# BONUS SERIES: Our Town Chapter 3 | One Little Bacon-Wrapped Sausage

An episode of [Bloomberg Tech](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1611767434), 11 Oct 2026, 46 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/41764a4f-fc64-4e11-89ba-ae7c0030ab5e/5d22ea18-317b-4a58-afb1-b4cf00a22c21/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=9caafc41-289c-4115-995d-ae7c0030ab75

Backers of the venture are big fans of a town in Idaho where a preacher with a flamethrower tells our reporters how much he hates feminism. Today on The Big Take: Chapter 3 of Our Town, a limited-run series from Bloomberg and The Big Take, hosted by Meribah Knight with Bloomberg’s Susan Berfield. Our Town tells the story of a battle over identity fought on one small town’s soil, where acreage, heritage, and what it means to be an American are all up for grabs. New episodes of Our Town publish on Mondays, but you can listen early on Fridays right here in The Big Take feed. 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.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
[0:04] Speaker 2: Podcasts.
[0:05] Speaker 3: Radio.
[0:06] Speaker 4: News.
[0:07] Speaker 5: Previously on Our Town.
[0:10] Speaker 6: I want to get back to the Ridge Runner and
[0:12] Speaker 6: the town that's being built, which I assume is a
[0:15] Speaker 6: fascist Christian theocracy.
[0:16] Speaker 1: That's what the TV news in Nashville has said.
[0:21] Speaker 7: This has been on my mind. It's on my mind
[0:23] Speaker 7: every day.
[0:23] Speaker 4: She was determined to see what they were about.
[0:26] Speaker 5: The healthy, natural, human way of life.
[0:29] Speaker 1: The Christian way of life.
[0:31] Speaker 7: The people backing these developments are very wealthy. If you
[0:34] Speaker 7: follow New Founding, and that takes you to Nate Fisher.
[0:39] Speaker 2: I've put millions of dollars into it.
[0:41] Speaker 3: And does your wife obey you?
[0:43] Speaker 1: Yes.
[0:44] Speaker 3: And why are you a Christian?
[0:46] Speaker 2: To fulfill that Genesis 1 Dominion mandate. Fill the earth
[0:49] Speaker 2: and subdue it.
[0:50] Speaker 3: Take dominion.
[0:51] Speaker 7: Has Christian nationalism come to Jackson County?
[1:04] Speaker 5: While Diana Knaff, the Gainesboro local, was doing her deep
[1:07] Speaker 5: dive to figure out who had come to her town
[1:10] Speaker 5: and what they really wanted, she came across yet another podcast.
[1:15] Speaker 5: It was an interview with Nate Fisher, the head of Newfounding,
[1:19] Speaker 5: the venture capital firm helping build the far-right community near
[1:23] Speaker 5: her home.
[1:24] Speaker 7: It was pretty early on. Nate Fisher, he was asked
[1:28] Speaker 7: by an interviewer.
[1:30] Speaker 1: Tell me about the Highland Rim Project.
[1:33] Speaker 8: We.
[1:34] Speaker 2: Own some land, we'll be buying more land, and we're
[1:36] Speaker 2: helping orchestrate moves of aligned people to the area. And
[1:39] Speaker 2: then it'll be a particular town where we'll actually have
[1:41] Speaker 2: a lot.
[1:42] Speaker 5: That town was, of course, Gainesboro, Diana's town.
[1:47] Speaker 7: Nate Fisher being asked by a reporter, what you're doing
[1:50] Speaker 7: there in Gainesboro, in Jackson County, sounds a lot like
[1:54] Speaker 7: what was done in Moscow.
[1:55] Speaker 9: Like Moscow, Idaho in the east is kind of what
[1:59] Speaker 9: it sounds like.
[2:00] Speaker 7: And he says, yes, you know, there are parallels there.
[2:03] Speaker 2: A lot of parallels to that.
[2:07] Speaker 5: Moscow, Idaho, a town more than 2,000 miles away from Gainesboro.
[2:13] Speaker 5: Did you know about Moscow before that?
[2:16] Speaker 7: No, it sent me researching and learning about Moscow.
[2:22] Speaker 5: Moscow, Diana discovered. had been the start of an ambitious experiment,
[2:27] Speaker 5: a prototype. And Gainsborough, it turned out, was meant to
[2:31] Speaker 5: be the next iteration. And if folks in Gainsborough wanted
[2:34] Speaker 5: a glimpse into one possible future, if Ridgerunner, the developer,
[2:39] Speaker 5: did plant its flag and gather its people, they could
[2:43] Speaker 5: look to Moscow.
[2:45] Speaker 7: It certainly gives you a prescient vision of what this
[2:49] Speaker 7: could become.
[2:50] Speaker 5: Prescient, yes, and alarming. But from this portal into Moscow,
[2:55] Speaker 5: Diana also saw another way to fight back. From Bloomberg News,
[3:09] Speaker 5: I'm Mare Benight, reporting along with Susan Burfield. And you're
[3:13] Speaker 5: listening to Our Town. This is Chapter 3, One Little
[3:18] Speaker 5: Bacon-Wrapped Sausage. The town of Moscow sits among the pine
[3:32] Speaker 5: forests of the Northwest. In the 1800s, the town went
[3:37] Speaker 5: by Hog Heaven, then Paradise Valley. Now it's Moscow, spelled
[3:43] Speaker 5: like the Russian city, yet pronounced Moscow. It's home to
[3:47] Speaker 5: the University of Idaho, but the town is also known
[3:51] Speaker 5: for something else.
[3:53] Speaker 1: Division.
[3:55] Speaker 5: In Moscow, a town of about 27,000, there are two
[3:57] Speaker 5: kinds of people. those affiliated with Christ Church, and those
[4:03] Speaker 5: who are not. Christ Church is a deeply conservative, evangelical,
[4:08] Speaker 5: and patriarchal denomination that has roiled the university town. Take
[4:14] Speaker 5: a walk down Main Street. It's only six blocks, and
[4:17] Speaker 5: you can see the divide with your own eyes. There's
[4:20] Speaker 5: seemingly two of everything. Coffee shops, restaurants, bookstores. One for
[4:26] Speaker 5: Christ Church members, who call themselves Kirkers, and one for
[4:30] Speaker 5: everyone else. Sometimes you can tell this from flags or
[4:34] Speaker 5: signs in the windows. All work, no woke for Kirkers.
[4:39] Speaker 5: Black Lives Matter or a pride flag for everyone else.
[4:43] Speaker 5: Kirker comes from the Scottish word for church, kirk. And
[4:47] Speaker 5: their goal, their church's goal, has always been to turn
[4:51] Speaker 5: Moscow into a town of Kirkers, a town under biblical law.
[4:58] Speaker 3: Happy Fourth of July, Moscow! Celebrate your freedom!
[5:03] Speaker 10: Freedom!
[5:06] Speaker 5: My reporting partner Susan and I went to Moscow in
[5:09] Speaker 5: the summer of 2025 for July 4th.
[5:13] Speaker 11: USA!
