PODCAST · history
Walter Edgar's Journal
by South Carolina Public Radio
From books to barbecue, and current events to Colonial history, historian and author Walter Edgar delves into the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the American South. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.
Episodes
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Murder, mischief, and malice in 1890s Spartanburg
This week we’ll be talking with Betsy Teter, author of A Carnival of Crime: Murder, Mischief, and Malice in 1890s Spartanburg (2026, Hub City Press). Her book uncovers a piece of lost history – accounts of which were lost when a fire destroyed the downtown offices of Spartanburg’s daily…
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The Cherokee War of 1776: Native destruction at the dawn of American independence
This week we'll be talking with Dr. Kevin Kokomoor of Coastal Carolina University about his new book, The Cherokee War of 1776: Native Destruction at the Dawn of American Independence (2026, John Hopkins University Press). Americans remember 1776 as the year liberty was declared, the moment they...
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Once upon a time in space: The story of Ronald McNair
This week we will be talking with Carl McNair, brother of the late Dr. Ronald McNair, NASA astronaut and Lake City, South Carolina, native. Ron McNair’s story is told in the four-part series, Once Upon a Time in Space, currently streaming on PBS and ETV Passport. Ron McNair’s story is singular…
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Seeking out the vanishing flavors of traditional Southern foods
With every growing season, the South is in danger of losing an ingredient that’s shaped our state’s flavor, history, and culture. This week, we will be talking with Chef Kevin Mitchell and food historian David Shields, hosts of the SCETV and PBS series The Savers of Flavor about their ongoing...
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Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life
This week Walter will talk with historian Albert Louis Zambone about Revolutionary War hero Daniel Morgan. On January 17, 1781, at Cowpens, South Carolina, the notorious British cavalry officer Banastre Tarleton and his legion were destroyed along with the cream of Lord Cornwallis’s troops. The…
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Empire of Ashes
This week we’ll be talking with Charleston author James M. Scott, author of Empire of Ashes: Truman, Hirohito, and the Descent into Total War (2026, W.W. Norton & Company). With startling immediacy, Empire of Ashes illuminates the moral dilemma at the center of America’s decision to inflict total...
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Backcountry resistance: South Carolina's militia and the fight for American independence
This week we will be talking with Carl P. Borick, author of Backcountry Resistance: South Carolina's Militia and the Fight for American Independence (2026, USC Press). As the title indicates, Carl’s book focuses on rank-and-file militiamen of the backcountry and explores how these ordinary men…
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Revolutionary voices
This week we are recording in front of a live audience at part of South Carolina ETV and South Carolina Public Radio’s America 250 celebration. Our guests are Gen. Will Grimsley, Chair of the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission (SC250); and Molly Fortune, Chief…
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The South Carolina BBQ Project
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…
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Murder in the Lowcountry? Call the Mudflats Murder Club
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...
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South Carolina from A-Z in Depth - The Scrabble episode!
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…
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Revelations: The Art of Leo Twiggs
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...
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Liberty is Sweet: The hidden history of the American Revolution
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,...
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Mary Whyte: An artist's life
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...
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Exploring "South Carolina from A to Z" - In depth, redux
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…
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“South Carolina from A to Z” in depth
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...
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The Father of American Opera: Carlisle Floyd at 100
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...
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Victoria Benton Frank: Making a new path while walking with grief
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...
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Gullah Culture in America
The book, Gullah Culture in America (Blair Publishing), chronicles the history and culture of the Gullah people, African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of the American South. Written by Wilbur Cross in 2008, it chronicles the arrival of enslaved West Africans to the sea islands of...
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The Ramos Gin Fizz: a history of the complex New Orleans cocktail that survived Prohibition
This week, in a "nod to all things Southern," we’ll be talking with Dr. John Shelton Reed about his book, The Ramos Gin Fizz (Iconic New Orleans Cocktails) (2025, LSU Press). In the book, John attempts to reconstruct Ramos’s original recipe using modern ingredients and addresses the question of…
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25th Anniversary of Walter Edgar’s Journal
(Broadcast on SC Public Radio on December 12, 2025) – Today we are featuring a very special edition of the Journal, taken from a live broadcast on SC Public Radio on December 12. Sean Birch, Director of SCPR, will be your host, talking with Walter Edgar and Alfred Turner about the 25th…
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Master of horror: Grady Hendrix
Today our guest is Mt. Pleasant native Grady Hendrix, author of the horror novel Witchcraft for Wayward Girls (2025, Berkley Books). The novel is set in Florida in 1970 and is about a group of pregnant teenage girls, living in a maternity home for unwed girls, who discover a book on witchcraft.…
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Rebirth: Creating the Museum of the Reconstruction Era and the future of house museums
This week we'll be talking with Dr. Jennifer Whitmer Taylor of Duquesne University about her book, Rebirth: Creating the Museum of the Reconstruction Era and the Future of the House Museum (2025, University of SC Press). In Rebirth, Taylor provides a compelling account of how to reenvision the...
