Our Town Chapter 2: This Dangerous Venture of Yours

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1:35Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

1:44Previously on Our Town. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. Like, what am I missing? Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations. It was like happening and you didn't even realize it was happening. I just was trying to figure out what I personally, one person, could do. This isn't a fly-by-night LLC that will be shut down. Come move here to be with us. Over the next few years, we have so much planned. Go to RidgeRinnerUSA.com. Yeah. I got a question. Why are you in Jackson County?

2:21Meribah Knight:The winter of 2025 was an anxious one in Gainesboro. It had been several months since news broke about the plan to build a, quote, aligned community near town. Ridge Runner, the real estate developer behind the project, was buying up so much land that it now controlled more acreage than Gainesboro itself. Locals were uneasy, bracing for what might come next. Then, on March 31st, 2025. So, Andrew, thank you for doing this. You're so controversial. I love that. Yeah, married man with six kids who pays his taxes. You're so controversial. Very. But you are doing one thing that's pretty wild, which is participating in the building of a new town.

3:07Meribah Knight:Tucker Carlson, the influential host, invited someone associated with Ridge Runner onto his show. You can have the American small town experience once again. It was Andrew Isker, the Christian nationalist podcaster who'd moved to Gainsborough the year before. I want to get back to the Ridge Runner and the town that's being built, which I assume is a fascist Christian theocracy. That's what the TV news in Nashville has said. This was a stunning leap for Andrew Isker and for Ridge Runner. Here he was chatting up Carlson and his massive audience about building this Christian town in Tennessee. It's a real estate venture to build communities.

3:51It's large properties, you know, two, three, 10 acre lots into a place where they can have land, where they can have some chickens, maybe a cow, like live like Americans used to. Tell us the response to this, this dangerous venture of yours. Well, you know, like locally, the people that I've spoken to, the people I've met in the town are very, you know, very enthusiastic, actually.

4:19Meribah Knight:It just wasn't true. Locals had watched the episode. Not what I was seeing on the ground. I was furious. These people are a problem, not an asset. I was pretty horrified. It is a national stage. Isker was so excited. He was like a puppy that found a new bone. To Nancy Pruitt, the retired art teacher, it seemed like this was just another work day for Tucker Carlson. But for Isker... For Isker, it was like I've made it to the top. And for Ridge Runner, this was a walking billboard. For people who are interested, what's the name of this again? Ridge Runner. The website is ridgerunnerusa.com. On YouTube, this episode got almost 800 ,000 views.

5:05Meribah Knight:How did Andrew Isker get on Tucker Carlson? This wasn't some local YouTube show. Has someone already bought the land? Yes, yes. The Ridge Runners bought the parcels. It's being divided up and sold, you know, as we speak. This was news to many in Gainesboro. Ridge Runners seemed to be moving quickly, already prepping lots for sale. Everybody that was worried about this was doing their own stuff. Locals were reading, listening, watching everything these guys were putting into the world. They think that we're a bunch of dumb idiots, but we all have done our own little research. I sat there and took notes.

5:39You know, it's hard to watch that stuff. They're tiring. It's hard to hate that much, I feel. So, like, I created a script that went through all their videos and transcribed them, just so you don't zone out or your soul leaves your body because you're listening to Isker.

5:55Meribah Knight:They were all trying to answer some version of a question that had been left hanging. So, I mean, what's your deal, buddy? Who's your friends? What's your deal? Clearly, these guys had a plan. And who's your friends? Because they definitely had connections.

6:17Meribah Knight:All across Gainesboro, a handful of small-town amateur sleuths went to work to figure out what their town was really up against and how far they were willing to go to protect it.

6:41Meribah Knight:From Bloomberg News, I'm Maribyr Knight, reporting along with Susan Burfield, and you're listening to Our Town. This is Chapter Two, this dangerous venture of yours.

7:05Meribah Knight:Oh, this is so gorgeous. Oh my goodness. Now we're alive. How many dogs do you have now? Now we're alive. He'll be going up for adoption. He's a bully. Barry Naff has a soft spot for dogs. Somehow, they always find him. His wife, Diana, is definitely an enabler. This fella, he showed up on the farm looking for help. He was starving. We're just going to keep him. He's sweet. Barry and Diana's home is perched on the edge of a forested hill on the outskirts of Gainesboro. They've got 115 acres of land, where they put walking trails and dirt roads for ATVs. So you designed this house? I did. Did you build it, too?

7:52Meribah Knight:I did everything but the framing. Barry's lanky, usually in jeans and a t-shirt, and always in motion. Well, y 'all make yourselves at home. Diana's petite with brown hair and bookish glasses. She's got a pink t-shirt on that says, be kind of a bitch. Inside at her dining table, she got down to business. It's a serious computer. It's called a tough book. It's a massive laptop that could probably survive a mortar blast. filled with research. Can you just take me through again all of the literature and the things you consumed? We don't have enough time for that. I do have a bibliography. Barry is right.