[5:15] Speaker 1: USA!
[5:16] Speaker 12: USA!
[5:17] Speaker 5: For the fourth year in a row, Kirkers put on
[5:20] Speaker 5: their own parade right down Main Street. It was the
[5:24] Speaker 5: only Fourth of July parade that day. Oh, say can
[5:28] Speaker 5: you see by the.
[5:32] Speaker 9: Dawn's early light.
[5:33] Speaker 5: In years past, protesters had lined the route, but not
[5:37] Speaker 5: this year. This year it was the absence of the
[5:40] Speaker 5: rest of Moscow that was noticeable. The only businesses that
[5:44] Speaker 5: stayed open on Main Street were Kirker. The people who
[5:47] Speaker 5: came to watch seemed mostly Kirker. Kirkers have a strong
[5:52] Speaker 5: entrepreneurial spirit. They've started lots of businesses and schools in Moscow.
[5:58] Speaker 5: And while Kirkers remain a minority in the town, their presence,
[6:01] Speaker 5: to some, can feel outsized and disruptive. To others, downright threatening.
[6:09] Speaker 5: Christchurch and Moscow have been in a years-long battle over, well,
[6:13] Speaker 5: almost everything. COVID requirements, taxes, zoning, even this parade. And
[6:22] Speaker 5: standing along the route, Smiling proudly was the man who
[6:26] Speaker 5: could take credit for cleaving Moscow in two, the head
[6:29] Speaker 5: of Christ Church, Doug Wilson. Wilson is tall, with piercing
[6:35] Speaker 5: blue eyes, a gray beard, a very grandfatherly presence. He
[6:40] Speaker 5: was there alongside his wife, Nancy, the church's matriarch, watching
[6:45] Speaker 5: the parade go by. Fifty years of hard work on display.
[6:54] Speaker 5: Wilson has gotten a lot of attention lately, inside and
[6:58] Speaker 5: outside Moscow. One big reason is that he's made himself
[7:02] Speaker 5: the de facto spokesperson for Christian nationalism, the movement to
[7:06] Speaker 5: turn America into a theocracy, for Christians to take over everything.
[7:13] Speaker 6: He's one of the rare American Christian pastors who is
[7:17] Speaker 6: willing to engage on questions of culture and politics. We
[7:21] Speaker 6: are honored to have him. His name is Doug Wilson.
[7:23] Speaker 3: It's an honor to be here. Thank you.
[7:24] Speaker 6: Thank you.
[7:25] Speaker 5: This is Doug Wilson on Tucker Carlson in 2024, his
[7:29] Speaker 5: first appearance.
[7:30] Speaker 6: So I'm sincerely confused by the phrase Christian nationalism, which
[7:34] Speaker 6: seems like an attack on Christianity to me. What is
[7:38] Speaker 6: it to the extent you understand it? And are you
[7:39] Speaker 6: a Christian nationalist?
[7:41] Speaker 3: So I'm willing to be a Christian nationalist because... Because
[7:45] Speaker 3: I prefer that phrase to the phrase I usually get called.
[7:49] Speaker 1: What do you usually get called?
[7:50] Speaker 3: White supremacist. White supremacist? Slave advocate. Oh. Racist.
[7:55] Speaker 5: Wilson rejects all those labels, except, of course, Christian nationalist.
[8:01] Speaker 3: As a Christian, I would like that national structure to
[8:04] Speaker 3: conform to the things that God wants and not the
[8:07] Speaker 3: things that man wants. That's Christian nationalism.
[8:11] Speaker 5: For Wilson, turning America into a theocracy, a country with
[8:16] Speaker 5: a Christian constitution, is a generational mission. This is what
[8:20] Speaker 5: Christ Church has been trying to do in Moscow for
[8:23] Speaker 5: the past half century.
[8:25] Speaker 3: Our tagline is all of Christ for all of life.
[8:28] Speaker 3: So we want to be seven day a week, 24
[8:30] Speaker 3: hour Christians.
[8:32] Speaker 5: Here's what it would look like. A place where men
[8:34] Speaker 5: would be commanded to take authority. Women must submit. where
[8:39] Speaker 5: only heads of households, mostly men, could vote, where same-sex
[8:44] Speaker 5: marriage is outlawed and abortion banned.
[8:47] Speaker 3: Women are created by God to be helpers to their husbands,
[8:52] Speaker 3: to conceive children, to bear them, to nurse them, to
[8:58] Speaker 3: take care of them. They're built by God to be domestic.
[9:02] Speaker 3: And when they are, this is the radicals, they're happy.
[9:12] Speaker 3: And when men are privileged.
[9:16] Speaker 5: This is not the Christianity of the normies and the grillers,
[9:19] Speaker 5: as Wilson says. His ideology is absolutist and prescriptive, filled
[9:25] Speaker 5: with clear rules, a rigid framework for how to live,
[9:29] Speaker 5: how to parent, how to husband, how to wife. Over
[9:33] Speaker 5: the years, he's published scores of books explaining it all,
[9:37] Speaker 5: books with titles like Future Men, Virtuous, a study for
[9:41] Speaker 5: ladies at every age, and it's good to be a man.
[9:48] Speaker 5: Wilson's ideas, his rules, have attracted evangelicals from all over
[9:53] Speaker 5: the country. And it's these ideas, and the people in
[9:56] Speaker 5: Moscow who follow them, that have divided the towns. with
[10:00] Speaker 5: one group trying to overtake another. But it wasn't always
[10:04] Speaker 5: like this. Before Wilson, before Christchurch, Moscow was just a
[10:10] Speaker 5: typical university town, a blue spot in a red state.
[10:14] Speaker 8: There were people from all over the country that came
[10:16] Speaker 8: here because the University of Idaho was really appealing. This was,
[10:22] Speaker 8: you know, this is kind of the cosmopolitan.
[10:24] Speaker 14: Part of Idaho, right?
[10:26] Speaker 5: Marilyn Beckett sat in the back of what Wilson calls
[10:30] Speaker 5: an enemy coffee shop as she recounted her move to
[10:33] Speaker 5: Moscow in the early 1970s. She was 18 years old
[10:37] Speaker 5: from a small, ultra-conservative town in Washington state when she
[10:41] Speaker 5: arrived in Moscow.
[10:43] Speaker 8: You know, I was a young woman, and when I
[10:46] Speaker 8: came here to go to college... That kind of cosmopolitan
[10:49] Speaker 8: feel for a small town was really just so uplifting,
[10:55] Speaker 8: you know? It just really made me feel a part
[10:59] Speaker 8: of something, and I think that's probably why I'm still here.
[11:04] Speaker 5: Doug Wilson also wanted to be part of something. When
[11:09] Speaker 5: he moved to Moscow in the 1970s, after serving in
[11:12] Speaker 5: the Navy, he went to the University of Idaho, like Marilyn.
[11:17] Speaker 5: then became a pastor.
[11:19] Speaker 8: He was just a few blocks away in a garage.
