Leaders react to Maduro capture; Greene steps down; Flu season busier than normal

Summary

Georgia Today Podcast – January 5, 2026

Episode Summary

Main Theme:
Today's episode reports on major national and local news, including Georgia political reactions to the US military’s capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation, an unusually severe flu season in Georgia, fallout from the 2024 Conyers Biolab fire, right whale calving updates, and a reflective interview with Southern food writer John T. Edge.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Georgia Reactions to the Capture of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro

[00:29–01:48]

• Georgia politicians responded along party lines to the US military-backed capture of President Maduro.
  • Sen. Raphael Warnock (Democrat): Voiced concern that US intervention could fuel more violence and instability in Venezuela.
  • Rep. Buddy Carter (Republican): Applauded the capture, labeling Maduro as an “illegitimate leader.”
• Venezuelan Americans in Georgia showed mixed reactions:
  • Israel Mendina, Venezuelan expat: “Maduro’s arrest felt like a new Independence Day.” ([01:19])
  • Some Venezuelan Americans and local protesters raised concerns about the legality and morality of the operation.

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2. Marjorie Taylor Greene Steps Down from Congress

[01:48–02:34]

• Greene resigned in her third term after five years representing Northwest Georgia.
• Noted for her polarizing presence and frequent propagation of conspiracy theories.
• Community remains divided:
  • Strongest supporters back her "fighter" persona.
  • Others criticize her for headline-generating tactics that had little tangible benefit for constituents.

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3. Georgia’s 2026 Flu Season Surpasses Past Years

[02:34–03:23]

• Flu fatalities: Seven deaths in Georgia over the last week of December, raising the season total to 29 (from zero at this time last year).
• Dominant strain: Subclade K causing typical flu symptoms but with increased severity.
• Hospital impact:
  • Dr. Christopher Hogan, ER Medical Director, Piedmont Macon Medical Center:

    “We see anywhere between 120 and 150 patients on normal days. Instead of tapering down, we just are more consistent across the entire week.” ([02:58])

• Covid and RSV cases remain relatively low.
• Georgia leads nationally in flu-related hospitalizations.

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4. 2024 Conyers Biolab Fire: Environmental Oversight Lapses

[03:23–04:54]

• Ash samples detected chromium after the Biolab fire.
• Emails reveal Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (EPD) worried that the fire could convert chromium into carcinogenic hexavalent chromium.
• Despite warnings, cleanup tests (approved by EPD) omitted hexavalent chromium, with contractors claiming it was “highly unlikely.”
• Dr. Ted Schettler (Environmental Health Network):

  “You almost should be assuming that a lot of that would be chromium 6 because there was a fire there and because it was that kind of fire with all these oxidizing chemicals.” ([04:27])

• Neither BioLab nor EPD provided comments after requests from GPB.

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5. Right Whale Calving Season: Encouraging but Insufficient Numbers

[04:54–06:19]

• 15 right whale calves born off the Georgia coast this season, exceeding last year’s total of 11.
• According to NOAA, at least 50 calves per season are needed to halt species decline.
• Only ~70 reproductively active females now exist in a population below 400.
• Main threats include entanglement, vessel strikes, and climate-driven changes in prey.

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6. Interview: John T. Edge on Memoir House of Smoke and Foodways

[06:19–14:06]

Motivation for Memoir

• Edge explains his pivot from food stories to personal memoir:

  “I had a responsibility to reveal my own story to others. That’s part of what drove me.” ([06:25])

• On the generosity of memoir:

  “I used to think about memoir as kind of an act of selfishness...but people came up to me and said things like, ‘I grew up in Texas and my mother’s drug of choice was barbiturates. But I understand your story. I can see some of my own story in your story.’ And that convinced me that maybe this memoir I might write wouldn’t be selfish but might be generous.” ([07:38])

The Southern Foodways Alliance Mission

• Inspired by John Edgerton, Edge says:

  “We at the Southern Foodways Alliance took it as our larger mission to tell the stories of people whose stories had gone untold—the cooks, farmers, and servers who fed the South—to kind of pay down debts of pleasure owed to previous generations.” ([09:04])

• On food’s cultural role:

  "Food is an elemental expression of people and place...by studying food, we can get at all of those things. We can get at race, class, ethnicity, identity." ([10:44])

On Race, Class, and Food

• Edge discusses using food as an entry point to explore complex Southern histories:

  “If you focus upon working-class food, the food that sustains the great majority of us...my interest was in paying attention to those working-class cooks and less in the recipe writing and more in the documentation of lives.” ([10:44])

The Tumultuous End at Southern Foodways Alliance

• 2020 was a turning point for Edge after his public comments about “this troubled American moment.”

