TrueSouth season six begins in a bathhouse in Hot Springs, Ark., an odd and endearing resort town tucked in the Ouachita Mountains, west of Little Rock. Mobsters once caroused here. Major league teams traveled here for spring training. Hot Springs began as a spa. Scalding hot water, pushing up through those mountains, still draws pilgrims. To understand this city, we visit with actress Joey Lauren Adams, who recently moved home from California to Arkansas. She explains the town’s no-judgement attitude and introduces us to the pageant of characters who live and work here. Musical performances highlight local and regional artists: Willi Carlisle plays banjo and accordion on the streets; Sad Daddy records a live performance in the Venetian Dining Room at the Arlington Hotel.

TrueSouth travels The Black Belt of Alabama, southwest of Tuscaloosa, to eat barbecue and witness what art makes possible. Visiting York, Gainesville, and Gee’s Bend, we eat pig tails and pork ribs with pitmasters who bridge the gap between craft and art. Join us as we ferry the Alabama River to talk with modern artists who make extraordinary quilts from ordinary castoffs. Watch and listen as China Pettway and Mary Ann Pettway of the Gee’s Bend Quilting Collective piece together a story of freedom won. Walk the streets of York with Marguerite Hinrichs, director of the Coleman Center for the Arts, to learn how the work of art drives change.

In search of Old Florida, we walk the ice boxes at Kyle’s Seafood to survey the catch and eat smoked mullet on the bed of a pickup. We drink beer and talk about home at a beach bar with local author C.H. Hooks. And we line up for a table at O’Steen’s Restaurant to dunk fried shrimp in a datil pepper sauce that burns bright like a beach sunset. Traveling this 16th century city, we explore the tensions between past and future. The shrimp boats that worked the Atlantic Ocean are mostly gone. Tourists drive the economy. Now, another crop is on the rise. Datil peppers, long associated with Menorcan people, are the next generation symbol of this place.

TrueSouth drives into Dublin, Ga., a postcard small town off the interstate between Savannah and Macon, with a courthouse square hot dog joint, a seven-decade-old soul food café, and a big story to tell about what it takes to face down the toughest of foes.

TrueSouth concludes with a special behind-the-scenes episode that tears across the region, from Florida to Georgia, through Alabama and Mississippi and Arkansas, on a scene-by-scene search for the stories that define the South.