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Reframing Rural: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Megan Torgerson
Reframing Rural is the award-winning documentary podcast founded in 2019 by writer, Montanan and farmer's daughter, Megan Torgerson. Reframing Rural does the much needed work of challenging stigmas about rural places by introducing listeners to working people, history and culture that don't always get the spotlight. Season 1 transports listeners to Torgerson's rural homeplace, a tight-knit agricultural community on the plains of far Northeast Montana. Season 2 sows hope in the future of the rural West and Heartland through interviews with rural activists, academics, artists and entrepreneurs. Season 3 combines narrative episodes with interviews to probe the status quo of agriculture, explore farm stress and the need for rural mental health care, the familial challenges of farm and ranch succession planning, the Indigenous roots of regenerative agriculture and the threats of rural gentrification and cultural extraction. Season 4 shares the stories of five Montana farm and ranch families.
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- Oct 1, 20261h 0m
Bonus | Live from Old Salt Festival with Amber Smith and Jaimie Stoltzfus
Sitting in the shade at the 4th annual Old Salt Festival in Helmville, Montana, Megan Torgerson interviews Amber Smith and Jaimie Stoltzfus about their journeys into ranching and motherhood. Amber and Jaimie are both first generation ranchers who have partnered in a cattle, grazing and meat enterprise that is featured in the short documentary film, Mother Range, which Megan produced along with Zach Altman and Anthony Pavkovich. If you enjoy this conversation with Amber and Jaimie, you can learn more about them and their innovative partnership by watching Mother Range.
- Jul 28, 202638 min
Obituary for a Small Town
This episode about Megan Torgerson's hometown - Dagmar, Montana - originally aired on The Obit Project podcast and on Montana Public Radio, summer 2026. The audio obituary for Dagmar (in-town population: 10), asks how do you know when a town is dead? Megan, a local historian, post master, church goers and farmers and ranchers try to answer the question.
- Jul 1, 202633 min
Bonus | Nature Breaking: America is Losing its Grasslands – Why it Matters
In collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund's Nature Breaking podcast, we're bringing you a conversation between Nature Breaking host Seth Larson and vice president of WWF's Great Plains program, Martha Kaufmann. In this episode, Megan reflects on her personal connection to the Northern Great Plains, before Martha and Seth explore why the grasslands are overlooked, why people should care about them, the state of the grasslands today and the work World Wildlife Fund is doing to keep grassland ecosystems intact.
- May 26, 202658 min
Succession Stories | Bonus | Country Musician Sterling Drake Tackles the Rural Mental Health Conversation
Sterling Drake is a musician from Philipsburg, Montana, who is using his platform to talk about mental health in agricultural communities. In effort to destigmatize the topic and connect people to resources, Sterling is talking about it in his lyrics and on the stage. Sterling and Megan met up in May 2025 at Live from the Divide in Bozeman. In addition to the impact he's making on the rural mental health crisis, the conversation ranges from how he simultaneously built a career as a rancher and a musician, to the role of folk music in helping us understand our history and the sonic identity of Montana he is helping to create.
- Apr 28, 20261h 1m
Bonus | A New Angle: "Megan Torgerson is reframing rural" & "Rural vs. Urban with Trevor Brown"
We've teamed up with A New Angle podcast to bring you two back to back episodes from their show hosted by Justin Angle a professor at the University of Montana College of Business. The first episode features an interview with Megan Torgerson on Reframing Rural's origin story, our latest season, "Succession Stories," and "Mother Range," a short documentary film Megan co-produced that premiered at Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in February. The second episode from A New Angle features Trevor Brown, a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Economy and Society at Johns Hopkins University who co-authored the book, "Rural Versus Urban: The Growing Divide that Threatens Democracy."
- Mar 31, 202657 min
The Tilt of the World with Joe Wilkins, Author of "The Entire Sky"
In this companion episode to our "Succession" season, Megan sits down with author Joe Wilkins to explore the pressures facing rural communities and how fiction can help us understand them more deeply. Joe's award-winning novel "The Entire Sky" follows a ranch family in eastern Montana navigating grief, generational change and the uncertain future of their land. Through these fictional characters, the novel offers a different way to think about succession and what happens when transition is delayed or avoided. Like Megan, Joe also grew up in rural Montana and has since chosen a home elsewhere, but his work is still rooted in the eastern Montana landscape – his "primal place" – where he witnessed how land shapes people and families over time. Together, Megan and Joe also discuss the "tilt," or forces pressing down on agricultural communities today, and the push-and-pull between leaving and returning home.
- Feb 25, 20261h 20m
Succession Stories | Bonus | Our Season Partner, Winnett ACES
Megan shares an update from Winnett ACES since her first reporting trip to Winnett, three years ago, then re-airs the season three episode "Winnett ACES: Strengthening Community & Keeping Ranchers on Working Lands." In this story, she visits Winnett, the only town in the least populated county in Montana, where out-of-state absentee land ownership poses a threat to local ranchers. To keep people on the land, preserve the region's intact prairie ecosystem and build a vibrant future for Winnett's main street, the rancher-led nonprofit Winter ACES is furthering economic and environmental sustainability for Petroleum Co. through grassroots community organizing.
- Jan 23, 202654 min
Succession Stories | Bonus | Megan's Family Succession Story
From the archives, we bring you Megan's family succession story "Farm Succession in Northeast Montana," the season three story of Megan's dad Russ Torgerson's retirement. In this episode, Megan shares the intimate journey of her family's farm succession, giving listeners an inside look into the emotional, legal and financial factors at play with succession planning. Curious what the next generation of farmers are facing, Megan also interviews the Jorgensens, another farm family from Northeast Montana who is transferring the management of their farm to their son Tanner.
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About Reframing Rural
Reframing Rural is the award-winning documentary podcast founded in 2019 by writer, Montanan and farmer's daughter, Megan Torgerson. Reframing Rural does the much needed work of challenging stigmas about rural places by introducing listeners to working people, history and culture that don't always get the spotlight. Season 1 transports listeners to Torgerson's rural homeplace, a tight-knit agricultural community on the plains of far Northeast Montana. Season 2 sows hope in the future of the rural West and Heartland through interviews with rural activists, academics, artists and entrepreneurs. Season 3 combines narrative episodes with interviews to probe the status quo of agriculture, explore farm stress and the need for rural mental health care, the familial challenges of farm and ranch succession planning, the Indigenous roots of regenerative agriculture and the threats of rural gentrification and cultural extraction. Season 4 shares the stories of five Montana farm and ranch families.
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