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Episode 497: The Seduction of Art Thievery with Jack Rodolico
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"I kinda hate it when people say writing is fun," says Jack Rodolico, author The Atavist original "The Blue Book Burglar."
Today we feature Jack Rodolico, who is a bit of an audio maven, but he comes to us hot off the Atavist presses to talk about "The Blue Book Burglar: The Social Register was a who’s who of America’s rich and powerful— the heirs of robber barons, scions of political dynasties, and descendants of Mayflower passengers. It was also the perfect hit list for the country’s hardest-working art thief."
It’s a fun, rollicking read, not too heavy, not really heavy at all, merely a great caper.
Batting leadoff is lead editor Jonah Ogles, so we talk about his side of the table about what less experienced writers can learn about pitching the Atavist and how Jonah worked with Jack to fix the structure of the piece. As always, really rich stuff from the editing side of things.
A bit more about Jack Rodolico, the dude’s got it going on … His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, NPR, 99% Invisible, and NHPR … He’s earning an MFA in fiction, and that’s really helping him with his nonfiction writing, as you’ll hear in a moment.
You can learn more about Jack at his website journalistjack.com. In this conversation we talk about his Atavist piece, writing fiction, earning trust, why you can’t pay sources for information, how he organizes his research and cites his work, beginnings and endings, and how he didn’t necessarily want to be a journalist, rather he wanted to be a writer.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Spoilers
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, AC and efforts. Happy Halloween. It's that atavistian time of the month. Magazine.atavist.com. So you got some spoilers ahead. Man, I wish I could write for the atavist. Listen to this episode, if you dare.
Lecture Promotion
00:00:18
Speaker
Monday, November 10th, if you're in Eugene. I'll be delivering a little lecture for the U of O History Pub to kick off the series this year. It's at 6.30 p.m. at World Pies.
00:00:33
Speaker
And it will be my now world-famous annotated reading, among a couple other things. Come on down, get a slice of Zabra, and get fucking hammered as I talk about the frontrunner again.
Glamorization of Art Theft
00:00:49
Speaker
It's very easy to like glamorize stealing art, you know, like because that's everybody's predisposition. But i I did think about him as a craftsman.
00:01:05
Speaker
Oh, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I talk to tell us your true tales about the true tales they tell today.
Introducing Jack Rodolico
00:01:11
Speaker
We feature Jack Rodolico, who is a bit of an audio maven, but he comes to us hot off the atavist presses to talk about the Blue Book Burglar, the Social Register, was a who's who of America's rich and powerful, the heirs of Robert Barron's scions of political dynasties and descendants of Mayflower passengers, it was also the perfect hit list for the country's hardest working art thief.
00:01:37
Speaker
It's a fun, rollicking read. It's not too heavy. It's not really heavy at all. Not really heavy. Merely a great caper. Show notes of this
Supporting the Podcast
00:01:45
Speaker
episode and more. I'm BrendanO'Mara.com. Hey, hey, there.
00:01:47
Speaker
You can peruse for hot blogs and sign up for my two very important newsletters, The Flagship, Rage Against the Algorithm, and Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. New Pitch Club drops November 1st.
00:02:00
Speaker
It will feature Tracy Slater's pitch letter to a literary agent that landed her representation for her book together in Manzanar. Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar-dollar bills, y'all, visit patreon.com slash cnfpod.
Editing and Writing at Atavist
00:02:16
Speaker
Batting lead off is lead editor Jonah Ogles. Yeah, he's back. Yeah, we had a little, we got Sayward last month, and now Jonah's back in the saddle. So we talk about his side of the table, about what less experienced writers can learn about pitching the Atavist, and how Jonah worked with Jack to fix the structure of this piece.
00:02:36
Speaker
As always, it's really rich stuff getting the editor side of things. I'll read more about Jack and give him a better fleshed out introduction before we hear from him, after we hear from Jonah.
00:02:48
Speaker
Let's cue up the montage. Huh-oh.
00:02:56
Speaker
I kind of hate it when people say that writing is fun. But every day is very much a pair of socks. And I love style. Don't get me wrong, but that style had better be adding something. Yeah, this could be good. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:03:21
Speaker
How many stories do you like to have assigned or for you guys feels comfortable? Like, okay, you're not scrambling for a story because you're like, oh shit. And like in two months we're like the well's dry. Yeah. yeah Well, I mean, unfortunately that happens sometimes.
Story Assignment Process
00:03:38
Speaker
um You know, like it it seems like the sweet spot is to have like eight to 10 stories.
00:03:46
Speaker
assigned out, yeah you know, because things just come up, even though we try, like we're, we're not like some magazines where like, I remember working it outside and it was like, okay, we can assign this, but it has to be in the August issue, you know? So like, that's part of the conversation with the writers. Can you turn this in by you know, six months before that so that we have time to do everything?
00:04:16
Speaker
And at The Atavist, it's much more about making the story the best it can be. you know And so when when things pop up and a writer says, hey, this source is tied up for a few months, you know can I have more time?
Successful Story Pitches
00:04:33
Speaker
We basically always say yes. even ah even if we've done a good job of of making sure we have like a story or two coming in each month,
00:04:44
Speaker
things happen and they shift. And if we have like eight or so signed, it seems like generally one will will come in in time. But if it if it dips below like six, then then we sort of start reaching that's when we do more reach out to writers that that we've worked with or whose work we've admired and say,
00:05:04
Speaker
what are you What are you working on? What are you excited about? Is there anything that might work for us? And and try to do our own digging for ideas. Yeah. And generally, there's usually like one or two promising ideas every two weeks when we meet to talk about pitches. And of those, once we're engaged in that back and forth, I think the odds go up a little bit. But it's still maybe 25% of those actually get assigned. Mm-hmm.
00:05:34
Speaker
but they But there are usually a couple that we're like, OK, this has some of the right stuff. Let's see if we can better envision what's going to happen. And like is the sourcing lined up? and you know So it's ah it's a steady stream of of decent ideas that come in, I think. Yeah.
00:05:54
Speaker
And if someone is relatively inexperienced and doesn't have a a big body of work, you know what do you like to see from that person and in their pitch?
Supporting Inexperienced Writers
00:06:07
Speaker
Well, yeah. so I mean, we're paying attention to the writing and the pitch for sure, especially for younger writers who don't have a ton of clips. It's important that that's pretty tight and and really reads like a first section of a story and yeah in places. you know And beyond that, I think what we're looking for is, and it i'm I'm struggling to talk about it because part of it is like a gut feeling,
00:06:34
Speaker
you know we We want to be excited by the idea, but but we're also like I pay a lot of attention to how I feel after I read responses to my questions versus how I was feeling before that. you know Because like if I'm um like, oh, this person's kind of stumbled onto something good, I'm pretty intrigued, here are my questions.
