Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 13—Greg Hanlon on the Audacity of Voice and the Value of Struggle
144 Plays9 years ago
Greg Hanlon is a crime editor at People Magazine and also a freelance sports writer. His piece "Sins of the Preacher" was anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing 2015 edition. His "The Many Crimes of Mel Hall" was a notable selection. That's called a hell of a run! In this conversation we hit up a lot nuts and bolts and also what Greg looks for in a story before he goes all in.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction
00:00:06
Speaker
Welcome to the hashtag cnf podcast number 13 This show is a first the first with the best american sports writing representative fresh out of the 2015 volume.
Greg Hamlin's Sports Writing
00:00:20
Speaker
It's greg hamlin the uber talented reporter whose sins of the preacher made the big book
00:00:28
Speaker
and his many crimes of Mel Hall piece made the notable selections. Now that is a hell of a run, which led him to use maybe the most perfect baseball analogy I have ever heard. So, I'm not gonna wait any longer. Let's just get right to the podcast. Three, two, one, podcast.
Recognition and Motivation
00:00:51
Speaker
Hey Brendan, how's it going? Alright Greg, how about yourself? Good.
00:00:56
Speaker
I think the sound is all right. Can you hear me just fine? Yeah, I'm good. Very nice. Well, thanks for carving out some time to do this. I understand that we're all very busy, and it's cool that you're able to carve out maybe 45 minutes to an hour here to talk shop. It should be exciting to talk about your work. Sure. Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. I'm flattered and humbled.
00:01:25
Speaker
that you reached out, looking forward to. Oh yeah, I mean it's, I kind of feel, I feel the same way, kind of flattered and honored to even sort of like talk shop with someone who's just really just on, you're really on top of your game with a lot of the work I've read from you recently, especially the two pieces, well the
00:01:47
Speaker
The Sins of the Preacher piece and the Crimes of Mel Hall, which both, Chad Curtis won in the anthology, Best American Sports Writing, and the other one getting a notable selection. Talk about what a great run. The head that you're on right now with those pieces, they're just so gut punching and moving. I just want to first off say, just great, great work that you did.
00:02:12
Speaker
Well, yeah, thank you for that. Often, as I sort of struggle this morning through a piece that I'm writing, I feel like 2014 was like my Brady Anderson 50 home runs in 1994. That's a great reference. That was the big creatine year. Yeah, so, I mean, I'm sort of not feeling whatever magic takes you to have resulted in that.
00:02:42
Speaker
struggling to recapture that, but I guess that's the point. You struggle and struggle, and then the end product, if you've struggled enough, hopefully comes close to your original expectations.
00:03:01
Speaker
about the struggle as writer to writer as I'm sure you're 150% aware of. Yeah, of course. Well, why don't you speak to that a little bit. How gratifying is it to have your work sort of publicly acknowledge and recognize like that after putting in those years of struggle, the miles and miles of sentences of doing the work, doing good work, and then finally getting
00:03:29
Speaker
getting that recognition that everyone, that every artist and everyone doing this type of work deep down wants, but even though you're still doing the work, you want to get that recognition as well. Sure. Yeah, it felt great. It felt totally validating. It really did.
00:03:58
Speaker
yeah i i think kind of all of us sort of peter on the edge of kind of crippling you know insecurity and sort of wonder what exactly it is we're spending our you know our lives doing it although you know biting the nails from all the parent are at our hair at all the kind of you know anxiety that we put ourselves through to get you know i mean i mean i'm not this is the uh...
00:04:27
Speaker
didn't make me rich and famous and wasn't a stadium full of people, you know, chanting my name, not the sort of overstate validation, but just kind of any token of, you know, of job well done by the people that, you know, consume this stuff. It really did feel great. And I'm very sort of humbled and grateful and
00:04:55
Speaker
honestly sort of lucky feel very lucky for it not not lucky as opposed to good but you know there are a lot of people that are good and there aren't as many people that are good and lucky and I feel lucky to sort of count myself among the crowd that is that is you know have luck here however you know kind of
00:05:21
Speaker
crazy this might sound for someone who's not want to fuck this up really seriously. Yeah, I mean, it felt great. I'm sure like most of us in this profession may, you know, work, validation is just hard to come by and we're kind of just struggling and struggling and it seems like the
00:05:50
Speaker
You know, the validations is not in proportion to the struggle. And to kind of have, you know, a couple moments where the score seems to be even, it felt great. And the way one guy used to do a book project on the 86 Giants a few years ago that I actually sort of aborted. And this guy was telling me about playing for Bill Parcells.
00:06:20
Speaker
He said that, I've always sort of taken this with me, he said that Parcel knew exactly, I mean for as much of a ball buster as he was, he knew exactly the right moment where he had to say something to kind of build you up. And the way he described it is like, he would just notice some little thing and he would just have to kind of finger on the pulse of all the
00:06:49
Speaker
sort of psychology, the mental state of his players. And he would just say this one little, you know, building up comment. And the way the guy described it was like, and he would just put gas in your tank and that would keep you going for weeks. And that's kind of how I feel about these selections.
