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Episode 396: Rae Nudson on Earning Trust, The Atavist, and the Pint-of-Ice-Cream Moment
2k Plays10 months ago
Rae Nudson is a journalist and author and she's on the show to talk about her piece for The Atavist Magazine.
We also hear from Atavist editor-in-chief Seyward Darby as we close out 2023.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Sponsorship
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and ever since practically nobody took me up on the free editing in exchange for a written review, that deal is officially closed. I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Also, here's a shout out to Athletic Brewing, my favorite non-alcoholic beer out there. Dry January is coming up. Might be a nice option for you if that's your jam. Visit athleticbrewing.com, use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout. You get a little discount.
00:00:28
Speaker
I don't get any money merely celebrating a nice product. Skip the hangover, man. Skip it. Oh, yeah, I had like some very, like, like, gonna eat a pint of ice cream, like, to lay on the floor kind of day. All right, so it's that Atavistian time of the month. So, you know...
00:00:56
Speaker
It's up to you whether you want to know some of the story behind the story before you read the story or read the story before you hear about the story behind the story.
Introduction of Guest: Ray Knudsen
00:01:05
Speaker
Visit magazine.adivis.com and consider subscribing. I don't get any kickbacks so you don't have to feel like I'm promoting something merely to make a buck.
00:01:14
Speaker
I don't make shit, man. We have Ray Knudsen on the show today, this final podcast of 2023, the fourth year of 2020. I've given up all hope that things get better.
Ray's Investigative Piece on Malpractice
00:01:28
Speaker
Ray is a journalist and author of all made up the power and pitfalls of beauty culture. She's written for the Cut, Paste magazine, Esquire, and now the Addivus magazine. That's a nice career so far.
00:01:44
Speaker
She writes a lot about women's health and that's the ecosystem of this piece for the activist about an OBGYN who took advantage of countless women and performed many procedures on their bodies without consent. It raises questions about who women can trust when they're at their most vulnerable, but also who's culpable and who should pay for the crimes of the doctor.
00:02:08
Speaker
Be sure you head into brendanomare.com for show notes and to sign up for my monthly rage against the algorithm newsletter. There's been an upsetting amount of unsubscribes and lack of growth. It sucks when you've been doing something for more than 10 years, but then it gets lumped into the current glut of newsletters and thus gets dismissed. I guess that's just the market telling me it sucks. Same for the podcast itself. That will soon turn 11, but all you can do is trust you're making something of value.
00:02:38
Speaker
and that it will find the people it means to serve when they're ready for
Sayward Darby's Return and Atavist's Goals
00:02:42
Speaker
it. First, we are hearing from Sayward Darby, man, who is back from sabbatical. And this piece and her goals for the forthcoming hellscape of a year, you know, she's going to talk a little bit about that. Didn't we just have an election year? Fuck.
00:03:00
Speaker
Okay, so let's just get into it. I'm not here to waste your time. Let's say hi to Sayward, and then we'll meet Ray, okay? Riff.
00:03:20
Speaker
on the precipice and doorstep of a new year, what are your goals for the activist going forward into 2024 and then also just you as an editor and a journalist yourself?
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah, you know, going into 2024 with Theatavist, the goals are modest insofar as I love what we're doing and we're doing it well and I want to keep publishing great stories that, you know, showcase
Media Industry Challenges
00:03:51
Speaker
Great reporting, great writing, just great storytelling, and we already have quite a few stories actually assigned, and we have a ton of copy in hand right now, which I think I over—I set too many deadlines during my sabbatical, basically, because I came back and had a bunch of stories in hand, which is awesome, because that means we have lots to work on, lots to choose from.
00:04:12
Speaker
But it's fun to already kind of see the shape of the year and the diversity of stories and whatnot. So yeah, I don't know that I have anything particularly unique or anything exciting in mind. We just kind of want to keep doing what we're doing. And the last month especially has been, as it is often this time of year, really, really terrible on the media front. Lots of layoffs, closures.
00:04:38
Speaker
I mean some great news like Jezebel coming back for instance, but you know it's a tough time as it has been for so long in media. I think that The Autivist is you know kind of on its little island doing its thing and I think that that stability really means something. It certainly means something to me. I think it means something to our contributors.
Atavist's Milestone Celebrations
00:04:57
Speaker
and our readers. And so, you know, I really want to make sure that we maintain quality, consistency, and stability just because, I don't know, it's such a tough time and full of, you know, unwelcome surprises. And if I can keep those minimized, that
00:05:15
Speaker
It means I'm doing my job. So, um, so yeah. And then, uh, uh, oh, we do have our 150th issue coming up. So once upon a time, we had a big plan for our hundredth issue to do a live event in New York. We were going to have, uh, various people. Essentially not read their out of his stories, but like tell their out of his stories. Um, we were doing it in conjunction with a storytelling show here in the city called the
00:05:44
Speaker
Um, the tell, uh, Leslie Jamison was going to be there. Barrett Swanson was going to be there. Um, and it was scheduled for March of 2020. So needless to say that did not happen. That was a bummer. Um, so we had our hundredth issue and then also our 10th anniversary, um, all within the pandemic. Um, and so I would love to do something around our 150th issue, um, just to, you know, celebrate having.
00:06:08
Speaker
you know, had such a good run and the fact that we're still running. So we don't know exactly what we're going to do yet. That's, let's see, five, four or five issues away. So a couple months, but hopefully we'll do something
Sayward's Personal Writing Aspirations
00:06:20
Speaker
fun. And how about you on a writer front, journalist front? Yeah, I didn't really write much in 2023 just because I was really focused on getting the magazine set up for my sabbatical and then being on my sabbatical.
00:06:37
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I would love to find something in 2024 that I can really sink my teeth into from a reporting and writing standpoint. Um, but I don't have anything in particular in mind right now. I don't know. Some of the, some of my favorite projects have felt very random, I guess, you know, something has just come across my desk or come to my attention or somebody mentioned something offhand to me. And for me, you know, I need to feel really, really passionate and curious about something to, uh, add it to my full-time plate.