00:06:59
Speaker
And then I'm more excited when they come back or it seems like, Hey, they're kind of thinking about this the same way I am. Then I feel like we're like, this is, you know, we're gaining traction on it, but if they come back and I'm like, Oh, that is not what I wanted to hear. You know, if my expectations for the story kind of lower that,
00:07:23
Speaker
you know that I'll often ask follow-up questions even a second or third or fourth time, but it if my excitement is diminishing, the more I learn about the their reporting or what sources are available or how what kind of memory the sources have and how they'll be able to...
00:07:44
Speaker
ah flesh out the types of scenes we want. you know If I'm not feeling great about it then we start to say, okay, that's not quite right. but But hopefully, you know we feel that good energy between between everybody. And and we don't like we know that like we can get a draft and rewrite it if we have to. you know So like we're not that we want to do that, that's never the goal.
00:08:10
Speaker
But if a writer is new and or kind of early career, we're we're not afraid to take a chance on them if if it seems like all the ingredients are there.
Exciting Pitch: Blue Book Burglar
00:08:24
Speaker
Nice. And with Jack's piece here about this art heist and this kind of this little but band of ah criminals here, you know, what ah what excited you about this pitch in this story when it came across your desk?
00:08:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, it's fun in in the first place, you know, like it's a it's a crime story where there's not like a bunch of dead bodies and a bunch of like real darkness.
00:08:52
Speaker
So that that's always great for us. And also, like he has spent like seven years with this story, almost maybe eight years now, reporting it, talking to Ray, the sort of the main character in it.
00:09:08
Speaker
And you know when you have somebody like Jack who's... got some experience no you know knows what he's doing in terms of storytelling and they've he's spent a bunch of time um the story and it's just kind of fun to read or you know like has is the right type of story for us that that makes it really easy this was one of those that came in and we read it and we were like Yeah, this could be good. Like, we have a couple of questions, but as long as as long as his response isn't like, I don't know and how dare you ask, you know, like, we're probably going to just assign this.
Appeal of Art Theft Stories
00:09:47
Speaker
Yeah, well, the bringing up that point of like, no darkness and dead bodies. Yeah. I was thinking, too, about why we really are enamored with art thievery, you know, over over the years. ah ah Michael Finkel wrote a great book, The Art Thief, that came out a couple years ago, which was a ah yeah great, you know, it was just a great book. And I wonder just, you know, for you, what is, what do you feel is the appeal of, yeah, art thievery? Yeah.
00:10:16
Speaker
There's like ah there's some cunning involved. you know like it's not a ah So many crime stories, you know either like a person is really like severely twisted or ah maybe like the story we did where ah a guy that in Minnesota like murdered a neighbor who he was worried was going to assault his child.
00:10:45
Speaker
Those types of stories, well, in ah in addition to the darkness, it's just sort of like, here's a terrible thing that happened, so we're going to write about it. But art stories are are different because, i mean, like I know there are victims in this story, and there are people who felt unsafe in their homes after their homes were robbed of all this incredibly valuable stuff that they had.
00:11:10
Speaker
But, you know, like they're not physically harmed. They're well insured, I'm sure, because it's all old money people. So it allows you to like get into the the natural like plot that a crime story has.
00:11:27
Speaker
But... There's this person, the criminal in those stories is somebody who's like spending a lot of time casing things, you know, figuring out how they're going to get in, how they're going to get out. So there's more of like a psychological thriller aspect to it without any of that, the, the dark stuff, you know? Yeah. There's an Ocean's 11 kind of vibe to it.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, for sure. It's, it's more, I don't know. maybe Maybe there's something in all of us that thinks, I'm smart enough. i could you know Could I pull that off or something like that?
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, there just there is something about them. I'm clearly not doing a great job explaining what it is, but there's something about art stories that just makes them fun. And as you as the editor lead editor of this piece, what was the experience of you know building it
Crafting Blue Book Burglar
00:12:21
Speaker
out? How did you build this out with Jax?
00:12:24
Speaker
Yeah, it was really fun. You know, Jack is is a really great writer to work with. um he has He has a good, he's funny, you know, like writing writing funny is really hard and and Jack is good at it.
00:12:40
Speaker
And he was super collaborative. we hes We talked on the phone maybe a little bit more than as usual, but I don't mind that at all. Like it was it was always great to like get on the phone and kick things around.
00:12:54
Speaker
And in terms of like the, the editing process on this, like it it wasn't, you know, there was no major like issue that we had to address. It was all just kind of like conversations about maximizing what we wanted to do. You know, like I think, I think we, we held I held meeting Ray a little bit later in the story than was in an initial draft. We we sort of got into Ray's background and revealed that he was the guy behind so many of these crimes pretty early in the piece.
00:13:34
Speaker
And so we moved that lower to to just sort of like drag out the tension of not really knowing who who he was. Yeah. Leaving some mystery. and And otherwise, I did a lot of trimming. I think I cut maybe, I don't know, 5,000 words or so out of the story. So it took about a third of the story yeah out of it.
00:13:55
Speaker
But, you know, that stuff is all... That's not really heavy lifting. you know it it was really more of a process of like getting on the phone, talking about how I was responding to the story, hearing whether or not that resonated with him, and then making like some minor shifts and cuts in order to just get it to be as fun a read as we could make it And after the the first section or the lead, and then there's a page break, and then, you know, Jackson, like, I came across the Greenwich case in 2017. So there's this first-person insertion, you know, right, you know, high up in the story. So, ah yeah, how did you guys arrive at at that as part of the part of the story and the storytelling?
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah, well, if I remember correctly, that initially came at the very end ah of the story. Although that I could be wrong out on all of this. They kind of blur together. But um I'll say that I think for a lot of writers, their impulse is to do that at the end.
00:14:59
Speaker
you know because they've got they've got all this great reporting, they've got all this great material, and then they sort of reach a point where they have reached out to the character, you know and they're going to finally do the sit down interview.
00:15:14
Speaker
and ah And I think that can work fine sometimes. my My feeling is that it's always better, almost always better to introduce yourself earlier in the piece if you're going to do that, especially like in an atavist length piece. Because I think if you're writing a 4,000 word story and you don't appear until the final thousand words...
00:15:35
Speaker
it readers you know Readers have spent maybe half an hour, less than half an hour getting to that point, you know so it's not jarring yeah in the way that it is in an atavis story where you've read maybe 10,000 words and then the writer appears.
00:15:52
Speaker
I think at our length, you want to seed it early, like, hey, I'm here. i'm going to be part of this. Here's my background. um And that then that allows us to, in the last section or maybe the second to last section, bring Jack back in and and readers already know who he is, what it you know what his voice sounds like, all of that type of stuff.
00:16:17
Speaker
In newspaper parlance, a lead is usually that first graph. And in longer magazine pieces, ah I guess the lead can be 500 words or 600 words or the an entire lead section.
00:16:32
Speaker
how are we How do you define leads as it pertains to you know these longer form narrative pieces? Yeah, I tend to think of them as a first section, basically. um you know and i and i think of We often end up sort of putting the the nut graph at the end of that first section. you know like we We like to start, or maybe just i do, I like to start with scenery and just drop readers into...
00:17:01
Speaker
detail and color right away because it just feels like a good way to get them you know fully engaged with the story and then you can kind of back up and say here here's what this story is about yeah but I think in this story like that what I would call a nut graph or but or maybe a lead is, you know it might be like two sentences at the, at the end yeah um that like, you know, he wasn't done robbing the homes of the ultra rich, not even close, but like that's the story, you know, it's almost like a second deck for it.
00:17:36
Speaker
You know, hopefully that has created enough tension for us to then back into Jack and, and take, you know, take a step back and say, Here I am as a writer. This is how I encountered this case.
00:17:48
Speaker
And here are sort of my bona fides that make me an expert, expert enough to be able to call this guy the hardest working art thief in America, ah which which is kind of what that helped sell the idea to.
Unique Aspects of Jack's Story
00:18:05
Speaker
It's not just a crazy art heist story.
00:18:08
Speaker
it's It's an art heist story where the guy behind it robbed hundreds of homes, you know like hundreds of homes, and spent cumulatively maybe like four years in prison over ah a 50-year career is is a criminal stealing high-value stuff, um or being accused of of stealing high-value stuff. He was only convicted, I think, in a couple of cases.
00:18:36
Speaker
So getting Jack's bona fides, I think, helped helped us make that argument. Awesome. Well, I think it's about time we kick it over to Jack and talk to him about how he went about this piece. So as as always, Jonah, it's so great to get your side of the table. So we'll kick it over to him. And as always, thanks for the time.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me, Brandon.
00:19:03
Speaker
Sweet. That's cool. Love talking to Jonah.
Jack Rodolico's Career and Fiction Writing
00:19:07
Speaker
Alright, so a bit more about Jack Rodolico. The dude's got it going on. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, NPR, 99% Invisible, and NHPR. That's New Hampshire Public Radio.
00:19:21
Speaker
He's earning an MFA in fiction, and that's really helping him with his non-fiction writing, as you'll hear in a moment. You can learn more about Jack at his website, journalistjack.com. In this conversation, we talk about his atavis piece, obviously.
00:19:36
Speaker
Writing fiction, earning trust, why you can't pay sources for information, how he organizes his research and cites his work, beginnings and endings, and how he didn't necessarily want to be a journalist. Rather, he wanted to be a writer. Something I could really attest Really cool stuff.
00:19:53
Speaker
Why don't you just buckle up? Maybe get get your get your dirty dishes ready. or Or leash up that animal. Okay? Okay. you're goingnna be to You're about to spend some time with Jack Rodolico.
00:20:19
Speaker
So what might be the the impetus to getting into more ah imaginative writing? So I think that When I go back to like wanting to be a writer, maybe 20 years ago, i didn't tell myself, like I wanna be a journalist.
00:20:38
Speaker
I thought, I wanna be a writer. And journalism became very practical. I wanted to do, I was interested in it. It was also the only way I could imagine getting a job as a writer. And so I did that and I loved it and sometimes loved it. Sometimes, you know, I enjoyed to have I've had a good career as a journalist and got into narrative and audio, but then I got laid off.
00:21:02
Speaker
um And the market changed a lot. And I was like, I have wanted to write fiction for a long time. i tried to on my own. And, you know, I think you get to a point where you realize, at least I do, where it's like, I want to do this and there's things about it that I don't know how to do.
00:21:17
Speaker
Like, i i I think this could be better. i think there's stuff that I just do not know about the craft of writing fiction versus anything else. um So getting laid off is a good prompt to you know, try something new.
00:21:31
Speaker
And so that's what i did. Nice, yeah, similarly, when I was in undergrad, I added journalism as ah as a major and stayed an extra year. So I stayed five years at UMass Amherst.
00:21:43
Speaker
And I didn't necessarily want to be a journalist, I wanted to be a writer too. and And I'm reading Susan Orleans' Joyride, her and new memoir that's out, ah basically about her writing and journalism career.
00:21:58
Speaker
And ah when I talked to her about it I've had her on the pod a few times, but it's like in the book, she doesn't want to be a journalist either. She just said she wants to be a writer. Writing nonfiction in magazine, she came up in a definitively different and more lucrative era in journalism than you and I have.
00:22:15
Speaker
ah But she was able to parlay her writing skill into a ah living. But that was kind of the a similar ethos. Like, yeah, we want to tell stories and write stories, but you know being a reporter or something wasn't really the goal.
00:22:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I've found that I'm such a better writer having done over a year now in an MFA program and just like pounding out 30 pages of fiction.
00:22:42
Speaker
I'm not saying I'm like a brilliant fiction writer, but just the writing and sentence structure and, and you know, how to land something. It's just that practice, you know, and it gets you thinking a little differently about,
00:22:56
Speaker
point of view, for example, like in this piece, I i was really, i had never really considered point of view before, because as a journalist, everything is third person, or at least it's supposed to be. And it immediately, thinking about fiction and and point of view, right? So point of view is first person, I, me, third person, he, she, they.
00:23:17
Speaker
And as a journalist, innately, it's supposed to be third person, right? And that represents that distance you're supposed to have. But that doesn't always work because we have our biases. And especially in audio, you do wind up getting a little bit more eye focused, like, or in a longer magazine feature, when I spoke to so-and-so.
00:23:36
Speaker
That alone really kind of blew my mind because there's this kind of illusion in journalism that you are not there with someone.
00:23:48
Speaker
um And we all, everyone in journalism kind of knows that's not entirely true and we have our biases, but that is the way we're trying to present it. So in as it applies to this piece for the atavist, I had this idea that I wanted to sort of start in third person and slowly work into first person as I went, because a lot of it sort of There's the story of the the caper you know like and the heist. And so that really starts out with the burglars did this, the detectives did that.
00:24:18
Speaker
And by the end of it, ah my goal was really to meet Ray Flynn, you know the the burglar. And that became much more about like the experience of interacting with him and trying trying to convince him to talk.
