transcript
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Speaker 5:
[01:07] I want to tell you a quick story that might be the true origins of this podcast. It was a hot summer afternoon in Texas, and I was about 12 years old. I was spending some time at my grandfather's house, and at some point he said he wanted to show me something I might find interesting. So, he went to his office and he took out a small wooden box, a little bigger than a shoe box. He opened the lid, and inside were three pistols. One was the standard issue Colt 45, which he carried in World War II. The second was a German Luger, which he got from someone who wouldn't be needing it anymore. And the third was a Colt 45 1917, a big hefty six-shot revolver. I knew the story behind the first two, but I didn't know anything about the revolver. And that's when he told me that I had a great uncle who ran a bank in Kansas. And this uncle was considered a potential target by the famous bank robbing duo Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. So the United States government shipped this revolver to my great uncle in the event he had to defend himself from Bonnie and Clyde. I love hearing stories like these. You know, Family Lore. And not just Lore about my family, anybody's family. You hear it from time to time. I'm related to Pocahontas or my great uncle invented the yo-yo, or my grandmother was almost cast as Dorothy Gale. Those are kind of unusual examples, but I'm interested in the unusual ones. The ones that seem a little far-fetched are just intriguing. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell their family stories. And then we're going to find out if there's any truth to these stories. Our investigations will not always be easy or predictable, because the stories we hear in this show aren't taken from textbooks or documentary series. They're preserved in a different format. This is Family Lore, and I'm your host, Lloyd Lockridge.
Speaker 6:
[03:05] Hello, Lloyd.
Speaker 7:
[03:06] Hi, there.
Speaker 6:
[03:08] How are you doing?
Speaker 7:
[03:09] I'm good. How are you?
Speaker 6:
[03:10] I'm just well. I've been so excited just to talk to you, not to hear what we're talking about. I'm so glad to talk to you.
Speaker 7:
[03:18] I know. I know.
Speaker 2:
[03:19] It's been a while.
Speaker 5:
[03:22] This is Martha Sayers. Martha is not an easy guest for me to introduce. First of all, I've always called her Ms. Sayers. Two of her five kids, William and Markham, are two of my best friends. I've known them for as long as I can remember. And I've known Ms. Sayers for as long as I can remember. You know the old saying, it takes a village to raise a child? Well, Ms. Sayers is a very important person in the village that raised me. There are many stories Ms. Sayers could tell you that would be very embarrassing for me. Frankly, she could stop this podcast right in its tracks. But instead, she's agreed to tell us a story about her life. In the past, when I've told people a shortened version of the story you're about to hear, they think I'm kidding, but I'm not. This is real family lore. And it centers around Ms. Sayers' great aunt, a woman named Margarita Sames.
Speaker 8:
[04:12] This is a colorful and romantic country. One of the oldest and yet one of the newest cities on the border is Laredo, Texas, the gateway to Mexico.
Speaker 5:
[04:23] The story begins in the early 1960s in Ms. Sayers' hometown of Laredo, Texas, which at the time was a sleepy little border town. Her home life when she was a little girl was pretty normal and down to earth, as she puts it. But every once in a while, her family would get a visit from Uncle Bill and his wife. Bill and Margarita were just different, especially Margarita.
Speaker 6:
[04:48] They would come to Laredo and stay at my grandmother's house. That's where I got to be around her a few times. She's the person you take a second look at. You don't just walk by and not notice because she was stunning, very attractive, and she was very made up all the time and had fancy clothing and Margarita just had this swagger, you know, hand motions all the time and she smoked and she drank and you know, I mean, and everybody was just kind of whoa, she was way ahead of their game.
Speaker 5:
[05:24] I think we all have relatives like this, the ones who roll through town unexpectedly and dazzle us with glimpses of something different. Every family has its culture and with that, they're usually members of the family who have a counterculture. And the rarity of these characters has a way of burning memories into our minds.
Speaker 6:
[05:43] So one of the first things I really remember, she was putting her makeup on, I was just standing right by her side, just she was talking to me and telling me stuff and I was just like taking it all in at five. And all of a sudden she took out this tool, you know, or whatever it was, I didn't know what it was. And she curled her eyelashes and I can still see her face. I never in my whole life seen somebody curl their eyelashes. I'm not going to say my mother didn't know about curling eyelashes, but she didn't do it, you know? I mean, she wasn't like that, but that's bad. I'm not saying it's bad. She was just over the top on everything. And it was always just a little bit, you know, Margarita and Bill are coming to town, you know? So get ready.
