This week's guests are the folks who created a beautiful new book, A History of Montana in 101 Places, Christine Brown, Kirby Lambert and Martha Kohl. This book is a production of the Montana Historical Society and is dedicated to the late Ellen Baumler, a beloved member of the author team.In this conversation, the guests discuss the beginnings of the book, which included gleaning a lot of information from creating interpretive signs and writing placards for the National Register of Historic Places. Guests discuss this new book as a natural progression from their first, A History of Montana in 101 Objects, and how difficult it was to nail down just 101 places.

This week’s guest is Sean Patrick Higgins, founder and CEO of Story House, a world-class film production facility located in Missoula, Montana. Sean and his colleagues at Story House are making the case that Montana should be considered a premiere location for all aspects of film production.In this conversation, Sean explains Story House’s goals of addressing housing affordability, economic development and film production in Missoula. He talks about the “bloat” in the film industry and the opportunity that Story House has to address that excess in a more cost-effective way. Sean also gets into the Montana Media Act, passed after the 2023 legislative session, which seeks to support Montana-based filmmakers and directors.

This week Justin is talking with Megan Torgerson, creator and host of Reframing Rural, a podcast celebrating rural people and their stories. Megan and her team recently launched their fourth season, Succession Stories.In this conversation, Megan talks about growing up on her family’s ranch and how she came upon the idea of Reframing Rural. Megan talks about the difference between a “living” and a “dying” town and Justin asks what is it about succession that has everyone talking.