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Episode 532: Barry Meier Likes to be Open to Surprises
1 Playsin 14 hours
"You never know what insight or information you're going to glean from someone, and so I want to be open to surprises. And not have any preconceived notions of what, who this person is, what they're going to tell me, imposing my own values, beliefs, whatever on them, because it's all a discovery," says Pulitzer Prize-winner Barry Meier, whose piece "You Can Run" appears in The Atavist Magazine.
Barry Meier is here for another Atavistian chat! Yeah, these have not come out in as timely a manner as I had hoped. The late delay of the “revived” one with Mac Montandon, and having pods that were getting moldy in the can too precedence. Anyway …
Barry Meier has won this little award you might have heard of called the, what is it, oh, yes, the Pulitzer Prize as part of a team of reporters in International Reporting for the New York Times. He’s also been a finalist for the Pulitzer and a two-time winner of the George Polk Award. He’s got a new piece out for The Atavist magazine titled: You Can Run: When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam, they thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime.”
He’s the author of three books, Pain Killer, which was the first to chronicle the Sackler family and the origin of the opioid epidemic. “The book that started it all,” wrote Patrick Radden Keefe, whose book Empire of Pain was heavily informed by Barry’s work. Barry also wrote Spooked and Missing Man. You can learn more about Barry at barryemierbooks.com . In this conversation we talk about:
- Using the boundaries of an envelope to map out a story
- Interviewing and the tools he uses or doesn’t use
- Being open to surprises
- Beginnings, endings, and pacing
This episode pairs well with Ep. 385 with Robert Kolker
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Pitch Club and Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, easy and effort. Sometimes the best idea you can come up with is the thing you wish you had when you were starting out. And that's what Pitch Club is at welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. I was such a frustrated freelancer, still am, not knowing how to pitch, still can't really.
00:00:16
Speaker
Not getting any traction, working on that. So Pitch Club is that thing that 2010 me, and I guess 2026 me, could really use and have used or whatever. Pitches ranging from agent queries, feature stories, and off-the-cuff unhinged essay pitches and more. I just dropped my book proposal overview, maybe my final book ever, to mark one year of Pitch Club and one year of The Front Runner, perhaps my last book ever. Forever free. You read a little, you listen a little, you learn a lot. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
00:00:49
Speaker
If I'm Leah, I take those boxes out in the backyard and burn them.
Introducing Barry Meyer and His Work
00:01:01
Speaker
It's Creative Non-Fiction Podcast, the show where i speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Meara, and let me tell you, and pardon the expression, my balls have been brutally kicked in this week. That prompted me to text my wife, I don't deserve anything anymore, ever. And she wrote back...
00:01:19
Speaker
What the fuck, man? I'm in meetings right now, but we are going to talk about this shit tonight. Barry Meyer is here for another Atavistian chat, magazine.atavist.com. Yeah, these have not come out in as timely a manner as I had hoped. The late delay of their revived one with Mac Montandon and having pods that were getting moldy in the can took precedence.
00:01:44
Speaker
So anyway, here we are with Barry's piece. Barry Meyer has won this little award you might have heard called, oh what is it? Kevin, can you tell me?
00:01:56
Speaker
The Pulitzer Prize. Oh, yeah, that one. As part of a team of reporters in the category of International Reporting 2017 with the New York Times. You might have heard of it.
00:02:08
Speaker
He's also been a finalist for the Pulitzer on his own and a two-time winner of the George Polk Award. He's got a new piece out for the Atavist titled You Can Run. When their parents ripped two young sisters from their privileged lives, gave them fake names, and took them on the lam...
00:02:23
Speaker
They thought it was because their father was in trouble with the IRS. It would be years before they learned the truth about his life of crime. I mean, those those guys, the atavists, they can write a deck. Am I right? But more on Barry when we reach his part of the conversation. Show notes to this episode more at brendanamara.com, where you can read blog posts, search the deep, vast archive of the podcast, and sign up for a Pitch Club or the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, the OG, for recommendations and stuff. You know, I made it a werewolf so it publishes when the full moon hits. Nose to the wind, baby.
Editing Insights from Sayward Darby
00:03:00
Speaker
You may also browse patreon.com slash cnfpod if you want to slip a few dollar bills into the collection plate and get some extra perks like the Flash 52 sessions and just to support the podcast. As you know, it's free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. As we get into this, we're going to hear from Sayward Darby, the lead editor of this piece, and how she navigated editing a piece by such an accomplished, decorated writer in Barry, and his economy of language, and why the lead of this story worked so well.
00:03:35
Speaker
So let's cue up the montage for part one of this thrilling Atavistian episode of CNF Pod, Riff.
00:03:49
Speaker
The writing part is where the magic is for me. My students, the kids these days. You know, there's a difference between losing and being a loser. I either work on it or I allow it to torture me for a really long time. This is going to to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:04:08
Speaker
When this comes across your desk, you know, what do what you thinking when you're like struck by this kid? Yeah, well, I mean, Barry pitched it really I mean, first of all, Barry's a pro, right? Like, closer, winner, and finalist.
00:04:20
Speaker
You know, wrote, I think, the first book about Sackler, Kane Fuller, and was also the New York Times guy who covered the NXIVM cult, which, I don't know, that was something I was obsessed with when it was happening. So, like, I knew who Barry was and was really excited to get a pitch from him. And then this just felt like such a...
00:04:40
Speaker
singular story. Like I, I'd never heard of it. Um, even though there had been, you know, like some coverage, certainly there was coverage of, you know, the the trial that happened around trial, but the case that happened in the, in the eighties. But then I was like, I've never heard this story before. Um, and it's just so cinematic. Like, it's just so crazy that, you know, these two kids are,
00:05:03
Speaker
told one day, sorry, you can't go back to your lives. We're now fugitives. It's just, it's nuts. Um, and the fact that he had such good access to Aaron, to, who's one of the, the, the children now adult that Aaron's mom had access to all of these documents that then came into Aaron and her sister's possession. so i mean, he, he just, he Barry had like tracked everyone down and, you know, talk to all the right people had all of the right documentation. And I think too, he he knew that it was a good story without making it salacious, right? It was just like, let's tell this story about what is fundamentally a deep childhood trauma and affects the way you move through your life you know from there on out and kind of make it about reckoning with that. Not, holy cow, can you believe that you know this is what happened to these kids? it's okay this happened and yeah it was crazy but then how do you live with that and that was from go like what he was interested in um and to me that seemed right it it felt like the way to to really tell the story well and yeah and Barry just has a great sense of narrative um and so it was a it was it was like a very fun process uh to work on with him
00:06:26
Speaker
Yeah. And when you ah know you're going to be working with yeah an incredibly accomplished writer and journalist, yeah what are what are some of the things that you as the editor are are kind of learning from from the writer that's Oh my gosh, I learn from every writer I work with in one way or another. And I think you know working with pros, actually feel like this is another example of something I said on the last podcast we did, Brendan, which is about sitting on my hands, um which is ah you know when you're working with a pro, realizing that they're often
00:07:01
Speaker
very good at just taking feedback. You don't you don't necessarily have to like line edit the hell out of something, right? You can kind of say, hey what about this? And oftentimes, they're going to know what what you mean and what what that means. And like that was actually very much the case, I remember, with Bob Colker. Actually, um i think he sent the draft on spec And when I replied, I said, you know it's great. You're great. and What do you think about? and then I had kind of one macro suggestion. and he was just immediately like, yeah, totally. you know So yeah, I think just you know kind of differing forms of how you give edits and realizing that like people at different sort of phases in their careers and of different you know levels of experience you know
00:07:47
Speaker
kind of process feedback differently. Barry also introduced me to like a notation for edits that I'd never seen before, which is like, XXPU. And I'm sure this is a newspaper thing, and I just haven't worked inside a newspaper, but it was like, what if in the line XX and then he would, like instead of using like quote marks. Anyway, I keep meaning to ask him about this. And I'm sure that there are so many newspaper heads who are like listening to
The Craft of Narrative Journalism
00:08:10
Speaker
this or like say, how do you not know that? But ah but that was fun.
