PODCAST
Stephen's People
by Stephen P. Williams
Great writing about people, aging, and finding joy in the future, including my dystopian utopian tale, The Lost City of Desire. www.stephenspeople.com
Episodes
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Walk with Me Through the Nez Perce Massacre Grounds
Outside of tiny Winifred, Montana the land got wild. The area is called The Missouri Breaks, because the hills seem to “break” apart into steep, deeply eroded badlands, canyons, and coulees along the Missouri River. In 1805, Lewis and Clark passed through here, referring to the unsettled land as...
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Greenification
As you watch the beautiful water flow into the desert, please accept my apologies for having been silent since November. I had some major distractions, though I think about this newsletter every day. This is quite unfair to those of you who are paid subscribers — I will be happy to move you to a...
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Tahquamenon
I’m developing a 70-minute one person show about how my roadtrip through the American pandemic influenced my relationship with my self, my kids and my country. That sounds pretty serious, but it’s actually pretty funny at times. I first performed an excerpt from this show on stage last year — the...
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How can one lovely cemetery in Yuma tell the story of two Americas? Naturally.
Yuma, Arizona was the destination for the train in the 1957 western movie, “The 3:10 to Yuma.” A couple of years after the fall of the Berlin Wall I spent a month wandering around Cuba, which was suffering great deprivation after the death of their sugar daddy, the Soviet Union. I saw zero other...
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Alone in their isolated Hogan, do they fear the bombers flying overhead? Yes, but they also advocate for world peace.
This is one of the worst audio engineering failures of my entire trip. It was windy up in the mountains, and I’m thankful for the subtitles — otherwise, you wouldn’t understand a word. The chapter, below, also makes things clear. Sachie doesn’t say much in this video, which was her choice. When…
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Why is there a man dressed as Uncle Sam at every American holiday celebration?
Driving outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico on the 4th of July, 2020, I came across Uncle Sam on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. He offered me candy from his bucket and we had a little conversation about celebrations, costumes and the life well-lived (without boredom or regret). This…
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What's the deal with men and masks in Taos? Kent Lewis on the pandemic response in his magical home. June, 2020
I landed in a magical little hotel in Taos called La Posada de Taos, where I decided to rest and recuperate after all my driving through panicked territories. One afternoon I had a fascinating conversation with Kent Lewis, who owns the hotel with his family. A dapper dresser, Lewis offers an...
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The secret to having a cloud forest baby and how to put a name curse on that kid
This ten minute video is of my first stage performance since sixth grade, when I played Black Bart in a theater production at my grade school. I’ve given readings and lectures in front of hundreds of people, but I’ve never gotten up and performed like this, in a theater at the Barrow Group in...
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It's the Wagyu life -- tromping through the dust and having some cowboy stick a syringe up your heiniey. Later, your calf turns into a $200 steak.
Halfway between Albuquerque and Santa Fe I stopped at Lone Mountain Wagyu ranch to see how the finest beef is made. These cattle were American Wagyu, and just like the rest of us USA mongrels, they were a combination of various breeds. The true Wagyus, in Japan, are pampered animals with…
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In Taos, I assumed the guy painting a sculpture at the laundromat was local, but he was from the Bronx. He and his partner gave me the lowdown on masks, handshakes and art in viral New Mexico
Northern New Mexico has remained in my heart since I lived in Santa Fe in the early 1980s, and visiting Taos during the pandemic was restorative. The virus was on the rise, and New Mexico was requiring visitors to quarantine. Outside the laundromat where I was washing my traveler’s clothes, a man...
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He had a voice, and I listened to him, though I wouldn't shake his hand on that road in rural New Mexico
I first saw this guy riding his bike in the middle of nowhere, outside of Santa Rosa, New Mexico. It was nearly 100 degrees out and he was peddling hard uphill, beard blowing in the wind. I drove another 25 miles to my hotel. In the morning, I ran into him as I left the parking lot. He was a...
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I had constant interior conversations about the ethics of my virus road trip -- in retrospect, my worries seem quaint
As I traveled through Kansas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, the pandemic effects that I’d seen in New York earlier in the spring started to pop up out west. As I was getting ready to cross from El Paso into New Mexico, I faced an imminent travel ban for everyone who had been in high risk states — I’d...
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Chumba Has Saved 7 Lives — but Risks His Own Every Day Navigating the Highway in a Vintage Wheelchair”
It’s late June, 2020 and I’m slowly making my way to El Paso. Walking to my truck after lunch in tiny Van Horn, Texas, I spot a man pushing himself backwards in his wheelchair across a 4-lane road. He’s carrying an 8-foot staff and his little dog shadows him — literally staying in the…
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Alone on the road, I found pleasure in some strange places.
