News from rural America.

We begin by talking with environmental reporter Delaney Nolan about how AI slop torpedoed a massive solar project in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. Next, Erin Borla, the executive director of the Roundhouse Foundation, talks philanthropy and shares some wisdom from her grandma, Gert. And Daily Yonder Culture Reporter Susannah Broun interviews filmmaker Rustin Thompson about his new documentary, “The Last Picture Shows,” which tells the story of independent, small-town movie theaters across the West. Oral historian Mi’Jan Celie Tho-Biaz stops by to invite us to a story feast, And Daily Yonder contributor Nhatt Nichols takes us to Wyoming, where Indigenous communities are working to restore native buffalo herds. Our featured musicians this week are Redd and the Paper Flowers, a “living room folk” band out of Knoxville, Tennessee.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm Jared Ewe, the host of Yonder Radio.

Every week, we bring listeners rural conversations with National Reach.

This week, we're reaching down into the Iberia Parish in Louisiana, where Delaney Nolan, a reporter, shares how AI slop torpedoed a massive solar project.

And then Erin Borla, the executive director of the Roundhouse Foundation, talks philanthropy and shares some wisdom from her grandma, Gert.

And daily Yonder culture reporter Susanna Brown interviews filmmaker Rustin Thompson about his new documentary, The Last Picture Shows, which tells the story of independent small-town movie theaters across the West, or lack thereof.

Oral historian Majan Salih Tobias stops by to invite us to a story feast, and Daily Yarder contributor Nat Nichols takes us to Wyoming, where indigenous communities are working to restore native buffalo herds.

Our featured musician this week, incredible story and incredible music, Red and the Paper Flowers, a living room folk band out of Knoxville, Tennessee, trivia and all of that on this week's episode of Yonder Radio.

Yonder Radio, Rural Conversations with National Reed.

Hello, Jared Ewy here, and I'm just going to be straight with you people.

This show is a lot.

I mean, and I mean that in a good way.

We're going to discuss the Roundhouse Foundation and how it is helping people around the country.

We're going to talk about the documentary about cinema deserts.

The story of red and the paper flowers will move you.

And, well, there's trivia that kind of creeps me out.

That's all on the way.

First up, we have Jan Patolsky, news editor of the Daily Yonder, to tell us about some of this week's top rural headlines.

What's going on, Jan?

Hey, Jared.

We start off with a report from CNBC about land purchases and AI data centers transforming rural land markets.

According to the report, data centers' land purchases reached about $6 billion in the first half of 2026, which represents a 79% increase from just last year.

In total, data centers represent 27% of the development sites in the U.S. this year, and it's the second highest category right after apartment buildings.

Several reports and analysis indicate that the key data center areas, commercial property values are truly skyrocketing.

One example of some sites from last year in northern Virginia and in northeast in general allegedly surpassed $8 million per acre.

And then more about mail-in voting, what's happening from Governing.com here?

Yes, so we've been covering the big issue over the mail-in ballots and the current administration's attempts to limit the access to mail-in voting.

Governing prepared a list of the states that could potentially suffer the most, or the voters who could suffer the most, if those rights were limited.

It's important to know that nationally, one in four Democrats and one in five Republicans voted by mail in 2024, according to the reporting.

So top three states with the most mail-in votes would be Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, all above 90% of their vote.

Next, it would be Utah, California, Arizona, and Vermont.

Those range between 60% and 90% of mail-in votes.

Right after them, Nevada, Nebraska, Florida, Michigan, and Massachusetts. in the range of 30 to 51 percent.

That just gives you an idea how bipartisan those effects could in fact be.

I find it a modicum of comfort that voting is a bipartisan issue.

And Gris, Michigan, sitting on a clean energy gold mine is the story.

Michigan is now investing seven and a half million dollars to research geologic hydrogen.

Hydrogen has been this holy grail of clean energy for a while now, famously Toyota, tried to develop cars running on hydrogen.

And that's because the byproduct of running hydrogen for your energy is water.

And according to a 2025 study from the U.S.

Geological Survey, Michigan sits on the high end of a potential sites for a ton of buried hydrogen.

Now, if out here in Colorado, you could just produce water by driving around, we'd just be a constant cruise party around here.

Jan Patalski, thank you so much for stopping by Yonder Radio.

Thanks a lot, Jared.

That was Jan Patalski, news editor for the Daily Yonder, and now Delaney Nolan, an environmental journalist who reports for The Lens, a nonprofit newspaper based out of New Orleans, Louisiana.

She's here to talk about some reporting she did in Iberia Parish in southern Louisiana.

She wrote a story, well, it's about AI slop.

I'm going to get this rolling by asking a strange question, but can you assure us, Delaney Nolan of The Lens, that solar panels are not causing tornadoes?