00:08:14
Speaker
um The story was such an interesting combination of like an enjoyable ride because it kind of has those natural naturally cinematic elements, but then also felt like he did such a good job of really you know getting at um I don't know, the the the human element and the impact.
00:08:37
Speaker
And he also, you know, as a newspaper guy, i think um he has a real like economy with his language, which I really respect. um And that's something, you know, I'm always learning from people's style and the people who've been doing this for a really long time. um I'm always struck by the economy of their language, um that they realize, you know, it doesn't have to be the most unique turn of phrase you've ever heard. Something I'm always working on with greener writers to say, like, it doesn't need to be so compound. It doesn't need to be so floral. It doesn't need to. And it's um and it's cool to work on stories where like the starting point is already.
00:09:12
Speaker
This is a good story. The language doesn't need to do anything extra. um Just just write good words. Yeah, well, coming up either through um and mfa programs or if you're reading, like, i don't know, think pieces or even reported essays, sometimes the language does feel like it can be overwrought. But good writing doesn't necessarily have to mean, like, this overwrought floral purple and everything. but I think in our heads that good writing is artistic. ah But sometimes good writing is a writing you don't notice.
00:09:47
Speaker
And that often comes from propulsive lean sentences. And if you're not taking, you might see one sentence that pops out because everything else is so like lean and economical. And like that's that's really the the restraint is often what leads to great writing.
00:10:02
Speaker
You know, that's what I'm finding. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Jonah and I were actually just this morning having a conversation kind of in this vein about how Most writers don't have a distinctive voice. And that's okay. Like, I don't think I do personally, right?
00:10:21
Speaker
And I think some writers are very keen to be known for voice. um And I think so few people can really achieve it. um you know It's one thing if you're you know writing essays, certainly if you're doing you know fiction, that's a whole different thing. But like when you're talking about magazine writing, when when people use voice, So few people, I think, have, oh, man, you know exactly who wrote that, you know, like, you know, from afar, you you just know who it is. um And that's and I feel like that's just so OK, because I think some of the probably the best magazine writers, in my opinion, are just really good at letting a story be a story, you know, which doesn't mean that they don't put themselves into it.
00:11:07
Speaker
But, you know, clearing your throat and being like, I have a voice is is just not, is rarely in service of the story and is exciting when it is, obviously. But, but yeah, no, we were having, we were just having this conversation this morning about like,
00:11:23
Speaker
what do writers mean when they say voice? And i think I think oftentimes people also say, you know, my voice, my voice, and we're not talking about style, we're actually talking about like intention, right? And we're talking about what do you want a story to say? and to me, that's different than voice, like voice is style. And anyway, this is so nitty gritty, but yeah, it's it's always just exciting to me to work with writers who write good words, write good sentences,
00:11:53
Speaker
and know that it's like you're building a building and it's like the most solid building you've ever seen. um And what you don't see is everything that went into building it. Another example, I was watching ah ah a clip earlier I know it's going to sound like I'm going off the rails, but I'm not, of Chiwetel Ijiofor talking about shooting a scene in Children of Men where like they're all inside of a car. And he was talking about like everything that went into choreographing that scene to make it look seamless and just like, hey, like we're in a car. But in fact, like there were hinged seats and people were ducking and like doing all this stuff as cameras were moving around. And like, to me, great writing is like watching a scene and being like, man, that's cool, beautiful, whatever. And then being actually surprised by everything that went into it.
00:12:44
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, like Barry reported the hell out of the story, wrote the hell out of the story. And yet reading it, it's not like, you know, let me puff up my trust and show you what a great writer I am. Yeah.
00:12:56
Speaker
Well, it's like it's 13,000 plus words that and it reads like it's half that, yeah you know, because it's got that propulsion to it. I mean, even the way it opens up is, you know, Aaron kind of the as as an adult is like speeding across Pennsylvania because, These documents could be on the curb, ready to go in the trash. This is the story of ah the answers to her childhood are kind of in this box. And and so already you're imbued with a sense of stakes right up right off the bat. And ah I don't know was that something he brought to you structurally or are you threw that in there? Yeah, we originally there was a different opening that involved the boxes, but not that particular scene. And I, I, having read the piece through originally, that scene was actually the end, if I recall correctly. And I'm pretty sure
00:13:50
Speaker
i don't know if you've spoken to Barry yet, but not yet he can correct me if I'm wrong. But I'm pretty sure I was like, what if we open with Aaron driving? Because I think there's also, to your point, just she's speeding down the highway. like Immediately, the story has momentum. like She's heading towards something. Is she going to get it? But also, what's it going to reveal?
00:14:09
Speaker
And to me, it really sets the pace. of this story, which is going to cover you know a decent amount of time, a lot of crimes, a lot of like you know kind of twists and turns. um And that really says she's going 70, 75 miles an hour or whatever. And it's like, OK, the story is going to feel like that too.
00:14:29
Speaker
Barry very much knew that the boxes were like the way into the story. And it was just figuring out like, how are we approaching the boxes? Who's approaching the boxes? Like, what's the, how how do we want to do that? um And there were some different options. And this one just ultimately, ultimately worked out. I think it was also an interesting, like the, like, if you were to kind of diagram that opening, the reason I think it,
00:14:54
Speaker
also works in no small part is because you get the lay of the land so clearly you get location. I mean, you get momentum, all of that, but you get names, you get relationships, you get like, what, you know, where are we in like geography? Where are we in time? Like without it feeling like, okay, you're telling me a lot of information, like it all kind of seamlessly flows together as a story.
00:15:18
Speaker
um that both has a beginning and the and end because it is like a bookended section that still leaves a lot to, you know, it's a bit of a cliffhanger, but still it's also like, you know the answer as to whether she gets the boxes by the end of the intro. But I also think it's like, it gives you in some ways like the who, what, when, where, why without that being what you think you're reading. And and I think that that, and that that's a testament to you to to, you know, the way that Barry kind of wanted to to lay out the story for people. Yeah, it was definitely story. Now that I'm thinking about it, was a story where it was like, you never really struggled to be like, who was that? You know? and I think it's because you did a good job of sort of introducing the players in such a way that you you kind of held on to them.
00:15:58
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really great point to underscore, because ah as big a story as it is, there's it feels like there's maybe a half dozen crucial character characters. So when you see their names, you're not like, oh, who was that from that chapter? you know You always had a good sense of who we were with at all times. Yeah, and it is. I mean, this is a crazy story that involves a lot of pseudonyms and a lot of lying and a lot of fake documents. And it's a lot to keep track of. And I think i think Barry did a really nice job, even before putting pen to paper, of kind of being like, what rises to the top, right? like Because there are so many like little details and sort of tributaries to the story you could go down, which might might be totally interesting. But I do think he had kind of a clear arc in mind. um And he was like, what are the details that are going to best serve this arc?
