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Episode 372: Anna Altman
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Anna Altman is a freelance journalist. This is her second time writing for The Atavist.
Substack: Rage Against the Algorithm
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction and Sponsor Shoutout
00:00:01
Speaker
Per usual, shout out to Athletic Brewing, the best damn non-alcoholic beer out there. Not a paid plug, but I'm a brand ambassador and I want to celebrate this amazing product. If you head over to athleticbrewing.com, use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout. You can find the link in today's show notes.
00:00:18
Speaker
You can get a nice little discount on your first order. I don't get any money. They are not an official sponsor of the podcast. I just get points towards swag and beer. Give it a shot. Especially the free wave. My personal fav. Yeah, sort of like sections. I try to just break it down into sections so that it's like, you know, when you get to the end of a thousand or fifteen hundred words or
00:00:40
Speaker
I don't know, it could be even shorter than that or something that that feels like, okay, you like, you know, have made it to the next drop cap and that that feels important.
About the Creative Non-Fiction Podcast
00:00:56
Speaker
Hey CNFers, it's CNF Pod, the creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Yes. Yes, I am. Thanks to all of those who weathered the technical shitstorm with episode 371, I still don't know entirely what happened. It somehow fixed itself over the weekend. I have no guarantee that this episode, 372, will fare any better. Nevertheless, we podcast.
00:01:25
Speaker
Spoiler alert, we're playing with the Atavis this week for this midweek pod. It's too far away from Friday to make it Friday's podcast, which is always a little bit of a bummer. I love it when these Atavis ones fall like really close to Fridays. I'm like, yes, I can just do that.
Exploring Compassionate Release
00:01:44
Speaker
Anyway, we'll be talking with editor and chief saber Darby and then freelancer and social worker to be Anna Altman.
00:01:54
Speaker
This piece deals with compassionate release in our prisons and one particular inmate responsible for the compassionate release of several people but not himself. Make sure you head it over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter just click the lightning bolt on my website or visit RageAgainstTheAlgorithm.substack.com
00:02:16
Speaker
first of the month. No spam. Can't beat it. If you dig this show, consider sharing it with your network so we can grow the pie. The pie is shrinking. Let's go in the opposite direction, CNFers. Let's keep us from going out of business. There are CNFers out there who need the juice. I'd like to think that we can provide it. You can also leave a kind review on Apple Podcasts so the wayward CNFer might say,
00:02:42
Speaker
All right, I'll give that a shot. And for the really intrepid CNF where there's Patreon, can I even talk? No wonder why the show's slipping. Patreon.com slash CNF pod. You could drop a few bucks in the hat if you glean some value. Show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Would you like maybe office hours? Would that be kind of cool? We can, I don't know, talk book marketing or reporting or research or writing. We could try that. The CNF and patrons deserve it.
00:03:11
Speaker
All right, that's about it for my rambling. Let's get after it with Say We're Darby
Narrative Journalism and The Atavist Magazine
00:03:18
Speaker
first. Authors, authors, geez, no one, I'm telling you, this is, I don't blame you. I don't blame you if you're done listening to this show.
00:03:28
Speaker
Your host should be better. Be better, Brendan. She's author of Sisters in Hate. She's editor-in-chief of The Adivus. Go to magazine.adivus.com. Think about subscribing. 25 bucks gets you 12 incredible pieces, plus access to their archive.
00:03:44
Speaker
All this blockbuster journalism. No, I don't get any referral bonuses, so you know my recommendation is true. I just want to celebrate the amazing work, Sayward and Jonah, and the designers, and the fact checkers, and the fleet of writers do. Okay, okay, riff.
00:04:15
Speaker
Given that, you know, you'll probably be chuffed at this, but I consider you in terms of your writing and your editing and your reporting, like a very high-level performer, if you will. Oh, well, thanks. I do like to be an A student when possible.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, and so as a result, there are certain things that I imagine that if you were to listen to a podcast or watch a video with a writer you admire, there might be something like you're on a certain level, you have a certain baseline fundamentals. So when you're listening to, I don't know, fill in the blank of a writer you admire, what are some things that you're hoping to glean insights from that makes you want to listen to something and you're like, oh, I want to hear them talk about this.
00:05:02
Speaker
I mean, I often find when I'm listening to those kinds of interviews that I'm interested in specific stories. And obviously this is what you do on the pod, but having people really drill down on how they found a story, how they reported a story, I guess speaking less in generalizations and more in specifics.
00:05:22
Speaker
just because, to me, I'm a person who really likes details and likes specifics. And even if I haven't read a story, if I hear somebody talking about it, I'm very likely to then go read it and have in mind the things that they were saying. But essentially, stories about stories is what I'm looking for, because every story has a story behind it in terms of how it actually got made.
00:05:47
Speaker
So I think that's important. And then I really do like listening to writers talk about their own flaws, failures, like self-doubt, you know, listening to people. Everybody's human. And when you hear people you admire talk about like overcoming
00:06:05
Speaker
obstacles or overcoming particular self-doubts or whatever it may be, I always find that to be really helpful as opposed to, I don't like people put on a pedestal, you know what I mean? I like it when they feel more relatable, but also there are often lessons in the
00:06:28
Speaker
in the process of failing or having to start again or having to fix a problem. So I think that that is really, really helpful. I know at the Power of Narrative conference that I spoke at in March at Boston University, Jennifer Senior was one of the keynotes and she's obviously amazing. One of the great magazine writers
00:06:51
Speaker
alive and working right now. I can't remember precisely what the question was that her interlocutor asked, but it was something along the lines of when you turn something in, how many edits does it go through? And she, by way of example, talked about two pieces from the last couple of years that she's worked on and how one
00:07:13
Speaker
actually came together really, really quickly and, you know, she turned in the draft and there was relatively little editing required and she was like, that is something that almost never happens. You know, more often something goes through multiple drafts and she was talking, I think specifically about her Steve Bannon profile, you know, and just how many kind of tries it took to get it right. And with an editor, but then I think she also had some of like other readers, you know, trusted,
00:07:39
Speaker
writer types, friends, whatever. And I think that when you really admire someone, you realize listening to them talk about craft and how craft isn't just, oh, this is how I hone my talent. It's also, this is how I treat this as a collaborative effort and get better by doing so. So yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but those are my things. Definitely.
00:08:07
Speaker
Yeah, definitely, because as much as I love the show to appeal to writers that might need a little juice and need a bit more experience, but I also like it to appeal to working professionals, people who have been doing this for a long time who do know the basics.
00:08:22
Speaker
And they're not going to glean a whole lot about how so-and-so might organize their research. I love those questions, but you already have a system most likely. But to get more into the headspace of that self-doubt and the self-talk and maybe the dialogue you're having between
00:08:41
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a trusted friend, trusted reader, or trusted editor to try to crack the code. I like to try to appeal the show to people who are highly skilled and want this, and then some people at the other end who might be just learning their chops and trying to manifest their abilities.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, no, totally. I think that makes a ton of sense. And for me, I think crack the code is a really smart way of thinking about it because every story has a code, right?
