Rural Remix

Our obsession with speed and efficiency might fill our stomachs, but it doesn’t do much else. Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses   how we can slow down in a fast food culture.

On this episode we are speaking with Eliza Blue about the art of sourdough bread. Eliza is a folk musician, writer, and rancher residing in one of the most remote counties in the contiguous United States, Perkins County, South Dakota. Listen to learn how we can co-evolve with bread and how bread connects us to our ancestors. Check out the recipe, show notes, and more on  ⁠our website.

Welcome to Rural Food Traditions . We’re starting where many meals across diverse food traditions begin: with bread. On this episode we visit with Nico Albert Williams about fry bread. We discuss the bread's Native American roots, controversial history, and Nico's personal relationship to the language of food. Check out the Fry Bread recipe discussed on our website .

Extreme survival stories like the Donner Party’s expedition over the Sierra Nevada or the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes are sensationalized for the lengths they went to survive, but is what they did really so unbelievable?

Don’t be fooled by stereotypes. Rural people care about the natural resources on which their communities depend. This week Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses the importance of specificity in environmental conversations and why environmentalists should listen to rural perspectives

Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson heard stories of multiple beached whales on the northwest coast in January 2023. Beached whales are not that uncommon on the shores of beaches on both coasts, but the number of dead whales has been growing. Claire's interest was piqued and thus began her whale obsession.

This episode of Rural Remix centers on the story of Jeans Corduroy and his journey as a transmasculine man in East Tennessee. Daily Yonder reporter Lane Wendell Fischer speaks with Jeans to explore growing up rural and queer, and identity’s impact on family, religion, and community.  Read the full story on  ⁠The Daily Yonder .

In the series's fifth and final episode, the narrative links back up with the present. Synthetic drugs like meth and heroin are being seized in their highest quantities to-date, and deadly overdose rates have reached new heights. What can be done? And what can the newfound popularity of harm reduction offer the debate? Learn more on our website.

While the Nevada suburbs continue to sprawl, a remote stretch of Highway 50 is starting to feel more and more like home for Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson. On today’s episode, she discusses a love for open spaces in the state of Nevada. 

As the U.S. found ways to successfully limit domestic production of methamphetamine, Mexican drug traffickers innovated new, high-volume production methods. Meth became very potent and very cheap, and began to infiltrate new American drug markets. What does this new system mean for the illicit drug supply? How does it affect people using and policing meth in the U.S.? Learn more on our website .

In 1999, the state of Missouri destroyed more than 900 clandestine meth labs. Among the officers tasked with carrying out that constant cleanup process, fear reigned. In response, the state trained an astronomical amount of resources on understanding the problem. A slew of state and federal laws were passed to limit access to meth’s precursor chemicals. But meth cooks got scrappy, replacing older...

Home can be a difficult place to leave, even for Oregonians in the danger zone of a major earthquake. In this episode of Keep It Rural, Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses natural disasters of the past, present, and future.

In the 1950s, meth was available over the counter. In the 1960s, it was still unscheduled by the FDA and widely prescribed by doctors. All kinds of people – among them housewives, truckers, and college students – used the stimulant to induce weight loss, wakefulness, and high spirits. But in 1971 meth was reclassified as one of the nation’s most dangerous drugs and its legal production quickly fel...

Welcome to Home Cooked: A 50-Year History of Meth in America. In the early 2000s, the “Faces of Meth” were tacked to cork boards in high school hallways and the nightly news was full of meth lab explosions. In this period, the stimulant was stigmatized as a “white trash” drug, and thought to favor rural trailer parks and farmhouses over inner-city drug dens. Today, however, meth use is increasing...

Country music is inextricable from Black culture, no matter how much the music industry has tried to separate them. Beyoncé’s new country songs could force a long-overdue change to how we think about a genre. Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses the overhaul of country music that is happening before our very eyes.

To love something is to eventually grieve the losing it. But what happens when climate change speeds up our rate of loss? Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses love, life, and loss in the anthropocene.

This is Keep It Rural. Your spot for musings on rural news, exploration of rural culture, and queries about rural life. Today Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses a Colorado effort to reintroduce gray wolves and the debate over humans' place in the natural world.

It's 2024 and we're still talking about how to get high-speed internet to the rural people and places that need it. An influx of federal dollars coming from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 may offer a path forward, and a group of Illinois government and business leaders are getting ready to seize the opportunity. As part of the Benton Institute for Broadband and Society&...

This is Keep It Rural. Your spot for musings on rural news, exploration of rural culture, and queries about rural life. Today Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses how a viral airplane near-disaster made her think about pedestrian safety on rural roads.

With Halloween in the rear view maybe you thought spooky season was over. But the scariest day of the year is yet to come… the horrors of Christmas are almost upon us. It's time for a Rural Horror Holiday Special . Join us for a bonus episode of the Rural Horror Picture Show as we explore this uniquely absurd and terrifying sub-genre of films that represent the darker side of the holiday seaso...

In Rushville, Illinois, Erin Eveland and her team at The HUB - Arts and Cultural Center are carrying out a mission to to bridge the gap between art, culture, and rural communities. In this new episode of Rural Remix, Eveland and Rural Assembly Deputy Director Libby Lane (a Rushville native!) talk about what drives the work, as well as the challenges of funding and the importance of community suppo...

Was Burkittsville, Maryland ever the same after the "Blair Witch?" What about the Texas town that played host to the "Chainsaw Massacre?" Dawn breaks and we conclude our series with some reflections on the lasting legacy of rural horror. How have the places featured in popular films been affected by their depictions on screen? And what do the tropes and shorthand used by horror...

No examination of rural horror would be complete without talking about folk horror. Superstitions about witchcraft and the occult hearken back to the country's pastoral, Puritan roots. We dig into the sub-genre and how it uses rural places to illustrate modern tensions between science and the supernatural. Films discussed include "The Children of the Corn" (1984), "The Blair Wit...

Sometimes the monster isn’t so literal, and deeper fears take center stage: isolation, grief, disillusionment, despair. In these cases, rural landscapes often play a supporting role. In our third episode, we turn our attention to the fear of isolation — both physical and emotional —and how it’s connected to portrayals of grief in horror movies. Films discussed include “Midsommar” (2019), “The Edge...

Continuing on from our first episode, we zoom in to a specific kind of "urbanoia." Join us for a closer look at a set of iconic movies that made a horror trope out of an over-the-top stereotype, introducing us to an infamous class of villain: the killer hillbilly and his degenerate rural family. As some Appalachians and rural people seek to reclaim power and pride in the word hillbilly,...