I'm here to say solar panels will not put a tornado in your backyard.

Why is this even entering the chat?

What has happened in the Iberia Parish where solar panel tornadoes might be part of the conversation.

Can you tell us about this AI slop that's been used to stop solar development?

Yeah, I mean, why do people believe this is kind of the question?

This all came out of plans to establish an industrial-scale solar project in Iberia Parish.

Industrial-scale meaning this is something that's big enough.

It's a few hundred acres.

You could plug it into the grid.

It'll supply electricity to places outside of Iberia.

That came to a head last summer.

So this company, Recurrent Energy, their division of a Canadian company called Canada Solar, they wanted to set up this big project and people got emotional.

People got upset.

So I think, yeah, the question is, is not only where does this misunderstanding come from, it's how is it getting picked up by people who really believe it?

And I think part of it is this history of being in an area where these big corporations especially petrochemical companies they come in they establish something and people who live there end up seeing wealth and resources you know we have a lot of resources we see all this wealth get taken away a lot of this opposition to the solar project was organized around social media especially on facebook groups but that facebook group itself the people who were in it the people who created it they were being connected to other organizers against solar projects in other parishes in other states who had worked on stopping, in some cases, successfully solar projects.

And some of the material shared in there was just flat out wrong.

Some of it is getting shared by people who were like entrepreneurs that are boosting nuclear power, or they used to work for a conservative think tank.

But yeah, what was really interesting to me was all these images and Facebook groups across the country that seem to be coming from a network of bots, of fake accounts, spam accounts that are based in South Asia, most likely Bangladesh, from what we could tell.

These AI generated images, it's a farmer with a sign that says, you know, keep Louisiana beautiful, put solar on rooftops, not on farmland.

And then in another group, you see a farmer with a sign that says, keep Nebraska beautiful, put solar panels on roofs, not far much.

And then you see it again in Texas and you see it again in Indiana, essentially mass produced AI slop that is looking like it is coming from a place of grassroots organizing and passion, but it's actually being mass produced in Southeast Asia by AI.

Well, Delaney, I love what you do in this article because you do go deep on the story, the AI and solar and the parish, but you humanize it with these people like Andre McAnally.

And this seems to me a story within a story.

Tell us about her journey because she's been at two different places on this issue.

Yeah, I think she's a really interesting character in this story.

She's an interesting position.

She owns a lot of land.

She's a family farm in Iberia Parish and the company, Recurrent Solar, was going to lease part of their... farm to build this project.

At a council meeting, she told the parish council, when I first heard about this, I was convinced we were all going to get cancer.

You know, a lot of the rumors that are going around about how it's going to give people cancer, it's going to leach toxins into the soil, it's going to wash poison into the bayou.

And then I did my research.

She's come all the way around to being one of the few supporters in the parish, or at least one of the few vocal supporters of this project.

And she said, this money that they would be giving us by leasing our lands, that would be helping my kids pay for their college.

But she spoke at this council meeting and said, you know, I'm really disappointed parish council has not I just assumed you all would do your own research the same way I have.

And I've learned that my fears are misplaced.

And now I know that this would be a great thing for my family and neighbors who came to my door bringing meals after my husband died in 2021, they won't speak to me anymore because of their opposition to this project.

So really, I mean, it really got heated.

What has happened with this big solar project?

Is it done?

The fallout from this campaign, this anti-solar campaign, was Iberia Parish Council ended up passing very stringent regulation that a solar installation, if it's more than 75 acres, which anything significant would be, it has to be at least half a mile set back from the nearest residential structure or building.

They've not officially announced that it's canceled, but it's been a year now and there's been no progress and it does seem to have knocked that project out.

Are you in though, despite this, solar is growing.

Yes.

I'm so glad you highlighted that.

Despite the hostile federal policy landscape, solar is just so efficient and it's so affordable now that there's really no stopping it.

It really is going to continue to accelerate.

There's going to be a little bit of a slowdown, a little bit of a dip, at least in Louisiana, once those subsidies that the Trump administration rolled back do expire in the next year or two.

But then the acceleration is going to pick back up again.

And so the real question becomes not, is solar going to exist or not?

It's going to be, do these projects come to Louisiana or do they go to a different state where there's maybe less local opposition or local misinformation running around causing undue burdens of regulation?

Well, people do not settle for AI slob.

Today we have the polar, well, we have the solar opposite Delaney Nolan.

I love that.

And her story from thelensnola.org is on Daily Yonder.

In rural communities, fears amplified by AI slop and social media hamper solar boom.

Thank you so much.

This was so much fun.

Thank you, Jared.

You can find this story at dailyyonder.com slash yonder radio.

And more of Delaney's reporting at thelensnola.org.

