Walter Edgar's Journal

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 cast off tyranny and proclaimed the self-evident truths of equality and freedom. But that same summer,...

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: he grew up in a segregated South Carolina and went on to earn a PHD in physics. With the beginning of...

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 search for the vanishing ingredients of Southern cuisine. Over the course of four episodes David and Kevin...

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 man who planned and executed this stunning American victory was Daniel Morgan. Once a barely literate ba...

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 war upon Japan.  A thorough historian and a talented writer Scott brings to life the struggles – m...

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 were recruited, armed, fed, and motivated. Drawing on underused pension records and state claims, he reco...

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 Executive Officer, of SC250. Among the topics we’ll be covering today are South Carolina's role in the American...

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 typograp...

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 (202...

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 giv...

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 commen...

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...

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 mo...

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...

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 South Carolina and Georgia; the melding of their African cultures, which created distinct creole language...

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 how and how much to shake the drink, a subject on which there is surprisingly much to be said. Offering...

(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 anniversary of Walter Edgar’s Journal . The program features questions and comments from our radio audience and...

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. For the first time in their lives power seems to be in the hands. We’ll talk with Grady about this late...

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 historic house museum. Using the Museum of the Reconstruction Era—known as the Woodrow Wilson Family Hom...

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 American Revolution . The six-part, 12-hour documentary series explores the country’s founding struggle and i...

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.” Talking with Walter today is Beryl Dakers, president of the Society and long-time producer with SCETV.

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 Southerner to serve in a Reconstruction cabinet, was the first federal lawman to propose using the Fourteen...