The Overlook with Matt Peiken

Since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Islamophobia and antisemitism are on the rise across the United States. That inspired me to reach out to leaders of the Islamic Center of Asheville and two of Asheville’s synagogues. I’m devoting this week’s episodes to those conversations. Today, I speak with Nasser Ostah, who moved from Jordan a little over a year ago, to become the imam of the Islamic Cent...

Asheville singer-songwriter Hannah Kaminer has established a pattern of processing and naming the heaviness in life through her music. On the heels of her previous album, “Heavy Magnolias,” comes “Heavy on the Vine,” a new collection of lush music underscoring lyrics born from personal turmoil and evolution. Today, Hannah guides us through her departure from organized religion and her societal obs...

Tourism officials want people to think of Asheville as Beer City, USA. Never mind that breweries now dot the downtowns of even the smallest of cities. Still, there are only a handful of schools in the country like  Craft Beverage Institute of the Southeast , on the campus of A-B Tech. Today, we talk with Jeff “Puff” Irvin, the institute’s director. Every semester, people from throughout the South...

One of Asheville’s iconic concert venues will vanish in the coming years—not because of poor business, but because of eminent domain. Salvage Station on Riverside Drive is on the map of businesses that will be forced to sell and give way to the I-26 Connector. A number of homes are also on the map for clearance. Nathan Moneyham, a division construction engineer based in Asheville for the NC Depart...

Nabil El Jaouhari grew up in a village outside of Beirut, Lebanon. Even amid post-war cycles of sectarian violence, Nabil followed a path of artistic expression. His fine art studies eventually led him to the United States. Since moving to Asheville, about eight years ago, he has regularly shown at Mark Bettis Gallery in the River Arts District. In today's conversation, we learn about his lif...

It took the formation of Thrive AVL , a relatively new nonprofit here, to formally connect tourism and affordable housing—and the policies and practices around them—as affecting one another. Casey Gilbert and Kate Pett of Thrive AVL go into detail about what’s called sustainable tourism—that is, encouraging tourism that enhances all avenues of life. They also dissect a recent Thrive AVL study that...

The Hospital Corporation of America purchased the nonprofit Mission Hospital four years ago in a deal shrouded in secrecy. Since then, hundreds of doctors, nurses and support staff have resigned. North Carolina’s attorney general has joined them in protesting what they see as an unflinching profits-over-people business model.  The Asheville Watchdog has written many stories detailing much of the d...

Asheville guitarist-songwriter David Wilcox has been at the vanguard of American folk music since the late 1980s. His observational storytelling and lyrical turns of phrase have earned him a loyal following throughout this country and beyond. Sixteen studio albums into his career, he’s still finding new things to say. Today, we go deep with Wilcox about his songcraft, his vein of inspiration throu...

Asheville city leaders have had a “Complete Streets” policy in place for more than a decade—that is, a commitment to make streets as friendly to cyclists and pedestrians as they are to cars and trucks. We’ve seen that policy take shape in the form of so-called road diets along Charlotte Street and North Merrimon Avenue and the Riverside Drive Greenway. It’s also the reason College Street and Patto...

We often hear about the lack of affordable housing in and around Asheville. But there’s a flipside to the coin that is often overlooked—overdevelopment is having a devastating effect on agriculture. Today's guest is Gina Smith, the features editor with Edible Asheville . She has reported and written a two-part series of stories titled " Losing Ground ." where she examines the loss o...

Sue Polston’s story is a screenwriter’s dream. Raised in a dysfunctional home, she became a mother while still in high school, and fell into a crack addiction. Today, Polston is the executive director of Sunrise Community for Recovery and Wellness . We talk about how Sunrise operates as a peer support network helping those with mental health and substance use disorders, experiencing homelessness a...

There are high hopes in Asheville for two former hotels converted into permanent housing for the chronically unhoused. The first of them up and running is Compass Point Village, developed and managed by the Asheville nonprofit Homeward Bound . The second, due to open in mid-2024, is a private, for-profit development that will convert a former Days Inn into a 115-unit complex called Step Up.     To...

