North Carolina Rabbit Hole

What's it like to be with the one you love 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? In this episode, host Jeremy Markovich meets Aaron and Lexi Harris, a pair of newlyweds who experienced the highs and lows of hiking the Mountains-to-Sea Trail across western North Carolina.

On the first day of her trip across North Carolina on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, veteran Erin Brennan is making sense of new gear, new routines, and a new beginning with the help of Warrior Expeditions, a group that treats hiking like therapy.

The new season of our award-winning podcast begins with some fairly basic questions. What is the Mountains-to-Sea Trail? How was it created? Who were the first people to hike the whole thing? And who would hike all 1,175 miles of it today? In this premiere episode, host Jeremy Markovich talks to the man who (accidentally) created it, as well as a llama wrangler who ended up doing something no one else had done before. We also meet several hikers, who are about to set out on their own journeys across the entire state of North Carolina: by foot, by bike, and by kayak.

In the latest season of Our State's podcast, we take a trip down North Carolina's Mountains-to-Sea Trail. All 1,175 miles of it.

A replay of Season 1, Episode 3, entitled "As High As You Can Get." It's the story of a man who climbs to the top of 2,000-foot-tall television broadcast towers to change the light bulbs, and how he remains calm in an environment that most of us would consider to be frightening.

Jeff Postell was a 21-year-old police officer when he made an arrest in the middle of the night in a small North Carolina town. That arrest ended a five year manhunt for the Olympic Park Bomber, Eric Rudolph, and changed Postell's life in an instant. In this season finale, we track him down to find out what happened to the soft-spoken North Carolinian who brought in a notorious fugitive.

Jeremy Markovich: producer, mixer, host

James Mieczkowski: producer

Elizabeth Hudson: editor-in-chief

Music in this episode:

• “Bright Direction (You're A Dark Star Now)" by Hiss Golden Messenger

Special Thanks to Matthew Yates, Katie Killen, Bill Evans and the Boston College Police Department, and Charles Winokoor of the Taunton Daily Gazette.

Some archival audio courtesy of WLOS-TV.

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What do outsiders see when they look at North Carolina? In this bonus episode, host Jeremy Markovich turns to The Andy Griffith Show for answers, and talks to a woman who worked on the series, then moved to the real-life town that the fictional Mayberry was based on.

Davis Island wasn’t always an island. In the early 1900s, a hurricane cut a path through a peninsula that stuck out into Core Sound, separating a stately home from the mainland.

Years later, a man achieved his childhood dream of living in that home. What he found was peace and beauty, and a love story that came to him, in an isolated place, with an unexpected knock on his door.

We traveled to the North Carolina coast to tell the story of a remote island, a chance meeting, and a man who’s trying to save a special place from an uncertain future.

• Watch a 7-minute documentary on Davis Island from Our State Short Films.
• Sign up for our upcoming Away Message newsletter.

James Mieczkowski: reporter, producer

Jeremy Markovich: producer, mixer, host

Elizabeth Hudson: editor-in-chief

Music in this episode:

• "Breathe Till I'm Full" by The Collection

Special thanks to the Humber family.

A New Yorker named Stephen Barcelo moved to a small town in northeastern North Carolina. Then he started seeing ghosts. Then bigfoot showed up. In this episode, we visit Littleton, go on a search for a hard-to-find creature, and find out what it really means to believe.

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Curtis Johnson fell in love with music while growing up in Wilkesboro, North Carolina. But when he gave up his job as a disc jockey to support his family, he held on to his dream. Now, he puts on small house-style concerts in an out-of-the-way place, and the shows keep everyone coming back for more.

James Mieczkowski: reporter, producer

Jeremy Markovich: producer, mixer, host

Elizabeth Hudson: editor-in-chief

Music in this episode:

• "Midnight Special," by Mark Stuart and Stacey Earle, performed in 2012 at the Cook Shack in Union Grove
• "Southbound Passenger Train," by Doc Watson, performed in the 1970s in Rochester, New York
• "Pick Me Up" and "As Good As It Gets," by Grace Pettis, performed in 2019 at Powder Horn Mountain

Special Thanks to Daniel Johnson and Curtis Johnson, the Renaissance Man.