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Episode 380: Wudan Yan
1.3k Plays1 year ago
Wudan Yan is a freelancer writer, journalist, coach, podcaster, fact checker, hiker. She wrote about food contamination for Undark.
Substack: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Suds: Athleticbrewing.com, promo code BRENDANO20
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
If somebody asked me what the structure of my brain is like, I would say it's a Russian nesting doll of Google dry folders.
00:00:13
Speaker
AC and efforts at CNF Pod, that creative nonfiction podcast, a show I speak to on average badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan Amara. Great. Look who it is. It's, uh, it's last night. It's Wudanyan. Oh, nice. Freelancer to the star. If you're still on Twitter, she's at Wudanyan. If you're still on Instagram, she's at Wudanyan. If you're still on the internet, you can learn more about her and her work at
00:00:43
Speaker
Wudan Yan dot com. What a world we live in. Wudan is a wicked good fact checker and host of the Writers Co-op Podcast. If you need a coach, well, maybe Wudan can help fix your swing.
Wudan's Story on Turmeric Contamination
00:00:56
Speaker
Wudan's latest story, depending on when you listen to this, is for Undark, titled The Vice of Spice, confronting lead-tainted turmeric. Say that however many times fast. It's a story.
00:01:12
Speaker
That's been seven years in the making for Wudan. She traveled to Bangladesh, so you didn't have to. It's a fascinating dive into food contamination, food doctoring, et cetera, et cetera. Make sure you're heading over to brendanomare.com for show notes and to sign up for the rage against the algorithm newsletter over at substack.
00:01:32
Speaker
Just click the lightning bolt on my website or visit rageagainstthealgorithm.substack.com. First of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it. Actually, you can. If you dig the show, consider sharing it with your networks so you can help grow the pie and get the CNF and thing into the brains of other CNF-ers who need the juice. The show's listenership keeps tanking. I guess my charming personality might have overstayed its welcome in the podcast space.
00:01:59
Speaker
We'll always take nice reviews on Apple podcasts. So the way we're seeing effort might say, hmm, all right, why not?
Promo and Personal Insights
00:02:08
Speaker
Shout out to Athletic Brewing, the best damn non-alcoholic beer out there. It's not a paid plug.
00:02:13
Speaker
I'm a brand ambassador and I want to celebrate this amazing product. If you head to athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a nice little discount on your first order. I don't get any money and they are not an official sponsor of the podcast. I just get points towards like swag, beer, maybe a hat or a t-shirt as if I need more hats and more t-shirts.
Managing Anxiety and Work Routine
00:02:36
Speaker
Let's give it a shot.
00:02:38
Speaker
Trying not to drink until I turn in a shitty fucking draft of this motherfucking book I'm working on. Got eight and a half months to be sober. I'm miserable. Here's who it is. Ruth.
00:02:58
Speaker
3AM voice is something I wrestle with just about every day. That's a good thing to ask you about. How do you wrestle with your 3AM voice? We all have it to some extent. What does yours sound like? Oh, I'm dead asleep. All right, so 3PM voice, maybe. Well, I stopped working at 3PM. Usually, by that point, I'm trying to think about what I need to do the next day, which is not fun, but necessary, just so I'm organized.
00:03:28
Speaker
start work at 8 30 in the morning with a plan. But yeah, 3pm is usually like, okay, either today was a whirlwind day, or tomorrow is going to be insane. But yeah, like, I don't, and I kind of think in the backdrop, my, my brain is just ruminating on whatever tricky like situations I encounter that day and how I want to solve
Balancing Admin Tasks with Creativity
00:03:50
Speaker
them. I think that is, these aren't necessarily writing problems. But like,
00:03:54
Speaker
How do I deal with this one client? Or how do I give this feedback? Or how do I want to frame this email in which I have to lay out some hard truths? Or what do I have to assign out to my podcast's producer or anything else? It's so funny. I'm not ruminating on things that will earn me money for words, but things that will keep me respectful as a worker.
00:04:24
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Yeah, it sounds like it's more what kind of keeps you awake or what keeps the gears turning in that sort of anxiety driving kind of way is more business admin type stuff versus creative stuff. Yeah, for me, it's hard because I'm a really direct person. And if other the person who is receiving information is also direct, that's that they don't perceive it as aggressive. They perceive it as like kind and helpful. But I think
00:04:53
Speaker
I don't know, just experiencing a lot of different communication styles and I think I need to be conscientious of that. With fact checking and someone, I've knocked on the door of some fact checkers and haven't heard back from them because I wanted to just talk to them about how they go about that. You do some of that work. Do you do quite a bit of it or is it?