Delaney's reporting is also part of the Mississippi Delta Ag and Waterdesk, an environmental reporting network that covers the nation's largest watershed.

And now it's time for our featured band of the week, Red and the Paper Flowers out of Knoxville, Tennessee.

There's music here, yes, and a story that will move you.

And now we're going to be talking to lead singer Red Daugherty and mandolin player Gavin Gregg.

Well, Red Darkey and Gavin Gregg here from Red and the Paper Flowers.

And I know you've been all over the country because I saw a YouTube commenter with exclamation points shout that they saw your van north of Denver.

You are in the musical montage phase of your life just rolling around the country.

Yeah.

And if someone pulls up to a Red and the Paper Flowers show, what are they going to hear?

Coziness, a good time.

We're trying to figure out what genre we actually fit into.

We call ourselves living room folk just because we bring warmth and storytelling.

Gavin plays mandolin.

Colleen is our cellist.

Gavin and Colleen playing off of each other is also like its own kind of cute form of storytelling in the instrumental space too.

Yeah, Gavin, you've been part of the great mandolin revolution over the past couple decades.

How is it being with the band?

In the VH1 behind the music, is everything going to be going well?

Yeah, yeah, it's great.

I grew up playing bluegrass, and we don't really play bluegrass, so it kind of keeps me on my toes as far as what the mandolin is supposed to do in the band.

Seems like there's a thing going on, a renaissance, that's reaching into all these maybe overlooked niches of music and giving some spotlight and some community warmth to bands, say, like yourself.

Are you feeling that?

Yeah, I think we do.

Something Gavin encouraged us to do, I think we move so fast sometimes that we don't really have time to stop and think about what it is that we're doing until after the fact. but he was really encouraging in pushing playing smaller towns because it feels more homey and more community-driven.

And so I think that that's maybe where the Renaissance is coming from when it comes to playing shows in certain areas.

Small towns seem to appreciate the music a lot more, and this smaller venue seemed to be getting a little more popular.

Well, it's a big deal.

I mean, I grew up in a really tiny town, and you could have a duo show up that nobody ever heard of, And I, as a kid, just wanted to go touch their face and see if they were real.

Like they were stars.

I think people are kind of pining for that real experience.

Are you getting that on the road, Red, that people want that?

They want your living room music?

Yeah, I think so.

I love playing music, especially with Katie, Colleen, and Gavin, because they're my best friends and Gavin's my partner.

I also really love talking to people.

Like before and after the show, like if I had a tail, it'd be Wagon.

I love it.

I think a lot of people just want to share what they're going through.

And I think it's energizing for them when we write something that they can connect to.

And it's really beautiful.

I go to your website, Red and the Paper Flowers, people go read this story.

And then your About Us page changed my life.

Do you want to share a little bit of that?

And then just an update on how Rush's music is doing?

Well, in 2023, my really dear, sweet friend, Jason Cooper was murdered by his roommate.

And we grew up together in a way working at this music store called Russia's Music.

He bought it from our boss in 2021.

And he willed it to me.

I didn't even know he had a will.

And I didn't know that I was in his will.

And you know, you have those conversations with your best buds, like you'll take care of my dog if something happens, right?

And I'm like, sure, buddy, you know, I'll take care of your dog.

I became the owner of a music store that is like a cultural hub in Knoxville, Tennessee.

We service about 90 schools and 3000 students for band every year.

It sounds really cold to say it like this, but I've found the humor through the grief at this point where, you know, he passed in February of 2023 and I've never had to plan a celebration of life and also learn how to do C Corporation business taxes in the same month.

So that was a wild, wild time to be alive.

You know, it sounds dark, but I don't, I don't think I would still be here if it wasn't for Katie, Colleen and Gavin.

They really pulled me out of a dark place that I was in for a couple of years.

I want to know about Appalachia.

What would you tell the world about Appalachia?

What do you know?

What do you want to tell the world?

It can be very peaceful and beautiful.

It's vast.

It's been cool to take these tours up and see the rest of Appalachia, how similar but also how different it is.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it's a special place.

Being East Tennessee, I didn't start traveling until much later in life, post-pandemic when we started really hitting the band hard.

So I think it's really cool to see the difference in Appalachia regions.

Just like everywhere in the country, there's always a lot of struggle.

But I think that what makes Appalachians a distinct group of people is that they somehow just carry it internally.

And I think it just shows up in art.

Just really strong people.

Now, Red, I mean, I don't want to be like causing controversy here, but you might not be doing anything for Appalachian stereotypes because I've read that you prefer barefoot.

Yeah, we sometimes we we I'm probably not helping the Appalachian stereotype, but we like playing.

We like playing with our tootsies out sometimes.

No shoe shows.

