Montana’s unofficial tagline is “the last best place” — which should tell you something about the way the state thinks about itself. It’s a political frankenstein, incredibly beautiful, increasingly filled with tourists, and a twelve-hour drive from one corner of the state to the other. Oh, and just over a million people total live there. Including Chris La Tray, who’s just finishing his tenure as Montana Poet Laureate, and one of my favorite thinkers on what makes Montana so easy to fall in love with — but not always a very easy place to live.

In this episode, we talk about our favorite, most contradictory, and most hostile parts of Montana culture, from exorbitant housing prices to what it’s like to live in a place that falls in love with its own area code. If your vision of Montana culture comes from Yellowstone, this is a great corrective… that will also make you want a huckleberry milkshake.

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Becoming a Little Shell

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