Friday, April 4, 2025
Become a Patron!Nick Davidson, @nickgdavidson on IG, a freelance journalist, says, “We usually think of hunting stories and looking for ideas, but I feel like it’s the other way around: stories hunt the storyteller, and I’m just prey.”
I love that sentiment.
Nick is on the show to talk about his piece for The Atavist Magazine titled “The Balloon that Fell From the Sky.” It’s a remarkable and tragic story of a gas balloon race where one of the teams was shot out of the sky by a Belarusian helicopter. It’s a gripping story that Nick spent the better part of three years reporting and writing.
Nick’s work has appeared in Outside, VICE Sports, Men’s Journal, The Atavist, and Garden & Gun, among many other places. He’s also a musician and an avid outdoorsman. In this episode, we talk about:
- What he’s better at now than he was just a few years ago
- Letting stories find you
- Recreating scenes
- Conversations vs. interviews
- How to ethically handle sensitive stories
- And a whole lot more
We also hear from Jonah Ogles, the lead editor of this piece to get his side of the table as well. Great stuff!
If you dig it, share it, and tag me on IG @creativenonfictionpodcast or Bluesky @brendanomeara.bsky.social.
Consider signing up for the companion podstack. Right now, it’s full transcripts and the parting shot, as well as highlighting episodes from deep in the backlog. I might experiment with a 1,000-word-ish-long “profile” from the podcast in a similar vein as Maria Popova does with The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings). The transcript will still be made available in full via a shareable Dropbox link, but this podstack will have more shape and perhaps my expansion/interpretation on things that really excited me. It’ll evolve. It’s evolving!