8:39Meribah Knight:We don't have enough time for that. Because when Ridge Runner landed in Gainsborough, Diana was worried about what this all meant for her town. So she went into research mode, and of all the local sluice, she dug the deepest. This has been on my mind. It's on my mind every day. Yeah. Hours and hours every day for weeks and weeks. Diana searched the internet. Well, now, I got all my information from the reader and the listener here. If it's not something to do with hot rods or, you know, welding. Or dogs. Or dogs. I'm not reading it. Barry jokes, but he was just as serious about the research as Diana.

9:17Meribah Knight:He grew up in Gainesboro, so he had a lot at stake. Barry's family, the Navs. The Drapers, they've been here forever. Mack Draper, that's my great-grandfather. He pretty much built Jackson County for us. He did. Diana, though, is a transplant to Gainsborough. She came from Florida, where she owned a successful medical consulting firm. 20 years ago, she fell in love with Middle Tennessee. It was like looking at paradise. In 2005, she bought a farm, and locals welcomed her. We had some lovely folk that would invite us to Thanksgiving dinner. cookouts down by the river, marathon drinking sessions that involve moonshine.

9:58Meribah Knight:But Gainsborough itself was flagging, and Diana wanted to help revive it. So she bought a building on the town square and fixed it up. Just started talking to people about what did they wish they had. They wanted a dress shop, so she opened a dress shop. And this is how she and Barry met. I had a metal fab shop. I just had my parking lot redone, and she drops a bucket of paint in my parking lot. I was bringing it to him because it was the paint I wanted to use to paint the sign, and I dropped it. The sign for her new dress shop. She'd hired Barry to make it. I got a big brown spot in my parking lot, so that's how we met.

10:41Meribah Knight:Now, years later, the two sat next to each other at their dining table, in their dream house, facing a massive wall of windows that frame the rolling hills, sunrise to sunset. If he never had to leave this property, he'd be fine. But now, their peace had been punctured. This country belongs to Jesus. By Ridge Runner and the men who came along with it, the podcaster Andrew Isker. Do you unequivocally renounce anti-Semitism, racism, and Nazism? I don't get down into the weeds of playing those games. His co-host, C.J. Engel. I don't unequivocally pronounce these things. No, I don't. Punctured by Andrew Isker's talk of hate.

11:23How do I impart that to my children?

11:26Meribah Knight:The same ethos. I'm like, well, I have to teach them what to hate. By C.J. Engel's talk of slavery. The existence of slavery itself is not a sin. Now, mistreating a slave, that would be sinful. Their views on women. God made men to rule, period. And Jewish people. Jews, in the biblical sense, they do not exist anymore. It's only Christians and non-Christians. And gay people. The poor homosexuals are being oppressed and everyone's being mean to them. And so we need to be okay with gay marriage. Diana, like many others, had never expected Gainsborough to attract newcomers like these. So many people were working so hard to help this community and build up this community.

12:11I just couldn't stand to see it.

12:12Meribah Knight:So the day after the TV report had broken the news, Diana decided to speak up. She went to the Bull and Thistle, the restaurant she'd opened a while back. And on the chalkboard outside, instead of the daily specials, she wrote a message. It just said, if you're a person or a group that promotes the oppression, discrimination against others, please eat somewhere else and you won't like it here. May it work. They never saw anyone from Ridge Runner step foot in the restaurant again. But even if Barry and Diana didn't see them at the restaurant, Ridge Runner was already starting to take up a lot of space in their life.

12:52Meribah Knight:Literally. It had purchased hundreds of acres on either side of their property in the hills for its, quote, aligned community. Barry was consumed by anger. I just, I just, it just made my blood boil. Poor Barry. Diana is the yin to Barry's yang. She's cool-headed. You know, you should never take anything on face value, right? So she decided to take a beat, step back, and start at the beginning. So myself, a number of other folks were like, well, could this be the whole story? And then the next question was, how bad is it really? She was determined to see what they were about. Who exactly were these guys?

13:40Meribah Knight:And what did they really want? So Diana readied her laptop and went looking. What do they do? Are they writing? Are they interviewing? Do they have books? Yes, yes, and yes. Substacks, books, articles, and podcasts. So many podcasts. And then I'd follow the affiliations. It was like going through these tunnels that were all underground. You really kind of had to dig and follow things because you have to know. You have to really know. And what Diana found was more than she ever expected. It was so much deeper and wider and bigger than just Gainsborough. This is a very widespread movement. It runs very deep and it runs very high.

14:30Meribah Knight:The podcasters were among the first arrivals to town that Diana knew of, and they'd talked excitedly about the prospects of their new life in Gainesboro. Many of my friends online, right, well, we want to have that in real life, where instead of laughing at each other's jokes in a group chat, right, we want to be able to laugh at each other's jokes on our front porches. Listening to them, it sure sounded to Diana like they'd been recruited. The ability of Ridge Runner to make that kind of thing happen, where now you can be with all of your friends in real life and do life together. I understood that Josh Abattoi brought them to our place, brought them to Jackson County.

