In short
Chapter 1 of Our Town (“Sometimes You Find Silver”) follows Gainesboro, Tennessee residents discovering that a real-estate venture (Ridge Runner USA, linked to New Founding) is buying large amounts of land to build a far-right Christian nationalist community. After a TV investigation, locals organize resistance (yard signs, a “DQ sit-in,” and blocking Ridge Runner from the chamber of commerce) as Ridge Runner expands its land holdings.
Guests
No podcast guests are interviewed in this chapter. Key on-mic figures include Brian Allen (metal detector hobbyist), Cassie Kessler (Coin restaurant owner), Mark Dudney (preservation planner/historian), Phil Williams (News Channel 5 reporter), Josh Abattoi (Ridge Runner CEO), and podcasters Andrew Isker and CJ Engel (hosts of ContraMundum).
Key claims
Ridge Runner/New Founding are orchestrating an intentional takeover via land purchases and recruitment; the podcasters promote anti-democracy and anti-women-rights views; locals were unaware until the November 18 TV report.
Notable examples
99 acres near the high school; the ContraMundum election-night livestream from Ridge Runner HQ; Nancy Pruitt’s “Dangerous, educated women” shirt and “hate has no home in Gainesboro” signs; the Dairy Queen sit-in; chamber rejection and a threatened lawsuit; a 450-acre purchase for $2.5 million.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Metal Detectorist's Journey
1:49 to 7:18
Explore the story of Brian Allen and his discoveries in Gainesboro.
“I got it as a Christmas present one year when I was young, 12, 13 or something like that.”
The Newcomers in Town
7:18 to 12:46
Cassie Kessler's observations about new faces in her restaurant and town.
“reporting along with Susan Burfield and you're listening to Our Town.”
Introduction to Productivity Tools
14:00 to 14:28
Learn about using ChatGPT to organize your projects effectively.
“stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work.”
Mark Dudney's Concern
15:35 to 17:05
Mark Dudney reflects on a disturbing news story about Gainsborough.
“A friend of mine texted me about three o 'clock.”
The Town's Reaction to the Report
17:05 to 19:11
Residents react to an alarming news report on Christian nationalism in their town.
“and so that was just a pleasure to be back here.”
Understanding Christian Nationalism
19:11 to 20:52
Mark explains the implications of Christian nationalism and its local impact.
“The report, a mere 10 minutes, shook the tiny town.”
Community Bonds Strengthened
20:52 to 22:51
The town comes together to confront the threat of outside influence.
“Brian Allen, the guy with the inquisitive mind and the metal detector, had also watched the report and felt an odd combo of emotions.”
Cassie Kessler's Insights
22:51 to 24:44
Cassie shares her experiences with the newcomers and their intentions.
“Inside the town hall, Bryant was relieved to hear his neighbors' objections.”
The Podcasters' Narrative
24:44 to 27:21
Features two podcasters discussing their ideology and plans for Gainsborough.
“his son, Josh Abitoy, who'd moved from Texas.”
Women in Gainsborough
27:21 to 28:00
Cassie highlights the significant role of women in the local economy.
“I don't see any reason why things will continue to justify women going more and more to college.”
Show all 21 chapters
Cassie's Role in the Community
28:00 to 28:46
Explore Cassie's contributions and the impact of women in Gainsborough.
“She had tried, really tried, but she wasn't a mother.”
Cassie's Role in the Community
28:49 to 28:59
Explore Cassie's contributions and the impact of women in Gainsborough.
“The Muslims in Dearborn, they voted for Trump.”
Political Discussions and Predictions
28:59 to 30:13
Analyzing the political landscape and reactions to Trump's win.
“Thank you for your service, but you're going with me.”
Revelations and Reflections
30:19 to 31:11
Cassie's growing realization about the town's changing dynamics.
“I couldn't have asked for anything better.”
Local Reactions to Ridge Runner
31:11 to 34:11
Residents' concerns and reactions to the Ridge Runner project.
“As news of the real estate venture continued to spread through the town, so did anxiety about who might come here.”
Nancy's Activism and Community Resistance
35:56 to 36:31
Follow Nancy's efforts to mobilize the community against Ridge Runner.
“ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work.”
Nancy's Activism and Community Resistance
37:38 to 39:53
Follow Nancy's efforts to mobilize the community against Ridge Runner.
“The Gainesboro resistance, as it's come to be known, started with 70-year-old retired art teacher, Nancy Pruitt.”
Abitoy's Overture and Community Concerns
39:53 to 42:03
Discussing Josh Abitoy's invitation and the community's skepticism.
“So if they got 50 people to move in here, yes, they could take over our little town.”
Community Unity at Dairy Queen
42:03 to 47:42
Discover how a community event at Dairy Queen brought locals together amidst tensions.
“The holidays offered a bit of quiet and much-needed normalcy for the town.”
Ridge Runner's Controversial Chamber Application
47:42 to 50:06
Learn about the local chamber's decision to deny Ridge Runner's membership and the implications.
