There’s a lot that’s dividing Americans right now - lots of divisive narratives that have captivated lots of people. One of those narratives features the apparent widening political divide between urban and rural culture. But, the truth is that the evolution of America’s urban and rural communities has always been symbiotic.

One of the best historical case studies of that symbiosis highlights the city of Chicago and the rural American west, documented by William Cronon in his award-winning book, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, published in 1991. In this episode, we reconsider the relationship between urban and rural in light of that history.

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