Talent vs Delusion
00:07:06
Speaker
It's like, I felt like I, you know, I really needed it and I'm grateful for having gotten that. And that doesn't mean that
00:07:15
Speaker
I'm not going to go each year, she cares about any acknowledgement from this point forward, but it put gas in my tank. That's great because there is this, in any artistic pursuit, there's really
00:07:29
Speaker
there's a real fine line between that talent point and pure delusion. It's because you have to be delusional to the point to put yourself through it for 10, 15 years of little money, little recognition, and sometimes little validation.
00:07:54
Speaker
So along those lines like you're saying that that metaphor of putting the gas in the tank is so important to To sort of a temper and and cut that those thoughts that might be delusional and it does keep you going and validates the pursuit and I think that you're there that line is real hard to define and actually is undefinable and you just kind of have to keep
00:08:19
Speaker
doing the work, and then hopefully you do get someone telling you one reason or the other, or becoming anthologized and just recognized for your work, and then you know you're on the right track and you're not delusional, you can keep continuing doing what it is you do. Yeah, I really think you hit it on the head there, and the delusion talent thing, I kind of think
00:08:46
Speaker
And I think you were sort of alluding to this as well with the fine line. As much as they're kind of opposites to each other, they're sort of the same thing. Because at the end of the day, a reader is going to want to occupy a writer that firmly 100% believes in themselves. And that's going to come across in the work. And the only way to
00:09:10
Speaker
fully 100% believe in yourself is if you have an ego, is if you are sort of capable of saying, you know, here for the next 5,000 words, the next 10,000 words, my voice is gonna carry this. My voice is gonna be the truth of this situation and you're gonna be in my voice and you're gonna benefit from that. I think that's a very sort of audacious thing that, you know,
00:09:40
Speaker
It sort of runs counter to character type of writers of, you know, of guys like me and you being these, you know, dudes that tear out our hair and are always sort of besieged by anxiety. I think we're sort of always teetering on that line of being besieged by anxiety.
Writing Routine and Challenges
00:10:00
Speaker
And it's very empowering and not only empowering, but like coming from a place of empowerment.
00:10:10
Speaker
of, you know, controlling these narratives. And I think those are sort of the, I don't know, I mean, not to get too like stoner freshman year of college-y, but I think that that's sort of the dialectic that we're all sort of playing with that you really hit upon with the talent delusion, you know, dichotomy, I guess.
00:10:33
Speaker
Um, you know, the marriage of the opposite of the captain and the illusion is delusion. That's kind of what we're all, you know,
00:10:43
Speaker
So how did you get to the point where you feel confident in your written voice on the page and confident to the extent that you're able to do the type of work you're doing? It's a rare talent that that just pops out of someone's head. I wonder how long do you feel it took you to reach a point of narrative confidence?
00:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, well, I would qualify that and say that that it sort of, you know, comes and goes. Like, you know, it's 2014 was my, you know, Daniel Murphy in the, uh, in the October of 2017. It's kind of like, it's, it's like anything, anything elusive, it kind of comes and goes. So I wouldn't kind of put myself at a point where
00:11:37
Speaker
You know, I sort of know that it's going to be there. But I guess as we were discussing earlier, I mean, if you put in the work, putting in the work alone, it kind of, is it self-confidence building? Because it sort of strips away. You know, kind of, you're not flat-footed when you're putting in, like, if you sort of put your head down and you say, I'm going to bang out, you know, however many words, and there's no excuse not to.
00:12:07
Speaker
even if the words suck, which is often the case. It helps, as with anything, to sort of be moving forward and not just kind of to be standing there flat-footed and besieged by your own anxieties. Something that really helped me that I didn't really think was helping me at the time was working for a community newspaper as really kind of my first journalism job.
Early Career Reflections
00:12:36
Speaker
covering really rinky pink stuff, that I wasn't into at all. And having to write, and we wrote about 10 to 12 stories a week that were pretty thorough stories, like 800 words, like real, multiple source reported articles. It was hellacious, and the whole time, my expectations for myself were very high on that.
00:13:06
Speaker
I think sort of for all of us, like treasure, every time that we put our name to it's important. Yeah, you didn't mail it in. Yeah, so I didn't mail it in and it was really like hard, like consequently. You know, I mean every single one of those 10 articles I was, you know, I was pulling out my hair. But it kind of got me over the hump of like,
00:13:30
Speaker
of being afraid to putting, of being afraid of putting thought to paper. And that was sort of huge for me. Because I think a lot of writers are actually a lot of would-be writers that sit there and sort of fantasize about how great it could be. And kind of getting over the psychological hurdle of like,
00:13:55
Speaker
You know, of your own expectations and just sort of getting into kind of more of a practical mindset where it's like, you gotta, you know, you're gonna do it because you have to. And if you don't do it, you're gonna get fired. You're gonna be broke. I think that was something that I'm just grateful for that experience, as bad as it was. I mean, I guess what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
00:14:23
Speaker
So what is your first hour to 90 minutes of your day look like? Especially when you're in the throes of reporting something long. How do you warm up? What do those writing calisthenics look like? Because we allude to just flat out doing the work, a lot of times that just comes from sheer repetition of
00:14:48
Speaker
a morning routine and maybe you have one, maybe you don't, but I'd be interested to hear how you sort of get into the mode. Yeah, so I did when I was freelancing full-time now. I'm working full-time to the last two or three months of my life. I've really kind of been behind on this through one very important freelance project that I have, very important to me on the freelance project that I have.