00:07:07
Speaker
So hopefully something along those lines will come along either via an assignment that somebody wants me to do or something I randomly hear and decide that that sounds like something I want to dig into. This is the time of year where maybe people are looking to improve something or maybe level up their ambitions or goals.
Crafting Effective Story Pitches
00:07:26
Speaker
And you can often speak to the fundamentals of good pitching, and good pitching tends to lead to more stories landed.
00:07:33
Speaker
So if there were, you know, something you could point to that, you know, if people are looking to write, you know, better pitches for you or for anybody else out there, you know, what might be a couple, two or three things that you might focus on? Like these are these are the things that at least get us having a dialogue about potentially assigning a story.
00:07:53
Speaker
You know, the out of us is its own weird little thing. And so, you know, pitching for us doesn't necessarily or the things that work in pitching for us don't necessarily work in pitching for other places. But I think, you know, oftentimes people send us really great ideas, but they don't.
00:08:08
Speaker
Um, highlight who the sort of animating character or characters are going to be. Uh, and so, you know, it's, it's an event or, um, you know, this thing that happened or it's a mystery or whatever. And I can see that, you know, I'm like, okay, cool. That's a good story. But.
00:08:25
Speaker
Who are the people going to be? Who are going to be the standout characters in the narrative? And so making sure that pitches really showcase who those figures are going to be is really, really important. And that suggestion goes hand in hand with
00:08:45
Speaker
you know oftentimes people will read about an event of some kind you know I don't know a murder or again a mystery or you know just something that grabs their interest and they'll put together a pitch but they will not have necessarily you know done that initial bit of groundwork to identify who your main sources are going to be you know how you're going to animate the piece
00:09:11
Speaker
And so, you know, oftentimes we'll say, well, that sure that that can make for a really good story. But, you know, who have you talked to? Who are you going to talk to? Who's agreed to talk to you? And people were more likely to assign a story when people have ready and exciting answers to those questions as opposed to just, you know, great. Yeah. You read about an interesting thing and, you know, put together a good a good couple of paragraphs about why it would make for a good story. But
00:09:41
Speaker
There's that essential element of why should we assign it to you? How do we know that you're going to be able to get the story? Because there's nothing worse than somebody ... I mean, there are plenty of things that are worse. But it's always frustrating when somebody promises to deliver this really great story and then can't because ultimately they just can't get people to talk to them or can't get the access that they had hoped for. It's always so disappointing.
00:10:06
Speaker
And so if we can sort of do everything we can to ensure that that's not going to come to pass in the, in the pitching and kind of, you know, brainstorming of how a story might work process, you know, the better for us, better for the writer, better for the story.
00:10:20
Speaker
Very nice. And I think that leads into Ray's piece here and to the points that you had just laid out for pitches that tend to work for you or pitches that don't. What was it about Ray's story when it came across your desk that struck you like, OK, this one has the goods?
00:10:39
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, I'm always interested in stories that, you know, it's a legal story. It's a, you know, something of a redemption story. It's also a health story. And we're always interested in, you know, pitches having to do with, we sort of have some, what's the word I'm looking for? Sort of like,
00:10:59
Speaker
you know, fringe topic, not fringe, like in terms of mainstream, but, you know, things that we just don't write about that often, like that we don't get that many pitches about. And so getting this pitch about, you know, a doctor who had done wrong to a tremendous number of patients and the sort of, you know, medical landscape was something that definitely grabbed me initially. I will say that things like sports fit into this category as well. Just we don't get as many pitches or at least pitches that would work for
00:11:28
Speaker
for us and so yeah, health, sports, science, you know, those kinds of things. SME longtime listeners know at times I will just interject to provide, I don't know, context or explanation, clarity, I don't know. But in this case, you know, say we're saying that they don't get a whole lot of sports pitches and I'm primarily a sports writer. It should be noted, and I think I noted this a couple months ago, but let's just re-up it.
00:11:58
Speaker
Uh, Jana Meisenhalder and Cassidy Randall, they're pieces that ran in the Atavists in the same year, were both anthologized in year's best sports writing, the latest edition, like, in the main volume. Not even notable selection. Like, two Atavist sports stories made that volume. And that's, like, where I would love to be someday. And here it is. Here is what, you know, Sayward and Company were able to do.
00:12:27
Speaker
Okay, this is something of a long interjection, but I just wanted to bring that up. Maybe there's sports writers out there. Consider pitching, because they don't really run that many sports, but when they do, holy shit, you might just get into year's best sports writing. Just saying.
00:12:41
Speaker
So yeah, that was
Victims' Redemption Narratives and Legal Challenges
00:12:42
Speaker
definitely one thing that immediately grabbed me. But then I think, too, there was just this element of this constellation of subjects who had been victimized by this doctor and who were either willing to share their stories with Ray or had shared their stories in court testimony and this feeling of kind of
00:13:05
Speaker
again, redemption almost of, you know, saying, you know, you did this terrible thing to me, and I'm going to sort of like redeem myself and make myself feel whole by telling my story. And I thought that that was very, very moving. There is a bit of a twist on that at the end of the story that I don't want to, you know, necessarily not twist per se, but just an unfortunate fact of the legal system that means that sort of effort to
00:13:32
Speaker
make themselves heard and whole does not go as far as they would like it to, and as far as I'm concerned, as far as they deserve for it to. But it just, it really felt like a story of people whose agency had been stripped from them and whose vulnerabilities had been exploited, who then were able in this story to kind of push back against the person who had done, and the system that had done that to
Ethical Considerations in Investigative Reporting
00:14:00
Speaker
them. So,
00:14:01
Speaker
So those were the elements that really grabbed me from a storytelling perspective. And then too, Ray had a good idea of who she wanted to talk to or had already talked to, and the legal documents, just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages of testimony, exhibits, et cetera. And it became clear that there was just a very rich archive, so to speak, to draw from. And that was also, I think, a really important element in deciding to assign it.
