9 - Journalism, Storytelling & Asheville’s Creative Pulse with Matt Peiken

Season 1, Episode 9: Storytelling as Wellness with Matt Peiken of The Overlook

In this episode of the Wellness in Asheville Podcast, I’m joined by Matt Peiken, award-winning journalist and host of The Overlook, Asheville’s premier podcast on arts, culture, and community.

Matt shares his journey from public radio at Blue Ridge Public Radio to launching The Overlook, and how storytelling itself can be a wellness practice. We explore why being seen, heard, and understood is healing—individually and collectively.

The conversation also dives into entrepreneurship, trusting your gut, leaving toxic jobs, and recognizing when it’s time to “drop the rock” of burdens that no longer serve you.

Key Takeaways

• Storytelling as Healing – Why voice and narrative help individuals and communities thrive.
• Trusting Your Gut – How intuition, not fear, can guide life and career choices.
• Drop the Rock – A metaphor for letting go of toxic jobs, relationships, or burdens.
• Wellness Beyond the Body – Journalism as connection, meaning-making, and social healing.
• Asheville’s Cultural Fabric – How local media highlights hidden stories and creative change-makers.

Timestamps

00:00 – 04:00 | Matt’s Journey to Asheville & Blue Ridge Public Radio
04:00 – 10:00 | Leaving BPR & Creating The Overlook
10:00 – 15:00 | Storytelling as Wellness: Being Seen & Understood
15:00 – 20:00 | Dropping the Rock: Letting Go of Toxic Work & Relationships
20:00 – 27:00 | Hidden Stories: Local Journalism as Community Healing
27:00 – 33:00 | Entrepreneurship, Grants & Building Independent Media
33:00 – End | Reflections, Courage, and the Next Chapter for The Overlook

Episode Links

• Matt Peiken's Website
• The Overlook Podcast
• Blue Ridge Public Radio
• Fresh Air – NPR (inspiration)
• Drop the Rock – 12-Step Spirituality Book (metaphor reference)

The Wellness in Asheville podcast is produced by Be Well Asheville, your local news source covering health + wellness news + events in Asheville. Get the latest at bewellasheville.com or follow @bewellasheville.

Transcript

Episode 9: Matt Peiken

​[00:00:00] 

Okay.

Welcome to the Wellness in Asheville Podcast, where we shine a light on the people practices, and places that make this city one of the most inspiring wellness communities in the country. I'm your host, Travis Richardson, founder of Be Well Asheville, your local news source for health, wellness, and community events.

Travis Richardson: In this special episode, I'm joined by Matt Piken, award-winning journalist and host of the Overlook Asheville's Premier podcast on arts, culture, and community. While his show spans a wide range of topics, today we're zooming in on storytelling as a wellness practice and how being seen, heard, and understood can be healing both individually and collectively.

From highlighting Asheville's creative change makers to covering grassroots issues, Matt's lens offers us insight into how storytelling is wellness. We'll explore the [00:01:00] role of local media in creating connection, how narrative helps communities make meaning and why your voice might be more important than you think.

And if you listen to the end, we'll give you a sneak peek into an exciting project. Matt is launching later this fall. welcome and thanks for being on the show today. 

Matt Peiken: Thanks for having me, Travis. I have to admit, and I even told you when we first talked, that, uh, I think this is the first time anybody has associated my work directly with wellness.

Uh, so when you told me about the list of guests you had on your show and that were coming up, I, I right away thought I was the odd ball out. But you've, you said nope. Uh, there's, there's wellness to explore here, so that's, so I'm here to find it with you. 

Travis Richardson: Excellent. I I really appreciate that. And part of the podcast intention is to find wellness in places that people may not expect.

So, uh, you, you definitely fit that bill. And actually, when we were talking earlier, um, it was really interesting because you have, I mean, if anybody knows Matt, there's like, uh, he's done pretty much everything that you can [00:02:00] imagine and then some. And so, um, I wanted to start out by asking you how. Going back to the overlook and that successful podcast that you had and the genesis of that and what I learned from you about this sort of job that you really didn't like and how that all happened.

Matt Peiken: Well, I I, I did like the job initially, so I, I moved here. I moved to Asheville in 2017 when I got hired at Blue Ridge Public Radio to cover the arts, and I didn't know it at the time, but apparently I was one of the relatively few people who moved to Asheville because I got a job. Most people move here because they wanna be in the mountains, they wanna.