00:15:18
Speaker
Um, kind of when I was in my groove, definitely the morning. I mean, I think that's sort of a, not a universal, but a very common thing among writers that you kind of want to get those sort of unspoiled, you know, unspoiled first, you know, whatever it is, six year, 90 minutes. Yeah. Um, I, I usually worked in, in terms of, of workouts, um, just as any kind, you know, any kind of benchmark, um,
00:15:46
Speaker
And when I was in my group, which I'm trying to get back into, I'm not really. It was 500 to 750 in a day. So I sort of start in the morning, and then I kind of have sort of straight thoughts of things that I was kind of working on. And sort of throughout the day, I would kind of go back and fill the stuff in.
00:16:14
Speaker
You know, again, I mean, just sort of having something on paper spares you from the blank page, which is a repository for anxiety and, you know, nightmare, which is a reflection of your ineffectual habitation. Yeah, the blank page is a taunt. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I mean, it sounds a little sort of
00:16:42
Speaker
straightforward and crude, but just a word limit and hitting it. And just in the act of hitting it, having, you know, even as terrible, having sort of some feeling of accomplishment, you know, and some kind of forward
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's like what Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird, and the very title of that book is, you know, she got that from her little brother or older brother. I can't remember where her brother is in her own chronology, but he had to memorize a bunch of birds, and he didn't know where to start, and her father, their father, just told him, just start memorizing Bird by Bird.
00:17:22
Speaker
And it's that simple. It's just do your 500 to 750 words and you knock that off. But at the end of the week, I'm bad at math, but if you do that every single day, you're about 3,500 words, which is sort of unthinkable in one sitting. But when you do it a little bit every day, in just seven days, you've done it.
00:17:47
Speaker
And I think that, you know, to go back to the bird-by-bird thing, like, you know, small nuggets of accomplishment, you know, put gas in your tank for the next accomplishment. So it's all about how you think about it. If you think about it as memorizing, you know, 50,000 ornithological species, that's a daunting and possible task. Break it up into, you know, into doable things and you're, you know, you're energized by accomplishing things
00:18:20
Speaker
It's great that you dropped Ornithology on the phone. I love it. I took an Ornithology course. I studied Biology too in college. As a result, I know a lot of mind-numbing minutia about birds and orders and all sorts of... And then you're living with regret about being a writer and not...
00:18:47
Speaker
You know, I tried. I equated to, I added journalism in my last year. I stayed next to here at UMass. I was on the five-year plan. I had finished bio, and I had tried sort of the pre-med route, the animal biology route, and
00:19:06
Speaker
the sort of molecular bio route and I just Every single time it was like the episode of Seinfeld where George keeps ordering pesto And he's like, why do I keep ordering pesto? I know I don't like pesto
00:19:19
Speaker
And that's the same thing. I was ordering biology upfront because I was just good at it in high school so I just majored in it. And every single time I'm force feeding myself this subject and I just can't do it. It's funny that you're sort of playing with practical versus what I want to do and you kind of kept on trying to make the practical thing work.
00:19:39
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. At the end of the day, your heart won out over your head. Yeah, it did, despite my father trying to totally dissuade me, or even keep me from doing that, because it didn't make any sense to him. This guy was an English teacher, so you'd think it would've made sense, but... Hey, well now, let's see now.
00:20:06
Speaker
take take want to know what right i mean you know there's no one who knows how how useful for the practical the stuff that's more than for the people i got exactly which is a big reason why i started the podcast was the talk to people about this kind of thing and uh... you know there is it's not unique in in and of itself because there's a lot there's long form and gangrene all the other are the other ones but i think it's good to
00:20:31
Speaker
to hear people talk about their struggles and doing the work. For me, it's just fun, just to talk shop with people whose work I admire. Totally. You talked about the Livingston thing and the Best American. Those are four or five versions of this type of thing. It's a community of writers.
00:20:55
Speaker
coming together to acknowledge all the hard work that people are doing. I think that's very valuable. Our support group, as it were, is not to be taken for granted. It's a good thing. I appreciate it.
00:21:17
Speaker
Cool. What has to be in place for you to pursue a
Story Attraction Elements
00:21:22
Speaker
story? What are some of the checks in your checklist that you were like, all right, these things are in place. I'm going to go pursue this Chad Curtis story, this Mel Hall story, or whatever you're working on now, the Marvel EV story. What has to be in place for you? Really, really good question.
00:21:43
Speaker
an editor saying yes and offering me some nominal, some of my feedback. That's a really good question. What am I into in a story basically is the question. I kind of like stuff with sort of probing psychological elements. I'm much more into how people work than how
00:22:09
Speaker
like things work or systems work, you know? And I guess if I can kind of, if I sort of have a, if I have an empathy with the people involved, like even the Mark Levy thing, like he's at one, you know, phase of his life and I'm at, you know, nearly the opposite. But I, I, I mean, it's, it's, Mark was great because he's such a sort of emotionally
00:22:40
Speaker
Connected dude. Yeah, I think that's sort of the aspect like a I'm sort of into what makes people pick I guess for lack of a better mm-hmm lack of a better expression and if I can kind of This fact could sort of be my You know if that's sort of the bulk of Of what's interesting about the piece that I'm you know that I'm interested
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah, with the Curtis and the Hall piece, too, you're dealing with pure hubris, too, with these guys. And I'm sure that even their acts are reprehensible as they are. In their own minds, they've...