“Ridge Runner applied to join the local chamber of commerce, guaranteeing them public ribbon cuttings and gripping grin photos with the town's business leaders.”
Ridge Runner's Expanding Influence
50:06 to 50:47
Explore how Ridge Runner's land acquisition is impacting the local community.
“Then, exactly a week after the DQ sit-in, Ridge Runner announced its largest land purchase yet.”
Transcript
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1:44Meribah Knight:Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Our story starts with a guy and his metal detector. I got it as a Christmas present one year when I was young, 12, 13 or something like that. One of the cheap ones, but I just like the mystery of it. There's this open field, nothing around, but here's a silver coin. Like, that was magical. Brian Allen grew up metal detecting in his hometown of Gainesboro, Tennessee, a teensy town in the foothills of Appalachia. People call it the Switzerland of the Cumberlands. Lush rolling hills, sweeping vistas, and a lot of history. I find a lot of moonshine sights, old shotgun shell heads.
2:30You can tell modern ones because they have the plastic.
2:32Meribah Knight:During the Civil War, the Confederate Army would post up by Gainsborough to seize the Union Army's supplies as they floated by on the Cumberland River. So for the right person, it's a treasure trove. Axes. Just the mystery of just putting something together. I'm a very quiet person. If I'm talking about something I'm passionate about, then I can go. There was one piece of land that backed right up to a curve in the river. Bryant had been eyeing it for years. 99 acres of farmland. It was over by the high school. That's the one that I really wanted to hit. A place that's about to produce his biggest discovery yet.
3:15Meribah Knight:This is the summer of 2024. Bryant goes digging through public records to get permission from the owner to metal detect. And he realizes it's been sold recently to a name he doesn't recognize. Now, Gainsborough is a town of a thousand people, many of whom are related. So it's a peculiar thing to find a name you've never heard of. Because most of the time, you know, he would sell it to Jim Bob over the holler. So it stays in the family, so that intrigued me. Because if someone local didn't buy the land, then who did? I have a very inquisitive mind about things. I have far-fetched ideas and some of them work out and some don't.
3:54I think that goes back to my metal detecting. Like, yeah, 90 % of the time I'll go out there and find garbage. But sometimes you find silver.
4:06Meribah Knight:So he Googles some of the details on the property record and sees that it was some real estate guy who bought the land. And that leads him to a company, one called Ridge Runner USA. He goes to the Ridge Runner website. The first thing you see when it pops up is pioneers in Appalachia. Pioneers in Appalachia. The website is spare with that single phrase over an image of an open field with a winding dirt road. And below, an invitation to learn more. Brian clicks. Ridge Runner is building pioneer communities in the old American heartland. Ridge Runner appears to be some kind of real estate company.
4:51We see rising demand for new types of communities around a shared vision for local life in America. I'm like, hang on, like, that was when I was like, well, you got something.
5:04Meribah Knight:Bryant searches more and finds that Ridge Runner seems to be affiliated with a larger company called New Founding. That website is packed with even grander pronouncements. We are forging an alliance to revitalize American civilization, bringing builders, creators, and concerned citizens together. Build the America you want to live in. And it's like, but it's already built. I'm like, yeah, that don't sound good. From what Bryant can discern, New Founding is involved in all sorts of things. Venture capital, media, and real estate. That's where Ridge Runner comes in. Both companies, Ridge Runner and New Founding, seem ambitious and filled with big ideas.
5:59Pioneers, frontier, all the words for oppression and conquering. We're going to convert these heathens. Like it gave me that feel. Like this was their manifest destiny.
6:11Meribah Knight:Ridge runner, new founding, those 99 acres across from the high school. Brian is trying to figure out what's in front of him. Like what am I missing? What was happening in his quiet hometown?
6:29Meribah Knight:In the months following, Bryant, who is painfully shy, reveals his discovery to only one person, a co-worker. But he keeps tracking Ridge Runner, the real estate company, and finds more land getting scooped up in and around Gainesboro. Bryant had stumbled into something, the beginning of an ambitious project, to make Gainesboro a new type of town, filled with like-minded people. This tiny town would soon realize it was part of a much larger experiment backed by people with powerful connections and plenty of money to build the America they want to live in starting with Gainsborough. From Bloomberg News, I'm Maribah Knight reporting along with Susan Burfield and you're listening to Our Town.
7:23Meribah Knight:This is Chapter One. Sometimes you find silver.
7:36Meribah Knight:A few months before Brian Allen, the metal detecting enthusiast, started snooping around about those 99 acres, a new face started turning up at the Stolen Coin restaurant. The coin, as it's called, is a local institution. Hi, how are you? It's owned by Cassie Kessler and her husband, who's the chef. Brian Allen goes there often, as do many day-tripping tourists. It's right on the town square. The town square, which is one square block with an old courthouse in the middle, is Gainesboro's social hub. It's where people come to gossip, to shop, to pick up a prescription, or eat a plate of biscuits and chocolate gravy.
