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Episode 349: Madeline Bodin
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Madeline Bodin is the writer behind "The Curious Case of Nebraska Man" for the Atavist Magazine.
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Transcript
Introduction and Promotions
00:00:00
Speaker
AC&Fers, shout out to Athletic Brewing. It's dry January, baby. And you might want to give it a go. Athletics near beers, non-alcoholic beers, it's delicious. I'm a brand-damn Bassador, and I don't get any money, and they're not an official sponsor of the show. I want to be very clear about that. They'd probably be upset.
00:00:21
Speaker
If I insinuated that they are but if you go to athletic brewing comm use the promo code Brendan Oh 20 at checkout You'll get a nice little discount and I get points towards swag But no money Give it a shot
00:00:38
Speaker
It's tasty stuff. And since I have a teensy bit more time on my hands these days, if you leave a review over at Apple Podcasts, I'll give you a complimentary edit of a piece of your writing up to 2,000 words. Once your review posts, usually around 24 hours, send me a screenshot of your review to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com and I'll reach back out and we'll get started. Who knows, if you like the experience, you might even want me to help you out with something a bit more ambitious.
00:01:07
Speaker
every once in a while you read something that just captivates you. And I'm brought back again to being a six year old and saying, I want to do this too. Like, this is so amazing. And I want to do this.
Podcast and Interview Introduction
00:01:26
Speaker
Oh hey CNFR, it's CNFpod, the creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? This is an atavist interview, so, you know, spoiler alerts and such. You're advised to read the piece, then listen to this, but if you don't care, no bigs, alright?
00:01:48
Speaker
Today, we speak with Madeleine Bowden. She is a Vermont-based freelance writer whose piece, The Curious Case of Nebraska Man, is heard out of his piece and it chronicles the rivalry between William Jennings Bryan and Henry Fairfield Osborne and their conflicting views on evolution. But, it turns out, even the enlightened believer in evolution subscribes to eugenics, which is a disgusting and racist form of human breeding.
00:02:14
Speaker
selecting for quote-unquote more desirable traits in genetics. Yippee, that was a thing. The piece has a particularly prescient line that echoes what we're seeing in schools of this country today regarding things like critical race theory and other topics parents and politicians of a certain political meaning want ousted from the curricula.
00:02:39
Speaker
Before we hear from Madeleine, we're going to jam with Sabre Darby, editor-in-chief of The Atavist. She's also the author of Sisters in Hate, and she recently just had a piece published in The Guardian about abused beagles. And if there's anything...
00:02:55
Speaker
that Sayward is more passionate about than writing in journalism. It's dogs. She's a dog stalker, and if you see her around New York, it's best you let her take a picture of your dog. Go check out her piece. The link will be in the show notes, where you may also sign up to my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. That's at brendanomera.com. Gosh, it's been like 12 years since I started the newsletter.
00:03:24
Speaker
different iterations over the years. I love where it is right now, but still, it's like a sixth grader. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:03:36
Speaker
All right, you know what? I think it's time to talk to Sabre. You know, if you're not already subscribed to this podcast, you know, just wherever you listen to them, just hit subscribe and this thing will go right into your feed just about every Friday. Sometimes I miss one, like if my mom starts going down the dementia hole. I mean, which she is and which happened this past year. So sometimes there are hiccups in production.
00:03:59
Speaker
like your mother with dementia. So in any case, now is the time to hear from Sayward Darby, one of my favorite people in the world. Okay, here we go.
Discussion on Atavist's Success and Future Plans
00:04:20
Speaker
Just so happened being the kind of the beginning of the year and usually anyone who's on the show and pretty much just in January or around January I was like getting a sense of how people are processing the past year and then thinking about what they want to accomplish in the next year.
00:04:39
Speaker
So maybe for you as you're looking to take on another year and you're reflecting back on the past year, how are you processing this time of year with respect to your writing, your editing, and the activist?
00:04:54
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you know, for the Adivists, I think we had a really good year on a lot of different levels. I'm really proud of, you know, all the stories, I mean, I'm always proud of the stories we published, but, you know, 2022 is a strong year in terms of the diversity of the subject matter in our stories. We had a really good year from a viewership standpoint, and we also, you know, won several awards from, you know, stories from 2021, but
00:05:23
Speaker
you know, in 2022, we saw all of that pay off. And I think, you know, with the out of us, like, my feeling was always just to keep building as much as we can. And, and so I'm excited in 2023 to kind of say, okay, we did all of that, can we, you know, maintain almost that new baseline of success, which is, you know, maybe higher, further ahead or whatever, however you want to describe a baseline than it was before. And, you know, can we move it forward?
00:05:50
Speaker
even more in 2023.
Impact of the Pandemic on Storytelling
00:05:53
Speaker
So I'm really excited about stories we have assigned, some of which I'm already working on, some of which will be coming in soon. And I'm excited to read, you know, pitches throughout the year. And, you know, to see where people's interests are, you know, I still feel like to a certain extent, we're
00:06:11
Speaker
I mean, the pandemic is obviously still ongoing. And I think that it's been interesting as an editor over the last couple of years to watch how people have approached the types of stories they want to tell or are even able to tell. You know, at first it was kind of like, where can I
00:06:30
Speaker
travel. Can I travel at all? And that's gradually changed. But I do still think we're seeing the ways that COVID has affected the actual
00:06:45
Speaker
content of some stories in some cases but then you know is also shaping you know the types of stories that people want to tell are able to tell and and so that's not necessarily you know has nothing to do with like a goal but just as an editor it's always interesting to watch how
00:07:04
Speaker
particularly because I work exclusively with freelancers, to kind of see these like tide shifts almost in terms of types of stories and pace of stories and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, and in terms of my own writing, I don't have any projects on tap right now. I spent a good portion of this year, the first, let's see,
00:07:26
Speaker
almost two-thirds of it, working on the fault line story for the out
Strategies for Publication Growth
00:07:32
Speaker
of us. If I'm still following that, you know, there have been updates and some developments of note. And so, you know, we'll see where that goes. All of the cases in that story are still scheduled to go to trial next year. You know, who knows if that actually happens, if there's some kind of like mediation or settlement before. But
00:07:51
Speaker
I'm still very much keeping tabs on that. And hopefully I'll find another story I am interested in really digging into. I haven't found it yet. This is basically the time last year when the fault line story came to my attention. And we'll see what 2023 holds in that regard. But yeah, I don't know. 2022 was an interesting year. I think it was my husband and I were just talking about this. And on the one hand, things got
00:08:18
Speaker
better in a lot of ways in the world, but in a lot of ways, they also did not get better. You know, whether you're talking about an actual war in Europe or you're talking about, you know, I mean, over the last couple of months, especially kids being really, really sick. I mean, lots of people being sick, but kids especially being really sick. And then, you know, certainly what the hell it means for media that, you know, Twitter has become the cesspool. I mean, it already was a variety of cesspool and now it's just got a particular stink in a new way.
00:08:48
Speaker
Anyway, I mean, every year has ups and downs. I'm not stating anything revolutionary there. But I think that, you know, 2023, there are things that have happened in 2022 where it'll be interesting to see how they play out in 2023 with regard to media, among other things. So yeah, I don't know. That's my ramble about time in the moment.
00:09:10
Speaker
When you talk about growth there some people will view growth like just strictly like let's get it get everything in front of as many eyeballs as possible you know that kind of like a scorched earth policy of growth and analytics and that.
00:09:27
Speaker
Or sometimes there's a strategy of thinking, you know what? There are enough readers or listeners, but another way of thinking of growth is instead of spreading those roots outward, maybe deepening the tap root.