15:10Meribah Knight:Josh Abattoi, the CEO of Ridge Runner. Diana had heard Abattoi talking on a couple of podcasts about zeroing in on Gainsborough as the perfect place for his, quote, people. He was bringing some really exciting people. Some really cool people are coming. And we've got some really cool people lined up who are going to be joining the project, moving there. The whole point of it is to plant a flag. He's talking about Isker and Engel. The podcasters, who Abitoy refers to as his customers. This small town is where our people are gathering. But why her small town? It was the question Diana and so many others had been asking.

15:57Meribah Knight:Turns out, as Diana discovered, Josh Abatoy already knew the area. He'd grown up about 30 miles west of Gainsborough. He'd left to go to college, then grad school for medieval history, and Harvard for law. He worked as a corporate lawyer in Texas, but by his mid-30s, he was ready for a change. and he moved back to Tennessee with his wife and young children. When we asked Abitoy for an interview, he declined. Occasionally, Diana had seen him around town, walking the square or once at the Dollar General. He was there in his hunting vest and his boots and he had his, you know, the full regalia on.

16:37And I thought about that. You know, he's playing a part. He's filling a role. He's got to go. So I really wanted to understand his connections and what was his end goal. We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the healthy, natural, human way of life, the Christian way of life, and demonstrate the superiority of that way of life.

17:05Meribah Knight:This was a theme of his Diana came across often, his desire to build a life away from chaotic, un-Christian urban communities. Abitoy says he's not a Christian nationalist, but talks often about reviving America with conservative, economically vibrant Christian towns, charter communities, he calls them. He envisions a rural and red revolution of conservative religious people moving to the countryside. Gainsborough, he hoped, would be one such place. It's not a crazy place like a lot of urban areas are. You're not going to go there and see rainbow flags all over the place, but it's also pretty low crime.

17:46It also had plenty of land. Who's going to grab the land? Is it going to be, you know, good-based people who want to build something? And he was excited about it. Or is it going to be Bill Gates and BlackRock and hippies from California?

18:04Meribah Knight:Occasionally, Abattoi would drop a detail here and there about the Gainsborough Project's progress. We have a lot more purchases under contract right now. So as of today, there are 40 households in the target region who have bought or moved there as a result of our efforts. They're spending money fixing the road, running electric. Barry had seen the landscape near his property change. Dirt roads where there hadn't been any. Markers for new lots. But otherwise, he and Diana still weren't really sure what they'd be living next to. So they continued keeping close watch for any clues from their future neighbors.

18:41Meribah Knight:One came soon. The invitations went out via email. Elegant, slightly mysterious. A drawing of an eight-point buck with the words land, liberty, legacy, Ridge Runner's logo, and below, a dropped pin revealing a location. Ridge Runner was hosting its first official open house, except there weren't any houses yet, and it wasn't really open. Perspective buyers only. No media. The invitation said so clearly. However, someone in town had gotten on Ridge Runner's email list by posing as a prospective buyer. I just entered a name and an email address. And of course I used a male's name. It worked. And when the invite arrived, she quickly passed it around.

19:33Meribah Knight:Locals, Diana and Barry among them, were now able to see what Ridge Runner had planned. It was called the Highland Rim Project. On the invite, there was a map showing a village with a community center, farmland, and a farm store. They called it an agrihood. Potential buyers were encouraged to sign up for a 30-minute tour of available plots. We have a lot of customers like this who have lived most of their life in the cities or suburbs, and they dream of a healthier, more natural way of life. Maybe they have a small little hobby farm, so when they're not working for Google, or some other major employer, they can step outside and touch grass and milk a cow.

20:18Meribah Knight:And for some time away from the wives and kids. One of the really exciting things that we're going to be announcing is called the Highland Rim Sporting Club. It's a men-only club cultivating together excellence and virtue and where they can socialize with other interesting friends and hopefully shoot some deer as well. This was Abattoi's vision for life in the agrihood. healthy, natural, Christian, superior. There were 44 plots going from$50 ,000 to$150 ,000. The prices were staggeringly high by Gainsborough standards. When locals looked more closely at the map, they also noticed something else.

20:58Meribah Knight:Right in the center, the very heart of the community, was a church. A church, it turns out, that would be led by someone they were already familiar with. This country belongs to Jesus. Andrew Isker, the Christian nationalist podcaster. That's what the gospel is. Who is also a preacher. Jesus has conquered. He is king. He has a kingdom. The kingdom is here. And he is invited. More after the break. Everyone's talking about how AI is transforming work, especially in sales. While the landscape shifts, one thing remains the same. The thrill of closing a deal. Whether it's a gong or a confetti machine, every team has its celebration rituals.

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