Wright Thompson

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994 appearances 3 recordings 2 series first heard Jun 2025 last heard 6d ago

Wright Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.

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The Bulwark Daily · Wright Thompson: The Ghosts of Mississippi · 16 Jan 2026 podcast

trying to test boundaries in a place that felt more and more closed in on itself.

I mean, those things aren't unrelated.

And so like the heartbreaking thing about the history of the book, because you're right, it does start off and you think, is this going to be like an academic exercise?

And what it ends up being is a history of the United States of America told in 36 square miles.

And the number of times in which one decision going the other way could have averted everything that happened in the state of Mississippi is incredible.

I mean, I love to talk about

was that the panic of 1837, all the southern states defaulted on all of their bonds and all of their loans from the international capital market.

And all the other states paid their money back, but Mississippi didn't.

And if you go read all the reasons, they invented culture war reasons for just not wanting to pay the money back.

And the problem, of course, is that after the Civil War, when everything is wrecked and people need to go borrow money to rebuild, Alabama has great credit.

So they have a steel industry.

And Mississippi has no credit to the point that in the 1930s, the country of Monaco was still suing the state of Mississippi trying to get its money back from a century earlier.

And so the degree to which Mississippians today are prisoners of political decisions and policy decisions that were made 100 years before their parents were born.

One of the reasons the water doesn't work in Jackson, Mississippi, is that Mississippi didn't pay its bills in 1837.

I mean, it's as embarrassing as that is to say.

It's just the truth.

I don't understand this idea.

especially Southern modern urge to not want to tell these stories because like, if I'm just gonna be real blunt, I mean, like my family was farming not far from there in 1955.

I still own that land.

So I don't really understand how hearing this history has hurt me in any way.

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