Fact-Checking and Research Organization
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah, I do a lot of it. Yeah, I'm happy to come back on and talk about fact checking and
00:05:22
Speaker
the craft of it and the business of it. And I think it's troubling that it means so many different things at so many different places. And yeah, it's not quite standardized. But how to how has being a fact checker helped your reporting? When I quit grad school to become a journalist. And I guess if folks haven't heard me on the show before, they can go to the other time that you spoke to me.
00:05:50
Speaker
But I quit a career to do journalism, which smart, dumb in retrospect, I don't know. And because I was coming from a research background as an intern, the magazines wanted me to apply my research skills to magazine stories via fact checking. And so I trained up at a magazine that I think had really good fact checking guidelines and principles. And now when I report
00:06:16
Speaker
a story, I am constantly annotating as I write, especially if I know the story is going to go through a fact check process. And I think that's just made me really diligent in tracking where things come from. And I think that's a relevant point to what we're talking about today, which is a story that's taken me about seven years to get out in the world, because over the course of seven years, I very slowly amassed information, whether from interviews or research papers that came out.
00:06:45
Speaker
How am I tracking those things? Right. I think that's a question that a lot of people might wonder if they're embarking on something even like a book project. So I think because I was trained as a fact checker, I, in the back of my head, I'm always like, this story is going to get fact checked. Also, I want the fact checking process to be seamless as possible, as seamless as possible. So let me just have all that backup there.
00:07:09
Speaker
Like, it just exists. I give my fact checkers a huge nested Google Drive folder at the start. And if somebody asked me what the structure of my brain is like, I would say it's a Russian nesting doll of Google Drive folders. Very nice. So this story on food fraud and turmeric and lead additives and so forth, it came to you like seven years ago. So maybe take us to that moment of what turned you on to this idea.
00:07:38
Speaker
So in 2016, I was going into my second year of freelancing and I had just finished an internship at Nature Medicine. My editor there just completed UC Berkeley's Food and Farming Fellowship, which is run out of UC Berkeley School of Journalism. And it was headed by Malia Wallen and Michael Pollan. And my incentives for applying, for wanting to apply for this program felt like
00:08:08
Speaker
Pretty simple. One, my editor had a great experience and she really recommended it. Also, I feel like at that point of my career, I had so much to learn. I felt like I had so much to learn and I definitely had a lot to learn. And I thought it would be really cool to learn from who else but Michael Pollan. And in my head, I'm like, all I have to do now is find an idea that they're going to take, also knowing that like fellowships and grants are competitive to get.
00:08:37
Speaker
And so I kind of just like read widely about food issues and there are some industry web pages that I kept looking at for inspiration. And I kind of just got really interested by this idea of fake food. And the story I started with that I pitched to Berkeley had to do with an individual who uses a very unconventional approach
00:09:07
Speaker
to trying to solve food fraud. I don't actually want to say anything explicitly because this is an idea that I hope I still can develop and I don't want all your listener base to go and scoop me. So I pitched a very different story then as like, here's an individual who is trying to use an interesting kind of controversial solution to solving this very big problem. I think the stats are like 30% of what we find in grocery stores
Crafting and Pitching Stories
00:09:35
Speaker
that's marketed as something is not what it is. And that's horrifying and looking at food fraud and my story is about spice fraud, but kind of going into this rabbit hole really taught me a lot about my own habits as a consumer and what are authentic food choices I can make as a result. So I pitched that story, UC Berkeley accepted it,
00:10:03
Speaker
They brought us there for a week, all the fellows there for a week to workshop our stories. I don't think they expected us to place it immediately, but we talked about how to best pitch our stories, where to pitch our stories, how to think about the narrative arc of the story and how to report it out as a result, like eat delicious food and everything else that comes with that territory. So it was really instructive, but that's how it began.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah, and as you realized that you had some meat on the bone, to what extent or how much, should I say, how much research and reporting went into you just formulating your pitch? Not that much, actually. I think the easiest pitch is to write. True then and also true now for me.
00:10:50
Speaker
are ones where the character becomes very evident because then to me that's one like introductory phone call where I try to parse out the important elements of a story. I'll spend another two on kind of putting that person in context and then like I have a pitch. It's not that much work for me.
00:11:11
Speaker
Yeah, for some people put in a lot of legwork for a pitch. Does it vary from story to story for you, or do you try to really limit the amount of front-loading work you do just out of sheer time? Well, pitching a story just means that what you produce just has to sell the story. It does not mean you have to report out the whole thing. So how am I going to get enough information to write into something salacious that an editor would be excited to commission?
