About South: Recent Episodes
About South
About South is a weekly podcast hosted by Gina Caison. Each week we talk to the folks who create, curate, and critique southern cultures.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso | | Assistant Producer: Jessica Parker | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
In the series finale of About South, we travel to the E.W. Shell Fisheries Center at Auburn University to discuss a subject near and dear to our hearts -- crayfish. Jim Stoeckel, an Associate Professor at Auburn, and Brian Helms, an Assistant Professor at Troy University, generously share with us their knowledge, expertise, and enthusiasm for this small yet remarkable creature.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this special short episode, we hear from several listeners who have made About South possible. Series finale airs Friday, November 15.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com
This week's guest practically needs no introduction because you've been listening to him on our show for years. Dr. Brian Horton is a professor at North Carolina Central University, a jazz history scholar, and a prolific musician. Gina calls him up to talk about all of the above and music programs at historically Black colleges and universities.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode, we present our first full-length phone interview with returning guest Dr. Tara Bynum, a Mellon research scholar in African American history at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and Assistant Professor at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Tara takes us back in time to an era before the Revolutionary War in Newport, Rhode Island, where we are introduced to an enslaved man named Cesar Lyndon, whose remarkable story offers us a glimpse into colonial enslavement and pre-Revolution commerce.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we keep it in the family as Gina sits down with new About South co-producer Jessica Parker. Jessica grew up in Fayette County, GA, home of the Line Creek Petroglyph, a large, engraved rock with a complicated history. Jessica first learned about the petroglyph when it became the subject of national news -- because someone had stolen it. Years later, she and Gina attempt to solve the mystery of the Line Creek Petroglyph.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode of About South, we travel to St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana to meet with Ashley Rogers, executive director at the Whitney Plantation museum and memorial site, to discuss the history of plantation enslavement in the U.S. South. As the only plantation museum in Louisiana with a focus on slavery, its rare and vital approach in exhibiting the area’s gruesome agricultural industrial complex sheds light on one of the most painfully minimized eras of American history.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, co-producer Kelly Vines sits down with Dwight Billings, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kentucky. Dwight researches social inequality and poverty, especially in Appalachia, where Kelly’s family has a long history. The pair discusses what drew the coal mining industry to southern Appalachia and the future of the region.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week on About South, we are joined by Dr. Calinda Lee, Vice President for Historical Interpretation and Community Partnerships at the Atlanta History Center. We dive headfirst into the topic of our hometown’s complicated past, and how we choose to tell the story of our past to others. Calinda helps us to understand the unique challenges in framing Atlanta history correctly, avoiding the pitfalls of past interpretations, and how we can plan for the future presentation of our historical understanding.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode, we sit down with Hillary Holley from Fair Fight to discuss the 2018 gubernatorial election that had the whole nation watching. We cover a variety of topics, including the tactics utilized by Brian Kemp’s office to suppress minority voters in Georgia, the ensuing litigation spearheaded by Stacey Abrams, and the hope for the future of Georgia elections.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Dozens of people lost their lives that night, but the event isn’t widely known about. This week, we sit down with Ryan Prechter, a visiting lecturer in Georgia State University’s History Department. Ryan studies queer history in the south, particularly in New Orleans. We revisit the tragedy with Ryan to better understand why it happened and how it relates to where we are now.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker joins as an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In honor of Randi Byrd's personal best record and the 50th Annual Coharie Pow Wow, we're rebroadcasting our talk on pumpkins-- giant pumpkins. Although Randi always had a green thumb, she only connected her interest in agricultural practice to her fascination with pumpkins in 2009. Growing a 700+ pound pumpkin is a difficult feat that often requires the support of family and friends. Randi talks about the community she found not only in fellow growers of giant pumpkins but also in the local Indigenous community as well as her online friends that encouraged her pursuit, performed ceremony on the land with her, and physically tilled the soil from which actual magic could grow.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, iconic Atlanta drag performer Brigitte Bidet joins Gina for a conversation about all things drag in the South. Brigitte is a classically trained dancer, a favorite host for southern queer publication WUSSY Mag, and a founding member of Legendary Children ATL. You may even have seen her as Dolly Parton #5 in the Netflix original film Dumplin’, starring Jennifer Anniston.