[11:23] Speaker 5: Back then, Wilson was preaching in his dad's garage. Congregants
[11:27] Speaker 5: sat on folding chairs next to cars in mid-repair. And
[11:31] Speaker 5: Wilson delivered his sermons beside a drum set and Jesus murals.
[11:36] Speaker 5: It was very 70s. God's garage, they called it.
[11:39] Speaker 8: It wasn't like he had a big message that anybody
[11:43] Speaker 8: was listening to.
[11:45] Speaker 5: Wilson was easy to dismiss. playing a mellower, shaggier version
[11:49] Speaker 5: of himself. You know, he was a joke.
[11:52] Speaker 8: People used to laugh at him, make fun of him.
[11:55] Speaker 5: But soon, Doug Wilson outgrew God's Garage. He sharpened his
[11:59] Speaker 5: ideology and strategy, started a primary school to educate the
[12:03] Speaker 5: next generation of Kirkers, then a publishing company to spread
[12:07] Speaker 5: his gospel, followed by a college to train leaders for
[12:11] Speaker 5: the Christian society he envisioned. Wilson even launched his own denomination,
[12:17] Speaker 5: All in just two decades. But even with all that,
[12:23] Speaker 5: to many in Moscow, Wilson was still an oddity of sorts.
[12:28] Speaker 5: And Wilson knew it. He wasn't getting the attention he craved,
[12:32] Speaker 5: nor the antagonism.
[12:33] Speaker 3: All the potential for hostility was there. But it wasn't
[12:38] Speaker 3: in evidence because there was no real awareness or sense
[12:43] Speaker 3: of a threat from Christians.
[12:45] Speaker 5: Wilson wanted hostility between the church and town. That, to him,
[12:50] Speaker 5: would be a sign of progress. Worship is warfare, is
[12:54] Speaker 5: a Christchurch motto. But so far, he'd failed to provoke
[12:58] Speaker 5: the town. To locals, it seemed preposterous that Wilson and
[13:03] Speaker 5: his Kirkers could radically change Moscow.
[13:06] Speaker 9: Yeah, but back then, too, it was pretty fringe.
[13:09] Speaker 15: Such a fringe thing, yeah.
[13:11] Speaker 5: Nikki Woodland and her husband Brett moved to Moscow from Portland, Oregon,
[13:16] Speaker 5: two decades ago to be closer to Brett's family. Nikki
[13:20] Speaker 5: said she'd give Moscow a year.
[13:21] Speaker 15: I was like, nobody lives on the Palouse.
[13:24] Speaker 7: You go to school on the Palouse.
[13:25] Speaker 9: You don't live there.
[13:26] Speaker 5: The Palouse, a delightful word, and also the scenic hilly
[13:30] Speaker 5: region where Moscow sits.
[13:33] Speaker 15: And that was 21 years ago. So we really like
[13:37] Speaker 15: it here.
[13:37] Speaker 5: Yeah, it worked out. They now run a popular restaurant
[13:41] Speaker 5: and a motel in town while raising three kids.
[13:44] Speaker 9: We kind of fell in love with Moscow because it
[13:46] Speaker 9: did remind us a little bit of like a mini Portland.
[13:50] Speaker 5: They hadn't heard of Doug Wilson or Christ Church before
[13:53] Speaker 5: they arrived in Moscow. But by the mid-2000s, Wilson was
[13:57] Speaker 5: finally starting to provoke the hostility from the town that
[14:00] Speaker 5: he wanted.
[14:01] Speaker 15: Almost immediately, we started hearing... about it. And the big
[14:05] Speaker 15: thing that happened right before we moved there was they
[14:08] Speaker 15: have this coffee shop called Butzer's, and they had distributed
[14:13] Speaker 15: these pamphlets.
[14:15] Speaker 5: Southern slavery as it was. Wilson had actually written it
[14:20] Speaker 5: about a decade earlier, but it hadn't gotten much attention
[14:23] Speaker 5: in Moscow until he organized a conference at the local university,
[14:27] Speaker 5: and the pamphlet was being distributed around town.
[14:30] Speaker 15: Explaining how slavery was mutually beneficial to the slave and
[14:34] Speaker 15: a slave owner, and yeah.
[14:37] Speaker 5: Slavery as it existed in the South, it read, was
[14:41] Speaker 5: a relationship based on mutual affection.
[14:44] Speaker 16: It was like a, you know, a give and take
[14:46] Speaker 16: between the slave and the slave owner, and then African
[14:48] Speaker 16: Americans ended up staying and having a better life than they.
[14:51] Speaker 1: Would have back in Africa.
[14:54] Speaker 5: Moscow just couldn't look away. Chatter about the pamphlet erupted
[14:58] Speaker 5: across town.
[14:59] Speaker 15: It was immediate.
[15:01] Speaker 5: The town paper ran dozens of stories. There were angry editorials,
[15:05] Speaker 5: letters to the editor, ads condemning Wilson. People protested in
[15:09] Speaker 5: the streets and staged counter-events during Wilson's conference. But locals
[15:15] Speaker 5: also probably didn't realize that Wilson had other ways to
[15:19] Speaker 5: spread his ideas, like in his school curriculums that he
[15:23] Speaker 5: sold across the country. Around that time, there was one
[15:27] Speaker 5: assignment titled, A Slave Letter. Pretend you live in the South,
[15:32] Speaker 5: it begins. Write a letter to a relative or friend
[15:36] Speaker 5: in the North who thinks that all slaves are mistreated
[15:39] Speaker 5: and beaten. Explain how your family treats your slaves well.
[15:45] Speaker 5: Another lesson instructs children to pretend to be a slave and, quote,
[15:50] Speaker 5: go outside, act out what it may have been like
[15:53] Speaker 5: to be on the run. It suggests students who own
[15:56] Speaker 5: hunting dogs role play with them. Take turns hiding in
[16:00] Speaker 5: the woods, it says, and let the dogs find you.
[16:06] Speaker 5: By the time the town was waking up to Wilson's ideas,
[16:09] Speaker 5: he was decades into the work, expanding his sphere of
[16:13] Speaker 5: influence and shaping the next generation of Kirkers. During the
[16:18] Speaker 5: year of the pamphlet, the church did something else, something
[16:22] Speaker 5: more permanent and very worrying to many people in Moscow.
[16:27] Speaker 5: Wilson's college, New St. Andrews, which had been founded in
[16:30] Speaker 5: a small house with makeshift classrooms, purchased a new building downtown,
[16:36] Speaker 5: right on the corner of Main Street, next to Moscow's
[16:39] Speaker 5: Friendship Square. Friendship Square, for decades, had been home to
[16:44] Speaker 5: community celebrations, concerts, protests, and now it would be the
[16:50] Speaker 5: hub of Christchurch's growing educational empire. Education is Wilson's long-term
[16:56] Speaker 5: strategy to convert Moscow and the nation into a theocracy.
[17:02] Speaker 5: Wilson calls his schools his munitions factories. There are over
[17:06] Speaker 5: 500 of them across the country, places that raise boys
[17:10] Speaker 5: to be warriors, to practice a, quote, theology of fistfighting.
