Rural Remix

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,...

Where do horror movies happen? Small towns, dark forests, cornfields, and farmhouses have each been the locations for iconic scary films. But why are rural settings so popular, and how do these choices affect the areas represented? In the first episode of our 5-part series exploring the often-flawed, but always interesting, depiction of rural people and places in horror movies, we look at urban fe...

Beginning this month Everywhere Radio becomes Rural Remix. Together with our partners at the Daily Yonder and Center for Rural Strategies, we'll bring you unexpected rural stories that talk back to the stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding rural communities. Up first, just in time for Halloween, is our debut series, the Rural Horror Picture Show, five episodes exploring the depiction of r...

Daily Yonder reporters Sarah Melotte and Claire Carlson talk about what's at stake in rural communities when extremist political movements infiltrate local politics. Melotte and Carlson talk about their own reporting and how they came to the same notion: that when extremist political movements — banning electronic voting systems or defunding libraries for example — enter a rural community, the...

How are rural people feeling about the future? What are they concerned about? What do they value? Pollster Celinda Lake talks with Center for Rural Strategies President Dee Davis about the findings of a soon-to-be-released poll that explores what's on the minds of rural voters in 2023. "We really asked questions to get beyond the surface, and we looked in-depth at concerns and values and...

Teresa Kittridge has spent much of her life serving rural people across the country as a leader in the private, public and nonprofit sectors as well as serving in elected office in Minnesota. She founded the nonprofit organization 100 Rural Women to inspire leadership and create connections among rural women. We talk with Teresa about the organization; what has changed in rural policy work; the de...

Whitney talks with Libby Lane, the Rural Assembly's new Deputy Director. She comes to us from the rural Midwest, from the 16-County region in Western Illinois, sometimes called Forgottonia. She grew up in a town of 3000, fell in love with musical theater and acting, and ultimately made her way to Chicago, where she now lives with her wife and their rescue dog, Roxie. And she's still a memb...

Tony Pipa is part policy wonk, part story teller. He focuses on connecting with policy makers, local leaders, and community members to reimagine federal policy to fit the needs of rural America. He uses his wide range of expertise to uplift stories of progress and success in rural communities. We talk with the native rural Pennsylvanian about the diversity of rural America, his new podcast, and br...

The United States is the world's largest incarcerator. Many of the prisons built since the 1990s are in rural places, particularly in Central Appalachia as an economic development strategy to replace the coal industry. The prison economy of Central Appalachia figures strongly into the work of both our guests, multimedia artist and organizer Sylvia Ryerson and professor and author Judah Schept....