Just because, I don't know, we like to feel the stage.

It depends if the stage is eye level.

I won't do it just for people's sake.

That is a thoughtful dude.

That is a thoughtful dude.

Because some guys pose.

I mean, maybe don't need all that light.

Yeah.

Well, I could talk a lot longer, but we should have more conversations.

This is incredible.

Yeah.

We'd love to be back.

Thank you for having us.

That was Red Doherty and Gavin Gregg from living room folk band Red and the Paper Flowers.

And now we're coming up on our first break, but not before we share our all-important first trivia clue.

We'll give you three clues throughout the episode and then reveal the answer at the end.

So here's your first clue.

Today's trivia answer.

Must hike, survive, and have some rhythm if he is to succeed in life. more trivia clues coming up and we'll be talking to Aaron Borla about the legacy of Gert Boyle from Columbia Sportswear that is next on Yonder Radio *music* Yonder Radio, Rural Conversations with National Reach.

We're going to talk about this documentary, The Last Picture Shows.

If you've noticed, theaters are disappearing around your area, especially drive-ins.

We have that covered.

Now, though, we talk to Aaron Borla, the Executive Director of the Roundhouse Foundation.

Aaron, I know you and the Foundation do a lot of work around rural Oregon, and you're involved in a lot of different kinds of projects.

So what exactly is the Roundhouse Foundation?

So the Roundhouse Foundation is a private family foundation.

We were started by my mother, who's an artist by trade, and actually funded by my grandmother, who was Gert Boyle, the CEO of Columbia Sportswear, and really focused on creative placemaking.

My mom, as an artist in Central Oregon, further away from sort of where all that capital exists in Oregon, which is that 40-mile radius around Portland-Salem area, recognized how hard it was for artists and creatives to get access to capital.

So we started the organization in 2002, really focused on supporting Central Oregon arts and cultural programs, recognized pretty quickly it's hard to be creative when your teeth hurt or you don't have access to clean water or healthy food.

And so we expanded our program areas to include environmental stewardship, education, and social service, along with our arts and culture background.

But really, we're hoping on elevating rural and remote spaces by providing a little bit of capital, some grant making, and relationships.

You are in this time and place in history where maybe governments are turning over more to philanthropic organizations.

Are you seeing that?

Is that something you're recognizing?

Oh my gosh, yes.

So I started as a staff person.

I've been a trustee for over 10 years now, right?

Our organization, my grandmother Gert passed away in 2019 and left a portion of her estate to our organization.

So we grew over 1400% in 18 months.

We grew a lot.

So our grant making went from $250,000 a year to that first year, a million dollars.

This year we'll distribute $21 million in grant making.

So when I stepped in in 2020, we had all these opportunities to work with community and really infuse capital in a way that was community driven, but also to leverage capital off of federal and state partners.

In the previous administration, we saw huge influx of capital through the Inflation Reduction Act and other opportunities where rural and remote communities were really elevated in the way to access those dollars.

But federal and state money had its limitations where philanthropic capital could either help come alongside projects or provide the match that was required.

And so I found our organization's sort of niche in that space was leveraging off of additional governmental capital.

With the current administration, all of those opportunities have gone away.

In fact, many of our partners have actually lost their capital that they worked for the last four years to gain to be able to do disaster resilience hubs, education programs, a variety of other things, which is I'm sure a story you've heard time and again over the past few years.

We do see communities turning back to philanthropy in a way that's like, how can you help us?

And the reality is philanthropic capital cannot backfill what we've lost.

Have people been able to recognize, though, that you are more necessary than ever?

I talk a lot about how do we mobilize capital in a way that will be able to put the bandaid on a head wound, for lack of better terms.

Like, how do we fix this, the immediate issue?

Like, what happens when the freezer goes out in the food bank?

You need some short-term capital to be able to fix that freezer without having to put the freezer purchase on a credit card with 19% interest.

But you can't think about anything else.

You can't think about mission and vision and root cause of poverty until you fix the freezer.

So how do we show up as a partner in philanthropy and say, let's fix what we can right now.

Let's do our very best to be a partner to you on the ground right now.

And then let's see how we can show up collectively.

What did Time Magazine see in you and Roundhouse to put you on the Time 100 philanthropy list?

Well, that, my friend, is a mystery to me still.

You know, I'm a pretty humble kid growing up in Central Oregon.

I feel like you shouldn't get a cookie for doing what you're supposed to be doing.

And only 7% of philanthropic dollars impact rural communities, according to the study that was done in 2015.

The latest study says that that's closer to 3%.

As we talk about native communities, that that statistic is significantly worse at 0.4%.

In 2022, I was selected as a fellow for the National Center for Family Philanthropy.