[17:16] Speaker 1: Wanted. Young men to rebuild Western civilization.
[17:21] Speaker 5: This is an ad for New St. Andrews College.
[17:24] Speaker 1: Must be unafraid of pain, blisters, intellectual rigor.
[17:29] Speaker 5: A way to recruit young men.
[17:31] Speaker 1: Must be impervious to manipulative women of all sorts. Giggling virgins.
[17:36] Speaker 1: Cyber skanks.
[17:38] Speaker 5: Recruit them into his fight for a Christian nation.
[17:41] Speaker 3: Exhaustion.
[17:43] Speaker 1: Guaranteed. Conflict.
[17:48] Speaker 3: Guaranteed.
[17:49] Speaker 1: Mortality. Guaranteed.
[17:54] Speaker 3: New St.
[17:55] Speaker 1: Andrews College. Liberal Arts for the Undaunted.
[18:02] Speaker 5: Now, this liberal arts school for the undaunted was unavoidable,
[18:07] Speaker 5: standing right in the middle of downtown Moscow, in the
[18:10] Speaker 5: middle of Friendship Square.
[18:12] Speaker 16: And so now, you'd hear about Doug Wilson and Christchurch,
[18:16] Speaker 16: and you'd see some college kids downtown.
[18:20] Speaker 9: Now we're just inundated with hundreds of kids.
[18:22] Speaker 5: Brett Woodland, the restaurant owner again.
[18:25] Speaker 16: And so now it's not just their ideology in your face,
[18:29] Speaker 16: but it's physically they're everywhere now, downtown.
[18:32] Speaker 8: It's like, how did the city do that?
[18:35] Speaker 5: How did they let that happen? Looking back, it's clear
[18:40] Speaker 5: to locals what a decisive moment this purchase had been.
[18:42] Speaker 15: I think that's where Moscow went wrong.
[18:45] Speaker 16: That was kind of the beginning of their foothold in
[18:48] Speaker 16: the heart of downtown.
[18:50] Speaker 5: That foothold was the start of Christchurch staking its claim
[18:54] Speaker 5: on Main Street.
[18:56] Speaker 16: They started buying up a lot of downtown, like big buildings,
[19:00] Speaker 16: historical buildings downtown. And now, you know, their schools are
[19:03] Speaker 16: downtown and people like us.
[19:06] Speaker 9: Are like, wait, what just happened?
[19:08] Speaker 5: Kirker started more companies, opened more restaurants, and made room
[19:12] Speaker 5: for more new St. Andrews students.
[19:15] Speaker 13: People will see a new business come in and they'll say,
[19:17] Speaker 13: who owns that?
[19:18] Speaker 5: Julia Parker has been in Moscow since 2000. Who's going
[19:22] Speaker 5: to do repairs on your home? What doctor they'll go
[19:25] Speaker 5: to and what doctor they won't go to? And you
[19:27] Speaker 5: know what they're asking is, are they affiliated with Wilson? That,
[19:32] Speaker 5: as a citizen, is kind of this cognitive dissonance that
[19:35] Speaker 5: I have to deal with all the time.
[19:37] Speaker 15: We just did not think that they would be able
[19:42] Speaker 15: to accomplish everything that they had.
[19:44] Speaker 16: And it's silly because they said from the get-go, we
[19:47] Speaker 16: want to make Moscow a fundamentalist town.
[19:50] Speaker 9: And we're all like, yeah, yeah, whatever, whatever. Moscow's too weird,
[19:53] Speaker 9: too liberal for that.
[19:57] Speaker 5: But for all the social and economic power Kirkers have amassed,
[20:01] Speaker 5: what they don't have, almost 50 years in, is political power.
[20:06] Speaker 5: Moscow has kept them from that. Doesn't mean they haven't tried, though.
[20:11] Speaker 5: In the mid-' 80s, Doug Wilson himself made an unsuccessful run
[20:14] Speaker 5: for city council. Since then, Kirkers have entered other races— for
[20:20] Speaker 5: city council, for mayor, for school board, the library— with very
[20:24] Speaker 5: little success.
[20:25] Speaker 11: We're terrible at politics.
[20:28] Speaker 5: Andrew Kraposchetz, a Christchurch elder and entrepreneur, founded a PAC
[20:32] Speaker 5: that funded three local candidates— And I'm.
[20:35] Speaker 11: Going to try and push on these candidates. And I
[20:37] Speaker 11: did that because I had nothing else to do with
[20:38] Speaker 11: my time.
[20:39] Speaker 5: One for mayor and two for city council. The men
[20:42] Speaker 5: he backed were conservative Christians, but not Kirkers.
[20:46] Speaker 11: So I did the darn thing and I raised some
[20:49] Speaker 11: money and it was great.
[20:51] Speaker 5: They all lost. Now he's reflecting a bit.
[20:56] Speaker 11: I will say that one of my great gifts in
[20:58] Speaker 11: life is mobilizing the left in town. So if I
[21:01] Speaker 11: get involved personally in any election, I feel like the
[21:05] Speaker 11: voter turnout on the left is unbelievable.
[21:09] Speaker 13: People saw his name and probably said, oh, well, now
[21:12] Speaker 13: I know who not to vote for.
[21:13] Speaker 5: Julia Parker had been elected to the city council just
[21:16] Speaker 5: a few years before, in 2021. She was part of an,
[21:20] Speaker 5: albeit briefly, all-female council.
[21:23] Speaker 13: You know, and it wasn't just all women, but it
[21:25] Speaker 13: was all really great women. We weren't all exactly the
[21:30] Speaker 13: same political stripe either, but it was kind of a
[21:34] Speaker 13: nice little, um, fuck you. My mother won't listen to this, right?
[21:40] Speaker 5: It was also, she says, a way to remind Moscow,
[21:43] Speaker 5: and those beyond, that Christ's church wasn't all powerful.
[21:47] Speaker 13: They have an outsized presence in this, like, attention economy.
[21:53] Speaker 13: And I don't think that translates into real concrete numbers
[21:59] Speaker 13: or influence.
[22:00] Speaker 5: Political influence. But they're still trying. Andrew Kraposchetz, the church elder,
[22:06] Speaker 5: is building a big housing development on the edge of town.
[22:09] Speaker 5: Five miles away is another Kirker-led development. Neither of these
[22:14] Speaker 5: are just for Kirkers, but some will move there, and
[22:18] Speaker 5: they will vote in Moscow elections. In the meantime... No
[22:23] Speaker 5: prize is too small for Kirkers.
[22:25] Speaker 16: They will run people for the local food co-op board.
[22:31] Speaker 9: The co-op, that's our thing.
[22:32] Speaker 5: I mean, come on, that's, you know, that's... More from Moscow,
[22:37] Speaker 5: after the break.
[22:45] Speaker 9: Good morning.
[22:46] Speaker 3: Good to meet you.
[22:47] Speaker 4: Nice to meet you.