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode of About South, we present the second half of our two-part conversation with policy advocate and longtime friend Sanford Johnson. We cover a wide variety of Mississippi-related topics, including the Jackson ICE raids, the 2020 election, and the defacing of the Emmett Till historical marker.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode, we travel to Clarksdale, Mississippi to sit down with education policy advocate Sanford Johnson for a conversation so good, we had to bring it to you in two parts. In part one, we reminisce about student government at Auburn, discuss education reform in the Mississippi Delta, and dive into that viral video that had everybody talking about safe shoe-wear activity.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, Sara Patenaude of the Handmaid Coalition of Georgia joins Gina for a discussion of reproductive rights in the state and beyond and what it means to stage a successful protest in the U.S. South. The Handmaid Coalition of Georgia formed in 2017 during a national 50 maids in 50 states protest. Georgia’s chapter is one of the most active largely because of HB481, six-week abortion ban introduced this past legislative session.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com. Photo Credit: Steve Eberhardt
In this week’s episode, we travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to sit down with Martyn Bone, a southern studies scholar and Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen, to discuss globalism and a postsouthern idea on an international scale. We touch on everything from overseas interest in U.S. Southern literature to the U.S. South’s long history with immigration, as well as our hometown Atlanta’s role in this international conversation.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we’re bringing you a local story about independent community radio station WRFG-89.3FM. Gina sits down with station co-founder Harlon Joye at WRFG’s Little Five Points studio to discuss the history of station as well progressive media in the city, the region, and the nation.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode, we sit down with Brian Ward, historian and Professor in American Studies at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, to discuss his 2017 book Martin Luther King: In Newcastle Upon Tyne about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s landmark 1967 visit to Newcastle University. Brian explains what makes this brief yet historic visit to northeastern England so exceptional, and we discuss the context of King’s journey, his motivation for coming to Newcastle, and the impact his presence continues to have on race relations on the Northeast today.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an Assistant Producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
About South kicks off its farewell season with a trip to England where we talk to Dr. Gavan Lennon, a professor at Canterbury Christ Church University, about southern studies in the UK and Ireland. Gavan highlights the sense of solidarity those from Ireland and the UK might feel with the vibrant and productive history of African American resistance and cultural production in the U.S. South. Our guest also describes some of the problems with how white southerners use the term “Scotch-Irish” as well as the similarities between ultra-conservativism in the U.S. and Brexit in the United Kingdom.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Jessica Parker is an assistant producer. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we’re wrapping season 3 of About South with a conversation about the legend of Trahlyta, a pice of folklore that says a “Cherokee princess” is buried under a pile of rocks in Dahlonega, GA. Gina and Allison Yost discuss the tale’s origins, why people are so connected to it, and the ways it mirrors many troubling ideas about Native identity in the South.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
We get a little bit meta in this week’s episode as we sit down for a conversation with Michelle Khouri, host of The Cultured Podcast and owner of FRQNCY Media Company. FRQNCY is a first-of-its-kind podcast production and marketing company in Atlanta, Georgia. Michelle talks about how her background as a writer compelled her to find a medium to tell stories more deeply, eventually leading her to podcasting. Through FRQNCY Media, Michelle hopes to create a podcasting hub in Atlanta that will connect the city’s sonic legacy to its contemporary technological and creative innovations.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we talk with Malinda Maynor Lowery and William Sturkey, both professors of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about the recent removal of the Confederate monument known as Silent Sam. The monument was erected in 1913 on the upper quad known as McCorkle Place ostensibly to remember "the sons of the University who died for their beloved Southland 1861-1865.” Malinda and William note the important distinction between a memorial and a monument: a memorial honors a loss whereas a monument celebrates some new entity or concept. This distinction is vital when considering the timeline of Silent Sam’s installation on campus. Nearly 50 years after the end of the Civil War, did the administration truly intend to memorialize the dead or did it wish to declare the campus a space for celebrating Confederate values and Jim Crow practices?
