Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a full lawn on June 16th, 2026, at Bonner Park Bandshell in Missoula, MT. The theme was “Power of Place”.

In our first story, a random audition lands Linda Grinde on the set of one of Hollywood’s most notorious movie disasters. It’s 1979, and Linda is headed to Montana for a summer theater gig. She ends up wrapped in layers of wool, riding in buckboard wagons, and holding a rifle near the Canadian border.

Linda calls her story “Time Traveler”.

Linda Grinde loves adventures and theater in equal measure. She is an actor and director who has traveled to 3 continents with her productions. She once hung by her knees on a trapeze 30 feet in the air and flew into the arms of a burly acrobat. But that’s another story.

In our next story, one place holds the key to Noura Mahmoud’s life’s work, her greatest love story, and her family’s future? Follow Nora on a journey that began with a 12-year-old girl’s school trip to the Library of Alexandria. From discovering a lifelong passion for teaching to a first date over Shakespeare, discover how a single sacred space can shape who we are across generations.

Nora calls her story “A Place Kept Finding Me.”

Noura Mahmoud is an experienced English language teacher and certified trainer from Egypt with over 18 years of experience in secondary education and teacher professional development. She is a certified trainer with the Professional Academy for Teachers, the British Council, and the American University in Cairo, and has contributed to large-scale programs such as NTTP, TEA, and Connect. Throughout her career, she has been recognized for her excellence in education, including being ranked among top teachers in a UNESCO innovation competition and receiving the Ideal Teacher award at the secondary level. She is particularly interested in integrating technology and artificial intelligence into education, as reflected in her project “My Smart Blog Speaks a Global Language.” She values collaboration, lifelong learning, and building supportive learning communities, and she is excited to join international programs to exchange experiences and expand her impact in education.

Madeline M loses her 29-year-old partner, leaving her lost in grief and overwhelmed by the heavy logistics of loss. An unexpected phone call from a near-stranger leads her to a small Utah town where a community embraces her. Listen to Madeline’s story about grief, grace, and finding a way forward.

She calls her story ““Dawn and Dusk””.

Madeline M is a storyteller, media producer, and nonprofit communications strategist based in Missoula. As Director of Storytelling at Resource Rural, she works with communities across the country to document how people are shaping change in the places they call home. Colorado raised, Utah forged, and Montana polished, she has spent much of her career helping rural communities tell their own stories and challenge assumptions about rural America. When she’s not working, you’ll likely find her riding gravel roads or gabbing with the gals. Tonight, she’s excited to share a story of her own.

Closing out this episode of the Tell Us Something podcast, Rebellious 15-year old Cathy Scholtens is desperate to escape a chaotic home life, landing her at an all-girls Catholic boarding school run by an eclectic group of nuns.

Discover how these stubborn, funny, and compassionate women showed Cathy what it truly means to be home in a story she calls “Lesson Learned”.

Thanks, Cathy. Cathy Scholtens is a retired pediatric nurse, veteran, and professional noticer of weird little things. She talks to strangers, loves the color yellow and occasionally follows curiosity down questionable paths. She believes life is best lived with laughter, kindness, and a willingness to look slightly ridiculous. She remains completely unsupervised.

Our stories today were recorded live in person in front of a packed house on January 20th, 2026, at The George and Jane Dennison Theatre. The theme was “Self-Evident”.

In our first story, Francis Davis is an aspiring novelist who receives a letter that promised to change everything: he had won a prestigious $50,000 arts grant. As he celebrates the windfall with his fellow dreamers and artists in the South Philly arts scene, a strange coincidence involving a famous jazz writer and a second piece of mail begins to cast a shadow over his sudden fortune. Francis calls his story “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”.

Francis Davis was born and raised in Philadelphia and has lived most of his adult life in the West. He has an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Montana and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Nebraska. Francis loves American working-class literature and teaches college writing, creative writing, and literature at Gallatin College in Bozeman. He’s also a certified hot yoga instructor and teachers at Headwaters Hot Yoga in Missoula and Vibrant Lives in Dillon, Montana. Francis published a collection of short stories, West of Love, and his stories have appeared in Story, Natural Bridge, and Weber: The Contemporary West, among many other publications. Francis Davis has also worked as a journalist throughout the state of Montana and has earned a variety of writing fellowships from around the country. He is married to Sally Cobau and the father of three children. He splits his time between Dillon and Missoula, Montana.

Adria L. Jawort spent years as a functional alcoholic in order to bury her true identity. Adria finds herself in an intensive treatment center where the ultimate lesson is learning to love yourself enough to survive. Her journey toward recovery leads her to confront a childhood memory in a Kmart clothing aisle and a deep-seated fear of being, quote, an “abomination,” leading to an act of truth-telling that accidentally goes viral on a global scale. Adria calls her story “Prestigious Education”.

Adria L. Jawort is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and transgender/2 Spirit journalist. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country-Today, among other publications. She is the Executive Director of the nonprofit Indigenous Transilience. You can also find her on Substack and Instagram.

Mark Matthews is a freelance journalist assigned by The Washington Post to cover a high-profile assassination attempt at the U.S. Capitol, he thinks he’s found the scoop of a lifetime in a small Montana mining town. After tracking down the shooter’s best friend and securing what he thinks of as a “bag of gold”, in the form of a delusional, handwritten manifesto, Mark discovers that in the world of big-city journalism, landing the story is only half the battle. Mark calls his story “Front Page News”.

Mark Matthews was born in 1951 in Lynn Massachusetts. During the 1980s he lived in a fishing shack perched on a dock at South Freeport Harbor in Maine. In 1989 he moved to Montana. Mark has spent the last 50 years of his life sculpting, painting, writing, making music and teaching people of all ages, the community inspiring patterns of American folk dances.

Christian Bazzano is hoping for clarity and a “Deadliest Catch” style adventure. He heads to Bristol Bay, Alaska, to work on a fishing boat. Between 20-hour workdays, stinging jellyfish, and the relentless, melancholic gray of the ocean, Christian discovers that the intellectual endeavor he planned is quickly dissolving into a battle to keep his own sanity from cracking. Christian calls his story “Lessons from The Last Frontier”.

Christian Bazzano moved to Montana almost six years ago from his home in Tennessee. He spent many years of his life doing seasonal work in various roles across the northwest; from whitewater guide to sawyer to ski operations to Alaskan commercial fisherman. Christian has his master’s degree in philosophy and works for an environmental education non-profit.