Speaker 5:
[06:28] But when it came to anticipating Bill and Margarita's visits, there was something a little more to it than eyelash curlers. There was something else about Margarita that made her a particularly interesting guest. I think Ms. Sayers, as a five-year-old girl, could sense that. Because Margarita was not just her aunt's name, it was the name of the drink she allegedly invented.
Speaker 6:
[06:50] I've heard my whole life that she invented the Margarita.
Speaker 5:
[06:55] She invented the Margarita. That's quite a claim, isn't it? To invent the Margarita. When I first heard this, I found myself thinking, did somebody really invent the Margarita? It just seems like something that would naturally come into being. But of course it didn't. Tequila, Cointreau and lime is not going to mix itself. And salt does not magically appear on the rim of your glass. Someone had to have been the first to make it. Ms. Sayers was quick to tell me that she didn't know Margarita super well. She was a very young girl when Margarita would visit, and she left Laredo for Austin when she was a teenager. But she told me I might be able to get more information from her cousin, Hank. Hank still lives in Laredo and might have a little more to say. So I called him up. I don't want to take too much of your time, and I figure we could just... I've got the broad strokes of this story, but Martha did say that you might be a little... So Hank Sayers has lived in Laredo his whole life, working for the Sayers car dealerships. It's a family business that runs pretty deep. The Sayers started the first car dealership in Texas in 1910, which is honestly before I thought people were driving cars. So he grew up in close proximity to Sayers' family stories, like the one about Margarita.
Speaker 7:
[08:03] I used to have lunch with my grandmother every Thursday, and she told all kinds of tales of family history. And of course, I was young and I didn't listen all the time, but I picked up some of it.
Speaker 5:
[08:16] And the story that Hank told goes a little something like this. His uncle Bill ran the car dealerships in Laredo. He had a wife and a few kids. Occasionally, Bill would go on the road to nearby places like Miranda City, an old oil boom town that's now a shell of its former self. And on one trip to Miranda City, Bill met a beautiful young woman named Margarita.
Speaker 7:
[08:37] Bill had been over there and met her and started an affair with her, unbeknownst to anybody in the family.
Speaker 5:
[08:45] And then Bill decided to take Margarita as his date to a Ford Motors exhibition show in Houston.
Speaker 7:
[08:51] And while he was at Houston, he had a terrible car wreck and both he and Margarita ended up in the hospital. Well, that exposed everything, you know. So Bill ended up getting a divorce.
Speaker 5:
[09:06] After the divorce, Bill's parents sort of said, Hey Bill, you seem to be fond of life on the road. Why don't you leave Laredo and take care of the dealerships in other parts of the state? So Bill moved to Alice, Texas and Margarita went with him. But it may not surprise you that Bill and Margarita weren't happy there. They both had a pinch it for adventure and Alice, Texas was not really meeting their needs. Plus, the scandal following the divorce was probably a little unpleasant. And they decided they needed a bigger change of scenery.
Speaker 7:
[09:36] So Bill sold all his dealerships and with the money he got from that, he and Margarita moved to Acapulco.
Speaker 5:
[09:46] Acapulco, Mexico. If you've been to Acapulco recently, you've seen the high rises on the beach, the cliff-diver reenactments and markets selling nostalgic arts and crafts from a bygone era. Well, Bill and Margarita moved there at the onset of that bygone era. It was the late 1940s, and Acapulco was cool. And if you came with American dollars, it was really cool. You could live like a king.
Speaker 7:
[10:10] And then bought a house up along the Calepa, which is where the cliff drivers are, you know. And at that point, that was where it was happening, and Acapulco was starting to take off.
Speaker 5:
[10:23] So Bill and Margarita showed up in Acapulco and fell into this vibrant expat community. And Margarita got to do the thing that she apparently loved most, host parties.
Speaker 7:
[10:33] I think the scene down there was party all the time. You know, these are people that had already retired or, you know, quit the whole American scene and went down and lived, I don't want to call it decadent, but you know what I mean, it was not working. And you could do it, you could do it because it was so inexpensive.