00:23:24
Speaker
they've justified their rightness in it somehow. And it's amazing, I wonder how did you flesh that out and how hard was the, I might be imposing my, how I, to me, I don't think I could do it because it was just, the subject matter is so hard and sensitive and I just, how did you power through that reporting and get to the real crux of those stories? It's just a monumental feat of reporting and I wonder how you went about it.
00:23:54
Speaker
Very, very good question. And it sort of plays into what I was saying before with the, with the, what makes people pick stuff. And I would think I would say that with the, with the Hall and Curtis pieces, I sort of approached them more from the perspectives of the victims and just sort of the, the confusion and the,
00:24:22
Speaker
you know the terror that they must have been going through i think i to the extent that i identified with you know with people in the story it was the not sort of based on on personal experience but uh... kind of how i think i have to the question of how this stuff happened uh... it was more compelling to me to put myself in the shoes of the victims as opposed to
00:24:53
Speaker
you know, what makes this evil guy check? I think I sort of, I think I got to the latter question by answering the former question. Did that grind away at you at all? Trying to be that empathic was something that's so mentally traumatic to these victims in these stories? How did that affect you in the process of reporting? It didn't.
00:25:23
Speaker
And I think I was fortunate in, well, the Curtis thing, you know, I never talked to the victims. I just sort of read through their other court testimony, which is extremely powerful. And I think it didn't, because sort of to get to the point, whether you're talking to me or whether you're testifying in court, it was very sort of cathartic and empowering for those people that do that.
00:25:54
Speaker
And so it was kind of, you know, for that reason, it was kind of triumphant. And it was sort of their, you know, in the courtroom, it was their first sort of moment of turning the tables. And for that reason, it, you know, it wasn't like I was sort of trying to draw things out of
00:26:17
Speaker
of people that were sort of too traumatized to even go near it. So there was there was an element of triumph. Yeah. And that certainly helped you for the whole thing. And the women that I talked to, I mean, this stuff happened, in one case, like 25 years ago, and a couple of more 15 years ago. Yeah. So some of that distance kind of, I'm sorry, I guess some of that distance kind of, oh,
00:26:44
Speaker
made it a little bit easier for them to maybe talk about it. It wasn't quite as fresh. That's exactly where I was going. The distance made it something to talk about and chew over and to explore, which I think was a really good experience. I would like to think was a really good experience for them and something that they
00:27:12
Speaker
are happy that they did and so from that perspective it sort of wasn't you know it's not like we like got off the phone and both of us started crying like i think you know it was a lot of sort of worthwhile um yeah showing over that stuff so yeah did you get us oh sorry it wasn't sort of that i mean i know kind of when when it's written it
00:27:39
Speaker
you know, when you're sort of encountering this stuff for the first time, it's a lot of horrifying stuff. But, you know, working on something like that for weeks or months or whatever, you kind of get by the horrifying stuff so that it's not like, it's not horrifying and new anymore. And you're at a level of discussing it, you know, with, with, you know, some level of perspective in a sense that, that things have worked out okay. And that, and that these people have moved on.
00:28:08
Speaker
Right. Did you get a sense that you were writing really important pieces? Because exposing and telling their stories and I get a sense too from your stories too that they came forward as much to protect others.
00:28:27
Speaker
as they were to just get their own story out and to get these sort of monsters behind bars. Did you get a sense too that you were playing a big part too to shed light on these people who use their bigger than life personas to get away with whatever they want to get away with?
00:28:56
Speaker
Yeah, well, I was not unaware of that sort of being the goal, but I feel sort of personally like I don't have much of like a kind of, you know, if I sort of approach it from the perspective of I'm gonna sort of make a political statement and do something to bring about social justice, it's gonna kind of lose the kind of
00:29:25
Speaker
you know personal from the inside out type of thing but i think it makes my work effective uh... and so it's yeah i mean i i was not aware of you know i've kind of doing something that comes from socially you know redeeming value uh... but i i i felt that if i sort of huge to the uh... you know to the
00:29:56
Speaker
sort of personal stuff and dealt with that with integrity that it was if I was lucky it would sort of follow and it would have sort of broader applications. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah, I think it does. There was kind of a question I had too because I wondered if you had sort of what your antenna might be tuned to like pieces that might reflect some sort of
00:30:25
Speaker
hold in the social fabric that you're trying to like spackle over and trying to not fix but shed light on but it sounds like you know you you find that you find some some some personal some personal stories that really are these beating hearts of these narratives and in so doing through that they if they happen to strike some sort of social justice cord then then so be it but it's kind of like not the not the go-to hook
00:30:53
Speaker
It's sort of an incidental thing with what the work you're doing. Yes. Well, I think I 90 90%, I think that's an accurate accurate summation. But but I, I do feel that that a lot of sort of interpersonal things are every interpersonal thing is sort of informed by the larger
00:31:22
Speaker
cultural zeitgeist. And if you can kind of make that, those connections exist. But for me, I find them more by focusing on sort of the ground level of the interpersonal exchanges, as opposed to, you know, as the kind of more, I don't know, top down, like, what's
00:31:51
Speaker
address the societal, you know, I find the societal, I mean, like the Mel Hall story, for instance, I mean, that was, that was about power and money and fame, kind of as much as, as much as anything. But I kind of wouldn't have thought of that before I got deep into the report. Right. And, you know, so it's, I didn't come to it with
00:32:19
Speaker
You know, I think sort of all exchanges between all people are informed by the social, you know, circumstances in the social context of the people in them. It's just for me, I find that from the ground up as opposed to the, you know,
00:32:40
Speaker
Well yeah, you have to let the reporting sort of dictate what the story means. You can't sort of inject what you want it to mean. It'll just kind of, it'll surface organically what the story will be about over time when you spend enough time with the subject for sure. Sure, sure.