00:14:31
Speaker
And with stories of the Atavistian nature, there's always the question of entry points and how to get into the story. So with this one, what was the kind of dialogue that you were having with Rey about getting into this to get us hooked and get us reading?
00:14:50
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think we both felt, and I should say Jonah definitely assisted on this story because it was something that had been assigned and was sort of in the editing process while I was on sabbatical. So, you know, he was very much part of this conversation too.
00:15:05
Speaker
But I think that having a single patient who could be our entry point through whose experience we could see the way that this doctor operated and exploited his power and really physically and emotionally harmed his patients. And so we wanted it to feel like
00:15:26
Speaker
we were going through this experience with a single person. And then what was great about Deborah, as we call her in the story, not only did this thing happen to her, but then she individually, unaware that she was just one of hundreds of patients who had been victimized,
00:15:45
Speaker
took it upon herself to try to hold him accountable. And there was something really moving about this person thinking that she's alone in this. And then by the end of the first section, we're able to flick at the fact that she's in no way alone and that she had embarked on this crusade that the legal system, the medical system was set up to essentially
00:16:09
Speaker
have her fail at and then there ultimately became power in numbers and so we thought that you know using her as something of a prism through which you suddenly you know then can see just how expansive and multifaceted the story is going to be and then she also has a nice you know from a storytelling standpoint there was
00:16:28
Speaker
She came to play an important role in the investigation into the Doctor. And then by the end of the story, you know, she is in a position now where, you know, she's kind of, it's changed her life in a lot of different ways and interesting ways. And so she felt like a really rich character to use sort of as our backbone in the piece.
00:16:49
Speaker
And some figures in this piece use their real name and then sometimes they're pseudonyms. And what's the dialogue that you're having when you're like, okay, in this instance, it's okay to use a pseudonym.
Historical Context of Abuse in Gynecology
00:17:05
Speaker
But also you are always in the back of your mind is like, you don't want to lean on that too much. And maybe you can speak to that because maybe people don't understand why we need like real names attributed to things most of the time, if not all the time.
00:17:19
Speaker
Yeah, well, I mean, we do not use pseudonyms lightly by any means. You know, we think it's important for people, especially when a story involves, you know, accusations, case, you know, actual convictions, in a legal sense, you know, people
00:17:37
Speaker
having a name attached to a source is vital to the fairness of the piece, not allowing people to be able to hide behind something. But these sources in this story are the ones for whom we use pseudonyms are people who were
00:17:57
Speaker
victimized in very, very intimate ways. The doctor in question is an OBGYN, and what he did to them, in some cases, took their reproductive systems without telling them, put them under anesthesia and took organs that they had not consented to have taken, very much affected their sexual lives, their reproductive lives. And there's just a very
00:18:22
Speaker
clear degree of vulnerability for these sources. And we felt like it was important that if they did not feel comfortable with their names being attached, we could verify everything they were telling us via court testimony and other reporting. We felt like it was important that they feel comfortable telling their stories and then not feel exposed in that process. And I should say that for the most part, I may be wrong.
00:18:51
Speaker
I don't think every single woman who testified in court did so under only her initials, but I think like 99% of them did or something. So this is just a way, roundabout way of saying that the legal system also protected their identities. And so that was something that, you know, the legal system did it. We felt fine, you know, respecting what these women wanted.
00:19:19
Speaker
And I think more than anything, when I'm thinking about pseudonyms, et cetera, we don't want to be in a position to do harm to people who have already had harm done to them or for whom harm is a real risk. And so we really want to come from a place of absolutely telling a story fairly and ethically, but also with compassion. So that is a hugely important part of what we do. And when it comes to pseudonyms, especially
00:19:46
Speaker
And I will say we have an interesting story coming up. I don't want to give anything away where a student is kind of a funny, a funny aspect of the story. But that's a couple months in the future. And it's played a very different way in the story. I'll put it that way.
00:20:02
Speaker
when you see that trust exploited and especially in a case of this nature where some of the women at the center of it, it harkened back to cases of the original like father of OBGYN and stuff and Henrietta Lacks and this invasive stuff that is just truly poisoning and damaging to the body to the extent that they can no longer
00:20:28
Speaker
in some cases, you know, have a family or stuff like that. It's just it
Systemic Issues and Accountability in Healthcare
00:20:33
Speaker
is this idea that we put so much trust in people in the white jacket who might not actually have our best needs and in this case is these women's needs at heart.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was definitely I think, you know, one thing I should also say about why this story grabbed me is, you know, I am a person who has a uterus and, you know, OBGYNs are a feature of my life because, you know, since I have basically, you know, been I don't know.
00:21:02
Speaker
I think I saw one for the first time when I was like 17 or something, and the incredible authority that these people have over their patients. There's a passage in the story where this is described, anybody who's ever been to a gynecologist knows that a first appointment with somebody can be incredibly harrowing because
00:21:28
Speaker
You are asked to, you know, it's not, you go to your GP or to a new GP and they're going to, you know, do you smoke? Do you drink? Like I'm going to look inside your mouth and your ears and I'm going to take your vitals. And with the gynecologist, it's like, are you sexually active? Like who do you have sex with? Have you ever had a sexually transmitted
Building Compelling Stories from Personal Narratives
00:21:45
Speaker
disease? Please take off your clothes so I can stick a scope inside of you. Like it is the most invasive.
