Show overview
Gone South has been publishing since 2021, and across the 5 years since has built a catalogue of 84 episodes, alongside 6 trailers or bonus episodes. That works out to roughly 50 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a monthly cadence, with the show now in its 5th season.
Episodes typically run twenty to thirty-five minutes — most land between 31 min and 40 min — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. It is catalogued as a EN-language True Crime show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 5 days ago, with 16 episodes already out so far this year. The busiest year was 2025, with 31 episodes published. Published by Audacy Podcasts.
From the publisher
For years, Gone South has been a podcast about crime in the American South. But in Season 5, we’re widening the lens. Through deeply reported, narrative-driven stories—and conversations with journalists, historians, musicians, and people who’ve lived these stories firsthand—we’re digging into the myths, scandals, and power structures that still shape the South… and, in many ways, the country itself. From re-examining the cultural meaning of the Alamo to tracing the family history of Alex Murdaugh to investigating the federal indictment of New Orleans’s former mayor, each episode stands alone. Together, they paint a picture of what this region really is and how it came to be. Gone South is a show for people who want to understand how history lingers and why it still matters now. Written and hosted by award-winning journalist Jed Lipinski, Gone South is the recipient of the Edward R. Murrow Award for Outstanding Achievement in Journalism. Previous serialized seasons include: Season 1: Who Killed Margaret Coon? Season 2: The Dixie Mafia Season 3: The Sign Cutter Follow Gone South to get new episodes every week.
Latest Episodes
View all 84 episodesThe Georgia Church Murders Part 2: Dennis Perry's Story of Wrongful Conviction and Redemption
The Georgia Church Murders Part 1: A Wrongful Conviction, a Fake Alibi, and the Reporter Who Cracked the Case
The Axeman of New Orleans
The T.M. Landry Scandal: How a Louisiana School Faked Its Way Into the Ivy League
Patterson Hood and the Duality of the Southern Thing
Sputnik Monroe: The Wrestler Who Desegregated Memphis
The Lampshade: A Post-Katrina New Orleans Mystery
S5 Ep 7The Lieutenant Governor Who Shot a Journalist: The Narciso Gonzalez Assassination
In 1903, South Carolina’s most powerful journalist is gunned down in broad daylight, and the shooter is the lieutenant governor. Narciso Gonzalez, editor of The State newspaper in Columbia, spent years attacking the Tillman machine: “Pitchfork Ben” Tillman, the architect of South Carolina’s post-Reconstruction political order, and Ben’s volatile nephew James Tillman, a rising politician with a reputation for drinking, gambling, and vendettas. On January 19, 1903, that feud turns into a street-corner assassination outside the State House. From Red Shirts intimidation and the Hamburg massacre, to Ben Tillman’s state-run liquor “dispensary” system and the riots it sparked, to a murder trial engineered to let the shooter walk, we trace the bloodline politics and raw violence behind the killing with writer Jack Hitt (This American Life, Uncivil). It’s a story about press power, political revenge, and how a state’s myths, and its laws, get written when the loudest voice in the room can be silenced with a gun. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ Listen to Jack Hitt on This American Life https://www.thisamericanlife.org/archive?contributor=8770Read some of Jack Hitt's best magazine stories on Longform.orghttps://longform.org/archive/writers/jack-hitt To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S5 Ep 6The Fall of Latoya Cantrell
New Orleans is no stranger to political scandal, but the federal case against Mayor LaToya Cantrell isn’t a classic bribes-and-kickbacks story. It’s a story about a relationship, power, and the alleged misuse of public resources. Times-Picayune columnist Stephanie Grace traces Cantrell’s rise from post-Katrina neighborhood leader to the first woman elected mayor, and what went wrong in her second term. Prosecutors say Cantrell and NOPD officer Jeffrey Vappie, her security guard, used city funds and access to a city-owned apartment overlooking Jackson Square and official travel to spend time together, then tried to cover it up. Cantrell has denied wrongdoing. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S5 Ep 5The Alamo Myth: What Really Happened in 1836
Most people know the phrase “Remember the Alamo.” Fewer know what actually happened there or why Texans still fight over it. Jed Lipinski talks with journalist and historian Bryan Burrough, co-author of Forget the Alamo, about the real story behind the 1836 battle and how the Alamo became a political myth. They trace the Texas Revolution back to Mexican Texas, American immigration, and the central conflict over slavery, then unpack how figures like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, and William Travis were turned into legend, and why revisionist history has sparked backlash ever since. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/Connect with Jed Lipinski:https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ Bryan Burrough is the co-author of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Mythhttps://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/1984880098 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
You Might Like: Murder at The U - A suspect awaiting trial and a murder still unsolved
EMurder at the U follows the murder of Bryan Pata, senior defensive tackle for the University of Miami. More than a decade later, with Bryan’s family desperately searching for answers, the case found its way to a team of ESPN reporters. Now, a suspect has emerged, and he is none other than one of Pata’s teammates. This new season tells the story of a shocking, high-profile murder investigation and what happened when a team of reporters tried to get to the bottom of who killed Bryan Pata. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S5 Ep 4Goat Castle: Murder, Myth, and Jim Crow Justice in Natchez