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we talk pumpkins-- giant pumpkins. Randi R. Byrd serves as the Community Engagement Coordinator for the American Indian Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and facilitates the Healthy Native North Carolinians Network. She is also an award-winning grower of giant pumpkins. Although Randi always had a green thumb, she only connected her interest in agricultural practice to her fascination with pumpkins in 2009. Growing a 700-pound pumpkin is a difficult feat that often requires the support of family and friends. Randi talks about the community she found not only in fellow growers of giant pumpkins but also in the local Indigenous community as well as her online friends that encouraged her pursuit, performed ceremony on the land with her, and physically tilled the soil from which actual magic could grow.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
While working as a street hustler and fortune teller in 1930s New York, Eddie Owens Martin fell ill and had his first vision of Pasaquan. When his mother died in 1957, Eddie moved back to Buena Vista, Georgia, changed his name to St. EOM, and began building Pasaquan, a seven-acre site with over 900 feet of painted masonry walls. The site is currently being renovated, and this week, we talked with site director Michael McFalls about St. EOM and his Pasaquoyan legacy.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we’re back in Boone — well, Banner Elk — North Carolina. We sat down with Zackary Vernon, an assistant professor in the Department of English at Appalachian State University. Zack has lived in Boone for three years and chronicled his early days in the high country in the essay, “Adventures of a Bad Environmentalist.” The piece was published in the North Carolina Literary Review and won the first Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize. We talked with Zack about what it means to be an environmentalist and the problematic nature of environmentalism.
Sound Note: There is a small sound glitch around minute 20:45 of this episode. We apologize for this hiccup in the original recording. Sometimes computers fail us. Zack says, “We see no tracks in the garden, but there is a pile sh*t out in the garden.”
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this episode, Gina visits Dr. Ben Frey, a citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and a professor in the American Studies department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ben talks about the current state of the Cherokee language and revitalization efforts in North Carolina. As Cherokee is the only surviving language in the Southern Iroquoian language family, it is remarkably unique. Ben discusses the importance of the language not only linguistically, but also as a tool to view his peoples’ knowledge about how to live with consideration, care, and respect for one another and the world.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week Gina, Kelly, and Adjoa took a trip to Boone, North Carolina, a city in the southern Appalachian Mountains with its fair share of mythology and nostalgia from its namesake, Daniel Boone, to its contemporary tourist economy. Although Boone and Watauga County were largely spared from the ravages of mining and mountaintop removal, it is nevertheless a complicated space mired in controversies about gentrification that eerily echo Watauga County’s colonial history. As they travel through the county, they visit the famous Mast General Store and end up in Meat Camp. All the while they try to pin down what’s real about southern Appalachia and the tourist economy and speculate about the future of a place with an apocryphal past.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we talk to geologist Josh Poole about Providence Canyon, also known as the “Little Grand Canyon,” in southwest Georgia. The canyon, however, is not an ancient geological formation. Providence Canyon emerged as a gully resulting from the destructive agricultural practices between Creek Removal in the early 1800s and the U.S. Civil War. We talk to Josh about the history of the canyon, the emergence of the anthropocene, and how geologists think about regional distinctions.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Before Maurice Hobson became a Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University, he was a Division I football player at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has since worked with student athletes at institutions across the South. We talked with Maurice about how he became interested in football, his experiences as a player and the race and class politics of southeastern football. As a former player and a fan, Maurice offers a unique perspective on the current problems facing college programs, especially programs in the South, and how we might work to make the sport safer and more ethically responsible.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
On June 24, 1973, an arsonist set fire to the Upstairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Dozens of people lost their lives that night, but the event isn’t widely known about. This week, we sit down with Ryan Prechter, a visiting lecturer in Georgia State University’s History Department. Ryan studies queer history in the south, particularly in New Orleans. We revisit the tragedy with Ryan to better understand why it happened and how it relates to where we are now.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we went down the road to the Center for Puppetry Arts, the only center of its kind in the country. When we think of puppets, Jim Henson, Father of the Muppets and Mississippian, usually comes to mind. The Center is home to the largest collection of Jim Henson puppets and props, but it’s also much more than that. Gina spoke with Museum Director Jill Nash Malool and Producer Kristin Haverty about the importance of the center’s location in Georgia, what it means to support the arts in local communities and internationally, and what we still have to learn from puppets.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this episode, we talk about the myth of southern hospitality with Tony Szczesiul, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Tony traces the long history of the myth and explores how it is embedded with the region’s other non-hospitable traits including enslavement and segregation. Tony describes how enslaved people performed the labor that made southern hospitality possible and how the term emerged as a shorthand justification for southern plantation life in the 1820s. Tracing the history of southern hospitality throughout the twentieth century reveals its importance to contemporary debates about immigration, tourism, and the culture industry.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Every off-week this season, we'll be rebroadcasting some of our favorite stories from previous seasons. This week we're bringing you "Freedom" -- an episode that remains incredibly special to all of us on the About South team.