Speaker 5:
[10:52] But hosting parties inevitably comes with challenges. And one of the challenges with hosting parties in Acapulco was that the most available liquor was tequila. And if you think 21st century tequila is harsh, the old tequila was horrible and nobody drank it.
Speaker 7:
[11:06] It was rotgut, you know, nobody drank tequila.
Speaker 5:
[11:10] But there must have been a solution to this problem. And Margarita Sames was going to find that solution. She was going to find a way to make the tequila a little more palatable for her esteemed guests. So she took the tequila and added some lime and Cointreau for sweetness. But the drink was at risk of becoming too sweet and at odds with the earthiness of the tequila. So she added a creative touch, a little bit of salt on the rim. But it still wasn't quite finished because every signature cocktail has to have a signature cocktail glass. A martini goes in a martini glass. A Moscow mule goes in a copper Moscow mule mug. So what would Margarita's cocktail go in?
Speaker 7:
[11:51] Well, her husband Bill decided to make her some... They were almost like champagne glasses, not a flute, but a champagne glass. And he had her name inscribed on the glass, Margarita. So she had these glasses with the name Margarita on them.
Speaker 5:
[12:08] The drink was complete. Now it was time to throw a party and have some people over to try it. So Bill and Margarita sent up the bat signal and guests from the neighborhood started trickling in.
Speaker 7:
[12:19] Well, one of the people that also had a house up there was Nicky Hilton from Los Angeles.
Speaker 5:
[12:25] That's Nicky Hilton as in the oldest son of Conrad Hilton, an heir to the Hilton Hotel empire. And if that doesn't impress you, he is also the great uncle of Paris Hilton.
Speaker 7:
[12:34] Nicky Hilton was the one who took the recipe back to one of his hotels in Los Angeles and started serving it there and it spread from there.
Speaker 5:
[12:44] And thus, the margarita was born. It's a good story, but is it true? Let's try to find out.
Speaker 9:
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Speaker 3:
[13:29] It is not hard to destroy a college. Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults and more.
Speaker 1:
[13:40] And now Campus Files is back for another season.
Speaker 10:
[13:43] There's a guy screaming into his phone. He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk get assassinated right in front of me.
Speaker 11:
[13:48] Every week is a new episode and a new story.
Speaker 1:
[13:51] It was so chaotic.
Speaker 11:
[13:52] It's almost like a university on a siege.
Speaker 3:
[13:54] Listen to and follow Campus Files. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 12:
[13:59] No one goes to Hank's for his spreadsheets. They go for a darn good pizza. Lately though, the shop's been quiet. So Hank decides to bring back the $1 slice. He asks Copilot in Microsoft Excel to look at his sales and costs and help him see if he can afford it. Copilot shows Hank where the money's going and which little extras make the dollar slice work. Now Hank's has a line out the door. Hank makes the pizza, Copilot handles the spreadsheets. Learn more at m365copilot.com/work.
Speaker 5:
[14:33] So how does one figure out who invented a cocktail? Well if you poke around online, you see all kinds of different theories. And for what it's worth, the Margarita Sames theory always makes an appearance. But as is often the case, the theories you find online are pretty light on the facts. So let's see what we can find in the way of facts. The first thing I wanted to do is figure out when people started talking about margaritas. So I searched the newspaper archives. Margarita Sames threw her parties featuring the margarita starting in the late 1940s. So any mentions of the margarita before then would be a little inconvenient. But the earliest newspaper mention of the margarita that I can find appears in a 1955 issue of the Los Angeles Times. There was a column called LA Incidental in which the author writes almost stream of conscious observations of things seen in and around LA. He talks about a new shoe store in the valley, and then says he was recently introduced to a cocktail called the margarita. He describes it as tequila's answer to the martini. He says in the article that he was served the cocktail at the tail of the cock lounge in Studio City. The bartender who served him the margarita claimed to have invented the drink. The bartender's name was Johnny Derlesser. This is not only the first mention of the margarita, this is the first mention of someone claiming they had invented the margarita. I wasn't sure what to make of it, so I sort of stuck it in my back pocket and carried on with the research. But the solitary research was beginning to raise more questions than answers. I needed to speak to a person, someone who knows a little bit about the history of cocktails. But who? What's your name? Tell me your name.
