housing solutions can feel elusive. But the Faithful Foundations program, created by the Urban Land Institute of Northwest Arkansas , offers a different approach: what if churches could use land they already own to help address the crisis? Candi Adams, Di...

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Perla Guerrero , Associate Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland and author of Nuevo South , to explore one of the most significant transformations in Northwest Arkansas history: what happens when a place that was overwhelmingly white through most of the 20th century experiences rapid demographic diversification. Dr. Guerrero shares her o...

Solomon Burchfield , Executive Director of New Beginnings NWA , brings both lived experience and professional expertise to one of Northwest Arkansas's most urgent challenges. Growing up in a family that faced the real possibility of homelessness. That formative memory, combined with years working directly with chronically homeless neighbors, has shaped his vision for what he calls "unive...

In this episode of the underview , we sit down with Victor Gurel , CEO of Trailblazers , the organization shaping how Northwest Arkansas moves, connects, and imagines its future. From singletrack to city streets, Trailblazers leads the region’s effort to design trails, tunnels, and active transportation systems that connect communities through shared infrastructure. Their work reminds us that move...

In this episode of the underview , host Mike Rusch sits down with Michael Spivey (President & CEO), Brannon Pack (Senior Director of Operations), and Bobby Finster (Project Lead) from the Ozark Foundation to explore the future of the Arkansas Rural Recreational Roads Initiative (R3) . As the cycling community in Northwest Arkansas continues to grow, it also finds itself navigating complex divi...

In this episode, we sit back down with Andy Chasteen , co-founder of Rule of Three and Oz Gravel , to reflect on the state of cycling in Northwest Arkansas. Andy first joined us in season one to share his vision for cycling as a force for belonging in this place. This follow-up conversation explores how that vision has evolved against the backdrop of national division, local debates, and the ongoi...

In this episode, we continue the story of the “All Bikes Welcome” mural, this time from the perspective of the artist, Paige Dirksen , whose vision and brushstrokes brought it into being. What began as a joyful community project with more than 80 participants under the 3rd Street bridge at Coler Mountain Bike Preserve became the center of one of Bentonville’s most divisive civic debates. Paige ref...

In this episode, Dr. Rachel Olzer , Executive Director of All Bikes Welcome , reflects on what the “All Bikers Welcome” mural symbolizes, the weight of the public fight both personally and professionally, and what it reveals about belonging in Northwest Arkansas. This conversation is not only about a mural, but about who gets to belong in public life, and how a city chooses to shape its character...

In this season two final episode, host Mike Rusch takes us back to the gravel road where the story of Northwest Arkansas began, a road overlooking unmarked graves, a place of silence and memory. From that ground, the season has traced centuries of history: Indigenous nations removed from their homelands, enslaved people forced to labor, families rebuilding after the Civil War, immigrants shaping n...

We close this season with the voice of Barbara Carr , great-granddaughter of Aaron Anderson “Rock” Van Winkle , an enslaved boy brought to Northwest Arkansas in the 1830s who became one of the region’s most skilled builders after Emancipation. His hands helped construct homes, courthouses, churches, and Old Main at the University of Arkansas, yet his name was nearly erased from public memory. Barb...

Aaron Anderson Rock Van Winkle was born into slavery and is believed to have been one of the first enslaved persons to be brought to Northwest Arkansas.  After emancipation, he became a landowner, father, and community member in Bentonville, Arkansas. But even today, his story remains largely absent from public memory. In this episode, we sit down with local historian Jerry Moore to explore Rock’s...

From Enlightenment ideals to the myth of the American frontier, the founding ideologies of the United States have long shaped how we define humanity, progress, and belonging. In this episode, Dr. Todd Stockdale invites us to trace how these ideologies, especially the Western liberal view of the autonomous individual, intersected with Protestant theology and national identity. Drawing on the work o...

Religion in the South is more than tradition; it’s a force that has shaped politics, belonging, and identity across generations. In this episode, we return to Dr. Jared M. Phillips to ask for a historical view to try and understand where that power comes from, and how it takes root in the South and places like Northwest Arkansas? Throughout the season, we’ve heard guests reference the role of fait...