00:16:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. One more thing. I think it you just brought brought it up and I'm definitely going to ask Barry about it too. And probably other successive writers. You said like even before putting pen to paper. So like some some of that thinking before maybe you paint yourself into some corners maybe. So like maybe just counsel for writers in general, you know, what are things that they should be thinking of before they put pen to paper?
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, gosh, that's a great question. um i mean, definitely think of you know what question is this piece asking and answering, which doesn't mean you know that you have to necessarily have the definitive answer, you know who did it, or
Barry Meyer's Storytelling Techniques
00:17:29
Speaker
whatever. I'm using crime, as I always do, because it's such an easy example to give. but you know having clearly in your mind what the point is. And it's telling the story, of course, you know, these are the events of of this piece. But it's also within that, you know, in this case, how are are they going to learn the truth? And what is that truth going to be?
00:17:52
Speaker
Right? Really having that in mind, especially when you have a ton of material, I think can be, I mean, write it on a post-it note, put it on the wall. And if as you're writing, you realize actually that question has shifted, take it down, write another post-it note, put it on wall, you know? And then I think too, like categorizing for yourself.
00:18:13
Speaker
Okay. What do i feel like are really essential details, color quotes, description, whatever. And then what's the stuff where, okay, it doesn't feel essential.
00:18:24
Speaker
It's not, it's not either essential from an explanatory standpoint and it's not essential from understanding. illustrative standpoint, but it's interesting. Right. And kind of having like a second category of like, if I can fit it in, that would be awesome. But also like, I don't think the story is going to be less without it.
00:18:42
Speaker
You know, they're kind of your darlings and it's like, sometimes you get to include them. That's cool. Um, and then, and then sometimes you don't, and that's okay too. But I think really the most important thing is like, what question is the story asking and answering? Um, and what,
00:18:56
Speaker
What details and information do i need to make sure is on the page to achieve that? Yeah, I remember like way back before we were friends and I had sent in a pitch about a particular profile and you were on like, you what's the animating force? I remember that stuck out to me in your reply to it.
00:19:15
Speaker
you know what is What are we getting at? You can call it the engine. I love animating force too. If you have a satisfying answer to that or a concrete example of what that is,
00:19:28
Speaker
especially for out of a stories, you're, you're getting pretty damn warm. Yeah, I think that's right. And we actually, we had a pitch meeting this morning and we had a story come in that, um you know, profiles are tough because oftentimes profiles are,
00:19:42
Speaker
they don't naturally have like the right narrative elements for us. um It's like, this is an interesting person and you're going to get to know them, but like where does it start? Where does it go? Where does it end? And it was the rare example of a story about and and a person's entire life that I was like, yeah, I want to know that because what happened at the end was so like,
00:20:05
Speaker
screeching brakes, like how did we how did that happen? right that Then you immediately want to go back in time and say, OK, what happened? right um And I think that and we we get so many pitches about interesting people. And I so often I'm going back to people and saying, look, this is interesting, we make for a great profile. But in our case, it's kind of like, OK, you're telling a story of a life and then it just kind of peters out.
00:20:26
Speaker
Thanks for telling me. But I don't know that we needed 10,000 words for that. um Or maybe it's just you know a better fit for another publication. um but it's really fun when a profile idea comes in and has like a clear sense of what the engine is, such that you're like, heck yeah, like I want to get in that car. I want to go um and ah and see where we wind up.
00:20:50
Speaker
Awesome. Cool. Well, this is great. As always, Saber, to get your side of the table. And a yeah we'll go hear from Barry now and hear hear how he crafted this piece and get the story behind the story from his point of view. So as always, Saber, thank you so much.
00:21:02
Speaker
Thanks, Brendan.
00:21:11
Speaker
Nice. All right. Okay, so we've got Barry Meyer coming up here, approaching home plate. who you should at this point be kind of familiar with. He's the author of three books, Painkiller, which was the first to chronicle the Sackler family and the origin of the opioid epidemic.
00:21:30
Speaker
Quote, the book that started it all, end quote, wrote Patrick Radden Keefe, whose book Empire of Pain was heavily informed by Barry's work. Barry also wrote Spooked and Missing Man.
00:21:42
Speaker
You can learn more about Barry at BarryMeyerBooks.com. And in this conversation, we talk about just a few items, among others. Using the boundaries of an envelope to map out a story.
00:21:54
Speaker
Interviewing and the tools he uses and doesn't use. Being open to surprises, beginnings, endings, and pacing. Parting shot on getting royally kicked in the nuts again. Should I wear a cup? But for now, it's high time we hear from Barry. And we start our conversation with me having asked him why he was drawn to investigative journalism in the first place. I edited the question out, okay?
00:22:18
Speaker
Okay? Good.
00:22:27
Speaker
I was always interested in investigating things and uncovering things and learning about things in the research of journalism as much as the writing aspect of journalism.
00:22:44
Speaker
I always considered myself and still do a much better reporter than a writer. It's a part of the process that I liked the most. And when I get to the writing, so I'm having a great time when I'm reporting and finding things and digging it up.
00:23:02
Speaker
And then when it gets to the writing stage, it's like, oh my God, why did but why can't I just tell people about this story? Why do I have to like write it out? And then that becomes, you know, a very different process.
00:23:17
Speaker
ah There are people that I've met along the line who are incredibly natural writers. who maybe have to rewrite something once or twice.
00:23:31
Speaker
And I was never blessed with that particular talent or gene. And so the writing part of putting a story together for me has always been more of a struggle than the reporting part.
00:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, recognizing that it is the thing that you struggle with the most, they what do you have in place? How do I make it easier? Well, that's a very good question. and i wish I had ahll logical, good answer to it because, ah you know, I seem to be my own worst enemy. um I got to know um Patrick Rainey Keith well because we both worked on Painkiller ah when my book was adapted by Netflix. And i said I saw something he wrote recently or gave a talk to a class where he was saying he started out jotting some major points from his reporting on an envelope.
00:24:33
Speaker
So he's limiting himself to the information he can put on an envelope, will then sort of I guess, translate into um kind of a structure that he then builds the story around.
00:24:49
Speaker
You know, I went like, oh, that's a really interesting idea. But I've never ah come close to having... like an organizing principle, if you will, to organizing ah a long piece or or books.
00:25:06
Speaker
I think from my experience of having written three books now, I have a sense of kind of what... what the narrative arc of the story is and you know kind of rough it out, but it's often not the thing that I end up with at the end. So it's a very it's a very labor-intensive, unnecessarily labor-intensive process.
00:25:34
Speaker
Yeah. are you the Because you like the reporting and the research so much, do you find that that ah it's a way that you maybe productively procrastinate? No, because even when I'm done and writing, I'm still wanting, like, why didn't I interview this person? Or maybe I should have done this. Or maybe it's still, yeah know, I'm still drawing. It's not distracting me directly.
00:26:03
Speaker
per se from writing, it's more of a question of, oh, this story could be so much better if I chase this lead down and if it pans out as it might.
00:26:18
Speaker
But then I realized could be chasing that forever. So there there is a point where I have to cut off the reporting.