Go hiking and they end up staying here. They end up getting stuck here. They marry somebody here and they, they live it out. And I, and I had never de designed to live in Asheville. It's just I was looking for jobs in public radio at the time. I'd been a print journalist for most of my career, and I worked [00:03:00] in online video for a while.

Done a lot of entrepreneurial work. I wanted public radio and, uh, blue Ridge Public Radio was just the first station that said you're hired. And so I moved here in 2017, but um, and I had a few really good years there. I, I love that job and. The arts. I don't need to tell anybody who has spent any time here that the arts are abundant here.

And I was always focusing on artists creating original work, whether it was performing arts, literary arts, visual arts, multidisciplinary, didn't matter if they were creating it. I was into it and I wanted to tell their stories. But then we had, uh, some changes in management. And which happens a lot in media and especially in news media, and I have never been one to stay in a job that didn't feel right in my soul.

I I the paycheck never. Kept me, uh, any place. You know, [00:04:00] I've, I've, I've made pretty good money in this industry and I've made terrible money in this industry, and it didn't matter to me as long as the work, uh, was really, um, fulfilling me and the kinds of stories I wanted to tell if I could tell them and if they, if I had a green light to tell the stories I wanted to tell, as long as I could pay my basic bills and everything, I, I didn't care what I was earning.

Uh, and with BPR. I was kind of, it, it it, the management became such a, I knew that when they had this change in management that my, the hourglass on my time at BPR had turned over, but I didn't know what I was going to do. I just knew that my time was running. Up there and I kind of whiteboarded a lot of different ideas.

And the Overlook podcast was just the winning one. It's a show, uh, that I kind of fashioned as a cross between the Daily from the New York Times and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. But for Asheville, I [00:05:00] wanted to be a very hyperlocal current affair affairs show. And the management at the time at BPR, they.

Weren't very interested in the show, or they didn't think they had the capacity to bring it forward. So I quit. 10 days after my last day at BPRI launched the Overlook and I in the next year and a half, produced 188 episodes of that show. And at one point I was doing five episodes a week. It was crazy, uh uh, schedule.

But I wanted to create the impression right out of the gate that I have not left the scene. I am doing something really. Relevant and important and unique in Asheville. I wanted to create that energy with audiences and, and I had good, good fortune with it for a while. I had, I had good audience, but not enough to make a living at it.

I had good, I had advertisers come to me, but I couldn't charge enough to make a living at it, and so, and I didn't get a couple of grants I was [00:06:00] looking for. I know this is a long winded, long way around what you were asking me. I stopped producing the overlook, uh, right around when Helene hit, and so then I started making my next steps, what am I gonna do next?

So that's where I'm at now. 

Travis Richardson: When I hear you talk about. Storytelling, you're, you're clearly passionate about it. And now, and obviously it, it must have took some bit of courage to make the leap into, um, doing the overlook and, and, and just like actually doing it. That's really challenging for, for people to leave one thing and, and do the next.

Uh, what, what really drives you if, if you were to like really get at the core, at what makes you passionate enough to leave something that seems fairly stable ish, um, into something like what you did. 

Matt Peiken: Well, I don't know that passion's the right ingredient. I think it's, um, following your gut and, and trusting your gut as a compass.

And I have [00:07:00] always trusted my gut ultimately, and leaving BPR was just the latest media job that I have left. I, I won't go through my whole history, but I was at a, uh, a newspaper in Minnesota, in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was union. Protected. I had 10 years of seniority. I didn't have to leave. I could have stayed and could have just ridden out a paycheck, uh, through my retirement if that's what I wanted to do.

Uh, and there came a point there where, uh, I knew that if I stayed, I felt if I had, I, I reached a fork in the road. Let's put it this way. I reached a fork and one path was staying, and I felt nauseous. The other path was leaving, not knowing what I was going to do, but just knowing I was gonna leave and I felt euphoric.

You have to trust that. That's just your gut. That's not passion. That's just I, 'cause I didn't know what lay ahead other than a certain liberation of these shackles that I, [00:08:00] I had felt. Uh, uh, at toward the final, like couple of years on that job there. And like I said, I've done that a number of times. I also have kind of an entrepreneurial bent and I think of ideas all the time.