00:11:42
Speaker
That's the goal of the pitch. I'm not out to report the whole story, even though I would love to, but that does not make business sense for me.
00:11:50
Speaker
if I won pitch I had, it was, I hadn't done enough. There was something of a cliffhanger-y vibe to my pitch, and it was just like, kinda like the idea overall, but we kinda need to know the ending somewhat before we would commission you to do this, and I naturally died. So it's like, if there is an element of mystery that can't be delivered, it's like there has to be at least a hope that you can stick the landing.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some, depending on what you're pitching, some editors will want to know how the story ends. And also like, if you don't have enough information in a pitch and some publishers interested, that editor will likely ask. And then you can just spend a very, hopefully smaller amount of time answering that question rather than trying to answer all the questions.
00:12:41
Speaker
And when you're getting into the meat of your reporting, to what extent do you do a lot of prep before interviewing a key figure versus letting it be more sort of a free flowing conversation that leaves you a little more open to discovery?
00:12:58
Speaker
One of the kind of strange things I do as a writer is, especially for longer stories like this, is envision if somebody else who is a much better writer than me has already written the whole thing, which means, you know, based on who I'm interviewing, whether it's an expert source or a supporting actor or actress, I kind of have a vision of exactly how they might show up.
00:13:27
Speaker
And I know that's limiting and, um, that helps me, you know, sometimes it's a quote, sometimes they're a supporting, um, character in a scene, for instance. And like, I want to flush out that scene. So, you know, I know enough about the person as to know where they would fit in, in the story. And I think over time that's led me to become a lot more efficient in my reporting process too, because I'm not trying to like expect one person to hold the entire story.
00:13:56
Speaker
you're having some guide rails to your interviewing like you were saying earlier, it does make the reporting more efficient, especially if maybe you only get like an hour with a person. It's like you got to be real tight with that series of questioning. Definitely. And it helps me with my previous over-reporting problem. This is probably a hot take, but I think narrative nonfiction journalists
00:14:18
Speaker
love to valorize over reporting. And when you work for yourself, time is money. And I realized I was losing a lot of money by over reporting. So I stopped. And especially, like I said, over the years, my process and reporting long form has gotten more efficient. And I think, yeah, there's no reason to over report if I'm out in the field, and I'm just
00:14:44
Speaker
trying to talk to as many people as possible. If people keep saying the same things, telling me things that are new, and I keep trying to ask questions that elicit something new, but I'm just not getting anything, it's time to move on. And there's nothing wrong with that. And another thing I do at the start of a story is outline it. I have, if I have a 4,000 word feature commission, I'll break it into roughly five sections of 800 words each. And the general structure of any feature story is scene, exposition,
00:15:13
Speaker
scene, exposition ends on the scene. And like just ballparking the idea of each section warranting 800 words, I would kind of, again, go back to my mental sketch of what somebody else who's a better writer than me would have all of those sections be and what key questions need to get answered. And then I think about who is the person who can help me answer this key question. And that's when I start
00:15:37
Speaker
outreach to sources who can help or look at my reporting notes to see how what I have can already fit in. I know this process seems really, hmm, what's the word I would like to use? Anal. But, and maybe it sounds really rigid, but I think through, as long as I have a starting point, I'm really flexible to the shape of the story changing. I am flexible to some sections being longer.
00:16:03
Speaker
I am flexible to some of the information not bearing out in the ways that I initially thought, but at least it gives me a starting point to start asking the questions that I proposed in my pitch or that my editor also wanted answered or anything else.
00:16:15
Speaker
You've referred to this this this this writer that you envision that's better better than you to kind of get you into that headspace if you will as your What is the shape or who is that writer that you envision is better than you that you kind of? that you embody It's not a single person and early in my career and talking to mentors who write along the form and
00:16:43
Speaker
their advice to me was to read a lot of what I wanted to produce. And I didn't really understand that advice, but now I do. Because reading other people's work and studying it and dissecting it is kind of like going to journalism school for free. And along with fact checking, too, for me, I'd say. And so seeing the structure of stories and how they flow and
00:17:07
Speaker
the user experience as a reader informs my approach as a writer. So I spent a lot of time reading features from the New Yorker and Harper's and New York Times Magazine, California Sunday, Rest in Peace, and so many others. And all of them have that scene exposition format more or less, unless you're John McPhee, then you can like
00:17:34
Speaker
going circles and roller coasters. But yeah, just seeing that basic form has really helped me a lot and just coming up with something simple to start. And again, like being open to the fact that that shape could change. For this particular story, everyone tends to have some degree of repartorial hurdles. And I wonder for you, what might you have run into here as a hurdle to your reporting and your research for
Economic Motives Behind Food Fraud
00:17:59
Speaker
it?