[22:48] Speaker 5: We met Doug Wilson this past April at the headquarters
[22:52] Speaker 5: of his publishing company, a large, newly renovated space right
[22:56] Speaker 5: on Main Street that was once Moscow's flagship department store.
[23:00] Speaker 5: I was waiting to see if you might know where
[23:02] Speaker 5: my name came from.
[23:02] Speaker 9: Meribah.
[23:05] Speaker 3: Yes, it is in Arabia, the waters of Meribah.
[23:13] Speaker 8: You passed the pop quiz.
[23:14] Speaker 12: Yes, I did.
[23:16] Speaker 5: Wilson talks to a lot of journalists. He's really adept
[23:19] Speaker 5: at it. He's charismatic, always ready to spar, tries to amuse.
[23:25] Speaker 5: Tucked into the back corner of the room was Wilson's flamethrower.
[23:29] Speaker 5: He likes to make videos where he straps it on
[23:32] Speaker 5: and lights stuff on fire.
[23:33] Speaker 8: We chatted with Wilson for the better part of two hours.
[23:43] Speaker 5: About Moscow.
[23:45] Speaker 3: Jesus said a house divided cannot stand. Being perpetually at
[23:48] Speaker 3: daggers drawn is not good for any society, any community,
[23:52] Speaker 3: any town.
[23:53] Speaker 5: About his rise.
[23:54] Speaker 9: So what's changed?
[23:56] Speaker 3: So I think that the fundamental thing that has changed
[24:00] Speaker 3: is the country.
[24:01] Speaker 5: About his feelings on things like feminism.
[24:04] Speaker 3: I hate feminism, so I just hate feminism.
[24:07] Speaker 11: Sorry to hear that.
[24:09] Speaker 5: And we talked about that one critical area where the
[24:12] Speaker 5: church has fallen short, local politics.
[24:16] Speaker 3: Moscow remains a liberal town, primarily in terms of elections.
[24:21] Speaker 5: Wilson says the church doesn't have a master plan for
[24:23] Speaker 5: local politics, because if it did, it would be failing.
[24:28] Speaker 12: So political power isn't necessary for what you ultimately want?
[24:32] Speaker 3: No, it's not necessary. Correct.
[24:36] Speaker 1: It's the caboose.
[24:37] Speaker 5: But Wilson says it's only a matter of time before
[24:40] Speaker 5: Kirkers get there.
[24:42] Speaker 3: The people who are freaked out about us sometimes talk
[24:45] Speaker 3: as though they're afraid of a military takeover or some
[24:48] Speaker 3: sort of hostile takeover. And that's not a legit worry
[24:52] Speaker 3: at all. But as regards to the substance of what
[24:55] Speaker 3: they're worried about, yeah, they have got every reason to
[24:58] Speaker 3: be worried.
[24:58] Speaker 9: You will be able.
[25:00] Speaker 1: To take over.
[25:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, takeover sounds militaristic. I would just say organic growth.
[25:06] Speaker 3: I have three kids. I have 18 grandkids. In the meantime,
[25:11] Speaker 3: the local liberal paleo hippie vibe is 1.7 children. It
[25:16] Speaker 3: seems to me that we're past the point of no return.
[25:19] Speaker 3: This is what's going to happen.
[25:23] Speaker 7: So once there's enough people who are sharing your beliefs.
[25:26] Speaker 3: There will be people like that in power. And what
[25:28] Speaker 3: would we call that when it happens? I'd call it democracy.
[25:36] Speaker 3: So Right down here on the right is a place
[25:40] Speaker 3: called Roman Roads. So just on this stretch, one block,
[25:44] Speaker 3: two publishing houses.
[25:46] Speaker 5: After our interview, Wilson took us on a walk down
[25:48] Speaker 5: Main Street. On our way out, we passed a massive
[25:52] Speaker 5: photo of Wilson with Charlie Kirk. Across, in big letters,
[25:56] Speaker 5: it read, Give Everything.
[25:58] Speaker 3: All right, so let's walk just one block up this way.
[26:03] Speaker 5: We come to a coffee shop. with its pride and
[26:06] Speaker 5: Black Lives Matter signs. One Wilson refers to as the
[26:10] Speaker 5: enemy coffee shop, not a place he'd go into.
[26:13] Speaker 3: I'd rather not go there. Like the coffee shop we're approaching?
[26:17] Speaker 3: And they'd probably rather not have me come in. Do
[26:21] Speaker 3: you go into businesses that aren't Kirker-owned? Oh, yeah. There's
[26:25] Speaker 3: a bagel shop that I've not gone to recently, but
[26:27] Speaker 3: it's a really good one.
[26:29] Speaker 5: The shops on Main Street are intermingled, some Kirker, some not.
[26:34] Speaker 5: But those who know... No witch's witch.
[26:36] Speaker 3: Taphouse kitchen. Some of our people.
[26:39] Speaker 5: Just beyond, there's a 30,000 square foot building.
[26:42] Speaker 3: So that's the old Cadillac Jacks nightclub.
[26:46] Speaker 5: Soon to be New St. Andrews' north campus. In the
[26:49] Speaker 5: three blocks that we've walked, what's the footprint of Christ
[26:54] Speaker 5: Church and also just the parishioners, if you want to
[26:57] Speaker 5: break it down?
[26:58] Speaker 3: Maybe say 30 to 40 percent, something like that.
[27:02] Speaker 5: Meanwhile, Kirkers account for only about 11% of Moscow's population.
[27:08] Speaker 3: Everything comes to him who hustles while he.
[27:12] Speaker 7: Waits.
[27:12] Speaker 5: Then we approached New St. Andrews' main building, the Foothold,
[27:16] Speaker 5: the building Doug Wilson is still proud to talk about
[27:19] Speaker 5: more than 20 years later. Its purchase, he told us earlier,
[27:24] Speaker 5: was meant to send a message.
[27:26] Speaker 3: It was symbolic. It was strategic. It was on Friendship Square.
[27:31] Speaker 3: When we bought that building, we were doing, here, let's
[27:35] Speaker 3: touch your eyeball. It was a bit of a provocation.
[27:38] Speaker 3: And the Friendship Square was, before that, pot smokers and
[27:42] Speaker 3: hacky sack players.
[27:44] Speaker 5: Wilson would like New St. Andrews to take over even
[27:47] Speaker 5: more of downtown. But a few years ago, the city
[27:50] Speaker 5: passed a new law that limits schools to only two
[27:53] Speaker 5: buildings downtown. This posed a roadblock for New St. Andrews' expansion.
[27:59] Speaker 5: But remember that hustle Wilson talked about?
[28:02] Speaker 3: So over here on the left on the corner.
[28:04] Speaker 5: Wilson pointed to a building across the street.
[28:08] Speaker 3: We leased it.
[28:09] Speaker 5: And to get around the law.
[28:11] Speaker 3: So we created another business, Moscow Business Services, Moscow BS.
[28:18] Speaker 3: And we farm our work out to them.
[28:22] Speaker 5: That signature hustle. It found a loophole.
