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Episode 359: Shannon McCaffrey
442 Plays2 years ago
Shannon McCaffrey (@shannonajc1) is the author and reporter behind "Sanctuary," a love story of sorts, for this month's issue of The Atavist. We also hear from Atavist editor-in-chief Seyward Darby (@seywarddarby).
Social: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Substack: rageagainstthealgorithm.substack.com
Beer discount: athleticbrewing.com, enter code BRENDANO20 at checkout.
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Transcript
Athletic Brewing Promo and Recommendations
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:29
Speaker
Give it a shot. All right. What do you have? You have nothing to lose. Nothing. Also, I'm so sorry, Brendan. Some guys walking by my house with a boombox. I don't know if you picked that up, but hello. I'm back in New York.
Podcast Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:47
Speaker
They see an effort, it's CNF Pod, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? That was Sayward Darby, the editor-in-chief of the Atavist. You remember her, she's here every month. It's that Atavistian time of the month, if you haven't deduced. So be forewarned that we might talk some story beats that might give away the crux of this
00:01:12
Speaker
story. So you might want to read the story by going to magazine.adavis.com. Then come back and then listen to the author, Shannon McCaffrey. Talk about sanctuary. There's elephants. Oliphants, if you're Samwise Gamgee. Also, this is a truce day. And I won't be putting an episode out this Friday. I just can't. I can't do it. Just can't.
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm up to my, you know what, and you know what, so let this just be an early gift, okay? You cool with that CNF-ers? Cool.
00:01:50
Speaker
Like I said, today's guest is Shannon McCaffrey at ShannonAJC1 on Twitter. She works for the Atlanta Journal Constitution. We talk about newspapers reporting, teaching the next generation of journalists, and her new piece, Sanctuary, which stemmed from her narrative nonfiction MFA program at the University of Georgia. It's one of the rare pieces that was pitched
00:02:15
Speaker
On spec, a whole cloth instead of just a query, it was actually fully written.
Newsletter Transition and Animal-Themed Stories
00:02:22
Speaker
Alright, you know how I love to do newsletter stuff, and I have to pivot from MailChimp to Substack. I know, I know, I always kind of tease the Substack crew, but I gotta move there.
00:02:35
Speaker
MailChimp dropped their free thresholds from 2,000 email subscribers to 500. I have close to a thousand so we're not talking a gigantic list here but I was still within the threshold of free and no longer true.
00:02:50
Speaker
So to maintain that list, I would have to pay $27 a month. I'm like, f that shit. So I'll be moving the list over to Substack, where it's free forever, at least for now. It'll still be the same newsletter, just a different interface, and it won't be that much different. I have to purge my MailChimp sign up embeds from hundreds of blog posts and show notes. So that'll be fun, because I have so much time right now.
00:03:18
Speaker
We're still raging against the algorithm. In fact, the URL for the new newsletter is going to be rageagainstgalgorithm.substack.com. First of the month, no spam. Still can't beat it.
00:03:33
Speaker
That's it, okay? We're gonna get right into it right now. Sarah Darby is a baton lead-off. She's the editor-in-chief of the Atavist, animal lover, and author of Sisters in Hate. So here we go. Let's talk some elephants, okay?
00:04:00
Speaker
JB McKinnon had a piece on these cows, The Resiliency of Cows on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, and now a few months later we've got this other piece that has animals at the center.
Appeal of Animal Stories and Human Relationships
00:04:14
Speaker
So what is it about animal pieces that might appeal to you but also reflect something about us?
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge animal lover. Anyone will tell you that I'm like the psycho who asks to pet every dog that I meet on the street. And I've also had cats my entire life. Our cat passed away last year, but assume I will get a cat again sooner rather than later. And yeah, I just love animals and always have. And so personally, animal stories,
00:04:49
Speaker
Speak to me I love reading about animals and you know the the JB mckinnon piece is a great example where it you know it's about the relationship between humans and cows to a certain extent but really it's about cows and like what do we not know about them or what should we know about them and kind of trying to understand the way they see the world and move through the world.
00:05:07
Speaker
And I love stories like that, and I also love stories about the evolving relationship between humans and animals, which I think Sanctuary by Shannon McCaffrey, our new story, really delves into that question of, I mean, in this case, a person who's had a relationship with the same animal, with the same elephant for almost 50 years,
00:05:27
Speaker
And, you know, considering over the course of that time, you know, how her love for the animal has grown, but also how, you know, her kind of understanding of herself vis-a-vis the animal has shifted. You know, the way that we relate to nature is an endlessly fascinating topic. I love any and all animal stories. And we also ran the one about, I can't remember if we were doing the pod at that time, but the one about
00:05:55
Speaker
uh, monarch butterflies migrating. Um, and yeah, it's a great, great piece by Nora Kaplan Brooker that was included in best American, uh, science and nature writing, um, called long may they reign. That was about, um,
00:06:10
Speaker
basically the question of would this one monarch survive the incredible migration that monarch butterflies do. Adamus has some other classics like 52 Blue by about a whale by Leslie Jamison and we find that these stories do well and I think it's because there you know is a just kind of perennial interest among humans to understand you know the creatures that we share this world with.
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, and there's a wonderful paragraph and pretty much very high up in the story that pretty much sums up how this is a love story of sorts. It talks about the pieces, like a 50-year relationship with Tara the Elephant and Carol Buckley at the center of it.
