Listening to the Echo: John Biewen and the Story of an American Coup
By Raymond Laws| Davidson Local
When John Biewen talks, you don’t just hear a journalist—you hear a man who’s been listening to America for decades. Not just the headlines, but the hum underneath—the unresolved chords of race, power, and history that still reverberate through our daily lives.
Biewen, Director of the Audio Program at Duke University’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, is best known for hosting Scene on Radio, the Peabody-nominated podcast that asks uncomfortable questions with unflinching curiosity. In series like Seeing White and The Land That Never Has Been Yet, Biewen and his collaborators pull back the curtain on how American ideals and American realities often part ways.
It’s not just journalism. It’s excavation.
That’s what made his appearance in The American Coup—the powerful documentary about the 1898 Wilmington Massacre—so fitting. The film, screened this week at the Edward C. Smith Civic Center in Lexington, recounts the only successful coup d’état on American soil. A mob of white supremacists overthrew the elected, biracial government of Wilmington, N.C., killing dozens and driving Black citizens from their homes and businesses.
Biewen, whose career has spanned NPR, American Public Media, and Minnesota Public Radio, doesn’t just tell the story of history—he asks how its ghosts shape us now. The questions he raises in Scene on Radio echo the questions The American Coup forces us to face: What happens when democracy is fragile? When truth itself is under siege? When we forget what we were meant to remember?
During the community panel that followed the screening, those questions hung heavy. There was a shared recognition that Wilmington isn’t as far away as we’d like to think. Not in miles. Not in memory. And certainly not in meaning.
Biewen’s work reminds us that storytelling, when done right, is more than information—it’s an act of civic repair. Whether through film, podcasts, or local conversations in places like Lexington, truth-telling is how we stitch the seams of history back together.
In a time when misinformation spreads faster than compassion, Biewen’s voice—and his methodical listening—feel downright revolutionary.
If you haven’t tuned into Scene on Radio, do yourself a favor. Start with Seeing White. Then listen to Men and The Land That Never Has Been Yet. You’ll hear echoes of Wilmington. You’ll hear echoes of us.
And maybe, if we listen closely enough, we’ll hear the sound of a country still trying to tell the truth about itself.
