The Cardinal is one of the most recognizable birds in the South and a year-round resident across North Carolina and much of the region. It is often heard before it is seen, known for its clear, whistling calls. States where the Northern Cardinal is the official state bird:North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana,…
Venus Flytrap Facts, Habitat, and Care Guide | North Carolina Native Plant
The Venus flytrap: everyone’s seen it snap shut on a bug, but most folks don’t realize it’s a true Southern original. This isn’t some exotic curiosity from deep in the jungle, or a greenhouse novelty that wandered in from nowhere. It’s rooted in a very particular patch of the American South—wet, wild, and fire-shaped, right…
The Aviary
I made fun of birdwatching for most of my life. It sat in the same category as early dinners and talking about the weather—something you eventually drift into, not something you choose. The kind of thing you joke about becoming. And yet… here we are. I just started a birdwatching group. It’s called The Aviary,…
SBP Podcast Episode 15: The Zack Bowen & Addie Hall Case: Murder in the French Quarter
In October 2006, a crime unfolded in the French Quarter that would become one of the most disturbing cases in New Orleans history. It was not a crime committed in the shadows by strangers. The people involved were well known throughout the Quarter’s bar scene. Friends drank with them. Bartenders worked alongside them. Tourists passed…
Southern Reads:
Some books entertain you. Some books educate you. And some books grab you by the collar and refuse to let you look away. Demon Copperhead is that third kind. Barbara Kingsolver’s 2022 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel drops the reader into Lee County, Virginia — deep in southern Appalachia — and tells the story of Damon Fields,…
SBP Podcast Episode 14: Beale Treasure -America’s Most Persistent Cipher Mystery
The Beale Treasure is one of the most enduring unsolved mysteries in American history — a tale of buried gold, encrypted messages, and a fortune that may still lie hidden in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. First published in 1885, the Beale Papers describe a massive cache of gold and silver allegedly buried in…
Southern Reads: On Trails
For our January 2026 Book Club selection, we read On Trails, a book that quietly reshapes how you understand movement, land, and the invisible systems that guide both. Robert Moor’s On Trails is not a hiking memoir in the traditional sense, nor is it a straight work of natural history. Instead, it is a slow,…
SBP Podcast Episode 13 : High Tide, High Times (Part 2): The Gentleman Smugglers & Operation Jackpot
When most people think of drug smuggling busts in the United States, they picture high-speed chases in Miami or massive DEA raids in Los Angeles. Few realize that one of the most significant crackdowns in American history didn’t start in those big cities, but along the seemingly quiet coastlines of South Carolina. In Part 1…
Southern Reads: All Sinners Bleed
Some Southern novels announce themselves with gothic excess — creaking houses, Spanish moss, and ghosts that refuse to stay buried. All the Sinners Bleed by SA Cosby does something quieter and far more unsettling. It opens in the daylight, in a modern Southern town that looks familiar enough to pass without comment. That familiarity is…
SBP Podcast Episode 13 : High Tide, High Times (Part 1): The Gentleman Smugglers & Operation Jackpot
In Episode 13 of the Southern Blueprint Podcast, we begin a two-part series exploring the true story of the Gentleman Smugglers and the massive federal investigation known as Operation Jackpot. This is a deeply Southern story—rooted in the Lowcountry, stretching from South Carolina’s barrier islands to the Caribbean, and ending with one of the most…