Inside Appalachia
Sundays 7am & 6pm
Inside Appalachia tells the stories of our people, and how they live today. The show is an audio tour of our rich history, food, music and culture.
Have a question or want to share your story? Send us an email at InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
- Watch Inside Appalachia videos
- View stories from the Folkways Reporting Project
- Inside Appalachia Podcast - Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or SoundCloud.
Affiliate Stations
To find your local station go here:
- Allegheny Mountain Radio in Frost, West Virginia, WVMR - Saturday 7 a.m.
- WETS, Johnson City, Tennessee - Sunday 6 p.m.
- Morehead State Public Radio in Morehead, Kentucky, Saturday 6 a.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.
- Appalshop Mountain Community Radio , WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky - Sunday 11 a.m. & Tuesday 6 p.m.
- WEKU Richmond, Kentucky - Saturday 6 a.m. and Sunday 7 p.m.
- WSHC Shepherdstown, West Virginia - Sunday 9 a.m.
- WUOT-2, Knoxville, Tennessee - Tuesday 7 p.m.
- WVCU Athens, West Virginia - Wednesday 5 p.m.
- West Virginia Public Broadcasting - Sunday at 7 a.m. and 6 p.m.
- WMOV Ravenswood, West Virginia - Saturday at 8:00 a.m.
- WUTC and WUTC-HD1, Chattanooga, TN - Saturday at 1 p.m.
- Radio IQ Roanoke, Virginia - Sunday at 6 p.m.
- Blue Ridge Public Radio, Asheville, North Carolina - Sunday at 2 p.m.
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Podcast Episodes
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This week on Inside Appalachia, we’re talking about traditional ballads -- how they tell stories and connect us to the past. -
This week, we begin our journey throughout Appalachia in Floyd County, Virginia, home of Earl White. Then, we’ll travel back to the early 20th century, when nurse Mary Breckenridge launched a midwifery program in Eastern Kentucky. We’ll also meet two student reporters at the Fayette Institute of Technology, who bring us stories about Anstead, West Virginia, and finally, we meet journalist Kim Kelley, who recently authored “Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor,” to learn about the pro-Union history of Appalachian people.
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This week, we’re airing an encore episode of Inside Appalachia. We’ll meet a man who makes wooden turkey calls, not ordinary turkey calls. We’ll also meet people who make wooden paddles by hand and custom-decorate each one, and a man who repairs cuckoo clocks. Finally, we’ll travel to some of the most beautiful spots in Appalachia to find wildflowers.
Stories
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Neema Avashia grew up in a neighborhood in Kanawha County, West Virginia, as the daughter of immigrants to the U.S.Her new book, "Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place," describes that experience. -
Helvetia is a rural town nestled close to the Monongahela National Forest, and like Thrayron Morgan, most of its residents can trace their heritage back to Switzerland.
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Last year, Inside Appalachia brought you the story of rock climbers taking on racist, sexist and other offensive route names in West Virginia’s New River Gorge. Inside Appalachia reporter Zack Harold recently checked in with DJ Grant, a climber who helped kickstart the effort to change the names, to see if climbers were successful in their efforts.
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If you’ve listened to Inside Appalachia, there’s a good chance you’ve heard LaPrelle’s music before, as one half of Anna & Elizabeth. That would be LaPrelle, who grew up in Rural Retreat, Virginia, and Anna Roberts Gevalt, who is now based in Brooklyn. Inside Appalachia co-host Mason Adams spoke with LaPrelle to learn more, beginning with LaPrelle’s roots as a ballad singer who took up the tradition of regional legends like Texas Gladden.
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Appalachian Ohio writer Alison Stine’s first novel, “Road Out of Winter,” won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award in April. Inside Appalachia co-host Mason Adams recently spoke to Stine about the novel and what it tells us about the world of today.
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A new road makes it easier to get from the Washington, D.C. metro area to the rugged backwoods of Tucker County, West Virginia, where nearly 130,000 of acres of state and federal land are accessible to the public. Instead of a four or five hours up winding mountain roads, the new easy, breezy four-lane now shrinks the drive to less than three hours. The growing number of visitors has boosted business — but it’s also strained the resources of a county with one stoplight and just 7,000 year-round residents.
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Dolly Sods is federally protected public land — full of rocky ridges, soggy bogs and beautiful views. It’s also the site of an annual nature walk called the West Virginia Wildflower Pilgrimage. This year was the 59th time that wildflower and birding experts descended on the area for the event. Inside Appalachia co-host Mason Adams made the pilgrimage from his home in Floyd County, Virginia to Dolly Sods for the annual event and brings us this story.
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A McDowell County food pantry is teaming up with a non-profit called Dig Deep in order to bring residents clean drinking water.
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Crystal Wilkinson is Kentucky’s new poet laureate, the first Black woman to have this title in the state. She recently spoke with Inside Appalachia’s co-host Caitlin Tan. Wilkinson began by reading a poem that is an ode to tobacco and her grandfather. The poem is featured in her soon-to-be-released collection of poems, ‘Perfect Black.’
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Last year, West Virginia’s New River Gorge became the state’s first national park and the 63rd in the nation.It’s just a one word change -- but those who fought for the new designation say it could make all the difference for the local tourism economy.