00:17:59
Speaker
I was trying to understand why people were cheating and committing crimes, although that is not how the people who were committing the crimes thought of it because they were doing it for economic reasons to support their families and their business and so on and so forth.
00:18:16
Speaker
in order to survive in an economic market, that is what they had to do. And that is economically motivated adulteration or food fraud in a nutshell. And so a part of me was worried that they wouldn't want to speak, but people were surprisingly open. And I think it's because time had passed since there was a major
00:18:38
Speaker
enforcement effort in Bangladesh after researchers had discovered where in the supply chain that people were adding lead chromate, which is both carcinogenic and bad because of lead. And then they also worked with the government to implement a series of interventions to basically stop that adulteration in its tracks. And that work, the big part of that legwork happened in late 2019 and early 2020. And I went this year in 2023. So I think
00:19:08
Speaker
you know, the the surveillance, the constant surveillance and possible punishment had passed. And I think people were willing to talk as a result of that, too. So explain a little bit about what lead chromate is, what it does and how it was used in this throughout your piece here.
00:19:29
Speaker
Yes, so lead chromate is an industrial painting agent. It's what makes school buses yellow and it is made of lead and chromate and chromate is CRO4.
00:19:46
Speaker
So a chromium ion with four oxygen atoms attached. And there's something about chemists call this the oxidation state. Sorry, this is so nerdy. The oxidation state of chromium. I like good chemistry. Perfect. Love it. It's plus six. And so chemists call that hexavalent chromium because it's six. And that specific type of chromium is carcinogenic. It can also cause respiratory issues.
00:20:14
Speaker
increased exposure to lead. I feel like in the U.S., California especially has a lot of regulations around lead, so continual exposure to lead causes neurodevelopmental issues in children, and it can cause kidney and heart problems in adults, although adults absorb way less lead than children.
00:20:38
Speaker
The story is about why lead chromate was specifically added to turmeric, which feels really ironic because in the last day, even five to 10 years, turmeric has been in the zeitgeist as being a health booster, right? And so why would somebody add something that is detrimental to health and something that is otherwise healthy? And the answer is in coloring.
00:21:05
Speaker
turmeric powder, I think consumers expect it to be that vibrant golden glow. And as many crops go, I don't know if you garden Brendan, but sometimes there's a good crop year and other times there's a bad crop year.
00:21:21
Speaker
And on bad crop years for turmeric, the root can rot. And when you polish the root, if it's a bad year and then you grind it up, that color is going to be a lot darker. And it's just not as attractive for consumers to buy. Not just consumers like you and me, but traders even along the lengthy turmeric supply chain.
00:21:45
Speaker
don't really want anything to do with it. But some people who still want to sell their turmeric in a bad year because that is their only way of making money will add a painting agent lead chromate to enhance its color. So that is the role of an incredibly toxic chemical and an otherwise like unsuspecting spice.
00:22:08
Speaker
It's just bonkers to me that the extent to which some of the, not just turmeric, but you look at other foods too that are doctored in such a way to make it more attractive and how insidious that is because how all the chefs say we eat with our eyes first, I guess we shop with our eyes in a lot of ways too and that can be deadly in a sense.
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would think that lead chromate feels a lot more deadly, but some things are like really hidden. So for a while I was trying to draw a story out of the adulteration of cumin powder because there was a lawsuit that got settled in Texas about a woman who went into anaphylactic shock because she has a peanut allergy and she bought a chili mix, I believe.
00:22:56
Speaker
with cumin as a component, but the cumin component was adulterated because the company who manufactured the cumin basically used round peanuts as additional filler to make up the additional volume before selling it to the packer.
00:23:12
Speaker
fun times like. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's yeah these things that these these corner cutting cost cutting things are for you know be it for I mean I guess you kind of see it a lot of times in like dog food and stuff like that.
Consumer Expectations and Food Fraud
00:23:28
Speaker
But when you you don't really expect that degree of filler with you know with human food especially with the allergies being what they are like it's like it's literally life and death with some of these things.
00:23:39
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, a lot of instances of food fraud feel a little more harmless. Like a few years ago, there was kind of this scandal around the fact that there were wood chips and graded Parmesan. And that's also hilarious, because what people meant by wood chips was that it was actually cellulose, which is a plant, a component of plants. And people add cellulose into like crafts, Parmesan and other
00:24:03
Speaker
packaged refrigerated grated cheeses to help it not be clumpy when it flows out. And guess what? That too is a consumer preference. So one fascinating thing about following food fraud for the last seven years is appreciating that a lot of why people cheat along the way is because consumers expect their food to be a certain way.
