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Episode 382: Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton
2.3k Plays1 year ago
Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton, father and daughter, team up for this braided piece for The Atavist titled "Held Together."
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction & Theme of Disconsolidness
00:00:01
Speaker
ACNF has got a crushing headache. This week's podcast is brought to you by disconsolidness, a state or spell of low spirits. You wake up in the morning, the alarm clock goes off, and you are in a state of disconsolidness, unabating, unrelenting.
00:00:25
Speaker
I was like, no prompts? What are the themes we're going to explore here? I need some inspiration and motivation. And Joe was like, I never had to tell my reporters that. They just went out and wrote the story and weren't, I guess, moralizing about their own work.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast & Guests Introduction
00:00:52
Speaker
Oh hey CNFers, it's CNF Pod, the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. But then again, you knew that. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Awesome. Three, count them, three. Ah, ah, ah. People on the podcast today, we have the father-daughter combo of Lucy Sexton and Joe Sexton. And she calls them Joe. It's just a thing that they do. You'll read about in the piece. I don't bring it up in the podcast.
00:01:21
Speaker
I once started calling my dad Walter and the first time I did it he was like kind of gave me side eyes like I'll allow it. I did it one more time and he could see the steam starting to come out of his nose and ears and I did a third time and he lit into me. He's like, I am your father.
Braided Narrative: A Unique Storytelling Approach
00:01:41
Speaker
Lucy and Joe are on the show to talk about their Atavus feature, not just co-binelined, not just co-written, but more like a duet with individual voices braided together like a rope toy. Lucy was working on a documentary about the Iranian hostage situation following and during the Iranian Revolution, the late 70s, early 80s.
00:02:06
Speaker
While at the same time, Joe, current day, 2021, while on assignment in Libya, was taken hostage himself for several days. Yeah, I know. Pieces titled, held together, that magazine.adivis.com, consider subscribing. I don't get any kickbacks, so you know my recommendation is true and my advocacy.
00:02:30
Speaker
for everything that Seward Darby and Jonah Ogles and the team behind every issue of blockbuster journalism that Adivis does. It comes from a good place.
Newsletter Transition & Genuine Endorsements
00:02:41
Speaker
While I have your undivided attention, I will be moving my newsletter already, oh my god, from Substack to Beehive. It's a more traditional newsletter delivery service. Listen, I don't trust Substack long-term.
00:02:56
Speaker
Maybe I'm just getting paranoid about social media in general, but think about it. When you sign up for something free, it's never free. I always get a bit weary, and I think they are... I don't think they're so different from other social media companies.
00:03:12
Speaker
And I suspect that if you keep offering a free product like I do and I wouldn't get people to upgrade for anything on that platform, I suspect you're going to get squeezed out or strong armed into some obscure corner of their sandbox.
00:03:32
Speaker
and they're gonna just kind of bury you. And you guessed it, their algorithm is gonna be doing that. And they're gonna privilege the people who have paid things because paid subscribers, the commission off of that subsidizes what Substack does.
00:03:48
Speaker
So make sure you're heading over to brendanamara.com, hey, for show notes, blog posts, that's gonna
Community Engagement & Support
00:03:53
Speaker
happen. It already has, I wrote one called How Not to Write a Book, and to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, first of the month, no spam, you can't beat it. We're gonna keep raging against the algorithm, because that's just what we do.
00:04:09
Speaker
If you dig the show, you might want to consider sharing it with your various networks and the people you know who you know will get some value of it. We still want to grow the pie and get the CNFing thing into the brains of other CNFers who need the juice. And don't we all need the juice?
00:04:26
Speaker
I have like a leaky bucket in my juice bucket and sometimes I get a nice note from someone and it's nice. It's nice. You need the juice. This podcast can provide juice. The show's listenership? I don't know. Sometimes it feels like it's going up and then other times it feels like it's fucking tanking. I guess my charming personality might have overstayed its welcome in the podcast space.
00:04:50
Speaker
We'll always take nice reviews on Apple Podcasts, so the way we're seeing effort might say, well, shit, I'll give that a shot. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, and by the way, deleted at Brendan O'Mara Twitter account. See ya. Go away, son. I might delete the podcast one, too, but then again, I might not. It's kind of like a placeholder, because sometimes you find contact information on X. Sorry, Twitter, X.
00:05:17
Speaker
I don't see myself adding another social media account. I'm turning into something of a crank of late. I really feel like I'm just like folding in on myself in a lot of ways, but that's a good place from which to write a book, and I am writing a book, lest you forgot.
00:05:33
Speaker
But I don't think it matters, social media. And watching people's cries for attention and trying to get that coveted attention and toehold so you have a platform through which you can be more attractive to sell your memoir, your essay collection, or your biography, or your work of narrative journalism.
00:05:53
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I get it, but I don't think it matters. I don't. It doesn't do anything for my mood. When I see people just like, they're doing this, they're doing these videos, and people who podcast are like, all right, no, I guess a video's a thing, so I'm just gonna be doing that now, and I just, I'm not, I'm not on board. I have this, and this PR 40 microphone before me with this metal pot filter, a boom arm, Hindenburg, in your attention.
00:06:31
Speaker
I want to give a shout out. We got two new patrons. And anytime I get patrons on the pod, I gots to recognize you. I want to say big thanks to Simon Cole. I want to say thanks to Kim Costigan for upping her pledge. And I want to thank Jamie Curry, who is on board now. Two from the UK. It's kind of crazy.
00:06:48
Speaker
This is what matters. And the newsletter, which you can now sign up for at BrendanOmero.com.
00:06:58
Speaker
You know, this is an international enterprise CNF pod. So thanks to everyone there who decided to join, join in our little podcast that could to throw a few bucks in the coffers to help it to help it live.
00:07:13
Speaker
And for Kim, they're for upping her pledge, 25%. That's pretty great. Shout out to Athletic Brewing, the best damn non-alcoholic beer out there. Not a paid plug, but I am a brand ambassador, as some of you know. And I want to celebrate this amazing product, so tasty. It's got, I hate the word mouthfeel. I hate it.
00:07:35
Speaker
But what's great about it is it doesn't taste like watered down beer. It actually has that kind of, a richness that IPAs have. Mouthfeel. If you head to athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, you get a nice little discount on your first order. Freewave is my favorite. I don't get any money, and they are not an official sponsor of the podcast, but I do get points towards swag or like t-shirts.
00:08:01
Speaker
And beer, I do have to pay for shipping, but it's nice that I can accumulate points and get beer to redeem those points for beer and then pay $5 for shipping. And then I have some libations that are lacking in what makes them libated. Give it a shot. All right, first off is editor-in-chief, Sayward Darby.
Challenges in Modern Journalism
00:08:21
Speaker
This is her final visit to the show.
00:08:25
Speaker
For three months, the parent company of the Adivis mandates a three-month sabbatical once every five years, so I'm told. So she's been forced to take a quarter year off. For the type A mind, I don't suspect it'll go well.
00:08:42
Speaker
I joked with her, I'm like, so you have like 11 weeks to decompress and then one to enjoy, and I think she laughed. But she might not have, she probably didn't. Anyway, we start with Sayward, and I asked her what advice can you possibly give to an upstart journalist, given that the paths that got the elders to where they are don't really work anymore, Riff.
00:09:20
Speaker
It's such a good question. And I actually was at a dinner the other night, and there was this lovely person who used to work at Lit Hub and Networks at Brooklyn Museum, where they're putting together a project of an in-house magazine, basically. And we were talking about being asked these types of questions. And I said, I never really know what to say, because what worked for me might not work now for anyone, just because the world has changed, the industry has changed so much.