00:33:00
Speaker
So how did you come to those stories?
Handling Sensitive Topics
00:33:03
Speaker
What was what drew you to them and then what allowed you at that point to then really sort of just do this full on swan dive and get into it? Yeah, so okay. Well, one important thing was that I was working full time. So at a community development profit, that was my my day job. It's, I mean, just sort of having
00:33:30
Speaker
having stability allows you to look at projects and say, OK, I'm going to do this, and I'm going to spend as much time on it as I need to spend on it. And it sort of takes you out of thinking of these things as economic necessities. And it gives you a great luxury of doing a story with the integrity that you want to do it with. So that's a big thing.
00:33:59
Speaker
I had done a story before the Curtis piece, a few months before that, I had done a story for Glenn Stout on, for Estee Nation on David Meggett, who was one of my favorite players when I was a kid. And he just, I don't know, are you a football guy, Brennan? Yeah, yeah, I love football. Okay, so you know Meggett. Yeah, he played for the Patriots for a little bit, didn't he? Patriots and the Giants, yeah. Okay. And he was just sort of a little cute, mighty mouse.
00:34:30
Speaker
character, um, and just the sort of, uh, kick returner, pump returner, third downback guy. And just a really dynamic, like likable player. Um, you know, just all sorts of moves and, and top first size and just like a really kind of sound fundamental, you know, winning, winning player. And I knew that he had gotten in trouble with like women before, um, or not, you know, subsequent to his career.
00:34:59
Speaker
And I sort of had it in my mind as I was sort of like looking for stories like, oh yeah, what happened to Dave Meggett? He got screwed up. He did something with women or something. And then the more I looked into it, I was kind of disturbed. You know, it turns out the guy was a, no exaggeration, was a serial, like brutal serial rapist. And I was kind of disturbed by my own
00:35:26
Speaker
sort of casual assessment of what happened to him. But I kind of looked at it like he screwed up. He got in trouble. And I didn't sort of comprehend the full, you know, the full human tragedy of what had gone on here. And that sort of led me to the conclusion that to the extent that the system covered, which it had, you know, it sort of had been in very brief AP articles,
00:35:54
Speaker
it hadn't been covered in any kind of meaningful way. And it sort of led me to the idea that if you bring out these stories, they're about, you know, there's just so much more than what people are taking away from it, which is what I took away from it. It's like, oh, that guy screwed up. You know, that got himself in trouble. And it's just a ridiculous way to look at something like that, obviously. And so I think what sort of informed
00:36:24
Speaker
My reporting on that Meggot story was, you know, was the fact that the way, my takeaway from it, from kind of what had been previously known, was just so, so off. So anyway, so I wrote that Meggot story, and it was great to work with Glenn Stout. And, you know, I mean, he's
00:36:50
Speaker
guru, he's just, it's kind of like dealing with a kindred spirit in terms of like, you know, I had never had an editor that spent so much time all and sort of spent so much effort. It was just sort of so kind of sincerely trying to get on your narrative wavelength. Yeah. And just really kind of earnestly helping you along as opposed to, you know, make me feel like a schmuck for
00:37:19
Speaker
including a digressive paragraph or correcting your grammar or not correcting your grammar or inserting their own grammatical errors. And it was just a really kind of eye-opening and just a tremendous growth experience and also very validating to kind of have my reporting and my writing be taken that seriously. And the story I thought
00:37:49
Speaker
went very well, and it got a lot of fun. I mean, for an hour on Twitter there, people were into it, and that was validating. And after that, I think the courtesy thing followed after that, because I sort of realized that I had done something with the Megat that I really enjoyed, that I sort of wanted to do again, and
00:38:19
Speaker
and do a little better and I think kind of having that sort of a similar, the sexual predator model that was sort of on my mind. And being able to kind of stay in that lane allowed me to sort of feel like I could grow in other ways with regards to the, you know, regards to the reporting and just the presentation and just sort of how I wrote the pieces. And so I did the Curtis one and I thought that
00:38:49
Speaker
went very well and then you know a lot of this is as you know i mean you go where the where the work takes you yeah i mean so to some degree this is opportunity but i i do feel like i was staying with similar subject matter was uh... what they call it a liberating constraint if you're kind of dealing with similar stuff you can kind of experiment and do it and
00:39:17
Speaker
It gives you a little more freedom, ironically, if you have some kind of repetition of stuff that you know that you've already done well before.