00:24:28
Speaker
If you can connect the dots further back, why have consumers thought that Turmeric needs to be like that super golden yellow or various other products have to perform a certain way and then that puts that production pressure to make it so? Yeah. In South Asian culture, Turmeric is widely used almost
00:24:52
Speaker
daily in curries and it's also a ceremonial spice and it's also really big in Ayurvedic medicine and I think culturally the more golden the spice
00:25:04
Speaker
the more valuable, the more medicinal. Fast forward a few hundred years, I guess, to capitalism and things like Goop, which is founded by Gwyneth Paltrow. She can post a very tantalizing photo of Turmeric Latte, the golden and milky swirl, and then that kind of takes off. So like some of it is called, I mean, most of it is cultural and some of it runs a lot deeper than just like what's on social media.
00:25:33
Speaker
As you sat down to write this piece and after you've done a lot of research and reporting for a feature of this nature and you've been doing it for years, at what point do you know you feel like you're ready to sit down and write the thing? Writing was the easiest part of this whole process.
00:25:53
Speaker
because I had known what I wanted to say for so long, and I finally had all the information that by the time I got back from Bangladesh, the words were about to spill out of me if I didn't start typing immediately. It's a very rare feeling, I would say. I don't know how many times you've ever felt that, because most of the time, yeah, extremely rare. Because to me, you know, normally writing is a job, and I,
00:26:23
Speaker
receive money in exchange for words. And I will do it because, you know, everyone clocks into work. And so sometimes it's a matter of writing that 500 word blog post or 1500 word profile for all these clients. And, uh, that feels like work, but when the information is just ready to come out wholesale, I just think that's so cool. And I a hundred percent took, uh, took that momentum and wrote
00:26:53
Speaker
this wrote 4,500 words in three days. Felt like a fever dream. I was going to say, those moments are few and far between and it's like when it's happening, I was going to, I'll ask, it was just like, did you just have to, we're like, you know what, I'm going to surrender to this right now. I'm going to table a lot of other things and just ride this wave because this does not come along very often.
00:27:20
Speaker
Oh yeah, I rejiggered my entire work schedule. I was like, I have been dicking around for like the first four months of this year. I should really drum up more work. I should reach out to my regular clients. But then I was like, no, because if I do it now, it's going to take less time than if I try and schedule it and even a week later. And so I was really just like, I'm obsessed with efficiency. I don't know if you probably know this about me, but
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, people don't think about long-form journalism as an efficient process. And in some ways, you know, during this story and it taking seven years to get out is not. But where I can make things efficient, I will want to do so. Yeah. In what ways do you streamline things and try to make what is on its surface an inefficient process far more efficient, at least for, you know, for your taste?
Pandemic's Impact on Journalism
00:28:09
Speaker
Yes. So I think we've talked about a little bit of that already, which is keeping the track of notes, knowing what
00:28:17
Speaker
what's important, what stands out from an interview. Like soon after that interview was completed, this is what I need. Everyone works really differently. Even in the field, I process all my notes and recordings from that day that evening. There is no like post field reporting, like examination of what was done once I'm home. All of that happens in the field. I have the ira glass method of
00:28:42
Speaker
journaling about the day as the day is wrapping up and reflecting on the most poignant parts because those also appear in my story and my draft. And so yeah, I find small points of efficiency and I will definitely latch on to them.
00:29:00
Speaker
Aside from this story, one other thing that might feel pedantic too is just tracking like all the sources I need and making sure that I am getting them, whether they are of like a specific, you know, a specific voice and expert type that I need or a specific type of like story character that I require and kind of just like treating it as a checklist. And just looking at it every single week or every two weeks, depending on where I am in the
00:29:30
Speaker
story production process and making sure that I'm on track to getting the interviews that I need. What balance or ratio of the work you do is this kind of feature work versus other freelance writing projects? If you asked me this five years ago, the balance would have been incredibly different. Spending time overseas in South and Southeast Asia was a big part of my business.
00:29:56
Speaker
I really loved it. And then the pandemic changed everything. Um, early in 2020, I was supposed to go to Bangladesh and of course that did not happen because maybe by now you've all heard that there was a pandemic. And so I pivoted into covering COVID and I was doing so much COVID reporting and I was writing and reporting like three articles at a given time and it really burned me out. And.