00:09:50
Speaker
And I remember getting advice from, you know, people of Joe's generation who, you know, their advice was just kind of go and do, which is not the easiest prospect now financially and otherwise. But anyway, so this person I was talking to said, you know, I agree that it's really hard and I too don't quite know what to say. And then they said, you know, what I try to focus on instead of
00:10:15
Speaker
Here's how you get a foothold. Here is how you start making money. She tries to talk more about what principles do you think are important to guide any career, whether you ultimately do find a foothold at one of the last standing newspapers or you're a
00:10:36
Speaker
independent blogger or, you know, I don't know you're doing your freelance long form journalist or whatever and talking about like what you have valued and what other people have taught you to value because I think that those things are sort of immutable.
00:10:55
Speaker
ultimately to having a good career and being a good person. And I'd never really thought about it that way. And I thought that was a really profound way of thinking about it. And it made me think back on people who've been my mentors, teachers, guides, whether they realized they were those people or not. And I realized ultimately what I have taken away from them and then tried to pay forward and certainly apply every day in my own work.
00:11:22
Speaker
is what I think is a good and right way of doing my job and how to treat other people, how to treat the material, how to treat the work. And so I don't know if that's a cop-out of an answer, but I think that on the one hand, things are constantly shifting and changing from a
00:11:41
Speaker
industry standpoint, but there are certain things that that I don't think change and that anybody should try to apply. So, you know, I mean, something as basic as like, don't be an asshole and don't work with assholes. If you can avoid it, or, you know, have respect for yourself and don't ever do work that is not compensated.
00:12:02
Speaker
and protect people around you, protect your sources. I mean, I could go on and on about this, but it's funny you asked this because I've been now noodling on this question ever since I had this conversation with this very wise person at this dinner party. So yeah, I kind of think that's how I'm going to start having those conversations. I'm a bit of a
00:12:24
Speaker
of a beacon of doom and gloom. I think sometimes where I'm like, I don't know guys, maybe media won't even exist in a few years. Um, uh, much less America. Like I'm, that's kind of my, my mindset a lot of the time. And I realized that's not terribly helpful one as opposed to thinking the nuts and bolts, kind of thinking from a macro perspective about the things that shouldn't change. Um, uh,
00:12:48
Speaker
to make for a good career, to make for a better industry, that kind of thing. So I don't know if that is a good answer or a bad answer, but that's where I'm at. Yeah. Well, it's like I think a lot of times we get really hung up on the medium of it. And the medium has always changed. But what hasn't changed are the skills of good reporting and journalism. It's just accuracy and the ethics of it, just making sure you're
00:13:16
Speaker
a solid interviewer and a solid writer and basic tenets of research of which even my research muscle isn't very good because Google makes it made has made us so lazy and it's like being able to track down things in a more analog way can get you some really rich stuff that a lot of other people are either
00:13:39
Speaker
ignorant to or lazy and so it's you know those things if you like those core skills if those are solid then I don't know if you'll be able to make a living but at least what you do is going going to be rock-solid and then you know if you focus on those skills then maybe it does parlay into something that is more sustainable
00:14:00
Speaker
those kinds of things you know skills um because i do think we as a society as young people in a society in this society um you know often really prioritize well how how can i put myself in a position to make money which i mean great we all need to make money but i think like
00:14:18
Speaker
in some ways like starting from the standpoint of like how can I do my job well is uh and well can encompass a lot of different things it can come encompass you know research you're talking about it can you know encompass particular skills um within that you know writing editing whatever but then also like i said sort of values you know being a good person having principles that you stand by as a journalist i don't know learning from people that you respect like all these different things and i'm not trying to be too kumbaya about it but i do think that
00:14:47
Speaker
you know, at the end of the day, you have to be nimble, right? Like things are constantly shifting, you know, what worked even a year ago, five years ago, might not work now. And so you need to be light on your feet, you need to be willing to, you know, do what you, I think too, I guess what I'm, what I was about to say, and this is a better way of putting it is like,
00:15:08
Speaker
I think that the lines between journalistic work and non-journalistic work have changed a lot, even just in the time that I've been a journalist. Whereas once upon a time, it was like, well, if you step away from journalism to do something else to make money, you can never come back kind of thing. And that's really not the case anymore. And so many people now do all kinds of things on the side or for periods of time to support what it is that they're passionate about.
00:15:35
Speaker
from a writing standpoint and I think figuring out what makes you happy in that regard or at least what makes you not unhappy in that regard and willing to be nimble and also hold on to whatever your values are, I think that
00:15:54
Speaker
I don't know. That's that's how that's how I'm going to be shaping these conversations going forward, Brendan. And I'm going to get better at talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. And not to belabor the point, but it is such a drag that, you know, you might have to like write for brands and do content marketing to subsidize journalism.
00:16:14
Speaker
You know your own journalism, whereas like here's this this this core like cornerstone of like a democracy of journalism the fourth estate It's basically built into the Bill of Rights and yet it's still something that is not really sustainable certainly these days to like make a living just start at a newspaper and work your way up and
00:16:34
Speaker
You know, it just and it's like you see people getting laid off at ESPN. It's like what other what other industry is like the more skilled and the better you are at your job, the more vulnerable you are to being laid off. It just is that drives me insane. I can't I just blows my mind.
00:16:53
Speaker
Right. No, I think that's absolutely right. And it's very frustrating. And trust me, again, I'm mostly doom and gloom about this. But I try not to be doom and gloom with young people because we do need young people to continue doing this work. And so yeah, thinking through, talking through experiences, and talking about what it's OK to compromise and what it's not OK to compromise, if that makes sense.
00:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Speaking less from a here's how you do it and more, here are some bumpers, if you will, on the bowling alley that are going to be there no matter, or should be there no matter what.
00:17:38
Speaker
always, always join a union. Work for your union, like respect your union, you know, any, I think all of these, you know, things that, especially when you can feel a little out at sea as a young person trying to figure out your way through a, you know, very turbulent industry, you know, having sort of these, these guideposts can be really helpful.
00:18:05
Speaker
Nice. And in this piece, for this month's Atavus with Lucy and Joe, when you just say that, you're like, oh, here's a co-buy line. And you did that with Sean and Lee several months ago. They did this really rollicking piece that basically took place in Germany. And that had more of the co-buy line thing, where it did seem seamless.
00:18:31
Speaker
Two guys doing the work, very sort of uniform, and it's telling. But this is more of a braided piece. And so talk a little bit about the unique challenges to this piece, given that it's not only co-bi-line, but really it's like two different essays braided together.
00:18:52
Speaker
Yeah, so the origin of this story kind of goes back a few years actually because Joe has pitched The Atavist a few times and in one case the story didn't work out because we had just run a very similar story literally like right when he pitched.
00:19:10
Speaker
That story and he ended up writing it for Pope publica where he worked at the time and it was an amazing story. And then he pitched the story that eventually became his book because he was kind of, you know, working through what he wanted it to be and he and I talked a little bit about it and he said you know ultimately I think this is a book.
00:19:24
Speaker
And in the course of that conversation, I remember this was May of 2021. He kind of went silent for a few weeks. And I was like, oh, well, I don't know what's going on, but, you know, he'll get back to me when he gets back to me. And then he sent me this email that said something like, you know, I'm back from this reporting trip to Libya. Things were crazy. I would have to go back and find the exact language. The point being, it was incredibly, like,
00:19:50
Speaker
underplaying the situation in the most insane way. I had no idea at the time what had happened because he wasn't really telling people, it wasn't really public information. And then fast forward to late 2022 and he and I were both at the ceremony for the DART Awards for
00:20:11
Speaker
the coverage of trauma, the Atavist had won, and the Outlaw Ocean project had, I can't remember if they were a runner-up, but honorable mention, like whatever it was for the work that Jo and Ian and Pierre and Mia had been doing in Libya.