00:21:53
Speaker
of commonplace experiences, I guess, because we're supposed to do this at least once a year for our health. And I think there's a degree to which you not only have to trust
00:22:07
Speaker
your providers, but have been told to trust your providers. They know best. Your body is complicated. Your reproductive system is complicated. These people have gone to school. They've been doing this forever. And so if they recommend something, you should do it. And I think that one of the most heartbreaking aspects of this story is
00:22:33
Speaker
witnessing, and this, you know, something I really empathized with, witnessing the, you know, patient after patient after patient, be told by this doctor, you know, if you don't do this, you will get cancer. If you don't do this, you won't be able to have children or, you know, any any number of things that just feels, oh, it has such incredible gravity from, you know, what is your life going to be like perspective. And when a
00:22:59
Speaker
person in a white coat who has examined you or you know looked at your scans or whatever it is says This is what you need in order to survive be able to have children, etc, etc You know, they say yes over and over and over and he
00:23:15
Speaker
is exploiting that trust and exploiting that sort of sociocultural authority that he is given. It's really just heartbreaking. And I think that if you're a reader of this story or telling somebody about this story, I think one of the big takeaways is it's OK to ask questions. It's OK to ask a doctor.
00:23:44
Speaker
Okay, but can you walk me through exactly what that procedure will entail? Do I have other options? I'm getting a second opinion if it's a really drastic diagnosis or suggestion or whatever. Yeah, I would never say, I don't want to tell people to do their own research.
00:24:02
Speaker
Because that can lead you down the dark, doom-filled pathways of WebMD. But definitely being your own advocate is so, so,
Balancing Professional and Personal Life in Writing
00:24:11
Speaker
so important. And I think women especially, and particularly women of color, which I am not, but women of color, there's a long, long history of their bodies being marginalized and exploited, particularly in the reproductive health space.
00:24:25
Speaker
So it's okay to be your own advocate. It's okay to say, well, wait a minute. I have a question about that. Um, or, you know, getting a second opinion. Yeah, it was definitely, um, enraging to read about the ways that he prayed on, uh, again, these women's vulnerabilities. You know, he, he targeted, it seems, uh, you know, vast majority of his patients were on Medicaid.
00:24:48
Speaker
So, you know, people from poor backgrounds, a lot of women of color, you know, just really preyed on who they were, what their vulnerabilities were. And yeah, it's enraging, just truly made me want to throw my computer across the room a few times. Well, very nice. Well, we'll say we're always always a pleasure to get your side of the table on these stories. And it's great to have you back on the pod to talk about these kind of things. So, you know, we'll kick it over to Ray now and then just thanks for the time and happy New Year.
00:25:18
Speaker
Yeah, Happy New Year to you. Alright, that was nice. Good to hear from Sayward again. Ray Knudsen is here to talk about this piece as well as that feeling of mourning that comes when the piece you had in your head will never come for fruition and you just have to surrender to what you've got.
00:25:41
Speaker
earning trust from sources using pseudonyms and the dreaded a pint of ice cream moment also stay tuned for a parting shot man about that aforementioned mourning for what you hoped your book would be and then having to roll with what you've got when you're not happy with what you've got okay
00:26:06
Speaker
For starters here, I asked Ray how she arrived at this story, CNF or so strap in. So I've been reporting more on women's health care lately in my freelancing. And I was kind of looking for something that I could sing my teeth into a little bit and just kind of go more in depth to. So I kind of just poked around and went down several like Google
00:26:34
Speaker
you know, rabbit holes and found this story among other malpractice case among other doctors and medical issues. But this one really stuck out to me in particular, because of how horrifying it is and how there were some stories about it. And there was some national coverage about it, but nothing I had seen that was really particularly in depth. And when you consider all the like true crime and bad doctor
00:27:02
Speaker
kind of stories out there that surprised me a little bit. But yeah, I just looked further into it and I saw that I had a court trial and testimony, which was helpful in material and having enough to work with. So I just looked into it and kind of ran with it. For people who
Organizing Research and Managing Deadlines
00:27:20
Speaker
might not know the cost of maybe finding either police reports or court transcripts of that nature, how much does that cost for you, the reporter, to find that stuff?
00:27:33
Speaker
Um, it costs a lot of time, um, and, and, and, and money. So pay, I used pacer because it's a federal court case. Um, so they have like, uh, in an amount that you can get for free each month, um, of a certain amount of pages, but this was like thousands and thousands of pages. Um, so yeah, I mean, I think it was definitely like several hundred dollars, which of course.
00:27:56
Speaker
At first, I paid for as I was reading them, and I think I did like a little bit at a time when I could, so that I could try to get, you know, under the limit when I was able to. And then I was, for this story, reimbursed, which is not, that's pretty lucky in freelancing these days, I think, to be able to get your expenses reimbursed. So yeah, so it's definitely can cost, you know, a couple hundred dollars if depending on the amount of documents, other courts are easier and more cooperative.
00:28:24
Speaker
to get stuff from so it can definitely cost your time and sanity too, depending on what you're trying to find. Now a moment ago you said something you were looking for something to kind of sink your teeth into. And for you, based on what you had been reading out there
Podcast Recommendation and Reflections
00:28:41
Speaker
and based on your own personal taste, what's the nature of depth and what does that mean to you when you find something that you can sink your teeth into and to kind of blow up?
00:28:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think that what has been really important to me in my healthcare reporting particularly is to take women's pain seriously, physically and emotionally. And I think that this story in particular, like maybe I might be going on a tangent here, but maybe some of the reasons it was overlooked was because it's
00:29:21
Speaker
an OBGYN because it's like gynecological issues and people don't want to talk about it. They don't take it seriously. People don't want to look at it, I guess, I think kind of in the, you know, general culture. So it's important to me to be able to look at that and kind of show historical context of why
00:29:42
Speaker
That's the case of why gynecology in particular is open to these kinds of crimes and this kind of mistreatment of patients and to show how we got here and why people get away with it and why these patients are more susceptible to harm in certain cases. And so that's kind of what I was looking for of like, what are we looking at today at a thing happening today and where did it come from?
00:30:10
Speaker
why is it like this? And then kind of how does that match with my like historical understanding of the medical
00:30:18
Speaker
you know, industry as it is today. And so much of the story is about, you know, a doctor taking advantage of these patients and performing procedures on them that they didn't consent to, hysterectomies among other, among other ectomies, if you will, in their reproductive systems. And it's such a delicate and sensitive topic.
