Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are taking
a really concentrated plunge into a state that
I think embodies, well, the paradox of the modern
South. Georgia. Georgia, exactly. You know it
as the Peach State, of course. But also the Empire
State of the South. That's the older one. And
that's really our mission today. We want to distill
the essence of this incredibly complex place,
tracing it from this... This very peculiar colonial
experiment all the way up to its current status.
A hyper -competitive global hub that is, I mean,
let's be honest, dictating national politics
right now. It really is. And you absolutely have
to start with the scale of the place because
Georgia's impact, I think, is just routinely
underestimated. Okay, so give us the numbers.
Geographically, it's the 24th largest. So, you
know, respectable. But its real power is in its
population density. It's the eighth most populous
state in the country. And what's the latest estimate?
For 2024, it's clocking in at around 11 .18 million
people. And the key to understanding that population
and really all the politics and economics that
follow is Atlanta. Precisely. The Atlanta metropolitan
area. I mean, it's a massive, sprawling thing.
It's huge. It's home to over 6 .3 million people
as of last year. So just do the math on that.
That's more than half the state. It's 57 % of
Georgia's entire population. That concentration
in one single metro area is, well, it's arguably
the single most important factor shaping the
state today. It's like a gravitational pull.
It is. It just fundamentally alters the statewide
economy, the social composition, everything.
Which makes Atlanta far more than just some regional
city. It's a true global city. Oh, absolutely.
It's a recognized world center for trade, for
logistics, finance. I mean, to frame the stakes
for you, the listener, just consider this. If
you went back to 2005 and you... you treated
Georgia like its own country. Its economy would
have been the 28th largest in the entire world.
And by 2018, its gross state product was already
over $600 billion. So yeah, this is not some
sleepy southern state. This is an immense engine
of global commerce. And that's what makes its
history and its recent political chaos so important
for everyone to understand. All right, let's
unpack it. We have to start at the beginning
because the original vision for this colony was...
Well, it was radically different from his neighbors.
It was almost like a social engineering project.
Georgia was the last and the southernmost of
the original 13 colonies, established pretty
late, too, 1732. And the first settlement, Savannah,
was a year later. 1733, yeah. The name, of course,
was just a straight homage to the king at the
time, King George II. But the initial plan, this
Oglethorpe plan, it was almost utopian. especially
on the issue of labor. It was. General J .F.
Oglethorpe, who founded the whole thing, he envisioned
this agrarian society built on small, virtuous
yeoman farmers. No huge plantations. Exactly.
The rules were strict on land ownership and,
critically, the initial plan prohibited slavery.
Okay, prohibiting slavery in the 1730s in the
Southern Colony. That sounds basically impossible
from an economic standpoint at the time. It was
a direct challenge to the whole system in, say,
South Carolina next door. The trustees who founded
the colony, they wanted this unique structure.
And it wasn't just slavery they banned, right?
No, they also initially banned rum and lawyers.
Rum and lawyers. So they were really going for
a moralistic society. Totally. They thought this
small -scale farming approach would create a
kind of buffer zone for debtors and the worthy
poor between Spanish Florida and the... big,
rich British colonies. So why did it fall apart
so fast? It just wasn't economically viable,
not in the long run, especially when settlers
started coming in from other colonies who wanted
to get rich using enslaved labor. The restrictions
just hampered growth. So the colonists themselves
pushed back. Immense pressure. So by 1752, the
trustees were facing debt. Their subsidies from
the crown were running out and they just relinquished
control. And Georgia becomes a royal colony.
Yep. And immediately the restrictions on large
landholding. and most importantly, a prohibition
on slavery were just gone. The experiment was
over. Georgia fell right in line with the rest
of the South. But despite that rocky start, they
were all in on the revolution. Oh, completely.
The delegates unanimously approved the Declaration
of Independence. And when it came time to form
the new country, Georgia was one of the first
on board. Tenth to ratify the Articles of Confederation.
In 1778, and then famously the fourth state to
ratify the U .S. Constitution, January 2nd, 1788.
Now here's where it gets really interesting,
because... Georgia originally claimed this massive
piece of land stretching west. All the way to
the Mississippi. And it was forced to give it
up in a scandal that just screams early republic
corruption. Tell us about the Yazoo land sales.
This was a colossal political and legal firestorm.