00:09:43
Speaker
And for you, how do you metabolize the idea of growth? And maybe sometimes you'd be like, you know what? Maybe we have enough base. Maybe it's time to go deeper. That's sometimes how I think about it, and I wonder how you think about it.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, the activist is in a nice position where, uh, you know, we, we are, you know, doing well from, uh, a viewer standpoint, a financial standpoint. Of course we can always be doing better. Um, but, you know, I think from my standpoint, we are definitely able to think about what it means to deepen as opposed to widen. Um, and, uh, and I think for us, you know, I've, I've had conversations with,
00:10:29
Speaker
you know, our little team about different types of stories, presentation of stories, I guess, more than, you know, I mean, our stories are our stories and will always be our stories, but, you know, are there kind of different formats we can think about presenting them in? Can we, you know, get more ambitious from a visual standpoint? And then, you know, on the business side of things, thinking about this is film and TV stuff, which is really not super relevant to
00:10:59
Speaker
craft of writing and whatnot but you know thinking through how are we maximizing what we're doing in that space because you know we get a lot of our stories optioned which is great and benefits our writers who make money off of that benefits the magazine as well there are all kinds of opportunities in that space and one of the things we've talked about is kind of figuring out like are we maximizing those opportunities you know are there ways of
00:11:24
Speaker
I don't know, working with documentarians as opposed to waiting for them to read a story and be interested. This is all very, very inchoate, but some of the things we're thinking about are, here are the fundamental building blocks of our business, and are there ways that we can strengthen them or add another layer to them?
00:11:46
Speaker
bolster them however you want to put it. And so that's definitely the kind of stuff that's on my mind. And then just from a pure story standpoint, thinking through, can we push stories more? Are there just ever working with writers to think through how they can tell the best possible story? How can they report it to the nth degree?
00:12:16
Speaker
write it to the nth degree, you know, really make it as great as possible, which is, you know, something we have the luxury of thinking about because we're not, you know, perpetually filling pages. And, you know, yes, we finished one story and then we turn to the next. But, you know, the time in between our stories and the demands on our stories are really different. And so at this time of year, always taking a step back and thinking like,
00:12:41
Speaker
are we telling the best stories that we can? What can we be doing differently or more of or whatever it may be to help freelancers sort of maximize the potential of their stories? And I realize that all sounds sort of abstracted, but it's definitely something that's always on my mind as I'm sort of thinking through, okay, we have a whole new slate of stories coming up and ones we haven't even assigned yet that we don't even know about yet. And so just really thinking through how we can make every
00:13:09
Speaker
every single story the best it can possibly be. You know, I've worked at plenty of magazine jobs where at a certain point you're like, you know what, we just have to be done with this story. Like I wanted more from it, but like we just have to be done. And certainly that's always the case. I think I don't know that I've ever in my life as an editor or writer published a story where I've been like, and it's perfect. You know, I think that that's like honestly kind of freaks me out when people think that because I think part of being a writer and editor is always thinking you can do better.
00:13:36
Speaker
But I do think there are ways in which that kind of, okay, we just have to let this be what it is, is not a way of thinking that the activist has to have in the same way that some other publications do. And so how can we make sure that we are celebrating that and helping writers find the breathing room they need to and space and creativity and whatever it may be they need to really push themselves and write the best stories that they can.
00:14:06
Speaker
One more question before we talk a little bit about Madeline's story. Also, being the start of a new year and you're going to be fielding any number of pitches, some that you'll say yes, some you'll be like almost, and some definitively no.
Improving Pitching Techniques
00:14:24
Speaker
So is there any maybe advice you'd give people for when their pitches fall short so what they can do to strengthen those pitches and give them a better shot at landing a piece, be it with you or any other glossy publication?
00:14:43
Speaker
I mean, first of all, you know, getting a no from us is not like, I don't know, I sometimes fear that writers are like, oh, well, then I can't pitch again. Like they didn't like my idea. And it's like, well, I assume you have lots of ideas, so please keep pitching.
00:14:56
Speaker
Allow me to punch in here real quick. You really should pitch say word in Jonah because they genuinely read these things. And not only do they read them, they often offer pretty good feedback. Like I remember when I submitted several years ago and they were like, you're a loser, don't ever submit again. Your own blog would reject you, which I thought was pretty steep, criticism.
00:15:21
Speaker
No, no, kidding. Very, very much kidding. You definitely have to, because even if your pitch isn't 100% great, oftentimes they're giving you little notes to make it better. And then on top of that, like Sarah Suley, she resubmitted a pitch she did, and lo, it was published. Okay, all right, back to say a word.
00:15:42
Speaker
Um, and you know, we try, we can't always do it. We do try to provide feedback on pitches. Um, and I would say that the vast, vast majority of the time, the feedback has to do with the fact that what's being pitched. Doesn't really have the kind of plot line we look for.
00:15:59
Speaker
Um, and the sort of like narrative heft. Um, and so we're kind of getting pitched more, uh, traditional features, which I know I've said this a million times on the podcast. There's, I love traditional features. I write traditional features. It's just not exactly what the out of us does. So I think, you know, really taking that to, to heart and realizing that that is the reason that even, you know, some of the most seasoned writers who we say, say no to it.
00:16:23
Speaker
is for that reason, right? It's all a matter of fit. And so just really thinking about when you're pitching the out of us, what would fit here? What read our stories, which I know people do, but really thinking through, okay, what is making these stories tick? And how can I pitch something that feels like it would be in keeping with this wider catalog? So yeah, I think that, and then also,
00:16:52
Speaker
the story that you just can't stop thinking about, right? Like the one that maybe you've thought about for years or months or whatever it is and you've had to move on to other things but you keep coming back to it. It's needling at you. You know, oftentimes that's the out of us story in your pocket. You know what I mean? Because I know so many freelancers have multiple things they're thinking about or working on at a given time and passion projects are kind of the thing that almost
00:17:22
Speaker
always turn out to be the right projects for us. Yeah, so I don't know, don't be disheartened. I pitch and get turned down, everybody pitches and gets turned down, and like, you know, don't be, don't be disheartened, but then also think through, okay, you know, what about that pitch didn't work. And again, we try to be candid. You know, the other, the other thing that we, and this is something that writers
00:17:46
Speaker
can know on one side and not on the other um is you know what mix of stories we have so you know if you if you read out of a story as you look at the last six months or whatever and you know you see i think here's a great example i mean it's a very silly example but it's a great example you know we ran that piece by jb mckinnon about cows in a hurricane like i don't know don't put just a piece about cows because we're probably not gonna be able to run it anytime soon we just ran a big piece about cows
00:18:11
Speaker
And so, um, you know, thinking about it from the standpoint of, uh, not, Oh, does this story I have seem a whole lot like an out of a story that recently ran. Um, you know, that's not necessarily the helpful comparison, but also, you know, I try to be honest with people on the flip side where if they pitch us something and I know for a fact we have something coming out in the next couple of months or that's assigned or whatever that, you know, overlaps quite a bit with.
00:18:40
Speaker
something that a writer has sent, I try to be honest about that. And so, you know, again, kind of trying to, as best you can, based on the knowledge you have of the publication, and I think this goes for any publication, I should say, you know, noticing what might be redundant or what might, you know, not be right for the mix. But then, you know,
00:19:02
Speaker
believing me when I say, you know, that we have something assigned and it just happens to overlap, you know, and, you know, please keep sending ideas. I think that that's like we're being genuine when we say that.
Nebraska Man and Science vs. Faith Debate
00:19:15
Speaker
And that we can kind of pivot to Madeline's piece about the Nebraska man and this sort of fossil controversy and the anti-science beliefs that we are very much feeling today and we're very much apparent way back when some of these fossils were dug up in the Midwest. Talk a little bit about Madeline's piece and what made it special.
00:19:41
Speaker
You know, so she had identified this very, we call it a strange chapter. And it is, it's a strange chapter in the debate between faith and science in this country. And also a strange chapter in what, at the time, this is taking place in the 1920s, that's where the story is set. You know, a strange chapter in this very, at the time, dramatic field, honestly, of human origins. You know, let's see, Darwin had
00:20:11
Speaker
proposed his theories, what, 50, 60 years before, and people were still trying to make sense of them, trying to figure out how, if evolution was real, how did it work? And there was just a lot, science was changing day in and day out, or this part of science was changing day in and day out.
00:20:30
Speaker
And she had found this, again, very strange little chapter in that, that what was very intriguing about it to me and to Jonah, who, quick shout out to Jonah, who was the original lead editor of this piece, and then his wife had a baby. Yay, Jonah and his wife and their baby, Farron, who was born just before Christmas.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so I kind of took over the project when he had to go on paternity leave. But when we were assigning the story, we were interested in the fact that this particular fossil was in the early to mid 1920s, like held up as this very, very important
00:21:09
Speaker
piece of evidence for evolutionary theory. Today, you know, fast forward 100 years, it is held up as the exact opposite. It is held up as an example, or a piece of evidence rather, that evolution does not exist. And so the question becomes, why is that, right? Like, what happened over the last 100 years? And to us, that was a really interesting
00:21:31
Speaker
question and I don't want to give it away. I would love people to read the story. I think it's a deliciously nerdy story. I am interested in these historical scientific deep dives where you really are seeing experts
00:21:49
Speaker
you know, square off about something that, you know, to the average person might feel relatively, I don't know, small or inconsequential. But in this case, you know, the science was, you know, very nerdy, very much, you know, you know, I don't know.
00:22:06
Speaker
happening in excavation fields and labs and museums and things like that. But because of the controversy over evolution in the 1920s in a public sense, that got brought to the fore. And so the debate over this particular fossil, which was a tooth,
00:22:23
Speaker
was on the front page of the New York Times and was, you know, mentioned in books and was this just very, I mean, subject of some incredible like political cartoons and things like that. And so it's interesting to also, I think, look back on a time when the science of evolution was so unsettled that and also, you know,
00:22:46
Speaker
so meaningful to such a large number of people that this was front page stuff. So yeah, I think it was kind of that combination of like, again, delicious nerdiness combined with historical significance and then this really interesting arc of how something can go in a war between two sides, right? It was initially a weapon used by one side and now it is
00:23:16
Speaker
a weapon used by the other side. And how did that happen is a fascinating narrative question to me. Yeah, it is. And it's a wonderful piece, Madeline, really. She takes the reins of this piece and really does a wonderful job with it, with the two antagonists of this piece, really going, butting heads with really, in the end, I think is what Madeline told me, is that Jonas said, well, science is the protagonist here.
00:23:45
Speaker
And science wins in the end, but it's a fascinating rivalry and conflict over this issue. And yeah, it's a great piece.
00:23:59
Speaker
Yeah, it is. And I think, of course, that's a typically smart thing that Jonah said, like science is the protagonist. And I think that what's interesting about that is it does win to a point, but kind of the, I don't know, maybe the overarching, you know, sort of takeaway from this story is that science must constantly be fought for and defended and improved upon and pushed.
00:24:25
Speaker
And like, one cannot assume that anything is ever settled. And I think that because there's like, I think a bit of like a sort of
00:24:35
Speaker
urgent note at the end of the piece about this. And to your point, you know, about the, I should have said this too, about the sort of two guys, dudes squaring off in the piece, you know, one defending evolution, one defending religion. They are very colorful characters, one of them being William Jennings Bryan, obviously a very famous person in US history, and the other William Fairfield Osborne, who was the president of the American
00:25:04
Speaker
Museum of Natural History in New York. Just a tiny slip of the tongue there. It was actually Henry Fairfield Osborn, not William Fairfield Osborn. Okay, back to the show.
00:25:22
Speaker
and a very wealthy Upper East Side guy and a very prominent, if not entirely, what's the word I'm looking for? I don't want to say competent, but there have been better scientists. Let me put it that way.
00:25:42
Speaker
you imagine them taking off their gloves and slapping each other kind of thing. That's the kind of rivalry we're talking about. And there's also some drama from the Scopes trial, which we didn't get into. We could talk about the Scopes trial all day, but obviously there have been incredible books and movies and plays and other things written about the Scopes trial. So we tried to keep that stuff in check in the piece, but it does provide for some real drama.
00:26:07
Speaker
All right, punching in one more time, only because I am something of a short, stocky, slow-witted bald man. I want to just clarify, in case you don't know what the SCOPES trial was about, here's what it's about from Wikipedia. The SCOPES trial
00:26:26
Speaker
Formally, the state of Tennessee versus John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was an American legal case from July 10 to July 21, 1925, in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it illegal for teachers to teach human evolution in any state-funded school.
00:26:55
Speaker
And I think that all of that too was interesting to us from a scene standpoint, from a character development standpoint. And I think too, in the case of Osborne especially, that he was a really complex figure, sort of this great defender of evolution on the one hand, but also somebody who had pretty problematic ideas about evolution, which is not unusual at the time. As people again, we're kind of figuring out
00:27:24
Speaker
you know, what exactly evolution meant and how it worked and whatnot. You know, he was the kind of person who, because of his position, because of his wealth, because of his power, you know, was invited almost, literally by the New York Times, to be evolution's defender. Was he the right person to be doing that?
00:27:46
Speaker
you know, sort of looking at the way that power, I guess, intersects with some of the other questions in the piece is quite interesting to me. I think I sometimes forget from the standpoint of just history, right? The Scopes trial ends, and honestly, like I remember what happened in the Scopes trial. I couldn't really tell you what happened after the Scopes trial. And I think this piece does a nice job too of reminding you that the Scopes trial actually didn't settle anything. You know, it was very dramatic.
00:28:16
Speaker
um it was you know this national spectacle but then it didn't ever get to an appeal and it very much you know if anything it deepened divisions as opposed to you know successfully making the case for one
00:28:33
Speaker
one thing or another. Maybe I'm just, you know, I don't know, ignorant or whatever, because I haven't seen Inherit the Wind or Red Summer for the Gods in a long time. But but I think that, you know, the piece does a nice job of showing how this debate was so intense front page stuff again. And but then didn't go away. You know, it kind of settled into its into itself almost. And, you know, each side became more and more entrenched. And, you know, we've seen polls. I was looking this up just the other day while working on the story.
00:29:03
Speaker
more people than ever believe in evolution, but there's still a lot of people who believe in creationism. And as Madeline, you know, mentions at the end of the piece, we are seeing sort of new types of debates that echo the evolution debate, whether you're talking about, you know, human sexuality, I think is probably the primary example I can think of.
00:29:26
Speaker
Um, where, you know, people are debating the science, um, and people who don't actually understand the science are, you know, claiming to understand the science, um, you know, legislators who have no business, you know, making decisions about what is true and what is not, uh, you know, about human sexuality are saying that they, you know, do. Um, and so, uh, and so I think that, and the piece is subtle in this, I think, you know, we're not trying to beat right, uh, readers over the head with it, but
00:29:55
Speaker
you know, point being, these types of debates have happened before. They are always happening. And again, like science must be fought for and defended perpetually. And, you know, otherwise, we all lose, quite frankly. All right, well, it's about time we turn it over to Madeline. So thank you so much for your time, Sayward, and Happy New Year. Same to you.
00:30:28
Speaker
All right, that was fun. We're about to hear from Madeline Bowden from her, here's a little ditty from her website madelinebowden.com. Right, are you ready? Okay, here it is.
Madeline's Writing Process and Inspirations
00:30:39
Speaker
Her mission as a journalist is to write vivid stories that don't merely engage readers intellect, but also create a reading experience built on senses and emotions to feed a deeper understanding of important issues.
00:30:51
Speaker
She's written for publications such as Biographic, Hakai, High Country News, Discover, Scientific American, Popular Mechanics, and Undark. Her articles have appeared in newspapers, including the Boston Globe. I grew up on that one. Christian Science Monitor, The Rutland Herald, The Hartford Current. She was a frequent contributor to Newsday's weekly science section for five years. And wouldn't you know,
00:31:19
Speaker
listening to these atavisthen pods helped her flesh out her pitch for this story and her construction of this story. You see? This isn't just the musings of a short, stocky, slow-witted bald man myopically complaining about why his career is in the gutter. It's a learning tool. So here's Natalie.
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, one of my favorite writing quotes that I came across was an essay by Francine Prose lately, and I wanted to get your sense of what she says here, because I think it really speaks to how we deal with writing and stuff in those alone moments where most, if not all, the work is done. So she writes here, writers are creatures who function best when we recall the writing process in tranquility.
00:32:07
Speaker
So for you, like, in tranquility, what is the writing process for you like? Wow. I'm trying to imagine a tranquil writing process, but I have to say, really, writing this article or the adabist has been probably the most tranquil writing process of my life. So it may be my only example, you know, for me, like I'm sure for you,
00:32:33
Speaker
And I'm sure for almost everyone listening to this podcast, you know, you got a million balls in the air, juggling a million things. You're doing reporting for one story and writing for another story and finding sources for a third story. So this was a lovely, somewhat tranquil process in that it took over a year.
