abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast

Podcast recommendation alert! This isn’t a new episode of “abandoned”—it’s a special preview from our urbex podcast pal Courtney Autumn, host of “Echoes of Elsewhere.” Join Courtney as she welcomes “abandoned” season 4 guest host, writer, and urban explorer Stev Hull-Allen for a conversation about the strange attraction to abandoned places—and what ruins can reveal about identity, memory, mental health, and the elasticity of time. 🏆 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

To celebrate the award-winning “All-American Ruins” short film arriving on HUDSY’s YouTube channel on Sept. 24, we’re returning to the Season 1 story that inspired it. Revisit Blake’s surreal exploration of the legendary Nevele Grand Hotel—and a version of this Hudson Valley juggernaut that, after years of devastating fires, no longer exists quite as it did then. 🏆 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Blake stumbles into a forgotten house in the Texas Panhandle, imagined legends and headlines begin unfolding in his mind — stories of addiction, homelessness, and loss, but above all, the power of family rising from the wreckage. 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

An unexpected—and ironic—detour to an infamous abandoned school in Kansas sparks the kickoff of season 4. When Blake accidentally stumbles into the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education at the Sumner School in Topeka, he finds himself confronting the moment his childhood imagination collides with historical transmissions the country once tried to erase. Note: Episodes 1–4 of Season 4 form “Fading Transmissions from a Republic of Ruins,” a four-part series embedded within the season. This Season 4 premiere was recorded in front of a live audience at Green Box Arts in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado. 🏆 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

Welcome to season 4 of the Ambie-winning “abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.” Through the immersive power of sonic storytelling, host Blake Pfeil guides you as he follows transmissions reverberating across forgotten spaces throughout the United States. This season, the signal grows stronger: guest hosts step behind the microphone to lead listeners through their own encounters with ruins. Along the way, “abandoned” asks critical questions about American history, culture, community, the environment, technology, and collective mental health, inviting listeners to use imagination as a tool for healing and connection. New episodes every other Thursday starting April 16, 2026. 🏆 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

On October 12, 2025, Blake was joined by All-American Ruins guest host and writer Isabel Wilder at the Ulster County Historical Society in Kingston, NY for a 90-minute program. Participants explored how ruins reflect America’s past, present, and future—while doubling as playgrounds for creativity, imagination, and healing. To learn more, visit: http://www.allamericanruins.com Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise with All-American Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the one-year anniversary of his best friend Julie’s death, Blake makes his way to the ruins of the Schrade Cutlery Factory in Ellenville, NY. The only remaining structure is a crumbling security gatehouse which Julie and Blake always talked about getting to but never did. Covered in vines, Blake reminisces on his friendship with Julie and asks her ghost if it’s time to let her go. (Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones 🎧 for every episode of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.) To read the transcript of this episode, click here: https://www.blakepfeil.com/aar-podcast.html To read the original story this episode is based on, click here: https://allamericanruins.medium.com/chapter-48-in-which-i-let-you-go-at-an-abandoned-security-gatehouse-15ace3dac05f To learn more, visit: http://www.allamericanruins.com Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise with All-American Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Wander through fantastical realm of a real giant beige house (at the end of a very long driveway), abandoned and hidden on the banks of a famous river in New York-- where you’ll meet the ghost of the old woman and connect the dots between this story and “The People Who Used to Live Here, Part 1” from Season 1. This episode features: Margarita Meyendorff (Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones 🎧 for every episode of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.) To read the transcript of this episode, click here: https://www.blakepfeil.com/aar-podcast.html To read the original story this episode is based on, click here: https://allamericanruins.medium.com/chapter-42-the-people-who-used-to-live-here-part-ii-39a5dc0072eb To learn more, visit: http://www.allamericanruins.com Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise with All-American Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In preparation for the season 3 finale, “The People Who Used to Live Here, Part II: The Giant Beige House at the End of a Very Long Driveway,” we’re diving back into the archives for this special re-release of “The People Who Used to Live Here, Part I.” You know; for context. This episode originally aired on December 29, 2022. Original episode description: In the season one finale of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast, follow Blake into his imagination as he recounts his experience exploring an abandoned mansion off a county highway in Ulster County, NY where he reflects on capitalism, exile, and chosen family. (Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones 🎧 for every episode of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.) To read the transcript of this episode, click here: https://www.blakepfeil.com/aar-podcast.html To read the original story this episode is based on, click here: https://allamericanruins.medium.com/chapter-11-the-people-who-used-to-live-here-a20a581bae8c To learn more, visit: http://www.allamericanruins.com Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise with All-American Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feeling trapped in their Covid bubble, Blake and his pandemic pod-mate Isabel explore an abandoned Hudson Valley farmhouse where Isabel discovers the Borden family’s influence on the country’s dairy industry and reconciles with childhood ghosts. In an All-American Ruins first, join Blake as he passes the storytelling reins to his sister-from-another mother who you may recognize from previous episodes in season 2, "Isabel and the Allentown Mafia" and "Sober." This episode features: Isabel Wilder Learn more about Isabel’s work at https://5thhousepottery.com/ (Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones 🎧 for every episode of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.) To read the transcript of this episode, click here: https://www.blakepfeil.com/aar-podcast.html To learn more, visit: http://www.allamericanruins.com Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise with All-American Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What does it look like to revitalize an abandoned space - that’s situated inside an active and excessively large shopping mall - in 2005? On this special bonus episode of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast, you’ll meet Michael Townsend, one of the eight artists who, from 2005-2008, did just that: built a secret apartment inside the Providence Place Mall. Michael is one of the subjects of the smash documentary Secret Mall Apartment, from director Jeremy Workman and executive producer Jesse Eisenberg, which follows the story of a motley crew of Gen-X urbex artists who did the unthinkable and brought national attention to the intricacies and devastation of urbanization and gentrification... simply by occupying “underutilized space.” This bonus episode was repurposed from a live interview on abandoned host Blake Pfeil and his creative partner Jeremiah Wenutu’s show Cinema Kingston!, a weekly late-night program that explores the film industry in Hudson Valley, NY. The show airs every Wednesday night from 9-11 PM EST on Radio Kingston, WKNY, AM 1490 FM 107.9, in Kingston, NY. To learn more, visit RadioKingston.org. To learn more about Secret Mall Apartment, visit secretmallapartment.com To learn more about Tape Art, visit tapeart.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While exploring the ruins of a once-popular drive-in movie theater, Blake thinks about his complicated relationship with his father, reimagining a screening of Star Wars that they attended together the year John was diagnosed with stage IV mesothelioma. May the 4th be with you. This episode features: John Pfeil Tiernan Pfeil (Note: For the best immersive experience, we strongly suggest you wear headphones 🎧 for every episode of abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast.) To read the transcript of this episode, click here: https://www.blakepfeil.com/aar-podcast.html To read the original story this episode is based on, click here: https://medium.com/@allamericanruins/chapter-28-dad-5a8c8ebd8631 To learn more, visit: http://www.allamericanruins.com Please contact advertising@airwavemedia.com if you would like to advertise with All-American Ruins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices