Transcript
Speaker: ACNF for Saturday, October 24th. Gratitude Brewing, 1 p.m. Chuck Klosterman is coming to town for a live recording of the podcast. We'll be talking about his new book, Rock, a mainstream alternative history of alternative mainstream music in his book, Football.
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Speaker: Check it out. Support it. Share it. Engage with it. It's pretty special. Happy about it. Happy how it came out. All right? Cool. I try to start writing early because there are some questions that don't come to you until you start writing.
Speaker: Oh, hey there, CNFers. It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And wouldn't you know, it's that Atavistian time of the month. Doesn't it always sneak up on us? And we have a wonderful story written and reported by Mark Johnson, Pulitzer Prize winner, mind you, for his story, The Family Plan.
Speaker: When a little girl in Iowa was diagnosed with a rare, incurable disease, her parents and their community came together to help her. They wound up making medical history. Good, good stuff here. And we'll fill you in a bit more on Mark when it comes time to hear from him and his part of the show.
Speaker: Now I tell you, this podcast nearly didn't happen. There was an audio glitch that didn't record more than half of the actual audio recording.
Speaker: But since I record video now to chop up and put on social media, I was able to drag the video file into iMovie, decouple the audio from the video, and then export the audio.
Speaker: Yeah, save the day. Some scary shit, man. Show notes of this episode more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey. There you may also sign up for Pitch Club, and we just crossed 1,000 subscribers. Pretty cool.
Speaker: My monthly sub stack where I break down a writer's winning pitch with audio annotations from the writers themselves. If you want to sell more stories, Pitch Club is your ticket.
Speaker: You may also visit Patreon.com to contribute to the financial operations of this enterprise. We lost a big donor. So if you've been on the fence about contributing to this listener-supported podcast, no, I don't take ads. You know that. I don't do ads. I do snarky ads that make fun of me with words in the dictionary, but I don't take any paid ads.
Speaker: It's listener-supported, baby. Check it out. Okay, but first we're gonna hear from editor-in-chief of the Atavist, one Sayward Darby, about why some Atavist pitches are thin and what to do about them, and what it was about Mark's story that made it easy to just slip in and edit the damn thing from the jump.
Speaker: You ready for that? Yeah, why not? Let's cue up this riff.
Speaker: Beginnings are the worst. Oh my God, I'm such a poser. Get this thing that's like a kick in the nuts. And I take orders from my friends and, hey, I'm going down to the Walmart. What do you need Run into a fucking wall. Excuse me. It's going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: and they feel maybe a bit thin. What what are some telltale signs that that a pitch just doesn't feel fleshed out enough? I think one of the first things is ah often pitches come in, they might be compelling, they might have a good narrative, but you can kind of tell that there's really only one character, that it's a little bit of an as-told-to. And for our purposes, we want to know like who is the constellation. of people that you are going to talk to. um And so we actually just rejected a pitch. ah
Speaker: I won't get into the specifics because it was a good idea. um And I think it's going to find another home. But it definitely felt like, okay, you kind of have the one source. And that person is interesting. And, you know, you're going to maybe have some document stuff around it. But ultimately, to build a rich narrative, you just need more, you know, like you you need more voices, but you also just need the texture that other people human sources provide. um You know, thinking about a particular incident from another vantage, you know, helping characterize whoever that central figure is. So yeah, so oftentimes, one thing that stands out to me and Jonah when we're evaluating pitches is, well, this feels thin, because we're not really sure who the other characters are, um or who would help
Speaker: really kind of beef up the the perspectives and the story. um So that's definitely one thing. i think the other thing, and i I feel like I've, you know, mentioned all of this before, but ah it is true. So I'll say it again. you know, you can you can write a pretty good 300 500 word pitch that sells a narrative, right? Like this crazy thing happened and then this happened and this happened and I want to tell that story.
Speaker: But oftentimes what's thin is, okay, but who have you talked to? Who have you actually secured access to? And I don't just, and I shouldn't just say who, it's the what, right? Like,
Speaker: have you gone to the place where this happened? Can you go to the place where this happened? um If it's a legal case, have you pulled all the documents? um And oftentimes, spin pitches, when you when you reply and ask those questions, people will be like, well, I'm planning on doing that, but I haven't done it yet. And I'm not saying if you to do all of your reporting up front, but ah but oftentimes that just makes us wonder, well, what's not in the pitch that we wish was in the pitch?
Speaker: I mean, I think from a narrative standpoint, oftentimes people will say, okay you know, there's this event, it happened, or this incident, or something. And then there's kind of the so what, or the then what, I guess. The so what is actually less important for us, because the so what I think implies kind of like what's interesting about this from a news standpoint, or, you know, cultural relevance standpoint. And for us, it's more the then what. um And so a thin narrative pitch is often...
Speaker: h it hinges on one like very good and you know or interesting animating thing but then it there's it doesn't really go anywhere from there it's just kind of like well that happened isn't that crazy and you know maybe we have people ruminating on the fact that it happened but then there's no continuation of the actual story um and so ah so the then what is is something that we're always curious about. um And it can go, you know, i can mean a lot of different things. doesn't have to be super dramatic.
Speaker: um But I feel like we in pitch meetings, as we're evaluating things, we often start kind of like imagining a third act. And try to figure out what could that potentially be. And I've actually taken I've done this now a couple of times in my responses to pitches, where somebody has an idea and it's not right for us and explain to them what would make it an out of a story.
Speaker: um And so, and um and I speak entirely from like, I'm making something up, you know, but it's like, okay, you have this interesting premise and I can totally see how this would be a profile or a feature in like very standard terms.
Speaker: Let me tell you what would make it an out of a story. So I'm trying to think of a good example that I've done recently without like, you know, giving people story ideas out, um like a phenomenon of something bad happening within a community.
Speaker: Bad, not meaning like abusive, but just like problematic. It's a trend. We can establish that it's a trend. The reporter is very well sourced. But it's like, okay, you've now told us that this is happening.
Speaker: And then what? um And so I explained to her, I said... For us, it would be, here's this thing that's happening that is concerning.
Speaker: You have a main character who's experienced it or witnessed it. Okay, we've established that. And then that person takes an extraordinary step. You know, says, I'm going to do something no one else has done. I'm going to try to, you know, get justice or I'm going to try to like rethink the model of something. And then that actually leads somewhere interesting. And I actually do think like,
Speaker: Mark's piece is such a good, Mark Johnson's piece is such a good example of this where it's not just a story about a rare disease and like the challenges that come with being diagnosed with one. It's about a family that took really extraordinary steps to ah to respond to a diagnosis of one of their loved ones. And I think that that is like what really made it like a special narrative.
Speaker: And so when Mark's pitch comes comes in and we talked about what made ah some pitches a bit thin. ah So his comes across the transom. And of course, you you assign it and he's written this great sort of a you know medical mystery, medical thriller kind of thing. And ah so what was it about this pitch that struck you?
Speaker: ah Well, I think first of all, look, Mark is a pro. He worked at Milwaukee paper for 22 years and then went to the Washington Post. He's one of Pulitzer's finalists for another one. Like he's, he's an incredibly good journalist. And so that was definitely part of it. And then on top of that, he already had such a clearly strong relationship with the family in question. And this is the kind of story. it is highly technical ah in a lot of ways, you know you're talking not only about science you're talking about a really obscure part of science the complement system um in our bodies which i'd never heard of um and to balance all of the the explaining that has to happen in the story you really need and i had no doubt that you know he's a long-time health and science journalist like he absolutely knew how to do that stuff you need
Speaker: incredibly vivid human characters and an intimacy with them that makes them really feel relatable and alive. And he already had that relationship with the family.
Speaker: And then, and look, I don't want to give it away, but there's a happy ending to the story and that had already happened. And so again, kind of from a narrative standpoint, it was like, okay, we know where it starts. We know what happens and we know where it ends.
Speaker: And so it wasn't, and totally fine. Sometimes stories sort of have, you know, open-endedness. um But this one really felt like the arc was complete. The characters were strong and he had really good relations with them. And then the science was interesting. Like it really was. I mean, science is always interesting, I guess, but, but and like, I feel like I learned so much working on this story. And ah when I have described it to people and kind of talked a little bit about like what our compliment system is and what it means if it doesn't work correctly, people are like, Oh, I had no idea. That we essentially have this like protoimmune system um that sticks proteins on on, you know, invaders, or in the case of the young woman at the heart of this story, you know, sort of over activates and assumes there are invaders.
Speaker: So yeah, so I think it was a combination of all those things. Yeah. ah Hearing you say this and just knowing the the history of Atavist stories, I think maybe what gets people into trouble when they're pitching is the arc isn't complete yet.
Speaker: And the people who have the most success, be it a historical narrative where it's been complete for years and kind of unearthing this thing that has a natural arc, or even in more contemporaneous times,
Speaker: yeah you have to have enough patience patience to see this thing through. And sometimes you're like, you might have access, you might have all the juice, but you're only in act two. youre like we need You need to see it through and that takes patience and that might never come to pass. But if we're going to land a story with you guys, it's like, we need to see like two and a half arcs. We need to see that it has this natural logical conclusion.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I think that's right. And, um you know, again, there are plenty of incredible publications that will run a version of a feature that doesn't have that that conclusion, right? Doesn't have that Act 3.
Speaker: Go forth and pitch those places. It's just, you know, specifically what we do with regard to narrative does require patience, I think. And, you know, in Mark's case, as I understand it, he kind of worked backward. um And maybe he speaks to this on on er the interview with you. But, you know, i think it was kind of like,
Speaker: recognizing that this announcement had been made about scientific a scientific finding and that was sort of making medical history, and then working backward and realizing the extraordinary things that had happened to get to that point. um And so that's another thing, you know, sometimes...
Speaker: You find an interesting subject and you're with them on a journey, but we don't really know where the journey is going to end. And I um want to put a pin in that because want to explain how that can still work for us. But then in other cases, it's like you find an outcome and you work backward from there. um You know, whether it's the adjudication of a case or or in this case, you know, a finding um of some kind.
Speaker: But i will say, with regard to sort of the patience in the third act, look, sometimes there are interesting stories that deserve to be told and can be told in really interesting narrative form, where the ultimate sort of answer is not there, or it's not going to happen anytime soon. and what are you going to do? Like, never write the story?
Speaker: um And so in that case, I think what's crucial for us is that the story is framed the right way and addresses the right question. Like, don't ask a question you can't answer.
Speaker: ask a question, frame the story around something where you can get to an answer. um Even if it's not the ultimate, you know, i mean, I'm trying to think of like, like in this case,
Speaker: what would it have looked like with Mark's story if he had tried to answer the wrong question? ah i don't even know. I actually feel like it doesn't really apply here because the the sort of framework was so obvious.
Speaker: But I do feel like we sometimes get, and this often happens with profile ideas, honestly, where people are like, look at this interesting person. They're so, you know, kooky or they're so fascinating or they're so brilliant or whatever. And that's all great. But then what's the arc? What's the arc? What's the arc? Um, and, and I think oftentimes when you're talking about sort of a more single person focused story, it's figuring out what question you're asking about them that you, that you can answer by the end, or at least get really close to an answer. Obviously that's different in Mark's case, like I said, cause worked backward. Yeah. Yeah. And I always love getting a sense of yeah unique challenges that you and the editor side of the table are experiencing as you're looking to get, say, in this case, Mark's piece to its best possible version, be it structurally or rearranging things or whatever. So what was that experience like for you making this as good as possible?
Speaker: Yeah, um that's a good question. um Well, this was an example of like the draft came in and I immediately felt like I could edit it because the reporting was there, the structure was there. um and so, you know, there wasn't a we need to rethink this. I need to send you a memo. It was more...
Speaker: you know, doing the the nip tuck cosmetic surgery to it, which is just, you know, normal stuff. I mean, i I think actually one of the funny challenges with the story popped up in fact checking because everything is correct, just to be clear. And there were no actual like issues in fact checking. It was just this very funny, like,
Speaker: Mark's been talking to these people for years, right? And they had been, they had spoken, I think, to him in ways that then when ah fact checker calls, and these are scientists, these are people who deal with precision and peer review, you know, they would really quibble with certain characterizations or words. And so the fact checker would come and say, we need to change this.
Speaker: And then Mark would say, but they, that isn't what they told me. They told me this. And then he would go back to them and I'd say, oh yeah, Mark, totally. You're right. Like that's fine to use that word, you know? And so this kind of funny, like ah sort of professional like stance that understandably the sources took vis-a-vis the fact checker.
Speaker: And, and again, this is, it's so small potatoes because nothing, it was all like, you know, a single word or like, you know, a particular phrase or something. It was, none of it was, was anything of real consequence but then it was just kind of funny to play this game of telephone ah between the fact checker who had maybe had a very short conversation with a source who you know spoke very sort of formally and then mark saying well let me go back to them because like i think we can we can do better um and so that was uh that was pretty funny and just like the technique the technicalities of it i mean working on
Speaker: a science story where you're talking about an obscure part of science ah and also just, you know, explaining the research process and grant funding and, you know, all of those things just take a lot of precision, patience and precision, excuse me, to make sure you're getting them, you're getting them right.
Speaker: Very nice. Cool. Well, I'm looking forward to talking to Mark and kicking this over to him so he gets his side and his experience and the story behind the story from his point of view. So as I always say, it's so great to talk to you. And thanks for the all the insights you share. So we'll kick it over to Mark now. And yeah, we'll talk again soon.
Speaker: Thanks, Brendan.
Speaker: Nice. I feel like I haven't spoken a say word in a while. That was nice. All right. So now we have Mark Johnson, who, as far as I can tell, has little to no Internet presence. He might be on LinkedIn.
Speaker: So you go look him up there. Mark won this little award you might have heard of called the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting. Have you ever heard of this thing?
Speaker: Like, it's new to me. is it a big deal? He spent 22 years at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and most recently he was at the Washington Post, but was unfortunately part of its recent mass layoffs.
Speaker: Good on you, Post. his first novel though the earth gives way came out in 2022 and in this conversation really fun really a really buoyant conversation i really really really enjoyed this uh we talked about interview stage fright interview prep is it ever okay for a reporter to want to be liked Things that didn't work, obsession, the stories we wake up with in our heads, writing early in the process, quote unquote reward scenes and what they are.
Speaker: The great advice he received from the journalist Rick Bragg, hidden beauties and why these kinds of stories still matter to him. A no parting shot this week on account on this being an atavist one and those tend to run long. So we'll return to our regularly scheduled parting shots next week. But for now, let's learn a little bit about a rock band Mark played in called the bloody stumps.
Speaker: Oh yeah, it's spooky season and we're going to hear about the bloody stumps. Let's go.
Speaker: Now, I understand that you used to play in a band called the Bloody Stumps. i need i need to I need to know about was it big. ninety three ninety two ninety three right around the time nirvana had hit it big We were in Rockford, Illinois, and I was working at the newspaper there. And the guy who was the pop critic, um we used to go go out um karaoke singing, right?
Speaker: I can't sing for sure. Terrible. But he had a good voice. And he was surprised, like somehow down the road, he he realized that I played guitar. i had a yeah i have this old Gretsch, like one of the like Chuck Berry style guitars. And um we got together and agreed to play a few songs for a New Year's party.
Speaker: And he got all excited and um he had all these great contacts in Rockford and started, you know, before we actually had any other players, he started spreading the word about the Bloody Stumps.
Speaker: I think he was the one who thought of the name and I can't remember how it came up, but it was funny because our um our original bass player, very good friend of mine, Will Pfeiffer,
Speaker: he we had to we had to ah let him go um right at the very beginning because he refused to buy or learn the instrument. So we ended up, but my wife ended up playing bass for for for the band.
Speaker: Yeah, we played around for about two years around the Rockford area, Northern Illinois University, that kind of stuff. It was fun. It was a great chance to...
Speaker: Kind of, it was a ah last chance to sort of postpone adulthood, you know? I always wanted to, you know, play in a band when I was in high school. And um this was, it was just like fun. Every, every part of it was like, you know, cherry on top, you know, kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah. I imagine yeah just that as a a music fan, loving, loving going to live shows, being up on stage, it does look, it looks pretty special to be up there. Just the, the feel the, especially if you're engaging with the crowd, if like they're into it and you're up there doing that, there are probably a few things that feel better than that. It was, I mean, I had, I had stage fright. So at times it could be, i would get nervous and I'd break a string or something, which would, was a pain in the neck. But we did a, we,
Speaker: ended up writing a lot of our own material and uh that part was fun too and i i kind of liked being um you know, being up there and, you know, we picked the, we did about half um covers and half original.
Speaker: And we did some really fun covers. We covered um the Violent Femmes, Gone Daddy Gone. um The guy who was our drummer could play marimba. He and his dad had built one. And so he did like all the marimba parts and the solo during that. And, um,
Speaker: Let's see what else we... Oh, yeah, we did we did a Joy Division song, Clash song. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Oh, nice. Well, you you bring up ah Stage Fright, and it that made me just wanted to put a pin in that because even with, like, ah even reporting cold calling, having a big interview, there there can be... I know I kind of suffer from a little bit of that sort of cold call anxiety, and for someone with you, you know, journals for as long as you are, and you speaking...
Speaker: I don't know. wouldn't do you experience ah a little bit of that sort of a pre-interview jitters or, you know when you have to make a tough call or even just any call? Yes, very much so. um Especially on bigger stories when there's a key interview that I have to do. Um,
Speaker: Oh, this was maybe 10 years ago, but I had for a book, a nonfiction book that I co-wrote with a reporter in Milwaukee.
Speaker: I had to um interview um James Watson, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA. And I remember being in my room at um this was at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories. I was there for a conference, but I had scheduled an interview with him.
Speaker: And the morning of the interview, I'm going over my questions and I'm just thinking like, you know, Watson was pretty unpredictable and could could say some pretty crazy things and i was just i was really nervous about it going well and i still have that from time to time you know i'll be in a hotel room and i know that you know when i went to iowa city for this um i sort of
Speaker: I had just been laid off like a month earlier and going to ah like flying to Iowa City he and staying there for a few days was a kind of a gamble.
Speaker: um I didn't have a buyer yet for the the story. And i was really nervous when I got there because I mean, I had some, I really liked the story. I had some good elements, but I didn't have the kind of details that I i thought I'd need.
Speaker: So, you know, i was in my hotel room, you know, sort of saying, you know, well, I should leave in like 10 more minutes, 10 more minutes, you know, and thinking, you know, what have I forgotten? What have I forgotten? You know? Well, that there's always that um that element of uncertainty going into a story, like especially if you're investing some personal time, personal money to do the reporting, and you're like, sometimes you just have to put your faith and your trust in the reporting. like Good things will come in. It's not always the case. Sometimes maybe there isn't going to be anything there, and that's like a total bummer.
Speaker: But it's like when you have that anxiety, like, I just got to put my faith in the reporting, my trust in the reporting, and then... Maybe, hopefully, good things will happen. I mean, I got some one of the most nerve-wracking assignments I ever had was when I was in Milwaukee.
Speaker: On 9-11, I got sent. They assigned me to drive to New York with another reporter. And, I mean, it was a long drive. It's 1,000 miles or so.
Speaker: And all that way, I'm thinking I had all these mixed feelings like, i I had a young son at the time. i still have him, but I was... An older son now. Yes, he's much older. But I remember thinking, you know, I would kind of rather be doing anything else than this. You know, it was actually supposed to be the first day of my vacation, and I'd come into the office to work on a longer story that I'd been i'd been um working on and was very excited about.
Speaker: And I knew I was screwed because the second I walked in the office, the city editor looked at me and he said, boy, am I glad to see you.
Speaker: And my heart sunk. It was like, ker-wonk. That's the end of my vacation, you know. And i mean, at that point, I didn't know what had happened. They'd only had one plane hit.
Speaker: And as we were talking a little bit more about it, the second plane hit. And I was watching, you know, TV, like quite a few people. And I was just, it was so disorienting.
Speaker: You know, I mean, I was going to this thing at the same time i was trying to figure out What is going on? And I knew that ah because of the the nature of the other reporter they were sending, she was more of a sort of cop's reporter and I knew that they'd assigned me to cover the families of, of the people were killed. And I thought, oh my God, this is like, every time I've gone, you know, to the victim of a fatal accident or a fatal shooting times a hundred, you know, yeah and thinking like, that's, what's waiting for me in New York, you know, as I'm driving, know,
Speaker: It was very nerve-wracking. And ah you know you brought up in speaking with with Watson, you know you're nervous and you had your questions written down. And I always love getting a sense of how individual narrative nonfiction writers, reporters you know go about interview prep, writing down questions. To what extent do you stick to that script and then veer off? and to what So how do you conduct an interview, handle an interview you know pre and and during? um Well, with stories like this one, I had already done a number of interviews with the family, and I knew them pretty well, but I also knew there were certain things...
Speaker: The kind of things that a magazine story needs that I didn't have. I mean, I hadn't got them to go into some of the details that make a story cinematic, like make you see what's going on.
Speaker: And I was thinking to myself, like during this trip, I would. wrote down, i always write down my questions and I usually go back over them a couple of times. I sometimes do two or three drafts of questions. um and i I try to figure, you know, what am I missing?
Speaker: You know, if I get out of this interview and I never, I get no more chances to interview this person, what is it that I absolutely need? What will I regret if I don't get?
Speaker: i stick to this script, but then also there's, when you're having a lot of fun, when it's going really well, it's it's a great conversation. And i don't know, I'm a sucker for that. I'll i'll go through 20 minutes where I don't look at my questions because There's, you know, a give and take and I'm just enjoying it so much.
Speaker: It's a good process. i I have to at least feel like I've prepared, like I have these questions and I'm not going to be stumped and and just sort of awkward pauses.
Speaker: Yeah, i I love that. I kind of treat it like, um you know, NFL coach in their call sheet. It's like they've done all this yeah prep and then they have all these situational things. And but then the game happens. Right. It's like, OK, well, we got to veer off because things are well they said something really cool and I didn't expect that. So we're going to go in that direction. But then you can pull it back to the thing. To your point.
Speaker: you don't know if you're going to get another crack at interviewing this person. ah You know, especially if they're older, you never know. they They could pass away. That's happened to me with some reporting I've done too. And it's like, if this is last time I talked to them, have I gotten as much information of the most most important information that I need um out of this, you know, transaction, if you want to call it that, because yeah, it, there's so much uncertainty. So to make sure that you do, you don't say like, Oh, you know, I'll, I'll call them next week and follow up. Right. You might not get that week. Yeah.
Speaker: I also, um I mean, this is something reporters are not supposed to want to be liked by their sources, right? I mean, there's the idea that, you know, we're not in this to be liked or to be, but I want, with a lot of my interviews, it's, especially for a story like this, it's entirely ah their choice whether they participate.
Speaker: yeah And I'm going to ask a lot of them. I mean, I ended up doing probably ah more than a dozen interviews with family members, you know, just over and over again, and that plus emails, checking things.
Speaker: And I want that process not to be... painful for them, like not for them to get to the end of it and think, oh my gosh, was this worth it? You know, what? I did not know that this dude was going to, you know, be ah following me for, you know, so long and dogging me on all these questions, you know.
Speaker: And there are times when I've I've just pushed my luck too far. You know, i had a story for the post that it's a shame. it I think it would have been, have been a really good story, but I hit a point where the subject of the story, um it was about a scientist ah who was, um who was trans and how this person had, um,
Speaker: had come out while working at a, you know, one of the highest profile government research labs in the country. um You know, tremendous, unbelievable mind, this person. And, and you know, a physicist doing, you know, some of the most advanced stuff out there.
Speaker: And i was asking them a lot about the, how they, came out and actually told all their coworkers.
Speaker: I mean, especially at a government lab. And I thought, I mean, it was it was a pretty intense you know experience that I think it got to the point where the nature of the questions just, it was too personal.
Speaker: I think if I hadn't have asked those questions, my editor would have come back to me and said, how come you didn't, you know? But it was an awful, awful feeling when i realized I'd pushed too far and that the relationship was destroyed.
Speaker: I was so depressed, like for weeks, it it kind of hung in my head, like, how did I screw this up? How did I blow it? You know? Yeah. Well, it's, it's totally understandable because when you're doing a kind of intimate journalism, yeah, you, you do kind of want to feel liked by, by these people because you do become awfully friendly with them. And yeah there is, the lines do sometimes get a little blurry and that's just kind of on us to adhere to those ethics and be very sort of forthright and do put up those boundaries. But It's yeah when you're doing stories like the one you've got for the atavis and probably countless others over your career. Yeah you do want to be liked and respected especially after the story comes out you want to still feel like you can talk to each other and not feel like you broke some trust and hurt their feelings. I mean, especially because of the nature of um a lot of the stories I do, they're they're feature sort of narratives.
Speaker: um they're not um They're not something hard news. i've I've done some investigative stories, but not very many. And with these stories like the one in The Atavist, you realize that ah you know there's there's no compelling reason why the person has to talk to you, right? yeah And after a while, if they are still talking to you, usually some kind of fondness has, you know, you you you have feelings about them, you know, they're interested in your life because I tend to share a lot of things
Speaker: You know, when when thing when a source mentions something and like I have sort of an analogous feeling or experience, I will kind of share that because I feel like it's it's it's kind of an exchange a little bit.
Speaker: um And so, you know, I want... but Very often towards the end of you know a long story, one that I've been working on for months, at least some but you know one or two of the sources will say it'll become obvious that they feel a sense of kinship and friendship.
Speaker: And my feeling is that because most of these are things that I won't revisit again, I'm fine if you want to be friends with me after the story is published.
Speaker: um I can't do anything about it before then. i mean, i can treat you decently like I'd want to be treated, but there's a lot of, you know, ethical barriers that I'm going to run into. And i I'm actually, um I know other reporters who just completely cut the ties. You know, when a story is done, that's the last time, you know, we see each other have a nice life.
Speaker: I've still got about, ah at least half a dozen people on my Christmas card list that are people I did, you know, stories on and that we there we stayed in touch.
Speaker: And i don't, I really, um I can live with that, you know. i'm I'm actually much happier with that than having somebody who wants to be friends and and me saying after,
Speaker: all of our sort of professional exchanges taking place no i'm you know i'm above that you know plus it's not like i have so many friends that you know if somebody you can always use more and i mean there's a a guy i wrote uh a story on about um probably 10 years ago former governor of wisconsin who his wife developed Alzheimer's disease.
Speaker: And this story was for a ah series on loneliness. And his story was about how you can be lonely even when you're, you know, you still have a spouse there. And it was about that experience.
Speaker: And afterwards, ah he started, you know, he would call me and invite me to breakfast at this like little diner. And we'd just go out and talk and,
Speaker: it It was a really, it was a good relationship. i so I still write to this guy and um I'm kind of fine with that. i i I think I'd have a harder time you know, looking at myself in the mirror, if I put up a wall after, and he was very forthcoming with me. He, he let me be there the day that he took his wife into an elder care facility, which was just brutal.
Speaker: Gosh. you know Yeah. Yeah. Well, and speaking of that, like the, the story you wrote for the out of us too, is is super, super intimate and personal. And so just how did you arrive at this story? Yeah.
Speaker: um Well, the the the funny thing was, it was um as a health science reporter, I get a lot of press releases, right? um You know, about discoveries that have been made.
Speaker: ah And this was, I got a press release about a paper that was coming out in the New England Journal of Medicine. basically saying that this ah extremely rare disease, um a treatment had been discovered for it.
Speaker: And there was something about the way the press release was written. there was I can't remember exactly what it was, but I had some feeling that one of the two scientists involved, there was like there was something personal about it, especially with very, very rare diseases.
Speaker: There's got to be a reason that you devote a lot of time to it. In this case, I knew that this was something that this scientist has been working on for, you know, 30 odd years.
Speaker: And I kind of asked the media contact, like just sort of probed a little little and said, you know, it is is there somebody in this person's family that that has this condition? Do you think they'd talk about it?
Speaker: And um at first they said, um well, we'll check, but no promises, you know, I'm not sure. And they got back to me and it turned out Richard was willing to was willing to talk.
Speaker: i My editor initially thought um that this would be like kind of a quick hit story. Like ah it it it was at a time when the um when the Washington Post was up against some really tough times and more and more of the reporters, people like me, were being urged to write shorter stories and more of them.
Speaker: And i knew right away that you know, as soon as I i heard that that that my hunch was right, that that there there was a personal story there, this was not a story I wanted to work three days on and then blast out.
Speaker: um One of the things that's a frustration in covering health and science is that Very often, because we get a press release about three, four days before a paper comes out, you know, some discovery, we don't have a lot of time to go into it.
Speaker: And the story that we write ends up making it seem like the discovery came out of nowhere, you know, because we can't, we don't have enough space to go into the history. What led to this?
Speaker: It also comes out that it's like the work of one person, right? This one lead scientists. And very often there's like 30 names on the paper and more people besides who've contributed in some way.
Speaker: The other thing is that, um, Stories like this, these daily stories um on discoveries, they often, um in fact, almost always, they make it feel like the whole process was smooth sailing.
Speaker: you know They had an idea, you know money was no problem, they got a grant, you know people were glad to like come with a wheelbarrow full of money, and um everything just fell into place.
Speaker: And one of the things that's always fascinated me about ah covering science is this aspect of dealing with disappointments and defeats. And um ah failure is really inseparable from ah success in science.
Speaker: I mean, very, very, i can't think of a single discovery that just, you know, hey, they you know, we tried something and the first time, bang, you know, it was a success. One of my favorite stories about that involves a um Japanese scientist, Shinya Yamanaka.
Speaker: I did a series on how scientists discovered methods of reprogramming cells so they can now like take a skin cell and turn it into the equivalent of an embryonic stem cell which gets you past the sort of the ethical debate over you know uh using embryonic stem cells Anyway, this scientist was basically the the pioneer in this. and But he initially was a doctor, and he had gotten frustrated because there were some conditions where he couldn't help people.
Speaker: And so he wanted to go into research. And he had been laboring away for years at this third tier university in Japan.
Speaker: All of a sudden he, I can't remember how it happened, but he gets an opportunity, a one-year fellowship to the Gladstone Cardiovascular Institute in San Francisco, this really high profile place.
Speaker: He's got a year there. He brings his family over, works ungodly hours, like 18-hour days. He works every day, weekends, everything.
Speaker: And his whole project is he wants to cure mice of, or rats, I think it was, of cholesterol, right?
Speaker: And so finally, he works towards this big experiment. All the rats got tumors and died. And so yeah in on one level, it's a complete disaster because something that cures you of cholesterol but gives you tumors is sort of making things, you know, much, much worse than they were to begin with.
Speaker: And all these people who worked around this scientist and got to know him um felt sorry for him. But he got really curious about that, about why what he did caused tumors. Why did this lead to tumors?
Speaker: And it ended up inspiring him to switch over to studying stem cells. And this guy, his discovery was so important, he ended up About five years after I interviewed him, he won the Nobel Prize. Oh, wow. um I mean, it was a stunning and it was his discovery was one of these rare types where even when I was working on the story, you know, which was like a year after the discovery.
Speaker: I would go to conferences and people would introduce him and they say you know, he's going to be, he's going to win the Nobel prize. I mean, it's, it's a given um because it was such an incredible, ah it was something that people didn't believe was possible.
Speaker: You know, he basically made, figured out a way to make cells go back in time to their origin you know, his embryonic stem cells. But anyway, I i always loved the fact that here was this crushing disappointment and he didn't react like, oh, you know, ah this is a year, my big chance is all yeah has gone down the toilet.
Speaker: He got really, he got more intense, ah you know, in in looking at what had happened. And as a result, you know, he made this you know, groundbreaking discovery. um I've always thought that that, you know, so I have a real kind of interest in the role that failure plays, you know, in discoveries. And that was one of the things that, you I told the scientists involved in this very early on that I wanted to be able to talk about things that didn't work.
Speaker: Because all we ever hear about when I get press releases are the things that did work. Nobody gives you a press release to say, hey, we have a paper coming out in the cell on this experiment that kind of didn't go the way we hoped, you know.
Speaker: Yeah. So in in ah your story with the atavist, there's this rare disease that affects you know the kidney and kidneys. And so yeah what was the nature of this rare disease that sets the story aflight?
Speaker: Well, the nature of it was ah it results from a problem in this part of the immune system that most people don't know that we have. In fact,
Speaker: you know, I'd been a science reporter for 15 years and I'd never heard of it, the the complement system. And it turns out that it is a very early sort of evolutionary part of our immune system that was developed before, you know, other parts. There are parts of our immune system that respond to very specific threats like bacteria or a specific virus like COVID.
Speaker: um But the complement system is designed to respond ah right away, much faster, um but less targeted.
Speaker: It's not designed to um to fight one particular you know a threat. It's designed to be an overall, like a sort of first alarm system.
Speaker: And what happens in in in people that get this illness is that it it basically runs amok. And in it's triggered sometimes at the wrong times um when there isn't a threat.
Speaker: And more seriously, it has this incredible overreaction. It starts... destroying you know cells and basically eroding parts of the kidney.
Speaker: And ah the people that that get this illness, they get proteins in their blood. and And it shows up um very often one of the early symptoms is blood in the urine, which was what what it was for this this particular family.
Speaker: And that's it's a it's a pretty scary symptom. And the – but the disease was one that I had i had honestly never heard of you know and before this.
Speaker: Yeah, and it even – you're talking about how certain um ah discoveries or even research can be personal. you know There was one particular scientist. was ah yeah Nick Meyer who was a research ah associate. Yes. i think at At first, they were they were worried about that personal connection, but they come around to saying, like in science, we're taught that you're supposed to be dispassionate. There was some talk that this is a bad idea because you know it's his daughter, you know Richard at the heart of it. And at the same time, she felt a strong pull in the opposite direction. Richard was a good boss, and the lab staff knew about Jenna's illness. yeah We all saw the toll was taking on his family. So there was this turn that like yet research, maybe on the one hand, is supposed to be dispassionate, but...
Speaker: maybe maybe it can help to be animated by a personal sort of vendetta against a disease. Exactly. i think I think that that's true. And i and it's um I've done several stories before this where I'd started to see that wall that we think of between you know personal feelings and scientific truth.
Speaker: I'd started to see that wall kind of ah crumbling um there was There's a famous stem cell scientist at Harvard who ah has been studying for decades how to use stem cells to treat or cure diabetes.
Speaker: And two of his children had diabetes. And this was just, you know and he made no bones about it. And I think that that that it should be okay to do that. I mean, this this is an endeavor where obsession almost, it it sometimes takes obsession to to really see it through all the disappointments to success, you know? And so I think that there has to be a very strong motivation to, you know, to find an answer.
Speaker: And um I mean, another story that I had worked on was a story about a um spinal cord ah injury researcher. He was, again, a stem cell scientist, but he got into this because his mother had been in this horrible accident and was paralyzed.
Speaker: I think that that motivation, this this personal motivation, you know, inspiration, it's, I feel like it's, it's okay to have. And, and scientists sometimes feel a little guilty if, if this is what's pushing them, but I don't think they should, because it's, it's very human.
Speaker: I mean, in a lot of what we do, you know, maybe it's not that, clear-cut, but there are motivations that go to you know our personal lives.
Speaker: And it's pretty hard to pretend that they're not there. And I always love getting a sense of the experience of reporting out a piece like this. So what was your experience, you know be it through the through the interviewing and yeah yeah meeting these central figures and yeah just the the reporting of this piece? What was the that experience like?
Speaker: ah it was a well It was a really good one. And some of that had to do with my personal circumstances. um At the time I started really going heavily into this, I had had to almost abandon the story for a couple of months um at the post because I needed to do more shorter stories and more of them.
Speaker: And I felt really bad. I'd been out of touch for a month or two with, ah you know, with Richard and his family. And then I get laid off from the post and I was feeling kind of really empty, like, you know, um I really miss...
Speaker: having a story that that I love, that's really, that's pushing me every morning that I wake up with in my head. And um I was very lucky that, you know, ah I think a few days or maybe it was a week after I got laid off, I i wrote back to the family and to some of the key ah people in the story and said, look, I'm really sorry I've been out of touch. um This was a situation I couldn't really talk to you about, but this was what was going on at the newspaper.
Speaker: And Now, um fortunately or unfortunately, I have a lot of time to devote to this. And um I think I said, you know, i understand if at this point you're, you know, you want to pack it in you know, i was out of touch for a month or two. And, um,
Speaker: you know, it it takes a lot of trust. You know, there has to be a trust there between, um you know, reporter and and subjects. And i just asked them whether, you know, I said, hey, i I'm all in. I love this story. I'm all in Would you be willing to continue to talk with me and trust me to find some place to publish it?
Speaker: And I was very lucky um because, everybody that I talked to ah said yes, yeah you know? And again, at that point, I didn't have somebody to print it. I mean, i i I just had to have sort of this faith that it just felt like such a good story, you know? And it wasn't just that it um it's a wonderful feeling when you've got um a story like that to tell. Yeah.
Speaker: But there was also, there was a side of it too, that it was a good story in the kind of way that made me feel better about the world. You know, there's a lot of things going on in this country and in in the world that can be really depressing and make you feel like like people ah are...
Speaker: like humans are not a very worthy creation that, that we're, you know, that there's an awful lot of bad will out there and pettiness.
Speaker: And so much of this story hinged on exactly the opposite on people caring for one another and being willing to, go that extra mile for each other. yeah I mean, there's a ah lot of sort of love in it.
Speaker: um And that made me feel better about the world. So it was every week that I was working on it. um I mean, there were times when I felt like, am I ever going to be able to finish this?
Speaker: But it was, it made me feel so good about you know, life that, um you know, i I couldn't imagine not finishing it. always love to get in a sense of the the process by which you then sit down to write when you felt ready to write, structuring it, um and those inevitable speed bumps along the way. So as you were gathering your materials to write this narrative, know, what was, ah you know, how did you set up your days and just ah approach the story with the, yeah, with the the rigor that you brought to it?
Speaker: um Well, one of the things that that I run into is that um I try to start writing early because there are some questions that don't come to you until you start writing.
Speaker: Like, oh, I know this one scene, but for instance, the scene where the bus driver comes to their home early. late at night on a snowy night um to give the the twins um teddy bears for their birthday, but also brings this check, the you know, one of the first sort of important acts to boost this nonprofit that the family started. And there were a lot of little things about that, little details, you know, um that I didn't know
Speaker: i'm I'm never quite sure whether I'm going to need or not until I start writing. So I start relatively early. But what it means is that the reporting process is is still continuing.
Speaker: um You know, in in fact, sometimes it I'm sure my people I'm talking with don't realize that I'm i'm already writing now. But there's parts, I tend to work in a way where with a longer story, especially an explanatory story, there are parts where I'm going to have to go into some complicated science.
Speaker: And those can be very intimidating. I get like, how am I going to explain this without it sounding too jargony or too much like a science textbook? And weighing down the narrative. is Exactly.
Speaker: At the same time, there are parts that... I love, like I can't wait to write. Like the scene where um Richard and Lynn are in Florida and learn finally that Novartis has received FDA approval for this ah drug, the first treatment ever for this this illness.
Speaker: And they know that after 30 years, you know, they've reached this incredible point. um That scene, I couldn't wait to write. I was so excited to write it.
Speaker: And there were there were other things like that. And so what I tend to do is I use those as sort of a reward. If I write this this really difficult explanatory section that um has that is going through a lot of technical information and trying to boil it down,
Speaker: Once I'm finished with that, then I get to write this other scene that I really want to write. It's like, I think of it as kind of like dessert. you know If I finish my broccoli, I get my ice cream sundae. love that too. In talking with Cher's friend and mentor in Madeline Blaze, when she was writing Queen...
Speaker: Oh, she's awesome. She's of my heroes. Oh, great. Yeah, me too. was so lucky to be able to study under her at UMass Amherst in the early 2000s when I was an undergrad. And she's just been a great friend ever since. And just one of those people who gives you, puts wind in my sails when my confidence is low, which is frequent. But yeah, she's just such a lovely person. And one of the times she came on the show when she had her biography on Alice Marble come out, I believe it's Alice Marble.
Speaker: a Queen of the Court, ah she would say like, sometimes, you know, a even if your story is chronological, writing out of chronology is fine. Like if you've got that 5,000 word chapter, you're just like, you know what, this is chapter nine, I know it's gonna be nine, I know I'm kind of stuck in one, two area, just write chapter nine. She's like, then it's money in the bank, and it might be fun to write, yeah but it also, it's something that you can, like, oh cool, like,
Speaker: once I reach that point, it's already done and you can kind of proceed from there. And in in a way, it's kind of what you're saying too. It's like you have these little treats. Maybe you just write that scene that is giving you some juice and giving you some life, some a Sunday. Satisfy your sweet tooth.
Speaker: It makes you feel good about the work, that that that ah you feel good about the writing. Like it's ah it's a positive experience. And it's funny because interviews with writers and, and um you know, movies about them focus so much on the hard kind of the gristle of it and, and you know, the the despair and things, which and those things do enter into it. But it's really important to
Speaker: feel like you enjoy, you love what you're doing. You know, i mean, being a reporter, I started off my salary in at my first job was 200 a week, which was like nothing. I was working on ah in a resort community on Cape Cod where if i the apartment that i was living in, I could only afford it because I was there off season. And months ahead, i I knew I was going to be priced out.
Speaker: you know so you're not doing it you know, for the money per se, you're, you're doing it. that There's something else that, you know, there has to be a passion yeah for it.
Speaker: Um, I interviewed, uh, the writer, Rick Bragg, uh, the former New York times correspondent once, um, lovely guy. And i remember him saying that every day you should do,
Speaker: ah at least one thing that makes you feel like a writer. He said, you I don't care, you can be covering like sewage commission. And I have covered meetings like that, you know, or or zoning board of appeals. But there should be one line in your story that makes you feel like a writer, where there's a nice turn of phrase or something that's very pithy, something that's brief, you know, just a sentence that feels...
