This week we will be talking with Nathan Spainhour, author of The South Carolina BBQ Project (2025, Good Printed Things). Nathan is a designer and educator whose work explores the relationship between design, place, and cultural narrative.

His book began as his MFA thesis in Graphic Design and has since evolved into an ongoing documentation of barbecue’s visual culture – from signage and typography to architecture and everyday ephemera – situated within the broader history of Southern foodways. The South Carolina BBQ Project is a lot of fun. Part history, part design study, and part love letter to the state’s most treasured foodway, the book explores the culture of barbecue across the Palmetto state.

This week our guest will be novelist Brian Thiem, from Hilton Head Island, and we'll be talking about his series of novels about the Mudflats Murder Club.

Brian draws from his experience as a former detective and cold case investigator, to craft suspenseful stories set on the fictional Spartina Island in the South Carolina Lowcountry. His latest book in the series is A Killer in the Cordgrass (2026, Severn River Publishing/Simon and Schuster).

This week our we are bringing you another episode in our occasional series which explores “South Carolina from A to Z” in depth. South Carolina from A to Z is our sister podcast that brings you “bite-sized,”one-minute topics from the South Carolina Encyclopedia. 

Listeners Virgil and Mary Ann Hobbs suggested that our next episode of A-Z in depth focus on topics that begin with the letters that give Scrabble players their highest scores - what a great idea! So, today's topics begin with Q, X, or Z.

This week we will be talking with Sara from the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston, art historian Frank Martin, and with artist Leo Twiggs about his exhibition at the Gibbes called Revelations: The Art of Leo Twiggs.

At 92 years of age, Leo Twiggs has a perspective on life in South Carolina that covers fundamental changes in our state and our nation. His art is both intensely personal and a commentary of the struggles that both Black and White South Carolinians share.

The show ends May 3rd at the Gibbes and opens at the Florence Museum June 1 for an extended run.

This week we are digging into our broadcast archives to bring you an encore of an episode that is perfect in this 250th-annivesary year of the start of the American Revolution. 

Walter’s guest is Dr. Woody Holton of the University of South Carolina, and they will be talking about Horton’s book, Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution. (2021, Simon & Schuster).

Liberty is Sweet has been described as a “deeply researched and bracing retelling” of the Revolution, which shows how the Founders were influenced by overlooked Americans—women, Native Americans, African Americans, and religious dissenters.

This week we will be talking with South Carolina watercolor artist Mary Whyte. 

A traditionalist preferring a representational style, and the author of seven published books, Mary has earned awards for her large-scale watercolors. Today we’ll look back on Mary’s career and talk with her about her new book, An Artist's Life: Unlocking Creative Expression.

We had so much fun last time out, exploring topics featured in “South Carolina from A to Z,” that we decided to do it again!

South Carolina from A to Z is our sister podcast – also broadcast each weekday on South Carolina Public Radio – that brings you “bite-sized," one-minute topics from the South Carolina Encyclopedia.

This episode we have selected five new topics to explore

This week our we are bringing you another episode in our occasional series which explores “South Carolina from A to Z” in depth.

South Carolina from A to Z is our sister podcast – also broadcast each weekday on South Carolina Public Radio – that brings you “bite-sized," one-minute topics from the South Carolina Encyclopedia.

This episode we have selected five of those topics to explore.

This week we’ll be talking about the life and career of the man that many call the Father of American opera: Carlisle Floyd. Our guests are Floyd's neice, Jane Matheny, and his biographer, Thomas Holliday. A native of Latta, South Carolina, Carlisle Floyd became a professor of composition at Florida State University in 1947. His magnum opus, Susannah, was first performed in 1955 and became the most performed American opera, second to Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.

Floyd was both composer and librettist of his operas, which typically portrayed themes common to rural America, especially the post-Civil War South. 2026 in the centennial of Carlisle Floyd’s birth and today we’ll talk with our guests about his long life and his career.

This week we’ll be talking with Charleston author Victoria Benton Frank about her new novel, The Violet Hour. Victoria was born in New York City, raised in Montclair, New Jersey, but considers herself to have dual residency in the Lowcountry. She is a graduate of the College of Charleston and the French Culinary Institute. Her mother was the late Dorothea Benton Frank, a best-selling novelist and native of Sullivan’s Island.

With the release of The Violet Hour (2026, Simon & Schuster), her second novel, she continues to hone her craft, this time with a story of grief and healing.