Decoding Southern accents, from the 'Durham accent' on HBO's White Lotus, to the Ocracoke Brogue

What this episode covers

0:01:00 Do the Southern accents in the TV show 'White Lotus' measure up? HBO's hit murder mystery series, The White Lotus, perked Southerners' ears with their third season. North Carolinians have found their Southern drawls prominently featured – but how authentic are the actors’ portrayals of Chapel Hill and Durham accents? We consult a local sociolinguist for answers. Walt Wolfram, William C. Friday Distinguished University Professor of English at North Carolina State University and the director of the North Carolina Language and Life Project This segment originally aired in 2025. 0:33:00 Two decades later, a ground-breaking book on Ocracoke accents gets a follow-up This time, the authors were joined by a fourth-generation Ocracoke resident and another language expert to take an even deeper dive on the culture and evolution of the accent. The book is called Language and Life on Ocracoke: The Living History of the Brogue. It includes QR codes with audio from people speaking with the accent, and with people sharing their experiences being asked by tourists to "speak" so they can hear it. Candy Gaskill is a coauthor and lifelong resident of Ocracoke. Jeffrey Reaser is an English professor at North Carolina State University, and the inaugural Walt Wolfram Distinguished Professorship in Sociolinguistics. Walt Wolfram has been a William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of English at NCSU. Wolfram announced his retirement in 2026. They co-authored the book Talkin’ Tar Heel. At the end of the first segment is a short clip of the song "Charlie Mason Pogie Boat." It's about a ship that wrecked just off Ocracoke Island. On the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings album "Between the Sound and the Sea: Music of the North Carolina Outer Banks."