November 2024 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Newsletters are not blogs

By Brendan O’Meara (11/29/2024)

There are a few “newsletters” I subscribe to that are anything but. Newsletters have morphed into blog posts. But you wouldn’t ever call a blog post a newsletter? Remember blogs? This is a blog post. Maybe it’s like how a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn’t a square?

Newsletters have the one golden thing going for them: permission. This is getting increasingly violated. Now, instead of posting to a blog, or even social media, creators with your email address are bombarding you with their Substacks.[SEE FOOTNOTE 1]. It goes directly to your inbox! No algorithm! These creators/writers/whatever are letting the platform host their blog in exchange for the ease of distribution. It takes effort to visit someone’s website.

Episode 440: How to be a Truffle Pig with Kate McQueen

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s that Atavistian time of the month, and we’ve got Kate McQueen on loan from the Pollen Initiative to talk about “The Good Traitor,” how a group of journalists in Nazi Germany sought to free one of their own from a concentration by means of … winning him the Nobel Peace Prize. Where do people find these stories?

Kate has a Ph.D. in literature from Stanford University and a master’s in journalism from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She’s the editorial director of the Pollen Initiative, “a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating media centers inside prisons across the country.”

Episode 439: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith Bring a Graphic Interpretation of “An Indigenous People’s History of the United States” to Life

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By Brendan O’Meara

It being a week before Americans, by and large, celebrate a major Thursday holiday, it seemed like great timing to have Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Paul Peart-Smith on the show to talk about the graphic interpretation Roxanne’s seminal text An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon Press).

Here’s a link to the source text and a link to the graphic text. Both incredible, must-read books, learning that takes place, as Roxanne writes, “outside the academy.”

Episode 438: How It’s All Connected with Taiyon J. Coleman

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By Brendan O’Meara

Hey, CNFers, very happy to introduce you to (in case you haven’t met) Taiyon J. Coleman, a leader, instructor, professor, and the author of Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America (Univ. of Minnesota Press).

It’s a fine collection that highlights systemic injustices that go largely invisible to people of privilege, like myself. So it’s all the more important to read about the experiences of our fellow Americans, to find a greater sense of empathy and feel the weight of their truths. We need to mainline other truths, people! The book is heavy and buoyant, and I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy.

Episode 437: Much Ado About Fact-Checking with Wudan Yan

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By Brendan O’Meara

Wudan Yan (@wudanyan on IG) reached out to me over the summer saying she was starting a fact-checking agency. I had long wanted to speak with fact checkers about fact-checking (and I plan to speak with more), but this seemed a good opportunity since Wudan wants to drum up some attention to new business, Factual.

Nieman Storyboard, with a story penned by Madeline Bodin, gave Wudan a nice bit of attention and, by extension, important attention on facts, this in an age when many people are deeply distrustful of media and people can’t even agree on what a fact is.

Episode 436: Mira Ptacin and the Story of How One Town Drove Out a Nazi

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s that Atavistian time of the month and Mira Ptacin (@miramptacin) is here! She is a writer, journalist, teacher, and did you see that sweater in her pic? Her story for The Atavist Magazine, “The Crash of the Hammer,” details how one town in rural Maine ran a new-Nazi (Christopher Polhaus, aka Hammer) out of town.

The crux of the piece is this notion of the paradox of tolerance. When you become tolerant of intolerant people (because tolerance) you invite the conditions for greater intolerance. Tolerating intolerance ultimately squashes out tolerance. Hence the paradox.