Why is Montana so in love with itself?

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2025

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Montana’s unofficial tagline is “the last best place” — which should tell you something about the way the state thinks about itself. It’s a political frankenstein, incredibly beautiful, increasingly filled with tourists, and a twelve-hour drive from one corner of the state to the other. Oh, and just over a million people total live there. Including Chris La Tray, who’s just finishing his tenure as Montana Poet Laureate, and one of my favorite thinkers on what makes Montana so easy to fall in love with — but not always a very easy place to live.

In this episode, we talk about our favorite, most contradictory, and most hostile parts of Montana culture, from exorbitant housing prices to what it’s like to live in a place that falls in love with its own area code. If your vision of Montana culture comes from Yellowstone, this is a great corrective… that will also make you want a huckleberry milkshake.

Thanks to the sponsors of today’s episode!

Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoc.com/culture to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today

Blissy is offering 60 nights risk-free PLUS an additional 30% off when you shop at Blissy.com/CULTUREPOD

Get 40% off Beam’s best-selling Dream Powder at shopbeam.com/CULTURE and use code CULTURE at checkout

Switch your cleaning products to Blueland and get 15% off your first order by going to Blueland.com/culture

Join the ranks of paid subscribers and get bonus content, access to the discussion threads, ad-free episodes, and the knowledge that you're supporting an indie pod trying to make its way in the world. If you're already a subscriber-- thank you! Join us in the discussion thread for this episode! Got a question or idea for a future episode? Visit culturestudypod.substack.com

To hear more, visit culturestudypod.substack.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Culture Study podcast, and I'm Ann Helen Peterson.
0:10.1	And I am Chris LaTray.
0:12.0	Chris, what do you do?
0:13.7	I'm a writer, and I'm the current Montana State Poet Laureate, and I'm kind of a public speaker, I guess now. Sometimes I feel like I'm more
0:23.2	that than a writer, but I do lots of different things. It's how one cobbles together the writing
0:29.2	full-time life is by doing a lot of different things and saying yes to things that you never imagined
0:35.7	being asked to do in the first place.
0:37.7	Like, did you ever think that you would teach elementary school students about poetry?
0:43.2	The bigger stretch is teaching graduate students writing, and I've never taken a college class
0:50.4	in writing or any of that stuff. That's the bigger stretch for me.
0:53.6	Right, right. Because like younger kids, you can just be stuff, that's the bigger stretch for me. Right, right.
0:54.5	Because like younger kids, you can just be like, what's the cool sounds in here?
0:58.7	Where can we find this?
0:59.9	Like, what's cool?
1:01.1	Yeah.
1:01.5	Or I can just glower at them for 35 minutes.
1:06.1	And you can't get away with that with graduate students.
1:09.4	Do you have to teach like a three-hour seminar or is it
1:11.8	shorter? I did. So I was the 2025 William Kittridge distinguished visiting writer in the
1:19.8	Environmental Writing Department at the University of Montana this past spring semester. And it was,
1:26.1	you know, one class a week for three hours at a time.
1:28.9	And it was a blast, you know, but, you know, I was the least educated person in the room.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Anne Helen Petersen, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Anne Helen Petersen and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.