On Mother’s Day in 1961, the Klan attacked 13 Freedom Riders by firebombing their Greyhound bus outside of Anniston. We close our first season by talking with Anniston Mayor, Vaughn Stewart, and Vice Mayor, Seyram Selase, about the Anniston Freedom Rider’s Memorial currently up for National Monument status. Stewart and Selase retell the story of the Freedom Riders and the bus burning and describe why recognizing this important landmark is significant for their town, the state of Alabama, and the nation.
Special musical guest: Jaye Price
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
We're thrilled to bring you the first episode of The Sound and the Furious podcast. Each week professors Elizabeth Stockton and Andy Crank use humor, curse words, and insight to connect today's events with America's past.
In their first episode, "Trump, the Dirty South, and the Humanities," they "look back one year into Trump's presidency. Andy sees Agrarians Everywhere! Elizabeth admits that her antebellum knowledge finally feels relevant."
We love tuning into this show, and we know our listeners will love it too. Learn more at https://www.soundandthefuriouspod.com.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we're proud to feature Lindsey Alexander's podcast, Story of My Life where she asks people over 70 how they came to be who they are and where they are. In honor of tomato season, we're bringing you Story of My Life's interview with Bell Best.
From Story of My Life: "Bill Best is known as the Tomato Man in parts of Eastern Kentucky. But he'll tell you he's more of an heirloom bean man. A prolific seed saver, Bill has more than 700 varieties of bean seeds; he's even brought a bean back from the brink of distinction. He's the author of Saving Seeds, Preserving Taste, and a founder of the Sustainable Mountain Agriculture Center. Story of My Life met Bill on his farm to hear about heirloom vegetables, growing up rural, and his life on the land. In this episode, you'll learn how to save tomato seeds from your garden."
Learn more at: http://www.storyofmylifepod.com
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
We're back this week with five more facts from your About South team. Gina, Kelly, Adjoa, and Lindsey cover everything from the great dogs of About South to the current activities of our resident crayfish, Dr. Grover. We also walk through some of our favorite moments and episodes from seasons one and two, and then we consider changing our name.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com. Support us at www.patreon.com/aboutsouthpodcast.