00:20:27
Speaker
And so he spoke on this panel. And he talked about being taken hostage. And I was like, what? He got taken hostage. Somehow I had just completely missed this. And then so we spoke afterward. And he said, I'd love to talk to you at some point about pitching some ideas again. And then we had coffee a few months later. And he told me, he was like, I have this idea where my daughter, who happened to be working or producing a documentary about the Iran hostage crisis,
00:20:50
Speaker
at the exact moment that I was taken hostage, we have this idea of maybe writing a piece together about that experience. And I was like, that sounds really
Braided Narrative Development & Styles
00:20:58
Speaker
fascinating. I would love to hear more about it. And then again, fast forward a few months, and they actually sent a fully written draft. So it came in this braided form where it's like Lucy talking, Joe talking, Lucy talking, Joe talking.
00:21:13
Speaker
But I there were a couple things I really liked about it. I mean, first of all, it felt like in some ways they were speaking to each other as much as they were speaking to the reader. And I thought that was really special. And then there are these really lovely.
00:21:24
Speaker
like literary moments of almost overlap in the piece where you realize like one of them is seeing something from their advantage and the other person is seeing it from their vantage. And so there's repetition, I guess is what I'm trying to say in the piece, but it works really well because you're actually seeing it from different sides. And I thought that was really special. And then also just, I mean, there's the wild, you know,
00:21:45
Speaker
coincidence of what Lucy was doing work wise when her father was taken hostage. But then they have this really moving, complicated backstory as father and daughter. And I think they do a really nice job of weaving that aspect of things into the story. And I'm trying to remember, I mean, you know,
00:22:06
Speaker
We, they sent a fully written draft and I had some suggestions mostly for like the last, I would say third of it, you know, to I think add a section each and, you know, divide some other things up just to kind of work on the rhythm as much as anything else. But I don't know, you know, we've never done a piece like this. I think it works really well. I think that the personal relationship is what makes it work really well.
00:22:36
Speaker
And I'm excited for people to read it because I hadn't really thought about it until this moment, but you're absolutely right about sort of the generational difference. And I think that they're each coming to this work from such different points in time. But at the same time, I think there is something, Joe worked at the New York Times for forever,
00:22:58
Speaker
worked at ProPublica, which is, you know, obviously an incredible organization and then kind of strikes out in the freelance world. And I think there's something to be said for what this story tells us about the dangers of, I mean, it's dangerous to be a journalist period in a lot of the world. But here too, it's like, you know, you put together what is essentially a freelance outfit. And, you know, when you're taken hostage, for instance, you don't necessarily have
00:23:29
Speaker
institutional backing protocols. There were protocols, but anyway, I don't want to give too much away and I'm rambling and not sounding terribly coherent, but I think that there is sort of this like undercurrent in the story about the state of journalism and how it has shifted and in some ways like Joe and Lucy
00:23:49
Speaker
like riding those currents together and in ways they maybe didn't expect. And I think Joe especially does a really nice job of talking about how his career followed something of a traditional newspaper path. And then late in the game, relatively speaking, he went off that path and started trying
00:24:17
Speaker
trying new things and learned a lot in the process, to put it lightly. So, yeah, I don't know, it's just it's a really special, it's a really special piece. And I think they did a really, really nice job with it. And it's nice, their their writing styles are very complimentary. Like, I don't think they're the same at all. But they are, they're very complimentary.
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah. And just from the editor side of the table and the fact that they sent you something that was, I won't say fully formed, but definitely like a draft. What challenges did that present you to make sure everything felt harmonious?
00:24:54
Speaker
I wouldn't say challenges, per se. They were easy to edit. I mean, they're both pros. They like to be edited. And so I wouldn't say challenges exactly. One of the things, and this often happens when we have a more personal story, you know, I try to gauge
00:25:14
Speaker
what people's comfort level is digging into certain issues. Because especially when somebody is like, this is the story I want to tell, if I as an editor see a dimension that I would really like,
00:25:26
Speaker
to flesh out more, I wanna make sure that that's something the person is comfortable with. They seemed totally comfortable with it. And actually one of the most helpful moments in the process was I talked to Lucy on the phone and early on, because I know Joe, he and I have communicated many times, but I'd never met Lucy. And so she and I got on the phone, she wanted to talk about,
00:25:51
Speaker
some things related to the Iran hostage project, just to explain how she wanted to characterize it, et cetera. Anyway, and in the course of this, she ended up actually telling me various things that wound up in the story, sort of stories about her childhood. There's this one incredible detail that comes up about how she got mad at Joe, the way he edited like a third grade homework assignment. And that ties into the end of the piece too. Exactly. And so like that was not originally in the piece.
00:26:19
Speaker
And it was one of those things she's telling me this detail and I said I was like that's incredible and like a really like fun like only the child of a writer would have this experience. And I think it said something about their relationship.
00:26:35
Speaker
it's not a challenge at all, but just kind of figuring out how to, like, what's not there and how do I find it? And I'm sure there's more. Of course there's more. You know, they've lived long, rich lives. You know, just having, posing questions to...
00:26:51
Speaker
with the knowledge that I don't actually know what the answers are. You know, is there more we can say about this? Is there more we can say about this? What about an example from childhood that might reflect this theme or whatever? And so sort of asking these almost broad questions, not factual ones, right? Like I'm not asking, well, when did this happen and why? Although there were certainly those types of questions as there always are in edits,
00:27:17
Speaker
it was more sort of, okay, let's think about this thematically and maybe dig into, you know, your biography and find something that might reflect that theme. And that's a very different, you know, way of editing as opposed to, you know, I don't know, define what this means. Or, you know, can we timestamp this? Or, you know, have we thought about a kicker for this section? You know, like just very different kinds of
00:27:45
Speaker
almost sort of like personal psychological questions. But it's fun to work on those types of stories. Nice. And it's been nice over the years to see various co-bi-lined and co-produced pieces. It was like Annalise and Sahara, you know, Lee and Sean, you know, you and Ariel for the podcast. And now it's like now like the father-daughter combo of Joe and Lucy. So it's just it's really cool how you've
00:28:12
Speaker
over the last couple years, been able to showcase the different dynamism of co-produced and co-bi-lined and co-written pieces. So I'm excited for people to get to experience this kind of collaboration that you've been able to put together.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, no, and thank you for saying that because I do think those are all very different stories. Yeah, very not just not just subject matter wise, but in terms of what does it mean for two people to be working on this, you know, like you obviously Sean and Lee's piece about Putin and his support of neo-Nazis in in Germany decades ago. You know, that is a piece of seamless, right? There are two people writing it, but it is
00:28:55
Speaker
the same voice throughout, which is obviously its own kind of challenge. And here we have two voices that are very distinct because each one writes a section and they go back and forth. But at the same time, they are not actually separate.
00:29:12
Speaker
stories right they are the same story woven together from different perspectives and then you have you know Zahara and Annalise and I think in that case you have a writer and a videographer like you have people working in sort of two different media to you know convey a story and then I mean the podcast was its own.
00:29:31
Speaker
sort of unusual situation, but you have, you know, Ariel kind of doing the nitty gritty reporting, describing, and then I'm sort of doing like the high level, like, you know, reminders of history and, you know, not talking to people so much as like narrating something.
00:29:49
Speaker
And those are all really, really different ways of doing a joint project. So yeah, I'm excited for people to read this one. I think it's really special if you are a father, if you are a daughter. I can imagine how this story will feel really special.
