Landon Bryant never set out to go viral. The former art teacher and native of Laurel, Mississippi, just had a knack for spinning a good yarn—and a wife who was tired of being his only audience. “We’ve known each other since second grade,” Bryant says of his wife, Kate. “She’s heard all my stories. One day she goes, ‘Why don’t you just tell the internet?’” So he did.
With a flowing mane of brown hair and a warm Southern drawl, Bryant started speaking straight to the camera on his Instagram account, Landon Talks, serving up nuanced observations about life in the South. Pollen? “A thick blanket of misery covering everything you know and everything you love.” Boiled peanuts? “You gotta boil them till they’re soft as a politician’s handshake.” And humidity? “It’s like walking in someone’s mouth.”
His homespun hot takes were already gaining traction, but Bryant really blew up in 2023 after some celebrities became fans. “Jennifer Garner and Chrissy Teigen shared my Bless Your Heart video in the same weekend,” Bryant recalls. “I literally had to pull over on the side of the road to the gas station to be like, ‘Hold on, pause. Either we have to delete all this or really think about it.’” He held on. Today, he has 476K Instagram followers and counting.
Part entertainer, part accidental anthropologist, Bryant has carved out an unexpected role: keeper of a vanishing Southern tongue. Raised at the elbow of his great-grandmother Elva (that’s pronounced Elvy, if you please), a woman who could sermonize on prayer lists and whip up a perfect yeast roll without breaking a sweat, Bryant absorbed more than family stories. He inherited a whole Mississippi dialect—a way of speaking that’s undeniably Southern but distinctly its own. And that’s another thing Bryant is here to remind you: The South is not a monolith. “It’s a region full of variables,” he writes in his new book, Bless Your Heart: A Field Guide to All Things Southern.
Through punch lines and porch wisdom, he’s documenting a fading culture and language one “cattywampus” and “fixin’ to” at a time. But the new book is more than a collection of sayings. It’s a love letter to the people who raised him and the culture that shaped him.
“Honestly, my grandparents’ generation is disappearing,” Bryant says. “Since I started working on this book, my wife and I have lost three grandparents. So in many ways, this became a collection of the things they passed down to us.”
In a time when his eleven-year-old son speaks what he calls “the global YouTube language,” Bryant felt a deep urge to preserve the voices of his neck of the South, a place he describes as only he can: “a collection of people all stirred together in a hot, wet soup of humid air.”
What else does Bryant have strong feelings about? We decided to ask him in a rapid fire Q&A:
Sweet tea or unsweet?
Sweet tea, culturally, but personally unsweet because I am working on my triglycerides and blood sugar.
Most divisive topic you’ve ever posted about (other than Parker Posey’s White Lotus accent)?
That one got me, but I think the most controversial was deviled eggs. I was listing options of how to make them and I said you could put crackers in your deviled eggs. That got me a call from the Food Network. They were like “What are you talking about?”
What’s your signature Southern saying?
Might could. I love might could. I think it’s so fun because it means so much: You might; you could; you have the option to, and you might.
What’s always in your fridge?
Duke’s Mayo. And sweet tea. I make a very good sweet tea.
Dream dinner party guest, dead or alive?
Dolly Parton.
Southern phrase you secretly hate hearing?
I hate anything that’s exclusive or anything that is like talking down on people. Anybody that’s being disrespectful, I’m super not into that.
Pimento cheese: yes or no?
Yes!
Most underrated Southern tradition?
I think our most underrated Southern tradition is family lunch. The regularity of coming together as a family, that really hits.
Cotillion: a Southern tradition worth saving or naw?
Okay, so cotillion sounds like something that doesn’t have the best history, but there is something to learning the etiquette of a place and learning how to exist in that space so you’re comfortable. Like I can go from a farm to a jackets-required dinner because I know the rules. That can be a good thing to have in your arsenal of tools.
Best advice your great-grandmother Elva ever gave you?
To learn as much as I can, whether it’s exploring the woods and finding a new flower or enjoying a book. And love people. That’s what I learned from her.
Boat shoes: Southern gentlemen staple or strictly coastal convenience?
I think they’re a Southern gentlemen staple. They work real well for a day party. They work real well for a crawfish boil. But you do got to keep them clean. They can get to smelling real bad.
Favorite excuse to monogram something?
You don’t need an excuse to monogram something if the spirit leads you to monogram it!
Bless Your Heart: A Field Guide to All Things Southern is available now. See Bryant on May 8 in Richmond, Virginia, at the 80th Book & Author Event hosted by the Junior League of Richmond.
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