Abandoned: The All American Ruins Podcast

There are some podcasts that define genre classification and would never be considered by large podcast networks, worried about recouping their investment in the show. Abandoned: All-American Ruins is one of those podcasts.

It is part fact, and part fantasy.

Creator/host advises before each episode: “It’s best you listen with headphones on, imagination on, and everything else turned off.”

Abandoned:All-American Ruins is a fantastical multimedia travelog in which creator/host Blake Pfeil recounts his experiences exploring abandoned spaces through multimodal storytelling.

The project has won dozens of awards and been featured in 11 countries and 17 states, most notably On Air Fest, SONOHR Radio & Podcast Festival, Berliner Hörspielfestival, Capital City Film Festival, ArchFilm Lund, Eugene Environmental Film Festival, Garden State Film Festival, Newburgh Fringe Festival, Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Oscar Qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival, and CineHealth International Film & Media Festival where it was awarded Best Podcast.

All-American Ruins has been spotlighted in Business Insider, People, Atlas Obscura, Colorado Magazine, and Noovie, among others, with accolades from the Ambies, Press Gazette Future of Media Awards, Signal Awards, Parapod Podcast Awards, PopCon Podcast Awards, among many others. In 2025, the podcast arm of the project, Abandoned, reached no. 1 on the Apple Podcasts Travel and Places charts.

Through All-American Ruins, Blake has also served as a speaker at Medium Day, Podcast Movement Evolutions, and the NC Museum of History, among many others.

After all these accolades, let’s discuss what the podcast is about. In effect, this show explores abandoned spaces across the United States. Along the way, abandoned asks critical questions about American history and culture, community, capitalism and economics, the environment, and mental health while encouraging folks to activate their imaginations as a tool for healing.

I think Blake Pfeil has tapped into a uniquely American archetype. In Europe and Asia, things can be very old, even thousands of years old. Yet, decay is somewhat rare. In the U.S., due to the rapid growth and technological advancements, there are few instances of “old,” but many more examples of decay.

The show, which began in mid-2022 and has released 60 episodes, exposed Blake Pfeil’s obsession as he traveled back in time to his childhood in the mountains of Colorado, where he reveals the genesis for his imaginative obsession with American ruins: an abandoned dairy farm.

Some of the notable episodes include the two-parter, Sometimes I Pretend I’m Erin Brockovich, when Pfeil explores two abandoned industrial spaces infamous for former EPA violations — the Al Tech Specialty Steel Corporation, a Superfund site just outside of Albany, NY, and C&D Technologies in Huguenot, NY.

In season two, Pfeil travels to Port Jervis, NY, where New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania converge. It’s a Coal industry zombie Apocalypse, with abandoned coal mines that left the landscape scarred and spoiled.

​Prior to his work with All-American Ruins, Blake Pfeil co-founded Macabre Americana, wrote and performed the solo folk music piece The BBC: 1970, and collaborated on theater and music performance projects worldwide, with stints in The Netherlands, Mexico, South Korea, as well as professional stage credits at Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, Huntington Theatre Company, New Rep, Company One, and more.

During the week, he steps into the role of Operations & Programs Manager at the nonprofit storytelling organization TMI Project, where he also serves as a producer for the two-time Ambie nominee The TMI Project Story Hour, winner of an International Women’s Podcast Award. On Wednesday evenings, Pfeil co-hosts Cinema Kingston! on Radio Kingston/WKNY (107.9 FM/1490 AM in the Hudson Valley, NY), and he recently worked as a guest producer for season five of History Colorado’s Lost Highways, a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities.​

Blake Pfeil is a SWF Michael Ajakwe Innovation Award Winner, Disctopia TruePlay Innovative Podcaster Award Finalist, and 2025 Green Box Resident Artist. Pfeil is an alumnus of SUNY Stony Brook’s Audio Podcast Fellowship; he has an MA from Purchase College, a BFA from Emerson College, and is a Member of Actors’ Equity + BMI.

I’ll end with an insight from a critic who can summarize the show far better than I could ever. “

“With Abandoned, Blake Pfeil is pushing at the boundaries of form, ​combining documentary and audio theater in a voice distinctly his own. These are the rare kinds of stories that leave you wondering,” says David Krasnow, Executive Producer, The New Yorker Radio Hour.