January 2025 – Home of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast

Episode 449: Drew Philp Wants to Make Spanakopita Out of Spinach News

Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, Dan Zak and Connie Chung will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

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It’s that Atavistian time of the month and this month’s story is heavy and chronicles what is likely, probably, a genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia … the hospital was overrun with victims. The medical staff risked everything to treat the wounded and believe the world ignored a genocide.

Drew Philp (@drewphilp.bsky.social) is the journalist behind “There Will Be No Mercy,” and we talk about how he pitched this as ER only in an Ethiopian hospital as that population endured unthinkable indignities. And this isn’t a historical piece. This happened within the last five years. Yeah. It’s a courageous piece of reporting, but even more courageous of the people at the heart of the story who literally are risking their lives to have this story told.

Episode 448: Evan Ratliff Returns … Or Did He?

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[Downloadable Transcript TK, CNFers]

Very nice to welcome Evan Ratliff (@ev_rat_public) back to the program, the special occasion being his incredible podcast Shell Game, the show where Evan created an AI voice agent in his own image and set it loose on the world.

It raises many questions about the ethics and the utility of the increasingly sophisticated world of voice agents. It won’t be too far into the future where they will be indistinguishable from actual humans.

A running writer’s companion

Listen … I am of fleeting attention. One minute I will say this is the greatest idea/hobby in the history of the world and think I should do it for the rest of my life.

Thirty minutes later say, ah, that was stupid.

So! My latest whim is to train for twelve weeks to run a simple 13.1 miles here in Eugene. The registration fee is $140, which is bonkers gross (and a reason I once flirted a little more than a year ago with an unsanctioned “race” that never came to pass on account of heat and wildfire smoke). The winter is a great time to run in Oregon. It’s chilly, wet, and the air quality is, by and large, pretty damn good.

Episode 447: Brooke Champagne Sits Back from the Suckitude

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By Brendan O’Meara

Brooke Champagne (@champagne_brooke) knows many things, but maybe most of all is that feeling of being able to sit and labor through shitty writing to get to the good writing. And get to the good writing she did in her brilliant essay collection Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (University of Georgia Press).

You can’t put this essay collection in a box, unless that box is titled “really cool shit.”

Episode 446: Harrison Scott Key and the Plight of Memoir

By Brendan O’Meara

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Harrison Scott Key (@harrisonscottkey) has written three memoirs, and what’s key to them as the narrator is making yourself either the idiot or the villain. In How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press) he was, for a time, the victim of his wife’s affair. But in deftly maneuvering and playing with structure he treats his marriage like a crime novel.

Harrison saves some of the biggest punches for himself as and his wife pieced together the wreckage into something lasting.

Harrison is also the author of The World’s Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? He’s masterfully funny and handles the balance between jokes and earnestness with a skill few possess.

Episode 445: For Andrew Dubbins, It’s About the Love of the Story

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Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zak will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

By Brendan O’Meara

When Andrew Dubbins locks into a story idea, it’s got to tick (tic?) certain boxes. Above them all is it’s got to have a story engine, it’s got to be cinematic.

And so it is with his story for The Atavist Magazine, “The After Dark Bandit.” This is a wild story about twin brothers who robbed banks at the same time, thus confounding authorities about how, it would appear, one guy was knocking off two banks at the same time.

Andrew is the author of Into Enemy Waters: The Story of the WWII Frogmen Who became the Navy SEALs. He was journalist of the year by the LA Press Club in 2020, and his work has appeared in Men’s Health, Slate, the LA Times, Smithsonian, Alta, and The Daily Beast.