00:30:07
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, say as always, thanks for coming on and kind of tease out this piece and to talk a little shop. So we're going to kick it over to Joe and Lucy now and just best of luck with your time off now going forward. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you in November.
00:30:28
Speaker
That's cool. Enjoy your sabbatical say word. My goodness. Uh, I hope you're able to relax, get some things done, unplug. And I know she's, she's traveling the world and, and, uh, she's not a particularly fond, uh, let's just say, uh, let me rephrase it. She's not particularly fond of flying, but that doesn't stop her from gallivanting around the world. And she's going to have a good time out there. I wish you the best and we'll, we'll see you in November.
00:30:59
Speaker
Next up, now betting, Lucy Sexton, who is a documentary filmmaker and writer, and Joe Sexton, who is Lucy's father, longtime sports writer, and worked on the Metro Desk at the New York Times for a bit.
00:31:14
Speaker
Freelancer these days ProPublica was on a team that won the Pulitzer Prize with ProPublica and he wanted to test his medal by working by going overseas to work on some important international reporting and
00:31:35
Speaker
really could not have gone worse. I mean, I guess it could have, but it was it's about as bad as it gets. And Lucy and Joe, they write so wonderfully about it. And it was in the end, it was Joe's idea to do this. And again, we kind of start at the point of when he knew he was ready to take this on. When you when you came back to the States after this horrible ordeal, like when did you know you were ready to write about it?
00:32:07
Speaker
I think actually, and I'm not trying to be cute here or whatever, but there's a scene at the end of the story where I joined Lucy at a screening for the HBO series, Hostages, and sitting in a theater with former hostages from Iran with, I think, four different directors who worked on the series with, you know,
00:32:34
Speaker
former State Department officials who work to freedom are sitting there next to Lucy and the lights go down and you're about to see your child's, you know, work up there. I think that just struck me like, we should tell our story. It's unusual. It could be interesting. And, you know, it'll be, I think a rewarding act of
00:33:02
Speaker
of trust between the two of us that will be good for us in our lives together. And this is a completely different kind of braid. It is definitively two voices, two vantage points, two points of view. So for the pair of you, how did you come to this form of telling this braided story? Well, a couple things.
00:33:31
Speaker
You know, from the time I got back from Libya, I was always pretty uncertain how much I wanted to write about what had happened, if anything. You know, we were mainly focused on publishing the story that ultimately ran in the New Yorker in November of 2021.
00:33:48
Speaker
And once that was done, and for that piece, I actually asked not to be named in it in part because it just felt like a distraction to me. And also my two youngest girls who were then 11 or not yet 11, I didn't want them to, I have never told them what happened. And so I didn't want them to get asked by somebody's parent at a soccer game or something.
00:34:17
Speaker
I have put off the idea of even writing about it for a long time, that once Lucy's documentary project was done and we had gotten together in Manhattan for the sort of screening of the Hostages series, I thought, you know, maybe I felt like I could write something about it. And Lucy and I have always wanted to do a project together, whether that's work on a book or work on a documentary. So I proposed to Lucy, which she
00:34:48
Speaker
consider or be interested in trying to jointly write a piece. But I think it was clear to the both of us, I'll let Lucy speak to it as well, that the only way to do it would be to do it in kind of alternating chapters of our own voices. It would be hard to imagine it otherwise. And I think maybe we both recognize that it would be unusual and maybe distinctive in some way. But I'll let Luke talk about it too.
00:35:16
Speaker
I think that's a good setup in terms of like where we first started with the piece. Maybe like, as you'll see in the piece, you know, we talk about maybe my stubbornness as like the child of a writer growing up being like, my voice is important. And I guess that still stayed true. And so I think one, just creatively, especially when you're writing with someone, you know, in your like immediate family,
00:35:45
Speaker
I think it's always like best to try to respect each other's voices and writing styles and versions of the story. But I think another thing behind it was just, I think some of the strength of the story was just kind of in the strange coincidence or confluence of different parts of our lives, be it professional life, personal life, Joe's life, both career and personal. And so I feel like
00:36:14
Speaker
one of the kind of themes or things that we explore in the story is just how do you balance between these different parts of yourselves or different parts of your story. So I think it also just made sense to keep it kind of like a back and forth passing of the baton.
00:36:33
Speaker
And for those who might listen to this before they read the piece, why don't we do a little background, just an individual background of where your individual points of view are coming from with this piece, and then that'll obviously make sense as they begin to fold in on one another and braid together. Right. Joe, I'll let you start.
Journeys in Journalism: Sextons' Perspectives
00:36:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I have now just turned 64. I've been a newspaperman my whole professional career, which is now somewhat alarmingly in excess of 40 years. And across those years at the New York Times and later at ProPublica,
00:37:21
Speaker
I was always both intrigued by the possibility of doing work overseas and also deeply uncertain myself whether I really have the guts and the stones to do that kind of work. And in the spring of 2021, I was no longer associated with any big major news organization. I was on my own and reconnected with an old colleague from the Times, Ian Urbina,
00:37:50
Speaker
who had founded something called the Outlaw Ocean Project, which is a sort of investigative news site dedicated to covering all the mischief and mayhem and marauding that goes on on the high seas around the world. And we had a long friendship and professional relationship and we each admired each other. And he was intrigued by whether I would kind of join up with his new outfit. And he had a reporting trip in mind
00:38:21
Speaker
which was to do a story sort of investigating the horrors being perpetrated against African migrants trying to make their way to Europe. And it was a very ambitious reporting idea that we would first go to Libya and then on to Niger and then maybe down into Guinea-Bissau to sort of trace the full route of migrants trying to make their way to Europe and the
00:38:49
Speaker
terrible circumstances they could find themselves when they were often captured and detained. And Libya was the first stop. So for me, at almost 62 years old, at that time, it might have been one of my last chances at foreign correspondence, or the chance to do that kind of work, and maybe the chance for me to prove something to myself. So I said yes. And soon enough, I was on a flight, first to Amsterdam, then to Istanbul, and on into Tripoli.
00:39:18
Speaker
And that's how I wound up there.
00:39:20
Speaker
And I have had, spent almost like a decade overseas. So kind of opposite trajectory in terms of really throwing myself out there and working across Southeast Asia and East Asia and then France and a million places doing kind of freelance writing and journalism, making documentary films.
00:39:49
Speaker
opening a restaurant in Vietnam, doing some private intelligence work. I mean, I tried everything and ended up coming back to the United States in 2019 and was supposed to be going to law school and ended up deciding not to do that like a month before classes started.
00:40:09
Speaker
and went back to full-time documentary filmmaking. And so I guess by 2021, when our story kind of begins, I had been working for the last...
00:40:21
Speaker
half a year or more on a documentary series by Shoah Forest for HBO exploring the Iranian hostage crisis that happened in 1979 when the U.S. Embassy was seized and taken hostage for 444 days.
00:40:41
Speaker
kind of as a result of the revolution that had happened and a lot of kind of deep questioning about Iran's relationship with the US. So I was busy kind of working as a story producer, researching it, finding characters, connecting with people around the globe who had stories to tell. And then we had been filming a whole bunch and that was kind of at the height of COVID. So
00:41:09
Speaker
It was, you know, constant testing and doing all this type of stuff and Joe reached out to me and was like, hey, I'm going to Libya soon and I need to get this done and that done and you've been overseas. And so I kind of got enlisted to help him out. And yeah, that's kind of how the story begins, I guess.
00:41:30
Speaker
And not to derail the conversation too much, but I have to ask, this restaurant you opened up in Vietnam, what did you serve? Oh gosh. I think with all restaurants, it was kind of like a refining of the concept, but we first started as a Korean-American dessert parlor.
