Episode 2: Moonshine

If you were looking down at Marion County from a helicopter, the first thing you’d notice would probably be the rolling green hills of Kentucky bluegrass, with two-lane highways curving around the corners. You’d see the black roofs of distilleries, and the spires of Catholic churches. You’d see cows and horses and miles of soybean plants. It looks a lot like other rural parts of the country. Nothing out of the ordinary. But below the surface, there’s a history that makes this place unlike anywhere else in the country. It’s the story of why the Cornbread Mafia happened here, in the center of Kentucky.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is a story about Marion County, Kentucky, a place with farming, moonshine, and pride in its bloodline. It’s a place that laid the foundation for a network of marijuana-growing outlaws called the Cornbread Mafia. Into this world walked a man named Johnny Boone, who set out to grow and harvest one of the greatest outdoor marijuana crops in modern times. But his timing was all wrong, and soon Marion County found itself at the national center of the War on Drugs. In their effort to take Johnny Boone and his syndicate down, law enforcement officials arrested 70 people...all from this pocket of Kentucky. It was the biggest marijuana bust in American history, and no one ever said a word. On Cornbread Mafia, we’re going to Marion County and finding out how a turning point in federal drug policy reshaped the story of a local community and had consequences that lasted for generations.