This week your About South team is answering your questions! Gina, Kelly, Adjoa, and Lindsey sit down and go through listener questions from the last year. And Kelly meets a Pelican. And we then ask for your money.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we set out to unearth the mystery of famed southern author Margaret Mitchell’s porn collection. This episode was inspired by a trip Kelly took to the Margaret Mitchell House a few years ago. There, she and a friend spotted what appeared to be a pornographic photo of a woman behind one of the doors. Not to be hypocrites, we were concerned about the ethics of S-Town’ing Margaret Mitchell, that is, attempting to dive into someone’s sexual life post-mortem — and getting hit with a lawsuit. So we called Andy Crank, an English professor and gender and sexuality scholar at the University of Alabama who has researched and written about Margaret Mitchell, for some insight into the rumours and to see if they were worth investigating. Did Mitchell collect porn? What might that say about her relationship with sex? Does any of this matter? We had so many questions.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Our episode this week takes us to the south on the small screen. Kelly sits down with our very own Gina Caison and About South friends Lisa Hinrichsen and Stephanie Rountree to discuss their new book, Small-Screen Souths: Region, Identity, and the Cultural Politics of Television. Attempting to define the “real” south only gets more complicated when the region is broadcasted, framed, and produced for an audience-- depending on how the audience accepts or rejects the images on screen.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we talk to geologist Josh Poole about Providence Canyon, also known as the “Little Grand Canyon,” in southwest Georgia. The canyon, however, is not an ancient geological formation. Providence Canyon emerged as a gully resulting from the destructive agricultural practices between Creek Removal in the early 1800s and the U.S. Civil War. We talk to Josh about the history of the canyon, the emergence of the anthropocene, and how geologists think about regional distinctions.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we had the pleasure of talking to Karen Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and author of Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South. Cox talks about her book and her process for writing about a woman whose story was nearly hidden. In the Jim Crow south of the early 1930’s Natchez, Mississippi, Emily Burns was wrongly imprisoned for a murder she didn’t commit while the likely murderers became celebrated southern eccentrics who opened their home to goats, chickens, and-- for a price-- tourists.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Located in Atlanta’s Historic West End, The Wren’s Nest is the historic home of Joel Chandler Harris, well-known for compiling and adapting the African American Brer Rabbit folktales. In the century since Harris’s death, the home has been converted into a museum and now serves as an anchor of the Atlanta arts community, especially in its neighborhood. This week, we met with Akbar Imhotep, the museum’s resident storyteller, and Kalin Thomas, its program director, to discuss the complicated history of the site and their vision for its future. We also discuss how storytelling can build relationships in communities, connect people with their heritage, and to help people heal.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we traveled to Baton Rouge and sat down with Dr. Carolyn Ware, a folklorist and an associate professor in the Department of English at Louisiana State University, to talk about the tradition of Cajun Mardi. Carolyn has spent years talking to Cajun Mardi Gras communities about their traditions, and, no, it’s not just a knockoff of the New Orleans Mardi Gras. Carolyn educates us on what Cajun Mardi Gras is, who participates, and why it’s still important.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week's episode, join in as Gina and returning About South guest Lindsey Eckert travel to the Minnesota State Fair to eat cheese curds, watch a rabbit show, and talk about regionalism. More specifically, the pair discusses how we construct regions to exist as idyllic places, separate from the problems apparent in the rest of the nation and dependent upon certain cultural calling cards-- like food-- for their survival.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Before Maurice Hobson became a Professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University, he was a Division I football player at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He has since worked with student athletes at institutions across the South. We talked with Maurice about how he became interested in football, his experiences as a player and the race and class politics of southeastern football. As a former player and a fan, Maurice offers a unique perspective on the current problems facing college programs, especially programs in the South, and how we might work to make the sport safer and more ethically responsible. *This episode contains language that may be offensive to some listeners.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In an issue of Swamp Thing, Superman contracts a virus that will cause him to become violent. Instead of wreaking havoc in Metropolis, he heads south to Louisiana: a place where there are no superheroes. While Superman and his ilk may not make their homes in the south, the region has been richly explored in the comics medium: from early narrative comics such as Li’l Abner, Pogo, and Kudzu, to more recent serials and graphic novels such as The Walking Dead, Preacher, Bayou, and Swallow Me Whole. This week we visited Brannon Costello, English professor at LSU, to talk about southern comics. We discuss how comics explore the south’s relationship to the nation, grapple with the region’s history, and imagine its future.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we chatted with scholar Jennie Lightweis-Goff about New Orleans, southern exceptionalism, urban plantations, and the lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina. We met with Jennie at her home in New Orleans to discuss why it’s important to imagine cities in the South, how urban areas of the South are as valid in their southern identity as rural areas, and what it means that New Orleans decided to take down its Confederate statues.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
