The Overlook with Matt Peiken
Local newsmakers, civic leaders, journalists, artists and others in the know talk with host Matt Peiken about the growing, complicated city of Asheville, N.C. New episodes are available Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Episodes
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 ...
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-span...
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...
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...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
We all know the impact of Asheville’s skyrocketing housing costs. What we don’t hear nearly as much about is how artists and arts organizations are finding it more challenging to do their work in Asheville.
Affordable workspaces was the topic of the latest ArtsAVL Creative Space Town Hall. Matt Peiken moderated a May 10 panel at Asheville Community Theater and r...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
We hear a lot about pervasive social issues in our community—homelessness, addiction, racial inequities, affordable housing, liveable wages. All of those play roles in one particular need we rarely hear about—diapers.
My guests today are Alicia Heacock and Meagan Lyon Leimena, co-executive directors of Babies Need Bottoms, an Asheville nonprofit diaper bank that...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
It’s a female-powered, multi-generational, one-of-a-kind lineup for the next Hear Here—Tuesday, May 28, featuring the Asheville-area bands Detective Blind and O•VAD•YA.
Listen here for clips of their music. Advance tickets are just $12.
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 G...
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 Pink Beds, a quartet shaped by disco, old-school pop and contemporary rock. You’ll hear the ...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Asheville artists Heather Hietala and Nava Lubelski have already tasted success commercial success. Now, their new work in separate exhibitions marks new ground in their personal and artistic evolutions.
In the first half, I talk with Hietala, whose response to her mother's death takes shape in the two- and three-dimensional canoes and boats that are metaph...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Gavin Stewart and Vanessa Owen have spent many years building lives for themselves in contemporary dance. Not long ago, they believed they largely had to perform and teach around the country to make it sustainable. Now, fueled by artistic residencies in Western North Carolina and the embrace of the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts, the couple hopes Stewart-Owen Dan...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
David Brendan Hopes has written more novels, poems and plays than he can count. The river of writing hasn’t slowed at all since his retirement from UNC-Asheville, where Hopes taught English and creative writing for more than three decades.
Hopes’ newest play is titled “A God in the Waters.” The Sublime Theater in Asheville is premiering it May 9-18 at the Bebe T...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
A chorus of critics are also reaching a crescendo with their opposition, pushing bac...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
There’s seemingly a full-court press from certain civic leaders to push Asheville City Council to approve a business improvement district for downtown. This BID would tax property owners, and by extension downtown commercial and residential tenants, to pay for a supplemental workforce to help the city’s efforts to clean up downtown and make it safer for the people who li...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Choral groups were among the hardest-hit and slowest to rebound from the pandemic. Two of the region’s enduring choirs are still finding their footing both artistically and in the wider public.
Today, we hear from the choirs’ two artistic directors—Kyle Ritter of Asheville Symphony Chorus and Emily Floyd of Asheville Youth Choirs. They’re performing together April 27 at F...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Just as Asheville’s arts community has evolved, so too has ArtsAVL. It changed its name just a year and a half ago from the Asheville Area Arts Council and, even before the pandemic, refocused its mission from service to advocacy.
My guest today is Katie Cornell, executive director now in her fifth year with ArtsAVL. We talk about that mission shift and the wor...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Want to know what’s happening with McCormick Field, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium and the Western North Carolina Nature Center? My guest has the answers.
Chris Corl is General Manager and Director of Community & Regional Entertainment Facilities for the City of Asheville. We go into detail about the upcoming trip around the bases for McCormick Field’s renovation, including ...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Asheville is very much a music town—not just for musicians, but also for fans, as evidenced by the six record stores dotting the city. As we approach the annual Record Store Day, April 20, we talk with Mark Capon of Harvest Records, Jesse McSwain of Static-Age Records and Morgan Markowitz of Earth River Records.
We talk about the evolution of their shops—for in...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Downtown business owners, workers and residents spent a lot of 2023 imploring Asheville officials to get a handle on crime, trash and vagrancy. All along, many were pressing to take matters into their own hands by working with city leaders to form what’s called a business improvement district.
A business improvement district—or BID—is a tax assessment that pays ...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
D. Tyrell McGirt says his career path was blazed as a 10-year-old in Greensboro, when his mother signed him up for a lifeguarding class. He ran parks and recreation departments in Alabama, Arizona and Alaska before moving two years ago to lead the department in Asheville.
In this conversation, McGirt talks through his department's recent decision to keep Malvern Hill...
LISTENERS: Have thoughts about this episode? Send them my way!
Seventy years ago, Black Mountain College was a petri dish for experimental art, sound and performance. It was also the birthplace of so-called “happenings”—events where practitioners strived to transcend the bounds of existence and expression.
Today, the Black Mountain College Museum and Arts Center throws an annual “(Re)Happening.” The 12th (Re)Happening is Ap...
Popular Podcasts
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Shootings are not unusual in Belize. Shootings of cops are. When a wealthy woman – part of one of the most powerful families in Belize – is found on a pier late at night, next to a body, it becomes the country’s biggest news story in a generation. New episodes every Monday!
A straightforward look at the day's top news in 20 minutes. Powered by ABC News. Hosted by Brad Mielke.