I mean, it was a huge deal. So they claimed all
that land. Right. And in 1795, the state legislature
was bribed, just flagrantly bribed, to sell off
huge chunks of this western territory. How much
land are we talking? About 35 million acres.
For ridiculously low prices to four land speculation
companies. That was the Yazoo land sale. I mean,
that's the dictionary definition of corruption.
There had to be a huge backlash. Ooh. The outrage
was so intense that the next legislature in 1796
repealed the whole thing. They even symbolically
burned the records with a magnifying glass focused
on the sun. But the land had already been sold,
right? Exactly. The companies had already resold
it to third parties, which created a legal nightmare.
So to fix it, Georgia just ceded all its western
lands, what would become Alabama and Mississippi,
to the federal government. In exchange for what?
A payment of $1 .25 million. And just like that,
the map of the Deep South was fundamentally redrawn.
And losing all that western lands, ironically,
that drive settlement pressure inward. Which
leads almost right away to gold being discovered.
And to one of the darkest chapters in the state's
history. Indigenous removal. Yeah. The Georgia
gold rush kicked off in 1829 in the northern
mountains. And it prompted this colossal rush
of settlers right onto land that was occupied
by the sovereign Cherokee Nation. And this was
real gold. Oh, yeah. The federal government even
set up a mint in a town called Dalanega that
ran right up until the Civil War. So that influx
creates the political will for the Indian Removal
Act. It directly fueled it. President Andrew
Jackson's whole push for the act in 1830 was
driven by this desire for land and gold. But
the Cherokee Nation, they fought back. In the
court. And they won, right? The Supreme Court
sided with them. Definitively. In 1832, the Supreme
Court, with Chief Justice John Marshall, ruled
in Worcester v. Georgia that the states couldn't
enforce their laws within Cherokee territory.
They upheld tribal sovereignty. But it didn't
matter. It's one of the most famous examples
of a president just ignoring the Supreme Court.
Jackson allegedly said, John Marshall has made
his decision. Now let him enforce it. And he
just didn't. He didn't. And the state of Georgia
helped run a land lottery. to give away Cherokee
land. Which results in the Trail of Tears. The
devastating aftermath. In 1838, the federal military
was sent in to forcibly round up and deport the
Cherokee tribes west of the Mississippi. A forced
march. Under horrific conditions. It led to the
deaths of an estimated 4 ,000 Cherokee people
from exposure, disease, and starvation. It's
a foundational tragedy, and it's directly tied
to those resources in North Georgia. That history
of conflict, territory, resource extraction,
it feels like a perfect prelude to the Civil
War, where Georgia was absolutely central to
the Confederacy. It chose to secede early. January
19th, 1861, one of the original seven Confederate
states. And its value was immense. Because of
the railroads and agriculture? Railroads, agriculture,
manufacturing, especially textiles. It was literally
the supply hub for the entire Confederacy. So
the military campaign against Georgia wasn't
just about winning battles. It was about destroying
the South's ability to even wage war. That's
it, exactly. I mean, you have huge, bloody battles
like Chickamauga and Kennesaw Mountain. But the
real pivot point was the fall of Atlanta in September.
1864. And that led directly to Sherman. To General
William Tecumseh Sherman's strategic and psychological
campaign, the infamous March to the Sea. How
devastating was that really? It was total war.
It was aimed at civilian infrastructure. Starting
in November 1864, his forces just systematically
destroyed a 60 mile wide path from Atlanta all
the way to Savannah. So they weren't just fighting.
No. They tore up 300 miles of railroad track.
They would heat the rails and twist them around
trees. They called them Sherman's neckties. They
destroyed cotton gins, mills, burned crops. The
psychological damage was just as big as the economic
damage. And the human cost of the war for the
state was staggering. Horrific. On the Confederate
side, 18 ,253 Georgian soldiers were killed.