00:24:30
Speaker
But I do think that like thinking about being a fiction writer has informed the way I write to such a great degree that I'm so appreciative of. That's that's really ah really astute, and that's ah something I wanna noodle with too, just ah you're just fucking around with with fiction in a way. Be like, oh, like this degree of interiority that we can maybe just imagine in fiction.
00:24:52
Speaker
All right, well, what are maybe the the questions or interviewing techniques that maybe we can get, we can push up against that interiority in nonfiction and be like, oh, yeah, like,
Importance of Fact-Checking
00:25:02
Speaker
can i you know, what sensory details can you kind of tease out in that in in the interviewing process to maybe get there ah as best you can and in nonfiction? So that's, I imagine fiction helps get, it helps push you into that space more.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I i still love the fact-checking. process because if it's true it should be true and you don't want to so much of the fact checking is like finding these little things that you realize like yeah I don't really know that do I you know so let's just get it out so I we can all feel better about it um and you don't want to misrepresent somebody and then on the opposite side like I'm writing a novel right now in the first person about a journalist.
00:25:45
Speaker
And it's so great to just be in his head and be constantly like a judgmental prick. And it's it's so liberating to sort of to portray that in a journalist.
00:25:57
Speaker
You know, because journalists are super cynical and like, because you see a lot of stuff and you are thinking all kinds of things that you should not put in your in your writing as a journalist. So, so yeah, I like, I guess I still like doing both. I like being able to sort of be the journalist and um get it right and tell a good story.
00:26:19
Speaker
And also trying out this new thing of like, I don't have to pretend any of this is real. You said a moment ago about the gradual revealing of you in first person, you're out of a story.
Structuring the Story and Writer Introduction
00:26:31
Speaker
And um you know in in the story, you know you have the the opening section or lead, ah but then you come into the story pretty high up. And when I was talking to Jonah, he said like, yeah, you were kind trying to withhold that first person for a bit in earlier drafts.
00:26:44
Speaker
So what was the dialogue that you guys were having to get you higher up in the story? Yeah, i I'm pretty sure that was Jonah's idea. to bring that higher up.
00:26:57
Speaker
I think the idea was there is something very unique about this art thief and this string of crimes. And that's my opinion.
00:27:09
Speaker
You know, um I and it's an informed opinion, but I'm not like I'm not remotely some sort of leading expert on art crime, but I've i've read a lot and I've talked to a fair number of people.
00:27:23
Speaker
And what was really unique about it was how it ran against all the cliches about what an art heist are. I mean, you think about the Louvre robbery ah couple weeks ago, right?
00:27:35
Speaker
That is the movie image we all have in our minds of breaking into a big museum, taking something you know really irreplaceable, um and it disappearing, and all the cloak and dagger and stuff like that.
00:27:52
Speaker
um Typically, from what I learned, that's an incredibly stupid way to steal art, because the whole world is looking for you. so this So it was sort of my opinion that this story was unique and different because this art thief stole hundreds of low value paintings. you know i I think of like the way an art heist is, like quote, successful, is or any robbery. It's like, do you get away with it?
00:28:21
Speaker
like Do you get the stuff out without getting caught? And then do you sell it? Do you make money from it? you know And steal a big painting, good luck selling it, because who's going to want it? you know But this guy, there was a success rate to what he did by getting small thing, small thing, small thing.
00:28:40
Speaker
So to go back to your question, I think Jonah's impulse was right that bring that up earlier, because what's really so special about one home burglary, or maybe even a bunch of them.
00:28:50
Speaker
I mean, that's and you know sure, there's like a cat and mouse chase to it, but it was helpful to get my opinion and my thought process and the sort of the research I've done up higher to make it clear like, hey, at least I'm the writer.
00:29:05
Speaker
like I'm in the driver's seat here, right? And i'm I think this is unique. So that's maybe enough of a hook to get people going through. Yeah, and what do you think it is about art thievery that is so arresting to us as readers?
Fascination with Art Theft and Class
00:29:20
Speaker
That is such a good question. People get so excited. i mean, you think about any other kind of robbery. People don't respect it, you know? I mean, like, they're really, like, if somebody hijacks your car or um breaks into your house or whatever, like, that's not something that people think is very romantic.
00:29:45
Speaker
But art is this thing that you're not supposed to touch, period. You know, and and there is a reverence about it. And so the audacity of somebody taking something like that, I think there's also like a really clear classist element to it.
00:30:04
Speaker
Most people, myself included, you know, we didn't grow up in homes with original artwork on the walls. and the sense of art is like you know a Christie's auction or a museum of fine arts where everything is just not very accessible.
00:30:19
Speaker
you know I mean, this is a rich person's world, typically. And so there is something about somebody breaking into that world and grabbing something and disappearing that people get pretty psyched about.
00:30:35
Speaker
you know i talked to I've talked to people about the Louvre thing in the last couple weeks People who I know have been working on this story for the Atavist, they're like, when I heard about the Louvre heist, you're the first person I thought of. I'm just like, thank you, I guess. you know um but they But they say things like, well, they kind of deserved it, didn't didn't they? And I was like, I don't know. didn't Like, did they? you know like i've I've really thought about it a lot. And people with Ray Flynn, who's the thief at the center of the story I did for the Atavist,
00:31:07
Speaker
People immediately assume that he was like a Robin Hood figure, that he he he did not see himself that way at all. It was totally practical. It was a scheme. He had no objections to rich people.
00:31:19
Speaker
And also, like, he would be totally comfortable talking to somebody you know, who is from a totally different i can ah economic status, right? A different class from him. So I think it's that class thing. I think it's like, you're not supposed to touch it and also sticking it to the rich.
00:31:37
Speaker
yeah on your website and talking about you know getting yeah telling telling true stories and earning trust among your
Building Trust with Sources
00:31:45
Speaker
sources. you know how did you How do you cultivate that sense of trust you know in general, but then maybe specifically to this piece, how you're able to you know lobby someone like a Ray Flynn to go on the record and talk as challenging as he was to deal with.
00:31:59
Speaker
you How do you cultivate that trust? I have never had a source like Ray. Never. I mean, he typically you get to a point where you realize someone is either interested or not.
00:32:12
Speaker
And if they're not, they've got a really clear reason, you know, it's like it's it it doesn't benefit them or it was something that was very personal or they have strong feelings about.
00:32:23
Speaker
mean, you build that trust by showing up again and again, by giving people time to get to know you before you turn a recorder on, um by being yourself and not being phony um and like chit chatting to about their life, um you know, just making the same way you'd make any acquaintance and build some trust.
00:32:42
Speaker
But with Ray Flynn, Like, I don't know. It was like I did all that stuff, but he just didn't see what was in it for him to be recorded.
00:32:57
Speaker
And he's a very pragmatically minded person in that sense, you know, um, It's like his lawyer said, like, Ray rhymes with pay, and you're not going to pay a source to do a story.
00:33:10
Speaker
And that was kind of it for him. you know And I had all these editors and journalists over the years being like, tell him it's his chance to get his story out there and to clear the air. And it's like, he does not care about any of that. It's like, if I would show up with cash, he would talk for as much as much time as I asked him. But that's not what you're going to do. and i In a way, I just have to respect that. It's like that's his line.
00:33:34
Speaker
um And yet, if I get him on the phone, like, I think he, I don't know if he trusts me or not. That's not really for me to say. But I do get a sense that, like, he'll chat with me a little bit.
00:33:45
Speaker
And every time we chat, I get a little bit more, you know. And so that became the strategy over time.
Choosing Between Audio and Written Formats
00:33:50
Speaker
um And doing it as a written story. When I finally decided, screw this, I'm not trying to do this as an audio story or as a as a big podcast. I had this whole vision at one time to do like a true crime podcast about it. And I even like sold it to a podcast production company, so like sold on paper, right? Had a contract and Ray backed out at the last minute because he wasn't going to get paid.
00:34:12
Speaker
and I had always kind of felt like this would be a better magazine story anyway, because i knew so much about him, but only from a paper trail. And if you can't get someone to sit down and tell you their whole life story for something like this, you can't do an audio story.
00:34:27
Speaker
And in a way, it's almost more true to him to kind of slowly bring him out of the shadows on his really kind of mostly on his own terms. so um That felt a little more true to the to what actually happened here.
00:34:40
Speaker
Yeah, that that gets to a ah point I wanted to bring up with you is having such a body of work in in audio and then here's this eight, 10,000 word yeah magazine story essentially.
00:34:52
Speaker
It's just like what is the the the math you're doing like, okay, or the on the spectrum, like, oh, this one could be, it's better written versus audio. But it sounds like it started as audio, but as he was a bit more reticent to go on the record voice-wise.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah. ah it it made sense to make that transition, right, to more written. Yeah, so so yeah, the number one thing is getting people on tape. And this was a story that,
00:35:20
Speaker
I could get the primary investigators on tape, but I didn't think that would be a great audio story just from their perspective. Ray just would not go on tape, and that was that. um So that was weighing against the audio.
00:35:35
Speaker
The other thing, though, that really weighed for writing it is that there were so many great details. When you do an audio story, you lose tremendous amount of detail.
00:35:46
Speaker
You have to write you know in ah in a much more simplistic, you know just sentence structure, noun, verb, like um yeah ah subject, object. like And you just lose a lot of detail because, you know, it washes past the ears and you have to be really conscious of that.
00:36:04
Speaker
um And so I had so many documents for this story with these like great tiny details that I knew if I could kind of collate all of them and sort them out, there would be it would just be packed with all of these cool with all of these really interesting facts.
00:36:25
Speaker
Like, can I give you one example from the story? um There's a section where I explain what they what the thieves stole and who they stole it from. And it's like a couple paragraphs. Originally, it was twice as long. Jonah, smartly, like kept encouraging me to cut it down.
00:36:42
Speaker
But every one of those sentences needed like, sometimes upwards of five or six sources. Because what I had was a police report. with the victim's name and what was stolen so and an insurance appraisal that might be 10 pages long.
00:36:57
Speaker
So go through the insurance appraisal and find the most unique, interesting thing, like a pair of handheld vans owned by but an emperor like ah a king of France or an emperor of France. you know like um and And then i would take the name of the person So had a list of the most interesting items and then a list of the people.
00:37:19
Speaker
And then I took the people, and I don't know these people's names you know off the bat. And then I would start looking for their obituaries. And it's like, oh, this guy was the chairman of the director ah board of directors of the National Audubon Society. you know This person actually was a Rockefeller. you know Her middle name now is Rockefeller. so So I had to make all those connections.
00:37:43
Speaker
and then line them up with the stuff that was stolen. right So that's how I found out, like this I don't even remember what it was, something was stolen from ah descendant of an investor in Thomas Edison's light bulb.
00:37:55
Speaker
um So that anyway, like all of that would get lost in an audio story. It would just be way too convoluted to explain. But on paper, you could really like lay it out and build the case as you go.
Ethics of Paying Sources
00:38:10
Speaker
You were talking earlier about how Ray wanted to be ah paid, and it's not uncommon for some sources to feel like, well, what's in it for me? like ah Why don't you like pay me for this information? I know when I was reporting for the frontrunner, my Prefontaine biography, you know there was one particular couple who knew Prefontaine in high school, and yeah they insisted I pay them, and I didn't. I was just like, that's you know that's off limits. You can't do that ethically.
00:38:35
Speaker
ah Jeff Perlman's written about this in his newsletter about a lot of sources and his reporting for on Tupac who would you know definitely ask for money. and you know like It's a line you can't cross. So i was hoping maybe maybe you could just articulate why. There might be a good chunk of people in the audience who who know why, but for those who might be unsure why, you know why don't we want to pay sources for information?
00:38:59
Speaker
Because it undermines your own credibility, let's say you pay a source. I mean, you you would be you basically wouldn't work again if it came out, you know, as a journalist.
00:39:12
Speaker
But but the the reason behind that is it it really undermines your own credibility. maybe Maybe the source is totally truthful and that's what they feel like they need to talk. It still means inherently you can't trust it, you know, because they've got this motivation.
00:39:28
Speaker
It's kind of the same reason you can't totally trust um someone who takes a plea deal to get out of extended prison time and then testifies against somebody else.
00:39:43
Speaker
um It's like they have a clear motivation to talk publicly, which is, you know in this instance, money, or in that instance, less time in prison.
00:39:55
Speaker
um So it means you can't inherently trust them, and it also kind of just reflects poorly on you. Like, what else are you willing to do to get a source yeah to talk Yeah, because you can it' say you pay someone $100 and you want to go back them be like, oh, it's $500 now. And then if they start talking to other people and and be like, oh, yeah, you paid him for that. Like, well, i want money now. It's like you're totally compromised in that in that way.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a house of cards. Yeah. this this Talking to Ray, though, did get me comfortable even having the conversation because you know it's just such a third, it's it's like blasphemous.
00:40:36
Speaker
It's just like, well, why we can't do that. We can't do that. And you can't. Yeah. But that doesn't mean you can't entertain a conversation with a source about like, OK, so you want to make money from your story.
00:40:47
Speaker
Okay, like there first of all, there are states where that's illegal, where people can't like get paid ah later on to do a movie if for a crime they committed.
