Away Message

Meet the man who became the world's largest manufacturer of Christmas ornaments, and used his power to make North Carolina more tolerant of all religions.

One month after Hurricane Florence made landfall in North Carolina, we bring you three stories of strength, resilience, and perseverance in the face of the storm.

A trip to a remote place we've been trying to visit for years: Frying Pan Tower, a decommissioned Coast Guard light station that sits far out in the Atlantic Ocean.

North Carolina's priceless copy of the Bill of Rights was stolen, hidden, then recovered in a spectacular raid. Here's the inside story of how it happened, from the people who were there.

In 1955, a man teed off on a course that didn't want him there. What happened next would change his life, and change the course of his town.

In 1961, two nuclear weapons accidentally fell on North Carolina. The man who defused them says a crucial part of one bomb is still in the ground.

A visit to a bridge that, for years, was never connected to a road.

The true story of a man who stood in North Carolina, shot and killed a man in another state, and got away with it.

In this supersized episode, host Jeremy Markovich goes looking for Charlotte's original gold mines, and then gets inside a vault that's full of billions of dollars to understand how North Carolina's biggest city ended up being the place where the state stores its money.

On Fontana Lake, in far western North Carolina, sit hundreds of floating cabins, meant for fishing and weekend getaways. But when the homes were threatened with removal, the owners banded together and took their fight to Washington, DC, where they found themselves in the middle of a debate over what private citizens can do on public property.

Dr. Martin Luther King once gave a speech in Rocky Mount, North Carolina that energized the city and changed the lives of the people in attendance. Now, after more than 50 years, a forgotten recording of that speech has resurfaced, and the discovery is providing new insight into how one of the most important men in American history came up with his most iconic phrase. Listen to more excerpts of the speech and read a transcript at kingsfirstdream.com/transcript/

In the next season of Away Message, we're heading out on a scavenger hunt of sorts. We're looking for hard to find places, lost artifacts, secrets, missing people, and forgotten stories. New episodes begin April 3, 2018. Find all of Season 1's episodes and information about Season 2 at away.ourstate.com.

In this bonus episode, host Jeremy Markovich finally hears back from a guy who never returned his call, and gets the greatest excuse he’s ever heard. Plus, we find out what the future holds for this podcast.

In the final episode of the season, host Jeremy Markovich tries to figure out whether his own home is a remote place by walking 14 miles from his house to his office. Along the way, he discovers the people and places that are overlooked from his car.

In this episode, host Jeremy Markovich visits the small brass disc at the western edge of the state that's become a strange tourist attraction, and finds out how remote terrain caused all sorts of problems for the people who drew North Carolina's borders.