8:20Meribah Knight:It's a southern thing. an Appalachian special. It was in the midst of all this when Cassie saw that new face at her restaurant, a real estate guy. I had become pretty good acquaintance for when he knew my first name basis, would come in, anytime he would come in, I would sit and talk to him. Cassie is energetic, a fast, urgent talker, flitting from table to table in the Coyne's cozy dining room. Hi, Dave Baby, how are you? Good, good. I just like to table touch, like to talk to people. It's a small town. Like, I know everybody in that restaurant. I'll show you the pictures of it. I know. I can't wait to see them.
8:55You were in a Yoda.
8:56Meribah Knight:And this new face, the real estate guy, he was a great customer. Very, very personable. And seemingly interested in investing in Gainsborough. And Cassie had a hot tip. My lawyer at the time was looking to sell his spot. The building was right around the corner from the restaurant, right off the town square. a prime location and rare find. And I had mentioned it because some of the other buildings in town, it's very hard for them to come there, pass down through family. Cassie had learned this about Gainesboro, that it was tight-knit. She'd moved there about five years earlier from Florida, and the town had given her a lot.
9:38I could not have been to this point in my life without the support of this town, whether it's council members, community members, business members, employees, like, it has just been an effort from everybody.
9:54Meribah Knight:Cassie is a recovering drug user, sober 13 years. So the idea of having this kind of welcome and support system to open a business, it meant everything to her. I was such a bad person for such a long time. And it's really nice to, like, take that effort that I used to be into being an addict and put it into the good stuff in the community and, like, helping. It just is like, I know it sounds cheesy and I say, it does, it's better than being high. Like, it really is. It makes you feel good. It makes you feel valuable. All the opposite feelings you get whenever you're an addict. Cassie loved helping Gainsborough grow because like her, it too had struggled in years past.
10:35Meribah Knight:Hollowed out by job losses and stagnant wages, nearby factories had closed. The Shirt Factory, Oshkosh Bogosh. Then came the opioid epidemic. But over the past decade, people like Cassie had started opening restaurants and stores that drew tourists. So when this real estate guy showed up in town and bought the building that Cassie tipped him off to, she was delighted. He bought it along with his son, who'd just moved from Texas to Gainsborough. He was becoming a regular, too. His name was Josh Abattoi. Soon he'd started coming in with other men Men who also seemed new to the town She wasn't sure if they were colleagues or friends As many times as they came into my restaurant Or did anything They never would talk to me But that didn't deter Cassie From chatting Josh Abitoy up After I'd found out that they had bought it Josh, his father, and another gentleman Were sitting at the restaurant And I can remember I remember it was table 10 and I was sitting there talking to them about, you know, what are you guys doing?
11:45And, oh, it's an appraisal business. Just very, like, not putting a direct stamp on it. Like, we're still trying to figure out it's going to be a couple different things. And I was like, oh, I'm going to have to come down and check it out.
11:58Meribah Knight:All the Gainesboro business owners were close. Here in town, like, all the businesses on the square, we, like, do so many things together. We just are each other's biggest cheerleaders. But that was not the response she got from Josh Abitoy. And I can remember him looking up at me and saying, we're just gonna have to wait till it's done. We're not gonna let anybody in there till it's done. From right then, it was like closed off. It went from open conversation to like, now I'm just not gonna talk about what this place is anymore. I should have been like, well, that's kind of weird. Then a couple months after Abitoy purchased that building by the square, the town would find out why.
12:37Meribah Knight:Nothing was quite the same for Gainsborough after that. More after the break. The people who seem to get more done than everyone else, they're not working longer hours or running on more caffeine. They've just stopped wasting time on the stuff that doesn't move work forward. Switching apps, re-explaining context, hunting for files. Those aren't small inefficiencies. their hours wasted every week. Superhuman Go gives you those hours back. From the makers of Grammarly, Go is an AI assistant that sits inside every tab and tool you already use, always available and already aware of what you're working on.
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15:40Meribah Knight:It was a Friday in mid-November when Mark Dudney, a preservation planner and historian for the area, received a message from his friend. It was about an upcoming news story. Phil Williams was going to have a peace on Monday night. Phil Williams is an investigative reporter with News Channel 5 in Nashville, been on the air for decades, and has a well-known series called Confronting Hate. New data appear to reveal a disturbing trend, the rise of hate in Tennessee. And the next story in the series, Mark learned, was going to be about Gainsborough. I felt like my blood pressure ramped up. I don't have an alarmist personality.
16:21I'm a really flat line on an EKG.
16:25Meribah Knight:Mark had grown up in Gainesboro, then left after high school, but had recently moved back. Well, this is sort of getting into personal stuff, but I got divorced last year. For Mark, like Cassie, Gainesboro was a place to recover, to breathe. My family has been here seven generations. I grew up going to a little church right down the road here, very tight-knit. Mark's dad had also passed away that year. Dr. Dudney, he was Gainsborough's beloved local doctor, delivered many of the town's babies. So Mark had a lot to process. Being home helped. So had turning off the news. I was listening to a lot of Allman Brothers, and so that was just a pleasure to be back here.