00:09:14
Speaker
Sure, like if you're a beat reporter, I guess, and not necessarily an investigative one, maybe you have kind of a formula for what you do if you're kind of cranking out stories minute after minute, day after day. But for the type of work we're talking about, there's no single formula that applies to any particular story. And anybody who tells you otherwise is crazy.
00:09:39
Speaker
So, you know, really getting into the headspace of like, and this is, I guess what I mean by story specifics too, is if you talk about a specific story and really, you know, how did you crack the code? Like, not just in terms of, you know, the structure or the writing of it, but the reporting of it, the telling of it, like, you know, I don't know, any number of things can, I don't know, be inspiring. Even if, even if, of course, those steps might not apply specifically to a story that a listener is working on, like there's still a lot to glean there, not least being the fact that
00:10:07
Speaker
that there is a different, like just being reminded of the fact that there's a different code for every story. And some stories have multiple codes, like you can tell them different ways, you know, obviously, so.
Challenges in Prison Reporting
00:10:17
Speaker
Yeah, and speaking of unique challenges and cracking the code, I know with Anna and the reporting of this piece, which hinges on Gary Settle, an inmate at a prison in Butner and helping with compassionate release, she was reporting, in a sense, in these little 10-minute chunks because he had to call her and all this, so you're talking about
00:10:43
Speaker
story-specific challenge to reporting, like Anna had one right there baked in from the start. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, anybody who, you know, reports on the carceral state will tell you, you know, just like the obstacles can be just insane. And that's by design, to be clear, you know, like the prison system makes it such that it can be as difficult as possible for people to communicate and tell their stories and whatnot.
00:11:10
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But I think what's really special about Anna's story is that it's the perfect example of how an issue story, so something about an important thing going on in the world right now, could be an activist story. Because Gary, the protagonist of this piece, is such a fascinating character, not least from, I mean, he has
00:11:35
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from the crimes he was convicted of to this incredibly long sentence he got that surprised even the judge giving it because of mandatory minimums to the detail in there about how he tried to escape prison with Woody Harrelson's father to what the meat of the story is, which is about how he has been a prolific, prolific helper for people seeking compassionate release, which notoriously is something that the Bureau of Prisons and
00:12:05
Speaker
courts, because it's a complicated process involving both. But, you know, notoriously, the Bureau of Prisons especially just does not let people get. I mean, just a vanishingly small number, which weirdly, not weirdly, huh, not weirdly at all, given the way the Bureau of Prisons works. But during the pandemic, like that percentage got even smaller.
00:12:26
Speaker
And so, you know, I think that when people pitch us these ideas, you know, that are very timely, very important, but oftentimes they don't have that kind of anchoring person or storyline that makes it work for the activist. And this was like a, I would edit a story about compassionate release anywhere because I think it's such an important thing to highlight and to draw attention to, but in the activist context, you know,
00:12:52
Speaker
Anna developing this rapport with Gary and Gary being so forthcoming. Um, and again, so prolific with, you know, the work that he's done. And then, you know, at a certain point, the story pivots just a little bit because you were watching him help all these people. And then it kind of turns to, can he help himself and can the people who, you know, he's been helping help him back. And it's just a really moving, just a really moving narrative, I find.
00:13:17
Speaker
Yeah, and you're kind of alluding to it right now, you know, in terms of a story that might, for lack of a better adverb, like merely be an issues piece versus one that can jump the chasm to a narratively driven activist piece. When you were, say, reading the picture, having a dialogue with Anna, what was the moment where you're like, okay, this does jump the chasm to what we can do?
00:13:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think Anna, because Anna has written for the Atavists before, she wrote a piece in 2019 about a art forger, could not be more different, quite frankly, from a thematic standpoint. This guy who's like one of the most, keep using the word prolific, prolific art forgers in Europe of the last couple of decades. And so I think, you know, when she pitched, like she already,
00:14:06
Speaker
knew what the kind of thing that we would be looking for. And so, you know, more than anything, I knew that Anna was great to work with. I knew that she was talented and she had already she already knew that she wanted Gary to be the heart of her story. And so, you know, there was not I would have to go back and look at my email precisely at the back and forth. But I remember thinking, you know, this seems like a really
00:14:32
Speaker
powerful story about something going on right now, but that has this like she's already identified who will drive the narrative, who and what will drive the narrative. So I don't know that there was necessarily an aha moment in the same way, just because Anna kind of already knew what we would be looking for.
00:14:54
Speaker
When I was talking with Jonah last and it was like it was with Tyler Hooper's shipwreck piece and I got to talking to him because there was Bill Donahue's piece that involved the kayaking across the Bering Strait. There was a blanking on her name but her circumnavigating the globe on the in a sailboat and the main character and then Tyler's piece. I'm like you know you got a thing for shipwreck pieces and then
00:15:21
Speaker
or like nautical pieces. And then here I'm like, I'm looking back to Maddie Kroll, you know, Kelly Loudenberg and now Anna's piece that deals with the carceral system in some capacity. And I wonder just, you know, for you as an editor and for you as a reader, you know, why those really resonate with with you.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yeah, well it's it's so interesting you bring up shipwrecks and then stories about, you know, the American prison system because in some ways they're like polar opposite ends of what we do right because shipwrecks kind of have this obvious narrative to them, you know, there is a ship and it goes down or.
00:15:57
Speaker
Or it is trying to cross something. The journey aspect is so naturally built in. And spoiler, we have another nautical piece coming later this year. And so I mean, I find them incredibly appealing from any number of levels, not least because the ocean is just an endlessly, or anybody, water. It's just like an endlessly fascinating, like the idea of people
00:16:21
Speaker
risking their lives or finding themselves in situations where they have to fight for their lives against this vast force that I don't think any of us can really fathom in terms of, in Tyler's piece, the Pacific, right?
00:16:37
Speaker
And then what's interesting is the carceral estate stuff, we get a lot of pitches, and I think rightly so, because I think that the horror show that American prisons are, is one of the most important stories of our time. And it is endlessly, I mean, there's a reason the Marshall Project exists, right? That the Marshall Project's entire project is to tell stories about a system that houses a really substantial percentage of
00:17:05
Speaker
Americans and, you know, other people. And then on top of that, you know, is wildly unjust, is wildly abusive. And so, you know, when we get these pitches, you know, of course, we say no to more than we say yes to, often for the reasons I was just alluding to a minute ago, you know, it's more of an issue piece. It's more of a it's something that needs to run
00:17:30
Speaker
quickly, maybe at shorter length, or you just doesn't quite have like the narrative heft we're looking for. But when those narrative pieces are there, like when those elements are there in a pitch, whether you're talking about, I mean, the three examples you gave, you know, what unifies them are these really, really compelling personal stories at the heart of them. And, you know, some surprising elements, whether it's
00:17:57
Speaker
a relationship that develops or getting some kind of reprieve or justice later than expected or not at all or any number of things. I mean, I don't know that there's anything more, I mean, I'm also a complete bleeding heart over here, but I don't think there's necessarily anything more profound and stakes could not be higher in some ways than those stories because it's,
00:18:25
Speaker
life and death a lot of the time, but it's also, even if it's not life and death, it's life and freedom versus living a life in which you have no freedom, honestly. And so the stakes, I don't know, are just incredibly compelling. And I hate using that because they are literal and serious and, you know,
00:18:49
Speaker
never want to make light of it in any way. And so when I say compelling, I mean that certainly from a narrative standpoint, but also just from like a deeply, I guess urgent is the word I would say over compelling, actually, they feel very, very urgent. So yeah, I mean, you can certainly talk about all
00:19:08
Speaker
kinds of buckets that out of a stories fall into, you know, we then also have kind of our true crime, which I would not put these stories, you know, into a bucket of, you know, who did this? Why did they do it? Can we catch them? That kind of thing. Although I will say, like, I think in a lot of those stories that we run a crime beyond belief by Katya Sajak
Appeal of Prison Narratives
00:19:29
Speaker
being one of them, you know, we try to be, you know, it's not like get, you know, catching the person if, you know, they have committed
00:19:38
Speaker
crimes and putting them in prison. We don't see that as a satisfying ending, per se, for the exact reasons I was just outlining about what the carceral state is like. And so Katya's piece does such a lovely job of showing, first of all, police failures in an investigative process, but then also what it means to be in a prison, in the case of that story, somebody with pretty serious psychiatric issues and what the limits are.