00:06:57
Speaker
You know, what did that, you know, what did this show about, you know, the capacity for, you know, love and these sort of a binding love story between, you know, a woman and her cherished elephant? Yeah, I mean, it is, you know, it's a love story that I think, you know, it's not romantic love, obviously, but it's you're sort of watching the evolution of almost like
00:07:25
Speaker
I want to care for you because you are something in need of care, meaning the way that Carol related to the elephant who at the time was known as Fluffy. And then evolving into something more along the lines of what is this elephant telling me she needs? What is this elephant conveying that love is to her? And there's a quote in the piece where Carol says something about how Tara, as the elephant was renamed,
00:07:54
Speaker
you know at every step in their relationship like Tara has led the way has like showed what it is that she you know wants and needs I mean to the best that you know a human can understand what uh an animal is saying she wants and needs and um and you know sort of that
00:08:11
Speaker
kind of shifting like on the one hand any animal in captivity and this is obviously a central point of the piece or central theme of the piece is you know once an animal like Tara the elephant is in captivity you can't release them you know into the savannahs of Africa or back into the jungles of Burma or whatever
00:08:28
Speaker
And so even people like Carol, who ultimately over the course of her life has come to believe that elephants should be wild, should not be kept in any form of captivity, that doesn't help the elephants who are currently in captivity. And so what is the ultimate expression of
00:08:45
Speaker
of love for those creatures. What is the way that we can take care of them in the best way possible given these limitations that captivity creates? There are so many beautiful moments in the story where they have this
00:09:03
Speaker
almost sort of ineffable bond. I mean, they've known each other for 50 years. That's so crazy. Like, I just keep thinking about it. You know, it's such a huge amount of time. And, you know, there's that beautiful moment at the end where talks about how, you know, they're both older, grayer, slower, you know, the arrogance of their youth has tempered and, you know, still here they are. And so, you know, their relationship is definitely, you know, one of
00:09:31
Speaker
caretaker and creature being cared for, but really, it's the bond of, or the love of friends, ultimately. Yeah, and Shannon spoke about the betrayal aspect of the story and how Carol often felt betrayed over time from colleagues at the sanctuary, but why she loves elephants so much is that there's no bullshit in that regard. And that can be true of
00:10:01
Speaker
of any of our relationships with pets too. There is no bullshit. There is only just the most basic desires for food and companionship, and there is no pretext. It's just everything is on the level, so to speak.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I used to joke about this particularly with regard to our cat who we just, we had for 14 years. I would just look at her sometimes when the world was on fire and literally or figuratively and just be like, man, you have no idea what's going on. I love that.
00:10:36
Speaker
I don't have to process any of the bullshit of the world with you. Like our relationship is just, you know, incredibly pure, right? Which, I mean, I know some people who are not into cats are like, yeah, your cat just wants to murder you, which like may be true, but I, you know, I love and respect her anyway.
00:10:54
Speaker
But I think what's interesting in this story too, and I think that Shannon does a really nice job capturing this, Carol is a difficult person in a lot of ways. And she will be the first to say that. That she is not easy to work with all the time. She's very single-minded. She's very headstrong. And Tara and other elephants as well, because Carol is very much an expert in various aspects of elephant health and elephant caretaking.
00:11:23
Speaker
they do not judge, they do not ask her to be any different than the person that she is. And I think there's a moment in the piece where she talks about how the elephants ground her. And I think there's something interesting to that. People who don't necessarily find
00:11:47
Speaker
find what they're looking for amongst people can often find very strong bonds with other creatures for any number of reasons. But I think that neither Shannon nor I was there for whatever happened at the sanctuary when Carol had a huge falling out with her longtime
00:12:09
Speaker
colleagues, you know, who was in the right, who was in the wrong. It seems pretty clear that, you know, some things were said and done that were really not above board. But, you know, ultimately the piece is less concerned with, you know, the specifics of that situation and more concerned with, you know, what is the also I'm so sorry, Brendan, some guys walking by my house with a boombox. I don't know if you pick that up, but hello, I'm back in New York.
00:12:36
Speaker
Anyway, I think that really, and we tried to keep the story really focused on this, is about Carol's relationship with Tara and what she was willing to do to maintain that bond and to nourish that bond despite everything that was going on around her career-wise or whatever.
00:12:58
Speaker
So yeah, I think Shannon does a nice job of situating Carol as, you know, she's not a hero per se. You know, she's a complicated person with flaws and faults, but, you know, she loves this elephant and loves all elephants. And, you know, I think like you see the best of her when she's interacting with these animals.
00:13:19
Speaker
And I always love to get your impressions about any unique challenges that you saw on the editor side of the table with this piece, be it from the concept phase or through the multiple rewrites.
Journalism Challenges and Digital Shift
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah, well, this was an interesting one because this piece came to us fully written, which does not happen so often. And it's because she had worked on a version of it for an MFA program at the University of Georgia in narrative nonfiction. So so we were able to.
00:13:49
Speaker
not just get a pitch, but really see Shannon's writing and the way that she was thinking about structuring the piece. And it's interesting, yesterday, and I had completely forgotten this, a different writer had actually pitched me Carol Buckley's story in 2018.
00:14:08
Speaker
Truly like I get so many pitches I did not remember but when that happens I always like to go back and look I mean this happens very rarely right that we assign something that You know somebody else pitched that we didn't take But I always like to go back and look and see like why did I say no in that case? Like did I make a mistake and it was interesting because that piece was pitched in 2018 but a ton of the important sort of narrative
00:14:34
Speaker
I don't want to say conclusive elements, but a very important lawsuit about Tara's fate happened in 2019 and certain decisions and paperwork were not dealt with until 2021. And so essentially what we got in 2018, it was many, many elements of the story that we ultimately published in terms of Carol's relationship with Tara,
00:14:59
Speaker
And you know the vision she has for how to care for elements in captivity, but from a narrative standpoint, it was like we needed just those couple more years to happen right for for the tree to grow a little bigger, so that it could really.
00:15:14
Speaker
really blossom. And I think that Shannon wrote it and then ultimately pitched it at the right time because you're able to ask this question, which is essentially will Carol be able to spend the remainder of her life with Tara and vice versa or not. And she pitched and wrote it at a time when we knew that answer, whereas a few years ago we didn't.
00:15:40
Speaker
So yeah, it's an interesting, I don't really, in this case, I didn't really see or feel challenges per se. You know, there were definitely some things to dig into to really understand as best we could and obviously get factually correct. You know, everything that went on between Carol and her former employer, an institution that she founded, that she parted ways with.
00:16:04
Speaker
But I think really, more than that, whenever we're working on a story about animals, you try to, on the one hand, we will always anthropomorphize to a certain degree, right? Because that's just, I don't know, our tendency. And finding a way to make sure that we're really capturing
00:16:22
Speaker
Tara's, you know, appearance and behaviors without assuming that we know what this animal is thinking, you know? And I think Shannon did a really, really good job of that. So that wasn't a challenge. I think it's just any time you're working on an animal story, it's something to be attentive to. Fantastic. Well, Sayward, as always, thanks so much for doing this. We're going to kick it over to Shannon in just a moment. Thanks for carving out the time. Thanks so much, Brendan.
00:16:55
Speaker
Okay, very nice. Now that we're warmed up, it's time for the headliner of this mini festival, this Atavistian festival. Shannon talks about how she got access to her central figure, being patient, and how getting face to face, especially in a digital age, is really the secret weapon of any reporter. So let's go see an effort. Why waste any time? I waste enough of your time. Let's not waste any more. All right, let's go.