17:11That lasted about six weeks.
17:14Meribah Knight:More specifically, until November 18th, 2024, the night the TV news story about Gainsborough aired. That Monday night, I watched it with my sister. Tonight, News Channel 5 Investigates special report reveals the Christian nationalists who want to turn a small Middle Tennessee community into their base of operations. Phil, you found that longtime residents didn't even know this was happening. This has very much been developing under the radar. I was glued to the television. Mark pulled a chair right up to the TV. In many ways, the views of some of these people are not so different from the white supremacists we've seen marching down Nashville streets in the past year, although they dress up their ideas with intellectual buzzwords and call it Christian.
18:04And they've announced that Gainsborough, the Jackson County seat, will be the focus of their efforts to resettle like-minded people from around the country.
18:13Meribah Knight:The goal, from what Mark understood, was to turn Gainsborough into their own type of Christian town. The report focused on two newcomers, a pair of podcasters who'd already moved to Gainsborough. They say they, quote, hate democracy, they're rooting for a Protestant dictator, and they think God made men to rule over women. Williams described the two podcasters as ambassadors for the larger venture. The two Christian nationalists denounced the efforts of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement in general. They celebrate images of whites-only diners in the 50s, and they mock historical incidents.
18:52Meribah Knight:As Mark watched, he learned the real estate group running the whole venture had already bought 100 acres right in Gainesboro, and another 500 acres somewhere in the Appalachian Hills. all to build the community. We were all flat-footed. We didn't have a clue. The report, a mere 10 minutes, shook the tiny town. Mark, despite his usual flatline EKG demeanor, was feeling all sorts of feelings. I do remember getting hot. Yeah. The arrogance, the hubris is mind-blowing. There was a phrase in the news report that hit Mark especially hard, Christian nationalist. With his penchant for constitutional history, he was familiar with the term Christian nationalist, though many of his fellow residents were not.
19:47To me, Christian nationalism is fundamentally un-American. Really, this is just about white supremacy.
19:54Meribah Knight:One important note, the podcasters do not call themselves white supremacists. They've called their podcast, quote, the number one Christian nationalist podcast in the world. But one of them told us he doesn't describe himself that way. And the guy in charge of the larger venture says he's not a Christian nationalist. Christian nationalists believe that America is a Christian nation and should be led by Christians for Christians, and more specifically, Christian men. Gainsborough, the Jackson County seat, may have seemed like a good fit. The county is overwhelmingly white, 96%. It's also Christian and conservative, 81 % voted for Trump.
20:40Meribah Knight:So it might be easy to stereotype. What people commonly think about Jackson County, they think we're all backwards, hateful, racist, and oh, he's from Jackson County. Like it carries something around here. Brian Allen, the guy with the inquisitive mind and the metal detector, had also watched the report and felt an odd combo of emotions. In a weird way, like vindication. But he also felt. Terror. This can't be real. I guess a here we go moment. Like, you know, this isn't a fly by night LLC that will be shut down. and they're here to, I guess, homestead to make a town. And I didn't know how the community would react.
Read the full transcript
21:18Meribah Knight:The town was practically vibrating, talking, texting, Googling. It was all the talk at church on Sunday. Days later, Phil Williams returned for a follow-up story, a sort of town hall on the square. About 40 people came. When you hear them talking about coming here to build a town, what's your reaction? This town is not for them.
21:44Meribah Knight:The vice chair of the local Republican Party spoke up. It scares me that they are very clear about taking over. Bryant stood in the back of the room, his mind racing. It was more like, why is this really happening? It was all making sense now. He thought back to the 99 acres across from the high school that he'd investigated months before. Back then, he'd worried he was being a little paranoid. Now, he realized he'd been on to something. That real estate company, Ridge Runner, the one Brian had Googled. We see rising demand for new types of communities around a shared vision for local life in America.
22:32Meribah Knight:They were the ones who'd purchased those 99 acres. That land was their start to building their community, to remaking Gainsborough. Build the America you want to live in. It was all a part of this plan.
22:51Meribah Knight:Inside the town hall, Bryant was relieved to hear his neighbors' objections. What message would you have for these people? We all want to be a part of a racial hate community. Yes, ma 'am. The bond that formed was almost magical. This was the Gainsborough he knew. Meanwhile, Mark Dudney, the historian, sat second row in the town hall, listening and making all kinds of wild connections. It was so close to Halloween. I've been watching horror movies. And I shot my mouth off and made some reference about Salem's Lot. Salem's Lot, a novel-turned-film by Stephen King, in which a man returns to his hometown only to discover that a strange businessman has also arrived, along with an ancient vampire, to take over the town.
23:45And as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Barlow and Mr. Straker can load up the coffin and get out of Salem's Lot. You've got somebody coming in who is trying to recruit and multiply. and it was not that far off as an analogy.