In this week’s episode, the About South team drove six hours to Ridgeland, Mississippi to attend _Murder is Golden_, a _Golden Girls_ tribute and parody dinner theater put on by Mississippi Murder Mysteries and the Fringe Dinner Theatre. Gina, Adjoa, Kelly, and About South friend Shannon Finck talk about the power of community and community theater in a time where interaction is undervalued and, as we’ve seen recently, increasingly violent. By bringing people together over a show set in Florida, a state itself divided with exclusionary politics, the Fringe theater group inspires laughter, self-acceptance, and the opportunity for connection.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
When Jon Smith, a professor of southern studies at Simon Fraser University and one of the toughest critics in the field, told us that he would be visiting Atlanta in April, we invited him on the show to critique our first season. We discussed many of the things folks might identify as southern, including blue crayfish, cornbread, and Cahaba lilies. Our conversation highlights why talking about the south is important, and why it is sometimes necessary to dispense with manners in order to do it well.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week, we travelled to Gadsby’s Tavern Museum in Alexandria, Virginia to talk with Lauren Frances Adams and Stewart Watson about their art installation, _Centennial of the Everyday_, which is currently on display in the museum. While Gadsby’s Tavern is well-known for its connection to the “founding fathers,” Lauren and Stewart’s installation highlights the contributions of women, enslaved peoples, and other unnamed citizens to the important events that occurred in this space. Their artwork complicates simple narratives about what America was and what it is, inviting visitors to consider spaces as archives and to remember the many "strangers" in the periphery of historical texts.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
With around 40 million downloads, Brian Reed’s hit podcast S-Town prevails in the American conscious and understanding of the south. In this episode, we sit down with David Davis, a professor of English and Southern Studies at Mercer University, to discuss the telling of a southern reality in S-Town. We look at how Reed’s telling takes a real story of human complexity and frames it as fiction, buying into southern gothic tropes and obscuring the lives of his subjects with a thin layer of regional gold.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
This week we talked with Monique Verdin -- an environmental activist, documentary filmmaker, and citizen of the United Houma Nation --about how the oil and gas industries have affected her tribal community in southeastern Louisiana. Monique tells this story in her documentary film, _My Louisiana Love_, which was directed by Sharon Linezo Hong. By following Monique’s family during the time between Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, the film reveals contemporary dilemmas faced by the Houma Nation. Monique sat down with us on a rainy day in New Orleans to discuss the documentary, her environmental activism, and why we should all care about what’s happening in Louisiana.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
To kick off Season Two, Gina and Kelly travel to the end of the world: Venice, Louisiana, which claims to be the southernmost point in Louisiana accessible by car. Traversing through landscapes reminiscent of _True Detective_, they find oil refineries, fishing communities, and estuary wildlife — alligators, egrets, herons, spoonbills, ibises, and several other species of birds. They leave with questions about how our dependence on oil has transformed coastal wetlands into sacrificial spaces, as Louisiana continues to lose approximately 38 football fields worth of land every day.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
We're back with Season Two! Tune in on July 7th.
About South is produced by Gina Caison, Kelly Vines, and Adjoa Danso. Lindsey Baker is our Marketing Director. Music is by Brian Horton. You can find his music at www.brianhorton.com. Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Gina and Kelly discuss their favorite moments from the second half of season one. In this episode, we discuss Gina’s storied history as a majorette. We also catch up with Ali Arant. In an outtake, Tara Bynam and Gina discuss the inherent pleasure of righteous anger. We also discuss a possible spinoff: “About War Eagle,” and we investigate the motivations of humans and monsters in bonus clips from “Real Early South” and “The Faulkner Witch Project.” Rounding out the episode, Joey Kennedy provides insight about the incoming Attorney General, and Vice Mayor Seyram Selase tells us why it’s important to return to the South.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
Gina and Kelly discuss their favorite moments from the first half of season one. We discuss the crayfish names suggested by listeners and Lindsey Eckert’s loveable personality. We talk about butt transcendence from “Vampires on the Outside, Accountants on the Inside” and booty-shaking rhythm from “Southern Souls.” We share a surprising snake premonition from our trip to Pasaquan, and Monica Miller answers questions about southern belles and Georgia peaches. In bonus clips, LeAnne Howe and Kirstin Squint discuss native mascots, and Gina talks with Michael Bibler about gifts. We end this episode with a clip from our conversation about southern nostalgia and authenticity with Scott Romine.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
A special announcement and invitation from Gina and Kelly.
