Gangrey Podcast

On this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Philip Gerard. Gerard, who is a professor in the Creative Writing Department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, is the author of a new book about the Civil War. The Last Battleground: The Civil War Comes to North Carolina was published in March by the University of North Carolina Press. The book is an extension of a series of nonfiction narratives that Gerard was writing for Our State magazine. Gerard was one of Tullis’s professors when he was in the MFA program at UNCW. Gerard is also the author of Cape Fear Rising, a novel that is set in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, a time when wealthy white residents massacred the growing and successful black culture in the city. That novel was originally published in 1994. Blair, the publisher, has reissued the book in a 25th anniversary edition, in part because so much of what is happening in the United States today mirrors Wilmington in 1898. Gerard has written five novels and eight books of nonfictio

This episode focuses on Eli Saslow's story "Into the Lonely Quiet," which was about one Newtown family whose son was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But instead of focusing on the reporting aspect of the story, as Gangrey episodes typically do, this episode is focused on the story's subjects and what it was like to open their lives up during a traumatic and horrific time in their lives. This is also the first episode of Gangrey: The Podcast that is told in story form, and not through straight interview. It's a complimentary audio piece tied to a written story that host Matt Tullis wrote for Nieman Storyboard. In this episode, Tullis talks with Mark Barden, the father of Sandy Hook victim Daniel Barden, Nicole Hockley, the mother of Sandy Hook victim Dylan Hockley, and Eli Saslow.

On this episode, I’m going to replay an interview I did Wright Thompson back in October of 2013. Thompson’s first book was just released by Penguin Books this week. It’s titled "The Cost of These Dreams: Sports Stories and Other Serious Business." It consists of 14 of Thompson’s previously published stories for ESPN. That includes the two stories that I talked with Wright about on this episode of the show – "Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building," and "The Losses of Dan Gable." Thompson’s profile on legendary wrestling coach Dan Gable is a perfect example of how and why reserved people open up to him. The Dan Gable story came up right on the heels of Thompson’s profile of NBA legend Michael Jordan. That’s the story that leads of the book. With the Jordan story, Wright said he kept thinking of the classic Esquire profile on Ted Williams, which was written by Richard Ben Cramer. That story was titled “What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now.” “That story is very much a North Star, and the thing I’ve alw

On this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Carson Vaughan, the author of the “Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream,” which focuses on a small-town zoo in Royal, Nebraska, and its eventual downfall. Vaughan started reporting and writing this book as an undergraduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He then took the project to graduate school, where it was his master’s thesis in the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s MFA creative writing program. That’s the same program that Tullis graduated from in 2005. “Zoo Nebraska” was published by Little A, an imprint of Amazon Publishing that focuses on literary fiction and nonfiction. Vaughan is a freelance journalist who writes frequently about the Great Plains. He wrote “My Cousin, the Cowboy Poet” for the New Yorker. He’s also written for the New York Times, The Guardian, The Paris Review Daily, Outside, The Atlantic, Roads & Kingdoms, and Runner’s World, among others.

On this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Michael Graff. Graff was the guest on Episode 35, back in June of 2015. At the time, he was the editor of Charlotte Magazine. He was also writing for places like SB Nation Longform. Now Graff is a freelance writer and editor. He recently published his first piece with ESPN.com, a story that focused on the life of former NBA legend Muggsy Bogues. That story, How Muggsy Bogues saved his brother’s life, and found the meaning of his own, explores the lives of two brothers, Muggsy, the superstar, and Chuckie, the older brother who spent many years battling drug addiction, but got clean once he started living with Muggsy. While Graff is still doing a lot of reporting, he’s also started writing, and publishing, some incredibly moving and beautiful essays, including ones about a high school friend whose daughter battled childhood cancer and another about what happened when he tried to cut negative people out of his life. Graff has written for ESPN, The Guardian, Garde

On this episode, we’re rebroadcasting an interview Matt Tullis did with Ben Montgomery, Thomas Lake, Michael Kruse, Wright Thompson, and Tony Rehagen, about the late, great Michael Brick. Brick died on February 8, 2016 after battling colon cancer. We’re approaching the third anniversary of Brick’s death, but his name and his amazing work lives on because a book of his stories — “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name” — was put together by the guests on this show and others, and then published by The Sager Group. The stories included in “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name” were originally published in The New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas Morning News, Harper’s Magazine, and others. Brick also wrote the book “Saving the School,” which was published by Penguin Press in 2012. Everyone Leaves Behind a Name is still available on The Sager Group’s website. It’s also available on Amazon.com. All proceeds from book sales go to Brick’s family.

On this episode, Matt Tullis talked with Sarah Weinman, the author of “The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel that Scandalized the World,” which was published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers in September. The book is a gripping true-crime investigation into the 1948 abduction of Sally Horner and how it inspired Vladimir Nabokov’s classic novel, “Lolita.” Weinman regularly writes pieces of true crime longform, having been published by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Republic, the Guardian, and Buzzfeed, among others. She also covers book publishing for Publishers Marketplace. Weinman is the editor of the books “Troubled Daughters, Twisted Lives,” and of “Women Crime Writers: Eight suspense Novels of the 1940s and 50s.”