00:17:27
Speaker
So actually, I did not take journalism courses. When I was in college, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer and was kind of moving in that direction and ended up in journalism completely by accident. But I can speak to the kids now. I mean, I think some of them, it's a struggle because you're coming into this at a time when the industry is really in turmoil. And so the folks that are coming in now, they're pretty hardcore because they're trying to get in at a time when a lot of people are getting out.
00:17:57
Speaker
I also think it's hard because you have to know every platform now. You can't just write. You can't just podcast. You can't just do video. You've really got to be able to do a little bit of everything. That's been interesting. Journalism is a lot different now than when I got into it, that's for sure. Sometimes every generation has a catalyst for people who tend to get into journalism, be it
00:18:24
Speaker
You know, the Watergate era definitely introduced a new generation of people who wanted to bring down corrupt politicians and so forth. And then there are always these little inflection points that get people into journalism. What are you noticing nowadays, given how bifurcated the media landscape is and how
00:18:46
Speaker
You have to be a Swiss army knife in so many different disciplines. What are the reasons you're finding that people now are excited about journalism? As hard as it is to be excited about it sometimes. Exactly. And that's what I kind of mean in that the folks that are getting into it now really want it, because if they were on the fence, they're going to go in a different direction.
00:19:06
Speaker
I do think I've covered a lot of politics and government throughout my career and a lot of court stuff. And I do sort of think some of the January 6th developments have inspired a few people because they do see a role for journalism, a real important role in accountability.
00:19:26
Speaker
But not all of them. There are several kids who really want to do pop culture, they want to do features, so it really does depend. But I am encouraged to see some of them as kind of a political junkie myself, some of them interested in going in that direction because I think it's just so important to have a healthy fourth estate looking at people in power.
00:19:49
Speaker
My most recent newspaper gig was until I left just before my section was disbanded. That was the opinion page editor for Paper in Eugene, Oregon. And it's a, you know, Gannett paper at this point. And as you well know, Gannett has a way of just scorching the earth and by virtue of its business plan, ends up creating these news deserts.
00:20:12
Speaker
So it's like, I don't know, how do you see the landscape surviving and being able to still cover things when the footprint is shrinking so small? Well, it's interesting. So my day job, I worked for the Atlanta Journal Constitution and
00:20:30
Speaker
Our footprint is shrinking but growing at the same time, if that makes any sense, because we're in the process of getting rid of the print product. I think we'll still probably have a Sunday edition, but pretty soon we're not going to have Monday through Saturday. And if you're not tied to a printing press, if your main product is digital, then you can reach people anywhere.
00:20:53
Speaker
You know, and it kind of has us thinking about, you know, do we just serve Atlanta and the metro Atlanta region? Do we serve the state of Georgia, kind of filling some of those news deserts? Do we kind of even become, start thinking even more broadly and think about
00:21:09
Speaker
You know a southern regional perspective, you know that that has to come with staff But but I do think that you know, the New York Times has figured it out The Washington Post has figured it out to a degree But I think regional newspapers are still struggling a bit because they don't have the same revenue model but but I do think some of them are figuring it out and I and I'm encouraged by I'm not just saying this because they
00:21:33
Speaker
give me a paycheck. But I am encouraged that the ABC seems to be looking at this as something to invest in rather than more cuts. I mean, we've had a lot of cuts over the years, and that isn't the direction we're going right now. I mean, Georgia's been at the center of the political universe again and again and again, and so I think that has also helped because we have just been
00:21:57
Speaker
inundated with huge news. Right. Right. And how have you now given you've got your day job at the at the paper, you've got your teaching at the at the college. And then of course, you found a way to carve time to write like an ambitious, juicy feature for the activist. So how are you like, how do you navigate these the various irons in the fire?
00:22:22
Speaker
Yeah, I'll let you know when I figure it out. I actually, I did not take a journalism class in college, but about two and a half, three years ago, I decided I wanted to pursue a master's. So I enrolled in an MFA program at the University of Georgia, and it's an MFA in narrative nonfiction, because although I'd been a journalist for a really long time, I wasn't as familiar with narrative work. I'd done some of it, but it wasn't an area that I felt super comfortable.
00:22:51
Speaker
And, you know, so I ended up doing this class. It was a part-time low residency class. So I was fitting that in. And this story actually began in my final semester. So I had a good amount of the reporting done.
00:23:07
Speaker
uh and some of the writing and and so I just I knew it was a just a dynamite story and I just kept pushing on it once I left the program but it was great to be able to start in a place where I had support and you know I had editors reading over my shoulder a little bit on the first drafts and
00:23:25
Speaker
But yeah, I don't have a lot of free time in my days. All these conversations that I've had with writers of activist pieces, oftentimes you're finding these things that have been covered in a hit and run sense. And then there's a way, and then it's like the narrative journals can kind of come in and do kind of like the slow burn, the storytelling parts of it. And it's almost like the television show Chopped.
00:23:55
Speaker
where you get like a basket of ingredients and it's like your job is to elevate those ingredients. And I think at these Atavus stories, it's like you have, there are some base ingredients and now it's your job to elevate it. So how did you elevate this?
00:24:09
Speaker
Well, I stumbled across the story.
Gaining Trust and Story Development
00:24:13
Speaker
I've always had this weird sort of affinity for elephants, not weird, but just always since I was a kid. I don't know why, but I've always liked elephants. And so just when stories or mentions of elephants come up, it just triggers like a little attention from me. And there was a brief in the AJC a few years ago about an elephant sanctuary that was going to open in South Georgia.
00:24:38
Speaker
And my antenna went up and I went, well, that's interesting. But I'm really busy doing other things. But I took out my notes app on my phone where I try to scribble things. And I just wrote it down to check back in a few months or a few years and see what was going on. And so when I enrolled in the MFA program and was looking for deep stories, I started Googling and found that this woman had opened the elephant sanctuary, but she didn't have any elephants. And I was like, well,
00:25:07
Speaker
What does that mean? That seems odd. Why is she there without elephants? And that's kind of when I started digging. I learned what was going on with her elephant, Tara, and the kind of whole backstory of this custody fight. And then I was like, oh, this is wonderful. I mean, this is just such a good story. It's got so many layers to the onion. So I just kept going and going and going. And to me,
00:25:34
Speaker
You had to really go back to the very beginning with her because her evolution really kind of tracks her evolution in terms of what she thinks about how animals should be treated and elephants should be treated in particular really has kind of tracked the way the country is evolved to you know in terms of.
00:25:52
Speaker
putting in more rights for animals in terms of viewing them differently, not simply as, you know, something that performs in a circus or stands around in a zoo. And so it just felt like there were a lot of bigger themes to explore, too, you know, beyond her own really compelling story. You mentioned, you know, you scribble some things away in your Notes app. Where do you, you know, come up with story ideas and keep track of them?