00:32:57
Speaker
And I had time, and I wasn't really tracking down sources in terms of people as much as documents. So, so that was interesting. And, you know, as far as the putting the words down on the pixels themselves, I guess, for me, it has to be a subconscious act, or it's not gonna happen.
00:33:26
Speaker
If I think about it too much, I'll just freeze up and stop. And that was one nice thing about this is that I got to, I got to take a breath and say, I'm just going to throw anything down. And if it's bad, I'm going to fix it later.
00:33:43
Speaker
And you said a moment ago how sometimes it's like you're trying to track down sources for one story, you might be writing another, you might be trying to come up with ideas for something else. I know for me it's very hard to keep straight. Sometimes the attention from one thing bleeds into the other and I have a hard time putting up the firewall between each project and everything gets all scrambled.
00:34:05
Speaker
So for you, how do you try to maintain some degree of separation between each project in each phase of those projects so you can kind of make progress on everything? Yeah, once upon a time I had this dream because I had these publications I was writing for that appeared to be on the same publication schedule.
00:34:27
Speaker
So I was always doing all the reporting for like two different articles and then doing all the writing for two different articles. And I had this dream that one day I was going to be reporting one story and then writing the other and my life would be easy and good. But then that happened and it wasn't, I got really confused. So, you know, I think for me, the secret is just before I write,
00:34:54
Speaker
kind of reviewing my notes and just getting my brain back into like, okay, this is the story, here are these people, this is what we're talking about. But what I'm finding is if there's any way to just work on one story at a time, wow, that really helps.
00:35:13
Speaker
I know looking over at my bookcase and there are any number of writers who, especially when I was thinking that I wanted to take up the pen as it were and become a writer of nonfiction myself, they were the ones who really inspired me, put fuel in my tank and made me want to try to join them if that can even be
00:35:34
Speaker
of something worth saying. So for you, Madeline, who were some of those writers that you looked up to that you were like, someday I'd like to kind of do what they're doing? Well, I'll tell you. This is the type of question I might blank out on, but I actually have lists and things all over my office to remind me. And if my headset lets me go this far, what I did recently is put together
00:36:04
Speaker
Like put my books, like the inspirational books, put them on a shelf together. And wow, it was just so cool to see all those books there. Now let me see if I can, I can read them from here. I have, here's a handy note right on my desk, House by Tracy Kidder, Hot Zone by Richard Preston, Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Four Wings and a Prayer by Sue Halpern.
00:36:33
Speaker
The Whale by Moonlight by Diane Ackerman. Don't Look at Thief by Susan Orlean. And look here, I can read when it says Friday Night Lights. On my desk, it says Buzz Bissinger. And The Spirit Catches You by Anne Fadiman. A Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. And Anything by Mary Roach.
00:36:57
Speaker
And what was it, you know, we can always talk about how certain writers turn like world from black and white into color for us. What was it about a lot of those books that really turned a light switch on for you? I wish they had turned on a light switch. I think what they did was set the standard. For me, writing has always been a response.
00:37:23
Speaker
I was a very passionate reader from a very young age. And I'm not even sure when it occurred to me, but it was also at a very young age that like people made these books and writers put these words on the page. So for me, more than showing me how to do it, because I think it remains magical for me for way too long.
00:37:52
Speaker
It was just this incredible experience that these writers gave me that I wanted to give to other people myself. And then it was just a lot of work from there to figure out how this magic happens.
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, and you said a word that really popped out to me was that they set the standard. And this morning and just kind of looking for a little inspiration myself, I picked up Murakami is what I talk about when I talk about writing. Ah, running.
00:38:27
Speaker
And there's a moment very early on in one of his early essays where he's talking about his profession or not being concerned with winning and losing, but what's crucial is whether your writing attains the standards you've set for yourself. So you're just kind of racing yourself.
00:38:46
Speaker
So for you, how have you grown and set your standards so you're not necessarily looking over your shoulder and comparing yourself to others, but really just setting your standard and trying to achieve your own race? Yeah, yeah. You know, what you just said reminded me of something that Ira Glass has said in many of his kind of storytelling craft talks in that, you know, when you start out,
00:39:15
Speaker
Hopefully you have great taste, but you can't get there. And it's just with every project, you're like looking, you're looking at what you're reaching for and you're trying to get a little closer with each, with each project or with each attempt. And I guess for me, especially starting from, you know, these greats.
00:39:41
Speaker
And thinking about my own progress. Wow. It's been really slow and just a little bit at a time. Like, Oh, I don't know. I'm trying to think of even something that came one thing.
00:39:57
Speaker
I've been talking about lately, the ladder of abstraction, you know, that's a fun tool to think about in your reporting and maybe in your writing if you're not like me and get too self conscious. But you know, thinking about kind of reaching down from the bland middle and thinking about, you know, the five senses and
00:40:23
Speaker
what you can show the reader what they can you can have them hear what you can have them smell or whatever of the five senses you can you can probably possibly use in whatever the story is and then also for me the bigger challenge still working on it is the reaching up you know what's the bigger meaning what's the big
00:40:46
Speaker
story you know what's the greater thing because you know any story can remain pretty small some unless we make the connection for readers and and that has been a struggle for me and definitely something I'm still working on.
00:41:03
Speaker
Do you ever get the sense, and this is just my own feeling and projection, I just wanna get your impressions on it, that just as your writing career progressed and then there are tendencies to look over your shoulder. I'm super guilty of that, and that's a big reason why I started this podcast 10 years ago, because I was just boiling in my own juices of resentment and jealousy.
00:41:30
Speaker
And it's just like sometimes I feel like, shoot, did I miss the train? Did I miss the bus? And I'm at this age, if it's not gonna happen now, if it hasn't happened now, it's probably never gonna happen, whatever that is. I wonder if just in that sentiment, if you've ever wrestled with that.
00:41:48
Speaker
Oh, absolutely. All the time. And I suspect I'm slightly older than you are. That's what us old people say. I'm 59 and you know, I've wanted to be a writer since at least I was six years old. And so I'm sure there were plenty of times where it felt like
00:42:16
Speaker
I was never going to get there. And you know, where there is has changed over the decades. And I think I had to reach a point
00:42:29
Speaker
You know, sometime in middle age, I have been alerted that I can no longer consider myself middle aged, which is painful. Um, that, you know, what it was is what it was. And, you know, I think I'm, I'm okay with that. I really, you know, with a lot of years of trying and not succeeding.
00:42:56
Speaker
or, you know, reaching and not grasping, I guess, you know, I had to think like, well, what am I trying to do here? You know what, what's the bare minimum? And the bare minimum is sharing stories that I want to share with other people.
00:43:17
Speaker
and trying to make a living. And somehow those two are often in conflict. But I try to focus on that. And one of the biggest disappointments for me, I had really enjoyed writing for my local newspaper for a really long time.
00:43:41
Speaker
I think maybe I would be happy doing that if it only paid a living wage. Like, well, first of all, if I could get a job there, which honestly is not a certain thing. And the other thing is, you know, do they pay a living wage, which maybe not. Certainly not for the freelance work, you know, freelancing for them for nearly 30 years, they're
00:44:07
Speaker
their rates have actually gone down significantly in 30 years. I think what you're speaking to also is perseverance and endurance in this. Where have you found the well to keep going in the face of rejection and just being dispirited by an industry that really likes to kick you and certainly kick you when you're down?
00:44:30
Speaker
Well, I think that's certainly a certain amount of stubbornness and believe it or not, a lack of imagination. There was certainly a time, I do believe it was, I was in my forties, where things looked really bleak, like
00:44:46
Speaker
publications were going out of business left and right, rates were going down. I was getting rejected so much and it was just horrible. And I said, all right, what else am I going to do? And I really thought about it like for years, for years, I did my thing, I scrapped together the best I could and persevered the best I could. But you know, the only thing
00:45:14
Speaker
I really wanted to do is write. So a lack of imagination on my part really, the only thing I wanted to do is write.