On this episode, Matt Tullis talks with Brendan O’Meara. O’Meara is the host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. On that show, he talks to writers, filmmakers, producers, and podcasters who he admires. They talk about the art and craft of telling true stories, unpacking their origin stories as well as tips and habits so that listeners can apply those tools in their own work. Tullis was a guest on the Creative Nonfiction Podcast back in September of 2017, when O’Meara talked with him about his memoir, Running With Ghosts. Recently, O’Meara hosted Glenn Stout, who talked about his new book, The Pats: An Illustrated History of the New England Patriots, which was just released. O’Meara is also a reporter and a writer. In 2016, he published the story “The Day That Never Comes” in the online magazine Proximity. That story, which we talk about in this episode, ultimately won Proximity’s Narrative Journalism prize for the year it was published. He is also the author of Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Fill

Ben Montgomery is the author of “The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search For Meaning in the Great Depression.” The book was published by Little, Brown Spark in September, and tells the story of a man named Plennie Wingo, who in 1931, attempted to walk around the world, backward. This is the third time Montgomery has been on the podcast. He was the guest on Episode 21, when he talked about his first book, “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.” That book went on to become a New York Times Bestseller. He was also one of five guests on Episode 45, which was focused on the work of the late Michael Brick, which was contained in the book, “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name.” The other guests on that show were Wright Thompson, Michael Kruse, Tony Rehagen, and Thomas Lake. Montgomery created the website gangrey.com, which was the namesake for this podcast. For years, he was one of the top enterprise reporters at the Tampa Bay Times, where he wrote

On this episode, we’re rebroadcasting an interview that Matt Tullis did with Janet Reitman in October 2013. During this episode, Tullis and Reitman talked about her story, “Jahar’s World,” which ran in the Rolling Stone. The story was about Jahar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Rolling Stone was criticized at the time because they put a glossy photo of Tsarnaev on the cover. But journalistically, the story that Reitman wrote was lauded as an excellent piece of reporting and writing. Reitman is being lauded again because of a piece she reported and wrote for the New York Times Magazine. The story, “U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It.” was published in early November. A few days after the story was published, Terry Gross interviewed Reitman for Fresh Air on National Public Radio. Reitman is a contributing writer for the New York Times, and a contributing editor for Rolling Stone. She is also the author of the book, “Inside

On this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Brin-Jonathan Butler. Butler wrote the book, The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match that Made Chess Great Again, which will be released on November 6. The book takes a look at the 2016 World Chess Championship, which was held in New York City just before the 2016 election. It also dives deep into the type of personality needed to be a chess champion. Butler’s first book, The Domino Diaries: My Decade Boxing With Olympic Champions and Chasing Hemingway’s Ghost in the Last Days of Castro’s Cuba, was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing, and was a Boston Globe Best Book of 2015. His story, “Ghost of Capablanca,” published by Southwest: The Magazine, was included in the 2018 Best American Travel Writing. He’s also been a notable selection in that book, as well as Best American Sports Writing, multiple times. Butler has written for Esquire, Bloomberg, ESPN The Magazine, Playboy, Harper’s, the Paris Review, and Roads and Kingdoms.

Episode 3 features Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly. Late last year, her two-part series, “The Innocent Man” was published. The story focuses on Michael Morton, who in 1987, was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife. In the podcast, Colloff talks about how she found out about the story, how she reported it and what it was like to shine light on a case like this. Colloff has written a lot of stories for Texas Monthly since joining the podcast. Most recently, and movingly, though, was a piece titled “The Reckoning,” which was about one of the victims of what is regarded as the first mass school shooting in the country’s history.

In June 2012, D Magazine published Michael Mooney’s “The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever.” The story is about a recreational bowler named Bill Fong, who on one night two years earlier, made an improbable run at perfection. The story has been included on just about every list of the best nonfiction of 2012 and ultimately was selected for Best American Sports Writing. In this podcast, we talk with Mooney about how he found the story, what the reporting process was like and how he decided to structure it. Since joining the podcast, Mooney has written dozens of amazing stories, including an up-close look at Glenn Beck. He just published the piece “Weekend at Johnny’s,” which had him traveling across America and visiting all of the bars that Johnny Manziel has partied in.

