abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast

All-American Ruins
  • 4.7 (132)
  • Places & Travel
  • Updated Biweekly

abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast guides listeners through immersive audio fantasies, recreating host Blake Pfeil’s experiences exploring abandoned spaces across the United States and around the world. Along the way, the show asks critical questions about American history and culture, community, economics, the environment, and mental health while encouraging folks to activate their imaginations as a tool for healing. Winner: Ambie Award (2025 - Best DIY Podcast), Signal Awards (2024 & 2025 - Best Experimental Podcast), CineHealth Media Festival (Best Podcast), Sydney Web Fest Michael Ajakwe Award for Innovation (2025) Nominee: UK Press Gazette Future of Media Awards (2024, 2025 - Regional Podcast of the Year), Ambie Awards (2024 - Best Indie Podcast) To learn more, visit www.allamericanruins.com.

  1. Sep 3

    Urbex Privilege with callie mackenzie

    Who gets to wander freely—and who gets to decide where we belong? Blake sits down with activist, multidisciplinary artist, and social change worker callie mackenzie for a candid, exploratory conversation about race, ruins, trespassing, land ownership, and the privilege hiding inside the practice of urban exploration. callie mackenzie (she/they) is a social change worker living at the intersections of art, music, and social justice. For her complete bio, visit calliemackenzie.com. Songs by callie on today’s episode include: “roller coaster” from the album “what that heart do” (2025) “kerfuffle” from the album “what that heart do” (2025) “i can’t talk about freedom” from the album “the wreckoning” (2022) callie’s complete music library can be accessed at: https://calliemackenzie.bandcamp.com  bell hooks interview audio courtesy of Othering and Belonging Institute “Kwanzaa: A Celebration” courtesy of WXXI (Rochester, NY) “Theatre Acknowledgement” courtesy of CBC 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024, 2025, 2026) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  2. Aug 20

    Conspiracy Theory (Green Mountain Race Track - Pownal, VT)

    While exploring the ruins of the Green Mountain Race Track in Pownal, Vermont, Blake meets Dina (and her silent husband Mike), self-proclaimed conspiracy theorists who believe the world’s buildings weren’t built by us at all but inherited from a lost Tartarian Empire — what Bloomberg News once dubbed the “QAnon of Architecture.” As Blake tries to follow Dina's train-of-thought, he realizes that, really, there's a small conspiracy theorist living inside each and every one of us. Dina is recreated by Terri Weagant. 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024, 2025, 2026) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Conspiracy Theory (Green Mountain Race Track - Pownal, VT)

  3. Aug 6

    Stev and a Buzzard in the Ballroom (Colonial Terrace - Peekskill, NY)

    Guest host Stev Hull-Allen (Blake's brother in a past life) guides listeners through the abandoned Colonial Terrace, a crumbling catering hall where every room seems to hold onto a different version of the past. As his imagination weaves in and out of oral histories, textbook memories, and invented folklore, Stev explores what abandoned buildings can reveal about timing, healing, and the strange feeling that some friendships don't begin so much as they find their way back to us. *** 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024, 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024, 2025, 2026) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Stev and a Buzzard in the Ballroom (Colonial Terrace - Peekskill, NY)

  4. Jul 23

    Lurana, You Were on My Mind (Nopeming Sanitorium - Duluth, MN)

    Inside the abandoned Nopeming Sanatorium, Blake talks to his grandmother (Grammie), Lurana — whose dementia carried her away before she passed. Like an insistent phantom moving through its rooms and hallways, signals reverberating inside the walls of Nopeming’s medical past radiate against Blake’s cherished memories, turning the adventure into a ghostly conversation across time about forgiveness, sobriety, and the confounding kinship between grief and love. 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024, 2025, & 2026) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Lurana, You Were on My Mind (Nopeming Sanitorium - Duluth, MN)

  5. Jul 9

    I Remember You Well (Taney Motel - Branson, MO)

    Blake finds sanctuary on the grounds of the abandoned Taney Motel in Branson, Missouri — a refuge tucked inside a world of risk. Wandering around the vacant property, Blake reflects on growing up queer, the quiet negotiations of safety, and the fragile, hallowed spaces that marginalized communities create when the outside world doesn't have room for them. 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024 & 2025) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    I Remember You Well (Taney Motel - Branson, MO)

  6. Jun 25

    Dylan & Blake on a Friendship, Cemented (A.J. Snyder Cement - Rosendale, NY)

    In the ruins of an upstate New York cement factory, Blake and New York Times best-selling author Dylan Thuras wander toward a mysterious “document storage house,” discovering they’re not just exploring a place but each other’s relationship to creativity and the myths we build to live inside it. Among empty boxes, industrial ghosts, and imagined histories, the duo considers what it means to construct something out of nothing, outgrow it, and still carry its faded transmissions — like a friendship — once it becomes memory. 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024 & 2025) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Dylan & Blake on a Friendship, Cemented (A.J. Snyder Cement - Rosendale, NY)

  7. Jun 11

    Fading Transmissions from a Gas Station Altar of Shoes (Wonderland Ranch/Mojave Shoe Station - Mojave, CA)

    Deep in the Mojave Desert, a defunct gas station has become a roadside altar of shoes, each pair carrying stories and secrets that transform a place for transients into a monument for return pilgrimages. Standing among the relics and artifacts of lives past, Blake considers eulogies, elegies, and effigies — and what it means to be remembered by strangers. Note: Episodes 1–4 of Season 4 form “Fading Transmissions from a Republic of Ruins,” a four-part series embedded within the season. 🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024 & 2025) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Fading Transmissions from a Gas Station Altar of Shoes (Wonderland Ranch/Mojave Shoe Station - Mojave, CA)

  8. May 28

    Fading Transmissions: Glenrio Was Here (Glenrio, NM)

    On the border of Texas and New Mexico, a town divided by a state line faces an identity crisis — and demands to be remembered. Wandering the empty fields and crumbling pavement of what, at one time, was a glamorous rest-stop town, Blake imagines a conversation with Glenrio itself as it bears witness to what once was, and wonders whether a forgotten ghost town might outlast us all. Note: Episodes 1–4 of Season 4 form “Fading Transmissions from a Republic of Ruins,” a four-part series embedded within the season.🏆 The Ambies — Winner, Best DIY Podcast (2025) 📡 The Signal Awards — Best Experimental Podcast (2024 & 2025) 📰  Press Gazette Future of Media Awards — Nominee (2024 & 2025) *** 🎧 Note: For the best immersive experience, find a quiet place and wear headphones when listening to “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” 🎧 *** Further Exploration 📜 Transcripts: https://abandonedpod.com 🗺️ Continue exploring: http://www.allamericanruins.com ✉️ Advertising inquiries: advertising@airwavemedia.com ℹ️ Learn more about your ad choices: megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    Fading Transmissions: Glenrio Was Here (Glenrio, NM)
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4.7
out of 5
132 Ratings

About

abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast guides listeners through immersive audio fantasies, recreating host Blake Pfeil’s experiences exploring abandoned spaces across the United States and around the world. Along the way, the show asks critical questions about American history and culture, community, economics, the environment, and mental health while encouraging folks to activate their imaginations as a tool for healing. Winner: Ambie Award (2025 - Best DIY Podcast), Signal Awards (2024 & 2025 - Best Experimental Podcast), CineHealth Media Festival (Best Podcast), Sydney Web Fest Michael Ajakwe Award for Innovation (2025) Nominee: UK Press Gazette Future of Media Awards (2024, 2025 - Regional Podcast of the Year), Ambie Awards (2024 - Best Indie Podcast) To learn more, visit www.allamericanruins.com.

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