00:30:45
Speaker
So for you when you were trying to find people, vectors to tell the story, how did you find people willing to talk and then engender a certain amount of trust to tell those stories? It was really hard. It was really hard. A lot of people didn't want to talk about it. A lot of people didn't want to talk about it at all. A lot of people didn't want their names attached to it. That's why we use
00:31:12
Speaker
anonymous sources because the people that were willing to talk didn't necessarily want their faces and names to be associated with this forever. It was really difficult. I've reported on sensitive things before and I've talked about people's gynecological issues before and giving birth before and things they've had trouble with before. This was the hardest it was for me to find people that were willing to talk to me. I think it was just explaining where I was coming from and that
00:31:42
Speaker
Um, you know, I wanted to take them seriously and I wanted to listen and they didn't have to share anything that they weren't comfortable with. And they could use, you know, a pseudonym if they wanted to, and just persistence and, and kind of explaining who I was. And, and, you know, I, I was working on this story when I gave birth to my second child. And so I think kind of coming from it, from that angle to, you know, I have two kids and I've been through some,
00:32:12
Speaker
you know, big medical things. And I understand how important that is and how scary that is and how vulnerable you can be. So I just kind of tried to approach it that way. And it was really hard finding people period. There's obviously this doctor had a lot of victims. He was a doctor for almost 40 years in this area. And so people, a lot of people were affected. And I think right after it happened, people were
00:32:39
Speaker
kind of spoken out about how shocked they were. And there were kind of people that spoke to the press then. But finding people to revisit that and kind of dive back into that trauma and that pain was really difficult. And one of our main sources in the story didn't respond to me for months. I mean, months and months and months didn't respond to me. And I called her for what I thought was going to be the last time just to leave her a message and be like, OK, I'm just going to tell her like when the story is coming out and
00:33:09
Speaker
you know, what I hope to say and I'll just leave a message. Like she's not going to answer. And she picked up and we talked for an hour and we kept talking. And that was like, she had told me, she said she, you know, had turned down other reporters and turned down other people, but she, she appreciated, you know, where I was coming from and what I was saying. And so she agreed to talk to me. So yeah, it was really, really difficult. And I think just trying to be honest and upfront with people and then kind of let them be in control of their story and what they want to say.
00:33:37
Speaker
Um, helped, but for some people, I don't know why they decided to talk. It was really difficult. And then other people wanted to talk, but we're in the middle of their own court cases. And so we're advised not to speak by their attorneys, which I understand. And it's a shame for me as a journalist, but like they can't do anything that would, you know, hurt their case. So I got, I got that too.
00:33:59
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And you get a sense that for people going into, you know, whatever, whether it's your general practitioner or OBGYN, you know, if they've got the white coat on, there is just inherent trust involved. And I think it's especially true with an OBGYN because it is such in a private and invasive
00:34:23
Speaker
you know, examination for women to go through, just for routine checkups and everything. And so the fact that there was someone of this nature taking advantage of so many people, and particularly women of color, it just really, you know, it really calls into question who women can trust out there. And the white coat is not an impenetrable shield. No, absolutely. And I think that's part of what makes it so devastating is that
00:34:52
Speaker
It's this person that people are in general taught to trust this doctor. You go there for medical advice and especially in OBGYN, it's like you trust them with your body that you don't show other people. It's not, you know, it's like they're looking at vaginas, at breasts, at your naked body and it's like, it's very vulnerable.
00:35:15
Speaker
your children like people trust these doctors to give birth to their children and that's itself a life-threatening thing and so I just yeah it's very intimate and very important and a lot of why I think gynecology kind of
00:35:33
Speaker
I don't know why patients, I guess, are maybe more vulnerable in that situation is because those kinds of appointments and details aren't always talked about openly. For example, my kids, I was talking about I had two kids, my two-year-old, when we proper going to the doctor, we're like, here's what's going to happen. They're going to take your temperature. They're going to check your eyes and your nose and your throat. And so everyone knows that experience when they go to the doctor, right? But people don't really talk about what happens at a gynecologist openly.
00:36:03
Speaker
So people don't share that information always. And so people, when it goes wrong or when it goes how it's not supposed to, people might not be as aware of that. And they also might not know what's worth questioning, when to push back, and how to get clarity if that dialogue isn't open.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah. And I agree. And I, I very firmly believe that people shouldn't have to be their own doctor. Like I should not have to know, you know, the, the doctor medical name of every single surgery of like what they call it when you take out a certain organ, like, right. Like I should be able to trust my doctor when he says, this is what I'm doing in plain terms. And so I don't think people should have to know how to read.
00:36:52
Speaker
you know, an ultrasound or an x-ray or like know what their symptoms are supposed to mean. That's why you go to the doctor. You're supposed to be able to trust a person who is credentialed, who has their license, who's operating at places that have supposedly checked them out. And there's reasons for that, right? It's you can't operate on yourself. You don't know what's wrong with yourself. And so, yeah, I just don't think I don't think it's anyone's fault. Like if a patient goes somewhere and a doctor says, hey, this is what's wrong with you.
00:37:20
Speaker
And it kind of makes sense based on your, you know, general, you know, layman's knowledge of what's going on, then like, yeah, why, why would you question that? Why would you take that to somebody else when nothing seemed wrong in the first place? You know, I just don't think that these, I don't think his patients were stupid. I don't think they did anything wrong. I just think he took advantage of a lot of holes in the system.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, and because, you know, I know just from, you know, my wife's experience of just getting an appointment with a credible gynecologist is like sometimes like they're booking six or seven months in advance and it's like, okay, in that time there might be some something that crops up and the sooner you nip these things in the bud, the quicker you might be able to get treatment that can lead to not dying.
00:38:11
Speaker
And so this guy at the center of your story was able to get people in and out and he really churned it out so that was in and of itself is very attractive to people who want to get the right care.