00:26:27
Speaker
Yeah, and inherent to reporting is interviewing. And I'm always curious how various journalists and reporters handle the the whole scope of interviewing the from re doing a lot of research ahead of time, and some people don't do any research ahead of time, and how they conduct an interview. ah so just for you, Barry, how do you approach interviewing as ah as a craft and as a skill?
00:26:52
Speaker
So I try to be as straightforward as possible. which I think is important. I try to, um when I contact someone, i try to so you know try to get them to understand why i'm contacting them.
00:27:11
Speaker
what it is that I'd like to talk about, why why I think the information they have may be important to the story. And ah first and also that um I would never send an email out or make a telephone call to someone that's confrontational. I know that happens sometimes with journalists, particularly people that are investigating things where they would write to someone saying, I know that you blah, blah, blah, blah. blah And if you don't talk to me, I'm going to blah, blah, blah, blah. blah
00:27:46
Speaker
And um i think that's, for one, ill-advised, but more importantly, um you never know what people are going to tell you.
00:28:00
Speaker
You know, you never know what insight or information you're going to glean from someone. And so i want to be open to surprises and not have any preconceived notions of what, who this person is, what they're going to tell me, ah imposing my own values, beliefs, whatever on them.
00:28:29
Speaker
ah because, It's all a discovery and you know, you make a call and suddenly maybe you've made 20 calls before it, but suddenly this person is giving you a piece of information you would have never ah never never otherwise gotten had you not spoken ah to them. i tried to try to approach it as openly as possible.
00:28:58
Speaker
Yeah, and ah sometimes I run into this too, be it on the podcast or if I'm interviewing sources. so Sometimes I can be overly verbose, but I try to have a good shot clock. you know when ah my If my game is going good, I have a decent shot clock and um and try to get out of my own way. And for you, what has been your experience of maybe like just trying to get out of your own way and get the onus on the other person talking?
00:29:21
Speaker
Well, sometimes I find it difficult since i blab, but um most of the time... I try to guide them to things that I'm interested in learning about or tell them things that I think they may want to know. Like I knew reporter, female reporter who shall remain nameless, who
00:29:56
Speaker
had a wonderful technique where she would call up sources and trade gossip with them. Right? She said, oh, you know I don't know, you know, someone just told me this, what do you, you know, so she's like, you know, creating this kind of immediate sort of sense of intimacy with someone.
00:30:17
Speaker
You know, in a story like this, the one that just appeared in the atavist, What was kind of surprising to me and and sort of opened up a lot of conversational lines was my knowing things about a situation or a person that the person to whom I was speaking didn't know. You know, they were aware.
00:30:44
Speaker
But they didn't know what was going on in the background. So when i spoke to them and i would say, oh, well, you know, it's funny because I just found out blah, blah, that would help move the conversation along.
00:30:58
Speaker
Well, and with the Atavis story, it's ah it's almost like here here you are, you're you're procuring this information that maybe be like Aaron and Meredith at the sort of the center of it don't know. It's almost like you're a private investigator, too. And you're you're building this dossier of this story to help patch in holes in their lives and telling this narrative. And it is like, yeah, you're procuring this information that that you ah are ultimately leveraging for a narrative, but it's also like giving them something of a salve. Well, you know, the characters drive stories, particularly narrative stories. and
00:31:33
Speaker
you know, there are characters that kind of rise to the top. They just demand lots and lots of attention. And clearly John McCann, their dad, was, you know, fit that bill.
00:31:48
Speaker
And i had written a book a number of years ago called Missing Man, which was again, ah it was a true story. it was about um guy by the name of Robert Levinson, who in 2007, he was a former FBI agent turned private investigator who disappeared in Iran.
00:32:10
Speaker
And was only seen once afterwards, like in a hostage videotape, and then I think was killed. And his family was desperate to find out what happened to him. They had heard rumors that he was working as a contractor for the CIA and had had gone over there on some sort of CIA-related mission.
00:32:35
Speaker
And So to start working on the story, they gave me access to his person, his files, his his business files and his emails. And I never interviewed him once during the course of the reporting on the book.
00:32:58
Speaker
But through his emails, and there were thousands of them, and his personal records, I got a really deep, deep sense of who this person was.
00:33:10
Speaker
To the point where I would say, oh, well I guess, you know, Bob, Bob Levinson, who was the character, he probably would have he might have reacted this way, and they would go like, oh, yeah, you're right.
00:33:22
Speaker
Or one of his sons said to me, that's exactly what my dad would have said. So I felt I was really, you know, i had a sort of understanding of that character.
00:33:32
Speaker
And in some ways, approaching John McCann, who was deceased, through, you know, the information that was disclosed during the investigation into him and the interviewing I did with people that knew him throughout his life,
00:33:51
Speaker
I felt I was going through a very similar process where I was getting to know someone very well who I had never spoken to and never will speak to, unfortunately.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah. And how do you gain access and trust i know to people? You can yeah piggyback that onto Aaron and Meredith, how you kind of get access and trust, and you know these key boxes and everything. you know How have you been able to do that for this story, but you know over the course of your career as well? I think, you know ah again, very similar to the process that i went through with Missing Man, people, for various reasons,
00:34:32
Speaker
come to a juncture where either because they're desperate to find what find out what happened to someone or they just want to know what happened, which was, you know, first was the case with the Levinson family and the the second was the case with ah Aaron and Meredith.
00:34:56
Speaker
They give you access to information that you might not have had access to otherwise. And yes, it becomes very much a way of kind of investigating the past, investigating a person, investigating their circumstances.
00:35:18
Speaker
um In the case of Aaron and Meredith, they, you know, through my own research, you know, I discovered that John had been essentially run out of his job. He was a mayor of the small New Jersey town at one point.
00:35:35
Speaker
And he had essentially been run out of that job. And then his name had appeared in criminal investigation of the influence of organized crime in the coal industry. And so you know I was discovering things about him that they were not aware of.
00:35:59
Speaker
And so, it you know, I think it creates this kind of symbiotic relationship where they're telling you things or sources are telling you things that you didn't know and you're telling them things they didn't know.
00:36:15
Speaker
I love the sentence in the very first part where you write, the 1980s were the twilight years of the golden age of fugitives. Passports were easy to counterfeit. Hotels and airlines took cash and there weren't cell phones or personal computers for authorities to track. And ah I love that as ah as a means of starting to paint the world. And sometimes we we associate world building with fantasy and in in certain novels, historical novels. but Even here in narrative journalism, in long form journalism, there is this element of world building.
Importance of Era and Setting in Stories
00:36:45
Speaker
So here you are in a sentence or two doing just that. So like, how important is that? And how do you build out a world that you immerseer us or immerse us in? Well, I mean, in this, in the case of this story, it was one of the first things I was most fascinated by because
00:37:04
Speaker
This story would never happen today, right? You can't, you know, like passports are pretty good. They're all biometric. you It's it's hard hard to get through.
00:37:15
Speaker
you know, you walk you travel anywhere and they scan your eyeballs. When I started looking into this and looking at Like when we're, yes, there were they were actually the first cell phones were invented in the early 1980s, but they were these big shoebox, so you know, like from Get Smart that cost like $10,000. But, you know, the pocket cell phone was not invented to the late 1980s, I believe.