00:20:05
Speaker
of getting care, support, a reporter having access, all these different things. I was obsessed with the Titanic when I was a kid. I love a story about a shipwreck. I find them endlessly fascinating. And so there's kind of that almost, I don't know, eternal part of me that is curious about those stories and just wants to eat them up. And then there's also the,
00:20:30
Speaker
I don't know. I'd like to say more mature part of me, the more thoughtful part of me, the more political part of me that is really, really interested in stories about one of the great crises and, I don't know, human disasters of our time, which is what the prison system has become.
00:20:54
Speaker
Absolutely. Well, yeah, we're going to turn it over to Anna because she's got a lot to say about the story. It's so moving and heartwarming, but also like really tragic at its heart, too. And so really, it's a wonderful story, urgent story and just masterfully done by the pair of you. So just thanks for coming on. As always, say we're going to kick it over to Anna. Thank you so much.
00:21:25
Speaker
Sweet. Okay, next we've got Anna Altman. She's a freelancer based out of Washington DC. She's written for the activist before in the past. So if you're a subscriber go check out their archives there. And this piece is incredible. It's a it's a incredible feat of reporting and research how she went about the reporting when her central figure was behind bars. How do you do that? How do you report that out?
00:21:54
Speaker
And it's an incredible topic, and she has an incredible mule to carry the story, to borrow a term from Lawrence Wright. So let's get after it. Let's not waste any more time. Here's Anna. That lead us to this kind of long-form journalism. And for you, what was the appeal of it, and how did you arrive at wanting to do this kind of storytelling and this kind of journalism?
00:22:18
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, the adidas is really a dream in that way, because they're really all about giving you the space to tell a story to its fullest. You know, they're not trying to fit you on a page. And you're not competing with any other long pieces in an issue. And yeah, but I guess what led me there.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's been a really circuitous route, and I feel like I've had a bit of an unusual trajectory as a writer, but I started out mostly writing criticism. You know, I realized that a lot of that was about sort of looking ahead at how other people told stories, but I realized that I also wanted the opportunity to try my hand at that too. And I think, yeah, sort of like what I said about the out of us too, that
00:23:03
Speaker
Having the opportunity to really dig deep on something is really a gratifying experience. I mean, we'll get into this more too, but I've been working on this piece for almost two years now and, you know, I've gotten to know the people in it really well. I've really spent a lot of time thinking about the issues that surround it and having the time to kind of think about those things and
00:23:25
Speaker
read about things and learn about what all the issues that surround a given story is more fun to me than writing sort of like a punchy short story. And so yeah, so that's the thing that I like to do the most these days. Who were some of the writers that you admired that proved to be maybe models for the kind of journalism that you do and want to keep doing?
00:23:48
Speaker
You know, I wouldn't always a little reluctant to say that they're models for what I want to do because I think that also makes it sound as though I think I'm approaching what they might do. But, you know, two writers who I really, really admire for a number of reasons are Larissa McFarquhar and Rachel Aviv.
00:24:05
Speaker
I think they both choose really interesting topics that have a lot of like media issues attached to them. They keep their storytelling pretty tightly centered on sort of the details of the individuals that they're looking at, but in doing so, they gesture at so many complicated philosophical questions, moral questions, intellectual questions. And so, yeah, whenever I see one of those people has published something, I'm always very eager to read it.
00:24:33
Speaker
Yeah, when you read work by them, are you ever just struck by like, fuck, how do they pull this off? Definitely. I mean, I think those two examples, I feel that in different senses. When I read Larissa McFarquhar's book about altruism and about what we
00:24:57
Speaker
know how we sort of think about how to help other people. You know to sort of take on such a heady philosophical topic but in a mainstream journalism context is pretty hard to do and sort of her ability to toggle between finding these amazing stories of individuals who really illustrate some of these thorny questions and then also being able to kind of
00:25:20
Speaker
expound on the ideas there, I think is something that's pretty amazing. I don't know a lot of people who can do that in that way. Yeah, with both McFarquhar and of you, I feel like I'm always really impressed with their ability to find
00:25:33
Speaker
stories that are not so straightforward. I mean, it's people you might feel sympathetic towards, but they're not saints. And, you know, the questions that their stories raise are not straightforward ones. And I think I've even heard both of them talk about their work in that way, that they don't want to choose a story where the answer is obvious, or where the moral high ground is obvious. And so I think that's a really interesting piece of it too.
00:25:59
Speaker
Yeah, for you, how do you generate story ideas and and lock in to some and, you know, keep either nourish them or let them die on the vine because there's just not at all. Maybe there's not enough there. So, you know, to be honest, my practice of finding story ideas is kind of getting a little bit more attenuated and a little bit slower and a little farther between. I'm also in the process of finishing up my training to be a social worker. And so, you know, I'm
00:26:28
Speaker
I'm in school I'm working in the community in a social work capacity and so, you know, I'm thinking about a lot of other things too. But I think, you know, for me I think always trying to find issues around sort of, you know, it's like all the, I hear so many things, especially in my work as a social worker.
00:26:48
Speaker
that has to do with social justice and the way that people navigate the world and the way that our society is inherently unfair. And finding stories that allow you to sort of dig into that, but again, in a way that isn't always totally straightforward or obvious. Sometimes you get like a little, like my outrage meter starts to sound a little bit, but that's not always the best story because if it's clear that something is outrageous and awful, then, you know,
00:27:17
Speaker
then everyone's just going to sit there and agree with you. But what about the things where it's not really clear what the answer is or what we owe people in certain situations? So that's one thing that I think about. And then I think there's so much
00:27:33
Speaker
to learn as a journalist about the difference between a topic and a story. And sometimes I'm really interested in a topic, but I never really find the right story to be a vehicle for that, whether it's the right character or the right set of circumstances or someone who's willing to be forthcoming enough with what they've been through. So a lot of times I have ideas about issues that interest me, but it takes me a very long time to find somebody
00:27:59
Speaker
who really illustrates that and helps me sort of tell that story in a meaningful and really detailed way.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, that whole calculus between topic and story is so important. I think maybe where a lot of people looking to pitch maybe a longer story might go wrong because they feel like they might have something that is a good topic, but it's just like, well, where's the animating force? What are the story blocks? How can this be spun into a narrative?
