It’s been 25 days since Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Florida panhandle and tore a path of destruction that reached hundreds of miles inland, killing at least 228 people across six states, destroying thousands of homes, and leaving millions without power.

While Spartanburg escaped the worst of the damage, faring far better than communities a short drive away in Western North Carolina that will take years to recover, the storm was a generational event, the worst storm to hit our area that anyone can seem to remember.

On today’s podcast, we’re taking stock of what we saw from our vantage points in Helene’s aftermath, watching a community come together in recovery while also marveling at how quickly a natural disaster could be politicized by opportunists and how easily it could become fresh grist for a conspiracy mill that never seems to stop turning.

The storm was a unique and (hopefully) rare event in Spartanburg’s history, but it also brings us back to a question we’ll ask again and again on this podcast: When people’s carefully curated, algorithmically reinforced information bubbles can’t be pierced by accurate information, no matter how authoritative the source, what options remain for reaching them?

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