Hey everyone, it's Omna. We wanted to let you know that we are taking a brief summer break over here at Settle In.

We're prepping all new episodes for you coming very soon, so stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, please enjoy re-listening to one of our favorite conversations that we recently taped.

And remember, you can always subscribe to Settle In wherever you get your podcasts.

My guest today is Michael Edison Hayden. He's an investigative reporter and an expert on far

right extremism. He's also the author of a new book. It's out now. And it's called Strange

People on the Hill, How Extremism Tore Apart a Small American Town.

So we talked about that town.

We talked about what happened when a far-right group moved into that small town.

We talked about the place that extremism now holds in American politics.

And we also talked about the personal toll that this work takes on him,

the threats that he's faced, the mental health challenges he's had to deal with,

even the friends that he's lost along the way. And we should note, this interview was actually

recorded before this past weekend's shooting that took place at the White House Correspondence

Dinner here in Washington, D.C. That's a story we're going to continue to cover on air and

online. But for now, settle in and listen to my conversation with Michael Edison Hayden.

Michael Edison Hayden, welcome to settle in. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Before we get into your new book,

I want to start with you. And what drew you into this work in the first place? Because you spend a lot of time

in some of the darkest corners of the internet really deep into stuff that a lot of people don't even know

exists. What was it that brought you into this in the first place?

Well, when I first started doing this, I actually started really with ABC News, which was doing a kind of an expansion then around the 2016 election.

And I ended up picking up a lot of stuff about Trump's followers because it was just like, well, give him that.

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