That's roughly one in five men from Georgia who
served. They didn't come home. And on the Union
side, Georgia... was home to one of the most
notorious sites of the whole war. Andersonville
Prison. A name that still just carries so much
weight. It's an enduring scar. It was formerly
Camp Sumter, and it was infamous for overcrowding,
no sanitation, starvation rations. Nearly 13
,000 Union prisoners of war died there. Mostly
from disease and starvation. Exactly. Just inhumane
conditions. And the consequences for the camp's
commander, Henry Wertz, were swift after the
war. He was executed right. Tried for war crimes,
convicted and hanged. He is the highest ranking
Confederate official to be executed after the
conflict. So at that level of destruction and
trauma, getting back into the Union must have
been a long, messy process. It was incredibly
protracted. Georgia actually holds the distinction
of being the very last of the former Confederate
states to be readmitted. The last one. When did
that happen? Not until July 15, 1870. And even
then, federal troops stayed in the state for
another seven years until Reconstruction officially
ended in 1877. Which really takes us right into
part two, because once those federal troops leave,
the conflict just shifts. It goes from a military
occupation to a systemic, political and social
one. Exactly. White Democrats regain power and
they immediately engineer a new system for total
political dominance. The goal was crystal clear.
Maintain white control and suppress the power
of the newly enfranchised black. population.
And poor whites who might ally with them. This
was all done through legislation, what we call
disfranchisement. They passed a poll tax in 1877.
Which was designed to stop poor people from voting.
By requiring a cash payment. Yeah. Yeah. Especially
black citizens. But the poll tax was just one
tool. Yeah. The white primary. That seems like
it was even more effective at just excluding
black voices entirely. It was a brilliant and
just a nefarious legal trick. In 1908, they set
up the white primary. Now, since the Democratic
Party had a total monopoly on power, winning
their primary was the only election that mattered.
So if you're not in the primary, you have no
say. Exactly. By legally calling the primary
a private affair of the party, they could legally
exclude black voters. It made the general election
completely meaningless for them. And you could
track the demographic results of these laws pretty
directly. You absolutely can. In 1900, African
-Americans were a massive 46 .7 percent of the
state's population, almost half. Wow. But because
of these disenfranchisement laws and also because
of the Great Migration, where black citizens
left the South for jobs in the North. That number
just plummeted. dropped significantly. By 1960,
it was down to 28%. The state successfully engineered
a politically marginalized minority. And this
era also has that dark legacy of extralegal violence,
lynching. The statistics are horrifying. They
really speak to the climate of terror. Between
1877 and 1950, Georgia recorded 531 deaths from
lynching, the second highest total in the entire
South. And this environment, of course, was bolstered
by the rise of white supremacist groups. Which
brings us to Stone Mountain. Right. Stone Mountain
holds a really significant and dark place in
this history. The second version of the Ku Klux
Klan was formally brought back into existence
there. When was this? Thanksgiving night, 1915.
And this revival was partly spurred on by this
incredibly controversial case happening in Atlanta
at the time. The murder of Mary Fagan and the
lynching of Leo Frank. Yeah. Tell us about the
ripple effect of that one event. So in 1913,
a 13 -year -old factory worker named Mary Fagan
was murdered. Her Jewish supervisor Leo Frank
was convicted. But there is mounting evidence
he was innocent, and the governor even commuted
his death sentence to life in prison. But a mob
took him from the prison. An armed mob. calling
themselves the Knights of Mary Fagan, kidnapped
Frank from his cell and lynched him in Marietta
in 1915. And this wasn't just a local tragedy.
This was a national event. It really was. And
it had these profound consequences. Frank's lynching
immediately galvanized the Jewish community across
the country. It was a direct catalyst for the
formal creation of the Anti -Defamation League,
the ADL. So that tragic event in Georgia directly
led to a major national civil rights organization.
It did. Specifically to fight anti -Semitism
and bias. It's just an incredible juxtaposition.
A state dealing with this intense internal social
turmoil, but at the same time, it's quietly hosting
the highest levels of national economic planning.
You're talking about Jekyll Island. That secret
meeting in 1910. Yeah, it's astonishing. In November
1910, this small, super secretive group of the
nation's most powerful bankers and politicians,
we're talking people from J .P. Morgan, Rockefeller,
European Finance, they all met secretly on Jekyll
Island. To plan what? To draft the plan for a
new permanent American central banking system.