00:37:44
Speaker
You could take a plane by paying cash for a ticket. And, you know, all all these things, it was just this whole nother world that I was,
00:37:55
Speaker
extremely fascinated by, realizing that this story, the experience of experiences of all this, all the peoples in this story were dependent upon the time period in which it took place.
00:38:14
Speaker
And, you know, since, you know, writers, always argue with editors that story should be longer and say word, God bless her is all for making, you know, running long stories.
00:38:28
Speaker
But, you know, I wish, you know, there's a part of me that wanted to expand on this whole era and get more into, you know, fugitive tracking and, you know, capturing people.
00:38:44
Speaker
cause there's ah like, I did a lot of research and this is like a fascinating lore, but I think that one paragraph, and I'm glad it struck you the way that it struck you, because it basically sets the ah boundaries in which the story you're going to read is taking place and let you know that this took place at a particular time that does not exist anymore. So we're not going to take you back to that time.
00:39:18
Speaker
and tell you the experiences of people who lived in it. Yeah. Yeah. I love that element of it. And I love the opening section too, because there is this, this tension in a race of Erin to get to these boxes that have a lot of the answers for her. It really sets the stakes of like, these are, this is the, the treasure that is going to unpack the story. Well, for you as the reporter, but also for us as the reader, like this is,
00:39:45
Speaker
ah very crucial to our our understanding of what you were going to unfurl over the following you know 12 or 11 000 words or whatever it ends up being so just when you're thinking of the the structure and starting the story in this in this manner you know how are you how are you thinking through the building of of this yeah it always started with the boxes in my mind it always started in with the the boxes and the search, you know, the, the discovery of the boxes, if you will, that would kind of be the trap door that you would then step through into the past.
00:40:25
Speaker
Because while it's not made clear in the article, you know, a lot, quite a bit of what you're reading are extracts from documents that are in the boxes. Right.
00:40:41
Speaker
that concept that there is hidden material about secrets, right? this is This was a family bound by secrets they were aware of secrets they didn't know about, secrets they didn't share with each other.
00:40:59
Speaker
um And so the boxes took became sort of the physical the physical manifestation of that. Because I was just, you know, like,
00:41:11
Speaker
struck by the fact that, you know, the Leah, the the mom was given these boxes in preparation for a criminal trial that would have taken place if John had not cut a plea deal and gotten her off the hook.
00:41:30
Speaker
And, you know, I kept thinking to myself, okay, well, if I'm Leah, I take those boxes out in the backyard and burn them the minute that, you know, the charges have been dropped against me. I don't necessarily want this information hanging around. And for some reason she chose to keep them and then to top it all off, there's this, you know, this, where the story starts is really dramatic scene where Aaron gets this phone call.
00:42:08
Speaker
and which sends her racing out to her mom's house to rescue the boxes. Totally, she had no idea they existed before that.
00:42:20
Speaker
And um so in some ways, it not only just structurally, kind of emotionally set the tone of relationships that existed.
00:42:35
Speaker
How did you come to meet Aaron? I met ah first met Meredith. I got to know her because um a friend of mine um up here in Western Massachusetts is a distant relation.
00:42:49
Speaker
And then i took a train down and you know spent an afternoon with with Aaron and Meredith together. that's um That's so key yeah here. you It's almost like you know when you're doing these kind of narratives or this kind of journalism, it's like always keeping your antenna tuned. You never know when an opportunity is going to strike and who's going to know someone who might be like, you might want to talk to this person. And then on top of that, you take a train down and meet them face to face in such a digitally interfaced world where we are like be at Zoom talks or texting and email.
00:43:26
Speaker
How important have you found it to get face to face with people as ah as a means to foster that kind of trust that allows you to write such a great story? Well, I mean, I grew up in an era where.
00:43:41
Speaker
journalists, reporters did not send questions to people by email yeah or contact them by email. You had to pick up a telephone. You had to cold call someone if you were trying to reach them on a story.
00:43:57
Speaker
You more than likely then went to meet them in person so they could see you, you could see them, you could get a sense of each other. I know because i have a teacher a friend that teaches journalism at Columbia University who says to me you like one of the biggest problems.
00:44:15
Speaker
ah he faces is getting people not to email, to call, to develop these relationships on a more personal level, not on a digital level.
00:44:28
Speaker
And I think it's extraordinarily important. I mean, don't think anything, anything I've ever written that, you know, unless it was something I read, you wrote on like maximum deadline in my newspaper reporting days would have, you know,
00:44:48
Speaker
it's just it's it's really, you know, not to give advice to younger writers, but that would be ah big piece of advice to younger writers that go see people, go talk to people, try to do as little on, don't interview people through written questions on email ah get a sense for them and get them just as importantly to get a sense of you.
00:45:19
Speaker
Yeah. So that if you think what they have to contribute to a story is of interest, they will feel much more comfortable about sharing it with you. Yeah. I think it's all the more important nowadays because we can, we're just getting bombarded with maybe AI scams through email and you just don't know what's real anymore. Except getting face to face. So it's doing that inconvenient thing.
00:45:44
Speaker
It's going to take maybe some time, maybe some money to maybe get on that plane or get on that train, drive four hours to meet someone. But I hate using this term, but like the ah ROI of of that interaction is going to pay off because they're like, oh, I can see you. I shook your hand.
00:46:01
Speaker
I looked you in the eye and I can. And you took the trouble to come. Yes. Yes. You took some trouble. You know, you. came And I don't necessarily see it as inconvenience because it's also important to see, oh well, is this someone I want to be talking to? You know, from your perspective as a writer or the journalist, who is this person?
00:46:30
Speaker
You know, what do, what, you know, what filters do I need to place on whatever it is that they're saying to me? i don't I see it like as an integral part of the process. If this is a process you've chosen to become involved with,
00:46:48
Speaker
then you should embrace it. You shouldn't see it as a pain in the ass or, yeah oh my God, i yeah I'm going to miss the Mets game or something on television. Although God knows no one watches the Mets this season. um I find, you know, even it was it was like a long train ride. It was like six hours.
00:47:10
Speaker
back and forth on the train. But even that was valuable because there was a way, you know, there was like thinking time and napping time, but also thinking time.
00:47:22
Speaker
And when you're interviewing, are you much of a, do you employ the tape recorder or you a strictly like notebook guy or both? Yeah. I, i during the the course of reporting, I, I,
00:47:35
Speaker
don't use tape recorders. That's my practice. yeah Simply because i don't like listening to myself again and again. I can attest to that editing the podcast. I'm like, ugh, I'm tired hearing this guy.
00:47:50
Speaker
Right. ah Or he just, yeah, it's like, it's me that that I don't want to hear. yeah The Atavist has a policy ah for fact checking purposes, recording at least one conversation Um, I'm sure they would have loved if I had recorded all of my conversations, but I didn't realize that.
00:48:10
Speaker
Uh, and it was so, you know, it's just like, so it's not part of my toolkit. I mean, my daughter is a journalist and she's very used to doing that. And so I had to like scrambling, call her up and say, well, what app do I use and what, what AI transcription service, should I use blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, I i did like my own before the story got turned over to a fact checker, I did my own final kind of like interview, kind of my own fact check, if you will. And that was recorded, but that was, those were the only conversations that were recorded. Yeah. Yeah. And do do you find that a recorder typically just gets in the way? You know, I don't even,
00:48:55
Speaker
know how to answer that because I've never really used them. So I don't have like the experience of saying, oh, this is getting in the way. And I do think that if you use them in your first interviews with someone, they will get in the way.