[28:25] Speaker 3: The city was just yanking us around. So we were creative.
[28:30] Speaker 5: Then Wilson lights up.
[28:33] Speaker 3: And then, have you seen the church hall? There's 30
[28:35] Speaker 3: acres there.
[28:37] Speaker 5: Even more land on the eastern edge of Moscow. 30
[28:42] Speaker 5: acres on Dominion Road.
[28:45] Speaker 3: They've just broken ground on the Tolkien building.
[28:48] Speaker 5: Wilson is a big Lord of the Rings fan. The
[28:51] Speaker 5: resources to acquire this much land and the buildings downtown
[28:55] Speaker 5: come from a few different revenue streams. There's the congregation itself.
[29:00] Speaker 3: So our people are giving, tithing people.
[29:02] Speaker 5: Kirkers are asked to give 10% of their income. Then
[29:06] Speaker 5: there's what comes from the publishing company, which Wilson says
[29:10] Speaker 5: has an annual revenue in the single-digit millions. Christchurch's expansion
[29:16] Speaker 5: is something locals have tracked for years now. They know
[29:19] Speaker 5: it well at this point.
[29:21] Speaker 16: They're very dedicated, they're very well-funded, and they definitely have
[29:25] Speaker 16: their eyes on the prize.
[29:26] Speaker 5: But then the pandemic came. and Moscow suddenly saw Christchurch
[29:32] Speaker 5: as an immediate threat, not a distant one. The town
[29:36] Speaker 5: had been quick to implement mask mandates, bans on publicization, gatherings,
[29:41] Speaker 5: and Wilson openly defied both. He held church services, let
[29:45] Speaker 5: a psalm sing outside City Hall with dozens of people,
[29:49] Speaker 5: and a huge wooden cross. One local business owner said
[29:53] Speaker 5: this behavior struck a nerve with locals, many of whom
[29:57] Speaker 5: hadn't paid much mind to the church.
[29:59] Speaker 12: Many of those people were like, now I do see
[30:01] Speaker 12: this as a threat, you know, not seeing them as
[30:04] Speaker 12: so harmless anymore. That they were making a statement like,
[30:08] Speaker 12: we've got our own rulebook. We're not looking out for
[30:11] Speaker 12: the rest of you.
[30:14] Speaker 5: And so in the wake of the pandemic, locals got
[30:17] Speaker 5: more assertive. And after years of Kirker scooping up real estate,
[30:21] Speaker 5: residents decided they could too.
[30:24] Speaker 9: There's a couple of different groups.
[30:26] Speaker 5: That Locals began pooling their money, forming investment groups, so
[30:31] Speaker 5: they're ready to buy the buildings themselves.
[30:33] Speaker 15: The idea of it just being ready to go, and
[30:36] Speaker 15: then there's one large one, it's like a co-op, that's
[30:40] Speaker 15: been set up. They ask for $ 1, 000 from each investor,
[30:45] Speaker 15: and I think it's really important. And as much as
[30:48] Speaker 15: you can, buy up real estate before they do.
[30:52] Speaker 16: Yeah, put your money where your mouth is kind of
[30:54] Speaker 16: a deal. Like, if you really do care about this,
[30:57] Speaker 16: You can't just sit back.
[30:58] Speaker 3: And bitch about it.
[30:58] Speaker 12: Complain about it.
[31:01] Speaker 5: The investors are just getting started. So far, they haven't
[31:04] Speaker 5: actually bought any real estate. They say they haven't been
[31:07] Speaker 5: able to find the right building, one worth their money.
[31:11] Speaker 5: But they're ready. Nonetheless, to some, it's hope enough that
[31:15] Speaker 5: these groups are even forming. Their town is still progressive,
[31:19] Speaker 5: still weird, still largely Moscow.
[31:22] Speaker 15: They have not taken over the spirit of the town yet.
[31:25] Speaker 13: You know, we are a pretty tight-knit community.
[31:28] Speaker 5: It's been 26 years since Julia Parker, the former city
[31:31] Speaker 5: council member, moved to Moscow. And she's learned a few
[31:34] Speaker 5: things about herself and protecting her town.
[31:38] Speaker 13: I think it's hard, but I think being vocal about
[31:41] Speaker 13: it when you push back, you know, publicly, I think
[31:46] Speaker 13: it's valuable because you know that they're going to keep
[31:49] Speaker 13: pushing this narrative that they've already taken over. You know,
[31:53] Speaker 13: that it's a done deal. And that now your town
[31:56] Speaker 13: is Wilsonville. It's been funny, you know, Moscow, Idaho seems
[32:03] Speaker 13: like we're 30 years behind in terms of fashion. And,
[32:09] Speaker 13: you know, like we're not on the cutting edge. But
[32:12] Speaker 13: one thing we have done for the last 50 years
[32:15] Speaker 13: is fought against Christian nationalism. And so, you know, here
[32:19] Speaker 13: we are on the cutting edge.
[32:21] Speaker 5: Yes, they were. Moscow, it turns out, is the place
[32:25] Speaker 5: that others elsewhere could look to as a warning or
[32:30] Speaker 5: as a beacon.
[32:33] Speaker 1: People are asking, can that be replicated in other places?
[32:37] Speaker 3: Can this be done elsewhere?
[32:40] Speaker 9: My answer is yes.
[32:41] Speaker 5: This is Wilson talking on the New Founding podcast about it.
[32:45] Speaker 5: New Founding is that venture firm behind the Gainsborough project.
[32:49] Speaker 3: And I think that's the whole design. What we're trying
[32:52] Speaker 3: to do here is a little hors d'oeuvre. It's one
[32:56] Speaker 3: little bacon-wrapped sausage, that's all it is. That is an
[33:02] Speaker 3: indicator of foretaste, that this is actually doable.
[33:07] Speaker 1: On planet Earth.
[33:09] Speaker 5: I am now convinced that places like Moscow are the future,
[33:13] Speaker 5: something that may go nationwide, Josh Abitoy wrote on social
[33:17] Speaker 5: media in November 2022. Abitoy, the CEO of Ridgerunner, had
[33:23] Speaker 5: just taken a trip to Moscow. He'd been invited to
[33:26] Speaker 5: speak to the board of New St. Andrews College. While
[33:29] Speaker 5: he was there, he met with Doug Wilson and spent
[33:33] Speaker 5: time at Kirker Businesses. In one tweet, Abitoy described the
[33:38] Speaker 5: vital joie de vivre of downtown Moscow.
[33:40] Speaker 2: There's like a dynamism and an upward mobility in a
[33:44] Speaker 2: community like that.
[33:46] Speaker 5: Less than two years later, Abitoy began talking about a
[33:49] Speaker 5: plan for his own Moscow.
[33:52] Speaker 7: So we just got back from an undisclosed location in
[33:55] Speaker 7: the mountains of Appalachia, scouting land and looking at doing
[33:59] Speaker 7: a pretty big real estate deal up there.
[34:03] Speaker 5: This would become the Highland Rim Project, the partnership between
[34:07] Speaker 5: Ridge Runner and New Founding, Nate Fisher's venture capital firm.