The plans they drew up in secret on that Georgia
island led directly to the Federal Reserve Act
of 1913. Wow. So the Fed was basically born on
a beach in Georgia. In secret. A fact that is
often completely overshadowed by the state's
more visible struggles. And speaking of struggles,
let's jump forward to the mid -20th century,
the civil rights era. This is where Georgia's
role is fundamentally redefined, not just in
the South, but for the whole country. And that
transformation was led by Georgia natives, most
famously, of course, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Yep. He came from the educated black middle class
of the city, and he used Atlanta as the perfect
base of operations. It was central, it was economically
powerful, and it had this strong network of churches
and universities. Which led to the formation
of one of the most important civil rights groups
in the South. The Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, the SCLC. Dr. King co -founded it
right there in Atlanta in 1957, focusing on nonviolent...
direct action. And the city has really honored
him. His tomb is now a National Historical Park.
Now, the state government was, I imagine, often
reluctant to change. But some leaders did embrace
it. Yeah, there were some who saw which way the
wind was blowing. Atlanta's mayor, Ivan Allen
Jr., was one of the only white Southern politicians
to actually testify before Congress in favor
of the Civil Rights Act. That's a big deal. Huge.
And Governor Carl Sanders worked with the Kennedy
administration to make sure the state complied
with the new federal laws. He helped manage that
difficult transition away from segregation. And
that cooperation led to real political breakthroughs
for African -American leaders. It absolutely
did. You start to see the integration of the
state government. Julian Bond was elected to
the Georgia House in 1965. And then Andrew Young
was elected to Congress in 72. And he was the
first African -American congressman from Georgia
since when? Since Reconstruction ended in 1877.
A huge gap. Which all Coleman needs in this really
powerful declaration for Jimmy Carter when he
becomes governor. Yeah. In 1970, in his inaugural
address. Governor Jimmy Carter declared that
the time for racial discrimination is over. A
southern governor saying that in 1970. It was
seen as a major moral and political pivot point
for the whole region. And of course, Carter used
that image as a progressive southern voice to
get all the way to the White House. He became
the 39th president. Before we move on to the
state's physical environment, we have to talk
about this chilling Cold War story you found.
A missing nuclear bomb. Yeah, this is a detail
that's often forgotten, but it's pretty serious.
On February 5th, 1958, a B -47 bomber collided
with a fighter jet during a training mission.
Okay. To save the plane and make an emergency
landing, the bomber crew jettisoned a Mark 15
hydrogen bomb, a 7 ,600 -pound weapon. They just
dropped it. Where? Off the coast of Tybee Islet,
near Savannah. A hydrogen bomb is just sitting
off the coast of Georgia. Well, officials believe
its plutonium core had been removed, so it couldn't
create a full nuclear blast. But it still had
conventional explosives that could scatter uranium
everywhere. A radiological threat. A serious
one. They searched for it extensively in the
60s, but it was never found. The current belief
is that the Tybee bomb is still buried deep in
the silt at the bottom of Wausau Sound. That
is an unnerving piece of Cold War history. Okay,
let's shift now to what shapes the state physically.
It's geography, climate. And ecology. Because
Georgia is not just the flat, humid place many
people imagine. Not at all. Its complexity is
rooted in its geology. It has five main physiographic
regions, each one totally different from the
next. Okay, break them down for us. So in the
far northwest corner, you've got a tiny rugged
piece of the Cumberland Plateau. Next to that
is the Ridge and Valley Appalachians. Then you
get into the mountains. The Blue Ridge Mountains,
yeah. Heavily forested, beautiful, and that's
where you'll find the state's highest point.
Then south of that is the Piedmont, which means
foot of the mountain. That's central Georgia,
where Atlanta is. And that region transitions
into the coastal plain. At a geological feature
called the fall line, where the rivers drop steeply,
and that marks the start of the fifth and largest
region, the huge, flat Atlantic coastal plain
that covers the whole southern half of the state.
And that creates some pretty extreme elevation
differences. It does. The highest point is Brasstown
Bald in the Blue Ridge at 4 ,784 feet. The lowest,
of course, is the Atlantic Ocean at sea level.
So the climate is mostly humid subtropical. Predominantly,
yeah. long hot humid summers but the northern
mountains get high enough that they can get snow
and have much cooler temperatures and the state
is incredibly well watered it gets a lot of rain
A ton of precipitation. Anywhere from 45 inches
a year in the middle of the state up to 75 inches
in the northeast mountains. And all that water
fuels this immense biodiversity. How diverse
are we talking? Roughly 250 native tree species.