00:28:30
Speaker
And I think that's a great way to maybe dovetail into your Atavist piece because, you know, a topic on its surface was, you know, compassionate release. But ultimately, you know, you did have something of a much juicier story here. So at what point did you realize you had a story and not just a topic as you started to sink your teeth into this one?
00:28:49
Speaker
Yeah, so you know I actually started out reporting on compassionate release with a different idea in mind. I was interested, I had read a couple of things about people who had been granted compassionate release but were not able to leave prison because
00:29:04
Speaker
they didn't have a place to go. And so a lot of people who have been in prison, they have attenuated relationships with their family members. They obviously don't have health care. They don't usually have means. And so even if they can leave, if they're sick enough to be able to leave prison, that usually means that they also need a nursing home level of care or a dedicated caregiver. And a lot of these people can't find that. And I have heard about a couple of nursing homes that were basically opened
00:29:33
Speaker
With the express purpose of housing folks who were eligible for compassionate release but didn't have a place to go and basically like what helped them get set up with Medicaid and then they could sort of charge Medicaid and keep these people safe but there's a lot of
00:29:46
Speaker
stigma around having your grandmother in a nursing home next to somebody who was just let out of prison. So there's been a lot of fights over those places and whether or not they're sustainable was a question. So I was interested in this question and I got in touch with a woman who at the time was a lawyer at this organization called FAM and she had been instrumental in setting up what was called the Compassionate Release Clearinghouse.
00:30:14
Speaker
a fan of basically a prisoner advocacy organization. Originally, it was set up as Families Against Mandatory Minimums, but they've expanded their sort of purview since then. So I was talking to her about her work setting up this clearinghouse, and did she have examples of people who weren't able to make it home because of these issues that I just described? And she did, and we had a really interesting conversation at the end. She said, when my colleagues wrote this article,
00:30:43
Speaker
for the American Bar Association Journal would, you know, about about our work and I'll send it to you and so I read it and at the end of the article there's sort of is like a little coda, and it mentions the fact that there was a man who was in federal prison. They did not reveal his identity.
00:30:59
Speaker
but they said that he had been instrumental in sort of helping them establish this work. He would find people inside the federal medical center where he lived and direct them to FAM so that they could exercise their right to go home when they were nearing the end of their life. And I said, well, who's that guy and what's his story? And so they asked him if he was willing or interested to talk to me and he was. And so all of it just to say, I was sort of pursuing something different and I learned about
00:31:28
Speaker
a really interesting individual who had a very long story and was willing to tell me about it and you know that ended up being much more interesting and propulsive than the other idea that I had had. The idea of compassionate release to me in some ways
00:31:44
Speaker
seems like a no-brainer. I mean, maybe that reveals a lot about me and my politics or what I think about the carceral system and things like that. But the idea that someone who wasn't sentenced to a life sentence dying in prison without the opportunity to say goodbye to their loved ones or to die in comfort or in peace seems like a bridge farther
Societal Views on Compassionate Release
00:32:08
Speaker
than
00:32:08
Speaker
than what most people expect when they think that someone should go to prison. Not to mention the fact that with compassionate release, there's also a financial calculus. People who stay in prison when they're very, very ill, it costs us a ton of money to keep them there. And what good is it really doing? So yeah, that was just a topic that interested me. It was like, as a society, why are we committed to keeping people locked away when they can't get out of bed, when they can't take care of themselves anymore, when they're really not a threat anymore,
00:32:38
Speaker
And, you know, one of the sources in my piece says at one point, like, if we were ever doing any good locking them up, I think it's pretty clear that we're not doing any good with that at the end of life. So, yeah, that was what I was interested in. As a social worker, I've worked with people at the end of their lives. And so that's a topic that interests me too. And anyway, so all these things kind of came together to get me interested in this topic. And then I found out about Gary.
00:33:03
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And to kind of quote the great New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright, he always said like a story needs a mule and a mule being just someone who can carry the story. And even though it might sound a little insulting on the surface, but it's just someone who carries everything.
00:33:23
Speaker
And so Gary is, he's your mule in this story and compassionate and even like as we learn something of a tragic figure too as his story unfolds. So what was it about him when you started interviewing him and talking to him where you realized like he was just such a good vector to tell this story?
00:33:44
Speaker
Yeah, well, from the get-go, I mean, the way that he was described in this ABA and this American Bar Association article was that, you know, this organization reached out to, they have a mailing list of 40,000 people who live in federal prison, and they shared information about a new law that had been passed. And, you know, a lot of people realized that this could benefit them, that they had a prognosis related to an illness that they had that allowed them to potentially seek
00:34:13
Speaker
um, early release. And a lot of people wrote to them to say, you know, you know, can you help me too? And, um, the only person who wrote to them, not about himself was Gary. And to me, that seemed pretty remarkable. And so I wondered, you know, well, like who is this kind of person who is motivated to do that? Um, he must have a certain amount of confidence. He must have a certain, um, desire to help others. He must have a certain motivation. And so I was really curious about all of those things.
00:34:41
Speaker
It was only sort of a little bit later that I learned about his past. And like you said, I think he is somewhat of a tragic figure.
00:34:48
Speaker
not the only person with a tragic story who's in federal prison, but certainly someone with a story with tragic proportions. And yeah, I mean, talking to him, he's very enthusiastic interlocutor, let's say. He wants to talk to you. He wants to tell you a story. He is very curious. He thinks deeply about a lot of things. And all of those things were really apparent from our very first phone call.
00:35:19
Speaker
He has a great sense of humor. He has interesting terms of phrase. The way he expresses himself is very specific to him. And all of those things made me think, wow, this is a person who's really interesting and has a lot to offer. And yeah, I thought, you know, this is also someone so at the time that I started talking to Gary, I'm just trying to do the math.
00:35:39
Speaker
I think he'd been in prison about 27 years. You know, this is someone who doesn't have a lot of access to the outside world. And, you know, to sort of be in that position of privilege to hear his story felt really meaningful. And I was I was game to talk with him and learn more about him. And, you know, since then, it's been so I started talking to him in July 2021. It's now May
00:36:02
Speaker
And, you know, we talk several times a week. And through him, I've learned a lot, not only about his life, but about his life there, about what it means to be in touch with someone who's in federal prison and what, you know, kind of access you have to them or not at different times.
00:36:16
Speaker
And that was new for me as a journalist. I haven't really reported on the prison system or spoken with or been in prisons. And he liked to tease me about that. And that was funny too. He talked about some of my naivete or that I was kind of a newbie to this. I don't have family members who are incarcerated.
00:36:36
Speaker
And or loved ones and so it was all new and he was a bit my guide And I think he enjoyed playing that role in some way as well now It's I understand that the phone conversations you would have with Gary just by the nature of the prison system and and communicating through those channels that you you only have like upwards of what maybe 10 minutes to talk is that right and
00:37:01
Speaker
Yeah, so the way it works is federal prisoners can call you, you can't call them. Things were a little bit different until very recently because of the pandemic. So usually phone calls cost money and the prisoner has to pay for that.