00:26:20
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I just read voraciously. I mean, I feel like if you're in journalism and looking for story ideas, I just I read everything that's anywhere near me. And I try to be an omnivore, you know, in the sense that I'm very interested in politics, very interested in law, but I read just about everything or I try to and just kind of wait for the light bulb to go off. And then, you know, I always have my phone with me, so I'll open up a
00:26:47
Speaker
You know a notes tab and just sort of scribble down What I'm thinking and usually tries to try to date it to give a sense of when I thought of it And you know some of them I never ever go back to you some of them You know are more Promising than others, but I just feel like when when lightning strikes when you read something and for some reason you are Drawn to that there there is a certain serendipity there. I can't really explain it. I just think you're attracted to
00:27:17
Speaker
to good stories and you get the ones that you're meant to have.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yeah, there is something of a Spidey sense that tingles when you read something. Like, you know, Truman Capote famously, when he wrote In Cold Blood, it was a brief in, I believe, The New York Times, where he read about the Clutter family. And, you know, say what you will about his practices for, you know, writing and making certain things up. But be that as it may, that it started as a brief, his Spidey sense tangled, and he goes to Holcomb, Kansas, and we have In Cold Blood.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's this undefinable thing, right? And I've learned to kind of trust my gut. I mean, it doesn't always steer me in the right way, but often, you know, there's something there that's, you know, maybe working in my own unconscious that puts me in the right place at the right time, you know, for those kinds of things to happen. But I do think it's a, I'm not trying to get all woo woo, but, you know, I do think there's a little bit of mystery to it, and I sort of like that.
00:28:19
Speaker
Now there's also the challenge of getting access to central figures to a story, and given that this was something of a biggish story, and Carol Buckley at the heart of this is someone who's been in and around for decades. So how did you lobby to get the requisite access you needed to really deliver on this story?
00:28:44
Speaker
She really didn't want to talk to me at first. When I first reached out to her, she called me back but said at the time she still had not gained custody of Tara, the elephant. Although she had won her court case, there were still legal filings going back and forth, appeals and
00:29:02
Speaker
Once you get Carol talking, she's very, very blunt and her lawyers had instructed her, please don't talk to the media, you know, until we get this over with, until we get this resolved. And so, you know, I just explained to her what I was interested in doing, that I wasn't interested in doing just a quick hit, you know, coming down and writing a, you know, an 800 word story. I was interested in really exploring much deeper than that.
00:29:28
Speaker
And could I check in with her? And so, you know, I would just kind of text her every couple weeks and ask how things were going. And then she got another elephant before Tara came home. A circus elephant named Bo retired there. And I said, well, can I come down? I know you can't talk to me, but let me just be a fly on the wall. You know, I just want to see this elephant arrive. And, you know, OK, fine. She was letting some local TV cameras in from, I think, the Tallahassee region.
00:29:57
Speaker
because she's really, really close to the Florida panhandle. And so that first visit, I said hello to her and maybe a few other pleasantries, but really didn't talk to her. Just stayed out of her way with a fly on the wall, tried to watch everything happen and left. And then I reached out again and said,
00:30:19
Speaker
Now will you talk you know and i promise i won't use it until after you've got tara back and i think at that point it's about a four and a half four hour four and a half hour drive down to where she is. I think she just thought well if this woman is going to drive all this way maybe she is interested in really telling the story the right way and i just sort of waited her out you know i kind of just wouldn't go away.
00:30:42
Speaker
And I just let her set the pace in terms of talking to me as much as she wanted to. There was a lot out there about her already, but not in a cohesive way, in a very, a little bit of a scattered way. She also, one of the reasons she was hesitant to talk at the beginning, too, is, and, you know, this is remarked on in the story, is that, you know, the whole way things ended with her at the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary, which is this original sanctuary she founded.
00:31:12
Speaker
they let her go, they fired her, left her really scarred. I mean, she felt very, very betrayed by that whole situation. And I'm not taking sides here in who was right or who was wrong, but I know that she came away feeling very betrayed and really wounded. And there was a quote in the story, I think, where she says something like, this is why I want to be around elephants. They're not manipulative. They don't lie.
00:31:38
Speaker
So I just think she's more comfortable out in the field or in the barn with the elephants. People are kind of a hassle. But again, I just kind of waited her out and it just kept showing up. Yeah, I think that underscores something really important, especially nowadays, you know, getting almost back to what you were talking about with your students and like this.
00:32:00
Speaker
media ecosystem where it's very easy to either find someone's email or to text that everything can be very detached and faceless. And the minute that you can, it's very easy to reject an email, reject a text, reject a DM. But if you can get face to face, suddenly
00:32:21
Speaker
you're human and then it's easier to lobby people, even if they might still be a little skeptical. But it's so like you going down there and putting in that legwork and getting face to face that made all the difference. Yeah, I think absolutely. And I completely agree. I mean, some of the students that we have in our class are, you know, do some drive by reporting, you know, in the sense that they're they're trying to do reporting based off Twitter feed and, you know, and other things. And
00:32:49
Speaker
We actually took them on a field trip down to the state capital, the Georgia State Capitol, because most of them hadn't been there. And I had worked down there for quite a while, and I was trying to show them how you can get stories just walking around the Capitol. And just by complete coincidence, we ran into the Atlanta Police Chief
00:33:08
Speaker
who was down there talking to a subcommittee about some crime initiatives. And it was right when all this, there's been this huge issue in Atlanta about COP City, where there's this training center. There was a death after police tried to clear the training center. Anyway, a hot topic. And so my students were then able to kind of talk to the police chief and ask him some questions.
00:33:30
Speaker
And they were blown away afterwards. Wow. And so that's what happens if you just go someplace. You never know who you're going to find. You actually might come away with something completely different than you went into it with. So I'm always trying to sing the praises of show up when you can. And I obviously know that's not always possible, but when you can, I think it can make all the difference.