It doesn't mean these are, uh, uh, ideas that are going to, um, what's sustain. They're not necessarily sustainable ideas. But they have a, a, a kernel of uniqueness of something that will fuel me. Getting to your point about passion and something that is useful and needed in whatev, however, I define my community and almost everything I've done has been locally relevant to where I've lived.

Yeah. I've not tried to become an influencer, you know, any of that. Garbage, you know, the, this, this chasing of, of status and, you know, getting a lot of followers. I'm the o the main thing that makes me feel old in the world is how terrible at social media I am. [00:09:00] Uh, otherwise I feel like I'm, I'm kind of age defiant and, uh, so I go where my energies take me and, and you know, more or less, I think I've been rewarded for it.

Travis Richardson: So you mentioned listening to your gut as this in internal compass. Tell me more about that. 

Matt Peiken: Well, you know, this ties into why you're talking to me even to begin with today about wellness. And I never thought about this way actually until you pose this question to me. When we, you know, when you even wrote to me about being on your show, I never thought that my own path was.

Dictated in no small part by my own personal sense of wellness for myself. And I have left jobs, like I said, I left. I've left jobs that paid well, but I was feeling dead in these jobs. And another thing I didn't talk about either, so part of [00:10:00] my career path, so in when I was in between journalism jobs, so.

I got a part-time, not part-time, sorry. I got a temporary job with this content marketing firm. If anybody knows what content marketing is, you probably know, uh, what I'm gonna say. It's a, it's a soul sucking line of work, and it's basically creating drl. For the internet that ties into search engine optimization so that when people plug in certain words in Google, these, this crap content will come up.

And we had clients, I worked for this firm that had clients, major clients like LinkedIn and SAP and, and eBay. I think eBay was a client anyway. Uh. I was part of a team. I was, they needed more writers and they loved that I was a journalist and thought, okay, let's bring this guy on. If I had stayed with this company, I would've made more money than I've ever made in any job [00:11:00] ever.

And they gave me a 90 day tryout. I was. I, I, I, I hated going into the office. I just hated it. And then they gave me another 30 day tryout. It was like, we need writers. We are gonna give this guy some more time. And on the last day of that 30 days, I brought my belongings into the manager's office and. She said, what's going on here?

I said, well, we know today's my last day. And she said, well, you know, uh, one of your clients that you were writing for, they're not renewing their contract. And, and, uh, so I said, look, you just got done telling us you need more writers. I know it, but I am not that writer. I, I don't belong here. She goes, really?

I goes, yeah, it's all good. It's all good. And so I left with my, and she was shocked, you know, that I, I was willingly leaving this. Very good paying job. This other job I took on, so I was, I was so elated to get this job with this major art [00:12:00] center in the country. I was hired to be their magazine editor, their managing editor.

I was elated by day two. I knew it wasn't gonna work day two, and I eventually asked my manager to lay me off. So that I could collect unemployment to start my next venture, which is what I did. I could've, you know, it was just it. I it as long as I could, you know, look, I don't have any kids, you know, people who have kids and other major responsibilities might have a different equation about it, but my sense of wellbeing and wellness depended on me leaving these toxic situations and they were toxic for me.

I'm not saying for everybody, but for me. And I never made a fuss internally. I didn't, you know, call anybody on the carpet. You know, I have my integrity, I have my sense of what's right. I don't, I, I don't do stuff. I don't do any work that really [00:13:00] makes me fee compromise my soul and spirit. And does that make me less hireable?

Probably. But boy, you gotta live with yourself. You have to live with yourself, right? And whether it's a toxic relationship, whether it's a toxic job, whether it's a toxic friendship, whether it's something that's just corroding you on the inside, and this is something I, you know, that I, I've long held this view about mankind.

In general, most people will stay in the hell that they know, rather than risk going to. What might be a hell that they don't know, and so the hell that they know, is it, it's awful. But I know this, I know how it feels. I know exactly what I'm facing. I'm just gonna stay in it. Well, we've only got one life as far as we know, right?

So why stay in something that is just tearing years off your life and tearing years off your soul? We can [00:14:00] always find ways to make money. Always. You know, that, that, that's if. Even though I've been very, very, uh, hard, fast and I am a journalist, I am not going to sacrifice my soul. If I had to, I would, I would wait tables, and it's a great job for pe for people who have the right mindset.