00:39:29
Speaker
yeah i think that's a really good point uh... i kind of like in it too i think you know yet having certain structure formats actually kind of freeze you up like you're saying like it it's sort of like uh... like a coloring book you've got you've got the lines to color in but you can choose the color within that framework you can then those boundaries allow you to just be creative within those boundaries so
00:39:57
Speaker
So I think there's a lot of truth to what you're saying in that sense. It's weird. Structure can free you in that sense. Absolutely. I think a lot of people read for structure. They read for voice, but I think there's just something
00:40:18
Speaker
Like something resonant, we need the, not only the story, but the story has to sort of fall into a certain sequence for it to really just have an impact. And as long as you could have adhered to that, you can almost do anything so long as you're within that, within those boundaries, as you said. Yeah. And I think, I mean, just the way you put it, I thought was just, Matt, was really good. You can do anything if you're within those boundaries. That's a lot.
00:40:45
Speaker
easier to deal with them, you know, that you can do anything. Yeah, which is terrifying. So I think you hit it on the head there. What are like right now, there's kind of like changing changing gears a little bit.
00:41:02
Speaker
What are five of your favorite books? What are your books that you cannot part with? If you had to throw out however many books you have, but you had to keep five, what would those books be? Okay, I think this is gonna be a non-exhaustive, you know? Because I'm not gonna, kind of in the spirit of what we were talking about before,
00:41:31
Speaker
I'm not going to worry about the whole universe of books. I'm just going to pick five and say, screw it. Um, so one of my like all time favorite sports books might be my favorite sports book is bringing the heat by Mark Bowden. And that's a fly on the wall account of the 1993 Philadelphia Eagles. And it was kind of a,
00:41:58
Speaker
a failed project because you could tell that this guy is about to get you know blackhawk down uh... but i don't pop up uh... you could tell that he really wanted to any sort of a banking on the eagles winning the super bowl mapping you know the greatest football book ever written you know when the super bowl it's still the greatest football character and it's just not nearly as many people know about it as they available is what happened it's just uh...
00:42:28
Speaker
remarkably detailed reporting just kind of really kind of capturing the emotional essence of of these guys it's kind of both you talk about the world of pro athletes it's like both empathic and contemptuous you know like he talks about sort of all the affairs that these guys are having and it's it it's not
00:42:55
Speaker
glorifying it, it sort of puts you exactly sort of in the head of these guys where it's like, that's just sort of the culture, you know, the ridiculous culture that they live in. Just a tremendous book and in terms of the sports stuff, just sort of a real, I mean, just everything about it. I'm not babbling here, but like the,
00:43:23
Speaker
kind of treatment of sports and society and and to serve what working to a city and the treatment of of the media sort of the grand kind of opus of the whole world that is contained in a professional football team uh... so i'll say that's one here i am just literally looking at my bookshelf uh...
00:43:51
Speaker
The Fortress of Solitude is another one of my favorite books, Jonathan Latham, that set Brooklyn in the 70s. It's a little kind of before my time, but I grew up in Manhattan in the 80s. So, you know, kind of distinct, but just sort of a real kind of like tactile, emotionally correct portrait of growing up and childhood.
00:44:19
Speaker
And also of New York City, of gentrification, of racial tension, of kind of interpersonal racial politics. I mean, just a remarkable writer, just like sort of tons of insight. I mean, that's one that I kind of find myself like getting up and I can sort of pick up and read two pages and kind of feel like I've gotten more out of that than, you know, than I have, you know. But however many news articles,
00:44:50
Speaker
What else? What else? A bookshelf here. Um, I love Roger Angel. Um, it is one of my, one of my sports writing idols. Um, just the, just the, just the voice and just the kind of rhythm and, um, and just kind of the,
00:45:18
Speaker
both the flow of his voice and the choices that he makes when he deviates from the flow of his voice, all the word choices that just stop you in your tracks and take you down a hole of a deep appreciation of both his writing and the sport of baseball. I've always just
00:45:45
Speaker
It's such a pleasure to read, like, you know, never another one that you can read something that you read a year ago and kind of clean new insights from. I grew up kind of a big Philip Roth fan, kind of know which of those, I don't know which of those is the best. I mean, they read a plot against America relatively recently. You know, American,
00:46:14
Speaker
after all on i guess the human spain just uh... com rhetorical power of karapa characters kind of speeches the last four pages and they're they're just so read a poll near kind of the uh... the sharp articulation rhetorical force behind behind people's inner thoughts which is kind of like uh...
00:46:43
Speaker
rhetorical dialectic that we're all kind of in. Um, that was a really poor way of putting it. Um, but, um, yeah, I mean, just, just tremendous fan of his and another one. There's a guy named Josh Wilker, um, who had this blog and he still
00:47:11
Speaker
post on it occasionally, it's called cardboardshots.net. And I can't recommend this guy enough. Basically the premise of the blog was he took a baseball card from this guy, maybe like 45 years old, 46, and he takes a baseball card from his childhood and just kind of ricks off of that for, you know, 800, you know, 1500, 2000 words.
