Rural Remix

In the series's fifth and final episode, the narrative links back up with the present. Synthetic drugs like meth and heroin are being seized in their highest quantities to-date, and deadly overdose rates have reached new heights. What can be done? And what can the newfound popularity of harm reduction offer the debate? Learn more on our website.

While the Nevada suburbs continue to sprawl, a remote stretch of Highway 50 is starting to feel more and more like home for Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson. On today’s episode, she discusses a love for open spaces in the state of Nevada. 

As the U.S. found ways to successfully limit domestic production of methamphetamine, Mexican drug traffickers innovated new, high-volume production methods. Meth became very potent and very cheap, and began to infiltrate new American drug markets. What does this new system mean for the illicit drug supply? How does it affect people using and policing meth in the U.S.? Learn more on our website.

In 1999, the state of Missouri destroyed more than 900 clandestine meth labs. Among the officers tasked with carrying out that constant cleanup process, fear reigned. In response, the state trained an astronomical amount of resources on understanding the problem. A slew of state and federal laws were passed to limit access to meth’s precursor chemicals. But meth cooks got scrappy, replacing older recipes with new, soda-bottle scale techniques. What was it like to police meth in this era? What was it like to use it? Learn more on our website.

Home can be a difficult place to leave, even for Oregonians in the danger zone of a major earthquake. In this episode of Keep It Rural, Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses natural disasters of the past, present, and future.

In the 1950s, meth was available over the counter. In the 1960s, it was still unscheduled by the FDA and widely prescribed by doctors. All kinds of people – among them housewives, truckers, and college students – used the stimulant to induce weight loss, wakefulness, and high spirits. But in 1971 meth was reclassified as one of the nation’s most dangerous drugs and its legal production quickly fell by 90 percent. Demand, on the other hand, persisted, and outlaw biker gangs stepped into the supply vacuum. How’d biker gangs come to dominate the meth trade in the 80s? And why did they eventually lose control of it?

Welcome to Home Cooked: A 50-Year History of Meth in America. In the early 2000s, the “Faces of Meth” were tacked to cork boards in high school hallways and the nightly news was full of meth lab explosions. In this period, the stimulant was stigmatized as a “white trash” drug, and thought to favor rural trailer parks and farmhouses over inner-city drug dens. Today, however, meth use is increasing rapidly among non-white populations in big, east-coast cities like New York and Boston. So what changed? And why was meth seen as a hillbilly drug in the first place? Find the full show notes on the Daily Yonder website.

Country music is inextricable from Black culture, no matter how much the music industry has tried to separate them. Beyoncé’s new country songs could force a long-overdue change to how we think about a genre. Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses the overhaul of country music that is happening before our very eyes.

To love something is to eventually grieve the losing it. But what happens when climate change speeds up our rate of loss? Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses love, life, and loss in the anthropocene.

This is Keep It Rural. Your spot for musings on rural news, exploration of rural culture, and queries about rural life. Today Daily Yonder reporter Claire Carlson discusses a Colorado effort to reintroduce gray wolves and the debate over humans' place in the natural world.