Gone South
The Zoo Where Everything Went Wrong: Inside Magnolia Wilds
This episode isn’t summarized yet
Create a free account and summarize it. In a few minutes you’ll have the key takeaways and a section-by-section summary.
Show notes
It started with a stolen parrot named Mango, who liked to dance to Doja Cat. When reporter Aidan McCahill wrote a quick, quirky story about the theft for The Advocate, he had no idea it would lead him down a monthslong rabbit hole into Magnolia Wilds, a Louisiana animal preserve already under fire from federal regulators — and its founder, Gabe Ligon, who'd just been arrested at a Texas airport on a felony theft charge.
What Aidan found was a menagerie of chaos: porcupines and capybaras escaping their enclosures, animals mauled and trampled to death, kids bitten by otters during $215 swim sessions, and employees quietly bringing kangaroos and lynxes home at night. Behind it all was Ligon himself — a libertarian showman who insisted he loved his animals even as the USDA, his business partners, and his own former staff told Aidan a very different story.
Subscribe to our newsletter:
https://jedlipinski.substack.com/
Connect with Jed Lipinski:
https://www.instagram.com/gonesouthpodcast/