Michael and Thomas are fresh from their vacations and back at the podcast studio. Their guest this week is John Provo, director of the Center for Economic and Community Engagement at Virginia Tech and the author of Vibrant Virginia, a forthcoming book about the Urban-Rural divide in the Commonwealth. Often framed as weak rural economic development, John reframes the issue as one that really has more to do with our understanding of wealth and class.

We discuss rural broadband and how telecom providers rigged the system against local governments from providing or subsidizing municipal infrastructure.