Speaker 13:
[16:11] Elizabeth Pierce.
Speaker 5:
[16:13] And you have a unique job. Yeah. What do you do?
Speaker 13:
[16:16] I'm a drinks historian.
Speaker 5:
[16:18] Elizabeth Pierce, drinks historian. She seemed like the person for the job. And the cool thing about Elizabeth is she's not one of these drinks historians who had everything handed to her on a silver platter. Elizabeth came by her profession honestly.
Speaker 13:
[16:31] Everybody wants to know how you get to be a drinks historian. I helped to create and open the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. I was the founding curator there. Despite having no academic background in museums or history, a strong liberal arts education prepares you to do anything. So I learned how to make something out of nothing. And that mattered because the museum opened in early 2008. And of course, that year ended in a great financial apocalypse. Funding dried up, everybody got laid off. I went on unemployment, drank heavily and dated a musician, which is the Holy Trinity in New Orleans, if you just need to shift your professional path. 2009 is the year I learned both unemployment and musicians run out after six months. And while the museum stayed open through volunteers, I needed a job. So I became a speaker on the history of New Orleans through food and drink.
Speaker 5:
[17:33] And that's what she's been doing ever since. But she doesn't just do New Orleans drinks. She does all drinks. In fact, she recently gave a series of talks on the history of tequila. And that's why I wanted to talk to her. I feel like if we're going to figure out when the margarita was born and who brought it into existence, we're going to need to trace the activity of tequila. And with Elizabeth, we hit the jackpot. This woman knows her tequila.
Speaker 13:
[17:59] So in the early and mid 19th century, tequila is marketed to Mexicans or other Spanish speakers living in states near the border. And there is no explanation of what it is. They were just like, tequila for sale, everything.
Speaker 5:
[18:13] Here's the gist. In the early to mid 1800s, tequila wasn't a thing in the US unless you live near the border.
Speaker 13:
[18:20] But people visit Mexico and come back.
Speaker 5:
[18:24] And towards the end of the 1800s, the Americans who had migrated to Texas are starting to acquire a taste for the stuff. And that became abundantly clear when in 1899, the city of El Paso contemplated seceding from Texas and rejoining Mexico. Here is what a Waco newspaper had to say about that.
Speaker 13:
[18:41] Think of the spectacle of a democratic convention in the Lone Star State without the gentleman from El Paso, who would care to go to a big democratic gathering, which he was not sure to meet one heart with a special sample of the best brand of tequila and a little pinch of salt to give it a relish.
Speaker 5:
[19:02] In other words, Waco said, El Paso, you can't leave Texas. Who's going to bring tequila to the next legislative session? So Texans had clearly grown to like it. But then...
Speaker 13:
[19:12] As prohibition in the US approaches, the language will become more hostile. It's called bottled dynamite. It's mighty degrading stuff and a good thing to steer clear of.
Speaker 5:
[19:25] Prohibition, a complete ban of all liquor production, distribution and consumption in the United States. Just as tequila was gaining some mainstream traction, it was taken off the shelves along with everything else. But as we all know, people were going to find a way to drink. And for people who lived near the Mexican border, that was not a hard problem to solve.
Speaker 13:
[19:47] I have a really great fact. From July 1918 to July 1919, 14,130 tourists crossed the border into Mexico. July 1919 to July 1920, 418,735 tourists.
Speaker 5:
[20:10] So from 1919 to 1920, which is the period of time that Prohibition went into effect, there was a 3000% uptick in Americans traveling to Mexico. And at first, the Americans were just going over to drink the same stuff they were used to drinking at home.
Speaker 13:
[20:24] Almost all the beer and liquor sold to Juarez saloons was manufactured by American firms that relocated south of the border. So people are going for the drinks that they are familiar with, like getting a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned. They're getting their whiskey, they're getting gin or brandy. And they're at American bars with American bartenders who are making American cocktails. And a very popular cocktail in the late 19th century was called the Daisy.
Speaker 5:
[20:55] The Daisy. I had never heard of this drink and I live in New Orleans. But apparently it was quite popular back in the 20s. It's a simple drink and it leaves room for interpretation.
Speaker 13:
[21:07] And the Daisy is a category. So you could make a gin Daisy or a cognac Daisy or brandy or whiskey Daisy or whatever. A Daisy consists of liquor of some kind, and you got to decide, lemon juice and some kind of liquid sweetener, which could be alcoholic or not.
