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Deep Roots, Wide Open Future · Rooted in the Plains

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Read It in the Plains, a podcast about the people, places, and moments that shape the Great Plains.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Nicole, and in each episode, I take you back to a time when sod houses lined the prairie, railroads carved through the tall grass, and community meant survival.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_00: This season took me all over the Great Plains.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: From South Dakota to Oklahoma, and a lot of places in between.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: We found ways people communicated with their neighbors across miles of open prairie.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We followed the grassroots work of women's federations who quietly changed what communities looked like.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: We sat with the weight of mistakes made over the past 130 years, and the hard truth that no effort to make them right will ever fully be enough.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Steps forward, but not the same as undoing what was done.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Eight episodes.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: One region that never stopped surprising me.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where season two ends.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to take a few minutes before we close out the season to tell you something that I haven't shared before.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: How this all started.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm from a small rural town in Nebraska.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking at the plat maps or land property maps from around 1900 when I found that all four branches of my family were living within about a 50-mile radius of each other, some even earlier than that.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: My Great Plains roots run pretty deep, and they run in a lot of different directions.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've always been interested in this region's history, especially from the turn of the century and earlier.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: The stories that happened right here.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: In places most people drive through without stopping.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: The idea for this podcast came to me about two years ago on a walk around the lake.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was listening to the tall grass and the wind, and if I'm lucky, I can hear a red-winged blackbird.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's just something about that sound.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: About a year ago, I brought this idea to a professor of mine.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I described it as a narrative podcast exploring the history of the Great Plains before 1920.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The voices, the landscapes, and the movements brought to life through storytelling and research.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Eight episodes, and an Instagram account for the visuals.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: We decided that it would be a great capstone project.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: The project launched last August.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And because I enjoyed it so much, season two started in January.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And when this show releases, I will have three more days until I graduate with a degree in history.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being here.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: It truly means the world.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: My goal has always been to make public history accessible, to make it sound like a story, like your friend who spontaneously bursts into historical facts, but cool facts.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: And with these episodes to fit into your daily life, your commute, your morning routine, your drive across the plains.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Long enough to learn something meaningful, but short enough that if it sparked something, you'd go looking for more on the topic.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: A person, a place.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's the great thing about learning.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It should never stop.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole point.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's always been the point.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Rooted in the Plains is more than a podcast.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a community.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to see it grow.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: I want this podcast to be a starting point.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe an episode sparks something.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: A teacher builds a lesson around it.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: A book club reads the title based on a topic from an episode.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: A museum pulls something from its collection because it was featured.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm hoping for.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: That the history doesn't stop when the episode stops.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you work in a library, a school, a historical society, a museum, or even run a book club, I would love to get episode materials into your hands.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: A one-pager, resources, things your community can actually use.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: If there's a local event, a historic site, a place with a story attached to it, I'd love to talk to you about building something together.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: A feature, a partnership.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's discuss.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're within a few hours of Lincoln, reach out.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love to come out and visit, explore the Great Plains, and bring the community with us.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: The show's email and Instagram are in the show notes.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And now for the part that I'm most excited about.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: This fall, I'm opening the mic.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: Rooted in the Plains has been about the people, places, and moments that shaped the Great Plains before 1920.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: But those roots carry forward.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: The stories don't stop at an arbitrary date, and neither does this podcast.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: This fall, the stories won't just come from me, but they will be built around one question.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: What's your plains story?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: For those people that have called this land home since long before any borders were drawn, I want to hear your story, your words.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: What brought your family here?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: What drew you to this land?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: What keeps you here?
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I want to hear from listeners.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: Stories that when you heard them from family members, you thought, how did they do that?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: The hard work, the lack of technology, or immediate communication?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Email me or fill out the My Plains story form in the show notes if you're interested.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Be the first voices for season three.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: The planes have been here longer than any of the stories I've told this season.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: Longer than the borders, the land runs, the exclusion acts, and the botanical surveys.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was all here before that.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it will be here longer than whatever comes next.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what keeps bringing me back.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's what started this whole thing standing at the edge of the lake, listening to the wind move through the tall grass.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there's still so much to tell.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be back in a couple of weeks to kick off the summer season with stories from the field.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Rooted in the Plains.