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Ken Burns: the American Revolution
This week Walter will be talking with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns about the American Revolution, focusing on the routing of the British and their allies by revolutionary Partisans during Cornwallis’ Southern campaign. Ken will also tell us a bit about his upcoming PBS documentary, The…
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"E" is for Edgar
Today we’ll be switching things up a bit. Instead of Walter and Alfred interviewing a guest we will have a guest interviewing Walter. The conversation is part of the Spring 2025 program put on by the University South Caroliniana Society: “E is for Edgar – Conversation and Barbeque with Walter.”...
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Grant’s Enforcer: Taking down the Klan
In his book Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan Guy Gugliota offers a gripping story of the early years after the Civil War and the campaign led by President Ulysses S. Grant’s attorney general Amos T. Akerman to destroy the Ku Klux Klan. Akerman, a former Georgia slaveholder and the only...
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Native nations in colonial South Carolina
This week we’ll be talking with Dr. Kathleen DuVal about native Americans in Colonial South Carolina. Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as Kathleen will tell us,...
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25 years of Walter Edgar’s Journal
This fall we are celebrating 25 years of Walter Edgar’s Journal! We thought that a good way to start that celebration would be to look back on the launch of our podcast. So, this week we bring you an encore of our final *broadcast* episode of May 2023. Our guest was the Director of SC Public…
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Witness to change: George Anson and colonial Charleston
This week we’ll be talking with Nic Butler, the historian at the Charleston County Public Library. He has been digging into archives both here and in Britain, researching the life of George Anson. Anson, was an officer in the British Navy who, by the time of his death in 1762, had risen to its...
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Beyond the western wall: Henry Tisdale and the transformation of Claflin University
This week we’ll be talking with Dr. Henry N. Tisdale, former president of Claflin University in Orangeburg, South Carolina. This Kingstree native has had a long and distinguished academic career, earning his undergraduate degree at Claflin in 1965 and, eventually, becoming the first African...
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SC A-Z - Back stories
This week we are going to be exploring South Carolina from A to Z. That’s the title of our sister podcast from which we will select topics that deserve a longer look that just 60 seconds. This time out we'll discuss the ambitious man whose name adorns a Christmas decoration; the aristocratic…
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The South never plays itself: The South on screen
This time out we are bringing you an encore from our broadcast archive featuring a conversation with Ben Beard, author of The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buff’s Journey Through the South on Screen (2020, UGA Press). Beard’s idiosyncratic narrative—part cultural history, part film criticism,...
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The Francis Marion papers: The legend, tactics and life of the Swamp Fox
After two decades of research and investigation, the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, in collaboration with the South Carolina American Revolution Sestercentennial Commission (SC250), has unveiled the first volume of the Francis Marion Papers, a project that holds the potential to...
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Mother Emanuel: Two centuries of race, resistance, and forgiveness
Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight...
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The Zombie Memes of Dixie
This week we will be talking Scott Romine, author of The Zombie Memes of Dixie (2024, UGA Press). The book traces the origin and development of several propositions, tropes, types, clichés, and ideas commonly associated with the U.S. South. Approaching these propositions as memes Scott argues…
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Exploring "South Carolina from A to Z" - Ep. 2
This week we're going to explore South Carolina from A to Z. Walter and Alfred will take five topics from past episodes of our companion podcast, South Carolina from A to Z, and discuss each at length, giving these people and events from our state's history some room to "breathe." We'll tell you...
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On the trail: Johnny D. Boggs' journey from the swamps of the Pee Dee to the Old West
This week we'll be talking with Timmonsville native Johnny D. Boggs about his latest novel, Bloody Newton: The Town from Hell (2024, Psicom Publishing), his journey from a childhood in the Pee Dee, his life in Santa Fe, New Mexico,and his career as a celebrated author of Western fiction. Bloody...
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Exploring "South Carolina from A to Z"
This week we going to explore South Carolina from A to Z. That’s the title of our sister podcast and the title tells you all you need to know about what that podcast does: Letter by letter Walter goes through the South Carolina Encyclopedia, giving you bite-sized takes on the history of the...