  “I exposed my own hubris and made me the story instead of the deeper story that was there.” ([12:05]) “Did it—was it an appropriate moment for me to leave? Yes. I’d been in my job 20 plus years...I lacked a vision in that moment and I paid for it.” ([12:05])

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7. Sports: Atlanta Falcons Leadership Shakeup

[15:01–15:45]

• Coach Raheem Morris and GM Terry Fontenot fired after the team’s eighth consecutive losing season.
• Owner Arthur Blank signals this is just the beginning of a broader leadership overhaul.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

| Time | Speaker | Quote / Moment Highlight | |---------|-----------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:19 | Israel Mendina | “Maduro’s arrest felt like a new Independence Day.” | | 02:58 | Dr. Hogan | “We see anywhere between 120 and 150 patients on normal days..." | | 04:27 | Dr. Schettler | “You almost should be assuming that a lot of that would be chromium 6..." | | 06:25 | John T. Edge | “I had a responsibility to reveal my own story to others. That’s part of what drove me.” | | 07:38 | John T. Edge | “I used to think about memoir as kind of an act of selfishness...but...that convinced me that maybe this memoir...might be generous.” | | 09:04 | John T. Edge | “...to tell the stories of people whose stories had gone untold—the cooks, farmers, and servers who fed the South...” | | 10:44 | John T. Edge | "Food is an elemental expression of people and place..." | | 12:05 | John T. Edge | “I exposed my own hubris and made me the story instead of the deeper story...” |

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Memorable Moments

• The divided and emotional response of local Venezuelan-Americans to the US’s unprecedented intervention.
• Personal reflection from John T. Edge on choosing authenticity—and humility—amid national reckonings and professional change.
• Edge’s observations on the power of food to express the South’s tangled legacies of race, class, and resilience.

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Resources / References

• For further details: gpb.org/news
• For John T. Edge’s feature: GPB’s Narrative Edge Podcast and YouTube series

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This summary presents the essential content and spirit of the Georgia Today episode for those who missed it, highlighting both pressing news and deeper cultural conversations.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Georgia Today Podcast. Here we bring you the latest reports from the GPB newsroom. On today's episode, Georgia politicians react to the US Military's capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is stepping down today and Georgia hospital staff say the current flu season is a lot busier than usual. We see anywhere between 120 and 150.

[B]

Patients on normal days.

[A]

Instead of tapering down, we just are more consistent across the entire region. Today is Monday, January 5th. I'm Peter Biello and this is Georgia Today. Georgia leaders are responding along partisan lines to the US Military backed capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. US Senator Raphael Warnock echoed Democratic concerns that the move threatens to bring more violence and instability to Venezuela. U.S. house member Buddy Carter echoed Republican sentiment, hailing the apprehension of what he called an illegitimate leader. GPB's Sarah Kalis reports on the reaction among Venezuelan Americans living in Georgia.

[C]

Israel Mendina was born in Venezuela but left the country in 2006 when he was 28 out of fear of political persecution. He's now living in Georgia and says Maduro's arrest felt like a new Independence Day.

[B]

The Venezuelan people was not able to take this guy out and you really need bigger muscle that only countries like us can do for us.

[C]

Not everyone celebrated the military action in Venezuela. Some critics held protests against the strikes in Atlanta on Saturday and questioned the legality of the operation. For GPB News, I'm Sarah Kalis.

[A]

Marjorie Taylor Greene is leaving Capitol Hill today in the middle of her third term. She represented Northwest Georgia for five years and became one of the most well known members of Congress in part for amplifying conspiracy theories. As she heads for the exit, there is little consensus among her supporters on whether the conflict laden headlines she generated were worth it. Greene's strongest supporters stand by her despite her break with President Donald Trump. They see her as a fighter who spoke for them. Others in Greene's district say her style of politics did nothing to help the people she represented. Influenza deaths have ticked up. That's according to the latest numbers from Georgia's Department of Public Health. Providers say they'll likely see another surge in cases as holiday celebrations wind down. GPB's Sophie Gradis has more.

[D]

Seven people died from the flu between December 20th and 27th in Georgia, bringing the total number of flu associated deaths this season up to 29 compared to zero this time last year. This year's most common strain, Subclade K, causes typical symptoms like fatigue and fever but can leave people slightly sicker in Piedmont, Macon Medical Center's emergency room medical director Christopher Hogan says their numbers of sick patients defy weekly trends.