[34:15] Speaker 5: Back in Gainesboro, Diana Knaff was connecting the dots.
[34:19] Speaker 7: You know, well, there are definitely parallels. There are similarities
[34:23] Speaker 7: that it all kind of gelled.
[34:25] Speaker 5: Moscow had always been an experiment meant to be scaled.
[34:29] Speaker 5: And now that experiment was in Tennessee, in Gainesboro, right
[34:34] Speaker 5: outside Diana's door.
[34:35] Speaker 7: I mean, we are a little test tube in a
[34:41] Speaker 7: very wide-ranging experiment.
[34:44] Speaker 5: But Nate Fisher and Josh Abitoy had a different timeline
[34:47] Speaker 5: than Wilson. To build the America they want to live in,
[34:51] Speaker 5: not in generations. They want to build it now. And
[34:55] Speaker 5: one reason they think they can really troubled Diana.
[34:59] Speaker 2: Moscow remains, they remain a political minority there.
[35:03] Speaker 7: Moscow continued to be troublesome to Doug Wilson.
[35:07] Speaker 2: So they remain in many ways at war with the
[35:09] Speaker 2: town council and things.
[35:11] Speaker 7: You know, the difference is that the community that we're
[35:14] Speaker 7: building in, our values aligned.
[35:16] Speaker 2: Our goal is something where we actually have a where
[35:20] Speaker 2: we actually have the concentration, where we can control the town.
[35:24] Speaker 7: And we can control them.
[35:27] Speaker 5: With a population that was mostly white, conservative, Christian, and
[35:32] Speaker 5: no university in town to muck things up, Fisher and
[35:35] Speaker 5: Abitoy assumed they'd found the perfect spot in Gainesboro.
[35:39] Speaker 7: The warning I took from that was that, looking at
[35:42] Speaker 7: Doug Wilson, when someone feels that they can control your
[35:47] Speaker 7: community because they are convinced that you believe exactly the
[35:52] Speaker 7: way they believe, that tells you that they've got big
[35:56] Speaker 7: plans for your little piece of the world.
[36:00] Speaker 5: Big plans for Gainesboro and beyond.
[36:05] Speaker 14: What Moscow is, is an example of the kind of
[36:07] Speaker 14: things that we should be building, right? Build Moscow's all
[36:10] Speaker 14: over the place, right? It shouldn't be the only one.
[36:13] Speaker 5: Andrew Isker, the Christian nationalist podcaster who is planning to
[36:17] Speaker 5: build a church at the heart of the also looked
[36:20] Speaker 5: to Wilson for inspiration.
[36:23] Speaker 14: Why is there no one else? Why is there no
[36:26] Speaker 14: one else in evangelicalism that speaks that way, that says,
[36:30] Speaker 14: we're not giving up, we're not going to surrender? Why
[36:32] Speaker 14: is there no one else willing to fight? That's the
[36:35] Speaker 14: reason why people are attracted to Moscow.
[36:39] Speaker 5: Isker actually knew Doug Wilson well. He'd been his intern.
[36:43] Speaker 5: He'd studied under Wilson in one of his munitions factories.
[36:47] Speaker 10: At Grayfriars Hall, we know that the Word of God
[36:49] Speaker 10: is living and active.
[36:51] Speaker 5: Grayfriars Hall, Wilson's seminary, was established a few years after
[36:56] Speaker 5: New St. Andrews College.
[36:57] Speaker 10: We live in times of turmoil and division. Times that
[37:00] Speaker 10: require holy and faithful churches, led by mature pastors who
[37:04] Speaker 10: preach God's Word with courage and clarity. But many seminaries
[37:09] Speaker 10: are in the business of training soft men in loser theologies.
[37:13] Speaker 10: teaching their students to unhitch from the Old Testament, drift
[37:17] Speaker 10: with the cultural current, and live beneath the progressive gaze.
[37:21] Speaker 10: Not to mention the progressive gaze.
[37:24] Speaker 3: Gross.
[37:25] Speaker 5: And now, Isker had brought all he'd learned, and then some,
[37:29] Speaker 5: to Gainsborough.
[37:31] Speaker 3: Light the fire.
[37:32] Speaker 10: Sharpen the sword.
[37:34] Speaker 3: Use the hammer.
[37:38] Speaker 14: Our enemies have power here, and they, we know... that
[37:41] Speaker 14: they are willing to destroy us.
[37:44] Speaker 5: He was there to carry on Wilson's mission.
[37:46] Speaker 14: It's a spiritual war. I mean, we are, we're doing
[37:50] Speaker 14: war with demons here.
[37:53] Speaker 5: To gather people to his new church, to the town.
[37:57] Speaker 5: But even though Isker was trained by Wilson, it's not
[38:00] Speaker 5: clear if his church would be welcome in Wilson's denomination.
[38:05] Speaker 5: Wilson says it might not.
[38:07] Speaker 3: He is very affable, very I like him a lot.
[38:11] Speaker 3: I had a good relationship with him while he was here.
[38:14] Speaker 5: Now, Wilson says he's got some differences with Isker, and
[38:19] Speaker 5: with other men of Isker's generation. From his perch, Wilson
[38:23] Speaker 5: says he sees.
[38:24] Speaker 3: This explosion of white boy angst is all over the country.
[38:32] Speaker 5: They're impatient for change, which he says is a problem.
[38:36] Speaker 5: And while he and Isker didn't agree on everything while
[38:38] Speaker 5: Isker was at Greyfriars Hall, in recent years... Something happened.
[38:43] Speaker 3: Where he really flipped on that, abandoned libertarianism, and adopted
[38:48] Speaker 3: the sort of conservatism that he embraces now. He, along
[38:52] Speaker 3: with a number of alt-right or radical-right younger guys, part
[38:57] Speaker 3: of this is a generational thing, part of it is
[39:00] Speaker 3: an ideological thing. I have differences with Andrew on... on
[39:05] Speaker 3: the Jews and World War II and, you know, issues
[39:10] Speaker 3: like that. And I believe that that emphasis is going
[39:15] Speaker 3: to be something of a spoiler in any attempt to
[39:20] Speaker 3: build a Ridge Runner thing. Because Winston Churchill once said
[39:25] Speaker 3: that a fanatic, I'm not calling Andrew this, but a fanatic,
[39:30] Speaker 3: is someone who can't change his mind and won't change
[39:32] Speaker 3: the subject and what's going to happen is you're going
[39:38] Speaker 3: to get the kind of fish that you're baiting for
[39:41] Speaker 3: you're going to attract a lot of weirdos.
[39:45] Speaker 5: Wilson says he's not anti-semitic still In his vision of
[39:50] Speaker 5: a Christian America, a nation under biblical law, everyone who
[39:54] Speaker 5: isn't Christian would be banned from public office. Christ or chaos,
[40:00] Speaker 5: he says. As for Ridgerunner's broader venture.
[40:04] Speaker 1: I wish them well.
