Ben Montgomery is the author of “The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search For Meaning in the Great Depression.” The book was published by Little, Brown Spark in September, and tells the story of a man named Plennie Wingo, who in 1931, attempted to walk around the world, backward.

This is the third time Montgomery has been on the podcast. He was the guest on Episode 21, when he talked about his first book, “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.” That book went on to become a New York Times Bestseller.

He was also one of five guests on Episode 45, which was focused on the work of the late Michael Brick, which was contained in the book, “Everyone Leaves Behind a Name.” The other guests on that show were Wright Thompson, Michael Kruse, Tony Rehagen, and Thomas Lake. 

Montgomery created the website gangrey.com, which was the namesake for this podcast. For years, he was one of the top enterprise reporters at the Tampa Bay Times, where he wrote about everything from the last spectacle lynching in Florida to why cops shoot at suspects. 

He left the Tampa Bay Times in October 2017 to focus on writing “The Man Who Walked Backward.” Now, he finds himself teaching student journalists at the University of Montana as the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Visiting Professor. 

Montgomery’s latest book is his third. His second book was titled The Leper Spy: The Story of an Unlikely Hero of World War II. 


He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Local Reporting in 2010 for his series of stories on the decades of abuse at a Florida reform school for boys. He won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for the same series.

Episode 67: Ben Montgomery

John Woodrow Cox is an enterprise reporter for the Washington Post. He’s currently writing stories focused on how the COVID pandemic is impacting children. 

On October 7, the Post published his latest story, about the Marquez-Greene family in Connecticut. They lost their daughter Ana at Sandy Hook, and recently had to make a hard decision as to whether they would send their 16-year-old son Isaiah back to school in the middle of the pandemic.

Cox was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing in 2018 for his series of stories that look at gun violence and how it was impacting children. His book — Children Under Fire: An American Crisis — expands upon that coverage. That book will be available on March 30, 2021.

Cox was on Gangrey: The Podcast way back on Episode 12 in October 2013. At the time, he was a reporter at the Tampa Bay Times. In that episode, we talked about his series of stories for the Floridian titled “Dispatches from next door.” They included one about a woman who was only able to find peace on the ocean.

We also talked about his coverage of cops, and one story in particular, about a 9-month-old who drowned in a family swimming pool. Cox said that story has had a lasting impact on him as a reporter. 

Since he was on the show, he’s won Scripps Howard’s Ernie Pyle Award for Human Interest Storytelling; the Dart Award for Excellence in Coverage of Trauma; and Columbia Journalism School’s Meyer “Mike” Berger Award for human-interest reporting.

Episode 84: John Woodrow Cox

Gangrey: The Podcast focuses on narrative journalism and the reporters who write it.

Episode 84: John Woodrow Cox

gangreypodcast

Related tracks