00:40:58
Speaker
But some places that's perfectly legal. So, you know, why don't you work with me to get your story out there because nobody knows it. And then maybe you get a book deal down the line. I don't know. like I have no control over that. yeah um It's not for me to say.
00:41:14
Speaker
But if that's what you want, I can't give it to you. Talking to me might get you a step there. you know Just being able to talk about that um was interest interesting. That was new for me. Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
Yeah. And they can, enough and the one source who threw it back at me, they were just like, well, you're making money from this, aren't you? I was like, well, and so that was the thing. How can you can make money off of this? And we can't. And I was just like, well, I'm not making that much, but i I understand your point that, yeah, of course I am on some level benefiting financially, but that's just my, that's my job. You know, that's just the nature of this.
00:41:52
Speaker
Yeah, it's like people might have an idea. It's like, oh, you're going to get rich off my story. Big time. No, I'm not. I will not get rich yeah off of your story. Believe me. Yeah, on an hourly basis. I made more as a janitor in college than I'm making on this book right now. Trust me.
Research and Citation for Atavist Story
00:42:11
Speaker
Well, you know, you you bring up all those citations, which is made it for a a better, like to your point, like a better read than it would be for a listen. And ah in the draft that I had, I just see the extensive amount of research and work you did, which is just really impressive for like kind of a nerd like me when it comes to this kind of stuff.
00:42:28
Speaker
I have my way of of citing as I write to make sure don't lose track of these things. But as you're laying out your materials and writing, how are you thinking of the citation and the yeah the citation as as as you're writing to make sure you're not losing any material?
00:42:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's a lot before you start writing. yeah There's so much to do before you Sometimes I'll have like a turn of phrase in my mind and i'll have a place where I put that kind of thing.
00:43:03
Speaker
For this story, what I had was paper files. you know, like bankers, bought one or two bankers boxes of paper files that I knew were gonna have to go to a fact checker eventually. So it was like step one, digitize all of them and label them in a way that's like organiz organize them chronologically, right?
00:43:22
Speaker
So then once I had that, which was massive, I could see a story in them just by going from one to the next. I created a timeline in a Google Doc, ah i it's it's probably 20 pages, maybe more. i don't I really don't remember. I haven't looked at in a while.
00:43:43
Speaker
That's just like first thing, second thing, third thing. So as I found new things, I could put them in the proper place. um And I would link back. I also made a massive spreadsheet of the name of every single victim of every single crime of every single suspect and every cop like with different tabs um and I would drop the source in that this was like compulsive in a way that I've never worked actually this particular story I really needed to do all of that legwork for this one because it was this massive paper
00:44:18
Speaker
um that I had these source documents that were a shorthand to digging through all of these things. And because they were old, I couldn't even like word search on them.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it was just this sort of photocopy. So basically I made these massive source documents that nobody really generally looked at but me, the fact checker probably did. um So that I had a really organized handful of documents um that I could refer to.
00:44:51
Speaker
And then once I had that, I could i could start writing. The thing that's always a challenge with an ad of a story because they're so long is the matter of pacing. And so how are you thinking of the pacing of this story as you're as you're generating those pages?
Challenges in Long-Form Storytelling
00:45:07
Speaker
So let me give a quick example. This was maybe four or five years, five about five years of law enforcement actively looking into these guys until they were arrested. And then you know eventually, there was you know they went to court.
00:45:26
Speaker
um And it wasn't until I wrote down the timeline that was like, oh, there's a two-week window in here that deserves a blowout section. like This is where this whole investigation came together.
00:45:41
Speaker
And so a lot of other stuff, it just becomes kind of the writing is a little more breezy. you know, in terms of like they were here, they were over there, they took this, they took that. And then in this section it gets really microscopic. Like the FB undercover agents watch them do this and then that and then this. So so I think for the pacing, i mean, that's what an editor helps you do too.
00:46:06
Speaker
You know, we sort of, Jonah and I agreed on a structure. it seemed like it felt right. Then you get, i mean, deep into the weeds of like 11,000 word draft.
00:46:18
Speaker
and it's a fucking mess. you know There's like whole sections in the middle that are like, ah but but I think we're gonna do this here, but I don't even know how to start it. um so you know and then as you And then as you have something that, for me, as ah with this story, is when we got something that felt more linear, then it was like, where's the pacing not matching the rest of the pacing? Where is it just like, this is a drag to read, you know so how do we get through this faster?
00:46:47
Speaker
Yeah, and you've alluded to it a bit already about the timeline, but I think for whatever project that we might be working on, a long magazine thing, a book, memoir, whatever, ah just how important is it to have a timeline in place?
00:47:03
Speaker
I guess it probably depends on the story, but pretty damn important. You need to have a sense of everything that happened, even when you're going to be telling just a fraction of what actually happened.
00:47:18
Speaker
You know, um you really have to understand as much as you possibly can um so that you contextualize it right. You know, I mean, you don't want to. You don't wanna be in a place where you're writing towards things that you don't really understand.
00:47:33
Speaker
And so this allows you to pick of all the things you know, you can't know everything, right? So of all the things you do know, what pops out as the most obvious things to really dive into.
00:47:46
Speaker
I think that it kind of helps you contextualize the timeline. Yeah, I think it's really important. I'll do it on projects that are not as involved as this one too. you know I generate a lot of documents and spreadsheets that are really just like become my working memory.
00:48:01
Speaker
until I get to that place where I'm drafting and then redrafting. And it's weird how much I wind up getting memorized. It's like, I actually know what page of what document I can find that thing on. And then I start bypassing my my timeline and my spreadsheets.
00:48:16
Speaker
um But I need that repetition you know to memorize it. Yeah, those redundancies are really
The Role of Patience in Storytelling
00:48:22
Speaker
helpful. i found that to be true with the pre-Fontaine biography I did, just having various things that just made it sticky in my head. but like okay like i i know i might not know exactly where something was published or...
00:48:39
Speaker
or something but like oh I know it was in 1973 so I can go there and you know in my central nervous system spreadsheet like I'll put some keywords that so I know how to search something out and be like okay I have a pretty good idea of where this thing is and those redundancies really helped me be like okay I can zero in I can make the bullseye a bit bigger in that way hold on a second I want to pull up my timeline I haven't looked in a long time how long is this thing Yeah, 17 pages.
00:49:05
Speaker
It's just full. It's like there's so I haven't looked at it while, but I totally needed it in those early drafts. That's when I really needed it was the early drafts. You know, this is a story that you've been you've been with for a long time.
00:49:16
Speaker
And how much research had you done ah before you realized that there was something there, that there was a shape taking place that you felt confident there was a nice, a good arc here, you know, and the patience it takes to kind of stick with that research, really?
