A podcast of the Great Smoky Mountains Association, the miniseries “Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music” won the award for Outstanding Public Engagement during the 2023 Public Lands Alliance Partnership Awards.

Antoine Fletcher’s love affair with podcasts blossomed back in middle school when he made his first one with his best friend. The project didn’t make them millionaires, but it was “the start of something that was really cool,” Fletcher said.  

After 20 years in daily newspapers, journalist Matt Peiken took a buyout from the St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press in 2007 and embarked upon his first foray into the entrepreneurial world — a daily video program called “3 Minute Egg.” Over nearly three years, he produced more than 300 short documentary videos that eventually became a pre-YouTube era public television hit. 

As voting hours ended on Election Day 2020, talking heads waiting for results to roll in filled the TV airwaves with speculation based on the exit polling data before them. What might it mean for the final results, and for the future of the American presidency?

A six-part podcast mini-series exploring the intersection of Black history and Southern Appalachian music through the Great Smoky Mountains Association is now launching. 

“Sepia Tones: Exploring Black Appalachian Music” is hosted by Dr. William Turner and Ted Olson, surveying the many Black roots and branches of Southern Appalachian music by sharing research, listening to recordings and interviewing contemporary Black musicians and experts in music history. 

There’s just something so mysterious about Southern crime stories. Small towns with big characters and dark family secrets. People taking the law into their own hands and crooked cops turning a blind eye. If there’s one thing mountain folk appreciate, it’s a tall tale woven together through the decades.