00:37:16
Speaker
And yes, there's a time limit because there's only a certain number of phones and everyone has to use them. And so at the time that we started talking, he was incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in North Carolina. It's at a complex called Butner. And when you're at that location, you get 10 minutes at a time. So I would get a phone call from a 202 number, which is actually a DC area code, but it's always the same number. It's sort of like the outgoing
00:37:45
Speaker
Bureau of Prisons phone number, I would have to accept the call. And then we would get 10 minutes with sort of series of interruptions throughout reminding me that this is a call from a federal prison.
00:37:55
Speaker
And then at 10 minutes on the dot, it would cut off. Um, and so we developed a system where basically I would send him my schedule that week and say, you know, I'll be available between noon and five on Monday and nine and two on Tuesday or whatever. And he would just try to call me as many times as he could now that the COVID emergency is over. Um, so I think I may be, I miss this part, but, um, during COVID those calls were free. Um, and now that the COVID emergency is over, there's a charge again.
00:38:23
Speaker
He also was transferred from what is called the Federal Medical Center at Butner to one of the medium security prisons in that complex, and actually the time limit's a little longer there. So we've been able to talk for 15 minutes at a time. But yeah, I can't call him. When there are lockdowns, he can't call me. We also communicated extensively through email. There's a specific prison
00:38:46
Speaker
an email system for federal prisoners and there's a long delay for how messages go through. Everything is read by someone in the Bureau of Prisons. I often wouldn't get emails for several days and then all of a sudden I would get six and they would be all out of order. We developed various systems to make sure that we knew which email was responding to which question and keeping track of things. But it was challenging and that was also really challenging in the fact-checking process too.
00:39:13
Speaker
Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't even think about that part of it. When you would do so with these calls, say like in 10 minute chunks, could if no one was waiting in line, could he then call you right back and have another 10 minutes or was it like you got one a day? He almost never was able to call me back right away. You know, some days we would speak as many as three times, but it would often be with breaks in between. So either maybe someone was waiting for a phone or
00:39:41
Speaker
It was mealtime or it was his chance to get outside and get some exercise or whatever it was. I don't actually have a clear sense of exactly what the course of the day was in that sense. But yeah, usually would be like, let's say I would get a call at 10 a.m. I would get another one at 1 p.m. and I would get another four. And I think the most we ever spoke in a day was probably three times. Yeah. And something I always love asking, you know, on the show and specifically with the writers about who do the who write the activist stories, there is interviewing for information and like interviewing for scene.
00:40:11
Speaker
And for you, how do you typically go about that, fleshing out those kind of details? But also, given that you had such very short windows to talk and talking about scene can be so expansive, how did you accomplish that for this?
Crafting Scenes from Limited Sources
00:40:28
Speaker
That's a great question. It was really challenging. And actually so much of this piece was done via desk reporting, but phone calls and reading documents and things like that, that creating scenes in the story was really, really challenging. You know, so much of it also was one-sided in the sense that, you know, Gary was my main source about the conversations and situations he was in with various people that he had helped.
00:40:54
Speaker
Um, most of the people that he has helped at this point have passed away. Um, some of them have surviving family members, but I think, um, Gary has always felt that once folks, he has helped believe he's a little bit, he likes to kind of leave the ball in their court, how much the family or the individual stays in touch with him. He doesn't really want to bother them. And so.
00:41:13
Speaker
I did get the opportunity to speak to some people that he had helped or their family members, but it was hard. It was hard to kind of get the scene from multiple angles. So a lot of it relied on Gary. I also spoke attentively to his mother, and she was able to tell me some things about the earlier years of Gary's life before he went to prison.
00:41:36
Speaker
But yeah, it was a big challenge. I mean, in terms of how I usually try to do it, I mean, I usually try to see things in my own eyes or go somewhere, you know, have other sources to kind of fill things out. But it was really all about Gary telling me.
00:41:49
Speaker
about these things. And I guess I would say that it wasn't always so easy to get sort of like the scene from Gary. I mean, he was sort of more interested in telling me the facts, you know, are sort of his own thought process about something or, you know, how he felt about something. But it's something that was a big challenge here. And I'm not sure, you know, I wonder how someone else would have approached it. And if they would have been more successful at creating that sense of scene in addition to, you know, just the facts, I guess, in a certain way.
00:42:17
Speaker
Yeah, and I get a sense too that this piece is largely about regret and how Gary specifically tries to atone for that regret, be it the pain he put his own family through and everything. And here he is, he's trying to at least make some things better through compassionate release and advocating for the terminally ill people in the prisons.
00:42:41
Speaker
Is that something of a theme that bubbled up for you through the reporting of this when you were reporting it and writing it?
00:42:49
Speaker
Definitely. I'm so glad you asked about that. I mean, one of the things that I thought about, you know, there's a palliative care doctor who I've read some work of. His name is Ira Bayak. And he's written a book that's sort of, it's called, I think it's called The Four Things That Matter Most. And he talks about how people at the end of their life, like the things that are most meaningful to talk about or to say or to have the opportunity to say,
00:43:11
Speaker
are please forgive me, I forgive you, thank you, and I love you. And so I thought about that a lot when I was writing this piece because the ability to sort of express those things or have the time or space to explore that with the one people that matter most is so blocked if you're experiencing the end of your life in prison. You sort of lose the ability to say those things, which can be so meaningful.
00:43:35
Speaker
And I think that Gary is an interesting case because I think he, you know, we haven't talked about this part yet, but, you know, he's terminally ill. At the time that I met him, he was, he had cancer, but he wasn't terminal. And he is thinking about the end of his life and what that means and what, you know, he'll get to experience with the people that he loves. And I think you're right that a lot of what he
00:43:58
Speaker
is contending with is how does he forgive himself? It's different than saying please forgive me or I forgive you, but he feels that he made a series of tremendous errors as a young man that he is paying for and
00:44:15
Speaker
while he may have some resentment or anger about the parameters of that situation, part of it too is about having hurt his loved ones and the pain that he put them through by doing these things and then spending the next 30 years in prison. So yeah, we talked about that a lot and it's something that he's still grappling with.
00:44:37
Speaker
Well, from what I understand from him, the people who are closest to him implore him to forgive himself, to accept that the people who care for him have forgiven him in a certain way, at least the ones who are in a position to express that. But he's not able to do that for himself yet, and that was a really big threat in the story. I think the degree to which that motivated him to do the work that he did of connecting
00:45:01
Speaker
his fellow inmates with FAM and with lawyers. You know, I don't have like a precise answer for that, but I think he does want to show that, you know, I think he said to me at one point, you know, when like the last line is written about me, I don't want it to be that I was a bank robber. You know, he wants to be more than that. And I think he certainly has shown himself to be more than that. And unfortunately, you know, the judicial system has not recognized that or does not honor that in the way that perhaps individuals do.
00:45:30
Speaker
What struck me about the piece as well was how some of the people that Gary was able to advocate and have them released back into the so they could live out their final days with their families. Some of them had like pretty well like far more quote unquote serious convictions than Gary. You know Gary who robbed banks armed robbery was no one was ever hurt. We all agree that it's you know it's
00:45:58
Speaker
not an enviable crime no crime is enviable but it's it's not it wasn't like as severe as some other ones and yet he was constantly he was constantly denied his compassionate release so that's i imagine that that's just uh probably maddening for you just knowing knowing the system and
00:46:19
Speaker
And for him, that's what makes it all the more tragic when you think about it. He's not going to get the benefit from it, even though his crimes weren't quite as severe as some of the people he's helped.
00:46:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's really true. And I think when I talk to different lawyers and different experts about compassionate release and about the First Step Act, one of the things that the First Step Act was trying to do, so this was the law that was passed by Congress in 2018, which had all sorts of criminal justice
Judges' Discretion in Release Cases
00:46:48
Speaker
reforms in it. But one of them was that rather than only being able to seek relief from the Bureau of Prisons that people who are terminally ill or have an advanced age could ask,
00:46:59
Speaker
the judge that, or the person who was in the seat of the judge that her visualize sentenced them to let them go home. They could ask them directly. And that was a big change. And the idea, one of the lawyers actually who ended up representing Gary for one of his compassionate release motions said to me, you know, the idea was that this allowed judges to reconsider people and sort of have the opportunity to see the trajectory of what had happened to them. That doesn't happen a lot in the federal prison system. There's no parole.
00:47:24
Speaker
Um, and so, um, you know, how have they changed and, you know, are, are they still a threat to society? Should we make a different judgment call now? But the problem is it really depends on the individual that sits in on the bench in your particular, you know, jurisdiction or district. Um, you know, there's been research this, um, we talk about this in the piece, but there's been some research that, you know, federal judges who were appointed by democratic presidents are more likely to do this.
00:47:52
Speaker
We saw in during COVID, so, you know, the story spans the period of COVID when there was really an explosion of compassionate releases because many judges saw this as a, quote, extraordinary and compelling reason, the pandemic and the threat that it posed to people who were ill, that it was an extraordinary and compelling reason to let people go home early, even if they weren't terminally ill. We saw that, you know, when there's sort of has been a post-mortem about who was let go and for what reasons that in
00:48:21
Speaker
states that tend to vote blue, that that happened in greater numbers. And that was another aspect of what was really frustrating in Gary's case. He went before a judge that it's not entirely clear how many compassionate release cases he has approved because there's not great record keeping about this. But anecdotally, his lawyers, the federal defenders who
00:48:47
Speaker
who brought the motion for him said that they they only knew of one case that he had ever let somebody go. And, you know, you, you can't switch jurisdictions you can't ask for a different judge to weigh in and you sort of get what you get in that sense. And so yeah I think that there was a feeling you know I think Gary tries really hard not to
00:49:07
Speaker
be bitter or to begrudge anybody else the better luck that they might have. But he did comment repeatedly on folks who got to go home in New York or got to go home in another state where judges might be more amenable to this kind of relief than the judge in Florida that he was going before.
00:49:29
Speaker
And as you started to sit down to write this piece, when you're tackling a piece of this nature, which is ambitious and long, there's the matter of structure and pacing and all those things that can sometimes gum up the works and get in the way of the actual writing. Very important things, but sometimes if you overthink it, and trust me, I'm an overthinker when it comes to this kind of thing, it can be kind of hard to start getting the ball rolling.
00:49:56
Speaker
So for you, as you started to sit down to write, what did you want in place? Be it structurally or just how did you go about starting just to start because it is, you know, it's a big sweeping piece.
00:50:10
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I think one of the things that was really, so there are two things that are really challenging in the writing that I'll point out. One was that at the time that I started writing, we still didn't really know the end of the story. So I was writing when Gary's lawyers were still in the process of putting together his compassionate release motion, showing that he was terminally ill.
00:50:31
Speaker
um to ask for his opportunity to go home and that went on for a really long time and so I was trying to write without really knowing where things ended so that was one challenge. Another one was that as you sort of already asked about there's not a lot of scenes here and so it's kind of hard you know I don't I was not able to be present for or get like a full sense of you know specific moments to sort of
00:50:56
Speaker
paint a picture that allows a reader to sort of really be drawn in from the get-go and so thinking about how to create those moments was also really challenging and I did end up sort of relying a little bit more on some of the other folks other than Gary who could also fill that picture out and so I ended up starting the piece actually from their perspective um and you know to kind of create a little bit of suspense too like like I sort of said earlier
00:51:22
Speaker
Gary was one of hundreds of people who reached out to fam asking for help from a lawyer for someone who was ill, who was terminally ill and might have the opportunity to go home. But he was the only one who wrote on someone else's behalf. But when he first wrote to these lawyers, they had no idea who he was. They didn't know if he was reliable. They didn't know if he was telling the truth. They didn't know why he was doing this and what his motivations were. And sort of that whole sense of like, well,
00:51:48
Speaker
We sort of have to take this on faith that this person is reaching out for good reasons, but I think they also felt like they had to be really careful. And sort of having that sense of this rush of requests from people and the urgency of that, I think the lawyers I spoke to felt great urgency to help these people get out. In a lot of cases, time was short because their prognosis was short. But to have this sort of mystery person kind of
00:52:12
Speaker
peek his head out and say like, hi, I'm here on someone else's behalf. I mean, that was a really similar moment. So I knew, I knew at a certain point that I kind of wanted to start there. So I think that it sort of led from there, you know, I think from there, then it was, okay, well, who is he and how do we know what we know about him? And Gary shared with me what he drafted, what he calls his life story that he wrote. And so a lot of that came from him. You know, he, he talked a lot about his childhood, about his upbringing, about sort of what
00:52:41
Speaker
he remembers about what led him to take this great risk to rob these banks and you know why he sort of didn't fully compute the severity of the consequences of that so you know that seemed like the next piece and then from there it was really about the relationships that he built with the people in prison that allowed him to help them and
00:53:00
Speaker
and with the lawyers who he was able to sort of connect folks with. And I think that was actually one of the things that was really poignant for me about reporting the piece was, yeah, he's really made meaningful friendships with these lawyers. I know that at least one of them goes off
00:53:17
Speaker
you know, not maybe not often, but she goes a couple times a year to visit him. They speak on the phone regularly as friends at this point. And that was an interesting part of the story that I wanted to make sure was there too. And I think I was hoping that that would also give it a little more dimension that this wasn't just Gary telling his story, but somebody else who
00:53:35
Speaker
could offer a perspective to give it a little bit more dimension. When you're writing longer things, sometimes the scope of it can feel a bit overwhelming at the start. And it can be important to have baking in small victories, however you might define that. For you, as you were embarking on the writing of this and trying to get that momentum, what did a small victory or even a big victory look like for you as you were drafting this?
00:54:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I feel like I do try to block out where I'm headed. I mean, like I said, I didn't know exactly where I was headed, because at the time that I was doing the bulk of the writing, I didn't know yet if Gary was going to get to go home or not. But yeah, sort of like sections, I try to just break it down into sections. So that it's like, you know, when you get to the end of 1000 or 1500 words, or
00:54:23
Speaker
could be even shorter than that, or something that that feels like, OK, you have made it to the next drop cap, and that that feels important. A friend of mine shared, let's see, let me find it, because I saved it on Twitter. She, all right, there's someone who posted this thing, because I was talking to her about just this thing I'm writing and how it is very overwhelming.