00:49:32
Speaker
ah To be perfectly honest, like, I knew that there was a good story from the very first interview I did. Like, the very first conversation. Because there was, there was you know, one...
00:49:45
Speaker
news piece online after these guys were arrested in 1982 there was a name of one cop in there detective from greenwich uh connecticut i got him on the phone he was like i got some records for you you know and and it was really kind of that i didn't understand the scope of it necessarily but it was one of those stories that it It made sense as a narrative right away because it was a slow burn of these um thieves using the social register to target the richest of the rich one house at a time.
00:50:23
Speaker
One, two, three, you know, like up to hundreds of them. um So I think I knew that early. But as far as like when I knew there was a big, its yeah I don't know, it's been eight years.
00:50:37
Speaker
like This is something I would like pick up and put down and pitch, and sometimes get accepted and then realize, like i don't really wanna do it for this place, or like it fell through. you know um So my timeline's a little screwy, you know? um Yeah.
00:50:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. to I like hearing people talk about that because, you know, we might get a good idea, and sometimes we are just, like, prematurely, like, jump the gun and try to pitch it before you know there's ah there's enough meat on the bone to even sustain something of this ah ambition.
00:51:12
Speaker
ah But then there's always the... the you know The ups and downs or maybe you pitch it here, like you said, and was accepted, but then it's like, nah, I don't know if it's right for you. and And you really roll with it, but you're still tethered to it in a way. And then just through time and patience, you put it aside, it comes back to you and you're like, oh, I just found the perfect place for it.
00:51:34
Speaker
I got the right document. It unlocked the door. And it's like suddenly...
Balancing Research and Pitching
00:51:38
Speaker
you can really dive in whole hog, but it takes a lot of patience. It's really, that that's a challenge, I think, and ah in this kind of work, especially if maybe you're ambitious and hungry to do this kind of storytelling.
00:51:49
Speaker
i I think, if you know, it's funny, because we're talking about it now, it's making remember, I was really cautious in not using too much of my time if I didn't need to. yeah So there's only so much work you have to do to write a good pitch.
00:52:04
Speaker
There's a lot more work you have to do to then execute the story. You have to know that it's a story, right? and But you don't have to do all of the reporting. And you're you're not writing the story. You're writing a pitch, right?
00:52:16
Speaker
Yeah. So, for example, like i Had all of these files these paper files I never digitized them until I signed a contract with the atavist So like all of the pitches earlier than that all of the places that I had discussed doing this story with I did not bother Because I knew it was going to be a lot of work and I hadn't start signed a contract and decided to do it um so There's a line there, right, where you've got to budget your time and figure like, I could be obsessed with this and I could do this just for myself, but
00:52:52
Speaker
that's annoying. I don't really i want to do it so people can read it. So like, ah be careful, you know. And when you're setting down to to write, you know, what is your, know, what are things you like in place? You how you to access your materials, ah and the coffee you like to drink, you know, just the the rituals and the routine by which you're like, all right, you know, I've got a block of time to commit to this. You what do you like to have in place?
00:53:20
Speaker
I like to be here in my office. I have a standing desk and a kneeling chair. I like my body is like writing is terrible for your body. And um Like, I mean, honestly, just pulling back, like if I haven't slept well and if I'm not exercising regularly, like that shit really matters.
00:53:41
Speaker
Like it really matters to be in the right headspace. So I try to be good about those things because I know it actually does make me ah like a better person and a I'm a better writer too. But then once I get in here, it's like, yeah, like i um I've got a big screen.
00:53:57
Speaker
I hate writing on a laptop now. It's terrible for my shoulders and you can't see enough. So I like to have a big wide screen where I can like have the document that I'm writing in in the middle and if I have stuff I'm referencing it's in the you know the sort of the side panels because it's it can get really inefficient if you can't see everything you need.
00:54:18
Speaker
Yeah, so I like to like basically set myself up visually and like physically in the space in a way that I'm like ready to work. you know As far as the writing goes, it's like I gotta be able to do all the research before I can actually sit down and write something that makes sense.
00:54:36
Speaker
And as you were you know composing the piece and maybe working back and forth with Jonah, you know what were some challenges that were unique to this story, a little speed bumps along the way that um yeah that you were able to iron out? h I think Jonah's impulse to put me in sort of first person earlier in the story That was a big deal.
00:54:57
Speaker
It helped with the setup of the piece. I'm trying to think of the challenge of it. um I mean, figuring out how to write a fair piece about a guy who didn't want to talk very much.
00:55:09
Speaker
That was challenging. you know i um And there were a lot of ways that we did it. One of them was like, We didn't actually pull him out of the shadows until about halfway through the piece.
00:55:22
Speaker
And that felt right for a reader. It was convenient for me, but also it felt right for the reader because you're sort of seeing this thing through the perspective of the cops who are trying to figure it out.
Creating Story Structure from Perspectives
00:55:34
Speaker
And then the police get eyes, you know, and the FBI get eyes on Flynn and his crew, and you're starting to see them at a distance. um And then after a while, I wound up talking to him, right? And so that that was the way the reporting worked and the case unfolded.
00:55:51
Speaker
And it happened to be a really good structure for the story, too. You know, and just little things like working through what I actually knew about him and what I didn't.
00:56:02
Speaker
And then... What if he tells me something that's really interesting, but there's no way I can prove? Right? Like, there are things he said that we did include, even though we couldn't prove it, because we realized, like, oh, we can actually show that this guy isn't generally a liar.
00:56:20
Speaker
Like, because the things he's told me of the stuff I can, like, research, everything lines up with exactly the way he told me. So it takes other things he said and makes them more credible. You have to say, like, I don't know if this is true. He told me he burned maybe upwards of 200 paintings that he didn't, wasn't able to sell.
00:56:42
Speaker
No way to prove that. But I actually also don't have a reason to disbelieve him because there's so many other things he told me that I was able to prove, you know. and When you're doing the research or the writing or the rewriting and the rewriting and the rewriting, you know, what are the places maybe on the on that map where you feel most kind of alive and engaged? The thing you love the most about doing this kind of storytelling.
00:57:07
Speaker
Oh, beginnings and ends. Beginnings and ends are the best. I mean, yeah they're they're the worst because you can obsess. um you know and spend so much time writing the beginning of something.
00:57:19
Speaker
um And middles suck. you know It's like beginnings are fun. you know i love writing and imagining, like you know because it's like you it's the only time you have where there's no preconceived ideas.
00:57:35
Speaker
You can just like hit with something that feels powerful. right And the end is a chance to sort of have the final word, right? So those are the most fun to write.
