In this episode 254, we visit with Ed Southern, author of “Fight Songs: A Story of Love and Sports in a Complicated South.”

Why do sports mean so much that so many will play and watch them in the face of a global pandemic? How have college sports shaped how southerners construct their identities, priorities, and allegiances? Why is North Carolina passionate about college basketball when its neighbors to the South live and die by college football? Fight Songs explores the connections and contradictions between the teams we root for and the places we plant our roots; between the hopes of fans and the demands of the past, present, and future.

Travis Mulhauser, author of “Sweetgirl,” had this to say about the book, "I promise that you have never read a book that so beautifully and intimately reveals the soul at the center of sports fandom—that understands so fully what it means to root. Fight Songs is a book about love and history and culture. Its truths are arrived at honestly and without pretense and it is, quite simply, one of the greatest sports books you will ever read."

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