24:04Meribah Knight:The town now believed it was part of a plan to build a far-right community, that outside money was flowing in to make it, and that podcasters, far-right Christians, were already here and promoting it. Everything else was still a mystery. What exactly was Ridge Runner? Who were these guys? And how many were already in Gainsborough? There was one person at the town hall, standing in the back near Bryant, who had some answers. Cassie Kessler, the restaurant owner. She'd recognized the two podcasters from the TV report. She knew them. They'd eaten at her restaurant. And what's more, the real estate guy, the one she'd helped find the building for, his son, Josh Abitoy, who'd moved from Texas.
24:52Meribah Knight:He was the leader. He was the CEO of Ridge Runner. the company behind this whole thing. Like, I instantly shot back to the night of the election. The night of the 2024 presidential election, just two weeks earlier, the last time Cassie had seen Josh Abitoy. He'd come in for lunch that day, and again for dinner. We made sure a nice table was set up for them, you know, Abitoy's family, they were all there with their whole family. She and Abitoy even made a friendly wager. I was like, who do you think is going to win? And it was just like me just being like funny. Like I can remember him leaning back like this and going, it's going to be Trump.
25:34He's going to take it. And I was like, I'm going to buy you a beer if he wins. He's like, OK, I'm going to hold you up to that. And we just, you know, chuckled.
25:43Meribah Knight:While Cassie headed home from the restaurant for an early bedtime, a very different night was ahead for Josh Abattoi, who left the coin to go be on a podcast.
25:55Hello and welcome to ContraMundum. It is election night. I'm Andrew Esker. This over here is CJ Engel.
26:01Meribah Knight:The hosts were the two podcasters, the ones who'd already moved to town to help Josh Abattoi with the Ridge Runner development. To many people in town, they'd become the voice of the venture. Awesome. All right, CJ, what are your thoughts? I am ready to doomscroll. Doomscroll Twitter all night long? All night. Cassie hadn't seen this live stream when it aired. But now, after the TV news story, she watched some. It was nearly nine hours. So I was just very angry. And I knew that I was going to see them at some point. Many others in town now also watched, eager to learn what they could about these newcomers.
26:38Meribah Knight:The two podcasters wore matching blue suits and ties, thanks to their wives. Yeah, they bullied us into matching. They already seemed giddy. You didn't get the pocket square. I have the pocket square. They're Trump supporters. Andrew Isker was new to Tennessee. He said he fled Minnesota for its wokeness. His co-host, C.J. Engel, left California for the same reason. I'm pleased as punch. And now here they were, live streaming their podcast from Gainsborough, from the same building Cassie had tipped Josh Abattoi and his father off to. It was now Ridge Runner's headquarters. The name of the podcast, Contramundum, is Latin for against the world.
27:22I don't see any reason why things will continue to justify women going more and more to college. Like women's lib, you know, liberation or emancipation and the career women, that's only led to despair. And I think that women are starting to recognize that. It will probably be easier to get rid of democracy as a whole before getting rid of the 19th Amendment.
27:40Meribah Knight:19th Amendment, the women's right to vote. And women are basically going to revert back to their natural station, like a natural order correction. It's so crazy to me that it's freedom for them, but only people that like seem like them. All their talk about women's natural order. Well, Cassie was not a mother. She had tried, really tried, but she wasn't a mother. She was a wife, an entrepreneur, a voter. She served her community in all sorts of ways. If you really did your research, almost every business on this square is run by a woman. A stroll around the town square reveals how many women anchor the Gainsborough economy.
28:24Myself, Miss Sally's, Nostalgic, Gib Flow.
28:28Meribah Knight:The pharmacy, the realtor next door, Faye's Cafe, the gift shop down the street. And then we have a woman judge and we have a woman attorney and we have women aldermen. And we're all women and we're all just keeping our heads down and we're trying to grow this town. Starting with our 8 o 'clock ad read here. The 8 o 'clock hour is sponsored by Paxmail. Fellas, get off of gay email. Join Paxmail.cc instead. Keep the money with the brothers. The Muslims in Dearborn, they voted for Trump. This is amazing. Thank you for your service, but you're going with me. Sorry, you can be deported last. You know what's hilarious?
29:11Meribah Knight:By hour four, it was clear that Trump was going to win. This is a right-wing project. That's right. That was Josh Abitoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner, chiming in. This is our democracy. Our democracy. It's ours now. This is our democracy. We are the captain now. Yes. By hour eight, it was confirmed. Kamala Harris had lost to Donald Trump. He is the atlas holding up the world of the patriarchy right now. Yes. And that's when... I've got the glass ceiling. Ten inches thick. The glass ceiling jokes began. The glass ceiling just got ten feet taller. Heritage America won. Oh, he's a purge. That's the only kind of America there is, man.
29:50Meribah Knight:Honestly, though. The podcasters finally signed off by talking about their new hometown. This is really cool, though, to be able to do this from Gainesboro, Tennessee. We've been building up for this moment for months, and we're here. We made the announcement. There's so much planned. We have great families here. We have great guys here. It's just really great to connect with a small town of Trump-loving Americans. So 7 ,000 of you watching, come here. Go to RidgeRunnerUSA.com. Come move here to be with us. I think this is just the beginning of a lot of things. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
30:20Amazing. Yeah, it's crazy.