00:33:53
Speaker
Yeah, it gives, it allows serendipity and luck to get on your side. You know, Lindsay Borgon, who wrote The Tree Thieves, when I spoke to her a few weeks, a couple months ago at this point, she would be on the scene and they were obviously sometimes go to report something or interview someone and you're
00:34:12
Speaker
You have an idea of where it might go but you never know until you get there and then when you get there sometimes that you're surprised by what happens and a lot of that stuff never happens unless you Get your boots on the ground and then it's it almost always blows you blows you away you know what you're able to get because you did a little of that extra legwork and it's always better than what you I don't know drop or imagine in your mind and
00:34:36
Speaker
Yeah, you've got to keep yourself open to the counter narrative or something that's surprising. You don't want to dismiss that. It builds complexity, which I think is so important in a narrative piece. And with Carolie, given that you recognize that she had been burned and betrayed by the people at the sanctuary, oftentimes journalists and reporters can
00:35:04
Speaker
Also It's it can be very tricky and delicate when you want to report on somebody and a lot of People at the heart of a story might feel burned in the end Given that she had felt so betrayed How did you handle the delicacy? That was her given that she was something of a wounded person when it came to how she was handled in these sanctuaries Yeah, I mean I think I just
00:35:31
Speaker
let her reach a point where she trusted me. I didn't start out with some of the tougher questions. So she kind of, by the time we got to talking about some of those harder things, she was comfortable enough with me that it didn't seem intrusive. You kind of just have to build up that trust for the source. It's also interesting, though. I mean, she was very sensitive
00:35:58
Speaker
to allegations of any kind of bad behavior at the Tennessee Elephant Sanctuary. They said she yelled. They said she was not nice to employees. And she would react kind of poorly. I would go back to her and say, well, this is what they're saying. What's your response to that? What do you think?
00:36:19
Speaker
She told me at one point, she said, I feel like I'm being driven by fear and I won't let myself be driven by fear. This is my story. This is my life and I'm not embarrassed about it. I'm not embarrassed that I had a performing elephant. Maybe we look back now with the ethics of 2023.
00:36:38
Speaker
think that was kind of abusive and you know just wouldn't be something we would do now putting an elephant on roller skates but those were the times and you know she I think is able to look back with
00:36:54
Speaker
the current place she is, the current perspective where she is, where she's very into animals and elephants being, you know, in the wild as much as they can be in a sanctuary, and still appreciate, you know, the route that got her there. And as you were doing your reporting, I was like getting into the nuts and bolts of even like the pitch process too, as we kind of track the evolution of, you know, this piece from Genesis into its ultimate, you know, birth.
00:37:23
Speaker
if you will. At what point did you feel confident that you could draw up a very evocative pitch that would light up someone like, say, we're Darby?
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think it was when she got Tara back. So that happened when I was kind of in the early stages of interviewing her. And once she got Tara back, I sort of knew that
00:37:56
Speaker
the story had an ending, you know what I mean? That the narrative arc would work, right? And, you know, I mean, the story's about several things. And as I said, I think it's kind of layered. But at its heart, it's a love story. I mean, it's really a story about love and friendship over the years. And so I don't think the story would have worked until she and Tara were wrapped together.
Storytelling Techniques and Timelines
00:38:21
Speaker
And so when that happened,
00:38:23
Speaker
I went, okay, I have my story now. She made me wait a couple of weeks to come down because she was just, I think Carol was nervous about Tara settling in and whether that would go smoothly and just didn't want anyone who Tara didn't know around to create problems.
00:38:45
Speaker
But you know, and then I went down and she seemed, the elephant seemed completely at ease. I mean, I think it's like two friends picking up a conversation with them when you see them together. They're very at ease around each other.
00:38:58
Speaker
Very high up in the story, too. I think this was probably at the crux of your pitch. I mean, even this one paragraph alone almost suffices. You know, you write, you know, there are many kinds of love stories. This one involves a woman and an elephant in their bond spanning nearly 50 years. It involves devotion and betrayal. It also raises difficult questions about the relationship between humans and animals, about control and freedom, about what it means to own another living thing. Like, kind of boom right there, right?
00:39:28
Speaker
It took a while to get that graph down. And that gets to the other issue in the story, which is a fascinating one, which is about property too, which has become an interesting question as we also look at the issues of personhood, the laws evolving in a way that is very
00:39:51
Speaker
It's evolving in a way that I think is very new in terms of what can be considered a person and what is considered property. And Carol will even acknowledge that she won Tara back because a jury believed that she was her property. But in Carol's mind, it's about what's best for the elephant. And she firmly believes that she can take care of that elephant like no one else can.
00:40:19
Speaker
And when you're reporting you're starting to fill up the notebooks and you've got your transcripts and whatever else that you might have at your disposal, when you're getting ready to write, are you much of a structure hound and an outliner? What's in place for you at that point?
00:40:42
Speaker
Well, and that's sort of a little bit, I benefited because I was, as I mentioned, I started this working as part of an MFA program. And so I had access to some just fantastic, you know, fellow students, but also some fantastic editors. One of
00:40:58
Speaker
One of our mentors was, is Melissa Fay Green, who wrote Praying for Sheet Rock, and John T. Edge, who has written potlicker papers. You know, so these are authors who really have chops. And, you know, they talked about how they
00:41:16
Speaker
structured things and they have different, everybody has their own technique. But for me, it was so daunting to think about writing a piece this long and this detail that I had to break it up into pieces or I don't think I could have ever started writing. It was much more manageable if I went, okay, this is the section on the trial. And for this week, I'm going to work on the trial section and pull out sections from the transcripts. Those transcripts were gold.
00:41:44
Speaker
because I had every word that was said during that trial, which was a marvelous resource. I always tell people, if you can find a story to write that has a courtroom scene involved and you have a transcript that will make your job a lot easier, but I had to break it up into chunks or I just think I would have been so overwhelmed. And sometimes I wasn't even sure
00:42:09
Speaker
how those pieces would fit together. I knew I'd probably go with some type of chronology, but I didn't want to start with their meeting in California because I felt like then it was going to take too long to get to the point where you realize the bond they have and what's going on with them being separated.
00:42:32
Speaker
Again, I wrote these pieces and trusted that they would eventually fit together like a jigsaw puzzle.
00:42:40
Speaker
As writers, too, there is sometimes it can be like you're already alluding to. When you think of the totality of the thing, it can be overwhelming and it's hard to even get started. So you broke it down into these manageable chunks. So when you're setting out to write and when you know that this is gonna be the thing on your plate for the day, what do you like to have in place so you can have an effective day at the ledger, even if that means
00:43:09
Speaker
you write two hundred words and cut a hundred and so forth. Right, right. Well, I actually, I really like to work at coffee shops. I know that sounds silly, but I like to have a little bit of background noise. You know, but not intrusive background noise, but I like to get set up in a corner, like a corner in a coffee shop and kind of
00:43:31
Speaker
convince myself that I'm going to stay for, say, 90 minutes. And I don't really put a word count on it so much as I'm going to get one page done. I kind of put a timer on it because some days it just doesn't come. But I feel like, OK, if I've spent 90 minutes on this today and it's
00:43:52
Speaker
I've written crap, you know, or I haven't written much at least I tried, you know but yes, I kind of make it a time thing more than than a word thing and again, you know, as I said, I started this during a semester and So I had two deadlines and that helped to like having sort of deadlines For grades, you know that I had to meet forced me to get a certain amount done. So that was
00:44:21
Speaker
That was actually a huge help in many ways because it forced me to get at least the outline, at least kind of a sense of what the story was going to say. It forced me to do that. And then, as I said, I just kept going because I felt like the story just had so much going for it.