00:45:24
Speaker
And I would say, as far as inspiration and stick-to-it-iveness, you know, first of all, friends, they help friends who are writers who are going through the same thing. You realize it's not you. It's not that there's something wrong with you. It's a bigger thing or how this works. I'm not sure. And also, you know, every once in a while you read something that just captivates you.
00:45:50
Speaker
And I'm brought back again to being a six-year-old and saying, I want to do this too. This is so amazing, and I want to do this. That's such a great sentiment to hear you talk about that, especially trying to find commiseration among peers. And for those who might be in, let's maybe call it a writer desert, and maybe they feel like they're the only one in town, that's where
00:46:16
Speaker
having conversation and you being so forthcoming about just how you've done with it. On the microphones here, I'll let someone who might be listening to this where there might be a writer desert be like, oh shoot, all right, I don't feel as alone anymore that I feel kind of crummy most of the time. And I still want to write through that or read through that and then try to get to the point of that girl at six years old where you were just so jacked up by some amazing thing that you read.
00:46:45
Speaker
And to hear you say that I think is just really valuable and it really kind of lights me up to hear you talk about it in that way.
00:46:51
Speaker
Well, great, because we absolutely all need that. And I live in Vermont. There's a lot of writers in Vermont, but certainly there's been times where I felt really disconnected from the writing community. And we are so lucky that there are podcasts like this one that can help us connect. And it certainly helped me listening to this podcast or others, hearing other writers that I really look up to
00:47:20
Speaker
and hear their struggles. And that helps me go on as well because you realize you're not alone in your struggles.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. So you're in, like, Bill McKibbin country. Yeah, no, he's, yeah. Middlebury, wow. That's a, I live in very, very rural Vermont, which I've been talking with our fact checker for the Atavists a lot today, it seems, and she's in even more rural Vermont. But Middlebury, Vermont is a really interesting, amazing place. It's probably the place you're thinking of when you think of Vermont. I don't live there.
00:47:58
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite places in Vermont I used to go to. I used to live in Saratoga Springs for a while. And I would zip over to Manchester Center because Norshire Bookstore is my favorite bookstore in the world. And I'd go over there whenever I could. It was only like an hour drive or so. I'd just over the border from Saratoga. And I just love going to that place in particular.
00:48:21
Speaker
I grew up in New England, so I know a little bit about Vermont. So yeah, it's just kind of bucolic. It's just like beautiful. I love it. Yeah. And the Northshire is the best. They also, they opened another shop in Saratoga. I don't know. I know. Yeah, I was there. I left Saratoga area in 2014 and they had started, I believe they opened that bookstore maybe 2012 or 2011 ish around there.
00:48:46
Speaker
So I did get to experience the Saratoga one also. That was a joy while I was there. But the Manchester Center one for some, that one really holds a spot in my heart. I was going to say, as great as the Saratoga one is, Manchester is just a wonderful place. I know. It's like a maze. It's so cool. It's got the bakery there. Yeah, exactly. What could be better than books and food? Right.
00:49:16
Speaker
Awesome. And so with your Atavist piece, this was a really cool trip into those fossil wars and that whole subculture, which the fossil industrial complex is so fraught with rivalry and all sorts of great debates. And so it might be a logical place for us to start about how you arrived at the Nebraska man tooth in this particular story.
00:49:45
Speaker
Well, that's kind of a story in itself. And I've already told you that I'm 59. And I said it might be relevant to certain things. And it's certainly relevant to how I came across this story. When I was in my late 20s, I was a staff writer for a trade magazine.
00:50:06
Speaker
writing short stories on my lunch hour and after work when I could possibly force myself to do so, sending them out to literary magazines and getting rejected and getting excited about any rejection that seemed kind of nice. I thought I was going to be a fiction writer and that I was just doing this trade magazine stuff.
00:50:29
Speaker
you know, to keep my hand in, to be a writer. And one day I was on the train commuting to my job and I was reading in the New York Times about this new fossil discovery, early human, and an idea popped into my head, you know, because the article had explained so well the significance and human origins and
00:50:57
Speaker
that out of Africa hypothesis and the proof for it and all that stuff. An idea popped into my head. I didn't see it as a literary piece more as a like more fun, frolicking novel kind of thing. What would happen if there was an ancient
00:51:15
Speaker
human fossil found in the United States? What would happen? Would nationalists grab onto it? What would happen to the people who found it and like just, okay, this is going to be a cool story. But because the foundation of being a nonfiction writer was always there, I just didn't know it. The first thing I did was dove into the research and
00:51:38
Speaker
I went to the library and I bought books and textbooks and I learned as much as I could about paleoanthropology only to find, after months, maybe years, hey, this had actually happened. Someone found evidence of human or early, early humans in the United States, in Nebraska. I'm like, okay, this is cool.
Fiction vs. Nonfiction in Nebraska Man Story
00:52:07
Speaker
And when I sat down to write,
00:52:10
Speaker
I maybe wrote three paragraphs because it was terrible. Like what I wrote as a fiction writer was terrible. And certainly one of the reasons why it was terrible was because what I was writing seemed like a pale shadow of what had actually happened back in the 1920s. And so I put that project aside and I said, someday I am going to write this story, the story of what really happened when
00:52:39
Speaker
there was this fossil that was thought to be a human being was found in the United States. And I would say, well, it had to be two years ago. It was kind of a, I had already done one kind of historical piece. So I felt like I had my legs under me. And at that time I was 58 and it was getting to be kind of like now or never. And yeah. And so I, then I pitched this story.
00:53:09
Speaker
And so what did the the nature of the the pitch look like and how did you you know get it to the point where like it was like it made you know say a word and Joe and be like oh let's you know we're gonna we're gonna take a fly on this one. That is a very good question. I am as a matter of fact seeing if I can find what the pitch actually was because it's right here in front of me somewhere. Beautiful. But I think because it was the Atavist
00:53:39
Speaker
I was thinking, is this going to be an article pitch or is this going to be more like a book pitch and I decided it should be somewhere in the middle.
00:53:51
Speaker
So, so I did like one weird thing I did that I certainly never done for another article is I wrote out the sections and I did just like you would do for a book proposal, except for instead of the chapters, I guess it was kind of the chapters of the article instead of the chapters of a book.
00:54:10
Speaker
I just wrote out a paragraph of what was going to happen in each section and trying to pay special attention to how it related to the story because it's very easy to get overwhelmed with the facts. But the important thing for the activist
00:54:32
Speaker
is that it be a story. And I thought this was a pretty good story. And it was just a matter of getting over myself knowing that I get a little bogged down in the facts to tell them what the story was.
00:54:48
Speaker
And I think a lot of people make a mistake in pitches. I know I do this constantly, even to this day, where you might not necessarily do quite enough legwork up front, enough pre-reporting, enough to really show that there's meat on the bone. You kind of jump the gun a bit. False start. For you, when did you know you had enough there where you could write like a pitch that felt like truly a synopsis of what you were going to manifest?
00:55:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a really good point that I think the requirements of pitching have certainly changed over, you know, my career as a writer. Today you hear a lot of editors if you, you know, go to a journalism conference they'll tell you
00:55:35
Speaker
I don't want to hear that there might be a good idea in this topic somewhere. I want to hear what the good idea is. I want to hear the story. Like, I want to know you have it all. And I have to confess that at the beginning of my career, I certainly threw a lot of topics at editors who then said yes. And then I dug around and found a story. And I knew I couldn't do that in this case.
00:55:59
Speaker
And the advantage I had was I had this research sitting around for 30 years. And I do wonder how often I had like picked it up and poked around a little and see what else I could find. But certainly, you know, there was like a second I had done all this research 30 years before. And once I
00:56:22
Speaker
realized it's time to pitch, you know, I started into it, just as if I was reporting the article I dug in I found some information online. I talked to some people. And it was
00:56:44
Speaker
I guess I was so anxious to pitch. That's what stopped me. But I felt like a lot like a book, again, I was kind of going more with the book proposal than the article proposal that I thought I had enough information to prove to myself and prove to them that the information was there and the story was there.