You know, I'm, I'm not a a, an elitist in that way, you know, I just know what feeds my soul and my wellness. It's the kind of work that I feel I was brought here to do, that I'm here to do and deliver for my community. And however I define my community, whether it's a locality or a niche interest, uh, that I am, my job is to illuminate the stories of others, and I'm gonna do it with this fierce curiosity.

And if I'm in a job. That's supposed to be journalism. If I'm in a job that doesn't allow me to do that and, and pins me in, then screw it. I'm outta here. 

Travis Richardson: You act from a place of what I'd say is inspired action. What would you coach somebody on to be more like you in certain ways? 

Matt Peiken: [00:15:00] In this I'll, I, I will say this.

I've been fired from jobs. It wasn't just always. Uh, leaving, which I did. I've quit a number of jobs, but I've also been fired from jobs because of who I am. I question things. I don't, I'm not deferential to bo, I'm not disrespectful, but I don't treat bosses as they're, they're sitting on an altar somewhere.

You know? I feel like they've been brought in. To deliver what wisdom and insights and experiences I have and observations that I have. And so I might be off base and debate with me. A lot of bosses don't wanna debate. They just want you to do what they tell you to do and follow this, do it as I tell you to do it.

And. Caused me the least amount of trouble is you possibly can and we'll get along great. I'm not that guy. You know, I've had great editors and I've had terrible editors. Um, but so getting to your question of how somebody could be like me, I am not, I disclaimer, I'm not telling anyone to be more like me, but I will tell you if your [00:16:00] gut is telling you that this situation that you're in, whether it's work.

Personal life. Whatever the situation you're in is not right. It's not working. Then damn it, you gotta speak up for yourself. Speak up to yourself, admit it to yourself. Don't suppress, don't press down. Do something internally and if it leads you here, here's something I used to, here's a little, uh. A metaphor that I developed all on my own.

And it may not be, there might be holes in it, you could tell me, oh, this metaphor doesn't, it's mixed metaphors, whatever. So when you notice a, a, a, something not right in your life, at first it feels like a pebble stuck in your shoe. And we're initially, we're gonna walk around with that pebble. We don't wanna take our shoe, we'll fig move our foot around.

We will kind of, we'll, you know, we'll work it to another side of our foot, whatever. And we kind of. You know, try to live with the pebble, but then it starts growing and it gnaws at us, and it's eating into our skin. And so eventually this thing gets bigger and bigger and [00:17:00] bigger, and then we take it out.

But we're, we're afraid to let go of this. Now it's, now, it's a stone, it's a rock, and we're afraid to let go of it because. What happens in our life? We're used to carrying this burden around. We know what the hell is of this rock and this bird, I'm just gonna put it on my shoulder. I'm gonna walk with it on my shoulder, and now I'm gonna switch arms.

You know this arm's getting tired. I'm gonna walk with this arm and you cannot tell yourself I'm going to leave on Monday. I'm gonna leave next week. Never happens. Never give yourself a forward date for when you think you're gonna be done with. It never gonna happen. You know why? Because you're so used to carrying that burden.

You're gonna carry it, carry it, carry it, until your body can no longer carry it. It becomes so heavy, so burdensome that despite your best efforts to hold onto that rock, you're gonna drop it. That's when you quit. That's when you leave that relationship. That's when you leave that friendship, not when you tell yourself you're going to, it's because your body compels you that [00:18:00] you can, you have no other choice.

And that's what's happened with me. I just follow that compass. I'm just quicker to drop that rock. I recognize it, like I'm okay. This doesn't serve me anymore, so I'm done. So if, if any to your question, the advice I would have is just recognize when you're carrying that burden and drop the rock. 

Travis Richardson: Sure.

Drop the rock. That's awesome. I, I, I love that. And I, I used to, um, you know, my ex-wife is a, is a therapist and she, her and I always talked about, uh, just in the course of, uh, relationship, you know, things that feel comfortable. And, uh, that's one of the first identifying patterns that you can say is like, does this feel familiar and does this feel comfortable?