A remarkable number. Red cedar, pines, oaks,
cypress, even the subtropical sable palmetto
down on the coast. And the state protects 58
specific plant species like yellow jasmine and
mountain laurel. out in terms of animals. The
white -tailed deer population is thriving. You
can find them in almost every county. Georgia's
also home to about 160 bird species, with the
brown thrasher being the state bird. And reptiles.
79 species. You've got venomous snakes like the
eastern diamondback, and of course, American
alligators down in the coastal plain. Plus, 63
species of amphibians. But you highlighted a
major modern ecological problem, an invasive
lizard. The Argentine tegu. Yeah, this is a classic
modern ecological battle. The Argentine black
and white tegu is this massive lizard. It can
get up to four feet long. It's smart. It's adaptable.
And is introduced to the pet trade. Exactly.
And now they have breeding populations in the
wild and they are devastating predators. They
eat the eggs of ground nesting birds, gopher
tortoises, even alligators. They are a direct
threat to Georgia's native protected species.
Know what's being done. State and federal agencies
are in a constant battle, trying to track and
trap them just to manage their spread. It's a
tough fight. And for the anglers out there, the
fishing is pretty good, too. Excellent. Across
the board. In freshwater, you're looking for
trout in the cold mountain streams, plus bass
and catfish. And on the coast, you've got red
drum, tarpon, flounder, a huge variety. OK, that
brings us to part three, the part that really
earns Georgia that Empire State of the South
nickname. This is the economic powerhouse. The
financial strength is foundational to this whole
story. Georgia consistently holds the highest
possible credit rating, AAA from Standard & Poor's.
But here is the most striking modern stat. For
12 consecutive years as of 2025. Area Development
Magazine has named Georgia the number one top
state for doing business. 12 years in a row.
That's not a fluke. Not at all. That kind of
success requires a very specific strategy, tax
incentives, predictable regulation, and attracting
huge corporations. And it's become a major headquarters
hub. A huge one. We're talking massive global
players. Home Depot, Coca -Cola, Delta Airlines,
Aflac, UPS. And that UPS moved to Sandy Springs
back in 91. That was a big statement. It was
a profound statement about logistics. UPS one
of the world's biggest companies chose a Georgia
suburb for one reason. unparalleled infrastructure
access. That is the core of their number one
ranking, logistics and connectivity. So what
makes the infrastructure so good? The state is
ranked second in the whole country for infrastructure
and global access. It has the most extensive
rail system in the southeast, but the real clincher
is the roads. Interstates. Yeah. Georgia's major
interstates connect to an incredible 80 percent
of the U .S. population within a two day truck
drive. If you need to ship something, Georgia
is often the fastest way to do it. That all suggests
low operating costs. But you found this weird
paradox when you look at the average citizen.
A huge tension. It's ranked as highly affordable,
but... People have a lot of personal debt. It's
a genuine puzzle that points to some serious
income disparity. A 2024 study listed Georgia
in the top 20 for affordability. So, you know,
utilities, groceries, they're relatively cheap.
But 2025 data showed Georgia leading the entire
country in searches for personal loans, nearly
twice the volume of most other states. So it's
cheap to live there, but people are desperate
for loans. The leading idea is that it's about
the rapid population growth and income inequality
around Atlanta. The city itself is very expensive,
which skews the numbers. And a lot of lower income
Georgians outside that core metro just haven't
seen their wages keep up with the state's corporate
boom. So they're relying on loans to fill the
gaps? High interest personal loans, yeah. The
wealth is concentrated, but the cost of living
pressure is spread out. And yet, despite that
strain, the housing construction market is on
fire. Absolutely booming. Georgia was one of
the top seven states that accounted for over
half of all new home construction permits in
2024. But crucially, it's managing to stay affordable
while building at that scale. So they're actually
building enough inventory to meet the demand.
Which is preventing that kind of runaway housing
costs you see in other high growth places like
Austin or Miami. Now, the absolute kings of Georgia's
connectivity are the airport and the seaports.
Let's start with Hartsfield Jackson. ATL is,
in a word, unparalleled. It is consistently ranked
the world's busiest and most efficient airport.
We're talking over 100 million passengers a year.