00:57:08
Speaker
Yeah, back when Jonah was at Outside magazine, I happened to pitch him a story about this kind of mystery around Crater Lake National Park here in Oregon, and basically the water level of the caldera at Crater Lake, which is the deepest freshwater lake in North America, well, at least in the United States, if not North America.
00:57:33
Speaker
And essentially, the water level never drops and never rises. And so it's like, where does the water go? And no one really knows where the water goes. And so I basically pitch them like a mystery story about how to find out where this water goes. And it was like, oh, that's all well and good. But it's just like, we kind of need to know the outcome of this before you go out and
00:58:00
Speaker
further report it out like so there can't be any basically for an editor give up all the spoilers like everything you know give it to them because they need to see the arc you know but for the reader we can withhold the spoilers but the editors they need they need the spoilers it's so tricky because you do have to express that feeling of suspense but they do kind of insist on having the answer don't they
00:58:28
Speaker
Yeah, jerks. The smart people, it is never in my experience ever been that they weren't right. That's the problem. They're always right. No matter what you think, later you'll be like, oh, yeah.
00:58:48
Speaker
Earlier you had talked about this story in particular, it was like finding the documents over people. So maybe as you're really turned loose on this, where were you finding the documents and how were you starting to create a three-dimensional picture that came out of archival stuff?
00:59:05
Speaker
Yeah, wow, was this tedious? Maybe not the answer anybody wants to hear. But this this started as a pandemic project. I mean, a lot of my other work was shut down because you couldn't go and talk to people face to face. People didn't want to meet you even if I was willing to go. So there was a lot of there were a lot of documents online. And that made me so helped
00:59:33
Speaker
I really thought I was going to report this entire piece without leaving my office. But that was not the case. What was really helpful is the Library of Congress has a database called Chronicling America, which has a whole bunch of newspapers. When I felt like I needed more, I signed up for newspapers.com.
00:59:57
Speaker
which has even more newspapers, old newspapers. I wound up going to the Library of Congress, which is a lot of fun. And then I went to the New York Historical Society, which was also fun, but in a different way to just get kind of as many pieces of paper in whatever form they were that might have some information about what happened a hundred years ago.
01:00:24
Speaker
Yeah, and that's always kind of the fun part and the challenge of when you can't talk to anyone physically because they're dead. It's like, all right, what can I find here that's gonna make this, not just this regurgitation of the archives, but these really make it come to life and be it, you know, you might find this one nugget from this one newspaper and then the other one covering the same story might reveal a different detail, like the name of the car and the car chase. You're like, all right.
01:00:52
Speaker
Now this thing is starting to actually, the 3D printer is starting to really build this structure. And that's always a moment of fun discovery for me. I know when I'm digging through newspapers. Was that true for you when you were reporting this one? Oh, absolutely. I mean, I think you described it perfectly. Sometimes you're just looking for any little detail and you're reading this article that was written 100 years ago and you're getting like, yes.
01:01:21
Speaker
Thank you. His office was on the top floor. I remember that was a big find. I was like, so relieved. Like, where is this office? It's on the top floor. Nice. But there you also reach a place where you don't have all the information you wish you had. You don't have all the information you would have if you were there or if you could talk to people and just say, you know, what was this like? What was the weather like? You kind of reach a point where you just
01:01:51
Speaker
have what you have, and then you kind of just need to write from that. Nice. And as you were progressing to the writing part of this, at what point in the process of your research and your reporting, do you feel like you have enough grist for the mill, as it were, to really start to write this thing out and put it together?
01:02:15
Speaker
I don't think I actually ever knew. So the first draft was written kind of I knew, I knew where the, the, the
01:02:27
Speaker
The billboard moments were like, I knew generally where I was going. I knew somewhat what the scenes needed to be or what the important things to talk about. And then it was just a matter of figuring out where I could collect enough information to create a scene. So first draft was
01:02:51
Speaker
read everything I could on this one aspect of the story, then write, you know, that section, it might be 300 words, it might be 2000 words, but just write that section, then leave that, read a whole bunch of other stuff, as much stuff as I can find, write another section. So then after that,
01:03:17
Speaker
it was kind of filling in the stuff that still needed more information. And then there was a second draft that was completely different. And I actually went out and did more reporting. That's when I went to the New York Historical Society. And I also visited the seminary in Richmond, Virginia, where William Jennings Bryan gave
01:03:45
Speaker
the talks that are at the beginning of the article. Yeah, and he's something of a central figure in this piece. And he seemed like a really enlightened individual in a lot of ways. But then when it came to this idea of evolution and Darwinism, he totally tried to refute it as best he could. He's saying at one point, Darwin's doctrine leads logically to war.
01:04:13
Speaker
among other things to refute it, but it definitely led to an ideological war between him and some of the more evolutionary biologists and the paleoanthropologists. Yeah, I have to say that is one fun part of writing this. I feel like if I'm not discovering things while I'm writing, then the process isn't fun.
01:04:36
Speaker
And one thing that was fun to discover was how complicated these two main characters were. I had pretty much written them off at the start. I was thinking on writing about basically two not so great or bad guys. I'm writing about two bad guys is really what it boils down to. Just diving into their lives and reading their letters.
01:05:04
Speaker
Their letters to their wives, especially, they both corresponded with their wives so much. And you really, that's not your public persona. That's a very private persona. And it was just fascinating to see how someone like William Jennings Bryan has this public face, but also this private face, which is very different.
01:05:30
Speaker
Yeah, with one moment where he he wrote that if it is contended that an instructor has a right to teach anything he likes, I reply that the parents who pay the salary have a right to decide what shall be taught. I was like, wow, that is really echoing today in America. And this was something that was happening 100 years ago.
01:05:51
Speaker
Absolutely. And that happened throughout the reporting process. That was happening in real time. As I was writing that section, all the critical race theory stuff was blowing up. And I was like, how is this possible? How is this happening again? What's going on? But it happened while I was writing.
01:06:16
Speaker
You know maybe just talk about your two main characters too and how you know you did like you were saying a moment ago they you know basically they're these you know basically you thought you were telling the story of like two bad guys but then they became a little grayer in character so maybe just describe them a little bit and your preconceptions of them and then maybe you know how they might have just maybe swayed your opinion about them a little differently over the course of your research.
01:06:43
Speaker
Sure, let's start with William Jennings Bryan and then see if we have the strength to go on to Henry Fairfield Osborn. We kind of all know William Jennings Bryan because we took high school American history and he was kind of an important person in American history.
01:07:07
Speaker
And I don't know if they still do this, because as I said, I'm, I'm old, maybe, or more than middle aged. But you know, in my day, inherit the wind was a big thing that they pulled out when you were studying the 1920s in history class.
01:07:24
Speaker
And in that one, William Jennings Bryan is kind of a bad guy. He's a buffoon. The only other thing I really knew about William Jennings Bryan before I started reporting was that he had run for president of the United States three times and never won. So it was a surprise to me to find out how he championed various things right now that we consider liberal.
01:07:54
Speaker
you know, an eight-hour work day, to break up monopolies, to regulate banks, so they weren't disappearing with people's money. He supported women's suffrage. He supported a lot of good things, and I am not a historian, I am just a journalist, but
01:08:20
Speaker
After doing this research, I think maybe he was the person or one of the people that turned the Democratic Party liberal because before Brian, you know, the Democrats were the people who didn't support the abolition of slavery. And so they were a pretty conservative bunch. But here comes Brian along and and has all these ideas to make
01:08:50
Speaker
make things better for the working class, the farmers, the middle class of America. And, you know, that was a big change for them.
01:09:05
Speaker
And in fact, he didn't run against Theodore Roosevelt, but I found a funny cartoon from Puck, a, I think it's a British humor magazine that was like these two people who are important in American politics are basically saying the same thing and they're supposed to, you know,
01:09:28
Speaker
be diametrically opposed to each other, but they all support the same things. And of course, Theodore Roosevelt won the presidency with those ideas, but William Jennings Bryan did not. So this complicated the person I thought I knew from Inherit the Wind. But as it turned out, then he twists again, because when I read in his image,
01:09:54
Speaker
hit the book of his speeches that he gave in 1921 that was really the first time he brought up his complaints against evolution. Wow, is he annoying? He says like, only God can explain why a black cow eats green grass and gives white milk. And I was like, I'm pretty sure that even in 1920,
01:10:25
Speaker
almost any scientist can explain that to you. It's not, it's not just God. It's, it's kind of biology and just reading stuff like that over and over again, it's almost a forced or willful ignorance. And, you know, he claimed to be a everyday guy, but he went to college and an era where very few people did. And he went to law school.
01:10:54
Speaker
at a time when even not all lawyers did. So he was an educated man who you know you read these speeches and you know he's kind of feigning this folksy
01:11:08
Speaker
persona, and it was a little off-putting for me. So it kind of made this U-turn. But again, he traveled extensively to give these speeches, and he wrote to his wife every day. And I want to say, of course he loved his wife, but not necessarily, of course.
01:11:31
Speaker
from reading his letters to his wife and his wife's letters to him. You know this was a loving relationship and that was a whole separate fascinating thing to me. Mrs. Brian, Mary Brian was a fascinating woman but
01:11:50
Speaker
their letters show a loving relationship. And that always makes someone seem more human and more likable, I think. For sure. And then there's Osborne, too.
01:12:09
Speaker
So back when I was in my 20s, and I'm like, someday I'm going to write this story, I thought this was going to be a good guy who is fighting for science, Henry Fairfield Osborn, against the bad guy, William Jennings Bryan, who's against science.
01:12:32
Speaker
Well, even before I pitched the story, I found out from some very obvious source, like maybe Wikipedia, that William Jennings Bryan had this dark side. And that is that he was a eugenicist.
01:12:52
Speaker
And eugenics is, you know, the belief that human beings can be bred to be better. It's a belief in like there's good genes and bad genes and we should pay attention to that when
01:13:07
Speaker
people get married and have children, which can be some hard stuff to read. It's really kind of disgusting. I don't know how else to put it. It's just, you know, and so many scientists of this era, Osborne helped to form the Galton Society here in the US, which
01:13:33
Speaker
was a group, a club of very eminent scientists who all supported eugenics. And it's really hard stuff to read. It's discouraging. It's discouraging to read. And it just occurred to me recently, very recently,
01:14:00
Speaker
What is encouraging about, like the good thing we can take away from this is once upon a time, people figured away, away from this and out of this. And if they did it a hundred years ago, we can figure it out again now. Yeah. What was the, what ultimately drove people away from this, you know, perverse idea of eugenics?
01:14:25
Speaker
That's a really good question. I can't say that I can answer it. One of the things about this story is there's so many fascinating little tendrils spreading off in every direction. And one of them is eugenics. And it was kind of like when the story ended, I kind of just needed to let it drop. And there were certainly places where I did follow the tendrils and did
01:14:54
Speaker
know dive in deep and learn all this stuff and then wound up not putting it in the article because it really needed to focus on this tooth and what happened in particular to this tooth.
01:15:08
Speaker
So I don't know. That's why it just occurred to me recently, I think, because I don't know how we got out of it. I just know that we didn't. Yeah. Well, I think that leads to a good point about the writing of this piece, too, and the idea of having to have a clear focus on it. And it being mainly like this tooth is like the focus in maybe an exploration or a meditation on getting out of eugenics would be a good thing and like something more book length.
01:15:38
Speaker
where you can go down that tributary. But here I know Jonah and Sayward, they're very big on, we need to find that central animating force and follow that. So maybe you can just speak to that in the process of writing the piece and fleshing out the narrative spine of it and how you kind of landed on, all right, we need to stick with this tooth.
01:16:04
Speaker
Oh yeah. And Jonah was really central to this. I had done a deep dive into Harold Cook, who was the person who discovered the tooth. And I mean, a really deep dive.
01:16:20
Speaker
I had so many questions, like how did he fit in? And I found all the answers. It was like the first thing I did. And then when I sat down to write, I think I actually did what I said before. I read all this stuff and then I just sat down and just kind of wrote what was on my mind and it was like 2,000 words. And then I decided, no, this isn't the story.
01:16:45
Speaker
This is a story about two men who are having this debate.
01:16:51
Speaker
So I just threw that part away and started, I tried to make the story as much as possible. Brian versus Osborne and how they kind of argued with each other across articles and books and more articles and how their conversation moved across different media, but really they're having this conversation, really an argument with each other. And I really focused on that.
01:17:21
Speaker
And that was the first draft I handed in. And Jonah said that that really wasn't working. And I agree wholeheartedly. I like the second draft, which is much closer to what people will be reading than when I first handed in, you know, Jonah said, this is a story about a tooth. Let's focus on that and let's get to know these people like,
01:17:49
Speaker
you jump right into them arguing, like, who cares? We don't know who they are. We don't know what it's at stake. They're just two men who are arguing and not even in person, you know, through articles, like they're throwing newspaper articles at each other. And so that's how the kind of the introduction to the piece about the tooth being found and
01:18:15
Speaker
how, I can't say I found the focus. It was really Jonah being like, hello, this is what it's about. You know, that focus is the tooth. And the other really big important thing that Jonah came up with is that science is the protagonist. Because when I wrote my first draft, I thought of it as a dual story.
01:18:42
Speaker
that Brian was the protagonist of his thread. He had something he wanted to accomplish, and the person who was standing in his way was Osborne. And then there was a separate thread that was Osborne who had something he wanted to accomplish, and the person
Social Media Presence and Personal Reflections
01:18:58
Speaker
who was standing in his way, the antagonist, was Brian.
01:19:02
Speaker
So in my first draft, that's what I tried to do. Like do this kind of dual story. I even have a graph somewhere in my office that plots out the story and shows how they're a mirror image of each other. You know, when Osborne wins, Brian loses. When Brian wins, Osborne loses. And that's how I wrote the first draft.
01:19:31
Speaker
But in the second draft with Jonah's good guidance, science is the protagonist. And that made it one story, hold everything together. And I think it makes a lot more sense now.
01:19:48
Speaker
It's great when you have those revelatory moments in the dialogue between writer and editor, and that's such a luxury that I don't think a lot of people get to experience. I know I haven't to the extent that Jonah and Sayward often will have that dialogue back and forth to really manifest the best version of a story.
01:20:08
Speaker
And it only happens when, in this instance, like you had to write a draft that you thought was going one way and you would have never probably landed on this notion of science being the protagonist with the other two being obviously the antagonist and the winner being science in the end. It's one of those things where you kind of have to work your way through it and only through working your way through it can you find that revelatory moment.
01:20:35
Speaker
it rarely hits you over the head at the start. You got to kind of grind your way through it. Yes. Every time there is a, you know, great relationship between writer and editor, like I feel I had with this story with the activist, it's just a reminder that writing actually is a team sport. And when you're playing at the highest level, you know, it's not just you, you have a team.
01:21:03
Speaker
Um, you know, you have editors that are thinking about your story deeply and kind of looking out for the story and what everyone's trying to accomplish. And, um, certainly one thing I'm thinking a lot about today is the fact checking. Want to give a shout out to Julia Shipley, who is going through just a tiny little newspaper articles.
01:21:31
Speaker
250 different sources for this. Actually, I don't know they're different, but like 250 things that I annotated, like
01:21:43
Speaker
Okay. This is from this article. Then you switch to a different article and then back to the first article, you know, that's three instances. And, you know, it's not just me. Everyone played a role here and everyone contributed. And my name gets to be on the article and that's awesome, but it also makes me look better than I actually am.
01:22:08
Speaker
I got to draft, you know, off the work of some really awesome people, which is, you know, a great feeling when you get that kind of writing experience. And as you said, it's really rare because there's a lot of different writing that we all do. And, you know, sometimes it's a matter of just getting the words onto the internet quickly so people know this thing happened, or
01:22:38
Speaker
I mean, there's a lot of things we call writing, and they're really all very different things.