00:41:51
Speaker
So my boyfriend at the time was a Korean guy who had moved to Vietnam and had helped open up a couple of Korean ice cream. They have a particular type of ice cream called bingsu, which is like a shaved milk ice cream. And it's very popular across Southeast Asia. And so he was like, I want to make one of my own. And then, of course, I was like,
00:42:17
Speaker
Well, let's add some like root beer floats and waffles with ice cream and the root beer floats were not popular in Vietnam. They're like, what is root beer? So it kind of like refined into more of just a Korean dessert parlor.
00:42:34
Speaker
And Joe, you were a sports writer for the New York Times for a bit, and then you moved over to the Metro desk when things were, with your family at the time, were such that moving over to the Metro allowed you to be able to raise your two older daughters at the time while working at the Times.
00:42:53
Speaker
you know and you talk about coming to foreign correspondence this this thing to go overseas later in life maybe you can take us to the the headspace of that as this being something of maybe a lot of reporters kind of a feather in the cap to see like you said because do you have the stones to do
00:43:10
Speaker
you know, within the sort of peculiar, you know, distinctive hierarchy of the New York Times, working for the foreign desk was always, you know, sort of the pinnacle. And it's where many of the people who would go on to run the paper, you know, had made their bones and won their Pulitzer's. And whether that is, you know, Max Frankel or Joe Leleveld or Bill Keller,
00:43:41
Speaker
were all successive executive editors of the Times. So the Foreign Desk was always the place if you were particularly ambitious, you would want to point yourself at. And having been a sports writer for a while at the Times and then having been a Metro reporter for a while at the Times, there was a chance for me to go to the Foreign Desk.
00:44:04
Speaker
It wasn't a certainty, but there was an opening in the East Africa Bureau, which is based in Nairobi. There are certain foreign postings like Paris or Beijing, which have a kind of obvious cache and appeal and come with a relative sense of safety. And then there are some really
00:44:31
Speaker
challenging postings. And East Africa would be among the most challenging. I think you would be responsible for something like a dozen East African countries, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, many of them one more troubled than the last. And so it would have been a handful. The first time the possibility came up, Lucy and her sister Jane were still in middle school themselves, I think.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was, you know, the idea of living in an armed compound in Nairobi and, you know, roaming around these, you know, dozen East African countries didn't seem like a particularly prudent thing to do or a fair thing to do to the girls. So that opportunity came and went, you know, so in 2021, when I
00:45:24
Speaker
I hooked up with Ian Urbina. It was a chance to get a taste of it. Ian and his nonprofit news organization have done some of the most daring reporting on the planet. Chinese slave ships, piracy on the high seas, been engaged in chases of mass polluters around the Arctic Circle.
00:45:52
Speaker
you know, he's been to North Korean waters. Anyway, a pretty intrepid and brave, you know, reporter. And so the challenge, you know, the chance to just like get a sniff of that, a taste of that, you know, felt both appealing and scary. And for me, you know, amounted to a little bit of a reckoning with my own sense of my own personal courage or lack of it.
00:46:21
Speaker
And to set the record straight, I was all game to go. And I think I was seventh going into eighth grade or something and I was already like researching schools that I could go to. I was like, what high schools do they have in Nairobi? Though I feel like I remember being South Africa was the first.
00:46:45
Speaker
Johannesburg or something like that. But I think that speaks to like, I had that bug to like, go overseas and I enjoyed challenges quite a bit from a young age.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's wonderful. And Lucy, at least the journalism just through which I'm familiar with you now, your medium is documentary film. And this piece proves what a wonderful writer you are as well. At what point did you realize that maybe film was the medium that
00:47:25
Speaker
Yeah, that appealed to you. If it, in fact, appeals to you more than any other sort of journalistic spur. I mean, I fell into documentary film quite by accident. I was like fresh out of Reed College and had always planned to go to law school and want to become like a law professor. And I was
00:47:48
Speaker
just doing a little bit of research work and help for a former New York Times journalist, or I guess he was at the Times at the time, but took a sabbatical to write a book. And he had made a documentary with Alex Gibney called Taxi to the Dark Side.
00:48:08
Speaker
And so his offices were in Alex Gibney's Jigsaw Productions in New York. And I kind of got recruited into a series about the death penalty in America. And so, yeah, I was never like a big watcher of documentaries growing up, but kind of fell into it and found it to be
00:48:33
Speaker
a really interesting form of writing because a lot of times you're writing with images, but there's extensive writing of treatments and scripts before you even go out and film, which was really interesting. But then I went out to Southeast Asia and also got recruited into
00:48:54
Speaker
two-year project that was a ProPublica project actually and I was kind of contributing reporting and research from Vietnam and then we made a documentary out of that for Frontline and anyways I gave a real try at being like a print journalist and was trying to kind of you know report from overseas and from Vietnam where like the
00:49:22
Speaker
There was no AP there, there was no Reuters, it was kind of like a black hole. To a certain extent freelance writing, freelance journalism is pretty brutal. It's like 90% of the time writing pitches that don't even get a response from an editor and then
Documentary Filmmaking & Storytelling Approach
00:49:44
Speaker
They want, you know, the entire piece to be delivered perfectly, uh, with images. And so it kind of was a bit of a jarring experience of like, I really want like a mentor. I want to learn how to tell stories better. Um, and documenting kind of was always there. So, and it's a very, very collaborative process. It takes like.
00:50:09
Speaker
really like a village to make one hour of anything. So I really appreciate that kind of collaborative aspect of filmmaking.
00:50:21
Speaker
And Joe, given that you and Lucy are journalists, but bridged by two distinctly different generations and ecosystems of journalism, too. The way you came up is so, so different than the way people are coming up in the last 10 years and certainly now.
00:50:42
Speaker
And what have been maybe some of the conversations you've had about, for lack of a better term, like advice to get momentum in this career when it's so tumultuous to get a toehold? Well, yeah, although I have to say, you know, I think the young folks who are interested in reporting these days are much more talented and skillful
00:51:10
Speaker
than the people of my generation. And while there's obvious challenges to the industry of for-profit journalism these days,
00:51:23
Speaker
There also have been, you know, an abundance of, you know, of new creations and new ways of telling stories and new, you know, the Atavist itself is a prime example, right? An online magazine that does, you know, high quality, you know, storytelling. You know, places like that didn't exist, you know, when you were trying to get a job at who knows, you know, the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire or
00:51:52
Speaker
you know, the Roanoke paper in Virginia. I'm actually intimidated by the young people who want to get into the business now because they have skills in data and social media and technology and language, you know, so I'm just I'm holding on by my fingertips at this point. And, you know, they they have more to offer me than I have to offer
00:52:19
Speaker
I do love this one moment in the activist piece that you wrote, Joe. You wrote like, when the Times asked me to help conduct in-house seminars on street reporting, I made a point of telling younger reporters that success is often determined before you get out the door. If you're fatalistic about getting what you need, failure awaits. If you force yourself to believe that an improbable reporting coup could happen, often as not, it does. Corny, maybe, but also true, at least in my experience.
00:52:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, you know, look, there is some, you know, eternal truths that, you know, if you're going to be a good reporter or, you know, as applicable today as they were, you know, 50 years ago. But, you know, they're all a whole lot of dirty little secrets in the world of journalism as well. And and one of them is that, you know, if you're if you're sitting in a newsroom and even a newsroom as accomplished and and, you know, full of resources as The New York Times,
00:53:17
Speaker
and a big story breaks, there's more conflict in people's heads than you might imagine about like, do I want in on this? Or would I love this to, this particular challenge to pass me by, right? Because, and so, you know, I can remember when the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City happened. It was a huge news event and the entire newsroom was
00:53:45
Speaker
you know, in an uproar of excitement and obligation. And they were recruiting people, you know, to get on a plane. The publisher had commissioned his own private plane to fly people out to Oklahoma City. And, you know, all you had to do was put your hand up and you could get to go.