00:47:40
Speaker
And it's memoir kind of based on that baseball card. So it's all pegged. And so there's an inherent humor to it, because it'll be like some 70s baseball dude with a perm and ridiculous beard. And he'll sort of begin with that, but get into his talking.
00:48:06
Speaker
You know, there's nothing that amazing or noteworthy about his life, but just kind of the emotional honesty and the humor that comes through. He wrote a book, which is kind of a compilation of this blog post, and it's called Cardboard Gods. And I think kind of the driving
00:48:35
Speaker
emotional force behind that is is you know as is indicated in the title of calling these guys gods kind of what what are we looking for like spiritually and emotionally from sports and i think kind of the humor in showing some ridiculous looking dude in the 70s and calling him a god sort of underscores the whole of search he's the sports fan enterprise um which
00:49:02
Speaker
which is something that I think about all the time because I'm, you know, a rapid fan whose emotional state is tethered to these people that have absolutely nothing in common with and couldn't tell us about me. And I think sort of the whole tone is a lot of self-deprecation bordering on kind of self-loathing. But it's just, it's beautiful prose. It's emotionally honest prose.
00:49:33
Speaker
And it's both poignant and hilarious. And so you wrote this memoir about five years ago. It's called Carport Gods. And he also, a year or so ago, he wrote a book about his, about having a kid for the first time. And it's called Benchwarmer. And it's really great because it's sort of
00:49:56
Speaker
kind of continuing the steam of, of being a fan versus being an active participant. And when he has a kid, he becomes kicking and screaming, you know, like the baby itself kicking and screaming, dragging his feet into the world, you know, into the arena itself. And he no longer sort of has the comfort of that, of that distance. And it's just really, it's just really beautiful and intelligent.
00:50:26
Speaker
emotionally honest and just emotionally on point pros and just totally readable. So I guess that would be, um, I can't recommend this guy enough. I think he, you know, he should get a lot more accolades. Um, he's on the internet and he's been written up by a lot of great places and, um, you know, uh,
00:50:50
Speaker
I'll have to check out all the his work for sure and a couple of the others you mentioned What do you have a favorite documentary? Yeah, I yes the thin blue line, okay The arrow Morris, you know murder you know mystery I guess in 1976 that's a
00:51:16
Speaker
Hey, you know, we talked sort of earlier about kind of taking on social issues kind of from the inside out and not, you know, not starting the documentary by saying that, you know, prosecutors can be overzealous. You know, here's an example, but rather just sort of building the story out with these totally unlikely, compelling characters. You know, the drifter who gets accused of murder.
00:51:45
Speaker
winds up being this just sort of very dignified, like, intelligent, you know, very well-spoken, it's kind of a resting screen presence. And I think that's a tribute to Morris's, that's a tribute to the guys, obviously, first of all, but just kind of, you know, Morris's sort of minimalistic touch. I'd say that's
00:52:14
Speaker
That's my favorite. Although, you know, we as long form dudes, we love our documentaries. Yeah, I know. Do you have like a different kind of other kinds of movie that you rewatch the most? Or what movie do you rewatch the most? Yeah, you know, I go through sort of phases with these things. I'm not in one right now. I love Woody Allen movies.
00:52:42
Speaker
I guess from the ages of like nine through fourteen, I probably watched Major League, you know, 170 times. Not that big of a movie guy. I mean, I have kind of my my co-tos that I've seen a million times that I sort of find myself thinking about it odd times in different ways. Both of them is probably, you know, whatever, like what's your favorite movie that's the one I mentioned, just kind of the, I was
00:53:12
Speaker
division three college baseball player which i always tell people like that's the farthest level of the sport you can get to if you're like not an athlete but just like a kid who likes baseball and so it's just sort of the the love of the game and the meaningfulness of the game as opposed to the god-given athletic talent for the game is something they you know sort of the heart of paul barrow and and just sort of the spirituality of the any movie that begins with
00:53:42
Speaker
I believe in the church of baseball. You have me at that. And since you don't rewatch a ton of movies, is there a book you reread the most? Or are you in the camp that there's too much to read out there so I don't have time to reread? No, I'm of the camp that there's too much to read out there so don't bother trying to cross things off your list and just read sort of what you
00:54:12
Speaker
yeah that's how i that's why i think i read gatsby every year uh... usually around december for whatever reason i picked the summer i just made pick pick two days and i read it it's uh... i just get so i wonder i wonder if that sounds like a great ritual uh... yeah that sounds like a great ritual yeah i mean i think to a degree these things are sort of uh... i'm sure i would derive a ton of meaning from doing that for you to do with what you're doing
00:54:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, what did I keep rereading? Yeah, bringing the heat. I mean, that's sort of, you know, the insights are intimately, you know, fresh and interesting for me. You know, yeah, I mean, the raw stuff I can sort of, you know, if I haven't read it in 10 years, I'll pick it up and I'll sort of find myself, you know, 20 pages into it before I look up. You know, just, yeah, firm believer in rereading because that's sort of the point of
00:55:12
Speaker
In this day and age, the value that reading has over other forms of media is that you can go back to it and get as much out of it as you did the first time. I don't think that's true with anything else. Yeah.