00:38:29
Speaker
Yeah. And that's what I think is so nefarious about this is that all the things he did, you could spin as a doctor taking good care of his patients. Right. And that's like why part of why he was able to get away with this for so long. He got people in when they needed to get in. If they didn't have transportation, if they couldn't get time off work and they only had today, he could get you in. He was fast. He respected, supposedly respected your time. You know, he looked like he was listening to people because he
00:38:58
Speaker
They thought he was taking their pain seriously. It was taking their concerns seriously. He was looking into things when other doctors ignored them or wouldn't schedule surgeries or wouldn't tie their tubes or do what they needed done. He would do it. That's what's so icky about it. A lot of things are terrible about it, but he came across as this caring doctor that took care of things and took care of his patients and looked into it.
00:39:26
Speaker
did the procedures and got it taken care of quickly. All of that made people feel taken care of, but all of that was, if you look at it from the other point of view, that was taking advantage of everybody. Those were all the same ways that he got away with what he was doing.
00:39:41
Speaker
Yeah, that's part of the con of it all, because the fact that if a doctor would go to those lengths, you'd be like, wow, yeah, he really does have my best interests at heart. But that was just part of the long game to just get more widgets into the factory that he could churn out at his clinic and then certainly at the hospitals where he would perform many of his procedures. Yeah, it just throws into question. It makes you wonder who you can trust.
00:40:12
Speaker
I think that these patients that I spoke with, how do they go to another doctor again? Their trust in any medical system, in any legal system is just broken. They don't trust anyone. How would you? I talked to a patient who went to an ultrasound after his trial and after everything went down.
00:40:34
Speaker
Uh, the ultrasound tech asked if she had an ovary removed and she thought, Oh my God, did I like, I don't know. Like she didn't know if she still had all of her organs because this was her doctor and he performed so many procedures on her. And like, I just, I can't imagine not being sure of like what's in your body and what happened to you. And like, yeah, going to somebody after that, like, I just, you still have to go to doctors, right? Like you're still a person, you might need something and you might need help with something or need something done. It's not like you can avoid them forever.
00:41:02
Speaker
and trying to go to someone and have any trust. It's just irreparably broken for some of these women.
00:41:10
Speaker
And the piece too, it has obviously those undertones of a lot of the racist science that was performed on, you know, just untold, just so sad of what, and tragic what happened to a lot of enslaved black women to, you know, and then just fast forwarding to even Henrietta Lacks and everything that's gone on there.
00:41:34
Speaker
So, you know, when you were stumbling upon that, like, just how illuminating was that stuff to just to come across? And, you know, what did that say about this? And how did that inform your piece? Yeah, it definitely informed it. I think I tried to report it coming from that context of this branch of medicine is built on the bodies of enslaved black women. Doctors in this field of medicine in particular made
00:42:03
Speaker
their name and made money and crafted procedures by violating these women by performing experimental surgeries on these women. When birth control was developed, there were, you know, medical trials on women in insane asylums who did not consent. And so I think that it's just you can find so many instances, especially in gynecology throughout history in the United States where
00:42:31
Speaker
women's bodies were seen as incidental to the medical progress to be made or as incidental to the doctor making money or making his name or getting famous for a certain type of surgery. And I think I tried to approach reporting the story in that way of understanding that everything that kind of goes on in gynecology today has that history. And that's still very much present in the kind of
00:42:59
Speaker
doctoring that happens today, even with good doctors, it's like the system is set up to take advantage of people. The people that are protected are not necessarily the patients. And I just think that that comes from a long context and long history of women and patients being taken advantage of in particular.
00:43:22
Speaker
And as action was starting to be taken, this notion of like sovereign immunity comes into play. And maybe explain what that is and how that comes to play in the story. Yeah. So sovereign immunity is basically a legal, I don't know, loophole, I guess, where you can't sue the state without the state's permission. So it's been in
00:43:51
Speaker
the United States legal system, like since it began, it's kind of a thing. I think they came from England, they like borrowed it from England's legal system when they were setting up the United States legal system. And so if an entity like a hospital is set up as a public entity that's like government backed, like Chesapeake Regional
00:44:13
Speaker
is a hospital that has a governing board that is appointed by city council. And it was established as a nonprofit hospital by the city. And so it is a state city run, you know, government entity technically. And so you can't sue the hospital. It falls under this sovereign immunity where because it's this
00:44:39
Speaker
municipal entity, people can't really sue the hospital. And one of the patients tried, a lot of patients tried actually, I think several patients named the hospital in their suits. And every single time it got taken off the suit. If one reason didn't work, then the legal team would try another reason and what ended up working and getting the hospital removed from the suit was sovereign immunity was saying that like, oh, actually, like you can't even sue the sensitivity at all.
00:45:09
Speaker
Um, so people would try to hold the hospital accountable and try to, you know, include it in malpractice suits or say, you know, that they were partially responsible and that they, you know, should be held accountable and provide compensation. And, and they were just kind of left out of it because of the sovereign immunity and, and a private hospital does not fall under that umbrella and, and just like, uh, you know, a private
00:45:34
Speaker
store or company is partially responsible for the actions of its employees as they carry out day to day their job duties. If an employee is carrying out their job duties and does harm, that company is partially responsible. But in a sovereign immunity case, they're not.