[A]

We see anywhere between 120 and 150 patients on normal days. Instead of tapering down. We just are more consistent across the entire week.

[D]

Nationally, Georgia enters 2026among the highest for flu hospitalizations. Other respiratory illnesses like Covid and RSV have largely been left out of the surge, with months of flu season to come. For GPB News, I'm Sophie Gratas.

[A]

An ash sample collected in the weeks after the 2024 Biolab fire in Conyers contained chromium. The normally harmless element occurs naturally in some soils that can change when it burns. Despite warnings, later testing approved by the state did not look for it. GPB's Pamela Kirkland reports.

[E]

Recently obtained emails show Georgia's Environmental Protection Division warned extreme heat from the Biolab fire could have transfer formed relatively harmless chromium into hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen. In an internal email, a state risk assessor recommended that any future samples be tested specifically for the toxic form of chromium. But this August, a cleanup plan submitted by a contractor for biolab excluded hexavalent chromium from testing, saying it was highly unlikely to be found. The plan was later Approved by Georgia EPD. Dr. Ted Schettler, Director of the nonprofit Science, Science and Environmental Health Network, says that decision is hard to defend.

[B]

You almost should be assuming that a lot of that would be chromium 6 because there was a fire there and because it was that kind of fire with all these oxidizing chemicals.

[E]

Chromium did not appear in any updates or response summaries reviewed by GPB News. Neither the Georgia EPD nor BioLab responded to GPB's request for comment. For GPB News, I'm Pamela Kirkland.

[A]

State wildlife officials say 15 right whale calves have been born so far this season. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources reported on Saturday that the last five calves spotted across the endangered species calving area were sighted off the coast of Georgia. The most recent spotting was two days after Christmas, about seven miles east of Blackbeard Island. That's according to NOAA Fisheries and according to the New England Aquarium, 15 calves exceeds last year's total of 11. NOAA says at least 50 calves are needed each season to stop the species decline. The season lasts from November through April, and the calving area is off the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Only about 70 reproductively active females remain among a population of less than 400 right whales. The Species is endangered by entanglements, vessel strike injuries and changes in prey availability because of climate change. Georgia born writer John T. Edge has been telling stories about the south and its food for three decades. From leading the Southern Foodways alliance to hosting television's True south and writing for numerous publications, he's connected the region's complex history with its cooks and kitchens. Now, in his latest book, House of Smoke, he turns his attention to his own story. His revealing memoir confronts uncomfortable truths and details the highs and lows in his personal life and amazing career in food media. John T. Edge spoke with GPB's Orlando Montoya.

[F]

After so many years of writing about others, why did you decide to write about yourself?

[B]

I mean, I can answer that a multitude of ways because the universe seemed to tell me I was supposed to be doing that. But one of the things I realized, making True south, our television show, is that, you know, I would sit down with, let's say, the Dublin show we made. I sat down with two women in Dublin who, who were in recovery for addiction. And I sat on a park bench in Dublin, Georgia, with these two women and they told me the darkest moments of their lives. And that became part of a show that we broadcast across the nation. And when I realized the depths of what people were sharing with me on camera as five, you know, five filmmakers stared back at them with lenses pointed toward them, that I had a responsibility to reveal my own story to others. That's part of what drove me.

[F]

Of course, I write about other people every day, but I also keep my own writing about myself on my computer. And I think to myself, will it ever be used one day? But you got it out there. There's sort of a sense that you want your story to be told as well.

[B]

Yeah. Orlando. I used to think about memoir as kind of an act of selfishness. You know, I really like you. I enjoy writing about other people. I think that's what I'm good at, quite frankly. But writing this book. And I wrote a magazine piece about seven years ago called My Mother's Catfish Stew. I used to write a column for the Oxford American magazine, and I wrote that magazine piece in a way to reconcile with my mother, who died 11 days before our son was born. I wrote that magazine piece to introduce our son to the. To my mother, whom he never knew as he was going off to college. When they read that magazine piece, people came up to me and said things like, you know, I grew up in Texas and my mother's drug of choice was barbiturates. But I Understand your story. I can see some of my own story and your story. And that convinced me that maybe this memoir I might write wouldn't be selfish, but might be generous. And I hope that's the way people read it, because that's what I intend.

[F]

For two decades, you led the Southern Foodways Alliance. You were with the organization from before its beginning. What did you see as its mission, and how did you and the organization advance it?

