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From hard-hitting to heartwarming, Hometown Stories will guide you through the Blue Ridge Mountains and into the heart of Virginia. Hometown Stories is a production of WDBJ7-TV based in Roanoke, Virginia.
Ginseng counted as currency in the mountains; your history rabbit hole has roots.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A Virginia journey turns a senator's milestone into a candid reflection on fear, place, and endurance.
A milestone turns into a three-year Virginia nature triathlon, with Senator Tim Kaine hiking more than 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail in Virginia, biking the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, and paddling the length of the James River.
A Virginia mill town uses music and memory to think through what comes next.
Freeze, Virginia comes across as a town still held close to its Appalachian mill-town past, from its buildings to the memories that locals keep in circulation.
A steam locomotive's return becomes a measured story of preservation, risk, and Roanoke pride.
Norfolk and Western Class J No. 611 gives this episode a clear, durable shape: a passenger locomotive that became an emblem for Roanoke and a wider preservation story.
An Appalachian root becomes a story about cash, custom, law, and the limits of a wild harvest.
A wild American ginseng trade sits at the center of this Appalachian story about money, custom, law, and survival. Hometown Stories traces the root from the era of Daniel Boone into a 19th-century boom tied to a strong Asian market, keeping the history grounded in what ginseng…
Curious facts, kid-sized and quiz-ready.
Tim Kaine says his Virginia nature triathlon meant hiking more than 500 miles of the Appalachian Trail, biking the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive, and paddling the James River.
Hometown Stories Episode 78 follows Freeze, Virginia, where the 2022 Freeze Music Heritage Festival, the Washington mill archives, and a 1973 shutdown memo all point to the town’s layered history.
Norfolk and Western Class J No.
Hometown Stories Episode 76 examines Appalachian ginseng through Leah Weiss, Keith Tigner, and Luke Monge, with Leanna linking the plant to mountain labor and regulation.
Hometown Stories examines how climate change is pressuring Virginia's billion-dollar wine industry through hotter summers, shifting harvests, and damaging weather events.
Joseph McGill discusses his mission to spend a night in every remaining slave dwelling and his new book 'Sleeping with the Ancestors'.
A roundtable discussion with data privacy experts from Virginia Tech about protecting personal data online.
This episode explores the story of Virginia's first Black Olympic gold medalist, a boxer and Tuskegee Airman who was arrested for refusing to sit in the colored section of a train in 1948.
Local journalists share their personal connections to Ukraine and fears for friends amid the Russian invasion.