00:49:09
Speaker
They didn't get in the way here because i could say to the people who I was doing these final interviews with, You know, I have not recorded any of our interviews up to this point. I've taken notes, but for accuracy sake, we're gonna record this interview if that's okay with you.
00:49:28
Speaker
i just think like putting a microphone in someone's face or saying, okay, you know, we're gonna, even if you're doing it by telephone, we're gonna record this at the beginning of, you know, your initial conversations with someone.
00:49:44
Speaker
is going to chill those conversations. Yeah, that's a great way of phrasing it. And um I love that, ah you know, we were talking earlier about kind of building character, whether it was Bob Levinson or in this case, like John McCall, who have long since passed, but you're still able to get a sense of who they are. It was a great sentence I pulled out, like John never used drugs. And this is at the point where he's starting to traffic cocaine. and um And he had always told Aaron and Meredith that people who did were fools, but he was good at lying and he loved the money, particular particularly separating fools from it. And I love that sentence, but that gets to the core of who this man was.
00:50:19
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He is a very um singular character in some ways. I mean, there, I guess 20, 30 years ago, ah there were two brothers, Tobias Wolfe and Jeffrey Wolfe, who wrote biographies, separate biographies about their father.
00:50:43
Speaker
who was a sociopathic liar. And one was called the Duke of Deception and the other one was called This Boy's Life. But they're basically, and they're superb writers, both of them.
00:50:58
Speaker
The experience of growing up with someone whom you love, who lies about everything, right? And your realization that this man I love, this my father,
00:51:11
Speaker
had lied to me, right? And when I was starting to get a sense of John McCann, those those books kind of like really came up in my mind where this is an individual who lied to achieve his goals, right? He he wasn't like a psychopathic liar, which is someone who just lies without rme rhyme or reason. He's someone who lies as a way of manipulating people to get them things
00:51:48
Speaker
what he wants them to do or create an image of himself that he wants. I mean, I think, you know, once I realized that
00:52:01
Speaker
he had lied and his Leah had allowed him to lie in their engagement announcement, that kind of like said, said thats okay, ah all right.
00:52:13
Speaker
I kind of get a sense of what this relationship was like. And, you know, I couldn't believe it at first. And I called up um a friend of mine at the Times who covers his education. I said, Well, who's, who do you know at at Princeton University, like in the media relations office there? So they gave me a name. It was very collegial. And I sent this person an email.
00:52:38
Speaker
And I said, Well, we have no record of John McCann being an undergraduate here. i said, well, he claimed to be a graduate student. And they said, okay, well, let's let's go check on that. Cause you know, you want to check that?
00:52:53
Speaker
And so had no record of him being a graduate student there either. And I said, okay, I get it. I get it. This man, he wanted to be someone else.
00:53:08
Speaker
He didn't want to be who he was. i don't i don't even know if he had a sense of who he was. i think one of the things that was most touching to me, and I'm really grateful to Aaron for sharing this, was the letters he wrote at the end of his life.
00:53:29
Speaker
you read about, there are small snippets of them. Yeah. And at the end of the story, the entire letters are kind of remarkable ah because here's John ah weeks or days away from dying.
00:53:45
Speaker
He knows he's writing for the last time the people closest to him. and it's like the first time where you see that he understands himself.
00:53:58
Speaker
He...
Exploring Character Complexity
00:54:01
Speaker
not that He has no regrets about anything that he did, but he knows what he did, and he's not no longer lying to himself about what he did. yeah And he's kind of proud of what he did.
00:54:16
Speaker
Yeah, you bring up Duke of Deception in this boy's life, but i also in hearing you talk about him in a way that he didn't want to be who he was, so he kind of made up essentially an alter ego. like I really think of Great Gatsby, of just...
00:54:29
Speaker
and changing your identity, maybe getting into some nefarious business to build your wealth, to build this this kind of ah ephemeral American dream. ah right and it But the thing is, there is wreckage in his wake and that wreck and that is bestowed upon his daughters.
00:54:48
Speaker
and And he was successful for a while to give him credit. Like when he first went into the coal business, he was successful. But then that whole coal, it's funny because now we're dealing with the same energy crisis that happened in the 1970s, you know, when there was the oil embargo, like we're experiencing to some degree now, prices of any petroleum-based fuels shot up and the a coal industry boomed back.
00:55:19
Speaker
And John got involved with a partner of his. When it all just started collapsing and it wasn't his fault, that his business collapsed, was like the whole bubble burst.
00:55:32
Speaker
Because the the oil embargo was over and people wanted, much you know, companies could get oil again and, you know, gasoline. And so, you know demand for coal just collapsed.
00:55:46
Speaker
But was very revelatory about his reaction to that was that he blamed his partner. for the collapse.
00:55:59
Speaker
That's what he told his daughters. And that's what he told everyone. But when you look at certain documents, you realize that both he and his partner were kind of looting the company in tandem.
00:56:12
Speaker
Right. And i got this sense of John. And it came through in various other ways as someone who always blamed other people for bad things that happened to him rather than taking responsibility or just saying, well, that sucks. You know, that's just, you know, that's just the way it is.
00:56:35
Speaker
um he would always blame other people. And so at the end, you know, he's blaming Steve. um his brother-in-law, that, oh God, if it wasn't for Steve, i never would have done this. If it wasn't for Steve, I wouldn't have been caught.
00:56:48
Speaker
Steve's the screw up here. he lured me into this, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah And, you know, it's that's it was, again, part of a lifetime pattern of behavior.
00:57:02
Speaker
And later in the piece, Erin's therapist had long urged her to write a book about her time on the run, but she was too overwhelmed by work for years to go through the boxes, much less turn whatever they revealed into a book. Then one day, Erin finally decided to take the plunge. She quit her job, sold her house in the Philadelphia suburbs, paid off her loans and moved to the beach to start working. And ah so kind of maybe what became of that project and maybe did that project kind of pivot to you taking the reins of the story in this case?
00:57:30
Speaker
I wouldn't say it pivoted to me other than, you know, the boxes existed, right? yeah She, he like, guarded them and she she was the ah protector of them for 20 years.
00:57:44
Speaker
If it wasn't for her desire, I think, at some point to have the story told at some point, um she wouldn't have kept, she would have burned the boxes too, right? She wouldn't have kept them. She she dragged them around from place to place as she was moving.
00:58:01
Speaker
So, you know, I'm incredibly grateful to her for being the caretaker of this of the story. You know, I think, and I hopefully captured what she explained to me in that, you know, there are certain things that you see that you can't unsee.
00:58:27
Speaker
And I think she began to get, she got concerned that that might happen or, you know, she had struggled and and succeeded in many ways in overcoming what by any reckoning was a very traumatic experience and getting on with her life and incorporating it into her life that maybe when confronted with the opportunity to revisit it, she thought, yeah, I'm good.
00:59:03
Speaker
Right. Yeah. There's not going like writing, like i maybe I thought I needed to write the book or write a book, when I was grasping for answers, but maybe I don't need those answers. Maybe I can just move forward. Yeah. Yeah. Cause later you also like after the boxes, Aaron and Meredith had a decision to make, whether to hate their parents for what they did and what they hid or to find a way to love them in spite of it.
