All Y'all

For our 50th episode of the All Y'all podcast, we're proud to present a podcast-exclusive interview with a genuinely fascinating Shreveport native: Byron Wilcott, who is better known to his fans as Main Event Pro Wrestling superstar Big Daddy Yum Yum. Wilcott's career as a pro wrestler has taken him all over the world, and he's got lots of incredible stories to tell. We caught up with Wilcott before a recent match in Shreveport, where he regaled us with tales of meeting Ric Flair, dinner with a Yakuza boss, and more.

William Joyce may be Shreveport, Louisiana's most celebrated storyteller. He's won an Academy Award, several Emmys and countless other honors during his career as an author, illustrator and filmmaker. The All Y'all team has enjoyed a long friendship with Bill; but, until he shared this story, we'd never heard the unbelievable story of how his mother and father met and what witnessing their love meant to Bill as a boy. It is a powerfully personal reflection on the relationship between love and courage. "Love for another person can make you so much stronger than you ever thought that you could be," Bill says in the story. Amen to that.

This is a special episode of All Y'all, highlighting our other podcast, Stuffed & Busted. The third, and possibly final, episode of Stuffed & Busted is a long-form tribute to our favorite restaurant of all time: Lucky Palace Chinese Restaurant in Bossier City. On Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018, the James Beard Foundation announced their list of semifinalists for the annual James Beard Awards, and Lucky Palace Chinese Restaurant in Bossier City was right there on the list nominated for Best Wine Program. For more info or to subscribe to Stuffed & Busted, visit http://stuffedandbusted.com

Boy meets girl: It’s one of the oldest stories in the book. But when Kyle asked for his girlfriend’s hand in marriage, a challenging road lay ahead. Kyle took the stage at our August 2017 live storytelling event to share this intimate, inspiring story of love’s ability to overcome any obstacle. Kyle's story elicited one of the most powerful audience responses that we've ever seen at All Y'all.

Luther Cox never intended to become a dance teacher. As an accounting student at Florida A&M University, he literally wandered into a West African dance class in progress and the course of his life was changed forever. Cox went on to found the Inter City Row Modern Dance Company in Shreveport's Cooper Road community in 1981. Inter City Row is now the oldest operating African American dance company in Louisiana. Cox's story gets us thinking about careers: How is it that some people accidentally wind up, through indirect routes, in roles that they were clearly born to fill? What are the chances?

Laura Crawford's father, Dr. Robert Popper, narrowly escaped death at the hands of the Nazis during the antisemitic pogrom known as Kristallnacht. The unbelievable journey that ensues is a globe-spanning journey of courage, luck, endurance and love. Crawford, who founded the world-renowned Centenary Suzuki School, was kind enough to share her father's awe-inspiring journey at an All Y'all live storytelling event on Saturday, March 12, 2016.

Shreveport, Louisiana - where the All Y'all podcast and live storytelling series is produced - is a small town in some ways. Following the announcement that All Y'all was seeking stories of the paranormal for our November 2016 event, "Haunted," several people contacted us to insist that Clay Walker be asked to share a ghost story onstage. One friend swore that Clay told two of the best ghost stories she'd ever heard. By the time that we sat down at a table with Clay and heard his stories for ourselves, there was almost no way that they could live up to our expectations...almost. As it turns out, our friends were correct: Clay can spin a spine-tingling yarn. The fact that these true stories are drawn from a youth spent in Shreveport's historic South Highlands neighborhood at the side of his well-known grandmother, Susybelle "Duke" Lyons, makes the stories that much more wonderful. In this special Halloween episode, we present TWO back-to-back stories - one told live, the other recorded later - from Clay Walker.

Derek Wayne Johnson was born in Carthage, Texas, about an hours' drive southwest of Shreveport, Louisiana. He fell in love with cinema at an early age, developing a special affinity for the films Rocky and The Karate Kid. Those films were directed by Academy Award-winner John G. Avildsen. Through an unbelievable series of events, Johnson wound up not only meeting his filmmaking hero, but directing a documentary film about his life. Robinson Film Center and Maccentric will present a screening of that film,John G. Avildsen: King of the Underdogs, on Tuesday, Aug. 8. Grab tickets to the film at RobinsonFilmCenter.org Here's the All Y'all interview with Derek Wayne Johnson about growing up in the Ark-La-Tex, meeting your heroes and what it's like to interview Burt Freakin' Reynolds.

Careers are tricky things. Sometimes, you pursue one career only to wind up in another line of work. Other times, a career sort of finds you - you take a job to make ends meet and, years later, you realize it's become more than a job. And then, sometimes, you tell the owner of the China Garden Buffet in San Angelo, Texas that you're a professional piano player (even though you only know a few songs) and - next thing you know - you're tickling the ivories.

Ghost stories can be a lot of things: visceral, frightening, unnerving. But very seldom do they drift into territory that could be described as intimate or personal. Storyteller Steven Abney took the stage at our Nov. 12, 2016 live event, "Haunted", and delivered a ghost story that was as equally suited for Ghost Hunters as it was for Dr. Phil. This spine-tingling tale of a haunted house and one man's struggle to shake loose of his demons continues to be one of the most unique All Y'all stories told to date.