Speaker 5:
[21:26] But while many Americans were sticking with what they knew, like the Daisy, some were broadening their alcohol horizons.
Speaker 13:
[21:32] I think there's a lot more Americans that are trying tequila during prohibition and it is because they have gotten themselves to Mexico and it's there and it's like, hmm, let's try this out.
Speaker 5:
[21:48] So, you have Americans drinking the same cocktails they were drinking in America, but they're also acquiring a taste for tequila and those habits begin to mix.
Speaker 13:
[21:57] So, what then happens is the tequila Daisy starts to pop up.
Speaker 5:
[22:04] So, based on what Elizabeth is telling us about the Daisy cocktail, a tequila Daisy would be tequila with lemon juice and a sweetener or liqueur of some kind. Sounds a little bit like a margarita, doesn't it? And does anyone know what the Spanish word is for Daisy? It's margarita.
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Speaker 5:
[23:31] Okay, so let's quickly recap. The daisy was a popular drink at the time of prohibition. Americans crossed the border to Mexico so they could drink, and they still wanted to drink daisies. One theory is that the tequila daisy was born, and it was called the margarita, which is the Spanish word for daisy. This honestly kind of seems like the answer, doesn't it? That the margarita was the name given to a tequila daisy. How could it not be? But before we steal margarita sames as thunder, let's think this through. If the margarita is just a tequila daisy, then when does it go from being called the tequila daisy to a margarita? If they're the same drink, when does one name supplant the other? Because as it turns out, people had no problem with the name tequila daisy.
Speaker 13:
[24:14] An early mention that I found for tequila daisy, that was the name of a racehorse in Dayton, Ohio. 1930, El Paso had a baseball name contest. Here are a few names submitted. The Tequila Daisies. 1935, in El Paso, a couple celebrates their engagement with a Mexican-themed party, and there is a tequila daisy in its cocktail course.
Speaker 5:
[24:38] So again, if a margarita is just a name for a tequila daisy, then why do people keep calling it a tequila daisy? One potential answer is that it just took a few decades for the name to evolve from tequila daisy to margarita. But there is a problem with that answer. We know that the margarita was a known drink by the mid-50s and certainly into the 60s. And yet, in the 50s and 60s, people are still talking about the tequila daisy. Why are people talking about both drinks if they are one and the same?
Speaker 13:
[25:06] Okay, so this was the thing that was kind of key for me. An El Paso column lists recipes for both the tequila daisy and margarita. The margarita contains tequila, Cointreau, lime, sugar blended with a salt rim. The tequila daisy is tequila, lime, sugar, grenadine and no salt rim.
Speaker 5:
[25:32] So clearly, the tequila daisy and the margarita are not the same drink. They are two distinct drinks. But then what's the connection between the margarita and the daisy?
Speaker 13:
[25:41] And I'm also wondering now if there might have been some miscommunication or something. If somebody is like, I want a tequila daisy, you know, while they're in, I don't know, Cancun or something. And then the guy is like, oh, margarita. Like, they know, because they know these two words go together. But then the tequila daisy would be a margarita and it's not. They're two different drinks.
Speaker 5:
[26:08] So prior to my interview with Elizabeth, I didn't tell her the theory I was researching and she didn't ask.
Speaker 13:
[26:13] And until what year is this?
Speaker 5:
[26:14] 46, seven, eight. But after we went through the history of tequila, the tequila daisy and the margarita, I told her about margarita sames. Margarita sames would throw these parties. And as I told her the story, I could see Elizabeth's gears turning. And then she interjected.
Speaker 13:
[26:29] Okay, so first of all, the unsinkable Molly Brown, like that lady who didn't die in the Titanic, Kathy Bates, okay, she is in Paris during prohibition and starts drinking the bee's knees. And when one is researching the history of the bee's knees, there are some alleges, and one of them is that Molly Brown invented this drink. Well, I believe that Molly Brown was very talented in many ways, like she's not making drinks, like she's not inventing drinks. Like socialite women don't do that, they have servants.
Speaker 5:
[27:04] Right.