30:24Meribah Knight:After listening to this, Cassie felt duped. Then it's like one of those like retrospects in a movie where like you find out something and then you go back and all the flashbacks of like, oh my gosh, that makes sense. Conversations Cassie witnessed in her restaurant months earlier now had an entirely different meaning. They're trying to sell these plots. So they bring people in, give them a tour of the town, and then they would bring them to lunch. And because they get great service, they say, look, we're welcome here. Look, when you move here, you can get this. Look how much they like us. They're all like us here.
30:57Meribah Knight:Like in that moment, you're just thinking that some people having a conversation. Oh, they like my restaurant. It's like, do not use my hard work and my businesses and my staff and everything that they do to sell your bullshit. As news of the real estate venture continued to spread through the town, so did anxiety about who might come here. After all, Josh Abattoi had been pretty explicit. The whole point of it is to plant a flag and say this small town is where our people are gathering. After the TV news story dropped, Abattoi laid low. I remember not even really seeing them around town. But one of the podcasters, CJ Engel, did make an appearance, a virtual one.
31:43All right, thanks for calling. I'm going to go ahead and give you to CJ, okay?
31:46Meribah Knight:On a YouTube show called Truth With Proof, hosted by a local preacher, Engel's new neighbors were eager to talk to him. So are you really an American? Are you a spy from Russia? I mean, what's your deal, buddy? Yeah, I'm American and I love this country and I'm here because I think it represents the American ethos much better than California did. I got a question. Why are you in Jackson County? I'm buying in Jackson County because I like the region and it seems like a good place to raise families. And this is where my friends decided to go. Who's your friends? Well, Josh Abitoy and Andrew and people like that.
32:24And we have friends here that have grown up here as well. how'd you make them on the internet and that's that's where you meet people these days yeah yeah well look well I appreciate your cynicism and I and I don't take it offensively so thank you for calling in and I hope to you know you know earn a you know better reputation over the next couple years here's another problem buddy sure we got coming in by land from Jackson County people you're taking that land away they're marketing that way the people from Minnesota, California, Wyoming, Colorado, wherever it is you're trying to get them from.
33:02That land will never be able to be back in the hands of young people
33:06Meribah Knight:from Jackson County who want to buy a house of two acres, five acres, 15 acres, whatever. They'll never be able to get it because it's going to be in y 'all's little Nazi party. I don't understand how you think that's good for our people. You're not welcome. Not everyone who called or texted was opposed to Ridge Runner. Someone says, hey, CJ, you're handling all the calls well. Those who watch the podcast in full will see your fruits and your intentions. But by and large, people were suspicious and very confused. Okay, I have a question about you all stating that you were going to plant a flag and start a town.
33:44I don't understand that exactly because we are currently a town. So I wasn't really for sure what that meant.
33:51Meribah Knight:That's what everyone wanted to know. What did it mean when they said they were building a town and would plant a flag? It's probably analogous. You know, like, I don't think, I don't have any plans to start a town. I mean, Instead he brushes it off as just talk. But I don't have any plans. And I say this very, very seriously. Our plan is to assimilate into the culture of the area and to participate in making Gainesboro a better place to live. Engel was as civil as can be, even said he'd gotten plenty of sympathetic messages in the weeks after. But those who wanted more details were frustrated.
34:31Meribah Knight:His answers on the show didn't reveal much. Then he and the others seemed to disappear from public life in Gainesboro. So residents decided they needed to take matters into their own hands. That's after the break.
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37:38Meribah Knight:The Gainesboro resistance, as it's come to be known, started with 70-year-old retired art teacher, Nancy Pruitt. My family goes back to, you know, when Gainesboro was formed. Nancy knows the town gossip, even has a police scanner on her kitchen counter, always chattering in the background. Nancy actually was the one who came and told me about it. You know, Nancy can tell you. Nancy was talking about that at one point. If she wants you to know something, she will make sure you know it. Nancy taught in the local public schools for many years. Since retiring, she's been living her best life, traveling the world, volunteering.
38:16Meribah Knight:This town is very special. To think that people wanted to come in and change everything, I was very disillusioned. It was a very sad day, and it changed my life forever. Nancy, who grew up staunchly Republican and voted as one until 2016, had never heard the term Christian nationalist. And now, the two men behind the so-called number one Christian nationalist podcast were living on her street. CJ lives down here, four houses from me. Nancy worried about how the town might be fooled by Ridge Runner, not because they were uninformed, but because they had other things on their mind. Jackson County, where Gainesboro is located, is one of the poorest in the state.