Learn more at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
On Mother’s Day in 1961, the Klan attacked 13 Freedom Riders by firebombing their Greyhound bus outside of Anniston. We close our first season by talking with Anniston Mayor, Vaughn Stewart, and Vice Mayor, Seyram Selase, about the Anniston Freedom Rider’s Memorial currently up for National Monument status. Stewart and Selase retell the story of the Freedom Riders and the bus burning and describe why recognizing this important landmark is significant for their town, the state of Alabama, and the nation.
Special musical guest: Jaye Price
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
This week, we met with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joey Kennedy to discuss this upcoming presidential election, southern politics, and the media. He explains how the “solid South” was created and why it’s important to view the South as more than a block of red states. As a journalist with more than thirty years of experience, Joey emphasizes how changing business models have affected the way that news is reported and the consequences of those changes on politics both regionally and nationally—most visibly, in the way that they have created the Donald Trump phenomenon.
This week's music is from Stuart McNair. Buy his music at stuartmcnair.com.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
Ghost stories are frequently attached to place—a house, a bedroom, a hallway, or a highway. The stories themselves even take on regional inflections, changing as they are told in different environments. To celebrate Halloween, we sat down with Eric Gary Anderson, Associate Professor at George Mason University to explore Undead Souths. We discuss how southern spookiness is expanding to encompass more than just Southern Gothic tales. We also question the function of the South as a site for creepiness in contemporary supernatural television shows such as True Blood, American Horror Story: Coven, The Walking Dead, and The Vampire Diaries.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
In the mid-1840s, Warner McCary, an ex-slave from Mississippi, took on a Native American identity, calling himself Okah Tubbee. He soon married Lucy Stanton, a divorced white Mormon woman from New York, who reinvented herself as a Delaware Indian named Laah Ceil. The two then embarked on an astounding adventure spanning all of North America, giving musical performances, working as Indian doctors, and participating in the early Mormon Church. This week, we talk with American Studies scholar, Angela Pulley Hudson about how the couple used popular notions of "Indianness" to disguise their backgrounds, protect their marriage, and make a living.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
Southern drinking mythology includes many larger-than-life stories about famous authors such as William Faulkner and Barry Hannah. However, according to American Literature scholar Matt Dischinger, this mythology leaves out important aspects of southern drinking culture. Today we sit down with Matt to talk about the impact of temperance as well as the current craft cocktail and local brewery boom in the South. We discuss “southern” spirits as well as regionally inflected drinking experiences. Our conversation explores how regional drinking culture is created and maintained through a combination of lived experiences and creative imaginings.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | | www.brianhorton.com |
When Tara Bynum tells people that she researches African American pleasure in the eighteenth century, they often respond with puzzled looks, but Tara asserts that interrogating pleasure re-centers the focus on black cultural production and uncovers the ways in which African American people make meaning in their own lives. We discuss eighteenth-century Methodist minister, John Marrant, a free black man who found pleasure through practicing his faith. Marrant’s experiences challenge traditional constructions of southern geographies and literary histories and invite us to rethink the role of Christianity and pleasure in the lives of African Americans in the eighteenth century. We close by way of Tara’s hometown, the sometimes southern city of Baltimore.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
Ali Arant, English Professor at Wagner College on Staten Island, joins us this week for a conversation about old maids. Ali’s research focuses on old maids in regional literature, but she has also found the figure in surprising places. For instance, the term is used to describe an un-popped kernel of popcorn and the unmatchable card in a game similar to Go Fish. An old maid also lurks in the lyrics of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” as the “maiden aunt” with a “vicious mind.” Our conversation investigates how cultural anxieties are embodied in this tragicomic character.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
This week, we have assembled an all-star team of football fans (all of whom happen to be women). Friends of the show, Kris Townsend, Alex Patafio, and Stephanie Rountree, join Gina Caison and Kelly Vines to have a conversation about what it’s like to be a woman who loves football in the South. We cover topics big and small: our childhood connection to the sport, our experiences with other fans, prescribed roles for women on game day, toxic masculinity, mansplaining, and regional performance. While it may seem like just a game, our discussion demonstrates the complex issues associated with our favorite fall pastime.
