This week we’ll be talking with Betsy Teter, author of A Carnival of Crime: Murder, Mischief, and Malice in 1890s Spartanburg (2026, Hub City Press).

Her book uncovers a piece of lost history – accounts of which were lost when a fire destroyed the downtown offices of Spartanburg’s daily newspapers, taking with it copies of the publications that had chronicled the city for decades. Besty has dug into the archives of other South Carolina newspapers to piece together a narrative that is both informative and gripping.

Through ten interconnected true-crime stories, her historical account captures a South Carolina county’s most violent decade – a time when bullets felled a mayor, a police chief, and a beloved bookseller, each in separate shocking incidents.

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, as patriots celebrated their defiant new nation, American armies launched another campaign—this one aimed at destroying the Cherokee nation.

In The Cherokee War of 1776, Kevin Kokomoor recasts America's founding moment by tracing the importance of westward ambition and settler violence to the origins of the Revolutionary War. And he uncovers the rarely acknowledged war waged by the emerging United States against the Cherokee people just days after the Declaration of Independence was signed. Far from a spontaneous frontier skirmish, this war was a coordinated, state-backed campaign with a clear aim: seize Indigenous land and crush Native resistance.

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 space shuttle program, NASA chose 35 applicants from a pool of over 10,000 astronaut candidates. In 1984 he became the second African American in space. Though he lost his life in the Challenger disaster in 1986, his story continues to inspire generations of young South Carolinians who want to reach for the stars.