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Dr. Ronald E. Beller, President of East Tennessee State University from 1980-91, died on April 6, 2024, at the age of 88. This interview with him, from the WETS archive, was recorded on May 2, 2003.

With the Memorial Day holiday weekend upcoming, we get important boating safety tips from Matt Cameron, with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the organization responsible for patrolling the state’s waterways.

We look back 63 years to a turning point in world history with Dr. Eduardo Zayas-Bazán, who, as a Cuban exile, participated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion on the southwestern coast of Cuba in April of 1961.

We hear a voice familiar to public radio listeners across the country: that of Larry Groce, creator of the program “Mountain Stage,” produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting for over 40 years. Larry hosted the program from 1983 until 2021, when West Virginia native Kathy Mattea took over the hosting duties. In addition to the history of the program, we discuss a new compilation album, “Live on Mountain Stage: Outlaws and Outliers.”

In an interview from 2003 that has never been aired before, the late Frederick “Pal” Barger, founder of the regional restaurant chain Pal’s Sudden Service, talks about his business philosophy. With stores throughout East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, Pal’s became the first restaurant company in America to win the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Pal Barger died in October of 2020. August 23, 2025, would have been his 95th birthday.

Dr. Colin Baxter, Professor Emeritus of History at East Tennessee State University, explains how Kingsport, Tennessee, and Hawkins County, Tennessee, helped win World War II, through the production of an explosive called RDX.

Author Robert Sorrell takes us from Greene County, Tennessee, north to Norton, Virginia, through his new book Secret Appalachian Highlands: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure.

We learn about the musical background and philosophy of Cornelia Laemmli Orth, Music Director and Conductor of Symphony of the Mountains.

This is part two of our interview with Cornelia Laemmli Orth, Music Director and Conductor of Symphony of the Mountains, a fully professional orchestra that traces its origins back to 1946, when it was called the Kingsport Symphony Orchestra.

We visit the Langston Centre in Johnson City, Tennessee—a multicultural facility that promotes community engagement through the arts, education, and leadership activities. The building housed Langston High School, where African American students were educated from 1893 until 1965. Langston supervisor Adam Dickson talks about the ongoing work at Langston, the history of the Juneteenth holiday, and another significant date in American history that will be observed in our area later in the summer.