And a lot of times those things that feel both familiar and comfortable are, can be not always. Of course can have the positive version of it, but are, can be the, the negative version. Even though it's hurting you, it may feel comfortable and familiar and, and you, you disassociate and think that this is a good thing, but it's actually, it's actually [00:19:00] hurting you.

Matt Peiken: Well, that's a whole other thing. When there's something you feel is comfortable is actually hurting you, that's, you know, but we all make excuses to hold onto something that's not working. So hopefully anybody, if, if you're gonna. To have any takeaway from my, uh, up and down story. It, it's that try to recognize something that's not working and don't be afraid to pivot.

Travis Richardson: Sage advice. Thank, thank you for that. When we were talking earlier, we talked about, um, you know, this idea of hidden stories and finding these, this hidden culture, uh, in, in the, in people. Um, and that kind of being relevant when we talk about healing and wellness and emotional and emotional wellbeing in terms of community and, and place and, and that kind of, that kind of thing.

Do you have any stories. About maybe a margin marginalized group or a story that sh uh, you know, [00:20:00] should have been told and wasn't, and then you picked it up, told it, and had some positive outcome as a result. 

Matt Peiken: It's hard, it's really hard for journalists to track the impacts of their stories. You know, they, you, we spend a lot of time, at least the kind of stories I report and like to report.

It's boots on the ground reporting. You find your subjects. You find a story that really res, you know, kind of drives you and you just follow it and, but when your story is done, you kind of move on and you, you know, you might keep in touch with the subjects that you've done stories about, but. There have been stories over the years, um, that only in very, uh, happenstance, uh, circumstances I've run into people who I've done stories about Later on or, uh, in a couple of instances, uh, I did have some tangible feedback from, uh, people that, you know, readers and listeners that told me it made a difference.

[00:21:00] I'll give you one, uh, story and I could tell you lots of stories, but one that jumps to mind is. I did. I found, when I was in St. Paul, Minnesota, I noticed this little low slung cinder block, and it was literally made of cinder blocks. This boxing gym, it looked even smaller than one story tall. It was just this, it was such a squat building, nondescript on this intersection in a very forgotten part of St.

Paul, Minnesota. I think it was in the Frog Town neighborhood, and it was called BT Bombers. I walked into this gym unannounced. 'cause they, I, they didn't have a phone in this gym. Uh, from my memory, there was no phone. So you walked in, and this is back in the early two thousands and. Right away you're hit with the sweat of the place and just these kids and, and, uh, people in the neighborhood who just felt a sense of belonging there.

And I can still remember some of their names [00:22:00] of this is more than 20 years ago. There's 23, 24 years ago, I can remember their names. Uh. Bete, was this the only woman boxing there that I remember? She was this 200 pound, uh, lesbian woman who, uh, she, um, what was this T-shirt she was wearing? Gosh. Anyway, I wrote about her.

I wrote about this kid. Risso Fort, who was, uh, a teenager and, uh, both his parents, he never really knew his dad very well. His dad had a lot of, uh, drug problems and he had a criminal history and his mom brought him to the gym to kind of give him some discipline and grounding, and he was a great kid. And, uh, oh yeah, that was the T-shirt that Carly wore.

She, so she walked the very first time I ever saw Carly Ente, she's just wearing a t-shirt and underwear and she's barefoot in the gym with just men around. And her t-shirt wrote, said, nobody knows I'm a lesbian. That was her t-shirt. [00:23:00] Anyway, CSO for, and then, uh, I wrote about the, uh, gym coach. God, what was it?

Clem Harris. I'm shocked. I remember these names. I have not thought about these names in 20 something years. And I wrote about him, how he used to spend the night at the gym. He didn't have a steady home and he would sleep on the pads. And one morning I, we had made plans, you know, so I would, I wanted to see how his morning started after he got up at the gym.

So I knocked on the gym door at like six o'clock in the morning and he answers in his gym sweats and he just got up from the pads. And so I would spend time with these people. And, you know, weeks and weeks going to the gym, stepping into their lives, going into their homes, and just writing about them.

And I ended up writing a four-part series about these people. Anyway, many, many years later, Clem. Wrote me. He found me on my website somehow and [00:24:00] he just wanted to tell me he was doing okay. And he really wanted me to know that, that the story I wrote about him personally and the gym, he still holds close to his heart.