[B]

Well, I was inspired by John Edgerton's writing. John lived most of his life in Nashville, wrote two big books, Speak now against the Day, about the generation before the civil rights movement in the south. And then another book called Southern Food At Home, on the Road and in History. And the idea that civil rights and food culture might have something to say to each other, we borrowed from John, and I took it as my mission. And we at the Southern Freeways alliance took it as our larger mission to tell the stories of people whose stories had gone untold, the cooks and farmers and servers who fed the south, to kind of pay down debts of pleasure owed to previous generations. And that meant conducting oral histories, making films. The Southern Few Ways alliance by now has made over. Collected over a thousand oral histories and made over a hundred films, and also publishing a journal, a podcast, called Gravy. All that work continues today, but all of it was this attempt to reconcile the South, a place riven by the Civil War, and then a place not quite reconciled by the efforts of brave people in the civil rights movement.

[F]

You write that race, class, and these other issues are very key to understanding the south story, including the biscuits and the fried chicken and all of it. Why do you take that approach? What is it about that approach that is the right way to go?

[B]

I think that food is an elemental expression of people in place. It is comparable to the literature that we make that emerges from the American South. It is comparable to the music that we make in the South. It is this honest expression that springs from this soil. And I think by studying food, we can get at all of those things. We can get at race, class, ethnicity, identity. And I think because, you know, I think if you focus upon working class food, the food that sustains the great majority of us. My interest was, you know, in paying attention to those working class cooks and less in the recipe writing and more in the documentation of lives.

[F]

Your tenure at the Southern Foodways alliance was brought to an abrupt end in 2020. This was a painful chapter to read because it seemed like everything you worked for suddenly came into question. Your allies became your enemies. And it was, in your words, like a horrible car wreck. Briefly, what happened?

[B]

So in 2020, remember that magazine piece I talked about my mother's catfish stew in that moment, the James Beard foundation, which awarded me their M.F.K. fisher distinguished writing Prize for that piece of magazine writing, asked me to engage in a webinar about what food writing can do and help us recognize about troubled families. And I said, oh no, no. I choose instead, let's focus on this troubled American moment. This was 2020 after the murder of George Floyd. And in that moment I said, I don't want to talk about what food writing has to do with complicated families. I want to focus on this complicated American moment. And in doing that, I exposed my own hubris and made me the story instead of the deeper story that was there. And that begins a moment when people challenge my stance in this world. You know, did it, was it an appropriate moment for me to leave? Yes. I'd been in my job 20 plus years and you know, if I'm being self critical, I think the thing I didn't recognize in that moment is the good I could do beyond the job I held in that moment. I didn't have enough vision to see something. What might come next for me and how a new generation of writers and thinkers were changing the narrative about Southern food, I don't know. I lacked a vision in that moment and I paid for it.

[F]

That's food writer John T. Edge, founding director of the Southern Foodways alliance, writer in residence at the University of Mississippi, writer instructor at the University of Georgia and host of SEC Network and ESPN's True south, among other titles. His memoir is House of Smoke. Thank you so very much.

[B]

Thank you, sir.

[A]

You can watch or listen to me in Orlando discuss that book on GPB's narrative edge. That's our podcast and video series about Georgia writers and Georgia stories. Find narrative Edge on YouTube or your favorite podcast app. Delta Air Lines has opened a hospitality space in the Las Vegas sphere. The Nevada entertainment company today announced a partnership with the Atlanta based airline that includes a Delta360 club inside the iconic venue.

[C]

How does AI even work? Where does creativity come from? What's the secret to living longer? TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions with some of the world's greatest thinkers. They will surprise, challenge, and even change you. Listen to NPR's Ted Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

[A]

In sports, the Atlanta Falcons have fired coach Raheem Morris and general manager Terry Fontenot. The team announced the moves hours after completing its eighth consecutive losing season on Sunday owner Arthur Blank said last night he has, quote, great personal affinity for Morris and Fontenot, but he believes a change is needed. He clarified today that those moves were just the beginning of a leadership sweep. He also announced a new president of football. That's all the news fit to podcast today thank you so much. Thank you so much for tuning in to Georgia today. We know you have a lot of choices. We appreciate you choosing gpb. If you want to learn more about any of the stories you heard on the podcast today, just check out our website, gpb.org news our reporters are always posting news stories there. And if you haven't subscribed to this podcast yet, hit subscribe now. We've got a lot of news coming your way this legislative session, which begins next week. If you've got feedback on the stories you heard today or would like to let us know about about a story you think we should be covering, send us an email. The address is Georgia todaypb.org I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

[C]

How does AI even work? Where does creativity come from? What's the secret to living longer? TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions when with some of the world's greatest thinkers, they will surprise, challenge, and even change you. Listen to NPR's TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.