00:30:23
Speaker
in that first pandemic year, I also dealt with mental health issues. And that also made me look really closely. I was burnt out, like extremely burnt out. And that burnout led me to take a closer look at my relationship and identity to my work. And I kind of realized that like, I love working on narrative journalism, I can produce narrative podcasts, I can be a fact checker on somebody's
00:30:49
Speaker
work of narrative nonfiction that is in book format, but I don't always have to be the person producing the work. And so at this point, I'm probably producing like one at most two pieces of narrative journalism a year that are in like the 4000 plus word range.
00:31:06
Speaker
And when you're reporting and you're out there and I'm looking at the final scene of your piece and you have some really good quotes from your central figures or one of your main characters who kind of sums that up. He has a reckoning with what he's had to do to just make ends meet.
00:31:26
Speaker
when you come across a quote of like let's say where he says like it hurt me sometimes to do that I have to answer to a law that I used it in food you know it being the lead chromate when that stumbles across your recorder or your notebook at what point do you realize like oh that that's a really good quote to go at the end
00:31:46
Speaker
Hmm. My editor put that quote at the end, but I knew in the moment that was a good quote. Uh, so my process in the field when I'm working with a translator is I'm always taking notes because I do not want to listen to that tape again. Usually I think that interview with that central character was over two hours. And when there's translation involved.
00:32:12
Speaker
the moments of actual useful English are so few and far between, which makes it such a process and such a big mental task for me to go back and listen to it again. So I try and spare myself that by getting quotes in the moment. And I will look at my recorder, write the timestamp, write out the quote, and then deal with it later. And I will know it's a quote that I'm going to use. At the end of the day, I take all my handwritten notes in my notebook
00:32:43
Speaker
and I type them up into Google Doc because it's easier to search for keywords when I'm not trying to make sense of my bad handwriting. Also good for the fact checker, by the way. And so, yeah, like I recognize good quotes in the moment because I am not digging. I am not listening back to tape to find them.
00:33:02
Speaker
What's sometimes nice when I do the activist interviews, I tend to get drafts that have some comments from either Jonah or Sayward in the margins. And what's nice about the draft you sent me, there's comments from the editor alongside, which is always kind of nice to get a little sort of peek behind the curtain of what's, and so it's always nice to look at that. And I wonder just for you, what was it like being edited on this
Collaborative Work with Editors
00:33:27
Speaker
piece? And as a follow up to that, how do you prefer to be edited?
00:33:33
Speaker
Hmm, the relationship. God, what's my voice doing? The relationship between a writer and an editor is deeply collaborative. And it's something I have had to learn over time. I think early on in my career, I kind of was like, me, me, me, I want the story to turn out the way I want it to, because it's my name on it. And somewhere in between, I probably think like,
00:33:59
Speaker
When I started doing more client work, actually, so like writing for biotech companies or nonprofits or research institutes, I started realizing that the writing is not
00:34:11
Speaker
for me necessarily, it is for an audience. And sometimes that audience is something I have no control over or no interest in, but I am creating a written product for somebody else. And I think that feels instructive in my approach in journalism, even if a project took me seven years. And so I really loved working with my editor on the story. They were really supportive. They helped ask good questions.
00:34:41
Speaker
tinkered around on structure with me in a way that I did not immediately see. And now I think that's like a cool structural tool to add to my arsenal. One bit of feedback they got was, you know, when I switched between scene exposition scene, that sometimes like the time is not in chronological order and I keep flipping between like present and past. And as a reader, that can be really confusing. And I was like,
00:35:07
Speaker
hmm, like maybe I have read too many things that flip so, so much like that, that it doesn't bother me as much. But I also like the alternative that they proposed, which allowed for, I think, more seamless reading, in a way, because the reader is not constantly doing the work of being like, Oh, we are like, 10 years past, and now we are back to the present. Um, but yeah, I think like, just creating work, I'm not creating work for me, I'm creating work for somebody else. And that
00:35:36
Speaker
is a collaborative process. I would say that's also true with a story that came out earlier this year in Popular Mechanics about noise pollution from a crypto mine. And the editor pitched me the topic and basically was like find a place. And I was like, ooh, I like this kind of assignment. Because it's really hard for freelancers to read the minds of editors and what kinds of stories they're interested in.
00:36:02
Speaker
And so I did a few, I did a few calls. I did a bit of digging around and I identified a place and then I kind of just sold my editor on the place. And that whole like.
00:36:12
Speaker
story topic to ideation, to like getting specific about where and why felt very fun to me. And I know for me, something that always gives me chest tightness is just the nature of, of, of cold calling and stuff like that. It just, it triggers my anxiety for lack of a better word. So for you, what are, what are some of those things that maybe you still struggle with, you know, if you have any at all?