And through that fellowship, I thought it would be really awesome to elevate some of these programs that we work with to a national stage and try and get additional philanthropic capital to go to rural places.

So we started a podcast called Funding Rural.

And through that podcast, we've elevated different stories.

We talked to other philanthropic funders that focus on rural spaces, programs that are working really well, just to try to gain attention to those spaces.

And I think maybe that's where time saw the work that we were doing.

That feels like where we have found our niche is showing up on a national scale to really talk about how philanthropy can impact rural places.

You're telling your story, but not only that, you're telling the story of your beneficiaries to expand what you do.

Yeah, That's important, right?

It's not our story.

My grandmother is an amazing human.

My mother is an amazing human.

I feel like the people that we have hired that are helping fulfill our mission are all amazing humans.

This is not our story.

The story is of the folks on the ground doing the work, impacting communities that need that support.

And so the more we can celebrate that work and talk about successes and challenges from the ground, the more we can move things forward.

And what I love about this is that I have heard from more people, particularly our urban neighbors, where they're like, I have that, I could close my eyes.

And that's the same story that I hear in our inner city, black communities or the Latinx communities that we serve.

So we've created these divides amongst communities that the reality is we're so much more similar if we just stop arguing for a hot minute.

That sounds like some serious spirit right there.

Yeah, I think, you know, she would definitely say something probably more aggressive, um, just because that was her persona.

But one of her favorite quotes, uh, that she used to say was early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.

I don't know if that one is as relevant as it's better to give with a warm hand than a cold one.

So doing what you can while you're here, not waiting till tomorrow.

I think that's important.

Well, that's an incredible way to leave this conversation.

Erin Borla, Executive Director and Trustee of the Roundhouse Foundation.

And now that foundation, part of Time's 100 philanthropic list for 2026.

Thank you so much. thank you jared appreciate the opportunity i love all things yonder thanks for what y'all are doing and now more music from bread and the paper flowers this is if the devil which will be a single on the band's latest record dead little thing coming out october 23rd If the devil saw you She'd get on my knees Repent to the Lord above Please pardon me If the devil heard you She'd close both her eyes She'd pray you'd love her Till the day that she died You You If the devil held you She'd cling and tie the run She'd beg to Jeremy To hold you till the dawn If the devil could taste you She'd starve herself Your love would be a knife To sustain her health You You That was If the Devil by Red and the Paper Flowers.

You can learn more about the band and buy their music at redandthepaperflowers.com.

That's red with two Ds.

And now a conversation with Daily Yonder culture reporter Susanna Brown, who loves her pop culture.

And she shows it again with this conversation with Rustin Thompson, the director, writer, producer, cinematographer, and editor of a feature-length documentary, The Last Picture Shows, which examines the fate of independent small-town movie theaters across the American West.

Here's Susanna and Rustin.

In your film, The Last Picture Shows, you lay out some facts.

So I'll say them now for the listeners, which is that in 1929, there were 22,000 movie theaters in the United States, and now there are fewer than 3,000.

And for drive-ins, there were thousands of drive-ins, but now only 300 remain.

So could you talk about how your film looks at this loss of movie theaters and what angle did you take to telling this story?

Well, I started from an angle of like personal grief over the loss of art house theaters and small theaters in the country.

I come from Seattle and we used to have a vibrant art house scene in Seattle.

Many of those theaters have closed.

I also grew up in small parts of the West, mainly eastern Oregon and parts of Washington.

And I remember these theaters that have been long closed or the ones that are still open.

And I've often wondered, how do they stay in business, the ones that are open?

And I'm wondering about the ones that have closed and what that says about the town, what it says about film going in America and what kind of memories these spaces hold.

So I set out on my own to do a long road trip through the American West to find the true cinema deserts of the West.

And those are the towns where theaters are separated sometimes by 100 miles.

And I wanted to just explore that.

I wanted to get the texture and the feel of the Western landscapes.

My film is very contemplative.

It moves in a very leisurely pace.

But I wanted to capture the melancholy of these spaces.

But also, I talked to the managers and owners of the theaters that still exist, that are still open for business, and what some of their challenges are in keeping these theaters going.

These places that have really still remain kind of oasis of community for the people living in these towns.

You talk about this great journey that you went on.

I think it was you went to 10 Western states.

Yeah, 10 states.

Tell me more about that journey.

And what was it like to both go to this many independent movie theaters and also meet the people behind those spaces?

Yeah, I chose the American West because, as I said, they are the true cinema deserts, but also it was a scope I could manage.

Also, I thought of the film as a Western.

It's almost like these theater owners are kind of holding their own against the villains, which are the huge studios, the corporate studios that dictate so much of their programming.

I would sometimes just come into town knowing that there were no theaters that were still open, and I would find those empty buildings and shoot the facades.