00:54:02
Speaker
And there were fewer hands put up right away than I think our own mythology of brave and intrepid and aggressive reporters would lead us to believe. And so I think that advice I would give younger people back then about street reporting, whatever, there's something of the same element there, right, is like
00:54:26
Speaker
Hey, can you run out on this quadruple homicide in the Bronx, whatever, tonight? Get us some victim material and see if you can find out more on the cop who is involved. That's a daunting thing. And to do it at a moment's notice. And you can go one of two ways. One is which, oh, fuck, how am I ever going to get anything? This is going to be four. OK.
00:54:56
Speaker
Strap it on, let's go. I always find something, whatever, get in your car and get to the Bronx. But it's more conflicted than I think we'd like people to believe.
00:55:11
Speaker
So Lucy, when you started on the out of his piece with Joe, let's go to the pitch. How did the pitch look to this when you were looking to co-produce this piece?
00:55:30
Speaker
I mean, I think it was more Joe pitching the story idea to me and being, you know, are you game to try this? And then I think it was first like, I don't, I was maybe a little more hesitant about, you know, whether it would work or how much I had to say. And so I think between Joe and I, we both felt like, well, one, we should
00:55:59
Speaker
we should write this thing out first, the whole thing, and just see if there's something good there. I mean the process was a little bit like
00:56:09
Speaker
Joe was like, okay, great. Well, like you go write up your stuff and I'll go write up my stuff and we'll just send it to each other. And I was like, no prompts. Like what are the themes we're gonna explore here? Like, you know, I need some inspiration and motivation. And Joe was like, I never had to tell my reporters that. They just went out and wrote the story and weren't, you know, too,
00:56:37
Speaker
I guess moralizing about their own work before going out and seeing what the story was. I was like, I'm not one of your reporters, but I'll try. So I went and just wrote up kind of a long personal story of my experience and tried to think about chapters or
00:57:02
Speaker
good places to stop. I think we had from the beginning kind of thought we should try doing this kind of braided narrative. I always love playing around with
00:57:14
Speaker
with structure, story structure. You know, I don't like starting at the very beginning and just going linear all the time. I love having kind of Rashomon effect sometimes, you know, switching perspectives and telling the same story over again. So I think we were both very game from the beginning to
00:57:37
Speaker
see if we could do kind of a fun swapping of voices in the piece. So yeah, I like wrote up a whole thing and sent it to Joe. I feel like Joe, I was always the first to deliver the piece and then he would come back with like, okay, this is what I have. And then we just kind of started shaping it and then giving each other
00:58:04
Speaker
some notes on where we could push things further. For someone who's used to relying upon visuals and audio to sometimes really ground the story in the moment, my writing I think was a little bit less like immediate and it was this moment at this time of day
00:58:29
Speaker
and uh the cicadas and all you know these like little details of of the immediate experience i think was actually lacking from my writing in the beginning so uh joe gave me some editorial advice um and yeah we just kind of drafted it until we felt it was good enough to send out and i think it was kind of
00:58:55
Speaker
you know, the pitch was like, read this. And if you think it's good, let's talk. Yeah, I mean, I think actually was, you know, Lucy's first burst of writing that persuaded me that the story really might have promise.
00:59:13
Speaker
You know, it actually was an early version of what is the introductory sort of chapter of the piece that's in the Atavist. And she just struck a, you know, a very, I thought, effective and, you know, conversational style of, you know, that was, you know, a little bit playful and a little bit
00:59:37
Speaker
sarcastic and a little bit just a very good kind of scene setting that really convinced me like oh this might actually work and be of interest to people in many ways I had the much easier writing assignment right I you know
00:59:54
Speaker
Four of us were abducted and held in Libya. And all I really had to do was tell, you know, what by definition was a fairly, I think, unusual and compelling, you know, sequence of terrible events. And, you know, with a straight, you know, kind of narrative timeline. So I definitely had the easier assignment throughout.
01:00:23
Speaker
I think some people might argue that you had the far more difficult task because it was so so traumatic on your end that you have to revisit those moments and to hear you call it like you're like either you know I the the less demanding assignment it's like there's a maybe that was a way for you to detach a little bit to make it a bit easier to to approach
01:00:46
Speaker
to, you know, both the events in Libya as they happened. And, you know, and since has been, you know, has been one of relative
01:01:01
Speaker
you know, calm both in the moment and then afterward. And again, I think you're probably right. It's probably some kind of trick of the brain or the heart to, you know, one initially get through some terrible events and then, you know, later on to process them and
01:01:21
Speaker
I hadn't told the story of what happened to many people prior to this. I don't think I had even told it to Lucy. And to this moment, and we'll see what kind of reception the story gets, to this moment, it's awkward.
01:01:42
Speaker
Do, will people read it and see it as like, I don't know, self-indulgent or self-important, or will they read it and, you know, have just a human healthy reaction to, you know, a fairly remarkable story of dark coincidence and, you know, kind of imperfect but durable relationship between a father and a daughter? I hope they do.
01:02:12
Speaker
but you're pretty self-conscious. But now that we've gone ahead and written 15,000 words or whatever, I think we've made a commitment that we're gonna be okay kind of undressing ourselves a little bit.
01:02:27
Speaker
I mean, I don't mean to speak for Joe, but at least my own experience as a writer, there's a difference between writing something and then having it read by others. And I think for writers, writing can be a very personal process of just processing and
01:02:50
Speaker
thinking through a moment or trying to capture or understand your feelings at the time, regardless of whether it'll be read by others or not. But that is a strong motivation and impetus and almost inspiration for writing. Part of what was hard for me writing this was like, how do I make a story in which every day I'm spending 18 hours or 16 hours working
01:03:19
Speaker
religiously on a job that I'm doing that kind of like doesn't have that much to do with Joe's story. I don't know how to make like 16 hour, you know, shoot days interesting to others. There wasn't a lot of time for me to process anything or even feel
01:03:38
Speaker
much of anything. And I think kind of as a producer and as somebody who's done a lot of work overseas in kind of challenging situations, you know, you kind of go into work mode and like, how do I solve this and take care of things? And
01:04:00
Speaker
you know, I was like, I don't know how interested readers will be in hearing me be like, okay, so I spent 16 hours that day, you know, moving cameras around and tell it, you know, getting crew to do this. And, and then for like, you know, an hour and a half at night, you know, at 3am in the hotel, finally thinking about what Joe needed and what I could do and all of that. So that was kind of my challenge.
01:04:28
Speaker
Yeah, Joe, you had brought up this how readers might accept it and the reaction on that end. And there are always, I guess, a couple approaches when you put out a piece of this nature or any nature where at one point maybe don't care what readers think about it. But then there's another part like, oh, you want to say, like, do people like it? How are they going to respond to this?
01:04:57
Speaker
For you as a writer, to what extent do you put a lot of weight in just the reader reaction part of it, just to make sure you're on the right pace, or for your ego satisfaction, or do you not care at all?
01:05:14
Speaker
then it's even, you know, safe to say. I mean, I'd like my answer to be, you know, some tough guy answer, like, I don't give a shit, you know, I write my books and whatever. You know, I think I'm hardly distinctive in this, but we might as well be honest. I think we all crave, you know, a response that, you know, that satisfies our our vanity and, you know, but
01:05:44
Speaker
That is, you know, that that's a substantial and ever present desire. And, you know, I would have to be honest about that. That said.