And so I think what my stories and the vast, vast majority of stories I've written over the years have been about people nobody knows. I haven't written about celebrities. You know, I, I, that just doesn't, it's not my, even in the arts, I just don't tend to write about well-known people. It's happened, but most of them not.

And so these people who I write about have never been seen in the way that I've seen them before. At least they tell me this, and I ask them, I'm interested in their lives in ways that they have not, uh, had. Directed at them before. And I think those are memories that people hold for, for many decades, maybe their whole lives.

And I've only been fortunate enough to have a handful of people tell me many years later what my story's meant to them. [00:25:00] 

Travis Richardson: When we, we, we think about the ability for somebody to tell their story and be heard and be seen, and the power that has for them and what it can do. And obviously you, you, you don't have, you're not following these people up year over year, but sometimes the proper telling of a story is just that one exact thing that you could.

That you need to make a new decision to, uh, try something new and having somebody be able to facilitate that like you do is pretty, um, pretty important. 

Matt Peiken: Um, well, I think, I think what I, I wanna add something to that, to though, but you know, it's not that my stories only impact the people I'm writing about, I think.

And they're not meant I don't write these stories to impact them. I'm writing these stories to impact readers and listeners and educate people to neighbors that they might not have otherwise paid attention to. And see the three dimensional lives that people of people who are easily characterized and easily, uh, defined.

They're not easily defined and my [00:26:00] stories, I hope when I do them well and when I'm afforded the access, uh, that some of these people have given me, I'm hoping that my stories, uh, provide layers of insight to people who aren't so easily categorized. 

Travis Richardson: Ha Has there ever been a story that you've covered or research that then ended up changing the way you saw something?

Matt Peiken: I, I have written about a lot of people who, on the surface, I felt I would have nothing in common with. For instance, I followed Mormon missionaries around for three months. So I, I'm, I'm a Brooklyn Jew who became, uh, like an atheist slash agnostic slash what I call a Seinfeldian Jew. So I'm very culturally Jewish.

I was Bar mitzvah. I can claim Judaism, but I'm largely atheist, agnostic. And here I was spending months with Mormon missionaries riding on bikes [00:27:00] with them going door to door. You know, kids, you know, who were just fresh outta high school or college, or they didn't even go to college and they're serving their comp, what's largely a compulsory two year service, uh, uh, for their faith.

And here I am, a non-believer, but you know, and they tried to convert me and I, you know, that I didn't, I, I held onto who I was. I gained real insight into them. I've written a, a number of stories about people of faith. Uh, I, when I was in Cincinnati, I followed the making of a passion play, this massive passion play that, uh, was for a congregation of like 16,000 people.

Massive church, crossroads church in Cincinnati, and they let me in. They were kind of inner sanctum as they were putting this show on together. Um, but so it did, it, did it make a believer outta me? No, but I stopped, I guess easily categorizing people who are of faith. You know, [00:28:00] I think I gained a lot of, of empathy and uh, and un understanding of how somebody could hold that.

Level of devout faith and belief. So I'm not as nearly as, uh, as quick to define these people, just like I'm saying my readers hopefully aren't, you know, so as I'm making these discoveries of these people, I'm hoping to de deliver that same bridge of understanding to my audience. 

Travis Richardson: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, you know, and I, I think about, uh, journalism as a whole.

I mean, obviously there's a, a massive difference between local and national and, and, and world. And obviously we all, we all see, um, we all see our perspectives in. In journalism that we, that we follow, whether it's, you know, thinking about politics like one side or the other. [00:29:00] Right. And, um, well, even, 

Matt Peiken: even more so now, more so than ever before in our history, we can choose exactly what we want to consume in news used to not be that way.

Two ge uh, generations ago, two generations ago, certainly, you know, and now everybody picks their media. So there, and this is, this is getting maybe off topic, but I think this is an important point about where we are as a society, that we all pick our own truths. There's no such thing as, uh, un fully understood truth anymore.

Everybody can pick and choose what they hold as true. And so I think we're, we're stuck as a society and globally in that way until we can solve that, uh, riddle. Uh, and I don't know if it is solvable when people can decide what you believe in that. Well, I believe in this, you believe in these statistics.

You, you can cite these studies after study, after study. Well, I can cite this person. I [00:30:00] believe in more. Okay, well, we're at a standstill. I think. I think when you talk about wellness, I think solving that, if there's a way to chip away at that is, is a be is the beginning of healing at a, at a global level, 

Travis Richardson: right?

