Category Archives: People

S9E6 Podcast: Tom Johnson: From LBJ to CNN

Stan’s guest this week is Georgia native and journalist Tom Johnson, whose remarkable career took him from Macon, where he worked for legendary newspaperman Peyton Anderson, to UGA’s Grady College of Journalism, to White House Fellow during President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, to publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and finally as president of CNN during the crucial years of the 1990s during the invasion of Kuwait and the fall of the Soviet Union. Tom talks about his new memoir, Driven: A Life in Public Service and Journalism from LBJ to CNN, published this month by the University of Georgia Press.

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S9E5 Podcast: Taking Down the Klan

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Stan’s guest this week is journalist and author Guy Gugliotta, discussing his new book, Grant’s Enforcer: Taking Down the Klan, published on April 15 of this year by the University of Georgia Press. It’s the story of how Amos T. Akerman, a Georgian, was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1870 to become the Attorney General of the United States, the first to lead the newly created Department of Justice, and how he waged war against and defeated the Reconstruction-era Ku Klux Klan.

Please note, due to a recording equipment glitch, portions of the audio may sound distorted. Even still, we think you’ll enjoy this conversation!

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S9E4 Podcast: What Dan Read: Dan Pelzer’s Reading List Over 62 Years

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Dan Pelzer died in July at age 92 and left behind a detailed list of every book he read from 1962 to 2023, totaling 3,599 books across 62 years—all of them checked out of his local library. His list went viral after his children wanted to print it and hand it out at his funeral, choosing to post it online instead. Stan explores Dan’s impressive reading list and many of the titles he read, and how it’s inspired him and so many others to “read a good page turner.”

S9E3 Podcast: Tracking Hernando De Soto Through Georgia

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Did Hernando De Soto travel near what is now DeSoto Falls in North Georgia? Or Desoto, Georgia, in Sumter County? Why don’t we know where he went and why is the evidence so hard to find? Stan’s guest this week is Dennis Blanton, professor of anthropology at James Madison University, author of Conquistador’s Wake: Tracking the Legacy of Hernando De Soto in the Indigenous Southeast (UGA Press, 2020). Dr. Blanton discusses the myths and realities of De Soto’s 16th-century expedition, based on his years of painstaking archaeological research—and how his current finds in southwest Georgia may re-define what we know about the infamous Conquistador’s entrada.

S9E2 Podcast: The 10th Inning with Mark Bradley