In 2012, historian Karen Cox is digging through the Mississippi State Archives when an archivist tells her, “If you want to know about Natchez, you need to look at Goat Castle.” Cox expects a ghost story. What she finds is stranger and darker: a 1932 murder that turned into a national Southern Gothic spectacle. The victim was a reclusive former Southern belle. The suspects were her eccentric neighbors, a failed concert pianist and an aging socialite, living in a decaying mansion overrun with goats. Newspapers dubbed them the Wild Man and the Goat Woman, and tourists flocked to Natchez to gawk. But beneath the spectacle was the real tragedy: Emily Burns, a young Black woman forced into the story and ultimately blamed, while the white suspects became local celebrities. Sent to Mississippi’s brutal Parchman prison, Emily was erased from the public record. Cox set out to write her back in and to expose what Goat Castle reveals about justice in the Jim Crow South. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/Connect with Jed Lipinski:https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/Karen Cox is the author of Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South:https://www.amazon.com/Goat-Castle-Story-Murder-Gothic/dp/1469661438 To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S5 Ep 3Charleston, 2015: Dylann Roof and Emanuel AME
At a 2024 House Judiciary oversight hearing, an exchange about racially motivated violence goes viral after FBI chief Kash Patel appears to stumble over a question about the 2015 Charleston church massacre. The moment sparks a grim question: how does a tragedy this defining slip out of view? Jed Lipinski revisits what happened at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church when 21-year-old Dylann Roof sat in on Bible study, then opened fire and killed nine Black parishioners. With New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb and Charleston native Jack Hitt, we trace the deeper history Roof targeted: Denmark Vesey, the long shadow of Confederate “heritage,” and the symbols that still shape South Carolina’s public life. From the Confederate flag’s removal to today’s backlash, this is a story about memory, denial, and what the country chooses to learn, or forget. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S5 Ep 2Stand Your Ground on Camp Swamp Road: The Scott Spivey Shooting
On September 9, 2023, a road-rage encounter in South Carolina turns into a nine-mile chase and ends with 33-year-old Scott Spivey dead on a rural back road. Police quickly call it self-defense under Stand Your Ground. But Scott’s sister, Jennifer Foley, doesn’t buy it. As the case is closed and sealed off, she starts building her own timeline, until a civil lawsuit forces the release of the evidence file: thousands of documents, photos, body-cam and dash-cam footage, and recorded phone calls that suggest the official story was shaped from the start. Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein and attorney Mark Tinsley follow the trail into a world of conflicts of interest, missing (or buried) evidence, and a system that treats the shooter as the victim. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S5 Ep 1Murdaugh Family History
Wall Street Journal reporter Valerie Bauerlein, who covered the Alex Murdaugh murder trial gavel to gavel, explains why the most revealing part of the Murdaugh saga isn’t Alex at all. It’s the 100-year legal dynasty that made him possible. We go back to Hampton County, South Carolina, a post–Civil War “burned county” built to enforce White Rule, and follow three generations of Murdaugh power: Randolph Murdaugh Sr., the solicitor who learned how to bend the system; “Buster” Murdaugh, a charismatic, ruthless prosecutor tied to bootlegging and alleged jury tampering; and Randolph Murdaugh III, the smoother operator who kept the machine humming, until cameras and modern technology started capturing what used to happen in the shadows. From the family’s early courtroom tactics and railroad lawsuits to the 2019 boat crash that killed Mallory Beach and the frantic hospital damage-control captured on security footage, this is the story of how a dynasty built its power and how it finally collapsed from the inside. Subscribe to our newsletter:https://jedlipinski.substack.com/ Connect with Jed Lipinski: https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.facebook.com/groups/gonesouthpodcast/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jed-lipinski/ To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Introducing Gone South, Season 5
trailerGone South, the Edward R. Murrow award-winning podcast, is back for a fifth season. Join host Jed Lipinski as he investigates new southern-based stories each week. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S4 Ep 42BONUS: The Real Buford Pusser | Part 4
Nearly six decades after Pauline Pusser’s murder, Tennessee investigators finally reveal what really happened. The TBI’s new findings suggest Walking Tall sheriff Buford Pusser staged the ambush that made him famous — and may have killed his wife. Host Jed Lipinski follows the fallout in Adamsville as investigators, locals, and lifelong believers wrestle over one question: what happens when a legend falls? Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S4 Ep 41BONUS: The Real Buford Pusser | Part 3
bonusIn 1967, Sheriff Buford Pusser said gunmen ambushed his car, killing his wife Pauline and inspiring the Walking Tall legend. Nearly six decades later, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation exhumed Pauline’s body after learning no autopsy was ever done. Reporter Jed Lipinski travels to Adamsville, Tennessee, where new witnesses and old secrets threaten to upend the myth of Buford Pusser. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S4 Ep 40S4|E40: An Interview with Jed Lipinski
In the 40th and final episode of Season 4, Jed Lipinski answers questions about the making of Gone South. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
S4 Ep 39S4|E39: Operation Sideswipe | Part 2
After a federal witness is gunned down on his mother‘s doorstep, investigators began unraveling a murder conspiracy at the heart of operation sideswipe. In this episode, Reporter Mike Perlstein walks us through a dramatic bond hearing and the shocking details that finally brought two key players to justice. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Gone South with Jed Lipinski. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices