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Episode 399: William Ralston Recounts a Harrowing Rescue for The Atavist
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William Ralston is a freelance journalist based out of the UK. In this episode, we talk about his Atavist piece "Mayday."
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction & Sponsorship
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, let's do this, CNF-ers. Let's give a shout out to Athletic Brewing. My favorite non-alcoholic beer out there. If you visit athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a nice little discount. I don't get any money merely celebrating a great product so you can skip the hangover, man. Dry January is over, but, you know, no sense in slipping into bad habits, B.O.
00:00:28
Speaker
you know, should I send another message? Should I give up on the source? But I always say, you know, one more, I'll try once more, once more. And often that final time is the time where it really unlocks, really.
Podcast Focus & Host's Personal Story
00:00:42
Speaker
Oh hey, singing efforts, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. I paid for my first hair and beard cut in 21 years because my beard is lacking and I was like, I'm gonna put it in the hands of a professional and see if we can't optimize my face.
00:01:07
Speaker
I look like I could be in the SNL video dick in
Introducing Guest William Ralston & His Atavist Story
00:01:10
Speaker
a box. William Ralston is here to talk about his Atavist story. There are some spoilers. So head to magazine.atavist.com to read the story titled Mayday the race to find four children who survived a plane crash deep in the Amazon.
00:01:30
Speaker
This story was widely reported but not better told than what William delivers here. William grabs you from the start and buckle up, dude, because it's 11,000 words that breeze by like a, like a thread man. And by that I mean a, yeah.
00:01:52
Speaker
threads Man, he doesn't let you go. He doesn't let
Listener Engagement & Show Support
00:01:57
Speaker
go of you. I also speak with Jonah Ogles the lead editor of this piece and Get his side of the table, which is always the unique part of these ad of Istian podcast But a few things first, you know, we love kind reviews on Apple podcast and when we get new ones I love to read them right here. Give you that shout out
00:02:20
Speaker
Here's Levi Justin Rogers, left a nice review in here. He is titled the most metal podcast.
00:02:28
Speaker
on creative nonfiction. Yes, that is true. That's me saying that. Here's his review. The best slash most metal podcast for those interested in writing CNF or hearing from some of their favorite CNF authors. I love Brendan style. I love his rages against the algorithms and authenticity about the writing life. Yeah, I always learn.
00:02:53
Speaker
about new and interesting books. Authors, while listening, he also has a great newsletter. We'll get back to that in a moment, but thank you Levi, Justin Rogers. That is amazing. I owe you an email. You can also support the show on Patreon by visiting patreon.com slash cnfpod. If you want to help keep the lights on at CNF Pod HQ, instead of the candles that I keep,
00:03:19
Speaker
Yeah you can you can help if you want to have some spare change if you got some spare change to four ten bucks a month. We'd be grateful for your contribution here. We got a new patron in stephanie patterson just want to give you a shout out for your generosity we also lost one cue sad trombone even steven.
Newsletter Challenges & Emotional Impact
00:03:41
Speaker
Rage Against the Algorithm Man newsletter went out today as of this recording, February 1st. Once again, more people unsubscribed than subscribed last month. Just killing it over here. Head to BrendanOMera.com for show notes and to sign up for the mailing list. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. Or maybe you can.
00:04:05
Speaker
The unsubscribes have been brutal this year. Those really hurt. I started the year with 904 on my list, and now there's 888. Lost nearly 10 today. Brutal. The mailing lists and the podcasts are the only things I care about. And when people unsubscribe, when you're not annoying and pestering them every week, and they still,
00:04:33
Speaker
reject after all the effort you put into a newsletter. Like I said, those hurt the small time author more than anything. I wonder if people would unsubscribe if they knew just how crushing it is to an author's platform, like how complicit unsubscribers are in making the newsletter creator more unattractive to agents and publishers.
00:04:58
Speaker
There are some authors lists that I'm on that I don't really read. Some that I was annoying, just put on without my permission, but that's a screed for another day. But I won't unsubscribe because I know how important that subscriber number is. Anywho, let's talk to Jonah before I get too sad over here, okay?
Sourcing the Atavist Story with Jonah Ogles
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this, you know, this was a story that was on a radar, you know, we had even say we're denied even like exchanged links. I think she sent the first one back back when this was all happening in the news not even a year ago. We're like, Oh, gosh, wouldn't that be a great story?
00:05:48
Speaker
And our first thought was, well, you know, the New Yorker is going to do this, you know, like it's just too big. They have too many great writers, you know, several of them with like pretty impeccable.
00:06:04
Speaker
connections to the South America and Central America and Spanish speaking countries. We almost thought like this is too big for us. And then we got a pitch from William and it was like, okay, here's somebody who's thought about it and is on the right track. And we just kept asking about everything about the story relies on the sourcing.
00:06:33
Speaker
And so we just kept asking, well, how are you going to get to this person? How are you going to get to this person? And if he hadn't already established contact with them, he knew someone who he had talked to someone who thought that they could get him in contact with them, you know? And so we kept asking questions and he had just like good answers to them, you know, not always perfect, but
00:07:00
Speaker
He was upfront about what he had and what he didn't and what he thought he could get and how he would try it. And eventually we thought, okay, we can't ask any more questions. He's answered them and it's pretty satisfactory. So let's get him to Columbia and see what comes out.
00:07:20
Speaker
his reporting on this, I can't say enough about it. Like I'm in awe a little bit of how deep he was able to get and how many people he was able to talk to.
00:07:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's something that I've rarely heard you say about being in awe of someone's repartorial chops on a given story. And that's not to denigrate the past pieces, but the fact that you just said that about Williams speaks volumes to what he was able to accomplish. So what was it about the heft of reporting he was able to accomplish that really made your jaw drop?
William Ralston's Research Dedication
00:07:56
Speaker
I mean, he was just tireless. He does not stop. I'm not sure. He has a newborn, and so I've wondered if, well, he's not sleeping anyway, so he's decided to be reporting as well. But man, I mean, I would get texts from him.
00:08:18
Speaker
in the middle of the night his time, because he's based in London. So I would get texts like just before I went to bed with a question. And then I'd have a text waiting for me when I woke up with another question. And he would say, OK, I think maybe I have a line on this person. So-and-so is going to tell this person that he's calling at this hour. And he would just call and call and call and call.
00:08:45
Speaker
until he finally got somebody on the phone and then was able to get them to open up and reveal their role in the story and other people's roles. He was just tireless with it. Well, long after the point, there were a couple of times when I even said to him,
00:09:08
Speaker
pause on the reporting because we've got to get some writing done on the story and we'll catch up on the reporting later because he just doesn't quit. He gets his teeth into it and he just wants to keep going.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, that's the thing. I remember talking with Jackie McMullen, a great sports writer, basketball writer. And a big thing with her back in the day, I guess even still to some extent today, she would always be like, when you think you're done, make 10 more phone calls. And to that point, it's like, OK, that's great. That's the rigger. But at some point, you can get lost in that. And you're like, yeah, eventually you do eventually have to write.
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, you've got to be able to write a draft at some point. You've got to hit pause. And even, I mean, towards the end of it, there would be small questions. And even when I would say like, look, if you don't know the answer to this, let me know because we can probably write our way around it or just tell me what you know and what you don't know.
00:10:12
Speaker
And he would still, his response would be, I can get this. I don't know the answer, but I can get this. Let me do it. Like give me an hour to chase it down. And he would go off and find another person and make another contact and find it. There were only a few things that in the end we just couldn't really find out, but they were really, really minor.
00:10:40
Speaker
details and we were able to write around them in the end. But yeah, he was committed to finding every last thing that he could.
00:10:48
Speaker
There's something that struck me about the piece too and I love when this happens organically and it does with with Williams piece here is how the the jungle is in and of itself kind of the this character you know this essence and I really I really love that when you can just like feel the heat and the humidity and the the suffocation of the canopy like it really I I just love that element of it and
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, totally, totally. I mean, I loved that about this story, that it's just, it feels so alive and it feels, I mean, it is very much a character.
00:11:30
Speaker
the story and it even like I've sort of gone on a jungle kick since then like I've just keep reading books set in the jungle I think because this piece is just like it wet my appetite for it and it's like let's keep going like I'm in the jungle mode let's keep reading about it
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, on some roads that I drive through and here in Oregon, just off to the side, some of these forests, we're just talking like evergreens. And you look in, and sometimes 10 or 20 yards in, it almost goes pitch black. And we're not talking super jungle canopy here. And you get a sense that somewhere in the Amazon, where maybe nobody has ever really traversed, that it is just total darkness, especially in the
00:12:19
Speaker
Even when it's sunny out, like during the, uh, it's under there. It's just, you feel the claustrophobic feeling of, Oh my God, like we're in a box almost. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, they, they, I mean, if, if the rescuers, the searchers, you know, got too far apart, there was a risk that they would be lost from each other, you know, and we're, and we're talking about feet, not.
00:12:46
Speaker
miles or anything, but it's not a quarter mile away where you get lost. It could be five, six yards away that you're getting lost. He goes into all this in the story. It makes it very difficult to find for children who are out there, particularly if they're worried about being found for one reason or another in that
00:13:15
Speaker
That's a part of the story and it's crazy. It's a crazy story. It's one of those that I talk about all the time. I feel bad for my wife and in-laws and friends who I see most often because they'll ask me how it's going and all of a sudden, half an hour has gone by and I'm still talking about this story about these kids.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah. Well, to your point earlier about thinking that the story was so big that there's no way the New Yorker doesn't kind of swoop in and get this, but it's like you guys kind of got the scoop on this and that's not something you don't associate scooping the adivists together and you kind of got it. I think as we wrapped up the story, I told William how proud I was to have worked on it.
00:14:07
Speaker
And, and how I do think I mean he, we set out, we only wanted to do this if we could write the definitive story, you know, we didn't want to write an aggregation of what had been published and other outlets.
00:14:22
Speaker
We wanted to get to primary sources and have this be the story. And he was able to pull it off and it feels great. It feels great to have actually done it and be able to get it out in the world.
00:14:40
Speaker
Because I don't think anybody out there has done what we've done. Yeah. It must have been an invigorating sense of urgency that maybe you don't always get all the time with these kind of stories with what you tend to publish.
Commitment to Storytelling with Jonah Ogles
00:14:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. You're absolutely right. I mean, it didn't. There was kind of an extra fire lit under us. And it also came together very
00:15:06
Speaker
quickly at the end you know we've we've worked i was just apologizing to another writer whose draft has been with me for a long time um but i told him like i've just every minute that i've had to work in many minutes that i haven't really had available to work i've been devoted to this story you know if if i get a text at 7 30 at night i'm you know
00:15:33
Speaker
eating the last bite of dinner and pulling out my laptop and dealing with it. It was pretty intense for me, but I have a pretty low RPM. I'm a big house cat at heart. So it was a lot, but it's worth it in the end to be able to pull off a story of this quality. Fantastic. Well, Jonah, this was great to get your side of the table here. We're going to turn it over to William now. So as always, thanks for the time. This was great. Yeah, thanks for having me.
00:16:10
Speaker
Alright, thanks to Jonah. Thank you, Jonah. William is a journalist based out of the UK. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Bloomberg News, Wired magazine, Esquire magazine, and more. He has little to no internet presence, so he doesn't have to deal with demoralizing mailing list unsubscribes. Here's my chat with William.
00:16:37
Speaker
One of the topics I wanted to jump off with you about was just the idea of engendering trust as a journalist. And this story really hinges on you being able to get that kind of trust. And here you are from UK and to the jungles of Columbia, South America.
Trust Building in Journalism
00:16:57
Speaker
And you're doing a lot of this over the phone. So how did you manage to navigate that?
00:17:05
Speaker
Well, it began because I had, I kindly spoke to Pedro Sanchez, who's the head of the Special Forces Unit in Columbia. A journalist in Columbia gave me his telephone number. And I remember I just called him one day and I just said, you know, my broken Spanish, I want to tell this narratively. I want to tell the story in great detail. Would you be willing to cooperate? And obviously, you know, their work deserves to be celebrated for finding their children and
00:17:32
Speaker
He was very enthused by the idea. I don't think he quite realized how much effort it takes on behalf of the sources who contribute to these pieces, but it all began with him. And then he gave me a number of many of the other sources in the jungle. You know, for example, Nicholas, the gentleman who actually found the children and several others.
00:17:51
Speaker
And I just reached out to them, but getting their trust was extremely difficult. They had been reached out to several journalists before me, because I actually came onto the story quite late. It took a lot of back and forth, and I am pretty dogged in that way. I think it was a case of, in this story in particular, it was a case of telling them, and it's the same with most stories, actually, to be honest with you. I was working on another sensitive story before this about the Lucy Letby serial killer.
00:18:18
Speaker
Again, it's about reassuring them that I'm not going to create sensationalist headlines. I'm going to treat this with the respect and the sensitivity that it deserves. And I'm also going to give you a platform to tell your story in great detail. And I have to repeat that to them. But by and large, I think it worked most of the time. Almost all of the reporting was done just by getting and just flying around and getting buses around and essentially trying to track them down, really. I mean, as much as I tried before I arrived in Bogota or arrived in Colombia anywhere,
00:18:48
Speaker
I couldn't arrange any meetings, it was just about being Bogota and we flew down to Villa Vicencio. There was an earthquake so we couldn't get the bus and then I flew down there, I heard some of them were down there, some of the rescuers were down there and I heard the Fatima, the grandmother was down there and we met her in a bar and we chat with her.
00:19:08
Speaker
And I spent a lot of time telling her that I want to tell her story in the detail it deserves to talk about Mike Delano and to talk about the children and to really give their side of the story because I think there's a lot of misreporting about it. And as soon as I sort of explained that to them with this word length.
00:19:24
Speaker
And with the rigor and the sensitivity that I write with, I think that gave them the reassurance, I think, to sort of sit down with me. But it wasn't easy. It was huge amounts of back and forth. I mean, we spent about, I think, three days with Fatima before she actually ended up speaking with us, with Andres, the father of the children. It was the same thing. I mean, I actually spoke to him over Zoom. I had a friend of mine go and sit with him in a meeting room in Bogota, and I Zoomed him, because I'd come back by that time.
00:19:54
Speaker
I was going back and forth with this lawyer for about three weeks, if not a month, just saying, this is what I want to do. He's a voice that hasn't been featured in this story before. His name had cropped up in, I think, several daily mail articles, but nobody had tracked him down, and I managed to track him down, fortunately. Again, he's almost been missed, and there was a lot of misreporting, and I just said, this is the story that will be definitive, and I want to do it in a way
00:20:19
Speaker
I want to give you the platform and I thank God they gave me the trust. And obviously then it grows from there. Once you have three or four of the sources, then you can say I've spoken to him, him, and her. And it's essentially saying this train is leaving. Do you want to be part of it or not? And by that point, once you get to that stage, then it's a lot easier.
00:20:36
Speaker
I had heard an interview with Pulitzer Prize winner Corey Johnson, a reporter over here in the States. He didn't come up as like a traditional journalist. He kind of just learned by doing. And a lot of what he would do is just like old school door knocking, just going face to face. If emails or phone calls weren't going answered, he'd just find their address and knock on the door.
00:21:01
Speaker
Lately, in maybe the last few years or so, certainly as the internet has really taken over in social media and digital means of communication, I think we've lost sight of how personal journalism should be and used to be.
Face-to-Face Interactions in Journalism
00:21:17
Speaker
And you getting face-to-face with these people, I imagine was really what really earned that trust. And maybe you can speak to that, getting face-to-face in an age where everything is really faceless and almost impersonal.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's necessary. I mean, it's the same thing with meeting somebody, you have to meet them in person to get a feel for what they're like. And there was the same thing here is that, you know, to meet Eliezer, for example, the gentleman who speaks about actually finding the children, you know, who's in that group of four,
00:21:47
Speaker
He was so cautious about meeting me. I tried to ring him several times from in London and never got through anywhere. I know that a lot of the sources turn their phones off or change their numbers for the reasons that are getting hassled by journalists. They didn't want to talk to journalists because they didn't think that they understood them. It's very important that you meet face to face, but I should say that a lot of it also came from
00:22:08
Speaker
came from recommendation. So the reason that Elias finally opened his doors to me and as he sat down with me and told me a story and sort of continued to call me afterwards was primarily because the soldiers, the military, I sat down with all the military in great detail. Sergeant Rojas, Captain Montoya, I went to their homes and sat down with them. Again, listen to their story. We sat down for hours and hours and hours.
00:22:29
Speaker
And because they that group in that second group, it came from a recommendation from them. They knew that I was doing, you know, I was, I was, I was treating this. I was really going to report this heavily and not miss report it. Not, you know, it's going to be fact checked. It's going to be, you know, it's going to, I'm going to give them the time.
00:22:45
Speaker
It came from recommendation in that way, so the way that a lot of the indigenous opened up was, as I said, the military either gave them a call or sent them a text or actually visited them with me. So the military really were the, they were the catalyst in all this really, but yeah.
00:23:02
Speaker
The face-to-face meeting is very important. I would never have been able to report it from over here because they just wouldn't have answered my phone calls. It worked out in the end, but it required lots of tips that I didn't think were going to go anywhere.
00:23:16
Speaker
And speaking with Jonah, he talked about your doggedness in the reporting. And you've even said that, too. It's just kind of in your nature. And I wonder, where does that doggedness come from? And how do you define it in your trade and how you go about the work? I don't know where it comes from. I've always been a hard worker.
00:23:41
Speaker
But I love it. I suppose it becomes easy when you know it can be effective, because there's been so many times in the past where I've been struggling to get a source, or other journalists I know have been struggling to get a source. I think I'll always send other WhatsApp, I'll always make that extra phone call when other people will give up. I really enjoy it, and often I find it that the piece can really open up. This story really opened up by getting Andrew as the father of the children there.
00:24:07
Speaker
not Mani or Anoka, but the father of the two eldest children, that really opened up because that was the only time I got a real sense of Magdalena. And I knew that he came in quite late, as I said before, and I just knew, having spoken to Jonah too, that I needed more context around Magdalena and I couldn't work out how to get that.
00:24:25
Speaker
And we'd all put a whole load of effort and time into the story. So I think it comes from that. I just can't be satisfied until I get it. And once Andres came back to me and gave me that sort of piece, it gave me the interview. As I said, I was going back and forth as lawyer for about a month beforehand. But I just don't rest until I've got it, really. But I also remind myself that I'm not asking so much for a favor from these people.
00:24:51
Speaker
Yes, you are because I suppose you're making money on and you are in a way capitalizing on their stories. But in the other way, I also like to think that I'm going to give them, as I said, the platform to tell their story in a way that is properly done. And that was definitely an example with
00:25:08
Speaker
with Andres, because he felt that journalists had overlooked him as the father of the children. He felt like journalists had approached him, hadn't been sensitive to a story, hadn't listened to him properly. And I know that I reminded myself that there are often other people in the story that deserve a voice, and that was the case with Andres, and he's the best example of it, really. Sometimes I think to myself that, you know, should I send another message? Should I give up on the source? But I always say, you know, one more, I'll try once more, once more. And often that final time is the time where it really unlocks, really.
00:25:38
Speaker
Sometimes, too, in making those extra calls to get that extra detail, as important as that is, sometimes you can get lost in it and forget that you have to eventually start to write the thing. So at what point do you feel like you're comfortable turning that faucet off and be like, you know what, William, you got to start writing, buddy. This one was a bit simple because I kind of had a very obvious lead for it because
00:26:06
Speaker
the crash is so dramatic. And there was documentation by the Civil Aviation Authority in Colombia that you could sort of reconstruct that in great detail. So I could begin writing quite quickly on this one. I mean, there was another option for the Lee, which was actually the helicopter, the actual rescue when they were actually rescuing the
00:26:24
Speaker
the children because I had the pilot of the helicopter who spoke to me, Julian Navoa, who was brilliant. He went into such great detail. He was very charismatic too. I actually begin writing almost because I can imagine what the lead is going to be. So often I don't wait to write until I've done all the interviews. They're going on at the same time.
00:26:47
Speaker
I often find that once you've actually written the story and you've fleshed out the information that you have, I find that then you can actually really spot blanks, so you can spot where the gaps are in this story, the way you really feel as if you could, that would really benefit from the reporting. So you can actually be very targeted with the actual sources that you're going to chase down. For example, I knew that I needed Andres for this. I knew that having somebody, one of the indigenous rescuers who could actually describe to me the moment of finding the children, one of the four,
00:27:13
Speaker
would be really important. So I asked, you know, you kind of continue to report, but I think that I report, I begin writing quite quickly and that can give you the direction of knowing exactly where the holes are that can really benefit from an extra paragraph.
00:27:25
Speaker
And a moment ago, you said something, and Jonah brought this up, too, that you were after a very definitive account of what happened here in this rescue.
Pressure of Creating a Definitive Story
00:27:34
Speaker
And that can be a lot of pressure to shoulder, be like, oh, shit, you've got to make sure no stone is left unturned. And you get one crack at it to be definitive. And so how did you kind of rise up to that moment? I did feel precious, honestly, I did.
00:27:54
Speaker
You know, it's a really funny feeling when you sort of go on a reporting trip because you sort of fly into this country and you're just hoping that these sources are going to appear or are going to be around and it's not like you can sign an agreement with them and be here on this date. With this one I felt really really pressured because
00:28:07
Speaker
It was a story that had been quite widely covered, so I had to really, really work out what I was going to tell the readers that hadn't already been reported before. There had been cover by the New York Times here, and loads of newspapers sent correspondence down there to report on it, and I had to sort of work out what else I could say. See, the first day I arrived, I sort of said, I landed at seven in the morning, and I remember I said, Pedro, I'm going to come and visit you right away, and that would give me some sort of content to begin writing.
00:28:38
Speaker
And I remember I landed at Bogota Airport, and I remember I texted midday, and we had a meeting scheduled for three in the afternoon. I remember he canceled, and I remember sitting there, and then I remember that I was supposed to go and visit Nicholas down in Puerta Ligissimo, and then he canceled, and I was there in my friend's apartment in Bogota, and I was like, oh my God, this is gonna fall apart. One of them was gonna, I was just panicking, and once you get the first interview, and you start to get, every single person mentions another name,
00:29:08
Speaker
person you must talk to and then it just grew from there really and this one a lot of it grew off of Pedro Sanchez as I said and the military who had all the military first because they were all quite easy to track down and Pedro sort of flew in some of the military you know he flew in from he flew in like Montoya and Montiel and all these people specifically to speak to me for the story so I sort of had the span of the article quite quickly because they were great talkers and they sort of
00:29:37
Speaker
were so helpful in detailing it for me. And I only remembered it extremely well. But then that left me in an Australian territory because I felt like I had all the military stuff really, really down to a T in terms of amazing detail, amazing quotes, and amazing perspectives. But it also left a huge part of the story out, which was the indigenous side. And that took a lot longer. And there was definitely a big panic because it was not easy tracking any of them down.
00:30:07
Speaker
sit down with me in any sort of detail. But yeah, there was several panic stations.
00:30:12
Speaker
And you said that you write fairly early in the reporting process, and you're able to target when you see the potholes in the road and everything. When you were in Columbia, what would a day look like for you? And you'd go out reporting, would you come back to a hotel or your friend's house and write a bit or transcribe? How would that shape out? I didn't write when I was over there. Reporting for me is, because I was over there, I think, for two weeks.
00:30:42
Speaker
and it becomes such a incredibly exhausting process. It's like, I think I was listening to a podcast with Sam Anderson actually for the New York Times, I think it was on the, I can't watch the podcast, it was now, I spoke about, you know, you're entering these worlds and you sort of, it's like your ears and your senses become highly sensitive for that period and it is like that. You become highly sensitive during these interviews, sort of make sure you get the information that you want because you don't have much time with any of them.
00:31:04
Speaker
I mean, you have enough time, but obviously it's not like you can ring them up very easily afterwards, because especially the military, they could be in the field, and the indigenous could be in the jungle, so I knew I had to get as much as I could from those meetings. I got names, got numbers, and
00:31:19
Speaker
And if I couldn't track them down, then I sort of flew to the city where I thought there would be. And it was just a lot of it was a lot of us quite speculative. As I said before, it became a little bit tricky because there was an earthquake when I was over there. So all the roads were shut off. So we had to end up flying a lot of the time, which made it more difficult.
00:31:34
Speaker
But yeah, it was honestly just flying. We had meetings with the military because they were very responsive, but the indigenous, it was just about flying to the towns where they might be and asking people, do you know anyone who was involved in the rescue? And fortunately, we got people who pointed in the right direction. Then we literally ran into hotels and bars where they were and asked them to speak with us, really. There's this wonderful moment where you go,
00:32:02
Speaker
OK, like, I think I have enough to actually write this now. And obviously, after that, then you fill in the gap, you fill in the blanks, your blanks, quite, you know, quite adrenaline fuel, very little sleep going from city to city to city, trying to get these people to try to track them down really ultimately. And when you feel like you have enough to write, how do you are you much of an outliner? How do you go about organizing what you've got?
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, I would like, I really wish I could say I was more organized, but I sort of, um, this one was a bit more difficult because all the interviews were conducted in the Spanish and I sent it to a, to a, to a, to a friend of mine who, um, translated and untrapped it to English. So I didn't really understand all of what was going on in the interviews. I understood enough Spanish to sort of understand the outline of it, but it really came together when I actually reviewed those transcripts. That's when I sort of really began to piece it together. But yeah, no, I didn't organize my files in great detail at all to be honest with you. I sort of just, um,
00:33:01
Speaker
I sort of just filed the audio, went on to the next one, and then sent out the transcriptors. Unfortunately, when I landed back in London, all the transcriptors had come back. And that's when the story really came together in my head.
Amazon Jungle as a Story Character
00:33:13
Speaker
Part of the story that I particularly loved was how the jungle feels like a character unto itself. And you get a sense of how claustrophobic it is underneath the canopy of a tropical rainforest like the Amazon in Columbia. So I don't know, just maybe kind of take us there and how you were able to really personify and characterize the ecology of where you were.
00:33:40
Speaker
It was really from the accounts. There were bits that didn't make it in the story. The first time I really got a sense of how difficult it was was firstly because the military was too scared to go in. I know that the special forces went in, but generally speaking, the Colombian military would have gone in and found that plane, but they were just too scared, or maybe not too scared, but they considered it too dangerous, let's say. So that was crazy to me. That was how dangerous it was.
00:34:09
Speaker
Yeah, because some of the people in the search parties, I mean, they walked upwards of like a thousand miles of zigging and zagging through to try to find these kids. And you could go barely a yard in front of you and be just shrouded in darkness. And you get a sense of how dangerous it is in there, and not to mention the predators that are lurking.
00:34:35
Speaker
One of the great unknowns is they didn't know if there was paramilitary groups or armed men in the jungle. That was obviously the big question at the beginning. But yeah, for what I understand is that if you drifted off six feet, especially after dusk, then you would be lost. And that's what happened to Wilson essentially, isn't it, we believe, is that we just don't know
00:34:59
Speaker
where he went. I mean, I think it was. I think it was. Yeah, it is. That's why the that's why these special forces walk so close. You know, they walked in single file within a few feet of each other. And Wilson is a dog. It is one of the search dogs in the story. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We should say that. Yeah. So I mean, it was incredibly difficult, incredibly difficult area to form a search operation. I mean, you get you get a sense of how thick it was given that they flew the air force and the
00:35:27
Speaker
an avian line flew planes over the over the jungle and they couldn't spot anything. I mean the foliage is incredibly thick, incredibly dense and that's what makes it so hard to sort of search to sort of lead a successful search operation.
00:35:41
Speaker
Yeah, and with activist stories too, so much of what they publish is very narratively propulsive, you know, beginning, middle, end, and telling a story in that sense. So, you know, when you're formulating
00:35:58
Speaker
the story beats in your head and the structure in your head. How did you envision this being sort of the engine behind this? How did you draw that up to keep us scrolling, keep us reading?
00:36:14
Speaker
This story was quite different because there's actually so many key moments in it. The crash itself is fascinating. Finding the Bottle by Wilma Miranda, then you've obviously got the indigenous Edwin Packie and the group of men with Renoke finds the plane. You've got these amazing moments where even if you drift off, you suddenly got this amazing moment
00:36:43
Speaker
quite gripping moments of joining the search, obviously, and you've got the ayahuasca moment towards the end. So I didn't, they were quite clear actually, actually, polls in the story that you could picture. There was a, the only difficult bit was the, actually, which Jonah did a great job of actually solving was the bit at the beginning, because actually, for the first 15 days, so they found the plane on the 15th of May, if my memory serves me well,
00:37:13
Speaker
And for the first 15 days, they didn't really find anything. I remember the Ares III group, the third special forces group, they found an abandoned fart camp, they believe. But nothing really happened during the first 15 days. But for the rest of the story, you had almost too many moments happening. I also wanted to add some texture into the background of the
00:37:41
Speaker
the socio-political situation in Colombia, I also wanted to talk about the indigenous beliefs. There are many subjects areas I wanted to explore, but at the same time there were loads of interesting moments that I wanted to sort of describe. And thankfully with the sources that I had,
00:38:02
Speaker
The chronology, what I mean to say is the chronology is, I think it kind of lends, it's quite a clear chronology in it all. I don't think we need to tell it in a really, in a different way. I think I kind of wanted to keep it chronological. And I know that's something that Joiner I suggested too, because there's so many names in the story that I think if you ventured off from telling it chronologically, it would have become probably a little bit too difficult to follow.
Strategic Narrative Elements
00:38:32
Speaker
Yeah, the one part, and I had emailed you about this too, just about the really cool structural decision of putting in the children's point of view, which comes late in the story, and that kind of breaks chronology a little bit.
00:38:47
Speaker
There are any number of ways that could have been handled. That could have been kind of braided in as they're trying to survive and then the search party around them, and you find that they're very close to each other at one point. And you don't really find that out until the end. And I always put a little spoiler alert at the top of the show.
00:39:05
Speaker
here so we can talk about that and how close those search parties were actually to these kids and how close they actually were to the crash site itself. But you find that out at the end versus it being kind of sprinkled out throughout. So I just wanted to get a sense of the decision making of that. The boring reason is that we had almost all of it written before we had the children's account. And as General discussed, we
00:39:34
Speaker
We didn't really want to have to mess with the structure of the piece again because we kind of had it had it pretty much laid out. The other reason for that is that the children's account we didn't really know how much of the children's account we'd really get because they are
00:39:48
Speaker
undergovernmental protection and they weren't available for interviews. So we didn't really know how much information we would be able to get so I didn't want to feel thin when you gave their account if you braided it in through the piece. I think in hindsight you probably could have braided it through but we didn't know how much information we would have braided through so at that moment it felt right to leave it towards the end. Which I think works really well anyway actually in hindsight.