00:55:31
Speaker
Yeah, because even though the book remains the same, it's like we change around the book. So you can always glean more meaning out of things, depending on how old you are. This woman I had on the podcast last time, Sarah Einstein, who wrote a great memoir titled Mott,
00:55:51
Speaker
she was given Jane Eyre when she was nine years old, and that's one of the books she rereads all the time, and as she grew up, she identified with different characters at different ages in her life, so the book almost, it stayed, it's been written, it was written however long ago, 150 years ago, I don't know, and it still changes with her as she ages, so it's like one of the beauties of being able to reread something, is that it,
00:56:19
Speaker
as static as it is, it's actually kind of alive. Totally, totally, that's a beautiful story. I love that, that's great. And how do you feel, do you use a tape recorder when you do your recording and your interviews, reporting and interviews? Or are you a notebook guy? Usually not, well usually it's on a phone and I'm just sort of, I'm kind of waiting, you know, I'm either sort of typing as they speak or
00:56:48
Speaker
You're kind of half-typing as they speak, and half waiting for them to say something that is interesting or that you know that you're going to use. Obviously, when you go somewhere, it's a tape recorder. No, I couldn't keep up with longhand. I don't know how.
00:57:06
Speaker
I don't know how those guys did it back in the day. Other than they made up a lot of stuff, I'm sure. I think even the greatest practitioners of it, I think there were many holes and they patched it in with their own spackle. Exactly. And that was accepted. I, for one, I wish
00:57:26
Speaker
I didn't have to use a recorder, but I just do. I need it as a catchall, like a fishing boat, you know, a toenet catching tuna. You're gonna catch a few dolphins, you're gonna catch a few things you don't want in there, but I'd rather have the liberty to throw the stuff out and then keep what's good instead of like missing stuff, or I can't read my penmanship because I'm scribbling too fast.
00:57:52
Speaker
Right, and also it forces you to go back to the interview and you might pick up stuff that you didn't the first time around. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I always, like, I hear stuff again, I'm like, geez, how did I not even hear that? And how did I not even follow up on that? And then, yeah, you can, you just find, you find these, these nuggets here and there. Also, you can always play it back to someone if they said they, I didn't say that, well, here, you said it right here.
00:58:17
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And it also just sort of frees you up to have a normal conversation and not sort of, you know, be doing the uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, you know, thing, where you're, you know, sort of underscoring the transactional, you know, transactionality of the whole change. So I think that's, you know, it's nice to talk to someone for real and not, you know, extract quotes
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah, it can be a little intrusive having the device out, but I think once you get to a certain point, you forget it's there. But yeah, there's definitely two camps, and I think more people use recorders now than before.
00:59:03
Speaker
But there's definitely the people who don't use it are like adamant about it, like John McPhee or someone like that. But then you get like John Krakauer on the other end. It's just like, I don't trust myself to take long hand notes because inevitably you fill in those holes with your own voice, not their voice. Sure. Sure. And who wants to worry about, you know, keeping up with the speed of your hand? Yeah.
00:59:26
Speaker
The worst is you know you missed something or you got something great in your notebook and you can't read your handwriting. That's the worst. Right. Yeah, I think sort of to go back to some of the stuff we were talking about earlier, it kind of dovetails with which methods you're using.
00:59:50
Speaker
Ideally, and in reality, I'm not this way, but ideally, I like to think of myself as like a Cal Ripken, how he always changed his batting stance. And I think that sort of a great lesson from baseball is that the guy who was sort of known as the ultimate punch-the-clock dude is also the guy that was always tinkering with his stance. And I think that kind of says it all.
01:00:16
Speaker
show up ready to work, but on any given day, it's like whatever, whatever works, man. And I think, you know, not that I practice that, I get locked into things. I don't show up every day, but I think that that's sort of a good, inspiring model that sort of shows you that, you know, the spirit with which we're all trying to commune with is elusive and you just show up and do your best every day.
01:00:44
Speaker
Well, I think that is a perfect place to end our conversation for this. This has been great getting to talk shop with you and talk about your wonderful work. My pleasure. Yeah, we'll have to do a part two again when something else of yours comes out or we'll just talk about some other stuff that crops up in the world. Or we'll get together and how much longer are you going to be in Raleigh?
01:01:09
Speaker
Good, good question. It depends on where, you know, we're looking for apartments now. We're not, if we can't find a good enough place, like a decent place that's on a good train line for my wife, we might just default and stay at River Place. We're gonna try to negotiate a lower rent if we can. But we'll see, yeah, we might have to hit up the waiting room for an in-person beer.
01:01:35
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds like a plan. Thanks so much for having me. Well, thanks a lot. Yeah, take care. You gotta take care. Take care, Ben. Bye.
01:01:45
Speaker
that was a good one you know what a great guest greg was you know and you can find him on twitter at greg hamlin i forgot to ask him where people can find them on the internet's and i know for sure that's where you can find him also you can find me at brendan omera and be sure to give the podcast a subscribe and maybe even subscribe to the email newsletter over at my website brendan omera dot com all it does is send you
01:02:09
Speaker
latest blog posts every Tuesday in the event that I post anything. No posts, no email once a week. It's pretty simple. If you like the podcast, share it with a friend. You get the idea. Anyways, thanks for listening. More to come in the future. As always, I never know when, but there will be more. Thanks again.