Host Chuck Reece welcomes NPR Music's Ann Powers to help us run down the 10 best Southern albums of 2019.

Okra is not native to North America. It arrived here at the same time enslaved Africans did. No one — no botanist, no historian — can confirm exactly how it got here. But it has connected Southerners across the lines of race, faith, and gender for centuries. In this episode of The Bitter Southerner Podcast, James Beard Award winning journalist Shan…

The spirit of High John the Conqueror keeps the wellsprings of American music, Southern blues and gospel, alive.GUESTS: Musicians Jontavious Willis (Georgia), Bobby Rush (Louisiana), Jake Fussell (North Carolina), the Glorifying Vines Sisters (North Carolina), and the late singer Precious Bryant (Georgia)....and Tim and Denise Duffy of the Music Ma…

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…

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 …

Squidbillies is one of the longest running shows on Atlanta-based Adult Swim. The animated series follows a family of “anthropomorphic mud squids” in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia. Ahead of the season 12 premiere, Chuck Reece moderated a panel with Squidbillies’ co-creators and one of its stars.…

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.

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.…

How Southerners come together to heal the deepest wounds — the physical and psychological injuries — suffered by American veterans and refugees.

"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.

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.