And other times, I would come into these towns where I knew a theater was open, and I knew that they had a marquee, usually the original marquee, and I knew that it would be lit up at night against a beautiful western sky.

And I planned my route to spend the night in some of those towns so I could film the marquee.

And I would sometimes just literally kind of knock on the door and meet the owner and tell them what I'm doing and ask them if I could interview them.

And they said, sure.

I wanted to talk about the effect of having to convert digital back in like 2010, 11, 12.

I wanted to talk about the effects of COVID.

I wanted to talk about the movie studios and the demands they put on these theaters.

I wanted to talk to them about what these theaters mean to the community and also why they kept at this.

They're not doing it to get rich.

They're doing it because they feel part of the community.

Many of these people grew up in these towns and moved away and came back.

And they were providing a vital place for people to get out of their house and come downtown to see a movie in a communal space.

And they didn't want to lose that.

So they were fighting a tough fight, but a good fight.

You mentioned some of the struggles that independent theaters might face with especially big studio systems.

And I'm wondering what it is like to run a small theater in comparison to something like a massive theater chain and how those challenges might be different.

So many of the small theaters that I filmed are single screen theaters, and they have been single screen since their existence.

They work with booking agents, and these booking agents will often book the same film in 70, 75, 80 theaters in a particular region.

So that's why often you would drive through these towns and you would see the same film playing at all these theaters, sometimes for three weeks.

And you wouldn't have any other choice.

And they want theaters to play these films according to what they call a clean screen protocol.

That means you can't show anything else while that film is running.

So if you're in a small town of 5,000 people or 8,000 people, everybody who's going to see that movie is going to see it in the opening weekend.

But it still has to sit on that theater because those are the rules of the game dictated by these major studios.

They don't really care if maybe only one or two or three more people go see that film.

They're going to get that money regardless.

So you mentioned the pacing of the movie and something I really loved about it was how much time is given to these theaters and these spaces is really beautiful.

And can you talk about the decisions that went into how you put this film together and how you decided to have so much of it be set to music and using still photography?

One of the things I wanted to do was capture that feeling, the special feeling the West has of this kind of languid pace.

That was important to me to capture the texture of the West, to capture the light.

I made the entire film with available light.

The music was a very important component.

It reflects another role that I have in my life, which is as a disc jockey on a radio station in Seattle.

The show I have is called Road Songs, and I play Americana, alternative country, alternative folk music, and I reached out to independent artists who I knew had the recording rights and the publishing rights to their music, so I didn't have to deal with any corporate entities whatsoever.

I didn't have to pay licensing fees.

And that gave me the ability to let these songs breathe.

So often you hear really great music in a movie, and it ends after 15 seconds because you have to pay more for every other 30 seconds of a song that you use.

I wanted it all to feel like this organic piece that the viewer was on a road trip with me in the American West.

Why are movie theaters important and what is lost when there's no movie theater in a town?

Well, I think they're important aesthetically and they're important for cinema because a movie theater is still going to give you the best visual projection possible and the best sound possible.

And it really is true.

Going into a theater and sitting with other strangers and having to really fixate on the film and not having the distractions of your phone, you are committed to that experience.

And that's important to understand what this film is trying to convey to you.

Even if it's a bad film, you'll know it, but at least you're committed to seeing it through.

What we lose by losing these theaters is we lose the ability to cultivate the next generation of viewers.

People get out of the habit, just like people get out of the habit of so many other things when digitalization and online tools get in the way.

And in small towns, it's especially important because those venues are often used for other ways to gather too.

They're used for live music.

They're used for putting on plays.

They're used for high school graduations and wedding celebrations.

And you know that New York and Los Angeles are talking about the Odyssey.

You want to be able to talk about it too.

So the movie theater is important for you to have access to that experience.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, Rustin, thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you.

That was Daily Yonder's Susanna Brown talking with filmmaker Rustin Thompson.

His documentary, The Last Picture Shows, is touring across the country, and you can find out if it's coming to a theater near you on Rustin's website, rustintompson.com, or by searching The Last Picture Shows.

The documentary will also be streaming beginning early 2027, but come on, check it out in the theater.

And, you know, if you've got that energy to escape the life you're living want to refurbish a movie theater, they're all over the country.

Well, we're about to take another break, but first we have another trivia clue.

Here it is.

It's not so much a migration, but a mate-gration that takes place about now.

I'll not tangle you in a web of details, but let's just say some otherwise upstanding citizens are terrified of them.

The answer is coming up, but there'll be another clue, and we are going to talk to Mijan Salih Thobias and what she's doing as an oral historian on the way on Yonder Radio. guitar solo Yonder Radio, rural conversations with National Reach.