[40:05] Speaker 3: It's a great idea. Okay, good luck. I'll just say this,
[40:09] Speaker 3: and this is going to sound like I'm slamming them.
[40:11] Speaker 3: I'm not slamming them. I'm just saying, watch out for this.
[40:14] Speaker 3: You don't want to come across like you're delivering Rivendell
[40:18] Speaker 3: in an Ikea box. Some of it is more organic.
[40:26] Speaker 5: Wilson goes on.
[40:28] Speaker 3: And it's really easy to have a shiny brochure and
[40:30] Speaker 3: prospectus and great ideas. But I think you really need
[40:34] Speaker 3: an established worshiping community first. Airlifting the whole thing in
[40:41] Speaker 3: is harder than establishing a beachhead and building it up slowly.
[40:49] Speaker 12: Moore.
[40:50] Speaker 5: After the break. Diana, having studied Moscow, was now reviewing
[40:57] Speaker 5: what had happened in her hometown and regretting what she
[41:00] Speaker 5: may have missed.
[41:01] Speaker 7: Golly, one of the tracts of land that's been bought
[41:04] Speaker 7: across from the high school, they're calling it Jennings Creek Colony,
[41:08] Speaker 7: Ridge Runner, is... That land belonged to his great-granddaddy.
[41:14] Speaker 5: Her husband, Barry, his great-grandfather.
[41:17] Speaker 9: And so the land.
[41:20] Speaker 5: Those 99 acres, the farmland, Ryan Allen, the metal detectorist,
[41:23] Speaker 5: so badly wanted to explore. Barry was kicking himself. And now,
[41:26] Speaker 5: every time he drives by, which is just about every day.
[41:51] Speaker 5: He has to look away.
[41:51] Speaker 4: I have to look over to the school when I
[41:54] Speaker 4: pass it now because I just can't, I cannot believe
[41:57] Speaker 4: that I let, you know, I let that get by
[42:00] Speaker 4: without getting it, you know, to keep them from, if
[42:04] Speaker 4: I wish I'd just known to talk to him, I
[42:07] Speaker 4: know it was quite heartbreaking, you know, to, you know,
[42:11] Speaker 4: imagine they, yeah, that's a tough one.
[42:17] Speaker 5: Diana didn't want more heartbreak, not for Barry or anyone
[42:20] Speaker 5: else in Gainesboro. If Moscow had taught her anything, it
[42:25] Speaker 5: was that buying that building on the square, the one
[42:27] Speaker 5: with the coffee shop that she'd heard Josh Apatow had
[42:30] Speaker 5: been interested in, that purchase had been a smart move.
[42:34] Speaker 7: If we can send a clear message that, unlike what
[42:38] Speaker 7: Nate Fisher said, this community cannot be controlled, if we
[42:43] Speaker 7: can send that message, they won't try to you know,
[42:46] Speaker 7: move on to our town square and all the things
[42:49] Speaker 7: that Doug Wilson did so long ago, right, in Moscow.
[42:55] Speaker 5: So Barry and Diana anxiously watched for other property to
[42:59] Speaker 5: go on the market. They snatched up one house just
[43:02] Speaker 5: off the town square on Murray Street, where Nancy Pruitt,
[43:06] Speaker 5: the retired art teacher, lives, and where the podcasters live, too.
[43:10] Speaker 5: Then they bought a second house on Murray Street.
[43:13] Speaker 7: Murray Street's very important. There's a lot of families that
[43:17] Speaker 7: live on there that have lived there a long time.
[43:19] Speaker 7: There's a great sense of community there. You know, it's just,
[43:22] Speaker 7: it needs to be protected.
[43:25] Speaker 5: That street. Diana and Barry have stayed ready, ready to
[43:28] Speaker 5: strike again if needed.
[43:30] Speaker 7: We do keep an ear to the ground.
[43:32] Speaker 5: To prevent Ridge Runner from expanding its footprint downtown.
[43:36] Speaker 7: Were we going to end up in that Moscow situation?
[43:38] Speaker 7: I mean, it, Clash of the Titans, no.
[43:40] Speaker 5: No, we're not, no.
[43:43] Speaker 7: No. It doesn't mean that we'll be able to buy
[43:46] Speaker 7: every building.
[43:47] Speaker 4: Yeah, we can't buy them all, but, you know, we
[43:50] Speaker 4: save one.
[43:52] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[43:53] Speaker 7: And hopefully if it's not us, it'll be somebody else
[43:56] Speaker 7: who actually really wants to start a business and benefit
[43:59] Speaker 7: the community, not create more division, because we just don't
[44:03] Speaker 7: need it.
[44:04] Speaker 5: But division was coming to Gainesboro by way of things
[44:07] Speaker 5: far beyond the town or its controls. In the fall
[44:11] Speaker 5: of 2025, something happened that would change everyone's calculations. Next time,
[44:19] Speaker 5: on the final chapter of Our Town.
[44:21] Speaker 1: They would like to see me die. They would like
[44:23] Speaker 1: for my children to grow up fatherless. They would like that.
[44:26] Speaker 1: They'd like my children to be harmed.
[44:28] Speaker 5: He led people to believe that his neighbor, which was me,
[44:33] Speaker 5: wanted harm to come to him. Have you always slept
[44:36] Speaker 5: with a shotgun next to your bed?
[44:37] Speaker 3: I'm very grateful to the Secretary of War, Pete Hexeth,
[44:40] Speaker 3: both for starting this meeting and for inviting me to
[44:43] Speaker 3: be here with you today. At Christ Church in Moscow,
[44:46] Speaker 3: we understand that worship is warfare. We mean that. I
[44:50] Speaker 3: would never in a million years have expected that my
[44:52] Speaker 3: hometown would be a place where this conflict is happening.
[44:58] Speaker 7: To call it shocking is probably mild.
[45:02] Speaker 5: I'm in my bedroom, sound asleep, and I hear something
[45:04] Speaker 5: banging on the door.
[45:06] Speaker 4: And I got up.
[45:08] Speaker 13: And I hear, Miss Pruitt, Miss Pruitt, call 911.
[45:17] Speaker 5: Our Town is written and reported by me, Maribyn Knight,
[45:20] Speaker 5: and Susan Burfield. Rebecca Lacks is our senior producer. Ken
[45:25] Speaker 5: Armstrong edited the show with additional editing from Rebecca Lacks.
[45:29] Speaker 5: Original score and sound design by Alex Segura. Fact-checking by
[45:34] Speaker 5: Annika Robbins. Additional production and editorial support from Julia Weaver,
[45:39] Speaker 5: David Fox, and Laura Newcomb. Special thanks to Bloomberg's Alana Susnow,
[45:44] Speaker 5: Bob Blau, Kristen Powers, Anthony Mancini, the Big Take podcast team,
[45:50] Speaker 5: and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcast. Additional thanks to Kristen
[45:55] Speaker 5: Kobes-Dumais for her helpful insight as we researched and reported
[45:59] Speaker 5: this episode. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster-Barr.
[46:10] Speaker 12: Thank you.

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