00:44:41
Speaker
Yeah, the stopwatch is such a great tool. And I think a lot of people underestimate how much they can get done in a short amount of time. Like, even like 10 to 20 minutes, if you just want to get into a little bit of a groove, you can get a lot done if that's all you're focusing on. So I can really see how 90 minutes in a coffee shop can
00:45:07
Speaker
You can get a lot of work done if you just put on those blinders and go for it. And I think part of the reason I like working in coffee shops and places like that is that if I'm home, I always find something to distract me. There's a lot of laundry to do or there's dishes to wash or, oh, my dog should probably get a walk. And if I'm in a coffee shop, I'm much more focused and can get a lot more done.
00:45:31
Speaker
So yeah, I think they're probably, I've got probably around five or six coffee shops I rotate between and I'm sure they're all sick of seeing me nurse one, you know, $3 cappuccino for an hour and a half or two hours. Yeah. Here she is. She's going to monopolize that outlet over there.
00:45:49
Speaker
She always sits on the table with the plug. She doesn't keep going. Now, when you're outlining or structuring, do you use any kind of a visual aid, be it Post-Its or cork boards or anything? I don't. But it's funny, at the end of this, I actually was thinking that I should have.
00:46:11
Speaker
You know, one of the aids that somebody had told me about was Scrivener. It's a program that a lot of writers use when they're writing books in particular because it allows them to kind of really organize their sources and things. And, you know, I don't know, I just didn't feel comfortable with it enough yet. I would try it again if I was doing a long story. But I did have a timeline, and that timeline was critical. I just had an Excel spreadsheet, and I lined up
00:46:40
Speaker
I lined up a sort of Tara and Carol story and then I lined up the
00:46:47
Speaker
milestones with circuses, the milestones with zoos, and the milestones with sort of the animal rights movement, so that I could kind of see how those things intersected. And, you know, you could see that when, you know, she was starting to have doubts about the zoo, that was when Ringling Brothers got rid of their elephant exhibit, or it was when something else happened, you know, it was around the same time that PETA was forming.
00:47:12
Speaker
people for the ethical treatment of animals. And so that was pushing public opinion. So I think that really helped. And all I used was an Excel spreadsheet. I'm sure you could use something a lot more complicated. At the end, when we were fact checking, I wished I had printed everything out though and used stickies just because then I was going back and forth into my Dropbox file and trying to find things. But I found just the timeline worked miracles for me.
00:47:40
Speaker
I love timelines to it. It definitely helps you get that helicopter view of a lot of things. Are you putting the years across the top and characters along the y-axis? What does it look like?
00:47:57
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the way I did it, and I'm sure there are probably many ways or even better ways, but I would just put the years on the left side and then I would put who, you know, whatever category it was on the top. I colored them differently, you know, so it was easier for me to see, you know, the, the differences. And then, you know, each, each, each year had an Excel line, even if nothing happened in that year, you know, each, each had a row. And so that way I can just really kind of.
00:48:26
Speaker
since how much time was passing between things. Carol was tough because she moved around so much. So every time I thought I had her timeline kind of nailed down, she was like, no, no, no, no, no. That was when I was at the zoo in Racine. I'm like, Racine? When were you in Racine? There was so much going on when she and Tara were touring that it was really tough to kind of get that straight.
00:48:53
Speaker
You know, so I had I have the highlights in there, but you know, she she was traveling just all over the place. So that was really difficult Uh to nail down she has she has an incredible memory though. I mean everything And this is when I began to feel super confident about the story too is that Things carol told me, you know when I would go back to try to verify them with other people
00:49:16
Speaker
checked out. I don't think there was ever an instance that I would go back to somebody and their memory was different. That gives you confidence in a source, or there'd be a document, or she'd have a photo, or something like that. That gave me a lot of... Not that I was worried that she
00:49:35
Speaker
it was making things up, but it just gives you this sense of confidence that she's really going deep on this story and she's committed to it being right too. And she told me a couple of times, she said, I would apologize for going back to her with questions for yet more questions. Oh, I got a fact check one more time. And she said, no, no, no, that's okay. I would much rather have you get it right. The problems I've had with journalists in the past have been that
00:50:04
Speaker
they abbreviate it, you know, they shorten it and there's not enough context. So she seemed at the end to kind of appreciate the fact that this was going to be a complex story, a story that really tells the whole story, a piece that really tells the whole story in all its messiness and, you know, and complexity.
00:50:29
Speaker
Give me a sense of, once you're in kind of the middle of it, maybe into your rewrites where you're probably getting some notes and edits from Sayward, what were some of the unique challenges you were facing in the heat of the moment of the rewrites?
00:50:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, to be honest, one of them one of them was that I had interviewed Carol so many times. And in this instance, I didn't use a tape recorder. I think that was because in the beginning I was trying to
00:51:01
Speaker
make her feel at ease. And I mentioned how I think she was a little wary going into this process. We would also find ourselves talking just in the strangest places. She took me on an ATV around the property, and then she just stopped and started talking. And all I had was a notebook and a pen. So I was like, OK, here we go. And I always wanted to take advantage because those were the best kind of comments, those really spontaneous comments where she's not
00:51:29
Speaker
preparing yourself but but in terms of going back to your question it became difficult because you know it'd be like what interview did that come from and i you know i tripped up my interviews and transcribed stuff but going back and trying to figure out where that was
00:51:44
Speaker
when you're fact checking was tedious. And the same thing with court records because there were a lot, a lot, a lot of court records and just kind of going back and annotating and making sure that everything lined up. Next time I do this, I will organize a little better from the beginning.
00:52:02
Speaker
But it was mostly that. I mean, I don't think we didn't have any significant disagreements on content or sort of structure. She had some questions and I feel like she improved the piece. Kudos to her as an editor. She's really phenomenal. We didn't have any serious disagreements about the writing or the content. It was really just backing everything up and filling in a few gaps here and there.