00:54:51
Speaker
And she shared this passage from, let's see, I think it's something that Matt Bell wrote. And it says, in an interview in The Writer's Chronicle, the writer Patricia Henley once explained how fellow novelist Charlie Smith suggested that one way to draft a story is to first write the islands by which he meant the writer should draft the parts
00:55:13
Speaker
he or she already knows those pivotal scenes that can be seen even before the intervening connective tissue has been imagined. And I really like that because there are some moments where you feel real strong about you're like, I got this. I reported the hell out of this. But it's like, I don't know, structurally, it's three quarters of the way through. I can't get there yet. But maybe you can. You just write that island and then you worry about writing to it at some point or another. So it becomes a little modular. Is that something that works for you?
00:55:43
Speaker
Yeah, I would say I do sort of something that mimics that in some ways, but it's a little different. Like I think for me, so much of it has to do with like quotes or specific moments that I know I want to get to. And so a lot of my outlining has to do with sort of figuring out where those moments are going to come. And so what I end up with early on is sort of a draft or not a draft, an outline, I don't know, like some hodgepodge of kind of quotes and moments.
00:56:09
Speaker
where it helps me block out the piece.
Structuring Narratives with Quotes
00:56:12
Speaker
And so I wouldn't say that I necessarily end up writing, let's say like the moment that's three quarters of the piece before something else, but I do sort of know that that's somewhere where I want to get to. And so it's like, well, how do I get from A to B to C to D? And so, you know, I basically have a document where it's like, you know, some some chicken scratch of
00:56:34
Speaker
quotes and other things that sort of show me that like, at some point, we're going to hear this from Gary or from his mother or something like that. And that that's a pivotal moment. And that is how I think about how to structure something. And that does motivate me to figure out how to how to get from A to B, basically.
00:56:50
Speaker
And in terms of decisions that come across in the writing process and drafting, about three quarters of the way through the piece is where you actually come into the story as an eye-forward narrator, whereas before you were far more omniscient. So what was just the decision-making and the thinking there of, okay, this is when I'm going to kind of step in here for a bit?
00:57:15
Speaker
As I was describing, I think the experience of reporting a story that happens in federal prison where you have so little access to it was an important part of the experience for me. And I think being able to transmit that a bit to the reader at a certain point felt important. I didn't feel like something I needed to lead with, but it felt like something that needed to be addressed.
00:57:39
Speaker
you know, to sort of build rapport and trust with someone who you talk to in 10-minute increments. And, you know, at least for the majority of the time that Gary and I knew each other, we'd never met in person, you know, to be able to sort of gesture at that was important, but I didn't think it needed to happen right away. Also sort of at the point at which I sort of talk about myself in relation to the story,
00:58:01
Speaker
was the point at which I had spent a long time talking to Gary at that point. I was deep in my research and my reporting and even in the writing, but we were sort of in this funny,
00:58:13
Speaker
phase, which was very challenging for Gary, where, you know, he had been told he was terminal. He knew he was going to apply again for compassionate release, but it was taking a very long time. And he was very anxious. You know, he was in treatment and intensive treatment for his cancer. He was physically very unwell. And he was trying to kind of just get through and wait and see what happened. The tenor of our conversations really changed during that time. And
00:58:42
Speaker
I wanted to sort of be able to express that too, that, you know, for someone who is very ill, who's very physically uncomfortable, who's spiritually drained, who has almost no control over anything in his life at that time, it really changed the way our conversations went. And so it felt like at that point, it was important to sort of talk about, yeah, what those conversations felt and sounded like, that he talked about how anxious he was, he talked about how,
00:59:10
Speaker
how hard it was to sleep. He talked about how he didn't really want to talk to a lot of people because he wanted to be able to wait to contact friends and loved ones until he had good news. He tried very hard to be patient with the judicial process, but he wanted things to move much more quickly. He felt like he had relinquished control over that to his lawyers. While he thought that was probably in his best interest, it was very challenging for him.
00:59:36
Speaker
that was a real deepening of our relationship. And so yeah, to answer your question more directly, that was the point at which I felt like our relationship was a bigger part of the story than it had been in sort of earlier parts of the story.
00:59:47
Speaker
And as you were, say, closing down your early drafts of this piece, and then now you're starting to have more of a back and forth and a dialogue with Sayward, who's just such a sharp, intuitive editor and is just really brilliant with how she brings herself to the dugout to coach her way through a piece, what were the dialogue like between the pair of you as you were looking to bring the best possible version of the story to light?
01:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, so this is the second time I've worked with say word. And so at least on my end, I felt like I really trusted her. I knew that she, like you said, that she was a real pro. And even if some of her cuts were brutal, that they were probably right. So that was, you know, I knew that I knew that that was that I sort of was going to entrust her with with this. Is that a gut punch?
01:00:41
Speaker
No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, I think when you spend so long thinking about a piece like this, and there are also so many parts of it or sort of like tentacles that can come off of it, I'm someone who can kind of get lost in some of that. Like, you know, what does happen to people who are in the carceral system at the end of life? Like, what's the difference between their care and someone who's
01:01:01
Speaker
on the outside, you know, so many rabbit holes about what happened with compassionate release during COVID, which was like its own story. And she was very, very clear about, you know, what was serving this particular story and what was ancillary and that was really helpful. I mean, obviously,
01:01:20
Speaker
I handed in something that was much longer, that was much bulkier, that needed some precision to it. And she was, you know, I trusted her to do that. Yeah, like, I still wonder about some of those details or like, you know, if they have a place in another story or if there's more for me and sort of thinking about, you know, compassionate release or end of life issues in prison and things like that. But I think that she was able to sort of separate the wheat from the chaff at least in the case of this particular story of Gary's story.
01:01:49
Speaker
and of the story of how compassionate release has changed over the last five years. So yeah, she was great. She did a great job.
01:01:57
Speaker
Writers tend to have some things that they struggle with all the time, and mine is a laundry list of things that will, in the spirit of brevity, I will spare the listeners and certainly spare you out of compassion. But for you, what is something that you kind of struggle with in some of the writerly baggage you bring to the page that you have to overcome?
01:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, definitely a concision. I think that, you know, I tend to maybe say something two or three times in a paragraph where once we'll do the trick. And I think sometimes that say we're also was very good at that and not called me out on that. You know, it's like the quote already said that you don't need an extra line about it.
01:02:40
Speaker
So that's definitely one thing. Yeah, I think what I was just describing to this desire to bring in a lot of threads that maybe make things more complex or harder for the reader to follow, even if they might bring extra dimensions into it, sometimes it's just not the place for it. That's definitely something that I struggle with. And I'm someone who really loves a lot of detail about
01:03:03
Speaker
people's lives and the things that they say and their quotes and I love sort of hearing things from people's own mouths and sometimes you just need to be a little bit more straightforward and you know just say what you mean rather than sort of fit in all those details. Those details obviously bring a lot too but there's a time and a place and
01:03:20
Speaker
That's another struggle I have. And when it comes to the research and the interviews and the organizing of it, how do you keep that information sort of corralled and easily accessible? So as you're writing, you're like, okay, I know where to find this information. And more importantly, I know how to find it so the fact checker can find it.
01:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, it was really challenging here. You know, a bulk of the reporting and the information that I have existed in emails between Gary and I through this antiquated Federal Bureau of Prisons email system. So, you know, I have
01:03:57
Speaker
a folder, you know, and the emails automatically delete after a certain period of time. So I have this folder of PDFs of all of our correspondence and, you know, being able to find things there plus in our conversation so that, you know, then I have this trove of, you know, dozens of hours of conversations that I've had with Gary and sort of trying to remember, well, did he tell me that on the phone or was that an email? I mean, it was really challenging. But my main tool, which I recommend to every writer, is to use Scrivener.
Organizing Research with Scrivener
01:04:24
Speaker
I dump everything into Scrivener. Every article that I write, every note that I take, it's all in there. And so it's all searchable. And so then if I'm having trouble finding something, at least, you know, I have that to fall back on. It doesn't mean it's always fast, but it means it's there and it's all in one place. Yeah, I try to be really diligent about sort of like footnoting or keeping track of my sources for each thing that I write as I'm going so that later on I don't have to go back and look for it, of course.
01:04:52
Speaker
this experience with fact-checking showed me that that did not meet those expectations. I needed to, I did need to go back and find a lot of things. But yeah, those are my, you know, I think just being able to have, keep good track of things, have a good sense of where things came from as you note them down and as you were writing. I mean, I think anyone who has waited to the end to put those things in knows how painful that is. So I've learned to do it as I go.
01:05:18
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of the sight as you write, even though I'm learning that, too, and what I'm working on. And it feels kind of herky-jerky to maybe write a sentence or two and then, all right, just footnote it right now. Just do it right now. Because I can't imagine what a nightmare that'll be. You'd be like, oh, shit. You're kind of writing from memory. You're like, oh, I'll remember this later. And you're like, damn it. I didn't find that. I can't find what I thought. Did I just make that up? Now I got to delete it because I can't actually verify it.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. And I think the other thing that also was challenging was, yeah, transcription. So like I use Otter as like my main transcription vehicle, I guess, or service. And, but you know, of course you need to spend the time to go back and make sure that it did things accurately. And when you're processing so much tape, that can be extremely time consuming. And I did not always do that. And so it meant that finding things in the transcripts
01:06:11
Speaker
Um, during fact checking was hard. Um, and you know, if I, if I did it again, I think I might come up with a better system. Um, or sort of, you know, maybe, I don't know, make notes of like the salient points of each conversation and sort of keep so that I have like some other record that isn't reliant on like an AI transcription service to make sure that I can find a keyword.
01:06:33
Speaker
Yeah I use Otter too and you know transcribing for me these days is going through and cleaning them up and they're usually like I don't know 75% accurate and I thought it would be like way way faster than doing it manually and
01:06:48
Speaker
Yet manually is its own bear and I'm glad I don't do that. But it still takes a long time to comb through and clean it up and make sure everything is accurate. It's surprisingly long. If you do it at like one X speed sometimes you can do it a little faster. But by and large it's like you really got to pay attention to every single word going by because it is. It does take a surprising amount of time to clean up those transcripts.
01:07:13
Speaker
Absolutely. I felt the same way. And this was the first time that I had really done it exactly in this way. And I expected to be able to sort of like keyword search without having done a lot of the cleaning up and.
01:07:23
Speaker
Yeah, it made it hard. So I think dedicating the time to a little cleanup is probably a good thing to budget in. Yeah. Well, very nice. Well, Anna, I want to be mindful of your time. And as I always bring these conversations down for a landing, I love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And it can just be anything you're excited about, a TV show or brand of coffee or a certain walk outside. It really doesn't matter. So I'd extend that to you. What would you recommend for the listeners out there?
01:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, I guess my suggestion or my recommendation will be a little bit nerdier. But one writer who I didn't really talk about, just because I feel like I don't know her full body of work as much, but someone who I really admire is Katie Engelhardt. And I read her book, The Inevitable, sort of early in my time reporting this. And I thought about it a lot. And I really recommend it to readers. So The Inevitable is a book that she wrote. It's sort of five or six case studies about people who
01:08:22
Speaker
are ill and would like to have physician assisted suicide, but they are not legally eligible for it in the places that they live or in some cases they are, but are not able to access it. And it's an amazing feat of reporting. It's a really thorny set of ethical questions in each of these stories. I mean, her eye for detail is amazing. And so I would really recommend it to your listeners. I also think it's sort of
01:08:50
Speaker
helps us all think about a little bit about like, you know, what do we want at the end of our lives? And, you know, how much self-determination do we have in that regard? So those were some things that I was thinking about. And maybe a slightly less nerdy example. I'm reading a great novel right now that I really like. It's by a Hungarian novelist named Magda Sabo. I think I'm pronouncing her name right. And it's called Ease as Ballad. And just on the sentence level, I think the writing is amazing.
01:09:19
Speaker
And it's sort of, yeah, I just think it's an excellent novel. So yeah, those are two things that I've been enjoying recently that I wanted to share with folks. Fantastic. Well, Anna, thank you so much for the work that you brought to be celebrated on the show and for coming and talking so forthrightly about how you went about it and the reporting and the subject matter itself. So just thanks for the work and thanks for coming on the show.
01:09:45
Speaker
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. And yeah, and I look forward to listening to more of your episodes. You have a great show.
01:09:57
Speaker
All right. Hey CNFers, thanks for listening. Thanks to Sayward and Anna for jamming in the CNF pod garage band. Head over to brendanomero.com for show notes and consider signing up for the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. It's on substack now. Book recommendations, short essay, writing inspiration, one hopes, and series of links that go up to 11. First of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
01:10:25
Speaker
So writing and research can exist on a sliding scale. They have to really, or at least in my case, they have to. The slider is starting to move towards the writing direction ever so slightly. I'm like 800 words in baby. At minimum, according to my legally binding agreement with Harper Collins, I need to somehow find 84,200 more words.
01:10:49
Speaker
I've interviewed a little more than 30 people. Maybe about two dozen. Meanwhile, a three dozen. Three dozen. That's three. 36. Meanwhile, a couple weeks ago, Jeff Perlman, former guest of the show, says on Twitter, just interviewed my 300th person and I'm like, how? How? I'll be lucky. Lucky.
01:11:13
Speaker
to get to 150, even 100 at this pace, and at my current deadline. Sure, it's not about quantity, but sometimes it is about quantity. I made 25 calls last week, spoke with four, with one schedule for this week, so let's just count it. Five for 25. You get your ass sent down to the minors for that batting average. The week before, made 37 calls, spoke with six. That's even worse!
01:11:41
Speaker
I'm gonna fail. My wife doesn't want me to touch my book advance at all because she's not a hundred percent sure I'm gonna deliver this manuscript. So when I fail, we'll just have to pay back the advance and then save up for divorce lawyers. She's gonna take me to the cleaners, man.
01:11:58
Speaker
Not that I have much. She'll get the car, the house, the dogs, and I'll have my wounded, shriveled raisin of an ego to snuggle up with under a tree that I will, no doubt, be sharing with one of our resident meth heads here in Eugene. This is now my life. Stay wild, CNFers, and if you can't do, interview. See you later!
01:12:34
Speaker
you