Hi, my name is Jared Iwi.

Coming up, more trivia clues.

If you've not heard a Nat Nichols story, you have an opportunity in a few minutes here as she is out on the Wind River Reservation sharing what she does.

But first, Majan Salee Thobias is a rural storyteller, an Afrofuturist oral historian.

Right now, she's hosting multi-sensory events called Story Feasts, which brings people together over great food to build relationships and talk about issues affecting rural and indigenous communities.

So looking up information on you and you are doing a lot of things.

And what's the hot majan right now?

What's the topic?

It's really all about the food and the story work that I'm doing, if I'm being honest, because everything I feel like in my cultural work world flipped upside down with the administration change.

And I think more people recognized, regardless of sort of how people vote or don't vote or whatever, that, you know, the U.S. is in a bit of a divisive moment in time.

I have learned people don't turn down a really great curated food event.

That's like the long and short of it.

This is your time.

You know, I have teenagers and you'd think they'd be on their phones a lot and they are sure, but they are leaning into records, a record player they have now.

They sit around like it's a 1970s basement.

They want real.

They want things that are real.

They want people.

I feel like this is it, right?

Is this what you're bringing?

It's the thing that has grown on its own exclusively.

It's the thing that people started asking me for in very different ways because I always held to this is an intimacy-based practice.

I'm weaving people together.

I always center events and gatherings where the community or the sector or the region or the country, wherever I'm being invited and called in to do this work, it's always a point of transformation, which is a sophisticated way of saying there's quite a bit of tension.

There might be some conflict and folks are doing their best to move through it and to gather people at the table who need to know each other either in new relationships or deepened ones.

And the fact that it's multisensory, I always bring in musicians and there's a visual artist and an herbalist.

It depends on the community that's being gathered, but it's always intentionally weaving all of those senses and inviting people in together.

It's like people just race to this.

If somebody gets invited to a Majan story feast, what is about to happen?

Well, they already know, hopefully at least one person there, but that might be only one person.

And so that I think also 2026, it can feel intimidating.

Like, what am I saying yes to?

They're all underwritten.

So you're getting a free, really great meal and also this amazing multisensory experience.

And the promise is that you will go away with at least one new colleague or friend or known now neighbor or collaborator, somebody who you are going to be in cahoots.

I'm still waiting for the marriage proposal announcement to happen as a result of one of my story feasts.

But other than that, I can say that I do deliver on the promise.

You will go away saying, you know what?

I thought that I knew everything about this issue.

I thought that I really, really stood on this firm side of it.

And I thought I knew all of the key players.

But it turns out, yeah, actually, I don't know personally my neighborhood council member.

Or I don't actually personally know the mayor.

Or I don't know the musician who's really amazing and all young people are tuning into in our city. but I never thought to invite them to the next town hall, et cetera, et cetera.

It's a strong relationship builder that's joyful.

And I happen to be like the field trip leader, basically.

Well, this has been fantastic.

Majan Salee Thobias.

Thank you, Jared.

Majan Salee Thobias.

And now I can't say it without my singing.

Singing it.

I feel so honored by that.

Majan Salee Thobias. okay that was sing it with me mijan sali thobias and that's gonna get stuck in your head which is a good thing because she does great things you can find her on instagram at mijan sali i'm gonna spell it out for you m-i-j-a-n-c-e-l-i-e get connected and learn more from her in our next segment daily yonder contributor nat nichols takes us to the wind river reservation in wyoming where tribal communities are working to restore buffalo herds.

Here's Nat.

Under the sweeping skies of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, Jason and Patty Baldez are doing critical ecological and cultural work for their tribes.

They're bringing buffalo back to their lands and people.

Though I spoke with them last summer, buffalo are currently part of a national conversation.

In early May of this year, Buffalo made national news when the Department of the Interior reversed a decision that allowed the nonprofit American Prairie to graze bison on seven parcels of Bureau of Land Management property in Montana.

Thankfully, this verdict against buffalo grazing won't affect bison on tribal lands, but it does bring up important questions about the cultural and ecological role of buffalo in general.

And no one is more qualified to speak to that than Jason and Patty Baldez.

Jason is the manager for the Eastern Shoshone Tribe's buffalo herd and the representative on the Intertribal Buffalo Council.

He's also an ecologist, and part of his work is carefully observing the changes the buffalo bring to their environment.

Buffalo had been here for thousands and thousands of years, and our people lived alongside them for thousands and thousands of years. until westward European expansion.

And about 150 years ago, the life ways of the people who were here changed drastically.

But we've always been buffalo people.

We've come from people who depended upon this animal, as well as the sustenance that this ecosystem provides.

Patty is Northern Arapaho and Northern Paiute of the Big Pine Owens Valley Tribe.