00:52:29
Speaker
I imagine that in pieces that are this long, there are tendencies or something you'll do a lot of reporting and you feel like something you've done really needs to be expanded upon. And the particular example I highlighted just to get your insights onto it.
00:52:46
Speaker
was that moment in 2006 where Winky, an Asian elephant, trampled and killed Joanna Burke. And that could be an instance where you really almost go into another set piece. But it's fairly tight and self-contained. Was that a moment that you could have easily seen yourself going on some longer tangent?
00:53:12
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of those areas that I think if I had a little more time, I might have, you know, I wanted to reach out to Joanna's parents, you know, to sort of get the sense of, you know, given that she's not alive, I really wanted to reach out to her parents if I did anything more just to gauge what their reaction would be since she's not here to tell her own story. You know, and I had more detail on that. You know, I did have a decent amount of detail
00:53:42
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, going back, if I ever did more with it, I might go in that direction. Because you look at these elephants, and they seem so lovely, and they're beautiful creatures, and they have all this emotional depth to them and intelligence. But when it comes right down to it, they are lethal.
00:54:05
Speaker
And some of these elephants were there because they had aggression problems, et cetera. So yeah, I think the reason I held off on Joanna, doing more with Joanna was just because she wasn't there to tell her own story. But if I'd had a little bit of time to talk to her parents, engage how they would react, I probably would have gone a little deeper on that.
00:54:30
Speaker
It reminded me of the Jordan Peele movie, Nope, that came out last year. Have you seen that?
00:54:39
Speaker
No, I haven't okay. It kind of deals with this this idea of like spectacle and animal is spectacle There's a I won't I won't spoil it much for you But there's there's that it's kind of a commentary on that and then trying to control things that are something uncontrollable and lethal and unto themselves and like what happens when you know Siegfried and Roy with their Tigers and
00:55:08
Speaker
Any number of incidents where elephants go rogue chimpanzees are known they seem so cuddly and they're so smart but they are some of the strongest animals and are lethal and will cause unspeakable harm to people and it just gets the idea where as much as we want to control nature and control animals when they decide they have had enough they they they definitely
00:55:36
Speaker
They lash out in a way that is completely understandable.
00:55:41
Speaker
Yeah, I just wrote that down so I can watch it. I'm always looking for good recommendations. And I think one of the things I struggled with with this story, and I had to really kind of rein myself in occasionally, was not to anthropomorphize the elephant. And the first editor I worked with, when I sort of just conceived the idea, when I wrote just a very small portion of it and showed it to her,
00:56:07
Speaker
You know, ask me the question she said, so do you want to call Tara she or should you call Tara it? And I was like, wow, I hadn't thought about that, you know, because she said, you know, you're this some some of the some of the
00:56:21
Speaker
the most compelling stuff at that point in the reporting had to do with the issue of property. I decided to go with she, I just thought it would have been strange and sounded strange, but it made me think about it in a way that I hadn't before. I think I tried one or two points to point out that
00:56:44
Speaker
we will never know what this elephant is or was thinking. As much as we try to read into her actions and her reactions, it is a mystery. And I really resisted the urge to try to make her
00:57:04
Speaker
human like in emotional ways in any way and had to really think about it occasionally. It's the longest story by far that I've ever done about an animal though. And I know you've read a lot about friction, so I'm sure you've read Susan Orlean. So I read a lot of Susan Orlean to kind of get my brain around how to write about animals in a way that was engaging, but not over the top.
00:57:31
Speaker
Yeah, because to me, this piece and a lot of her work, they rhyme to me. Yeah. She's definitely a huge influence on me. I liked her before getting into this, but really when I started to think about conceptualizing this piece as a longer story, I thought of her. The other book that was helpful was Thomas French had written a book called Zoo Story.
00:57:56
Speaker
which was also a good one. And that he spent a year at the zoo in I think it was Tampa, when they imported elephants. And, you know, and then there was a scene where one of the chimps, I think it was one of the chimps went, went wild and became violent. So that was another influence his book, his book was also great.
00:58:15
Speaker
Yeah, the first sentence in that is just like an elephant at 747 hurtling across the sky. And it's so great. Yeah, Tom was a grad school mentor of mine. Oh, really? Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, and that book came out maybe a year or so after I had worked with him. So it was really that was a hot topic at the time.
00:58:45
Speaker
Oh, I bet. And I mean, what timing on his part, though, to start covering it when the elephants arrived, which I'm guessing is probably what got him into it to begin with, because there was a controversy there. But then to be there when the zoo director ended up leaving. And I mean, as you know, sometimes it can be a little bit of a crapshoot if you spend a lot of time on something. If you're going to get something great out of it, he just seemed to,
00:59:14
Speaker
I mean, he's incredibly talented writer and reporter, but he also, I think, got a little bit of luck in being there at just a phenomenally interesting time. Oh, for sure. Oh, and they shot the tiger too. I forgot that, didn't they? They had to kill the tiger. I think so. Yeah, I don't remember exactly, but yeah, there was a lot of stuff going on. What I remember specifically about the tiger is how much she liked cinnamon. It was just such a great little detail.
00:59:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's stuff like that that just sticks with you. And something else I want to get your thoughts on is a lot of writers, you land your pitch, you got your story, and it's about to be published. And by the time this podcast airs, your piece will be fully public for people to consume and enjoy.
01:00:06
Speaker
And, you know, we always think of it as like, yeah, this is a moment to, it is all celebration and all positivity. But I know for me, there would always be a moment of like, kind of like terror and panic. And it's like, oh my God. Maybe you can speak to that and maybe like the anxiety of having this thing go out into the world when, you know, you've held on to it for so long.
01:00:30
Speaker
Yeah. And even in my daily journalism, I sometimes have that fear where I'll wake up in the middle of the night and think that I did math wrong or something, or you got a figure wrong. The thing that helps here, and I still have a bit of terror even now, and we've still got a few days, but the thing that helps is that the fact check was so thorough.
01:00:57
Speaker
that makes me feel a bit more bulletproof. But even apart from fact-checked, it's just the tone you take with certain things. There are people who don't like Carol Buckley at all, who think that she did a very selfish thing in taking Tara away from
01:01:16
Speaker
what should have been her permanent home. So I fully expect that there'll be criticism from both sides for being too soft or too hard on one person or another. And that's fine. I just hope I hit the balance right.
01:01:33
Speaker
Maybe both sides are a little unhappy, but cannot point to any factual errors.
Pre-Publication Anticipation
01:01:41
Speaker
But yeah, it is terrifying to put this out in the world. It's like taking a delicate egg and placing it out there and people are just going to break it and destroy it. It feels very close to me. I just saw the pictures for the first time.
