Where is Bobbie Gentry?

Studio 360
"Ode to Billie Joe" on vinyl

A theater in Memphis decided to stop showing “Gone with the Wind,” and Aisha Harris, a Slate culture writer and host of the podcast Represent, joins Kurt Andersen to talk about what many see as a nostalgia for slavery in the movie.

At 50, there are two central questions surrounding the song, “Ode to Billie Joe”: Why did Billie Joe McAllister jump off the Tallahatchie Bridge, and why, decades ago, did the woman who sang it, Bobbie Gentry, disappear from public view? And finally, Andersen talks to another Omahan done good, the director Alexander Payne, about his new movie, “Downsizing.”

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