00:57:48
Speaker
I kinda hate it when people say that writing is fun. It's not. not like It's It's what I am driven to do.
00:57:59
Speaker
um And sometimes it's like satisfying, um It's very rarely fun, know um even though I love it. you know um so But if anything's close to being fun, it's like writing a good open.
00:58:15
Speaker
That's for sure. And then in the middle, it's i it's the worst. It's the worst because it's very easy to know where you want to start and where you want to land. And at some point in the middle, it's like, God, there's a lot of facts and God, there's a lot of stuff that happened.
00:58:29
Speaker
And how do how do we hone in on what? And so it winds up being this mess of stuff that an editor has to look at and be like, this stuff isn't interesting, this stuff isn't important, this is what I want to hear more of. And then as you kind of hack that stuff away, the middle gets a lot clearer.
00:58:48
Speaker
you find the middle gets clearer when you have, at least in your mind, a very crystallized ending, kind of like a lighthouse in the distance and you're like, oh, I can see it. So now things are starting to inform that ending.
00:59:02
Speaker
Yeah, totally. And you also have to know what the story is about. You know, you do have to kind of establish early on okay, there's like here's the thing that's gonna happen here.
00:59:13
Speaker
this is an art This is a story about an art heist, right? like that's That's pretty clear.
Establishing Themes and Focus
00:59:17
Speaker
um But you have to know what the bigger thing is that this is about. And that's what we Jonah and I honed in on over a while.
00:59:26
Speaker
It was clear that Ray Flynn was a unique thief and the line we wound up coming with ah up about him was the hardest working art thief. You know as people talk about the greatest, right? So I think, which I think is kind of a bullshit idea, but this guy worked. It was a job, it was a career.
00:59:43
Speaker
So, like having that beginning and then knowing what the what it's really about, you can't know where you're landing until you know the about. So it's like those are the sort of three pieces that make the middle clearer because then it becomes like how do how are we getting to that eventually? you know And you can find stuff that's like this is really kind of superfluous. Like it's not getting us to the bigger picture point that we want to get to. Yeah. how At what point in the in the process of the research or even maybe the writing did that capital A about crystallize for you?
01:00:17
Speaker
about halfway. Like I said, like I've been thinking about this story for so long and I've pitched it so many times and I've had the benefit of like working with other smart editors and people who take in pitches to talk about it, um which a lot of times you send a pitch and you just don't hear anything, right? This one has been worked over so many times and that about always, like the arc was always pretty clear, but the about changed over time.
01:00:44
Speaker
And probably when I came into working with Jonah and the Atavists, the about was something along the lines of like, this isn't this is an untold story and it runs contrary to what we typically think of as an art heist, right? Not one big one, but like 500 small ones.
01:01:06
Speaker
So that was enough to kind of get an editor interested, but then that became less interesting the more we wrote. And it was like, but what is it about this guy? So we knew there was something about him that was the about, and then it took a long time to get that like one word, you know? Like, hard working. And it's like, yeah, that feels true.
01:01:28
Speaker
i don't wanna call him the greatest. I don't wanna call him a genius. But like this was his job. It was there was a work element to it.
01:01:38
Speaker
And that felt unique. It sounds a little humdrum.
Craftsmanship in Art Theft
01:01:42
Speaker
He was a hard work. He was hardworking. But when you say hardworking thief, then it's like, oh, yeah, I'm kind of in now.
01:01:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's like he he saw it as a as a as a craft. I thought about him, i wanted to be very careful to not like glamorize. It's very easy to like glamorize stealing art, you know, like because that's everybody's predisposition.
01:02:05
Speaker
But i I did think about him as a craftsman. like i mean The way he talked about it was always, I just never got the sense that in the times I've spoken with him that he was bragging.
01:02:17
Speaker
You know, um it was just like, I'd be like, oh, I read this in this FBI document. And he'd be like, no, i did it it wasn't like that. It was like, here's, you know, like it was a very practical way of approaching things, you know, and he just got very good at this thing. i don't I'm not saying he thought of it as a craft or something like that or an art form or something, but there was an element of like, oh, you got good at this. You figured out how to do this well.
01:02:45
Speaker
And that is what a craft is. you know It's like repeating something until you can do it well and even like assess other people's work. you know like I had an interesting conversation with Ray once about the Gardner Museum robbery, which is considered, like quote, the greatest robbery in history. Boston, you know Rembrandt's stolen, 1990, all this stuff's never come back.
01:03:09
Speaker
And Ray said ah the people who did the Gardner were not professional. And it was like, yes, that is 100% because mess. it was a mess they It was stupid to so to steal major works that everybody was always going to be looking for.
01:03:27
Speaker
um They ripped them off the wall, smashed glass, like cut the frames. That's not professional, was Raiflin's perspective. It's professional to do it well, not damage the art, and then get paid.
01:03:41
Speaker
you know like that's That was his opinion.
Recommendation: Netflix's '100 Years of Solitude'
01:03:45
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's great. well Well, Jack, this story was just ah a lot of fun and really illuminating and just, yeah, it was a good rollicking read.
01:03:52
Speaker
and um And so I just, as as they bring these conversations down for a landing, I love just asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind. That's just anything you're excited about ah that you want to share with the listeners. It's bringing you a little bit of joy. So I would extend that to you, Jack.
01:04:07
Speaker
Anything meaning like a story? could be a story. It could be a really, a really good candy bar or brand of socks or fanny pack or it can be anything, man. Oh, man.
01:04:21
Speaker
What am I enjoying right now? I am, this is very literary, but like my wife and I have been watching this. Netflix had a series on 100 Years of Solitude.
01:04:33
Speaker
they they you know The Marquez book. It is my favorite all-time book. And it's one of those things that it's like, man, they better have gotten this right. And it is magical. It's so, so good.
01:04:46
Speaker
And it's, I don't know, I just love it. I love it. It's like you really get dropped into this world. And I don't usually feel that way about a book turned into something, especially book I really like, you know?
01:05:00
Speaker
For sure. That and my dog. I've been enjoying Zuzu a lot lately. Oh, nice. Fantastic. Oh, well, Jack, well, thank you so much for carving out some time to come on the show and talk talk some shop around this amazing story you've written for the Atavis. So thanks for the time and thanks for the work, man.
01:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me.
01:05:24
Speaker
Thanks to Jonah. Thanks to Jack. Magazine.atavist.com. That's where you're going to find the story. And maybe consider subscribing to the Atavist. It's 25 bucks for a year, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.
01:05:37
Speaker
It's really amazing. And no, I don't get any kickbacks. So don't think that I'm pushing subs because I get a commission. I get nothing.
01:05:49
Speaker
Yeah. So stay wild, CNEvers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.