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The cost of the vote: George Elmore and the battle for the ballot
This week author and journalist Carolyn Click joins us to talk about her new book, The Cost of the Vote: George Elmore and the Battle for the Ballot (2025, USC Press). Elmore's story is that of a man who believed, with uncommon boldness, that he and other Black Americans were guaranteed the right...
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Backcountry war: The rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter in the American Revolution
This week we'll be talking with Andrew Waters about his latest book, Backcountry War: The Rise of Francis Marion, Banastre Tarleton, and Thomas Sumter (2024, Westholme Publishing). In it Andrew weaves the history of three key leaders in the American Revolution into in a single narrative, focusing...
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"Somewhere toward freedom" - Sherman's March and the story of America's largest Emancipation
This week, we’ll be talking with Bennett Parten, author of Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation (2025, Simon & Schuster). In Somewhere Toward Freedom, Ben reframes this seminal episode in Civil War history. He not only helps us understand how...
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North of Main: Spartanburg's historic Black neighborhoods
This week, we’ll be talking with Betsy Teter and Jim Neighbors about their book, North of Main: Spartanburg's Historic Black Neighborhoods of North Dean Street, Gas Bottom, and Back of the College. In this book, co-authors Brenda Lee Pryce, Betsy Teter and Jim Neighbors tell the story of how...
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Settler violence, native resistance, and the coalescence of the Old South
In his book, Aggression and Sufferings: Settler Violence, Native Resistance, and the Coalescence of the Old South, Evan Nooe argues that through the experiences and selective memory of settlers in the antebellum South, white southerners incorporated their aggression against and suffering at the...
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Remembering Nathalie Dupree
This week we bring you a very special episode of the Journal – we will be remembering our friend and champion of Southern cuisine, Nathalie Dupree, who died on January 13, 2025, at the age of 85. Nathalie visited with us twice during the Journal’s long run as a broadcast program: once in 2011 to...
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Raptors in the ricelands
In his new novel, Raptors in the Ricelands, Ron Daise unfolds a story in a twenty-first century fictional community near Georgetown, SC - a story which reveals family secrets and conflicts that challenge cultural beliefs. Conveyed in four acts and with chapter names that follow the production...
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Charleston's Nathaniel Russell House: Kitchen house archaeology sheds new light on the life of the enslaved
On this episode of Walter Edgar's Journal, we’ll be talking with Tracey Todd, the Director of Museums for the Historic Charleston Foundation, and Andrew Agha, an archaeologist working on the site of the Nathaniel Russell house, a National Historic Landmark on Meeting Street. We’ll be talking…
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Marjory Wentworth: One River, One Boat
This week we’ll be talking with former poet laureate of South Carolina, Marjory Wentworth about her new collection of poems entitled One River, One Boat (Evening Post Books, 2024). This collection of occasional poems and essays includes those written about heartbreaking and joyous times in South...
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Romancing the Gullah in the age of Porgy and Bess
Dr. Kendra Hamilton’s book, Romancing the Gullah in the Age of Porgy and Bess, is a literary and cultural history of a place: the Gullah Geechee Coast, a four-state area that’s one of only a handful of places that can truly be said to be the “cradle of Black culture” in the United States. While...
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Lincoln's unfinished work: The new birth of freedom from generation to generation
Abraham Lincoln, February 9, 1864(Anthony Berger / Library of Congress) This week, we offer you an encore of an episode from our broadcast archive: A fascinating conversation with Dr. Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthe w J. Perry Jr. Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University, and Dr....
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Southern/Modern: Modernism in Southern art from the first half of the twentieth century
"Where the Shrimp Pickers Live," 1940, oil on canvas.(Dusti Bongé (1903-93) / Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS. Gift of Dusti Bongé Art; Foundation, Inc. 1999.012 ) This week we will be talking with Jonathan Stuhlman and Martha Severens about their book, Southern/Modern: Rediscovering...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
From books to barbecue, and current events to Colonial history, historian and author Walter Edgar delves into the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the American South. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.
HOSTED BY
South Carolina Public Radio
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Walter Edgar's Journal have?
Walter Edgar's Journal currently has 366 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Walter Edgar's Journal about?
From books to barbecue, and current events to Colonial history, historian and author Walter Edgar delves into the arts, culture, and history of South Carolina and the American South. Produced by South Carolina Public Radio.
How often does Walter Edgar's Journal release new episodes?
Walter Edgar's Journal publishes regularly with 366 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Walter Edgar's Journal?
You can listen to Walter Edgar's Journal on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Walter Edgar's Journal?
Walter Edgar's Journal is created and hosted by South Carolina Public Radio.
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