01:05:54
Speaker
I think there are other simultaneous desires that you hold, which is, you know, depending on the kind of piece you're doing, one that will have some impact, particularly when you're telling other people's stories, that you do justice to those stories and that those people's truths are received by the reading public in a way that, you know,
01:06:17
Speaker
you know, is of some consequence. So there are both legitimate and, you know, less flattering desires you go into any kind of publication of a story feeling.
Self-Reflection & Audience Reception
01:06:27
Speaker
But, you know, the most honest answer is there's a whole lot of ego investment in it, whether you're, you're fully honest with yourself or, you know, with the
01:06:39
Speaker
I feel like I'm maybe more conscientious than Joe. I'm always like, I just don't know how interesting this is gonna be to other people. Should we really write it? And I think Joe was really like, let's just give it a try. Maybe it's coming from the documentary film world and the entertainment world where a lot is put by like how many viewers did it have and how,
01:07:06
Speaker
you know, pacing is so important. Like, did you lose people within the first five minutes? I think there's a lot of concern with that within documentary. I know it's there in writing, but I don't know, I just always think that my own story and life story is really not that compelling. So I guess I was for this piece, particularly was from the beginning, a little concerned about whether it had
01:07:36
Speaker
any value or interest to others. And I'm still nervous about it. I don't know what the reaction is going to be. But I think one thing that put those fears to rest a little bit was if we just stay true to our story and to, I think, one of the more
01:08:06
Speaker
interesting and fruitful and evocative parts of this story is really the relationship between Joe and I and this father-daughter relationship. And so I think that's kind of, you know, while it's unique to us, those relationships are also universal. And so I think, you know, that got me a little bit over this hump of whether it's going to be interesting or compelling to others. So.
01:08:30
Speaker
But just even to come at it from a, you know, just a purely clinical point of view, right? I mean, I've been doing this now for 40 years or whatever and become a pretty good judge of, you know, what's a good story. And, you know, for some of the stories that I've been a part of that have had, you know, the greatest, you know, public reception, you know,
01:08:52
Speaker
they all have like almost a singular aspect of it that carries the entire thing. We did a story, I was an editor on a story at ProPublica called The Unbelievable Story of Rape and wound up winning a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting and became a Netflix series, eight-part Netflix series. It was a real sensation, but the, and it was, you know, but the,
01:09:21
Speaker
the single fact that the heart of it that made it what it was, was that a young woman had reported being raped was disbelieved. That happens all the time or whatever. Not only was she disbelieved, but she was then prosecuted for having filed a false complaint. And that moved it into, you know, in the America's ugly and
01:09:47
Speaker
you know, seemingly endless variety of stories about rape and misconduct or like that put it in a different category. I haven't a write a story while I pro publica about a cop who was fired from the force for his involvement in a fatal shooting of a young African-American kid.
01:10:09
Speaker
His fault was not that he shot the kid. He was fired for not having shot. So, you know, again, in America's endless catalog of, you know, police killing stories, that put it in a different category. This story for the Atavist has, you know, at its heart, a pretty extraordinary coincidence, right?
01:10:32
Speaker
that a daughter is working on a series in which she's spending day after day talking to former hostages, former hostage takers, families of those taken, whatever, about the experience of their loved one being held overseas, and that her dad goes missing in the course of it, and is held hostage for almost a week in Libya.
01:11:02
Speaker
that just doesn't happen every day. And putting all, you know, concerns about our personal stories or what we do, like, that's a hook that's going to work, I think, almost every time. That would be the kind of cynical clinical view of why, you know, you might believe that the people will be interested in the story.
01:11:26
Speaker
And, you know, whether the reaction is positive or negative, whether it gets, you know, a million reads or none, you know, I think it's been a good experience for Lucy and I to have done. And there's going to always be the satisfaction of that, whatever the public makes of it. Like all parent-child experiences, you know, it's a mix of
01:11:47
Speaker
tension and frustration and love and trust. And that's fundamentally, I think, a good thing for Lucy and I to have done together.
01:12:00
Speaker
Yeah, you kind of took that question out of my mouth. I was going to just say that just as the pair of you doing this, what the experience was like to be able to co-author something of this nature just as what it speaks nothing of writer, writer, journalist to journalist, but father to daughter and daughter to father.
01:12:22
Speaker
I mean, I wonder if I scarred Joe early on with that, you know, a story of, I think it was third grade, his kind of like rewriting of editing of one of my homework pieces and me being, I think it was quite a disagreement, verbal blow up or something. And I was like, you're not helping with anything ever again.
01:12:50
Speaker
So maybe I've scarred him in that way, but I think he was pretty insistent upon me writing this day my sections kind of on my own and not over-editing me, which at some times I was like, I want more. Give me more. Give me more.
01:13:12
Speaker
feelings or material, uh, themes, concepts, like whatever to work with. And so it was sometimes kind of like brutal to really just like sit down and like make myself write this thing. But, uh, I think in the end, I really appreciated, uh, that, you know, I think he really does respect my writing and my voice. And, and so I think in that way we're pretty good
01:13:41
Speaker
collaborators. And, you know, when I was off in Vietnam and Thailand and Cambodia and
01:13:50
Speaker
uh, what not writing, you know, freelance stories for, you know, vice or all, all these different publications and didn't have really much of an editor. I always turned to Joe and it was like, Hey, can you take a look at this? And so I think we have kind of developed a kind of like also more professional relationship when it comes to that. And yet, you know, of course we have like,
01:14:17
Speaker
those father-daughter moments or those moments you have with close family members where you're like, you are so annoying right now. And the good thing about families, it's like really hard to shake them. So I think we allow for each other to like have our moments of annoyance and move forward. And, you know, it kind of like just is part of the whole thing.
01:14:44
Speaker
So I think it's been a great experience. And whether it's a father-daughter writing tandem or just two journalists trying to co-write a piece, never.
01:14:57
Speaker
You know, what they most need is not each other's feedback, but they need a, you know, a third party independent. And, you know, Sayward was really, I think, awesome. She was taken by the story from the first time she read the first draft of it. She had very clear ideas about how it could be made better. You know, she had specific requests of the two of us.
01:15:21
Speaker
And I think having that kind of excited and enthusiastic referee step into it was vital and will always be the case in any kind of jointly written piece. So I'm very grateful to
01:15:39
Speaker
There's a scene in The Godfather when Don Corleone realizes that Michael did something that pulls him into their underground. There's a look of anguish on his face like, oh my God, you were supposed to not be in this. You were supposed to be the one who got out.
01:15:58
Speaker
And so, so, Joe, Lucy becomes a journalist. You're a journalist. Was there that moment of anguish? You're like, I thought I wanted better for you. I wanted. But now you're you're in the you're in the mud of this journalistic career now. Well, first let me begin with a confession, which is despite, you know, having been a Brooklyn boy from my birth and, you know, having kind of, you know,
01:16:26
Speaker
fronted myself as some kind of Brooklyn tough guy or whatever from back in the day. I've never seen the Godfather. Same here. I've never seen the Godfather. But I know enough about it to easily imagine the scene. And the answer is yes. Lucy's a quite brilliant woman, and I'm going to make her uncomfortable or whatever. But as I say in a piece, she's 10 times smarter than me.
01:16:55
Speaker
She wrote a fascinating thesis paper when she graduated from Reed about the law. I'm the son of a lawyer. She's the granddaughter of a lawyer. I had a rooting interest in her becoming young and legal prodigy and eventual professor.
01:17:23
Speaker
Just because she really, I think, liked the subject of the law and was recognized by professors and whatever as somebody with a distinct degree of promise to enrich that world. But to have instead entered the world of storytelling, there's nothing wrong with that. Like I said, I'll steal an old line. Lucy's heard this a number of times.