On this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Jeff Pearlman. Pearlman is the author of “Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL.” The book takes a deep dive into the United States Football League, which existed from 1983 to 1985. The league existed when Pearlman was a kid, and he was in love with it. It’s a book that Pearlman has called a labor of love. Pearlman interviewed 430 people for this book. Only two people with ties to the USFL that he reached out to refused to talk to him. One of those people was Donald Trump. Trump was the owner of the New Jersey Generals in 1984 and 85. Pearlman was doing the reporting for this book during the 2016 election season. One thing he started realizing was the Trump was making the same types of promises as a presidential candidate, as he did as a USFL owner. That includes the time he signed quarterback Doug Flutie to a huge contract, and then sent a letter to the other owners of the league, telling them all that they had to actually pay for Flu

On this episode, we’re rebroadcasting an interview Matt Tullis did with Earl Swift in November 2014. At the time, Swift’s book “Auto Biography: A Classic Car, An Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream” had just been published. Swift has a new book out now. “Chesapeake Requiem: A Year With the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island” was published by Harper Collins, and is getting rave reviews. Auto Biography is also a fantastic book. It tells the life story of a 1957 Chevy that, at the beginning of the book, is falling apart. He also delves deep into the life of the current owner, Tommy Arney. Arney had a brutal childhood. He dropped out of school in the fifth-grade, and lived a life of crime. But had also become a somewhat successful and controversial businessman. The story of this car started as a five-part series for the Virginian-Pilot, where Swift had been a reporter for many years. In this interview, he talked about the differences between reporting for newspaper work and reporting for a

This episode is a rebroadcast of the interview Matt Tullis did with Luke Dittrich in September 2013. At the time, Esquire had just published his story “The Prophet,” a story about a neurosurgeon who claimed to have visited heaven in a best-selling book. Dittrich’s piece pretty much debunked those claims. Dittrich also talks about his story about the Joplin, Missouri, tornado. The story — “Heavenly Father! I Love You! I Love Everyone,” was about 23 people who rode out the storm in a convenience store cooler. The store was destroyed, but the people within all survived. Dittrich ultimately won a National Magazine Award for the piece. Since joining the podcast, Dittrich turned another piece that was discussed in this interview — “The Brain That Changed Everything” — into a book. “Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets” digs deep into that Esquire story and unveils the life of his grandfather, the doctor who treated Patient HM and performed lobotomies on untold numbers of people. The book

On this episode, the podcast replays the interview Matt Tullis did with John Woodrow Cox from October 2013. Cox was the 12th guest on the podcast, and, at the time, was a general assignment reporter in Pinellas County for the Tampa Bay Times. On this episode, he talked about the short, narrative stories he was writing for the Floridian Magazine. The series was called “Dispatches from next door.” They were short pieces – just 500 words – but painstakingly reported. He talked about two such pieces – one about a woman who is only able to find peace out on the ocean, and another about a senior citizen who is always on the look for a younger woman who will save him from loneliness. Cox left the Times in 2014 and went to the Washington Post. He’s an enterprise reporter with a focus on narrative journalism there. This year, his series about the impact of gun violence on children in America was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing. He is currently working on a book that will expand on that cov

This episode features an interview Matt Tullis did with Brooke Jarvis in May 2015. In the interview, Jarvis talks about her story “The Deepest Dig,” which was included in the Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 anthology. That story ran in the California Sunday Magazine. She also talked about her piece “Homeward,” which also ran in the California Sunday Magazine. That story is about a young man from the jungles of Ecuador, whose village sent him to the United States so he could be educated and come back to save the village from the oil industry and colonization. Since joining the podcast, Jarvis won the Livingston Award in National Reporting — she won that in 2017 for her story “Unclaimed.” In 2016, she was the recipient of the Reporting Award from NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, and a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award in Journalism and the Livingston Award in International Reporting. In November of 2017, her story “How One Woman’s Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her” went v

On this episode, host Matt Tullis talks with Stephen Rodrick, a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a writer-at-large for Esquire. In the third week of June, both of those magazines published profiles of two very different celebrities that Rodrick wrote. Esquire published Rodrick’s piece on Taylor Sheridan, a writer and actor who is reinventing American Western storytelling through movies like “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water,” on June 19. Two days later, Rolling Stone published his fascinating profile of Johnny Depp. That piece got all of the attention because Rodrick spent a sometimes sad, sometimes fun, sometimes weird 72 hours with the man who has played everyone from Willy Wonka to Jack Sparrow. It also chronicled the troubles that Depp has been face, troubles that are primarily financial despite the amount of money he has made in his illustrious career. Rodrick was the guest of the podcast on Episode 6, back in February of 2013, when he talked about his story “The Misfits,” which was about th

Pamela Colloff is a senior reporter at ProPublica and a writer-at-large at The New York Times Magazine. She was the third guest on the podcast back in January 2013, when she talked about her Texas Monthly series The Innocent Man. That episode has unfortunately been lost. Colloff ultimately won the National Magazine Award in Feature Writing for that story. On this show, Colloff talks about her two-part series, “Blood Will Tell,” her first project for ProPublica and the New York Times Magazine. In this extraordinary project, Colloff tells the story of Joe Bryan, a former principal in Texas and a man many believe was wrongfully-convicted of murdering his wife. Prior to joining ProPublica and the Times in 2017, Colloff was an executive editor and staff writer at Texas Monthly. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker and has been anthologized in “Best American Magazine Writing,” “Best American Crime Reporting,” “Best American Non-Required Reading,” and “Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary