Writer Soni Brown chronicles her journey from Jamaica to New York to Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Now, she wonders if she feels like Las Vegas is really her home and reflects on the tradition of Black people who sought liberation through migration. BMI Shearing Fellow Natasha Tarpley grapples with the idea that violence and armed self-defense are a ne…

Writers Mary South and Alexandra Kleeman discuss writing climate crises in works of fiction in the face of rising temperatures and unprecedented ecological disasters. Kleeman’s latest novel, Something New Under the Sun, takes us to a drought-ravaged California, where water is so scarce that a substitute is manufactured and sold as WAT-R. In the mid…

Food activists Jocelyn Jackson and Cheyenne Kyle discuss food as a means of liberation, keeping history, and showing community love. Artist and activist Carolina Caycedo discusses her project “Be Dammed” — a geochoreagraphy that chronicles the movement of rivers, how they become blocked by dams, and the negative effects dams have on communities who…

To be patient is to be able to endure hardship, “to bear pains or trials calmly or without complaint.” Writer Jumi Bello recounts her experience of being a psych ward patient as a woman of color and the countless ways in which neurodivergent people become dehumanized and estranged from society. Hexagons have mysterious qualities related to dynamite…

Joe Raposo had a gift for imbuing simple concepts—letters, numbers, colors—with rich emotion through music. In 1969, he received a call from a friend to be the music director for a new children's TV show. And so Sesame Street found its sound. In the first part of this episode, essayist Chris Arnold looks back on the life of a man who created a soun…

On the sidewalks of Las Vegas, Aarrow Sign Spinners like Laramie Rosenfeld, Evan James, Chris Sicuso, and Rayen Jones throw giant arrow-shaped signs into the air, spinning them around their bodies as they backflip, wave to passersby, and point to a destination–all in the name of advertising. Yumi Janairo Roth is an artist and anthropologist who has…

In this episode, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil discusses art and simulation with her father, inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil; poet Vi Khi Nao takes listeners through a sound walk in Las Vegas; novelist Lisa Ko and visual artist Toisha Tucker reminisce on virtual karaoke nights in early quarantine; and writer Elena Passarello presents an essay on puppe…

In this episode, performance artist Brent Holmes explores the origins and myths of the American cowboy. Meanwhile, businesswoman Anna Bailey shares pieces of her life as one of the first African-American women to hold a gaming license in Nevada. Writer Sam Forbes brings us an account of being invisible while working as a dancer in a Las Vegas strip…

Attorney Dayvid Figler grew up near the famous Las Vegas Strip in a hard-gambling family. Decades after becoming a lawyer, Dayvid meets Nann, a problem gambler who would become his client. In this episode, Dayvid and Nann unpack the emotional and life-altering effects of Nevada’s most lucrative industry. You'll also hear poet-performer-librettist D…

In this episode, writer Soni Brown sets out to reconsider what’s left of the Mint 400, an elusive made popular by Hunter S. Thompson's novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Meanwhile, LeVar Burton transports listeners into an engine oil-infused dust storm as he reads an excerpt from Fear and Loathing. Inspired by Octavia Butler, writers Megan Stiel…

In this episode, writer Elissa Washuta describes a moment where she spotted her future self walking around Seattle; writer and anthropologist Elizabeth Greenspan shines a light on the work of architect and educator Denise Scott Brown; and Izzy Santillanes sits down with his former workshop teacher Shaun Griffin to talk about how poetry transformed …

In this episode, The Believer’s deputy editor and essayist Niela Orr finds a home in Toni Morrison’s words. Then, Vegas-born poet Fred Moten and cultural historian Josh Kun discuss James Baldwin, music, loss, extraordinary listening, and–for Moten–what it was like growing up in Las Vegas.由Black Mountain Radio

Jimmy Santiago Baca reads “Poet’s Prayer” from his most recent book, Laughing in The Light. Baca is an award-winning American poet and writer of Chicano descent.由Black Mountain Radio

Black Mountain Radio is an experimental, artist-driven audio project from The Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute at UNLV, publishing home of The Believer. This pilot episode features an audio essay by Soni Brown on the paradoxes of “land acknowledgment” (because performing them often brings with it a decided lack of acknowledg…

Black Mountain Radio is an artist-driven, community-focused audio project broadcast from Las Vegas to the world, created by the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Black Mountain Institute (BMI), home of The Believer. Black Mountain Radio showcases intimate conversations, original performances, and oral histories from the Mojave Desert in Southern Nevada—with…