01:17:50
Speaker
So one of my favorite colleagues at the New York Times was a big city columnist, Jim Dwyer, who had written a column for first Newsday and then the Daily News and then came to the New York Times. And he had a great line and I've enjoyed stealing it since I heard it, which is that there are three great, inextinguishable human desires. The need for food, the need for sex, and the need for stories, helping satisfy that
01:18:19
Speaker
you know, humankind's endless appetite and need for stories of all kinds. That's good, fun, noble work that is its own kind of contribution to, you know, a better future. So spending a life in the world of storytelling, that's an okay outcome for my kid.
01:18:40
Speaker
Very nice. Well, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I love asking the guests. And this is great. We have two for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And that can just be anything you're excited about. It could be reading. It could be movies. It could be a brand of socks you're particularly tickled about. So I'd extend that to the two of you. Like, what might you recommend to the listeners out there? Oh, gosh.
01:19:03
Speaker
You can go first if you want to buy time. And it's somewhat related to, so when I got back from the ordeal in Libya, it was a very strange kind of reentry. And one of the remarkable things was you actually didn't want to see your family right away. That you would think that would be the most normal and instinctive reaction, but I actually didn't. I needed some kind of space to get my legs a little bit.
01:19:32
Speaker
And I watched a show that was done, I think it was four seasons, whatever. But it is, it's called Rectify. And you can find it on one of the streaming services. And it's, for me, was among the most profound pieces of TV that I've watched about the experience of
01:19:54
Speaker
but wrongly convicted on death row, who then reenter the world once their case is overturned and vacated. Anyway, maybe it was just something about my state of mind at the time.
01:20:11
Speaker
But I found it just an exquisite piece of work. So the show is called Rectify, and I'd recommend that for anyone, particularly those emerging from a Libyan jail cell.
01:20:29
Speaker
I'm trying to think of something. I mean, two things come to mind. One is recent, one is not so recent, but stays with me and it's kind of relevant to writing this piece. The recent thing is I enjoy Amtrak trains in the summer. And I know there's been a lot of horrible flights that I've been dealing with. And I know a lot of people are like,
01:20:55
Speaker
you know trying to get away in the summer and i just have to say aim track trains they're so nice i would just suggest that as a life hack for the summer avoiding the horrors of flying right now if we're wanting something more creative
01:21:11
Speaker
of a recommendation back in 2021. So at the year that this kind of story takes place with Joe and I, I watched one of my favorite, favorite documentary filmmakers, Robert Greene. He came out with a documentary on Netflix called Procession. And it's
01:21:35
Speaker
you know, all of his work is kind of like hybrid between scripted and documentary and really complex, interesting story structure. And I remember watching it and being really inspired and I think maybe even kind of encouraged me in the writing with Jo to lean into trying what could be a very difficult
01:22:00
Speaker
kind of narrative. So yeah, it's a great, great documentary. It's called Procession by Robert Greene. Oh, fantastic. Well, Lucy and Joe, this was so great to get to talk to you about this piece and your approach to it. And I just want to commend you on a job well done. And thanks for coming on the show to talk about it and some other things. Thank you.
01:22:30
Speaker
Say a word. Lucie and Joe. Nice. Great talk. Great chat. You can visit magazine.adivist.com to read the piece and or subscribe. 25 bucks a year. Not bad when you really think about it. How many things are you subscribed to? So many creators out there are asking you for a few bucks a month. Jeez, I do. Patreon.com slash CNF pot.
01:22:58
Speaker
But sort of do like a million other people I know who are on Substack or be it Ali Ward of Ologies and she's on Patreon. And then there are people who haven't even really built an audience and they start a newsletter and they're like, already, hey, pay for this so I can do my work. And it's like.
01:23:18
Speaker
They haven't done the hard work of building a base. They're gonna be very disappointed. You know, if I upgraded to paid for everyone I read, I'd go bankrupt. I suspect you would too, so I wonder what makes you choose to pay into one versus another. It could be as simple as kindness, or it could be something else. I mean, this podcast will always come out on Fridays, whether people pay for it or not.
01:23:45
Speaker
I mean you pay for it one way or another be it time or money and people who do both awesome high fives I hope to offer more one-on-one stuff some facetime. I think that helps I think people really enjoyed that It's just a matter of finding something of an objective party who is talked to hundreds of people about doing this kind of thing and you know listening and
01:24:08
Speaker
Hearing out hearing you out maybe offer a little pointer here and there and you want to talk about a bargain You know if I had a CFO they'd be like you got to cut that shit out, but I don't so here I am What are we gonna talk about this week? I suppose I can talk about some book stuff I haven't talked about book stuff in a while and You know what I've been riffing on in my journals all on John Steinbeck is a
01:24:33
Speaker
you know, what's been consuming my days of late is the feeling of like, am I doing enough in a given day? And sometimes it just never feels like enough. I don't even know what that is. But I think I, this week especially has been pretty good. I've spoken with, you know, long conversations with five people. And then when I say long conversations, it's like upwards of an hour or more. I usually cap it off at an hour and then want to circle back with people.
01:24:58
Speaker
And then I found some other people, some intermediaries who put me in touch with people. So that's really good. You know, that's good. And I think that is enough. It's hard to tell sometimes. Like I'm reaching the bottom of the bucket for sure of the written record on Prefontaine.
01:25:13
Speaker
I must be in the bottom quarter if not lower so that leaves me with tracking down more people to interview interviewing past interviewees again circling back for more detail cleaning up the transcripts oh gosh I have more than like 60 transcripts probably pushing closer to 70 and I think I need to clean up about 40 of those
01:25:35
Speaker
It's not as bad as actual transcribing, but it's still a slog. I don't need to write. I've been in a slump of late and haven't had the momentum. I need to lay down more road. Find out where those potholes are. Find out what feels thin. When I know maybe a particular area could benefit from some more bulking.
01:26:00
Speaker
you want to know these shortcomings when you're like eight and a half to six months from deadline versus like one month be like oh shit I got a circle back to 30 people because this feels bad and I've only got a month to do it I don't want to do that
01:26:15
Speaker
However, I've written probably a neighborhood of 10,000 words. So that's not terrible, but we kinda gotta start to hustle. In terms of the story, I really think the best tool is a timeline. You know, mine isn't as fleshed out as I would like it to be, so I need to really comb through my omnibus.
01:26:31
Speaker
on the bus spreadsheet of more than a thousand articles that I have very detailed notes about you know just find those big beats ask myself what do they mean why are they worth digging into deeper
01:26:47
Speaker
thinking about structure too. I don't think I have the chops to pull off what I really want to do, but it's to treat this book like the last dance docu-series on Michael Jordan. I think I cracked the code as to how I could do it, but I don't know if it's smart.
01:27:03
Speaker
And I suspect my editor will be like, just please don't. But that said, that last dance element, that's going to be a chapter unto itself. You know, that sort of a big block through which you could hang, potentially hang the entire narrative. It's going to be its own thing. So I think I can experiment by breaking it up into chunklets that float over the top of the entire prefrontal story and why he still matters, why he's still relevant today.
01:27:33
Speaker
When those beats are measured out, then the research and the reporting becomes far more targeted, far more efficient. Then you can go back to someone and you just talk for maybe 20 minutes instead of two hours. You just go right to the heart of what you want to get. Anyway, that's kind of where we're getting. As we're still trying to find new people, more people to talk to, but that's where we're at.
01:28:00
Speaker
And then that's where we're going, okay? Good. Well, I hope you're good. I hope your writing's going well. And we've come to the end, so I hope what you will do is stay wild. And if you can't do, interview safe.
01:28:36
Speaker
you