The land remembers
Places hold the physical and social imprint of decisions long after the people who made them are gone.
A geographical history of violence in America
Violence does not simply happen in a place.
It both shapes and is shaped by the places in which it occurs.
A narrative podcast about how violence is built into the places we live.
A special episode on the life that became common ground.
New · Special episode
Dolly Parton, or The Last American Consensus
Americans argue over nearly everything. But we agreed on Dolly Parton. What does that agreement reveal about the country we still want to be?
Start here · 1:43
Listen to the trailer
Across the United States, violence is written into the landscape, sometimes visible, more often hidden beneath the surface.
Violence in America is not random, episodic, or confined to the past. It is structured, spatial, and cumulative.
How to listen
Follow the argument through place.
A narrative exploration of how land, labor, movement, and access shape the geography of violence in the United States.
Power takes spatial form
Law, infrastructure, industry, and policy determine who may move freely, who is contained, and who bears the cost.
The past remains active
History is not scenery. It is a set of structures that continue to organize everyday American life.
From the field notes
Places under examination
Lawrence County, TN
Violence remembered
San Diego, CA
Violence curated
The Everglades
Violence engineered
Huntington, WV
Violence exhausted
Las Vegas, NV
Violence abstracted
St. Louis, MO
Violence enforced
White Castle, LA
Violence withheld
Synthesis + Future
The accumulated argument
Season One moves through seven American places before drawing its accumulated argument together and looking toward Season Two.
From the blog
The Cities We Love When They Bleed
Why do we embrace New York and Washington in tragedy while rejecting the lives they hold? A reflection on September 11, public memory, and the world inherited by a generation born afterward.
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