#193 Building the Rodeo Archive: Where Beyond the Chutes Is Headed

In this special episode of Beyond the Chutes, as presented by ParaSight System, Doug Simcox sits down on the back porch in Taylorsville, Kentucky, with his son Ben Simcox for a candid conversation about where the show is headed and why the release schedule is slowing down.This episode pulls back the curtain on the growing Beyond the Chutes archive project: collecting rodeo artifacts, digitizing Tom Woods’ historic rodeo photos and slides, scanning old Rodeo News magazines, preserving podcast transcripts, and building a searchable wiki-style database to connect the people, places, events, stories, and forgotten pieces of rodeo history.Doug and Ben talk about the three-prong approach to preserving rodeo history: gather the physical artifacts, digitize and modernize them, and organize them into a working historical archive. They also discuss how this archive can support future shows, books, documentaries, articles, and deeper storytelling around the IRA, IPRA, Longhorn Rodeo, World’s Toughest Rodeo, and the broader Western lifestyle.This is a call to the rodeo community: if you have old photos, programs, magazines, VHS tapes, stories, or memories from the rodeo road, Beyond the Chutes wants to hear from you. These stories matter. This history matters. And now is the time to preserve it.