Over 100 million. And its operations employ more
than 60 ,000 people. The modern airport we see
today was basically set up by a huge expansion
project they finished in 1980, which just positioned
it perfectly for the... Decades of growth that
followed. And the maritime power at the Port
of Savannah is just as big. A colossal operation.
It's the third busiest seaport in the United
States and the fourth largest and fastest growing
container port in North America. In 2023, it
handled, what, 4 .9 million TEUs? Yeah, and for
anyone not in logistics, a TEU is a 20 -foot
equivalent unit. It's the standard size of a
shipping container. So nearly 5 million of those
massive boxes in one year. To handle that kind
of volume, the Port of Savannah's Garden City
Terminal is the largest single container terminal
in all of North America. It's a monumental asset.
So what industries are fueling all this? What's
moving on all these planes, trains and ships?
Let's start with manufacturing. Historically,
it was textiles. The whole I -75 corridor near
Dalton and Calhoun is still a major center for
carpet and flooring. But today, transportation
manufacturing is the big growth engine. Like
Kia. Exactly. The South Korean automaker Kia
set up its first U .S. plant in West Point, Georgia,
back in 2009. They're looking forward. The state
is making a big push into electric vehicles.
A very aggressive push. Rivian, the EV company,
is building a massive new facility near Social
Circle scheduled to start production in 2024.
It shows the state is really trying to cement
its place in high -tech transportation. But Georgia's
traditional image is tied to the land. Agriculture
has to still be a massive industry. Oh, it's
incredibly vital. I mean, this is where you get
some of the state's most iconic exports. Georgia
is the number one producer of pecans in the world.
The world. The world. The Albany region in the
southwest is the global center for pecan production.
And we have to give a shout out to the woman
who was key to its peanut industry. Absolutely.
Naomi Chapman Woodruff. Her research in peanut
breeding developed strains that produced yields
five times the typical amount. She was instrumental
in making Georgia a top peanut producer. And
then there's the poultry. The kingdom that feeds
the nation. Georgia produces more chickens than
any other state. The city of Gainesville proudly
and, you know, rightfully calls itself the poultry
capital of the world. And, of course, peaches
and Vidalia onions. Can't forget those. The peaches
give the state its nickname, and the Vidalia
onion is the official state vegetable. It's so
important. It's regulated by law. Okay, let's
talk about the flashier modern industry. Film
and TV. The Hollywood of the South. It is a remarkable
economic story, driven almost entirely by some
very competitive tax incentives. And it has worked.
Atlanta is now firmly established as the Hollywood
of the South. The growth was explosive. In 2016,
Georgia actually surpassed California in the
number of feature films produced on location.
And the economic impact is huge. By fiscal year
2017, it was already at $9 .5 billion. And it's
not just movies. It's these huge TV series that
set up shop there for years. Give us some of
the big names that have filmed there. Oh, the
list is huge. Massive streaming hits like Stranger
Things, iconic cable shows like The Walking Dead
and then the blockbuster movies, Black Panther,
Captain America, Civil War. It's turned Atlanta
into a year -round global media production hub.
And finally, in this economic section, how does
Georgia power all this? Very high electricity
demand. Natural gas and coal are still the primary
fuels for most of it. But nuclear power is hugely
significant. How much? Almost a quarter of the
state's total electricity comes from nuclear,
from plants like Plant Hatch and Plant Votal.
And Volkl is building new reactors, right? Yes,
the first new nuclear units built in the U .S.
in decades, which shows a real commitment to
non -carbon power. At the same time, they're
heavily investing in solar. As far back as 2013,
they were ranked 15th in the nation for solar
capacity after a massive investment spike. They're
diversifying. All right, let's pivot to part
four. The culture, the education, and the hyper
-volatile politics that define the state today.
First, what are the major cultural contributions?
Georgia has a really deep and vibrant cultural
life. In fine arts, you've got the High Museum
of Art in Atlanta. And the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
is the largest arts organization in the whole
Southeast. And it's interesting. Atlanta has
been the setting for two Best Picture Oscar winners.
That's a powerful link between its history and
its film image. You've got the classic Gone with
the Wind winning in 1939 and then Driving Miss
Daisy in 1989. And of course, major literary
works like The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
But the state's musical influence is arguably
even bigger on a global scale. Oh, for sure.
Music is just integral to the Georgian identity.
You have Ray Charles, a native son, whose version
of Georgia on my mind is the official state song.