Asheville's homeless strategy division has invited the public into a three-part educational course that dives deep into the actual causes of homelessness, the array of solutions at play and how we, as individuals, can play a critical role. Today's guests are Emily Ball and Debbie Alford, two-thirds of the city’s homeless strategy division . We talk about the prevailing myths around homel...

Hannah Cole is an Asheville artist who translates her everyday observations into her studio craft. These observations started out as external. Now, partially inspired by the incursion of artificial intelligence, Hannah's newest body of work sees her turn her gaze inward. Here, I talk with Hannah about what representation by human hands means in the era of AI. We also talk about Hannah’s turn...

It doesn’t seem all that long ago that people bottled up their mental health struggles or got real about them only with a therapist, if at all. Today, much of the stigma is lifted but, for many, access to quality mental health care remains elusive. My guests today are Meredith Switzer, the executive director; and Brendan Hughes, the development director, for the nonprofit All Souls Counseling Cent...

Until this current school year, student enrollment at UNC-Asheville had dropped in each of the previous five years—down 25 percent from where admissions officials want it to be. The drop mirrors national trends. My guests today are Marcio Moreno, UNC-Asheville's associate vice chancellor of admission and financial aid; and Michael Strysick, head of the university’s communications and marketin...

The Resonant Rogues allowed The Overlook to use their "Maker's Song" as the show theme. It's only fitting to have Sparrow and Keith, the heart of the band, as guests for the show's 100th episode—closing a week of episodes recorded Sept. 27 in front of an audience at the Tina McGuire Theatre, inside the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts. Here, Sparrow and Keith tell ho...

We continue our week of episodes recorded in front of an audience at The Overlook Live with Asheville Symphony Orchestra music director Darko Butorac. We talk about how the orchestra pivoted this season after city officials deemed Thomas Wolfe Auditorium uninhabitable because of outdated and nonfunctional infrastructure. I ask why this orchestra only performs monthly programs and why he and other...

We launch a special week of episodes recorded from The Overlook Live with a deep dive and dissection into Asheville’s commitment to racial reparations. Three years after city leaders committed to a formal reparations resolution, the commission tasked with drafting specific proposals is still debating what reparations even means.  My guests are Dr. Dwight Mullen, a retired UNC-Asheville history pro...

Violinist Andrew Finn Magill  has an eclectic, genre-crossing new album called “The Polaris Project.” Horror writer Jamieson Ridenhour is the writer and co-creator of the popular fiction podcast "Palimpsest." The two Asheville artists split this episode of The Overlook.   Ridenhour and “Palimpsest” actress and co-creator Hayley Heninger celebrate the upcoming fifth season of their show w...

Just last year, roughly four out of five Asheville-area Black children tested below grade level in reading proficiency.  My guests today are Ashley Allen and Jess McLean, co-executive directors at Read 2 Succeed, one of a handful of Asheville nonprofits supplementing the reading education happening at under-resourced schools. Read 2 Succeed is particularly focused on closing what it calls “the rac...

You’d have to be a shut-in not to notice the prevalence of panhandling in Asheville. It’s become so visible along Interstate on-ramps and off-ramps that, early this summer, a committee of city councilwomen proposed penalizing sympathetic motorists who stop to give money to panhandlers. A public outcry compelled them to walk back that proposal and soften other language in a pending update to the ci...

Andrew Scotchie is one of Asheville’s homegrown musical successes. He was an active busker, he played in local clubs long before he was old enough to legally get in the door and even started his own successful knockoff of the popular Bonaroo Festival, called Barnaroo. A few months ago, Scotchie released his fifth album of eclectic Appalachian music, called “Love is Enough.” Scotchie talks here abo...

Social politics are making inroads into public schools. State legislatures, particularly those controlled by Republicans, are mandating that elections for school boards become partisan, and they’re drafting legislation to censor books available in school libraries, the curricula taught in classrooms and even classroom conversations. This is the second in a two-part conversation with board members...

There’s no glory in serving on a school board, at least not in North Carolina. State legislatures control your policies and purse strings. Parents sling arrows at you online and at public meetings. There are efforts to turn school board elections into overtly partisan affairs and pass legislation forcing teachers away from certain books, curricula and even classroom conversations. This is the firs...