This week on the SouthBound podcast, host Tommy Tomlinson talks to Jason Mott, the North Carolina writer whose novel “Hell of a Book” recently won the National Book Award for fiction. It’s a funny, surreal and tragic story about trying to process the far-too-common violent deaths of young Black people in America.

Hank Klibanoff's podcast “Buried Truths,” which is about long-ago racially motivated killings in Georgia, has won a Peabody Award. This season, though, Klibanoff decided to tackle a more current case: last year’s death of Ahmaud Arbery.

This week on the SouthBound podcast, it’s the best of 2021 – clips from some of my favorite interviews of the year. You’ll hear from everyone from bestselling author Shea Serrano to poet Ada Limon to “Death, Sex & Money” podcast host Anna Sale, plus many others.

Joseph Ewoodzie is a sociology professor at Davidson College and the author of a new book called “Getting Something To Eat In Jackson.” It’s about the interplay of race and class in Mississippi through the lens of what Black people there eat and why.

This week on the SouthBound podcast, Tommy Tomlinson's guest is Ed Southern, author of a new book called “Fight Songs.” It’s part love story and part history lesson, telling how college football became such a huge deal in the Deep South – and how college basketball became just as big a deal in North Carolina.

This week on the SouthBound podcast, my guests are Michael Graff and Nick Ochsner. They’re the co-authors of a new book called “The Vote Collectors,” which takes a deep look at the controversial 2018 election in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District – a rare election where voter fraud actually occurred. But there’s a lot more to the story than one election.

This week on the SouthBound podcast, writer Shea Serrano talks about his new book, “Hip-Hop (and Other Things),” which is likely to be his fourth straight New York Times bestseller. On Twitter, he has built an army of followers who routinely do good deeds for people in need. And it all stems from a moment when he really needed a second job.

This week on the SouthBound podcast, it’s a replay of our 2019 conversation with musician Ben Folds. He talks about the big mistakes he’s made in his life, and how they helped him make better art – and become a better man.

This week on the SouthBound podcast, we talk to Billy Reid, who has built one of America’s high-end fashion brands from his home in Florence, Alabama. Reid’s customers include actor Daniel Craig, who wore one of Reid’s coats in a James Bond movie. That sold a lot of coats.

This week's guest on SouthBound is Adia Victoria, a singer from Nashville by way of South Carolina. She explores a spooky, moody brand of roots music on her new album, “A Southern Gothic.”