Bringing some ideas they have been thinking on for years, Eli and Jeremy connect with folks from their childhood for a sober look back at their hometowns and how they shaped their respective views of the world.
 
Chapter 1: 16 Tons
During the cold war, people in Jeremy’s hometown bragged that the coal-fired power plant there was so crucial to the power grid in the eastern seaboard that it put it high up on the Russian’s nuke list.  In 2023, the Homer City generating station was finally decommissioned (and hastily demolished in 2025…)  It turns out that his childhood best friend., Eric Barker, broke the story. Jeremy and Eric chat about growing up in a fading coal mining town, and the ways that shaped their lives.
 
Chapter 2: Packing
Rural racism, cultural awakenings, and meat packing plants. Eli takes a noir’ish trip down memory lane to his hometown of Britt, IA to reminisce with his old friend, Abel Ortiz. They realize that they had different experiences of their community but both shared the draw of new cultural experiences in bigger cities. Guest Abel Ortiz relates the story of his parent’s arrival in the rural Midwest from Mexico and how they worked hard to make a sustainable life for their family.
 
Atoms smasher Picture online
Wikipedia page on power plant
Current plan for the redevelopment of the former power plant site.

There are very few places on earth like the Ace Hardware on Willy Street.  In a sense, it is the embodiment of an American ideal that is quite hard to find in our modern corporatemaxxed world. Jeremy takes the lead on this episode, and gives us a look at things from a view of the backroom in an interview with one of the store’s co-owners, Tom Shepherd.  As Jeremy discovers, the store is on the cusp of a change as new leadership is moving into place, setting the store up for its third generation of ownership.
 
Atwoodland Productions

Recording began for this episode more than two years ago when Eli and Jeremy were pulled to create something new after a several year hiatus from their first podcast collaboration ExtraTextual. From COVID, to the Trump elections, the growth of AI, the increasingly chaotic climate, gun violence, and the ever changing legacy media and social media landscape… so many things make it hard to even define this moment in time. To Eli and Jeremy, it feels like a time of chaos (or is it just their own mid-life crises), and they are trying to bring some meaning and order to that chaos. To do that, they are starting small, connecting to things in their neighborhood, and having a look at how these big things can be made more manageable when you take a different perspective and start with what is Just Around the Corner. 
 
Google Maps to Hippo Park
 
Gretta Wing Miller’s Movies on Sid Boyum:
Sid Boyum Sculpture Project
Sid Boyum: Life is an Illusion
 
Atwoodland Productions