Colorado isn't like that anymore, granted, if it can be said that it ever really was. Denver writer Jill Carstens talked about exactly that — not necessarily the cowboy paradigm, but certainly the romance that old Denver used to have — in her 2024 memoir Getting Over Vivian. But even that love song to old Denver was traced with hope, and that hope is what seems to be driving Carsten's new podcast.
That podcast, Colorado Soul Stories, premiered on June 25, and the first four episodes are available for download and streaming now on major podcast platforms such as Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify and more.
Carstens is uniquely qualified to carry out this search for the soul of our state. She earned that "Native" bumper-sticker cred by growing up in Wheat Ridge, bumming around a burgeoning Colorado art scene as a youth, and attending Colorado State University, where she graduated with a journalism degree in 1987. She spent her post-college years waiting tables at the then-burgeoning Wynkoop Brewing Company and discovering the wonderfully gritty joints among the then-vacant streets of Lower Downtown. She returned later to earn a teaching certification from the University of Colorado Denver, and after a long career in education, began a second vocation in local journalism.
Carstens’ determination to create the Colorado Soul Stories podcast came in part because her local writing gigs had dried up. The Denver North Star, where she wrote features and a longtime monthly column, was purchased by Times Media Group, which did not ask the columnists to stay on. She'd also previously written long-form features for Colorado Central Magazine, and its print publication ceased after also being bought out. "All those outlets just slowly dried up," sighs Carstens. "Community papers were among our last authentically written publications, created by people that you might already know, or at least could actually meet."
It was in talking to her friend Lisa Rogers that Carstens had the idea to move into podcasting. Rogers is one of the former owners of the much-missed northside coffee house Common Grounds, a legendary Denver java joint that helped to make 32nd and Lowell the destination it would become for many years. "I was sort of tearily complaining about what was happening to the North Star, and Lisa said, 'Let's just start our own paper, Jill!' And I was immediately like, 'No,'" Carstens laughs. "'No, that sounds too hard. But maybe a podcast...'"
At first, Carstens wasn't really sure how to pull it off, so she started looking all around the city for a good place to help her figure it out. "When I found Denver Community Media, I just felt an immediate connection. I knew I was in the right place to help me tell the stories I wanted to tell."
That reaction is by design on the part of DCM, whose motto is "Just Hit Record." It's city-owned, housed at 21st Street and Arapahoe, and founded to help facilitate access to media production by the public. In other words, the perfect organization for helping to launch a podcast about Colorado's spirit.
The debut episode of Colorado Soul Stories honors Muddy’s, another legendary Denver coffee house, this one hailing from the hippie era and lasting through an important couple of decades for Denver's exploding growth. “I went there when I was in high school and it was just so cool and authentic,” says Carstens, and points out that its establishment in the early 1970s provided a much-needed home for local art and culture at a time when Denver was greatly lacking such a place for people to gather.
Further episodes include a unique storytelling organization that dares folks to tell their hardest life stories, and an interview with North Denver artist/musician/playwright Cipriano Ortega. “These are only the first three of a long and growing list of people I want to talk with, and stories I think deserve telling," Carstens says. "And the range of them is indicative of the scope Colorado stories embrace, too. These three initial subject matters are quite different, but they share a common thread in our conversations, which distills into a common theme: the desire to make the world better."
Future podcasts will go on the road to meet up with all sorts of characters, including an animal intuitive in Nathrop and the first woman to climb all of Colorado’s highest peaks. “It’ll be a bit of a ‘Stone Soup’ of people and places," admits Carstens, "but I'm confident in finding the state's soul-piece in all of them.”
Colorado Soul Stories launched with four episodes on June 25; new episodes are planned to drop every two weeks. For more information, see Jill Carstens' website.