And Gladys Knight. Midnight Train to Georgia.
In rock, you have the Allman Brothers, the Black
Crows. And you have to talk about the underground
scenes that birthed whole new genres. The Athens
music scene in the 80s and 90s was profoundly
influential. It sparked a global alternative
rock movement. Bands like R .E .M., Widespread
Panic, the B -52s, they all came out of this
one college town. But Atlanta's specific contribution
to modern global culture is probably hip hop
and R &B. Since the 90s, Atlanta has become the
global epicenter for that sound. It displaced
New York and L .A. artists like Outkast, Usher,
Ludacris, TLC. They've defined modern pop music
for decades. OK, turning to sports, Georgia seems
to embrace both collegiate passion and professional
excellence. It does. It has teams in all four
major leagues, the Braves, Falcons, Hawks and
Atlanta United in soccer. But college sports
are a religion there. Clean old fashioned hate.
The rivalry between the Georgia Bulldogs and
Georgia Tech, one of the most passionate in all
of college sports. And Atlanta has proven it
can host the world's biggest events. Absolutely.
The 1996 Summer Olympics, which left a huge legacy
on the city's infrastructure. And looking ahead,
it's hosting multiple games for the 2026 FIFA
World Cup. And of course, the Masters Golf Tournament
in Augusta every year. We also have to mention
one of the most famous and maybe notorious figures
in baseball history came from Georgia. Ty Cobb.
A very complex legacy, but he was from Narrows,
Georgia, first player ever inducted into the
Baseball Hall of Fame, and his nickname was the
Georgia Peach. Let's talk education, which is
obviously fueling all this workforce growth we
talk about. The state has a deep educational
history. The University of Georgia, UGA, founded
in 1785, is the country's oldest state -chartered
university. The whole system produces about 90
,000 graduates a year. And central to funding
all that is the Hope Scholarship. The Hope Scholarship
is a huge deal for socioeconomic mobility. It's
funded entirely by the state lottery. And it
gives tuition assistance to any resident with
a 3 .0 GPA who goes to a public college in the
state. It's essentially free college tuition
based on merit, and its biggest impact might
be combating brain drain. It encourages Georgia's
best students to stay, study, and enter the local
workforce. It's a remarkable piece of social
engineering. And there was also a structural
change at the local level that shifted educational
representation. That's right. A lot of local
school boards shifted from at -large voting where
everyone votes for every seat to single -member
districts. Which increased minority representation.
Significantly. It helped make the school boards
look more like the students they serve. And finally,
before we get to politics, we have to talk media.
Atlanta is a hub. A massive one. It's the ninth
largest media market in the country. And much
of that was built by one man, Ted Turner. CNN,
TBS, TNT. TCM, Headline News. The Weather Channel
is also based there. And historically, WSB -TV
was the first television service in the entire
South, back in 1948. Okay, this brings us to
the most complex part of our deep dive. The dramatic
political pendulum swing that has made Georgia
the defining swing state of our time. It's a
story of extreme continuity followed by radical
change. Before 1964, Georgia had the longest
unbroken record of one party dominance by the
Democrats of any state. Nearly a century. And
that was maintained by the disenfranchisement
tools we talked about earlier. The poll tax,
the white primary. It wasn't popular consensus.
It was engineered control. So what broke that
iron grip? It wasn't just the Civil Rights Act.
It was a Supreme Court decision about the voting
districts themselves. That is the single most
crucial and often overlooked factor, reapportionment.
In 1964, the Supreme Court issued two landmark
rulings that establish the one man, one vote
principle. Forcing districts to be based on equal
population. Exactly. Not on arbitrary geography
or county lines. And what was the immediate effect
of that in Georgia? It completely rewrote the
state's power structure. For decades, power was
held by rural counties that were grossly overrepresented.
Reapportionment immediately shifted all that
power to dense urban areas, primarily Atlanta
and its suburbs. It neutralized the rural control.
It shifted the state's center of gravity right
to its growing metropolitan core. But the ideology
of the conservative white voters didn't shift
with the geography. They just switched parties.