00:40:14
Speaker
Yeah. What's interesting about hearing you say that is that, you know, it was just the circumstances of when you got the information and where you were in the writing already that kind of dictated where that went. So it wasn't so much a creative choice at the very start of the thing, like this is where it kind of makes sense. It's like, well, this is the only place you can go right now. And, you know, in the end, not knowing the backstory of it, like it works brilliantly. So it kind of gives you an idea of
00:40:42
Speaker
all the different directions and tributaries you can go down and it's still very effective and still works and it's still powerful. Yeah, I like it when you read it because I think that the reader, these pieces are long, I think this one was 11,000 words and there's definitely that tension in the piece where you're dying to know the kid's account at that stage and I think that it comes at the right time.
00:41:07
Speaker
And something I wanted to pick your brain about also, and this is kind of in our email dialogue, given that you had been, you know, in rewrites in the story you had written, you've been with it so long that you just, you lose sight of how fresh it is, and you just, you kind of glaze over, you're like, I don't even know if this is good anymore.
00:41:26
Speaker
And I can attest that it is brilliant. But when you've gotten to the point where you've read it so many times, you almost can recite it by memory. And how do you rewrite in there knowing that it's like, OK, am I making this better? Is this still even good anymore? What's the approach like for you? It's really hard to know. You never really know until I land to honest with you.
00:41:55
Speaker
I have a few people I send it to sort of ask, you know, sort of just sort of see whether they can follow it, see whether, as I said, I have a tendency to over report, which is, which is, I suppose, a blessing in a curse in a way, because it does end, does throw up all these fantastic characters that feature in the story. But obviously, some of them simply don't add anything. You know, for example, there was, there was, there were three or four characters that spring to mind that I had in the draft up until like last week, I think, before we closed it, that featured, but they just didn't add anything to the story. You know, I had like a guy called Jayir who was the
00:42:26
Speaker
another cousin of a firm of Mendoza, there was a guy called Andrew Zandonia who I told you about before who was involved in the search in very minor ways, but it kind of over complicated the narrative. But it kind of, yeah, I depend heavily on my editor Jonas, you know, trust him implicitly to sort of know which bits to cut out and which bits weren't, didn't really add anything to the story. But as I said, I also send it to a few really trusted editor friends of mine who sort of will read it through and say, you know, this section is a bit
00:42:56
Speaker
whatever, this doesn't really add anything. But it really does depend on my editor in that way. And that sort of relationship is really, really important. There's obviously, I suppose, part of me that also wants to give them a voice. It's kind of, I imagine it's quite frustrating for the source when they sit down and tell you their story for an hour and then they don't make their voices even in the story at all. So there's something inside of me that always wants to mention that name. Part of, I suppose, also another part of it, I suppose, is sometimes you want to sort of
00:43:26
Speaker
There's obviously something egotistical in it, you know, sort of showing, I got this guy who did this, but to be able to add that into the story, certainly, yeah, in answer to your question, it really depends on the editor. And I sort of have to trust them to know what's important and what's not.
00:43:45
Speaker
Well as we're winding down here, as you know, long time listeners that I ask guests for a recommendation of some kind and some people read the confirmation notes which prompt them on that and William was in a bit of a brain fog from having been a bit overworked and he's also got a relatively very young baby in the house and
00:44:13
Speaker
The recommendation then caught him really flat-footed and he's like, can I get back to you? And I said, sure, you can get back to me. And then he he sent me an email and he said, for my recommendation, please say, Rummy, the card game best played with four people. My girlfriend and I were staying with my mom and sister over Christmas because we had a because we have a newborn and wanted an extra pair of hands.
00:44:39
Speaker
And it really is a great way to spend quality time together over a glass of wine. Great recommendation. I love that stuff. Some people say, like, I gotta do a book. I gotta do a book. And in this case, it's like, no. Rummy is pretty amazing.
00:44:54
Speaker
Ah, right. We did it. We got here. What's that, episode 399? Woof. Thanks to Jonah and William. I have nothing left to give, so no parting shot. You could always follow along with the show at a Creative Nonfiction podcast on threads and Instagram.
00:45:14
Speaker
And yeah, subscribe to the podcast if you don't. And no parting shot, maybe next week. Got episode 400, what? Are you kidding me? There might be a song and dance number. Probably not. But don't count it out. I might do a dick in a box song and dance number with this shave that happened today.
00:45:43
Speaker
If you can't do the interview. See ya.
00:46:14
Speaker
you