south carolina is in the same tier as texas, of places i will go days out of my way to avoid even passing through. it makes georgia look like vermont. for the record, i've been there more times than i care to remember. it's so fucking hot sometimes. all the northern chuds should move to a compound there and get walled in.

but anyway, more earnestly, as a native son of the south, there was an episode of Who Makes Cents not long ago that made a lot of things click for me about the American South in the 21st century. it also provides a material context to these shallow stories of people in other parts of the US relocating in significant numbers to the american south that confound liberals and require the sort of trash tier framing found in this eye roll of an article about an idiot finding her village.

if you haven't listened to Who Makes Cents: A History of Capitalism Podcast before, while engaging, it is not an entertainment product. it doesn't have ads/ad reads and consists of a structured, polished interview of a recently published and lauded subject matter expert allowing them to do a deep dive into their area of study. many/most of the guests are phoning in, so sometimes the sound quality needs help / boosted volume, BUT it creates a very informative 45m-1hr long episode where the interviewee gives powerful context for some counter-intuitive or obscure phenomenon that reveals the structural forces at work and connects them to the bigger picture. it's also generally delivered in very plain language, so no need to be a theoretical head. i got into it before i was really even a leftist, though it is pretty obviously marxian now that i know what to look for.

from the episode description

An iced cold Coca-Cola. A cross-country flight on Delta to visit friends. A much-needed medication overnighted via Fed-Ex. Bulk toilet paper purchased at Wal-Mart. What do these items have in common? In today’s modern economy, each of these can be purchased from the comfort of the couch, frequently with a credit card pioneered by Bank of America. They are all also from companies headquartered in the American South.

Most Americans, when they think about the companies that have given rise to our modern-day economy, their thoughts frequently drift to places like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, all major cities that frequently draw recent college graduates eager to land a job in the high-paying tech and finance sectors. Yet, some the biggest companies responsible for our have-it-now, fly-by-the night, buy-on-credit, modern economy originated not in the urban North and Northwest, but through servicing the rural American South. Many of these same companies are some of the biggest contributors to climate change. Drawing on exclusive interviews with company executives, corporate archives, and other records, he explains how businesses from the American South helped make it possible for us to satisfy our desires from the convenience of our home and/or hometown, no matter how remote, while also revealing the environmental costs associated with each.

Bart Elmore is a Professor of History at The Ohio State University. His latest book, out now with UNC Press, is Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet. His first book, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (W.W. Norton, 2015) won the Axiom Business Book Award for best business commentary and the Council of Graduate Schools 2016 Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities. His second book, Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future (W.W. Norton, 2021), won the 2020 J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Award and the 2022 IACP Food Issues and Matters Award, and was a finalist for both the American Society for Environmental History’s George Perkins Marsh Prize and the 2022 Hagley Prize in Business History sponsored by the Business History Conference and the Hagley Museum. He is a recipient of the Dan David Award.