01:22:44
Speaker
And when you were in what I like to call the messy middle of things or the muddy middle of things where you're kind of too far away from home to swim back to shore and the lighthouse is really far off and you know you got to keep going. What kept you I guess deadlines is usually the answer but in the absence of deadlines what is the thing that kind of keeps you going when you when you just really feel stuck and you're like man this
01:23:10
Speaker
The middle here is just kind of sagging, it's dragging. I don't know how I'm going to get through this. You know, for you, how do you push through that? Well, I think I do that in different ways depending on the project. But in this case, you know, I had this tremendous luxury of time. And it really is a luxury. I don't know how else to put it. Basically how I got through it is I said,
01:23:35
Speaker
All right, I don't know how this is going to work. I will try this. This is what I'm going to write. You know, I'll just write this down and I'll come back to it later and see if it still seems okay.
01:23:47
Speaker
And the thing I can't figure out after doing this for nearly 35 years is why sometimes when you come back, it is okay. And sometimes it's horrible. Like I can't predict while I'm putting it down what it's going to look like to me the next day or the next week or whenever, you know, however long I have to look at it. Sometimes you write something and it seems like total crap.
01:24:11
Speaker
And you read it back later and you're like, wow, I didn't know that I was that good of a writer. Right. Sometimes you write something and you think it's brilliant and you read it later and it's like, what was I thinking? This is like not even the English language. This is horrible. I can't figure it out. So with this story, I had the luxury of when I was struggling to just do the best I could at the moment.
01:24:37
Speaker
And then I could go back to it many times. And then I also had very good editors who were going to read it and tell me if it worked or not.
01:24:46
Speaker
Very nice. Well, here, I want to be mindful of your time, and this is great to get to unpack your activist story, and it was just a rollicking good read as the activist stories tend to be, and this one doesn't disappoint in any way. So as we bring this down for a landing, Madeleine, I always like to ask guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there, and it can be anything from a book to a pair of socks you're excited about.
01:25:14
Speaker
I'd extend that to you, Madeline. What might you recommend to the listeners out there? Sure. I have to say, I did give this a lot of thought until I came up with the perfect thing to recommend. Because I am all about learning and growing as a writer and a sense of community as a writer, I want to recommend a writing workshop.
01:25:40
Speaker
It's given by Jackie Banaschinski through the Madeline Island School for the Arts. No relation. I have never been to Madeline Island, to my great disappointment. She gives, it's a week-long workshop in person. It's given
01:26:02
Speaker
Twice a year, once in Tucson, Arizona at a resort, which you probably won't be able to enjoy. I didn't. I was just hanging on trackies every word. I didn't want to leave for a minute. But it's Arizona in the winter, which is amazing. And also on Battle and Islands in Wisconsin in the summer.
01:26:22
Speaker
And it's just such a fantastic experience, or it was such a fantastic experience for me. I love the other writers that were drawn to this workshop and have remained friends with all of them, as far as I know. If I haven't talked to you recently, you're still my friend. But it was great because it was a writing community. We were all interested in the same things. And Jackie is so smart about writing, and I've learned so much.
01:26:52
Speaker
So it's not only a great boost for my writing and community of writers. And for me, since I went to Tucson, some warm weather in January. Oh, that's awesome. Well, well, Madeline, like I said, this was wonderful to get to talk to you about this. And I want to thank you so much for the work. And thanks for carving out the time to talk shop here. So thanks again.
01:27:15
Speaker
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thanks for all you do. You know, you know, I'm a fan of your podcast and so thank you for, for all the writers that you talked to and thank you for talking to me this time.
01:27:33
Speaker
Well, thanks to Stayward and Madeline for the time and the insights. It's always great, isn't it? It gets different people's takes. You know, I always like to think when they offer a great insight and you're like, oh, I never thought of things like that. It's like adding it to your cart and Amazon. And you know what? It's like no day shipping.
01:27:52
Speaker
You may find the show on social at cnfpod on Twitter and at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. Bluh, I know. Visit BrendanOMara.com for show notes and to rage against the algorithm with my up to 11 newsletter. First of the month, no spam, as far as I can tell, can't beat it. So it's the end of 2022, isn't it?
01:28:15
Speaker
I don't know about you, but end of your list bummed me out. I don't know why, it's nonsensical. Maybe it's the personal ones when it sounds like someone is gloating for what a great year they had and while I'm over here stuffing my face with Juanita's tortilla chips.
01:28:31
Speaker
If Andor Monsoon is listening, and he isn't, that's a chip worth reviewing. He does great chip reviews on his Instagram, at angermonsoon. We talked about his Predator book earlier this year. Anyway, these chips are just so addicting, and boy does it blow you the fuck out. It really boils down.
01:28:54
Speaker
I think to the reality showfication of people's lives on social media and the constant neediness of the attention cycle. I'm particularly sensitive to it because I was once that person who just was hoping to kind of hack his way to some degree of audience and platform through Twitter and whatever it might be. Maybe this is the one that goes viral, man.
01:29:18
Speaker
And if it goes viral, then people are going to want to know what I have to say. And the fact is I have little to nothing to say. As someone who traffics in your attention, I understand that might be something of a hypocritical statement to say that I hate that people who feed off the attention cycle. But I stand by it because I like to think that I add value for in exchange for your attention.
01:29:42
Speaker
which is why an intention of mine in the next year anyway is to scale even farther back from social media, even phone use in general. The rub being that that's where I listen to podcasts and music. I'd love to double the size of my newsletter base and that will require spending time actually writing and publishing in prominent places. So then people will then be more inclined to rage against the algorithm with me, with us.
01:30:10
Speaker
I don't want to be at the mercy of a billionaire egomaniac when I can cultivate and serve the podcast audience and the newsletter audience. And I want to figure out a way to get people more inclined to maybe member up at the Patreon page, too. I mean, it's tough. That's a tough sell to pass around the collection plate for this thing that comes out for free anyway.
01:30:33
Speaker
Another goal of mine is I just want to read all of Haruki Murakami's novels. I reread his running memoir. I'm reading his latest book, Novelist as Vocation. I'm just really digging Murakami. I've read a few of his books before and I'd like to read them all.
01:30:51
Speaker
Small goals, big goals will take me all year. I'm not a fast reader. But if I'm not scrolling mindlessly, I should have more time to read. But sometimes you only have so much bandwidth for reading. Am I right? I start to hurt.
01:31:05
Speaker
All in all, I want to just continually do less and less. I'm not gonna post on Instagram my New Year's resolutions. What does that do? I understand that if you draw a cartoon and you don't post it on Instagram, then it's like it never happened. But maybe that's fine. Maybe that's okay. Not everything has to be so public.
01:31:25
Speaker
Because trust me, it's not going to grow your base. I like to think that all this attention that we pay toward mindless social media, if you just take that energy and channel it towards looking up at a big Douglas fir, or phone call with a friend, or lying with a pillow over your face, it's time better spent.
01:31:47
Speaker
Honestly, and if you want to know the truth, part of me wishes that I wasn't this, whatever this is. Most days all I want to do is disappear, you know, reduce my footprint as small as possible, and just shrink away. Slink away.
01:32:03
Speaker
So, you know, a new year doesn't necessarily fill me with hope, though I hope I can free my mind from all this toxicity that I tend to spill at you at this juncture. Spill on to you, sorry. It has to go somewhere. I believe it was Isaac Newton who said toxicity can neither be created nor destroyed. So to balance this equation, I have to dump it somewhere.
01:32:27
Speaker
Science I think it's the newest in That's gonna come out in a couple days the newest rage against the newsletter The newsletter rage against the newsletter. We don't do that. We rage against the algorithm I'm writing about how I'm kind of like a motivational downer
01:32:48
Speaker
Like, I want the best for you. I want you to achieve your goals, manifest your ambition, publish widely, get that memoir out there, those essays, you know, bucket list publications. Dude, I want it all for you, trust me.
New Year Encouragement and Sign-Off
01:33:03
Speaker
But, you know, I'm also allowed to wake up 360 days a year wishing I was somebody else.
01:33:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's such a, that's like a titanic bummer. But it's like I'm a turtle who can't shed his own shell. But here we are at the tail end of another lap around the sun.
01:33:23
Speaker
I don't know. I guess I can say just don't put too much pressure on yourself. I'm trying to take a little less pressure off myself. Clock's ticking no matter what. No sense in straining. Little gains make for big progress. That's a truism I like to live by.
01:33:42
Speaker
You know, a year from now, you'll wish you started. So I hope you start whatever that thing is that merits your starting. So Happy New Year, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.