Author Connor Towne O’Neill On the Battle to Shape History

On today’s episode, Ryan talks to a fellow Southern transplant, writer Conor Towne O’Neill. They nerd out over their mutual fascination with the ghosts of American history that linger in the South, and how their presence looms in the Confederate monuments that even now, unconscionably, still stand on American soil.

Connor Towne O’Neill is an author and journalist based in Alabama. His new book, Down Along with That Devil's Bones: A Reckoning with Monuments, Memory, and the Legacy of White Supremacy, follows the protests and battles that surrounded recent attempts to remove monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. O’Neill has also written for New York magazine, Vulture, Slate, and the Village Voice.

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