00:45:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's so, you know, thorny that, you know, they, you know, the clearly where wrong has been done and they're just still trying. There are ways to kind of weasel out of it. It's just an even greater injustice in some not greater injustice, but every bit of an injustice where it's just like, ah, sorry this happened to you, but, you know, I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah. And it's wild because it's like
00:46:21
Speaker
A person can't just walk into a hospital and perform a surgery. That would be illegal. That's assault. That's not a thing that can happen. They have to credential the doctor. The doctor signs papers or gets checked out or does whatever they need to do to be able to work there. I don't know of a good equivalency, but they give
00:46:43
Speaker
permission basically for this doctor to perform there and to do operations. But the hospital claims that they're not responsible for this doctor's actions, even though they checked the doctor out and said it was okay for you to operate here. So it's just this legal mess that this hospital is taking advantage of to not accept or take any responsibility for the things that happened in its operating rooms. And it just kills me. It kills me because
00:47:12
Speaker
The hospital made money from Dr. Perway's operating at the hospitals. They got to charge insurance companies for the patients that stayed there, for the operations that happened. And so they made money from it. And they're expanding. The hospitals are expanding. They're growing. They're adding new bets. They're adding new machinery. They're doing new things because of money they've made over the past however many years. And part of that money came from
00:47:41
Speaker
women's organs being stolen from from procedures that were done without their consent. And it's just like, how do you square that? How do you how do you take that money, and do something with it and, and know that it came on the back of these women and patients that you were supposed to protect that you were supposed to help. And I just like it just kills me and I can't because a lot of people, a lot of the patients that I spoke with feel very
00:48:06
Speaker
betrayed about it and feel like the hospital is just as big of a story as the doctor. Yeah, and this is by no means an equal comparison, but it's kind of like an athlete who has like, I don't know, is a bit of a, let's just say a handful, but he's really good. And so the team will be like, you know, we're just gonna kind of turn a blind eye. The better you are, the more they'll put up with your bullshit.
00:48:35
Speaker
And it's kind of like he was able to perform so many procedures that, like you said, basically made this hospital probably millions of dollars that they're able to just put more beds, get more patients in there for whatever procedures are going to happen. They're going to keep growing and growing and growing. And so this is like built on a very just almost an evil foundation. And that doesn't square.
00:49:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's true about the entire healthcare system, right? It's, you know, in many ways a for profit and this is technically a not for profit hospital, but it has to make money to do you know, that doesn't mean that it doesn't make money. That means that it just doesn't go to certain places that money. So yeah, it's our whole healthcare system is set up in a way that has to be making money.
00:49:24
Speaker
And so that again creates the opportunity for these things to happen for someone who is making money to get away with terrible things because the hospital needs money to be able to continue being a hospital.
00:49:37
Speaker
And something I like to talk about also is kind of like, you know, as we get into the writing of the piece is when you're thinking about structure and maybe even entry points of a story of this nature. And, you know, you dive in with Deborah and her experience here. And so there's just, just in terms of constructing the story and sitting down to write this thing, you know, just how did that set itself up to be the entry point for this?
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, Deborah's story was always one that we hoped to start the piece with, but she is the source that didn't respond to me for a really long time. And so I didn't, we just weren't sure what we would feel comfortable. And so she filed a lawsuit herself in federal court, which I was able to get a hold of the documents from that lawsuit. So I knew a lot of what happened in her story before I spoke with her. And then I saw also that she testified
00:50:38
Speaker
in the Perways trial. I had a lot of what happened to her and was super interested in her story because it's so compelling. She tried to sue this doctor all by herself when a lawyer wouldn't take her malpractice case. Her tenacity and the way she
00:50:58
Speaker
approaches things was always really admirable to me. And really, it was a good story. And she was someone I felt like I could really relate to of, you know, she, she tried to be on top of things and on top of her health. And she got, you know, a bad test result and was trying to take care of it and do the right thing. And she just got taken advantage of and ended up in a really horrible situation. And so her story was always very dramatic and very
00:51:28
Speaker
you know, interesting. And we were we were really hoping to start out with that. But like I said, I didn't get in touch with her for many months while reporting the story. And so we weren't sure if we wanted to lead off with this kind of story without talking to the person and, you know, making sure that they were OK with it. And we weren't sure if we were going to use her name or not and things like that. And so we tried to do it mostly chronologically. It's kind of how we at least started the structure.
00:51:56
Speaker
Um, and then with the hope that we could lead with Deborah's story and get in touch with her. And luckily we did get in touch with her and she was okay with us using her story and she was able to talk to us and she was amazing to talk to. And, and like I said, I just really admire her, the way she views things and her tenacity and the way she tries to look out for other people. And, um, it was really.
00:52:24
Speaker
in honor to speak with her and to speak with everyone that I spoke with. But yeah, so we really wanted to start with her and we kind of tried to set things up chronologically and then kind of take it from there. But there was a question of whether we would start with her or not, or whether, you know, if I needed to go deeper into another patient's story that I had spoken with, and maybe we should start with that. And so it kind of, I think at one point, Deborah's story was not the lead.
00:52:50
Speaker
But then after we got ahold of her and got it worked out, we put it back at the top. So that's kind of where we started and then kind of hope to take it chronologically from there, even though we kind of go back and forth a little bit in the structure. It's mostly things were going well until they weren't. And then things fall apart pretty spectacularly. All right. At what point in the research and the reporting, do you start to feel confident that you can then begin the writing? Oh, boy. I was not very confident.
00:53:19
Speaker
about, I mean, I struggle with this a lot. Like I said, it was really hard for me to get people on the record. So I ended up going to Virginia several months into my reporting so that I could talk to people face to face. And that is when after that is when I felt like I could start writing because I talked to several of the patients. We sat down for a long time and we spoke and I felt like
00:53:50
Speaker
I had it after that. So after I went to Virginia, I saw where things were happening in the hospitals, the doctor's offices. I talked with the patients face-to-face. That is the point where I started writing. And I still had a lot to do after that. I still hadn't made contact with Deborah, and I still had follow-up calls and stuff like that. But yeah, that's the point where I started outlining and started drafting.
00:54:16
Speaker
see what I was missing and see how far I could get and see kind of what else I still needed to do. Do you get a sense that you know a lot of people a lot of writers or journalists it's just um there's never a moment when you're ready to write you have to just kind of write before you feel like you're ready and then you have to kind of figure it out there as you're laying down road. Oh yeah definitely I feel like that I just feel like um
00:54:42
Speaker
I am a person that has to just start and see where I get to. And that's not to say I don't outline or anything because I do. But I just need to start and then see what gaps there are and see what we need to fill in and see where we need it to go. So yeah, I definitely feel like I had to start. I had to just start and I had to just go. And I also have two small children. And so I don't have a lot of time to just
00:55:10
Speaker
sit down and start where I want to start. I have to just take the time that I have and just go do as much as I can in the pockets of time that I have. And so that kind of forces my hand a little bit too.