Speaker 13:
[27:04] And so I believe that Molly Brown popularized the bee's knees because she had it in Paris, and then she came back to the US after Prohibition, was like, I had this drink and it's really good. And everybody's like, oh yeah, it's Molly Brown's drink. So I'm choosing to believe that this Lady Margarita had this drink with her name on it, which I absolutely believe that she decided that she was going to feature her name on this glass. And then people are like, what's that drink? Oh, it's Margarita, you know. So she might have named it. I think that that's, I believe she labeled it.
Speaker 5:
[27:44] So here's what I think. I think people have it backwards. The main contending theory, as you now know, is that someone made a version of a Daisy with tequila. So they gave it the Spanish name for Daisy, Margarita. I think a person named Margarita wanted to make a signature cocktail. So because of her name, she went with a Mexican version of the Daisy. Was Margarita Sames the first to mix these ingredients? Who knows? Maybe.
Speaker 7:
[28:12] Probably not.
Speaker 5:
[28:14] But I think she might be the reason that mixture of ingredients is called a Margarita, which is what made it the marketable cocktail we all drink today. So if anyone can lay claim to this cocktail, why not Margarita Sames? But I'm hung up on something. That article in the LA Times from 1955 about the bartender in Los Angeles, Johnny Derlesser. We have a random columnist with no dog in the fight, long before anyone was arguing over who invented the Margarita, saying that this bartender, Johnny Derlesser, served him a Margarita at the Tail of the Cock Lounge in Studio City, and that he claimed to be the inventor. How do you make sense of that? So I thought back to what Hank Sames had told me about the guests at Margarita's parties in Acapulco.
Speaker 7:
[28:58] Well, one of the people that also had a house up there was Nicky Hilton from Los Angeles.
Speaker 5:
[29:04] Did Nicky Hilton hang out at this lounge in LA? Did he return from one of Margarita Sames' parties and then tell this bartender how to make the drink? Maybe, but I couldn't find any proof of that. However, I found something else. I was looking through old newspaper clippings about Margarita Sames and found one from 1994, which featured an interview with Margarita. In the interview, she talks about the exact party where she unveiled her signature cocktail. And she mentions some of the guests who were in attendance. There's Nicky Hilton, we all knew about him. And there's Joseph Drown, who owned the Hotel Bel Air, also in Los Angeles. No big surprise. But a third guest is mentioned in this article. A guy named Shelton McHenry. Unlike the other two, Shelton did not own hotels. He owned a bar. It was a celebrity hangout in Studio City, called The Tale of the Cock. Its head bartender, Johnny Derlesser. It seems the margarita has a certain allure to it. Similar to the magnetic pull of margarita sames that Miss Sayers described in the beginning of this episode. The stunning woman who commanded a room, curled her eyelashes and absconded to Acapulco after a scandalous affair. Now have we proven that margarita sames invented the margarita? No, there's still room for reasonable doubt. But in my interview with Elizabeth Pierce, she read an excerpt from a magazine. Because as it turns out, while the first newspaper mention of the margarita was in 1955, it was not the first time the drink appeared in print. Two years prior to that LA Times article, the margarita cocktail was mentioned in Esquire magazine.
Speaker 13:
[30:50] In the December 1953 issue of Esquire magazine, it states, the margarita, she's from Mexico, señores, and she is lovely to look at, exciting and provocative.
Speaker 5:
[31:02] Now who does that remind you of? Thank you for listening to Family Lore. And please check in every Wednesday morning for new episodes. If you have stories you'd like to share about your family, please email me at FamilyLorePod at gmail.com. That's FamilyLore, P-O-D, at gmail.com. Family Lore is an Odyssey original podcast. It is written and narrated by me, Lloyd Lockridge. Our executive producers are Leah Reese Dennis and I. Our lead producer and sound editor is Zach Clark. Our story editors are Maddy Sprung Kaiser and Katie Mingle. Additional sound editing, mixing and mastering by Chris Basel and production support by Sean Cherry. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, Hilary Shuff and Laura Berman. Thanks again for listening to Family Lore. If you have time, we'd love for you to rate and review the show.
Speaker 1:
[32:13] For years, Gone South has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But for our new season, we're widening the lens. Through deeply reported, narrative-driven stories, we're digging into the myths, scandals and power structures that still shape the South and, in a lot of ways, the country itself. Follow and listen to Gone South Season 5, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your shows.