Exactly. That's the Southern strategy. As the
National Democratic Party embraced civil rights,
white conservative voters began shifting to the
Republican Party. You see it early. Georgia voted
for Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964. And that
trend just continued. Between 1960 and 2020,
the state only supported a Democrat for president
four times. Jimmy Carter twice, Bill Clinton
once, and Joe Biden once. And that Republican
ascendancy really took hold in the 90s and 2000s.
You have Newt Gingrich from Georgia becoming
Speaker of the House in 94. And then in 2002,
Sonny Perdue became the first Republican governor
since Reconstruction. A complete reversal. By
2004, Republicans controlled all three branches
of state government. The century of Democratic
dominance was officially over. And now, thanks
to all that urbanization and demographic change,
Georgia's volatility has made it the definitive
swing state. The 2020 election sealed that status
forever. Joe Biden carried the state by just
11 ,779 votes, a razor -thin margin that brought
the entire national spotlight right to Georgia.
And the elections that followed were even more
dramatic. The 2020 Senate runoffs were a national
obsession. They decided control of the U .S.
Senate. And Democrats won both. They did. John
Ossoff became the state's first Jewish senator
and Raphael Warnock became its first black senator.
And their wins were widely attributed to the
diversifying Atlanta suburbs and massive turnout
among young and African -American voters. The
pendulum just keeps swinging. We can't talk about
2020 without talking about the Republican rebound
since then. The hyper volatility is the new norm.
In 2022, Republican Governor Brian Kemp won reelection
by a comfortable 7 .5 percent, a huge margin.
Strong ticket split. A very strong one. And then.
Most recently, in the 2024 presidential election,
the state flipped back to the Republican column.
Donald Trump won it. By about 115 ,000 votes.
So the pattern is clear. It's a hyper -competitive
battleground state where presidential races are
razor close, maybe favoring Republicans slightly.
But Senate races can go Democratic because of
that massive metro turnout. It really is a state
divided. And one last structural detail. All
those counties. 159 counties, second only to
Texas. And uniquely, Georgia is the only state
that still has sole commissioner counties. What
does that even mean, a sole commissioner county?
It means one single elected person holds both
the legislative and executive power for the entire
county government. They set the budget, hire
people, pass laws. all without a county board
to check their power. Wow. It's rare now, mostly
in rural areas, but it reflects this deeply decentralized,
sometimes autocratic local tradition that is
just a world away from the modern governance
of the Atlanta metro. What a journey. From the
anti -slavery ideals of the Oglethorpe Plan to
the Trail of Tears and Jim Crow, only to emerge
as a global corporate hub that dictates national
politics. That contrast is the key tension we
uncovered. You have the deep agrarian history,
the peaches, pecans, poultry right alongside
this ultra -modern identity as a global logistics
hub with the world's busiest airport and that
massive port. and its history of conflict directly
shapes its present. The legacy of the civil rights
movement directly shaped the diversifying demographics,
and that diversity is the fuel for its political
volatility today. So what does this all mean
for the future? We talked about those crucial
1960 Supreme Court rulings. One man, one vote.
That shift, combined with the nonstop population
growth around Atlanta, it fundamentally and permanently
neutralized decades of rural political control.
Meaning the state's future is controlled by its
diversifying suburbs and that powerful urban
core. The demographic and economic momentum behind
Atlanta is so profound that it guarantees Georgia
will stay a hyper -competitive, global economic
media and political swing state for the foreseeable
future. The state is permanently polarized between
the overwhelming power of the core and the traditional
identity of the perimeter. And here's where it
gets really interesting for you, the listener.
Think about Georgia's historic pattern of being
the last state to join major American movements.
The last of the 13 colonies. The last. to be
readmitted to the union. Right. Its current role
as a volatile leading swing state is a radical
reversal of that entire history. It's not lagging
anymore. It's leading the national conversation.
It's defining the razor thin margins that decide
who holds national power. And if you want a symbol
of that dual identity, the traditional roots
meeting modern dynamism, I'd say you should research
the story behind one of the state symbols. Like
what? You could look into the Cherokee rose,
which is often said to symbolize the tears shed
during the Trail of Tears, or brown thrasher,
the state bird, which is common but incredibly
resilient. Which symbol do you think best embodies
this complicated present? The scar of history
or the persistence of the natural world thriving
despite all the human conflict? That is a great
thought to mull over. Thank you for joining us
on this deep dive into the paradox of the peach
state. Always a pleasure.