00:36:40
Speaker
I don't really. I just sent a pitch to an editor who I've worked with before that was like, your colleague told me to reach out to you because it sounds like it's something you'd be interested in. Here's everything I've been talking about with her. Sorry that this is a like throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks, but I think I'm just like learning that more editors
00:37:02
Speaker
especially editors who I've had a relationship with are probably a lot more amenable to that kind of pitching process. But I think one thing I teach to my coaching practice is like, to get people away from this idea that a pitch has to be perfect. Actually, one of the most triggering things to me as a like, somebody who helps freelancers is pitching events that are like pitch perfect. And I'm like, No, we don't need to be perfect.
00:37:29
Speaker
The pitch just has to be good enough to sell something. And that can be a 500 word, you know, three and a half paragraph memo pitch, or it can be like two sentences that's really captivating. But in those two sentences, the writer is doing a lot of work in defining what the story is and saying why it should be told like right now and why they're the person to do it. Like, so I don't think there is a perfect version of a pitch. I haven't thought about pitching in that way for a very long time.
00:37:59
Speaker
I know, you know, thinking about the activist who I have pitched unsuccessfully, there are some publishers who like a more conventional magazine pitch. And there are others who are just like, oh, wow, like I really enjoy working with this writer or I want to work with this writer. Let's co-develop an idea together. So, um, I think it requires experimentation, but I, my anxieties these days are not about pitching.
00:38:25
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, my anxiety, it's just like, thankfully I have a North Carolina phone number. So when I call people, they tend to let me go write the voicemail. And so I can usually leave my pitch of who I am, why I'm calling them on the voicemail. And I've got it down to like 45 seconds or so. And usually they'll listen, they'll call me back at that point. But it's when I have to do that, my little spiel,
00:38:53
Speaker
like in the moment can get weird to like, well, who the hell are you? How do you even find me at this, then the other? So oftentimes those things just, I just don't like cold calling and it's a, but you know, gotta do it. So I just do it.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's a but but yeah, very nice. Well, as always, I like to bring these conversations down for a landing by asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind, something fun you're excited about. And I'd extend that to you. What might you recommend for our our faithful listeners out there?
Personal Reflections and Recommendations
00:39:25
Speaker
Well, it's summer, so I recommend getting outside and getting away from your screen. And I hope you're listening to this while doing something fun.
00:39:36
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, this is great to get to kind of unpack this piece a bit and something you've been working on for a long time. So it really exhibits the patience that you had in the story from beginning to end. So as always, just thanks for coming on and talking to some shop. Thanks so much for having me.
00:39:53
Speaker
Well, well, well, thanks to Wudan. She had this story coming out, and she reached out to me and wanted to talk about it. I don't think this conversation lived up to what she was hoping, but sometimes you have your fastball, and sometimes you don't, and my arm is fucking dead these days. Don't forget to sign up for the rage against the algorithm.
00:40:11
Speaker
sub-stack, or do forget to get more of these sunny dispatches from the likes of me. The newsletter and podcast subscribers is really all I care about. Why? It's elective and permission-based, so F Social Media. If you want to really level up your support, you could always go to patreon.com slash cnfbot. I finished a series of coaching calls where I spoke with members about what they were working on and sending them transcripts and recordings of our chats.
00:40:39
Speaker
Pretty good value. Sometimes you just need to talk things out with a somewhat detached and semi-experienced voice of sorts. What a deal. I mean for like four bucks a month you can get a lot of my time. I think Wudan charges like $300 for 50 minutes. You can get me for four bucks. Pretty great, huh?
00:40:59
Speaker
I wrote a 657-word screed of how sour my headspace is, can you tell, with the idea of reading it right here. But I realized what a disservice that would be to you. Like, I realize part of the appeal of me as a host is that I'm pretty forthright with how shitty I feel on the reg about being a writer and the host of an obscure podcast.
00:41:23
Speaker
But there are parting shots you write and read and you know you're helping people and then there are ones that will no doubt cause even more people to unsubscribe from your sinking ship. Ah fuck it. Here's the unpumped septic tank that is my head right now.
00:41:41
Speaker
So I took Instagram off my phone and only used the podcast account through the desktop computer at this point. It's limited. You can't post the stories really. You can, but it's really very limited. But who the fuck cares? None of this shit matters. We're all giving our time away for free. I'm telling you, I'm in a real bad mood. It just came on really quick. I wasn't in a bad mood when I woke up. Most days I am.