On my trip I wore t-shirts, shorts and summer jeans, jamming my dirty clothes into a stuff-sack at the end of the day. Every week I’d need to do a load, so I kept a Ziploc bag of quarters in my glove box. If I weren’t staying in a hotel that had machines, I’d head out to the local laundromat....
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Every artist wants to be known
Everyone knows about Marfa,Texas, of course. Filled with famous artworks and people from the coasts driving vintage turquoise pickups. It’s a wonderful place, though a bit unreal at the edges. I drove an hour from there to Ft. Davis, population 2,000 and shrinking. Not far from the stately, and...
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Isolation, fear and connection on the southern border, June, 2020
In the morning I headed down dirt roads through a desolate canyon towards the Mexican border. It was 114 degrees at the border, bright, dusty and bleak, and I didn’t encounter anyone besides a store clerk who sold me cold Topo Chico mineral water and some spicy peanuts. Driving along the border...
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John Quiñones lets his generous spirit out, and we can all feel better for it.
I stopped in Dallas to visit an old friend who I very rarely see. John Quiñones hosts a popular TV show called “What Would You Do,” that puts people in situations where they can choose to be helpful, open, honest and fair —- or not. And even the people who choose “not” are treated with respect. I...
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Everything's abandoned in West Texas, so let the cowboy cumbia roll
I’d always wanted to go to Marfa, the locus for art in West Texas, and a pandemic visit seemed like a good idea — there wouldn’t be any other tourists. I set up my tent for a few days at a psychedelic cowboy glampground named El Cosmico, at the edge of town. I chose a spot under a scrubby oak not...
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Nothing makes a feller ponder like a train rolling through a Tulsa sunset
Walking through a vibrant section of Tulsa, I stopped to listen to three Indigenous and one Black musician play traditional Pawnee music on the sidewalk. The group was led by a Pawnee-Seminole rhythmist named Cenc. His hair was cut very close to the scalp around a tight man bun. A small crowd...
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He's a wise Republican who serves great food. His strong opinions got him kicked off Tulsa talk radio
Everlands, by Stephen's People is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Ty Walker has a lot on his mind I bumped into a serious looking man as he exited the Black barber shop on Black Wall Street. His name was Ty...
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Meet Stormy, a 17-year-old writer braving Tulsa alone
(The video is 8 minutes long. I apologize for the poor sound quality. I was still learning how to make videos.) Everlands, by Stephen's People is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Stormy was one of the most...
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You dropped a bomb on me, baby. A tour of Tulsa's Greenwood Massacre site, a century after the destruction
In the 13 minute video above I narrate a tour of the site of the Greenwood Massacre that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma in June, 1921. Nothing is left of the prosperous black community that existed before angry white Tulsans fired machine guns and dropped kerosene bombs on the local citizens, in...
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Stay away from our strawberry pie
In New York, where the streets were empty and the hospitals were full of covid patients, I had an alarming sense of the pandemic. But on TV, people were partying in Boise and running track meets in Texas. I wanted to square what was happening in the rest of the country during this strange time of...
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The luxury riot of 2020
On June 1, just days before I was to fly to Wichita to begin my trip, I took an early morning walk across lower Manhattan, taking in the silent and empty landscapes. In SoHo, which was almost completely empty, I came across a gaggle of police arresting a couple of kids on Wooster Street, which…
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Scenes from an empty New York City
After I got over my acute bout of covid, in March, 2020, I began wandering Manhattan on foot, bike and electric scooter. At the time there were tons of ride-share scooters for rent with an app, and driving up the avenues with hardly any cars or trucks on the road was such a rare pleasure. Often,...
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Stephen's People
Ego and aging Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash My day was filled with interesting work. A good day. Yet I let my aging (raging) ego get the better of me. I spent several hours on a video call with my partner at Evertunes Studio (a fancy name for just the two of us, working over Zoom), as…
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Pulling a polar bear tooth
Click the arrow above to enjoy this three minute story from Age: The Next Everything. I’ll be sending out bonus content once a week, in addition to my regular newsletter. I was inspired today by a woman who once came face to face with an apex predator. Get full access to Everlands, by Stephen's...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Great writing about people, aging, and finding joy in the future, including my dystopian utopian tale, The Lost City of Desire.
www.stephenspeople.com
HOSTED BY
Stephen P. Williams
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Stephen's People have?
Stephen's People currently has 27 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Stephen's People about?
Great writing about people, aging, and finding joy in the future, including my dystopian utopian tale, The Lost City of Desire. www.stephenspeople.com
How often does Stephen's People release new episodes?
Stephen's People has 27 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Stephen's People?
You can listen to Stephen's People on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Stephen's People?
Stephen's People is created and hosted by Stephen P. Williams.
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