And we talked about this idea of truth being splintered and, um, very little disagreement about what happened, but what, what should be done, um, you know. It was funny 'cause today I was on chat, GPT and I had gotten this, uh, this, um, article, um, uh, current events with um, uh, Iran in Israel. Was looking at it, and just for fun, I was like, let's see what Chatt BT has to say about it.

So I said, analyze this, and I analyzed it and it came up with a conclusion and I said, now take the opposite stance and refute what you just said. And it did it perfectly, and it came up with all these research and articles to cite how it could refute what it just said was the thing. So, I mean, it's comp, it's even [00:31:00] more complicated because, well.

Matt Peiken: AI has complicated. So the, the, the landscape that I just laid out about how there is no universal truth that predates ai, now AI is creating, you know, people are using it to create very realistic video and, uh, creating stories and feeding the media, uh, information that is not true, just completely false information, but people believe it.

We're, we're, we're. I don't know how we can ever get that genie back in the bottle. 

Travis Richardson: Well, now that we're off topic, I have one more question for you because how I, I'm also really curious about this. How do you see, um, you know, journalism and content creation in general of any type moving forward in the context of AI being so dominant now 

Matt Peiken: that I don't wanna conflate journalism with content creation, so.[00:32:00] 

Content creation to me means filling in a hole, filling in some space to whether it, for whatever your reasons are, maybe you're selling advertising alongside it, whatever. Journalism, the act of journalism, real journalism, ai can't do that. Right? And not yet. Maybe someday, but right now it's not going out on the streets and finding BT Bombers, boxing gym.

And telling people about it. It's not going out on the, on bikes with Mormon missionaries and giving you the full layers of what their lives are like. It's not going into Crossroads Church and giving you, putting you behind the scenes of rehearsal and, and into, uh, the. Pulpits and you know, so, so it takes real people to do real journalism.

Uh, AI can certainly rewrite articles. It could take statistics that you feed it and tell it to write a 100 or 200 word story about this. It can do that, but it can't do [00:33:00] journalism. So that's the, those are two different things. So now how do we value journalism in this age where crap content is proliferate?

I, I don't know when people are watching, you know, Fox News or Breitbart News or some of these other, uh, conservative outlets that, that certainly have, uh, a real political agenda to the content that they have. They're not doing journalism. They're putting spin. Are there, are there spin Meisters on the left?

Certainly. But when people ask. This is getting, this might be tangential, but I think this is vital for people to understand where, where journalists come from. So a lot of people say, well, journalism journalists, a lot of journalists are liberal. You guys are just too liberal. Journalists often come [00:34:00] about their, their analysis and, and observations and reporting.

Based on what they've seen out in the world, they're not going in with a bias. They're finding stories and finding realities on the ground, buttressed against humanistic values that then, yes, there's almost always a liberal leaning because there's humanity, there's empathy, and when we don't have an agenda and we want all boats to rise.

Okay, call that liberal. But you know, that's not a political liberalism. That's a living value. And so when people look at journalism as either as as agenda driven, I fight hard against that. Real journalism is not agenda driven. You have your values that don't leave you. You find stories out in the world that sometimes, [00:35:00] you know, maybe a certain policy, um, uh, political policy might be a progressive or liberal policy that isn't doing good in the world, but it's not because the desire is not valuable.

Okay? If this policy's not working, then let's find out. What policies will work? What laws, what, what public policy will do the job that we intend to do Now? Do we wanna solve homelessness? Do we wanna, um, help people from around the world find places that are secure and safe to live in? Hey, those are values.

Then how do we get there? That's what journalists ultimately look to parse out. 

Travis Richardson: Do you see a role for, uh, local journalists and podcasts podcasters in creating a, a healthier community, uh, in general? Is that part of a role, do you think, or is that. Left to others. I think 

Matt Peiken: podcast, well, let's journalists. Yes.

[00:36:00] And how they deliver that journalism. Is it it that the podcasting is one avenue for delivering journalism? There's video, there's audio, there's the written word, whether it's printed and paper tacked onto telephone poles or put on the internet. There's short videos like TikTok. There's long videos, documentaries that can be on YouTube or on streaming services.

