Roots and Shadows: The Real Appalachia Podcast

In 1984, the Commonwealth of Virginia believed it had placed its most dangerous men behind walls designed to hold forever. Those walls stood at Mecklenburg Correctional Center, a maximum security prison in Boydton, Virginia, known at the time for housing death row inmates and some of the state’s most violent offenders. It was considered escape proof. On a quiet spring night in May 1984, that promi...

In the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia, there are some stories that linger long after the music stops. This first episode of Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia begins in Smyth County, Virginia, in the early 1970s. On a Saturday night, a young woman attended a community dance, the kind of gathering common in small Appalachian towns where families knew one another, teenagers stayed out...

Roots & Shadows: The Real Appalachia is a narrative podcast exploring true stories from the Appalachian Mountains, stories shaped by place, family, and the things people stop talking about. Drawn from public court records, historical reporting, and word of mouth passed through generations, each episode examines how violence, silence, faith, and memory take root in small communities and how the...