39:02Meribah Knight:And I did not know how many people were going to be concerned because they had to figure out how they were going to get their next meal. I couldn't get people to understand the gravity of the situation. Gainesboro has a live and let live kind of attitude. There were some folks who had concerns at first, but those faded. Some weren't worried at all. Others likely couldn't pass up a top-dollar offer for land. We have such a low voter turnout in the city that they knew that this was a place that they could take over and plant their flag, as they said. Gainsborough has just 605 registered voters. And if they move 50 families in, then they could take over the politics and the government.
39:48And I was a city alderwoman, okay? And I know that I had a landslide with 130 votes, and the next person was 100 votes. So if they got 50 people to move in here, yes, they could take over our little town.
40:11Meribah Knight:Gainsborough's protests kicked off with a small gesture. One of the podcasters had gone to social media to say how much he hated what white, educated women had done to America. So Nancy being Nancy walked to the square and asked the owner of a local gift shop to print a t-shirt with a slogan on it. Dangerous, educated women. She wore it around town. It was her first public act of resistance. I just was trying to figure out what I personally could do. Nancy began contacting her neighbors, old co-workers, a local pastor, restaurant owners. She estimates she spoke to 50 people. And then slowly people started getting on board.
40:58Meribah Knight:Nancy was consumed. She spent an hour every morning researching while she had coffee, and in the middle of the night when she couldn't sleep. My closest friends, they were concerned because they said, you're so obsessed by this. I said, I think we all need to be. Nancy realized she needed to do even more, something that the podcasters on her street would be sure to see. We need to let them know that everybody on their street and surrounding them are not okay with their views. So in came the lawn signs. They said hate has no home in Gainesboro. On November 30th, 10 days after the town hall, Nancy posted on Facebook, Anyone want a yard sign?
41:42Meribah Knight:Message me. The requests rolled in. Yes, please. Amen. I want one. I need six of them. We had signs all over this town, in everybody's yard, on the side of the road. 300 signs in all. In a small town, it felt like they were everywhere. Someone put up a billboard, too, right on the main road into town. It read, Small Town Big Heart. Here, nasty notions play no part. Gainsborough, where all are welcome. A few weeks passed. The holidays offered a bit of quiet and much-needed normalcy for the town. Then, at the start of the year, Josh Abattoy, the head of Ridge Runner, made a surprising overture, an invitation to talk, not to Nancy, but to her neighbor, who promptly shared it with Nancy.
42:38Meribah Knight:And he said, I'm reading, quoting, I moved to Gainesboro over the summer. Phil's mistaken reporting is not how I would have chosen to be introduced to my new neighbors. I would love to grab coffee sometime and dispel what Phil has said about me and my company. Hopefully the warm welcome to all people. Abitoy has denied being a Christian nationalist. He says the podcasters are not Ridge Runner ambassadors. They're customers, and they don't speak for the company. Ridge Runner says its community will be built around a shared ethos of land, liberty, and legacy. As Nancy kept reading Abitoy's invite, she saw an opportunity.
43:20Meribah Knight:We've been happily invited several times to the Dairy Queen morning coffee and have gotten the ability... He was talking about a weekly coffee clash of local veterans that he and CJ, the podcaster, have been joining. ...to meet people, so you're welcome to come as well. And so we did. We just took more than one person. It would be the first time everyone who had been anxious and alarmed would gather, in the same place as their new neighbors. And they'd have breakfast at the local Dairy Queen. A group of people in the community wanted to just do a show of community unity. That's Mark Dudney, the historian.
43:58Meribah Knight:What's your mindset like walking in that morning? We need some bacon and eggs. Dairy Queen is not yours and we are aware of what you're doing That same morning, Brian Allen, the metal detector guy got a text from a friend telling him, go to Dairy Queen now Okay, I'll go get a sausage biscuit, I don't know I walk in and I'm like, all these people are like, what is going on? Is it Free Dilly Bar or something? Free Blizzard? The place was packed every booth taken I was like, what's going on? Like, oh, there's a sit-in. It would come to be known as the DQ sit-in. People that I argued with on Facebook politically are there and they're mad.
44:46And I'm like, oh, God, thank you. Both sides of the political spectrum being there was chill-inducing. Like, it was like, all right, we got this. We were expecting about 30, 35 people and about 75 showed up. I've never been so proud of my community. The one thing that you have to process is that this is so foreign to us. There is no guidebook available about what to do. I come in, and so I see Abitoy standing over there.
45:21Meribah Knight:Josh Abitoy, the CEO of Ridge Runner. Just seeing him like a jump scare. Abitoy came in, and I went straight to him. Nancy wanted to talk about the house across the street from her, where one of the podcasters lived. I introduced myself and I said, I know you purchased that. And he goes, no, I didn't purchase that. Josh Abattoi is right. Actually, his dad bought it. But to Nancy, all Abattois led to Ridge Runner. And I said, yes, you did. He said, how do you know that? And I said, well, I give one hour of my life to you every morning over coffee, doing research. So I called the owner that sold it to you.
