A Bowl of Soul A Mixed Stew of Soul Music

Terry A. Ferguson hosts this educational soul music show with a mission that goes beyond entertainment: he wants listeners to understand the roots of rhythm and blues. Each episode is structured as a history lesson, spotlighting the artists, composers, arrangers, and songwriters who built the foundation of R&B and soul. The show covers figures and moments that mainstream music media often overlooks, giving proper credit to the people who shaped the genre from the ground up. A Bowl of Soul has reached 101 episodes and maintains a perfect 5.0-star rating from 7 reviews on Apple Podcasts. Episodes release biweekly and typically run about an hour. A recent episode from February 2026 honored the musical artists who performed at Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Push Expo in 1972, tying the music directly to the cultural and political context of the era. That kind of historical specificity is what makes this show stand out from more generalist music podcasts. Ferguson's approach is curatorial. He selects the music, provides the context, and connects the dots between different eras and movements within soul and R&B. The show carries a clean content rating and has a warm, public-radio quality to its presentation. If you want to understand how gospel, blues, doo-wop, and funk all fed into what we now call R&B, this podcast does the work of tracing those lineages episode by episode. It is a genuine education wrapped in great music.