Speaker: strong to you, you know, that you're proud of. And there's a lot of, it's funny because there's a lot of editors sometimes that look at that as kind of a negative thing that you shouldn't be carried away with the, you know, with like purple bros and things like that. And you can obviously go overboard, but the experience has to balance you know, the the the hard work with some joy, you know.
Speaker: i wanted to get a sense of, know, landing stories of this nature is just seems to be, you know, harder and harder ah these days. And, you know, you have to come at it with that that degree of passion that you're talking about.
Speaker: So like why are stories, you know, like this, you know, why why do they remain important to you? Well, for so for ah for several reasons. One is that I think people are really hungry for reading, you know, even despite all these wonderful technologies we now have, and you know, video games, ah movie DVDs and and streaming services and everything like that, books are still very popular. And there just isn't, at least for for a lot of people, there isn't something else that can replicate that experience of
Speaker: being in the midst of ah of reading something, a piece of writing book, a story, an article, you know, um a poem that just transports you.
Speaker: So that's, you know, i feel like that's, that's something that, you know, is, is makes it, you know, kind of worthwhile. ah the the other thing, the other thing too, is that I think people still, know,
Speaker: people so badly crave inspiration. Like this has been a really rotten period for heroes. the The number of, and I look at it personally, the number of writing heroes I've had where i then read something about this this great writer, or I meet them, and I come away thinking, oh, boy, I wish I hadn't. you know They're really a kind of a crummy individual. i
Speaker: They're really not a nice person. they they All this beauty flows from from them, and yet they're kind of an ugly person. And I think, I mean, it's like... um I think one of the best analogies are sports. You know, so many heroes in sports, people like Lance Armstrong, then turn out to be lot less than heroic.
Speaker: And i think that ah there's a kind of heroism that's a little bit more ordinary that that we don't hear about. Somebody like Richard Smith is going to not be in the newspaper very often.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of scientists go their whole careers and they're lucky if they're in the newspaper, you know, a couple of times, but they're still doing something that's very important and and they're doing it in a way that's inspiring.
Speaker: You know, they're they're giving everything they have, you know, to to doing something. And to see that, especially from somebody that's not celebrated, somebody that's not been given the most valuable player award or a Nobel Prize or something like that.
Speaker: I think it validates what a lot of a lot of us are doing, ordinary people. We're we No one's calling us a hero. No one's telling us, oh, you know you're great, you're this and that.
Speaker: um we're just We're just working really hard and kind of struggling up a hill. And it's nice to see somebody else that's doing the same thing and see them in such a way that you realize you know there really is some heroism to to going to work every day, to pushing something that makes the world a little bit better.
Speaker: Well, what i what I hear and how you're talking about it and what your your story reflects a lot about what ah what Tracy Kidder made a career of, the late Tracy Kidder, you know, and not even Paul Farmer, you know, this, you know, this great, right great, the great late Paul Farmer.
Speaker: That was a very inspirational... Yeah, Mountains Beyond Mountains. And yeah, there are you can yeahp they kind of rhyme here in a way. in a And yeah, again, a a you know Tracy Kidder made a career out of these backyard narratives of very normal everyday people going about the work with with rigor and with passion to make their own little acre of the world a little bit better.
Speaker: And I think that there's something extra beautiful about like hidden beauty, the beauty that's there, but that we walk by every day and don't, you know, notice.
Speaker: My wife and I in the last five or 10 years have gotten into birdwatching. um We used to live in um in the Midwest and we had a backyard, we had these feeders.
Speaker: And especially during the pandemic, when I was working at home for two years, in fact, we had, it was a two bedroom house and we had four people, myself, my wife, our son, and his girlfriend, all working in this one house.
Speaker: And it was amazing because I had this big window in my office and I could look out and see the birds going through their lives. ah fighting over food, you know, ah little conflicts, you know, but also feeding their young, like, you know, when ah the young chicks sort of do the begging behavior and open their mouths.
Speaker: And you kind of realize that um ah our struggles are just part of something much, much bigger. And,
Speaker: I don't know. I think that's a that can actually be a very good feeling. you know um It was for me. I i like knowing that that things that seem at the time unbelievably important and sometimes crushing election results that we've dreaded, you know something like that there's a day or two where it just feels like bottomless despair. Like what is their good that comes out of this?
Speaker: And it's it's helpful just to see the whole thing continuing to churn on, you know? oh for sure. And yeah, and and this wonderful story that you've brought to light, it definitely contributes to that. So I just got to commend you on this story. And also just thank you so much for carving out time to talk shop on the podcast. This is awesome, Mark.
Speaker: Oh, been wonderful. No, it's been it's been great. Thank you so much for for having me on. I'd love to see some of your work too. I can tell that you've got you've got a really strong passion for for this. And I'm always, as a writer, I'm always excited by somebody that has a passion for what they do.
Speaker: Yes. Awesome. Wasn't that great? Pretty great. I thought it was great. Thanks for listening, Stephen F. Reuss, and thanks for Mark for coming on the show. Thanks for Sayward for always being willing to do these kind of things.
Speaker: Be sure you're all subbed up to the podcast and subbed up to the newsletters and you're following the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. If you're going to be in Eugene on October 24th, I'm telling you, you got to come and join us for a live recording of the podcast. If you got about two hours to burn on a Saturday afternoon, the podcast recording not two hours long, but the the the window of the event is two hours. The podcast recording itself is about 40 minutes and room for Q&A. So don't think you're sitting there for two hours listening to two schmoes talk. It's a
Speaker: A slice. Well, the main event of the literary event, okay? Chuck is one of a kind. It's going to be a pretty special time. And I need butts in seats, baby. I can't have Chuck Klosterman looking out from the stage and seeing, like, three people.
Speaker: Myself included. Going to be a fun one. ah RSVP link is in the bio of my Instagram, and there's also a Facebook page, an event page for it. Okay.
Speaker: I'm not really a Facebooker, but I got that up there on ah on on the Facebooks. Ugh. Sounds gross just saying Zuckerberg properties over and over again. Bleh. All right.
Speaker: Dig it, friends. Stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