46:01Meribah Knight:Nancy decided it was time to say her piece. So obviously you purchased it and then you did a quick deed and put it in their name for whatever reason. I said, I don't know. And I said, and then Isker moved in that next day, I guess. And that's when he got frustrated and didn't want to talk to him anymore. I sat down next to CJ. Cassie Kessler, the restaurant owner, slipped into a booth next to the podcaster. And I said directly to him, I'm like, you know, why are you here? And he said, you know, we're from all different parts of the country. You know, we have a bunch of woke people that got elected into office and then came in and changed the whole town.
46:42And it just didn't align with us anymore. So we left. And I'm like, so what's the difference in what you're doing now to us? And he goes, well, you know, we're not trying to change your town. I looked right at him. I said, you say all these things about women. I said, but I own my building. I pay local tax. I pay sales tax. I pay liquor tax. I have employment. I have a nonprofit. But because I can't physically have children, I'm not worth anything. And he says something, God, something to the effect of I have different beliefs than you. And I will tell you, and I hope he's listening. you were shaking like a leaf.
47:25Meribah Knight:Josh Abattoi declined to speak with us for this story, but you'll hear directly from the podcasters, CJ Engel and Andrew Isker, later in this series.
47:37Meribah Knight:A couple weeks after the sit-in came the biggest standoff to date. Ridge Runner applied to join the local chamber of commerce, guaranteeing them public ribbon cuttings and gripping grin photos with the town's business leaders. Cassie Kessler, who was on the chamber's board, said the news landed with a thud. As a board, we were not fans of letting them on. But we live in a democracy, so we wanted to leave it open to the people. We held an open meeting, and there was not one member in that room that wanted them to be a part of it. Next, the board hired an attorney. He said, you don't have to accept it because things that they were saying discriminatory that went against pretty much everything in our morality clause.
48:26Meribah Knight:So the chamber rejected Ridge Runner. From what folks remembered, the chamber had only denied a few businesses. Some years back, it rejected a topless auto repair shop called Boob & Lube. Now the chamber was denying Ridge Runner. It was Gainsborough's first official repudiation of the venture. We had a certified letter drawn up and we sent it to them with a full refund. I think they thought we were going to all cower with our tail between our legs and run away. After the denial, the chamber received a letter from a lawyer in Missouri, notifying it that Ridge Runner intended to sue the chamber and possibly individual members, who it claimed, quote, knowingly discriminated or conspired to discriminate against Ridge Runner.
49:12That we were infringing, we were discriminating against them.
49:18Meribah Knight:The letter demanded the chamber preserve all communication regarding its decision to deny Ridge Runner. All emails, texts, faxes, floppy disks, metadata, video, audio, thumb drives, everything. Then you're going to sue us. So then we're going to tie up whatever little money we have in legal fees, which means our Christmas parade gets canceled. Our tree lighting gets canceled because we have no funding to do that. So now you get to go tell the town that you canceled Christmas. Go ahead. As a bunch of Christians, tell this town that all of our Christmas festivities cannot be put on because your feelings are hurt.
49:56Because you didn't get into the chamber and you didn't get your propaganda picture. Get the fuck out of here.
50:03Meribah Knight:The threat letter hung over Gainesboro. So did Ridge Runner's growing stockpile of land, which they almost always paid for in cash. Then, exactly a week after the DQ sit-in, Ridge Runner announced its largest land purchase yet. 450 acres. An old family farm they'd acquired for$2.5 million. A stunning price by local standards. All told, Ridge Runner now controlled upwards of 1 ,200 acres in the county and beyond. Ridge Runner's footprint was growing so rapidly, it now eclipsed the size of Gainsborough itself. Locals would soon discover that this venture was connected to something much bigger, a vision of turmoil, collapse, and a new America.
50:54Meribah Knight:Next time on Our Town. Tell us the response to this, this dangerous venture of yours. Has someone already bought the land? Yes, yes. It's being divided up and sold as we speak. We need cities on a shining hill. There's no question that they were brought here intentionally. It means I was chosen by God. The old order was all coming to an end. She was determined to see what they were about. They're pouring money into this and they have a lot more to pour. They will start with one state and they have chosen Tennessee as that state.
51:33Meribah Knight:Our Town is written and reported by me, Mara Benight, and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lacks is our senior producer. Ken Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lacks. Original score and sound design by Alex Sugira. Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver, David Fox, and Laura Newcomb. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Alana Susnow, Bob Blau, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take Podcast team, and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster-Boer.
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From the publisher
Oh, the things you can find with an inquisitive mind – and a metal detector.
Today we’re bringing you Chapter 1 of Our Town, a limited-run series from The Big Take, hosted by Meribah Knight with Bloomberg’s Susan Berfield. The series tells the story of a battle over identity fought on small town soil, where acreage, heritage, and what it means to be an American are all up for grabs.
The limited-run series will publish on Fridays in The Big Take. We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer.
Hosted by Meribah Knight with Susan Berfield Produced by: Rebecca Laks with Julia Weaver and David Fox and help from Laura Newcombe Edited by: Ken Armstrong with Rebecca Laks Original Score and Mixing by: Alex Sugiura Fact-checking by: Annika Robbins Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.