Go Atlanta

The Fandemic Tour fan convention is coming to Atlanta March 18-20 at the Georgia World Congress Center. The focus of the weekend is on “The Walking Dead,” which has been filming here in Georgia for quite a while now. “Walking Dead” stars including Norman Reedus and Jeffrey Dean Morgan will be on hand, but so will non-”Walking Dead” stars like Sebastian Stan and Backstreet Boy Nick Carter. Rodney Ho recently spoke with organizers about the convention and he’ll bring us that conversation.

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Cartersville may not be the first place you think of visiting for a weekend road trip but it certainly should if you’re into cars, local history, art or science. Nestled between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Cartersville has been dubbed Georgia’s “Museum City.” It’s home to Georgia Museums Inc., a nonprofit that operates the Bartow History Museum, Booth Western Art Museum, Tellus Science Museum and the recently opened Savoy Automobile Museum. Phil Hudson spoke with Tom Shinall at the museum and he’ll bring us that conversation on this week’s podcast.

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Ben Brasch asserts that America’s premiere storyteller is the Black professional wrestler. They communicate quintessential stories through not only acting, but with their bodies, performing amazing athletic feats. He talked to some of the industry’s best African American wrestlers about what it’s like to be pioneers in their field and what they’ve brought to the art form.

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Acworth’s Jeremy Sides, a former Navy man and father of two, is an entrepreneur and a metal-detecting hobbyist, who started out searching for Civil War relics in the woods and creeks. His fondness for finding gold nuggets earned him the nickname “Nug,” and he began documenting his exploits on his YouTube channel, Exploring with Nug. His career took a dramatic turn in November when he scanned the creeks around Sparta, Tennessee, and found a submerged Pontiac with two teenagers inside. They were Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster, missing since April 3, 2000. Since then, Sides has become part of a growing group of freelance sleuths seeking out mysteries and posting their exploits online. The AJC’s Bo Emerson recently spoke with Sides about his work for this week’s podcast.

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Drs. Terrence Ferguson and Vernard Hodges graduated from Fort Valley State University and then attended veterinary school at Tuskegee University. Those are two of only four historically Black universities — with Delaware State University and Florida A&M — to offer a degree in veterinary medicine, and Tuskegee is the only one to offer a doctorate. The two opened Critter Fixer Veterinary Hospital in 1999, and now have their own show, “Critter Fixers: Country Vets.” Season 3 will premiere on Nat Geo Wild at 9 p.m. Saturday, March 26, and you can watch the first two seasons on Disney+ (look for the Nat Geo Wild tab). The AJC’s Nancy Clanton recently spoke with the vets about their work and she’ll bring us that conversation.

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This week, we’ll hear from longtime Atlanta artist and educator Constance Thalken, a retired professor emerita at Georgia State University, who offers a personal take on the darker side of development in her solo show at Whitespace Gallery. The show is divided into two bodies of work in two separate spaces. The main exhibition, “Exit Wounds,” is centered on the disruption of development in Thalken’s Decatur neighborhood. And in the smaller cellar space close to the main gallery, Thalken’s work continues in “Between Worlds” where she photographs a hornet’s nest with the kind of granular detail that suggests a scientist studying a specimen under a microscope. Felicia Feaster talked with Thalken about the work and the inspiration behind it for week’s podcast.

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For about 40 years Tinsley Ellis has lived his life on the road, either driving to a gig, setting up, performing, tearing down, or driving to the next gig. Ellis made himself legendary as a touring machine, and an icon of the Atlanta blues scene. Then came COVID-19. In March 2020, halfway through a 60-gig jaunt promoting his album “Ice Cream in Hell,” everything fell apart, all the clubs canceled, and Ellis drove home from Northern California in one, long, painful, three-day burst. On this week's podcast, Bo Emerson talks to Ellis about the difficulties of being a touring musician in the pandemic era, returning to the road and his new album “Devil May Care.”

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This week, we’ll revisit how Atlanta’s dining scene is navigating the COVID-19 pandemic. Our food and dining editor Ligaya Figueras talks with fellow dining critic Wendell Brock and Southern food writer Hanna Raskin about the Atlanta dining scene amid the new uptick in coronavirus cases. They’ll discuss Raskin’s recent report about COVID-19 cases among Georgia food service workers and other issues affecting local restaurants.

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The Obama portraits arrive in Atlanta this weekend for a run at the High Museum of Art. The portrait tour was unexpected since originally there was no plan for the paintings to leave the Smithsonian after they were unveiled. But the gallery saw its attendance nearly double from 1.2 million visitors to 2.3 million visitors during the first year the paintings were exhibited, and museums across the country asked to host the works.

Atlanta is the fourth stop on the exhibit’s five-city tour, which began in the Obamas’ hometown of Chicago last June, before traveling to Brooklyn and Los Angeles. After Atlanta, the portraits go to Houston. On this week’s podcast, we’ll hear about the portraits and the tour from Dorothy Moss, curator of painting and sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery.

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This week, we’ll revisit our look at the High Museum of Art’s “Picturing the South: 25 Years,” which is in its final weeks, closing Feb. 6. In 1996, the High began commissioning photographers for an exploration of the South’s rich social and geographic landscape for its “Picturing the South” initiative. Now the High is marking 25 years of “Picturing the South” with a major exhibition that gathers all of those commissions for the first time. Visual arts contributor Felicia Feaster spoke with the museum’s curator of photography, Gregory Harris, and she’ll bring us that conversation on this week’s podcast.

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