About Hardin Local
The team behind Hardin Local — the community-focused podcast and social platform covering Hardin County, Kentucky.
About Hardin Local
Hardin Local is a community-focused podcast and social platform covering Hardin County, Kentucky — Elizabethtown, Radcliff, Vine Grove, West Point, and everywhere in between. We produce free, non-partisan local coverage across civic life, business, food, housing, events, and the people who make this county what it is.
The flagship is the Hardin Local Weekly Podcast, livestreamed every Wednesday on Facebook and uploaded to YouTube and the major podcast platforms. Every segment — Events, Business Buzz, Housing Market, The Experienced Eater — is also published as a stand-alone video and a written article you can read here on the site.
If something is happening in Hardin County that the rest of the news isn't covering — a new business opening, a closing announcement, a restaurant worth a drive, a civic meeting that didn't make the paper — there's a good chance we are. And if we aren't yet, tell us.
The Team
All your favorite hosts and contributors — every Linktree, contact link, and follow button is collected on the team page at tr.ee/HLteam.
Rachel Brantingham
Primary Host
Rachel anchors every episode and steers the show through events, housing-market updates, business news, and the Experienced Eater segment. She brings local real-estate expertise (Heart of Kentucky MLS) to the weekly housing dives and keeps the conversation grounded in what actually matters this week in Hardin County.
Phil Taul
Creator
Phil started Hardin Local as a community-focused podcast and social platform built around free, non-partisan local coverage — civic, business, food, housing, and everything in between. He produces and edits each Wednesday's livestream into the segments, clips, and articles you see across Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
Scott Lucas
Co-Host
Scott joins the show as a co-host whose voice is rooted in long-time community involvement across Hardin County. He brings perspective on civic life, local business, and the people who make Elizabethtown, Radcliff, and the rest of the county work.
Jon O'Brien
Events
Jon owns the Events segment every week — five-day rundowns of what's happening across Hardin County, from the State Theater to small-town festivals to one-off pop-ups you'd otherwise miss. If there's something worth doing this weekend in Hardin County, Jon knows about it.
Nate Bryan
Business Buzz
Nate runs Business Buzz — the openings, closings, expansions, and ownership changes that shape Hardin County's local economy. He covers it like someone who actually knows the people running these businesses, because he does.
Britten McDowell
The Experienced Eater
Britten and Michele McDowell co-host The Experienced Eater, a long-running restaurant-review segment that scores Hardin County restaurants on a 10-point scale informed by years of eating across the country. They take it seriously, and so do their followers.
Michele McDowell
The Experienced Eater
Michele co-hosts The Experienced Eater segment with her husband Britten. She brings the warmth, the sharper questions, and the diplomatic counterweight to Britten's sometimes-brutal scoring honesty.
Where to find us
The website is the hub — every article, every podcast episode, the events calendar, the housing-market dashboard, and the election-coverage pages all live here. Plus we publish across the platforms below:
- Facebook — Wednesday livestream + segment videos + weekly recaps
- YouTube — Full episodes, segment videos, and long-form interviews
- Instagram — Reels, clips, and stories from each week
- TikTok — Short-form clips and behind-the-scenes
- X — Real-time updates + quick announcements
- LinkedIn — Business news + professional updates
You can also subscribe to the weekly email — every Wednesday's podcast recap + the week's top stories delivered to your inbox.
Why we do it
Local news has been shrinking for two decades. National stories crowd out the ones that actually shape day-to-day life in Hardin County. We started Hardin Local to fill that gap — not by pretending to be a newspaper, but by being what we are: a podcast and social platform run by people who live here, know the people we cover, and care about getting it right.
Free. Non-partisan. Local.
That's it.
Get in touch
Story tip? Event we missed? Business opening, closing, or expanding? We want to hear from you.
- 📧 [email protected]
- 💬 Messenger channel for updates
- 📣 Become a sponsor — support local coverage