LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

This is the second half of my conversation with Hedy Fischer and Gail McCarthy, who along with their artist husbands bought buildings in the River Arts District early on and are committed to keeping those buildings open and affordable for other artists. They’re joined here by Stephanie Monson Dahl, the city’s manager of Urban Design, Place Strategies, and Long Range Planning.

If you missed Part One, dial back in your podcasting app to listen to that first before tuning in here. In today's episode, we talk through concerns of losing artists in the RAD and strategies for keeping them there. We talk about conversations city leaders are having around land equity with the Southside neighborhood and how artists could potentially migrate there. We also get into the stakes for the RAD and all of Asheville if the state takes away the city’s ability to regulate short-term rentals.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

Hedy Fischer and Gail McCarthy have been in Asheville since the late 1970s and, along with their artist husbands, played critical roles in the evolution of the River Arts District from a neglected, polluted wasteland of warehouses into the thriving arts and commerce destination it is today. They also have thoughts on whether the scales of progress for the neighborhood have tipped too far.

Today is the first in a two-part conversation with Fischer and McCarthy, along with Stephanie Monson Dahl, the city’s manager of Urban Design, Place Strategies, and Long Range Planning.

We talk about how 2010 marked a key turning point for the district and how vision and investments from the city and key developers turned the tide. We talk about the differing impacts of hotel vs. residential development there, managing traffic in the RAD and whether building owners beyond McCarthy and Fischer are as committed to offering artists affordable workspaces.

The second half of this conversation posts Thursday, June 20.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

Hear Here is a performance and podcast series designed to elevate conversation around local rock and indie music. I invited two all-female bands to the May 28 evening of Hear Here at Citizen Vinyl.

The bands Detective Blind and O•VAD•YA come from different generations. Detective Blind are three sisters—the eldest is only 17—while most of the members of O•VAD•YA are in their 50s and 60s. Still, the bands made fast friends with each other at soundcheck and the good energy between them continued well past the evening’s final note.

Let's step back to May 28 and Citizen Vinyl to hear music and an interview with O•VAD•YA. I’ll bring you Detective Blind’s portion of the evening later this month.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

There are about 400 Bee City USA programs across 47 states, all with a mission to sustain pollinators by increasing native plants and nest sites while reducing the use of pesticides.

The entire Bee City movement started in Asheville 12 years ago with the efforts of Phyllis Stiles. During the thick of a month of pollination celebration here, I talk with Stiles about her path to pollination through beekeeping and the start and growth of Bee City Asheville and Bee City USA.

We talk about how to responsibly keep pollinator-friendly gardens, the dangers of non-native plant species and the ecological challenges and stakes at hand. We also get into what governments and other institutions are doing to stave off pollinator loss and promote conservation.

A week of pollination-focused events in and around Asheville starts June 17.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

Pete Candler wears many creative hats. He’s a photographer and maker of short films—all of it self-taught—and he’s also an author and recovering academic.

His new book, titled “A Deeper South," is both an internal and external travelogue over 25 years of road trips through the American South. We’ll also talk about leaving a tenured professorship at Baylor University to pursue his creative impulses, why he has always been drawn to photographing places rather than people and his discovery of a family history too close for comfort to the vestiges of slavery.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

Madison Brightwell and Don Silver are local novelists who don’t know each other but have similar creative trajectories. Both spent early years behind the scenes—Brightwell in film production, Silver working for music mogul Clive Davis—before turning to more conventional careers. It wasn’t until their 40s that both leaned into writing fiction.

Silver’s new generation-spanning, coming-of-age book is titled “Scorched.” Our talk is the second half of today’s episode. We begin with my conversation with Brightwell, whose new book, “Under the Redbud Tree,” has a teenage girl heroine and blends fantasy with a certain realism people in Western North Carolina should recognize.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

Most people reading or listening to this likely take their literacy for granted. But for thousands of youth and adults throughout Buncombe County, literacy is a hurdle impacting nearly every element of life.

My guests are executive director Amanda Wrubleski and program directors Rebecca Massey and Erin Sebelius with Literacy Together. It’s an Asheville nonprofit training and teaming reading tutors with struggling youth, immigrants, people emerging from prison and many others.

Literacy Together isn’t the only local nonprofit focusing on literacy in Asheville and Buncombe County. Last October, I featured the leaders of Read 2 Succeed. Today, we talk about how literacy is often an issue of equity, how myriad life challenges can hold people back from literacy, how someone can graduate high school and still not be able to read well and how tutoring is really only half the work of Literacy Together’s directors.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023

LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!

April 27 marked the debut of "Hear Here," a series presented in tandem with Citizen Vinyl to elevate conversation around local rock and indie music. The premiere featured talk and performances with the bands Pink Beds and Caged Affair.

This episode is all about Caged Affair, a vocalist-guitarist son and his drumming father from Waynesville, whose music is shaped by '90s bands such as Nirvana, Weezer and Everclear.

The next "Hear Here" evening is an all-female lineup Tuesday, May 28, at Citizen Vinyl, featuring the bands Detective Blind and OVADYA. Detective Blind is a trio of sisters, the oldest of whom is still in her teens. OVADYA has at least a couple members who would qualify for their AARP cards.

Wake Up, Asheville! and ¡Despierta Asheville! (in Spanish) are new morning newscast podcasts that give you all the local news you need to know in under five minutes. Both are free to subscribe/follow wherever you get your podcasts!

SPONSOR: Asheville City Soccer Club home games run through June 29 for the women's team and July 13 for the men's team at Greenwood Field on the UNC-Asheville campus.

Support the Show.

Support The Overlook by joining our Patreon campaign!

Advertise your event on The Overlook.

Instagram: AVLoverlook | Facebook: AVLoverlook | Twitter: AVLoverlook

Listen and Subscribe: All episodes of The Overlook

The Overlook theme song, "Maker's Song," comes courtesy of the Asheville band The Resonant Rogues.

Podcast Asheville © 2023