00:42:10
Speaker
Today I was like, okay, things are okay. I'm almost at genius level on Spelling Bee. I got word on six. That happened. But I'm just in a bad mood. And that's really shitty of me to dump a bad mood on you in the parting shot of a podcast. I just wanna, I mean, I'm at a place where I just wanna burn it all down. I don't see the point to anything. Who are these people who wake up in the morning and they're like happy?
00:42:37
Speaker
You know, when 5.30 or 6 a.m. rolls around, I'm like, fuck. Here, it's happening. Here we go again.
00:42:46
Speaker
And listen, I realize this is an insult to people. We've lost people who were taken before their time, people who like lived and relished and just every day is a gift. I realize it's an insult to people, to those people. Or to people who wish they could just have one more day on this pale blue dot.
00:43:08
Speaker
You know, I'm just fed up with everything. I can't exactly put my finger on it. Maybe it's because, you know, book stuff just, it doesn't feel like it's going particularly well. Maybe it's because for 10 weeks we've largely been on house arrest managing these three dogs. I only go out in public to go food shopping. And then like, what an asshole, you have a roof over your head. And food and health insurance, like the fucking gall to even complain.
00:43:35
Speaker
It's a big reason I've pulled about as far back from social media as I possibly can without deleting everything because I find people's cries for attention so transparent and nauseating that it just makes me angry. Lately, everything has brought out the worst in me and the worst of me. You don't deserve this attitude if you're still listening, the four of you that make it this far. What right?
00:43:59
Speaker
Do I have to be grouchy when I have that coveted book contract with a recognizable publisher? Like, isn't that the dream? You know, one more year would be the fucking dream, but can't do shit about that. Right now, I'm the guy you avoid at the party. Well, no, wait. Now, I'm the guy you don't even bother in fighting, because you wouldn't leave your sunroof open during a thunderstorm. Or if you do, you let's hang out. I often wish I was this guy, Joe.
00:44:26
Speaker
Think we all have a Joe in our lives. Maybe you're Joe also and good for you I've probably talked about him before he has this night. He has his nine to five He loves going on like two to three cruises a year. He likes working on his house lives for slow pitch softball season like he wears a full uniform and
00:44:48
Speaker
And get this, at last check, and granted this was a few years ago, the dude slides into second base. Nobody slides. Joe fucking slides. And the guy, so far as I can tell, is the happiest motherfucker on the planet. My wife also noted he has a hot wife, or at least a wife that's definitively out of his league. Either way, bonus.
00:45:10
Speaker
And when Wudan in this conversation, she brought up that she had earned a fellowship for this piece she wrote. And I thought to myself, wow, like, how do people even find out about fellowships and shit? Like, I have no idea.
00:45:20
Speaker
Then I thought, well, maybe me applying is worthless and pointless anyway. Like, if I actually won one, I'd be taking a spot from someone who likely deserves it way more. Plus, does the world really need to hear from another cisgendered, straight, white, middle-aged dude? The answer is a hard no. So yeah, I hate myself. That's what all this boils down to. I've hated myself since I was 14 years old. So 29 years of self-flagellation, self-hate, self-defeat, self-loathing,
00:45:50
Speaker
Thanks, Mom. I get it from her, and I haven't been able to wrestle that demon to the ground. Not calling my mom the demon, you know, the more... figurative demon.
00:46:05
Speaker
For years, I had to almost hide any success I had from her on the phone and just play the lovable loser. Otherwise, she would no doubt turn on me. When my sister elevated her station, my sister was dead to her. Mom would likely turn on me. I think I was somehow better. I think I deserved a higher station in life. And the thing is, when you are pathologically self-deprecating, as I have been my entire life for the most part, to get a laugh,
00:46:34
Speaker
give it enough time and you start to believe it. My dad always said that the world needs ditch diggers and I was like, who am I to think I'm above ditch digging? He was ashamed when I got a job as a janitor in college.
00:46:47
Speaker
It was nasty most of the time, but, you know, occasionally there'd be like free donut holes still in the bakery and I would put them, I would chew on them that would spit them out. It was sort of like this pre-bolemia because I just hated it. I hate how I looked and I'm like in my body, bad body image. And I told my friend John who worked with me, I'm like, hey, I invented a new eating disorder. It's just you chew on it and get the flavor and then spit it out. And he was like, wow.
00:47:17
Speaker
Anyway, I was thinking of deleting this entire parting shot, but then I was like, you know what? Fuck it. Leaving it in, okay? Stay wild, see you in efforts, and if you can't do interview, see ya. Maybe next week, maybe next week, things will be better.
00:48:08
Speaker
you