00:59:28
Speaker
So like, we what was the, how did they reconcile what they, what they found with you know the actions of their parents and move forward in, in the light, in light of it? I think general speaking more generally that you know, we always, um oh, I hate my parents. i hate my father. I hate my mother, blah, blah, blah, blah blah for these minor things yeah that they do to us, right?
00:59:53
Speaker
So in some ways, all of us make choices as we get older of accepting things that we at one time hated our parents for doing or putting us through.
01:00:08
Speaker
And that love that one has for their parent ah is a very powerful force. And because the alternative to that is, you know, very unpleasant, you know, like hating a parent, hating someone who gave birth to you, raised you, provided for you, whatever.
01:00:40
Speaker
it's It's such a repudiation of who you are. It's such, it's an endless pit because it's a type of hatred that has nothing will satisfy it.
01:00:54
Speaker
You know, nothing, no amount of anger, no amount of hatred will satisfy the hatred for a parent. So in many ways, i think they made what was a very natural choice, which was, I want my life to be a continuum. Yes, there was some like crazy shit that happened during it. And maybe, you know, maybe I would have
01:01:25
Speaker
liked a more nor stayed in the Fox Chapel and enjoyed my childhood there. It's just, it takes you in, yeah the alternative is an ah bottomless black hole.
01:01:36
Speaker
And I love how you bring the piece down for a landing with the ending of their, they kind of visit their old house and they come across the, or they are handed the blueprints, which in and of itself is kind of like a plan for a different kind of life or a plan for a life unmanifested, you know, right there on paper that what could have been. And so just how did you arrive at at this ending?
01:01:57
Speaker
ah And how do you think about endings? Well, You know, ah endings are often difficult because, you know, sometimes stories don't have natural conclusions to them.
01:02:12
Speaker
um I felt pretty early on when I learned of their trip and learned that Meredith had gone to see the house and that she had gotten this set of blueprints.
01:02:27
Speaker
from the current owners, that that was gonna be the end of the story. Because it just seemed like like they're now back where the story starts.
01:02:43
Speaker
So they've come full circle. And like, maybe i even if she didn't get the blueprints, I could have written that story and the story, you know, there's a passage in the story where one of Erin's friends, they get together, the you know, the four girls, now women who grew up together in Fox Chapel.
01:03:10
Speaker
um They're in their fifties. They're reminiscing about old times. And there's this memory of this birthday party that John and Leah threw for Aaron in 1983, I guess, when Aaron turned 13 and it was at discotheque the movie Flashdance had come out.
01:03:32
Speaker
And as a present, John, and you've already learned in the story that he had like a ring with a McCann family crest on it, He gives Erin, who loves jewelry, you know, a ring, her own ring with McCann family crest on it. So that scene could have potentially served as the ending for the story. But I just felt coming back to the house, the fact that Meredith had not been inside that house since that very morning,
01:04:09
Speaker
It just seemed like a very natural way to end the story, to bring it back to where it started. And I
Crafting Compelling Endings
01:04:15
Speaker
think, you know as one thinks of endings, it's a good way to think of end endings, you know, particularly stories that have taken place in the past.
01:04:25
Speaker
um If you're taking people on some kind of time journey, which we did here, you know, kind of stretches out over many, many years, the story, a good way to end is to bring it back to, you know, a pivotal moment in the story. Yeah. are Are you someone who labors more over the endings or the leads?
01:04:47
Speaker
I labor over everything. I'm non-denominational like this.
01:04:53
Speaker
I know there some people i talk to, they will just tinker and tinker with the lead until they it is ripped out of their hands. And then, and then and you know, endings too, to some degree. But sometimes what gets lost in it is in the middle and the middles can sag because we tend to over index on the beginning and end as important as they are. But the middle can't suffer either, especially with out of his stories. Like the pacing's got to be or really on point.
01:05:16
Speaker
Right. Right. Yeah, and ah yeah so when you're when you're thinking about pacing, how do you ensure that, yeah, things feel like they are moving moving along at a nice economical clip?
01:05:31
Speaker
Well, the yeah the challenge in this particular story was it's essentially two stories. It's a crime story, a story of a crime, and it's a family story.
01:05:49
Speaker
So the challenge structurally was how do you weave these two things together so that they complement each other and they feed off each other.
01:06:02
Speaker
And um
01:06:06
Speaker
so it was important to choose pivot all pivotal moments throughout the piece.
01:06:18
Speaker
that would serve to advance both stories. ah so because there would be a tendency to get so involved in one aspect of the story, you'd lose the other thread or vice of versa.
01:06:36
Speaker
So it was constantly saying, okay, I'd love to write more about this, but I can't, I've got to get back to this. Or how do we is there a moment or emotional moment that will be a pivot point that can serve to bring the two threads of the story together.
01:07:02
Speaker
and then launch us into the next section
Recommendations and Reflections
01:07:05
Speaker
of it. Yeah, that's really well put. Well, nice. but Well, Barry, I want to be mindful of your time. And as I ah bring these conversations down for a landing, i always love getting ah a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And that's just anything that you're finding kind of fun and enjoyable that you want to share with the listeners out there. and That can be anything from like ah a book, a movie, a brand of socks you're tickled by. So I would just extend that to you as we bring our conversation down for a landing.
01:07:29
Speaker
Uh, what I, uh, am doing right now, um, or listening to right now, i had went to, uh, a ah close friend of mine was,
01:07:40
Speaker
In the, he was a put on he was proprietor of a jazz club and he had ah benefit a couple of weeks ago for a nonprofit jazz club. and I got to meet the saxophonist and composer Henry Threadgill there.
01:07:58
Speaker
And um we were talking really delightful and and He was telling me these incredible, he grew up in Chicago and was telling me these incredible stories of ah his life in Chicago.
01:08:13
Speaker
And a woman who was sitting sitting in between us said, oh, well, Henry's written a book. And it's called Easily Slip Into Another World.
01:08:26
Speaker
And so I've been listening while I've been working in the garden to his book, which is, if you enjoy music, jazz, a phenomenally interesting individual, I would recommend it. Nice. Well, and isn't that like good narrative journalism is easily slipping into another world? Like, isn't that the crux of it too?
01:08:46
Speaker
Exactly. And it's told in a very narrative fashion. Fantastic. Awesome. Well, Barry, this was so cool to get to talk to you about your work and and about this amazing story you've written for The Atavist. So just thanks so much for the time and for talking shop.
01:09:00
Speaker
All right. Be well.
01:09:08
Speaker
Awesome. Big thanks to Sayward and Barry. And don't get too sick of these Atavist pods yet. We got another one coming up your way very soon. I'm told the writer is a charisma bomb. We'll see. We'll see.
01:09:24
Speaker
Be sure you're subbed up wherever you get your podcasts and equally subbed up over at Pitch Club. Welcome to Pitch Club. really would love to hit a thousand subscribers by the end of the year. That'd be really cool.
01:09:35
Speaker
And so we got like six months. Get on it. Get on it. I know you want to sell stories. I know you want to get better at it. Pitch Club's the way, man. This is the way. If you want to get better at selling them, and boy, do I need to listen to the advice of my guests, head to welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
01:09:53
Speaker
I'm going to subscribe.
01:09:58
Speaker
I do. I have like four email addresses that I pumped into the list. and You got pump that list up, man. yeah Anyway, my nuts are getting pretty resilient, what with the kicking of them and all. Had a great chat this past week, yesterday ah as of this recording, with my book editor for the Front Runner about ideas and maybe what he thinks I should pursue on the counsel of my agent.