There's podcasting series, there's live radio, there's, so podcasting is just a tool. One of the things about podcasting, which is both a blessing and a curse, and I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before here. It's such a low bar of entry. Anybody can do a podcast, but because anybody can do a podcast, that means anybody is doing a podcast.

And a lot of it gives the medium a bad name. It's not produced well. It sounds terrible. There's no real strong point of view. Facts be damned, uh, a lot of the time. Now, if you're clear that you wanna write, produce an absurdist or [00:37:00] fictional or funny podcast, great. Awesome. It's a great tool. And look, I've done a, a couple of different podcasts and I, I, I welcome anybody in but podcasting, while yes, it can be a healing communal vehicle for people, it can also, um, create or further some of the ills that we're talking about.

So it's just a tool. That anybody with a microphone and a computer can access. And it's really up to the individual where they wanna do, do something healthy. And that feeds community, local community, global community, or that divides us. And there are people who go in with agendas on all sides of that.

Travis Richardson: True. And that's sort of reflective of the state of, of the human condition, I guess. So, uh, I guess par for the course there. Um, well, how does your work in all of its forums help people feel more connected to Asheville? 

Matt Peiken: Well, I think, I'd like to think that I did that when I was at Blue Blue Ridge Public Radio by [00:38:00] telling the stories of artists who mostly weren't known, that it helped my audiences know their neighbors.

In ways they didn't know of them before through my podcast. The overlook that I think it helped them dial into. Story, not stories dial into situations, circumstances that exist in our community that maybe they knew about in aggregate in general, but they didn't know the details about they, they didn't understand backstories or understand how they could help or make a difference.

Uh, and I think my podcast helped build bridges there. And now with the new thing that I'm doing, so I pivoting. Away from journalism, at least with this project, it's called Documentary Southeast, and it's a. Uh, documentary film screening and photo exhibition space that I'm operating out of Mars Landing Galleries in Mars Hill.

If you don't know where Mars Hill is, it's a little town [00:39:00] about 20 minutes north of Asheville in Madison County, and there's a fantastic gallery there. Mars Landing. It's 6,000 square foot open floor gallery. It's, uh. Pretty much primarily a contemporary art space right now. And we've been, uh, bringing in, uh, jazz concerts and others occasionally and now expanding the programming with documentaries.

And it will start, uh, this fall with what I'm calling reel to reel 25. So it's REAL to REEL. Uh. 25, and it was up until recently going to be a six weekend festival. Now we're still playing with it, but it's going to be a documentary film festival. It's going to launch documentary Southeast, and we're going to use that festival to kind of, um, raise money to, uh, build awareness, get some press, and have the, uh, the general public start following us so that.

Come early 2026, we will have full-time programming with [00:40:00] documentary films and photography where every other weekend will be a different film screening, and every other month will be a new photo exhibition, and that will happen sometime probably February, March of 26. 

Travis Richardson: That is super exciting and it's really exciting for me because I actually live a few miles away, so I'm definitely awesome.

Gonna be taking advantage of that. And uh, I think you had mentioned the best way to get updates is probably subscribe, uh, to your, um, email list, right? Um, on, well, yeah. Right 

Matt Peiken: now my newsletter is, I'm having technical issues with the newsletter, but if you go to doc southeast.org, so it's DOC southeast.org, you'll see the website.

Just check there for updates. Hopefully within by the time this podcast airs, I will have those technical issues ironed out on the newsletter link on the website. 

Travis Richardson: I have absolute faith in you, sir. 

Matt Peiken: You do. Well, that's one of us. I I am not a tech head. I'm working. I just, [00:41:00] before we started recording this conversation, I just sent an email back saying, your fix that you said would work has not worked.

So what are we gonna do? So that's where we're at right now. 

Travis Richardson: Same boat here, same thing for my website. The web, the website's done. No, it's, no, it's not, not even close. Anyways. Well, Matt, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your Yeah. Voice of course. With, uh, really appreciate you being on and, um, I think, uh, everyone who I.

Should go and check out your websites and, and be a part of that Doc Southeast Project. It looks, it looks really exciting and a totally different venture for you. So thanks. And as people 

Matt Peiken: read my journalism or listen to my journalism, I've got tons of work up at my personal website, matt piken.com. Thanks so much, Matt.

Take care. Thanks, Travis.

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