This episode contains explicit language.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
We associate certain foods and beverages with the U.S. South: sweet tea, barbeque, grits, and moon pies. Right now, southern foodways are particularly prevalent in popular media, as several widely circulated southern publications feature professional photographs of artisanal southern dishes served — as if by magic — to tables surrounded by smiling, multicultural southerners. This week, we talk with UNCG professor Scott Romine about how southern foodways might obscure the stark racial divisions and inequalities characterizing domains of food production and consumption. Scott also explains how the moon pie underscores how tradition and authenticity are always changing and rely on southern imaginaries to function.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
For Dean Martin, the moon was a complicated metaphor representing love and pizza, but for The B-52’s, “that tacky little dance band from Athens G-A,” the moon in the sky is just “called the moon,” and no matter how many times fans may ask, a “tin roof, rusted” only refers to a rusty tin roof. This week, we talk with LSU professor Michael Bibler about how The B-52’s fashioned an internationally renowned music act out of a queer, campy, thrift store aesthetic and how their lyrical literalism might offer listeners a way to think about the tacitness of southern queerness.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
The Native South is a complex term, encompassing many different American Indian cultures, peoples, and connections. This week, we talk with Choctaw author and professor LeAnne Howe and Native American Studies scholar Kirstin Squint about what we might mean when we talk about the “Native South.” Howe and Squint describe how Native American literature can act as a vehicle for change, opening up people to Indigenous histories, allowing them to see the continuing presence and influence of Indigenous cultures, and enabling productive conversations about contemporary issues including the environment and immigration.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
In the U.S. South, parents frequently tell misbehaving children to stop “being ugly,” but according to southern studies scholar Monica Miller, there is a certain power in being ugly, especially for southern women who want to escape traditional expectations. This week we sit down with Monica to talk about ugly women in southern literature and popular culture, including Flannery O’Connor’s Joy/Hulga, Katherine Anne Porter’s Cousin Eva, Alice Walker’s Celie, and even Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlett O’Hara. We also discuss Designing Women, The Real Housewives of Atlanta, Dolly Parton, and Minnie Pearl.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
While working as a street hustler and fortune teller in 1930s New York, Eddie Owens Martin fell ill and had his first vision of Pasaquan. When his mother died in 1957, Eddie moved back to Buena Vista, Georgia, changed his name to St. EOM, and began building Pasaquan, a seven-acre site with over 900 feet of painted masonry walls. The site is currently being renovated, and this week, we talked with site director Michael McFalls about St. EOM and his Pasaquoyan legacy.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
Over the last twenty years, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in southern hip_hop artists; however, there are several distinctly southern artists who are not necessarily considered in conversations about southern musical traditions. We sit down with Scott Heath, a scholar of African American literature and culture, to talk about the southern inflections of neosoul music. We also discuss soul artists Ray Charles, James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, and Nina Simone, and we listen to music by Taylor Swift, Outkast, James Brown, Erykah Badu, and Maceo Parker in order to investigate the qualities that make a sound “southern.”
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
Covington, Georgia is a small town on the outskirts of Atlanta with a big reputation in the film industry. Billing itself as the camera-ready “Hollywood of the South,” Covington has starred in several films and television shows, including the popular CW series The Vampire Diaries. This week, we tour the town with southern studies scholar Molly McGehee and sit down to talk about southern television, including the economic and material impact of television shows that are filmed in southern spaces.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
In pet stores around the globe, customers can find for sale a bright blue crayfish that is supposedly endemic to Florida. Its abnormally bright color prompted a surprisingly lengthy search to find one in the wild. After reaching out to several crayfish experts, we realized that a huge mystery lurked behind this tiny blue creature. Lindsey Eckert joins us for the investigation.
Learn more about this episode at www.aboutsouthpodcast.com.
| Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines | | Music: Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com |
Season One trailer for About South.
About South is a weekly podcast hosted by Gina Caison. Each week we talk to the folks who create, curate, and critique southern cultures. Coming soon to iTunes and Google Play. Visit us at aboutsouthpodcast.com.
Co-Producers: Gina Caison & Kelly Vines Music: "Alright With Me" Brian Horton | www.brianhorton.com