01:10:21
Speaker
See what he thinks would be a good idea for you. So anyway, i brought ah i brought some ideas to him too to get his eye get his feedback. I mean, it was great in that he was honest and informative, but definitely one of my epic bullet trains to Bumberville, as I like to say, in the end.
01:10:37
Speaker
And he said, ah yeah, dad books, you know, those narrative histories, biographies are really hard sell now. As many of that storytelling that we've become accustomed to and though that in those forms have moved largely to narrative podcasts.
01:10:54
Speaker
And a lot of that audience is over there now. So a great narrative that would have been a maybe a bestselling book 10 years ago, five years ago even, is more than likely a podcast now.
01:11:07
Speaker
You know, we didn't talk about it, but the same can be said for docu-series. You see these, be it on athletes or a micro-moment in time. You know, a six-episode run, four, five, ten episodes. That used to be a book.
01:11:22
Speaker
People's attention spans are broken. you Sitting down with a book is like asking someone to summit Everest. He told me whatever the book is, whatever your idea is, is like you have to have a clear sense of why this and even needs to exist in the world. Will people want to pay $32 for it? And those two things, why it needs to exist and $32, is an increasingly high bar to clear, especially for someone with a shitty platform like mine.
01:11:51
Speaker
yeah Here I was thinking I was doing okay platform-wise, but not really, which is also ain't i another kick in the groin. Football to the groin for my Simpson lovers out there.
01:12:04
Speaker
And because I'm not, say, a staff writer at The Athletic, The New Yorker, yeah ESPN, The Atlantic, all these big newspaper magazine outlets, website outlets, it's harder to get seen and even more of a challenge to, as he said, make my own weather, which I thought was a really great image. like When you don't have that institutional backing behind you, it's so incumbent upon you to create your own ecosystem, to make your own weather.
01:12:33
Speaker
I really love that image, and that's really true. If you're on your own, yeah know you're your're pretty hosed. Put that tattoo on your arm. My first and best, so here here we go, the the ideas. My first and best idea, he said, sounded more like it'd be better pitched as a podcast, like strike one.
01:12:50
Speaker
My second best idea, the only one that got like a little bit of an eyerow eyebrow raise has a backdrop that's a bit too hard to sell. So strike two. My third idea i didn't want to do anyway. So glad I'm glad he waved that one off. So we'll call that a foul tip.
01:13:08
Speaker
My fourth idea, ah the the writing book based on this podcast, he just waved off as not altogether interesting and something I could do tomorrow and just hand out to people or 10 years from now for myself, who knows?
01:13:22
Speaker
So there you go. There's swing and a miss. And of course, the Griffey book was a non-starter with him, and I knew that. I wasn't trying to re-litigate and take that book to the Court of Appeals. But he said, like, basically, Barry Bonds killed you know, any feeling that we have for ninety s baseball. Like he just, the steroid era and Barry Bonds in particular just murdered baseball.
01:13:47
Speaker
So anyway, my five ideas are fucking garbage. And if you don't have ideas, your only option is OnlyFans. Am I right? Yeah, I got tighten up this bod if I'm going that direction.
01:14:01
Speaker
Things are a little loose. He told me to take my time and really plumb around the Pacific Northwest for untold histories. That that might tell a larger story. Like ah that book, I think it's peter by Peter Stark, Astoria. Astoria.
01:14:16
Speaker
yeah among um among others, you know just thinking like that. Be more open-minded to ideas, which I think I am, IMO. Think regional. Thinking about how you can tell a really good yarn about a micro-moment.
01:14:29
Speaker
Spend time on Amazon in categories I want to write in and see what is doing well. If a book has like 800 reviews and ratings or so, which is pretty good, very good, I'd say.
01:14:40
Speaker
It probably sold over 10,000 copies, which is something of a bombshell book these days. Frontrunner does not have that many ratings and reviews, despite all my asking for it. But I'm not going to complain about that.
01:14:53
Speaker
The Frontrunner failed to get into the running social media circles and and spread that way. The substa the subtext that i was that I failed to get it into the hands of the running circles. But I have a tendency to read between the lines and insert myself in those lines.
01:15:11
Speaker
The book was supposed to be in the goodie bags of every runner in the Bowerman mile at the pre-classic. And like the combined Instagram followings of all those runners in that field is like hundreds of thousands of people who are running nerds. But once Linda Prefontaine got wind that I was going to be on the ground selling books and that there were things in the goodie bags, she threw a shit fit and had my book signing canceled. And those books from, I'm guessing the books that those runners were supposed to receive were removed.
01:15:42
Speaker
I don't have proof of that. I need to have follow-up on that. Because not a single one of those runners shouted the book out at all. So I'm thinking that Tracktown and people running the meet were like, oh, we're going to take the book out. and So I don't know whatever happened to those books either.
01:16:01
Speaker
It would have gone a long way if Cole Hawker, Grant grant Fisher, or Yared Neguse shouted it out on Instagram. like That's how you sell books now. If you can sell books at all, like that's kind of how you do it. That would be better than a review in the New York Times.
01:16:15
Speaker
And I can't begin to tell you how important Platform is or your ability to worm your way into the communities on social media who will talk about your book. You know, make no mistake, as much as we hate it, a lot of other people, that's where they hang out. It's where they spend their time. It's where they get their news. It's where they get their pop culture references and their things that they want to buy.
01:16:36
Speaker
And if you get your shit into the hands of someone who has some platform and influence, that's how you sell books these days. I'm not saying waste your time feeding the algorithm, but I am saying you better spend a significant amount of your time thinking about your email list and the communities who will talk about your work and how it how it can possibly spread among those communities.
01:17:00
Speaker
So I don't know what to do. I was a bit rudderless before this, and now i'm it's like I'm rudderless and now I'm bailing water to try to stay afloat. Should I focus on pitching magazine stories and put my time there? And then maybe a magazine story tells you it wants to be a book. At that point, a lot of people do that. That's been a proven track.
01:17:24
Speaker
ah Should my agent hustle the work I've pitched her Do I give up on this book writing thing in general? Maybe write. fiction short stories novels young adult sport novels i i don't know i don't know yeah i'm just down i'm feeling more down than usual which is saying something i need a job i have a lot of work but i have no job And the only way I know is freelancing, and I fucking suck at freelancing.
01:17:57
Speaker
I've never been good at actually making a living doing it. i don't think i've ever i Objectively, I've never been able to make um a living freelancing. But maybe I just need to lean in and not jump ship to a retail job the second things get weird, the second things get squirrely.
01:18:14
Speaker
that's kind of where I'm at. I'm no Ted Lasso. You know that. I can't fake that. I can try to be more positive, but I'm not like a rah-rah guy. So I can't exactly see the silver lining here. But it's just like when I thought I was getting altitude. Just when I thought after 20
01:18:30
Speaker
That I was starting to get some traction. it was like, nah, fuck you. It's about high time you start over. But sadder this time. That's right. You'd look a whole lot better if you frowned once in a while.
01:18:43
Speaker
You were getting a little too happy. A little too sure of yourself. What's your tagline again? You can't do interview. Yeah. Say it.
01:18:55
Speaker
Say what? Say your stupid little tagline. If you can do interview. ya.