Do you think a Southern accent means its speaker is dumb? In Episode 1 of our second season, we got news for you. GUESTS: Comedians Trae Crowder, Drew Morgan, and Corey Ryan Forrester...Bitter Southerner contributors Dartinia Hull and Lolis Eric Elie...Rapper Killer Mike...Bitter Southerner readers Kristy Wittman Howell and Jessica Whatley ..read more

In Season 2, The Bitter Southerner travels across the South to get at what’s underneath the culture of our region. Host Chuck Reece and various Bitter Southerner contributors bring together stories about why the blues will never die, how okra unites every Southerner, and how to come to terms with the South’s past. Season 2 starts November 15, with new episodes every two weeks until March ..read more

The South lives and dies by its stories — and the writers who tell them. We end Season 1 with a festival of readings and observations on Southern writing ..read more

In our final episode of Season 1, we hear North Carolina-based author Daniel Wallace reading a part of his essay, "Killings." It appears in The Bitter Southerner magazine and in The Bitter Southerner Reader Volume 2. Here is Daniel reading the entire essay in which he remembers the time he killed a chicken ..read more

"Southern culture" is impossible to define because it's always evolving, thanks to immigration. As new people arrive, new ideas go into the gumbo that is our culture. We take a trip to the "Ellis Island of the South," serve up some Brazilian barbecue, and jam out to a Southern mariachi band ..read more

Booze matters in every culture, but in the culture of the South, it matters in some peculiar ways. We have a drink and dive into the twisted roots of the South’s liquor culture ..read more

In a special bonus episode of The Bitter Southerner Podcast, Bridget Lancaster of America's Test Kitchen introduces a story from her podcast called Proof. In it, reporter Maya Kroth looks at how a Spanish pig is changing Southern farmlands. She meets Georgia farmer Will Harris, who is upping the South’s pork game by introducing Iberian pigs to the United States. These pigs are the source of jamón ibérico, a precious cured ham produced in Spain ..read more

When we gather around the table and ask for blessings for the food and the hands that prepared it, we rarely think about how many hands — from how many cultures and races — labored to bring that food to our table. It's a provocative discussion we have with several chefs and food historians ..read more

For our grand finale this season, we’re going to attempt to answer a question that ... to every truehearted Southerner … is among the most difficult questions ever: Can the South be redeemed? Congressman John Lewis and Andrew Aydin talk about their mission to tell the Civil Rights Movement through comics....we hear about a Freedom Rider’s lifelong fight against injustice....Pulitzer Prize winning columnist John Archibald on overcoming the “great silence” that exists in many of our lives....and Peggy Wallace Kennedy reflects on the legacy of her father, former Alabama Gov. George Wallace ..read more

The North Carolina folklorist Bill Ferris has documented the sounds of the South over the last 50 years. He has said nothing crosses racial lines as easily as music, and that's what this episode is about. We begin with a story about Booker T. & the MG’s. Next, a conversation with The Bitter Southerner's hip-hop columnist, Joycelyn Wilson, about how trap music has become the “folk music” of young, African American Southerners. And finally, a long chat with the Bill Ferris himself. NOTE: This episode contains explicit language ..read more