atavist – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

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

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.

Episode 432: Betsy Golden Kellem, Scholar of the Unusual, Closet Historian, Atavist Writer

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By Brendan O’Meara

Betsy Golden Kellem (@bgkellem) is an attorney, a historian, and a “scholar of the unusual.”

Her piece, “City on Fire,” chronicles “the night violent anti-government conspirators sowed chaos in the heart of Manhattan” … in 1864. It’s a wild piece that shows how history has a way of feeling very fresh.

Episode 423: Rhana Natour and Eman Mohammed Take You Up Close for The Atavist

Rhana Natour and Eman Mohammed

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By Brendan O’Meara

Heavy one, CNFers, heavy one, this for the Atavist. Rhana Natour and Eman Mohammed profile Layan Albaz, a Palestinian teenager who lost her legs in an Israeli airstrike. This is the journey of a young girl who came to the U.S. to be fitted for prosthetics, but as Rhana writes, it’s like learning two musical instruments at the same time.

Not only that, Layan’s story is one of THOUSANDS of children who have lost limbs during these horrific bombings. Rhana and Eman speak about this far better than I can describe, so let’s give you some info on them.

Episode 419: Maggie Gigandet Red Paperclipped Her Way into Freelancing

Maggie Gigandet Photography by Nathan Morgan

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s yet another Atavistian podcast, this with Maggie Gigandet, a freelance writer behind “The Extra Mile.“

After a horrific accident, doctors told Todd Barcelona that he’d likely never run again. So he and his wife decided to run farther than they ever had before.

Maggie used to be a trial attorney, and she made the pivot to freelance writing during the height of the pandemic, so we dig into how she made that change and what skills transferred over.

Episode 414: John Rosengren on Cuts, Note Taking, and Darkness for The Atavist

Photo credit: Scott Streble

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s that Atavistian time of the month and, boy, is “Anatomy of a Murder” a dark one. Brilliant, but bleak.

John Rosengren is the reporter behind this gripping story of how a vigilante murder divided a town. The story couldn’t be in better hands than John’s.

He is the author of twelve books including The Greatest Summer in Baseball History, Hammerin’ Hank, George Almighty and the Say Hey Kid, as well as the novel A Clean Heart.

Episode 410: Brian Fairbanks and “The Last Shall be First”

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By Brendan O’Meara

Brian Fairbanks is a freelance journalist and author and he is featured in The Atavist Magazine for his piece “The Last Shall be First” about a corrupt New Orleans cop and wreckage he left in his wake.

It’s a wild story and calls into question the structures that are supposed to keep citizens safe, as if we needed any more questioning. History repeats, so what do we do with that?

In this episode, we also hear from editor-in-chief Seyward Darby about the 150th issue of The Atavist, which is crazy, right?

Episode 391: For the Atavist Magazine, Lily Hyde Takes Us to Ukraine

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By Brendan O’Meara

For this month’s Atavist, Lily Hyde wrote “Two Thousand Miles from Home,” as Russia invaded Ukraine, theree women from the same family became pregnant at the same time. Then the war tore them apart.

Pretty bonkers, right?

Just wait till you read it.

Lily riffs on how she arrived at this story, how she came to live in Ukraine, the novel that’s helping her narrative nonfiction, and how she earns trust.

We start off by speaking with lead editor Jonah Ogles so, you know, you’re gonna get some inside baseball from the other side of the table.

Episode 387: Tom Donaghy

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By Brendan O’Meara

“Who Killed the Fudge King?“

Tom Donaghy, a playwright and screenwriter, needed to find out.

Harry Anglemeyer was a fixture of Ocean City with a fudge empire on the Jersey Shore, The Copper Kettle. He wanted to lift up and move forward the ocean-side city. He was openly queer in a time that wasn’t as accepting. In 1964, he was murdered and the case was never solved.

Enter Tom.

Episode 382: Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton

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By Brendan O’Meara

It’s that Atavistian time of the month and we’ve got a two-for-one, BOGO!, with Lucy Sexton, a documentary filmmaker, and Joe Sexton, a lifelong newspaperman and father to Lucy.

Lucy was working on a doc about the Iran hostage crisis when her father was taken hostage while reporting in Libya. What came out of it was “Held Together,” edited by Seyward Darby.

What’s all the more compelling is the dual authorship, not in the traditional co-bylined affairs that are uniform in nature with two names atop the story. This is two distinctly tuned instruments playing together in harmony.

Episode 372: Anna Altman

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I try to break it down into sections, when you get the end of a 1,000, or 1,500 words, you’ve made it to the next drop cap, and that feels important.
Anna Altman, Ep. 372

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By Brendan O’Meara

Anna Altman (@bananaaltman) is a freelance journalist and a social worker in training, and she just wrote and reported her second feature for The Atavist Magazine called “The Quality of Mercy.” It deals with compassionate release for the terminally ill and the one man at the center of it advocating for his fellow inmates.

In this episode we dig into how she arrived at this story and the unique challenges of reporting this piece in the ten-minute chunks Anna had with her central figure, Gary Settle, as they spoke through the prison phone system.