She's the executive director for the Wind River Native Advocacy Center, which, in her words, focuses on getting people to participate in their lives.

The more I'm around the buffalo, I realize they just make friends with so many others, beings, really for the betterment of us if we pay attention and accept them.

Like the buffalo berry bush, I feel like, who else would those berries be for if it weren't for us, for the buffalo to go under there and make space for us to harvest them?

And also just the way they grow with all these spines that the birds actually leave them quite alone for us.

On the day I visited Patty and Jason, there had been a harvest, and the cultural center was filled with people tanning the hide and processing the meat.

This is all part of Jason and Patty's work to re-matriarch buffalo to their tribes and to the land.

Today, 230 buffalo make up the Shoshone and Arapaho herds, and they have been reclassified to be wildlife instead of livestock on the Wind River Reservation, giving them the same protection rights as other native wildlife.

But when this reservation was opened up for homesteading, we became trespassers on our own reservation.

And so our people don't remember coming here to fish or coming here to hunt or I'm coming here to gather.

And so that relationship with the land was severed when the reservation was opened up.

By reacquiring these lands, the goal would be that these lands go back to ownership and jurisdiction of the tribes and open to our tribal members to interact with this place again.

Jason's thesis research was on historic buffalo wallows and plant biodiversity.

But when he was conducting his research, there weren't any buffalo making new wallows.

Through their re-matriarching work, they've been able to see how deeply intrinsic buffalo are to the entire ecosystem, including the people native to this land.

Buffalo are described as being great disruptors, like wildfire in the ways they interact with their environment.

Their long hair helps spread seeds and their hooves are sharper than those of cattle, breaking up the prairie and aerating the soil.

And knowing that everything that is disrupted or agitated is actually a really positive thing for it to be itself and shine.

Everything's a little more greener.

Instead of abundance, we say scads a lot around here.

And there's just scads of things.

There's more of ourselves even.

It's not just the plants and animals, but us as animals and even landscape, finding that in ourselves to be connected to and grow.

It's quite remarkable how simple it is to pay attention to one animal just, as Jason says, how they walk and where they walk and what they choose to do is ultimately giving us gifts after gift.

One of those gifts is the sustenance they provide the Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone people.

The meat being processed back at the community center will be distributed to the tribes, helping to restore a balance with land, history, and community.

Buffalo eat the foods that in turn help to heal us.

They have the highest omegas, minerals, vitamins, proteins, lowest fat and cholesterol than almost any other meat.

Buffalo was systematically exterminated, nearly eradicated altogether, and the result was that they starved us into submission.

That's past.

And now as we think about land use, we think about our own health, we think about our own well-being.

Buffalo is such a central and important part of our healing, not just metaphysically, but physically.

By being able to provide buffalo to our community is an act of food sovereignty.

It's really valuable for me to watch folks kind of be stunned almost by the fact that they have such a gift in their life as buffalo.

I mean, I think it's a real good reminder of how lucky we are to be born who we are.

The music you're hearing is a ceremonial music from the Drum Eagle Society, played for the release of the buffalo onto the prairie in 2022 and recorded by County 10.

The bison sound was recorded by Sean Burson for the National Park Service.

I'm Nat Nichols with Yonder Radio.

You can find more of Nat Nichols reporting at dailyyonder.com.

Our hour together is almost over, but we still have one important bit of unfinished business to attend to.

And yes, I'm talking about trivia.

Here's your third clue.

Before sealing the deal, so to speak, one of the two must tap out a little rhythm to impress the other.

If he fails, he dies.

What is the answer to this most romantic beast?

Tarantulas.

Today's answer is brought to you by the mere presence of the forthcoming Tarantula Fest in La Junta, Colorado.

No, they're not an actual sponsor, but what they celebrate is a true inspiration.

The long walk that male tarantulas take to meet a female and continue the species.

Once the male finds the female's dwelling, he must tap out an enticing drumbeat with his pedipalps.

If she doesn't like the rhythm, she'll kill him.

If she does like it and commences engagement, the male must use his tiny four-leg hooks to hold back her fangs, or she'll kill him.

After mating, the female recedes into her cave and begins the several-week process of nurturing the young from egg sac to toddling.

The male wanders into the prairie and dies.

Those are just a few of the scintillating details of the mate-gration of the male tarantula.

They're on the move through southeastern Colorado right now, and we'll visit Tarantula Fest to bring back that full story.

Look for more on dailyyonder.com slash yonder radio, and listen to our trek right here on Yonder Radio.

I don't want to be as scared of spiders as I am, but I am.

So with a celebratory shudder from me to you, thank you so much for being with us here today, tarantulas and all, Yonder Radio.

Georgie, Yonder Radio, Rural Conversations with National Reach.