The Blood in Our Soil: A Geographical History of Violence in America

Tomi Castle-White, PhD
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Documentary
  • Updated Daily

The Blood in Our Soil is a narrative nonfiction podcast about how violence is built into the places we live. Hosted by Tomi Castle-White, PhD, each episode begins with an American landscape and follows the histories written into it: from forced removal and racial violence to environmental destruction, economic extraction, policing, and the quieter systems that determine who may move, belong, and thrive. Moving between fieldwork, archives, public memory, and personal observation, the series asks not only what happened in a place, but how that violence continues to shape the present.

Episodes

  1. Aug 26 ·  Bonus

    Special Episode: Dolly Parton, or The Last Great American Consensus

    The Blood in Our Soil usually examines what America has buried. In this special episode, it asks what America can still recognize. Americans argue over the flag, the Constitution, the Statue of Liberty, every holiday, and even the meaning of fundamental rights. But we agreed on Dolly Parton. Her death leaves more than an absence. It leaves evidence that we can still recognize strength without cruelty, faith without exclusion, wealth without indifference, and generosity without self-promotion. Her voice, humor, music, and humanity crossed genre, politics, religion, class, and region in a way few American symbols ever have. If we know what the best of America looked like in Dolly, why do we treat those values as admirable in an entertainer and optional in a nation? For once, America agrees. And that is something.

    Special Episode: Dolly Parton, or The Last Great American Consensus

  2. Aug 22

    The Blood in Our Soil, Episode 3: The Florida Everglades

    The Everglades has been treated as a swamp to drain, a wilderness to conquer, and a convenient place to discard whatever Florida wanted out of sight. In this episode, I trace how politicians, developers, sugar corporations, and the state reshaped South Florida by controlling its water, extracting its value, and pushing the human and environmental costs into the sawgrass. From Napoleon Bonaparte Broward’s campaign to drain the Everglades to agricultural pollution, invasive animals, and bodies hidden in its vast interior, this is a story about the violence embedded in attempts to dominate a landscape that has never fully surrendered. Visit thebloodinoursoil.com for episode notes, sources, and more.

  3. Aug 10

    Episode 2: Old Town, San Diego

    Old Town San Diego is often presented as the birthplace of California: a landscape of preserved adobes, mission bells, restaurants, souvenirs, and carefully curated nostalgia. But beneath its streets lies another history: Indigenous displacement, colonial violence, public execution, and human remains absorbed into the modern city. In Episode 2, anthropologist Tomi Castle-White explores the stories Old Town preserves, the histories it buries, and the unsettling ways the past remains present beneath our feet. This episode contains discussions of violence, death, and human remains.

  4. Aug 9

    Episode 1: Lawrence County, Tennessee

    Down a dirt road south of Nebo, two unadorned stones and a murder legend become an entrance into older layers of removal, slavery, war, racial violence, myth, and the quiet work of forgetting. Moving between the road, the archives, David Crockett State Park, and Lawrenceburg’s public memory, this episode asks how a place can tell one story of violence so insistently that older and more organized forms of violence become easier to overlook. Content note: This episode discusses forced removal, enslavement, racial violence, murder, lynching, and the deaths of children. Episode transcript:  https://thebloodinoursoil.com/episodes/lawrence-county-tennessee

  • 4 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

About

The Blood in Our Soil is a narrative nonfiction podcast about how violence is built into the places we live. Hosted by Tomi Castle-White, PhD, each episode begins with an American landscape and follows the histories written into it: from forced removal and racial violence to environmental destruction, economic extraction, policing, and the quieter systems that determine who may move, belong, and thrive. Moving between fieldwork, archives, public memory, and personal observation, the series asks not only what happened in a place, but how that violence continues to shape the present.

Information