The story begins in a dorm room at Wake Forest on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Or, it begins in Havana, Cuba 6 months prior. Or, it begins in 1997, the Year of the Ox …

But let’s start in Davis Hall (Suite 204 to be exact) around 10 PM on Election Night 2016, where two 19-year-olds sat together and cried wept over the results of the first Presidential election in which they were able to cast their vote.  

They didn’t know it, but that was the moment the first seeds of Fried Green Tomato Media were planted.

The friends were named Ben & Abby, and they were two born-and-raised North Carolinians who had met the summer before during a study abroad program in Cuba.  In many ways, that trip inspired passions the two have followed every day since: they learned about politics, art, and entrepreneurship in the context of a nation whose relations with the United States seemed to be on the brink of “normality;” they learned about structures that gate-kept marginalized people from participating in them; and most importantly, they learned that anything is possible if you’re creative, and want it bad enough.

They came back to campus that fall and both began to work alongside the professor who led the trip (she remains a mentor a decade later). For the rest of their time at Wake, Ben & Abby not only researched and wrote together, but also developed deep passions for community, art, justice, and storytelling. Ben earned a BA in History, Abby earned a BA in Philosophy, both studied Spanish, and then the friends went their separate ways - Ben to Boston and Abby to DC - both enrolled in grad school to earn their MA in Latin American Studies. If you’re keeping track of time, the year is 2019, and a pretty major world event happens the following March. 

Both living alone in a pandemic, both wading through books and papers about the Western Hemisphere, and both with unlimited data on their phones, the friends start having long daily calls. Pacing around their apartments, with AirPods almost always dying because of the length of the discussions, Ben & Abby talk through the complexities and nuance of politics, history, philosophy, linguistics, conspiracy theories, and the headlines of the day, with the call inevitably always turning to a conversation about a future “book” they’ll write together.

The friends keep this up for the next four years. Ben goes to law school and earns his JD with a concentration in Asylum and Nationality Law, and works in Miami as an anti-poverty and immigrant advocate. Abby spends these years working on public policy and government affairs teams within multinational corporations, and soaking up the ways of DC like a sponge. Over time, the tone of the calls change. Ben & Abby share daydreams of returning to North Carolina, working for themselves, and making a real difference. Recognizing the many opportunities they’d been granted, the friends still lamented about how so many things they learned at their jobs, and in their studies, were inherently elitist and exclusive. They wanted to spread the knowledge they had, but in a way that was way less stuffy than how and where they learned it. 

And as it goes, life intervened, and gave both Ben & Abby reasons to move back to North Carolina in 2024. In late October of that year, shortly before her move, and immediately after getting a rejection email from what felt like a dream job, Abby called Ben and finally asked a question they’d been dancing around for a while.

“What are we going to do when Trump wins this election?”

The time for think-pieces was so clearly over. Pragmatism and precedent were out the window, and the two friends couldn’t understand why major media outlets and pundits were still acting as if it was business as usual. They had spent the last eight years - since Trump was first elected - developing their critical thinking around public policy, law, and authoritarian regimes, and nailing down their hard skills of writing, researching, and presenting information to a variety of audiences.  

The answer to the question became clear. 

In a way, it was the “book” they always talked about, but it needed to be more urgent, and more digestible for a Gen Z audience. Ben & Abby realized that the hesitation they had felt for so long about putting pen to paper on a project that would see the light of day had nothing to do with a lack of content, but rather a lack of inspiration to work solely in that medium. They realized that their voices mattered, and didn’t want to wait any longer to be added to the conversation; they knew that they needed to get information out fast.

Once they realized they didn’t have to work within the confines of existing structures, the ideas flowed. First it was a podcast (Red State Reboot), then a newsletter (LACarolina), and pretty soon the two realized that there’d be no way they could ever pick just one project to develop. The brainstorming happened furiously and obsessively, and over the course of a few weeks, the vision became clear.

Ben & Abby decided they were going to form a media company with the guiding light being the democratization of knowledge through creative modern methods. 

___

Donald Trump was elected for a second term on November 4, 2024, and several weeks later, we officially formed Fried Green Tomato Media.  We went all in, working late nights (Abby) and early mornings (Ben), and haven’t stopped since. The first episode of Red State Reboot was released on Inauguration Day 2025, and we’ve continuously added projects to our network in the year since. 

We hope that you join us in our mission to democratize knowledge. A good starting place is to check out our relevant and approachable publications. But our greatest hope is that you may even consider developing a project of your own, whether it is on our network or somewhere else. Your creativity and perspectives are one-of-a-kind, and our communities deserve the stories you have to tell, and the knowledge that only you are able to share. 

Ben & Abby

Ben Brooks

Ben is a lawyer at heart but not by trade - meaning that he has a law degree but used it open a restaurant and Fried Green Tomato Media. When not fighting the power or researching/tracking neo-Nazis in the Carolinas, Ben is creating new menu items, finding the next musical pulse, and curating exquisite vibes in the least likely places. Ben is fluent in Spanish and earned his Juris Doctorate from the University of Miami School of Law, concentrating on constitutional, asylum, and nationality law. Before that he earned his M.A. from Boston University in Latin American Studies; he earned his B.A. in History and Spanish from Wake Forest University (Go Deacs!). Ben is based in the Foothills of North Carolina and continues to use life as an excuse to document dying Foothills/ Appalachian culture.

Ben’s Substack