Strange People on the Hill: An Interview with Michael Edison Hayden
It Could Happen Here
Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
4.0 • 6.5K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
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Summary
Molly interviews Michael Edison Hayden about his new book, Strange People on the Hill: How Extremism Tore Apart a Small Town. The book is an intimate portrait of what happened in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia after a white nationalist group moved into the castle on the hill.
Preorder the book now or buy it anywhere books are sold when it comes out on April 7, 2026
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:05.9 | CallZone Media. |
| 0:10.6 | Hello and welcome back to It Could Happen here. |
| 0:13.3 | I'm your occasional host, Molly Conger, and I'm joined today by a very special guest, Michael Edison Hayden. |
| 0:18.1 | Hi, how's it going? Thanks for being here. |
| 0:21.8 | You may know Mike from his work as an investigative journalist and an expert on far-right extremism. He currently co-hosts |
| 0:26.6 | posting through it, a weekly news podcast with fellow veteran of the far-right beat Jared Holt. |
| 0:31.5 | But today we're talking about his new book, Strange People on the Hill, how extremism tore apart |
| 0:37.0 | a small American town. It comes out April 7th, |
| 0:40.3 | 2026, but you can go ahead and pre-order it now anywhere you buy books and make sure you ask for it |
| 0:45.5 | at your local library and your local independent bookstore. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. |
| 0:50.3 | I'm excited to talk about this. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, I was worried that I wasn't going to have time to read the whole book. I mean, to talk about this. Thank you. I appreciate it. Yeah, I was worried that I wasn't |
| 0:55.8 | going to have time to, like, read the whole book. I mean, you talk about this a lot in the book, right? The stresses of covering this beat. But I sat down to read it and I read it in one sitting. It is very compelling. Wow. But it's not the book I thought it was. Hmm. You know, When your publicist sent this to me, I thought, oh, phenomenal. |
| 1:12.0 | This is a book about Peter Brimlow in the Racism Castle in West Virginia. I would love to read a book about Peter Brimlow in the Racism Castle. And it's not really, is it? Like, the Brimlows are the strange people on the hill, and they sort of stay on the hill, right? You have a couple of |
| 1:27.8 | encounters with them in the book, but for the most part, it's a book about the town. |
| 1:32.6 | Yeah, yeah, it's about the town. And I'm glad that you mentioned that. I really didn't want to |
| 1:37.6 | write a book that was about these villains that have been, you know, |
| 1:45.3 | populating our culture for the last 10 plus years that just seem to get |
| 1:49.5 | unlimited traction on social media. |
| 1:52.3 | There's nothing wrong with talking about them. |
| 1:55.0 | And there's nothing wrong with certainly reporting on them because I did my share of that, |
| 1:58.1 | you know, day in and day out when I was with SPLC, for instance. |
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