01:01:58
Speaker
They sent over the proof today and it almost made me cry just seeing that the photos go with that Go that will go with the piece, you know that it that it It really kind of brought it home that the story is done Yeah, oh, that's great. Well shin and there's always something I like to ask people as we kind of bring these conversations down for a landing it says to ask for for you to provide a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there and like I always preface this that it can be anything and
01:02:26
Speaker
A lot of people go with books, but oftentimes it's like a brand of coffee or socks or fanny pack. I mean, anything that is enriching your life in some way that you want to recommend, I post that to you for the listeners.
01:02:39
Speaker
Oh, I would recommend Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. I just finished that book up and I thought it was really tremendous. She's a good author who I always seem to like what she writes. But this book was particularly good. I would recommend that. I also recommend Hot Yoga.
01:02:58
Speaker
I've been doing hot yoga and that has calmed me down as we have been working our way through this process. Fantastic. So I'll give you two. Awesome. And yeah, with the King's Oliver book, this is a good opportunity to maybe say like, how does fiction nourish or inform the nonfiction that you write?
01:03:19
Speaker
Oh, I, I read probably, I would say I probably read about two third fiction, one third nonfiction in terms of any, that doesn't count, you know, news consumption on the nonfiction side. Um, but I think one of the things that I have learned writing.
01:03:34
Speaker
longer nonfiction is I have taken the tricks from fiction. I mean, in terms of creating a good scene, in terms of writing dialogue, I mean, I just think when you read fiction, it shows you what's possible. And if you try to do that with nonfiction, I just think it can enrich the piece so much. I mean, so much of what I do in my day job is straight reporting, you know, and
01:04:03
Speaker
very happy doing that. I think it's really valuable and needed. But boy, if you can kind of write a story, a non-fiction story, a true story, and make it read like literature, I mean, that's just the best. Yeah, that's the juice right there. I'm with you. Yeah. Well, fantastic. Well, Shannon, this was so wonderful to get to talk to you, Talk Shop, about how you went about this incredible piece you've written. So I just want to commend you on a job well done. And thank you so much for hopping on the podcast, Talk Shop.
01:04:32
Speaker
Thank you, thanks for having me, this was fun. Alright, thank you for listening CNFers and thanks to Sayward and Shannon. If you like these Atavistian pods, consider subscribing to The Atavist at magazine.atavist.com. I get no kickbacks, so you know my recommendation is true.
01:04:55
Speaker
Maybe that makes me stupid, but it makes my recommendation true. If you like this conversation as much as I did, and I did, consider sharing it and tagging me in the show at CNF Pod on Twitter or at Creative Nonfiction Podcasts on Instagram. This show will only grow because of you.
01:05:17
Speaker
As you know, I'm something of a nobody and it's the validation of your endorsements that makes the needle move if it moves at all. There's so much content out there. So many old shows and many more new shows of people like me trying to get some traction out there.
01:05:37
Speaker
And the show only survive the pod fade if you celebrate it, so long as it's worth celebrating. And speaking of celebration, in a couple weeks, the show turns 10, okay? So I think that qualifies me as one of the old, the old shows on the internet.
01:05:55
Speaker
you can also head over to patreon.com slash cnfbot throw a few bucks into the chip jar right now there's twenty three patrons and it's a eighty three dollars a month which is pretty rad kind of shave about fifty percent of that offer taxes and that leaves about forty dollars
01:06:12
Speaker
uh... month to cover some of the operating costs is twenty dollars a month for hosting so that's another twenty for other uh... things that i can sock away for potential gear upgrades or transcription services as i am want to say the show is free but it sure as hell ain't cheap focus man focus it's been hard to come by lately same with sleep maybe they're tethered together the fact that i can't sleep means i can't focus and
01:06:41
Speaker
And the fact I can't focus means it's a horrible cycle. Focus has been the operative word around CNF pod HQ. I can't even talk anymore. I'm so tired. Poor me, trying to make headways. Many of us listen to music or podcasts while we do various tasks, be it researching or washing dishes.
01:07:01
Speaker
I'm sort of longing for the days when if you wanted to listen to a record you had to physically put in a CD or a vinyl and drop the stylus and you'd sit there and you'd just listen to an album the way an artist intended it to be listened to. You know, listening to an album the way you would watch a movie, you know, just sit there and take it all in.
01:07:24
Speaker
And maybe one more cooking or doing dishes you give yourself over to the senses of the moment. Be it your knife, slicing through the celery, or how your damn sponge still smells like fucking garlic.
01:07:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's really because I hate how my phone, even if I'm not on social media, is like my music player and it's my podcast player. I hate that even when I'm doing the most mundane tasks. I have this need to turn it on and find a podcast or an album on Spotify. And all my entertainment and distraction is tethered to this supercomputer, keeping track of my every movement and thought.
01:08:03
Speaker
And because I talk to myself so much, my phone knows what I'm thinking. It's right there. It's listening to me right now. My wife and I often long for the year 2009. We were living in Saratoga Springs. We rented this tiny home. We weren't quote unquote as well off. But we were far happier. We had some friends. We went out to a great local bar called, you guessed it, The Local.
01:08:32
Speaker
We barely or rarely worried about being productive And I've tried to deconstruct that time kind of come up with a playbook You know mainly in 2009 and the big thing is this No social media at all and the social media that was around wasn't as sophisticated so as to drain our attention and tug on our FOMO and
01:08:57
Speaker
I was only on Twitter this June 2009. That's when I got on Twitter because I was reporting six weeks in Saratoga and I thought it would be great to like maybe share Rachel Alexandra's workout times and other tidbits from reporting the book. Tweets appeared in the order they were tweeted. I had a flip phone.
01:09:20
Speaker
That sounds simple, but I attribute much of our misery to smartphones and social media, and we're not even that much of a consumer of it, because we know how much it makes us miserable, but I consume it just enough to be miserable.
01:09:36
Speaker
but maybe none of this tracks and I'm just on the verge of a mental breakdown but when I look at the playbook of then versus the playbook of now I'd say screen time is probably a thousand percent higher and Netflix had just started dabbling into streaming
01:09:54
Speaker
I mean, what else was there? It was nothing else, really. I don't know. I'm thinking out loud here. Something for me to chew on. Sorry you had to come along for this toe-tapping, good parting shot, but maybe it'll help you interrogate why you're miserable, too, and don't tell me otherwise. Stay wild, see you in efforts. If you can't do, interview. See ya.
01:10:41
Speaker
you