After the Civil War a group of English men and women traveled to the hills of Tennessee to set up a utopian colony.   Today we tell that story. You can subscribe to the Stories podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Audible, IHeart Radio, Audacy, or on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening and for sharing our stories with your friends!

Today we tell a story that's a little bit history and a little bit folklore about a legend in eastern Kentucky named Moses Stepp, supposedly the oldest man to have ever lived in the state. Thanks for listening and for sharing our podcast with your friends.

In 1959 a mining operation ignored mine regulations leading not only to a mine roof collapse but flooding so bad that miners were killed and the entire economy in the area was pretty much destroyed. You can subscribe to the Stories podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audacy, IHeart Radio, Stitcher or on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for listening and for sharing our stories with your friends...

1929 was a rough year for the jailer at the Yancey County jail, in North Carolina.  That year saw not one but two 3-prisoner escapes from the facility.   That's our story today. Thanks for listening and for sharing our stories of Appalachian history.

We wrap up our story about Davy Crockett, telling of his leaving Tennessee and moving to Texas to fight in the Texas War of Independence. You can subscribe to the Stories podcast on your favorite podcast app...please add us to your favorites list! Thanks for listening...

Probably nobody embodies Appalachia and her people more than a man born near Limestone, Tennessee, in 1786.  Davy Crockett was a frontiersman, cowboy, businessman, politician and a martyr to the cause of Texas independence.   Today we start telling you his very big story. You can subscribe to the Stories podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening!

In 1945 a preacher was arrested and charged in his wife's death...by snakebite. Seems he had been holding a service near Norton, Virginia, in which a large poisonous snake had been placed in his hand, and his wife had been bitten when she reached over to pat the creature's head. Today we tell the story of a death in a snake-handling church, another part of the history of this place we call home: Appalachia.

In 1671 Thomas Batts and Richard Fallam set out from Appomatox Town (near present day Petersburg), Virginia, on a mission of exploration into Appalachia.  Along the way they discovered the New River and many other places in the western part of the colony. Today we tell their story. You can subscribe to the Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, IHeart Radio, Deezer and many other podcast apps. Thanks for listening!

One hundred years ago this month the largest labor uprising in American history occurred in southern West Virginia when striking coal miners gathered with weapons and headed toward the Appalachian coal fields, intent on unionizing the mines there. What started with a deadly shootout in Matewan between men hired by the coal company to kick striking miners out of company-owned housing and Police Chief Sid Hatfield and his men in the spring of 1920 and Hatfield's subsequent killing on the McDowell County Courthouse steps by those same enforcers a year later exploded into a mass movement that took the police, hired mercenaries, bombs dropped from airplanes, machine guns, poison gas and, finally, the intervention of the U. S. military to stop. Today we tell that story.

In 1912 a Carroll County, Virginia, man was sentenced to serve a one year sentence in the state penitentiary. The announcement of that sentence set off a gun battle that became one of the worst incidences of violence ever to occur in an American courtroom. You can subscribe to the Stories podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, IHeart Radio or on your favorite podcast app.