00:55:21
Speaker
Yeah, maybe expand on that a little bit. You know, if any popular creativity influencer out there is just like, you know, you got to carve out this amount of time to do your writing and blah, blah, blah. But for someone like yourself who might have just agents of chaos running around and you're like, do I have a half hour today or two hours, 90 minutes or 20 minutes? I don't know.
00:55:47
Speaker
So how have you cultivated a sense of this is how I can get work done amidst unpredictability? Yeah, I don't know if there's like a real good sense of it or you just like are so panicked. You just go. So I think when I had some time, I just was like, OK, I got to go. I got to get this done. I did, you know, a little bit after bedtimes here and there. My husband is
00:56:10
Speaker
incredibly supportive of what I was doing. And so we would schedule blocks of time for me to go work. So it was like, you know, an hour here, two hours there, 30 minutes, stuff like that, where I really was able to get the job done. And then if something came up, then you just kind of have to run with it. And like, there isn't time to just sit and wonder what you're going to do. So if one thing isn't working, then I'm going to go to another section or I'm going to look at another thing I need to look at because
00:56:40
Speaker
I can't just sit down and do nothing when I have those pockets of time available.
00:56:58
Speaker
there's this idea that you need like that you know that four or five hours of at a time to sink in and sometimes they tell people you know what like if you got 10 minutes just set that timer for 10 minutes and you'll be surprised what you can get done in 10 minutes and it's kind of hearing what you say kind of echoes that it's just like okay I have this block of time and I imagine that over the time that you've developed this that
00:57:25
Speaker
you've probably been surprised with yourself what you can get done when you're like, okay, I might have 20 minutes, let's go. And you get quite a bit done. Yeah, absolutely. And I have also set timers, you know, like, okay, I have 15 minutes, like, let's just get something done in that amount of time. And, and I think part of it is just working with what you've got. And so you need to just go as much as you can. And then part of it, like I said, is kind of sheer panic of like, Oh, I have to get this done. And I have a lot of words to go, you know, and so, um,
00:57:53
Speaker
Yeah, but I think that's just how you build something big. You have to just do it a little bit at a time. And when I was working on my book, um, I got up, I had another job. I was, I got up early and would do a little bit at a time. And like people would talk about, yeah, like writing four or five hours or days at a time or weekends at a time. I write paragraphs at a time. Like I write sentences at a time because I just don't have necessarily
00:58:22
Speaker
the time that's going to lead to pages and pages. And plus I don't have like the mental capacity to just sit and write for five hours at a time. Um, maybe people do, but I just don't, I just, I just don't think I can do that necessarily and still get something worthwhile at the end of it. You know, like at a certain point, my brain is fried anyway, and I need to take a break. So that's just for me, sometimes how it shakes out. Anyway, I kind of wonder sometimes like, what would it have been like if I had
00:58:48
Speaker
days and weekends and hours and hours to sit on an uninterrupted to do that. And like, I don't, I don't know, but I also think that sometimes you just have to call it done because I could, I could still be working on this, right? Like I, I see things that I want to get deeper into or do differently or, you know, write better, but I just don't, it just, sometimes it just has to be done.
00:59:14
Speaker
Yeah, there eventually, there comes a point, and I'm kind of, I'm starting to feel the crunch of this book deadline I'm on, and there's this moment where, like, you kind of have, over the course of the writing and the reporting, you have, like, the vision of what you hope the article or the book is gonna be, and then the closer and closer you get to the deadline, you're like, eventually you have to just resign yourself to
00:59:39
Speaker
just the material you've got and what you're at the mercy of and just surrender to that and do the best you can. And I'm right in that moment where I'm having to kind of resign myself to that surrender. And is that something you've experienced? Oh, absolutely. And I think that because I know the women who couldn't talk to me, because I know some of the stories that I'm missing,
01:00:05
Speaker
or I couldn't get to, or the sources that wouldn't agree to speak with me. I know several other ways this story could have looked. I know several other stories that I'm missing that I wish I could have included. And so that is really hard. It could have gone a lot of different ways. And I am bummed about that. I'm bummed that these people couldn't get on the record with me. I'm bummed that I couldn't talk to people I wanted to talk with. And so I know what's missing.
01:00:33
Speaker
Um, but I don't, I mean, hopefully the story in its final version doesn't feel like anything's missing. Um, but yeah, for sure. I like know the things that could have been included and I, that I couldn't get. And, and, but yeah, it's like, as a journalist, you don't get the best story that exists from what happened. You get the best story from what.
01:00:56
Speaker
people will say to you, right? And so that's like you said, like you have the material you have, you have the people that will talk to you and you just have to do what you can with that. Yeah. And it's I guess if it's done right, the reader won't know any different and it's going to be like, oh, this is fine. But like deep down, you know, like, man, there were 50 more people I wish I could have spoken to for this. I just didn't have the time or no one returned my calls. And then you're kind of left with this ache of what might have been.
01:01:23
Speaker
And that's that's truly what I'm wrestling with at the moment. I got to get my head. I got to I got to get out of that headspace. But right now it's just like I'm mourning for the people that I haven't been able to reach yet, even though I still might be able to get them. I'm like, it's just kind of eating me up like this isn't going to be what I thought it was going to be. And that's it's killing me. Oh, yeah, I had like some very like
01:01:51
Speaker
like gonna eat a pint of ice cream like to lay on the floor kind of days because it was like I was like so close to like getting some interviews that I really wanted and that I thought would like make a really good story and these people like I said like some of them wanted to speak with me and so it felt so unfair of like they wanted to share their story of what happened to them. I wanted to talk to them. Someone out there probably wants to read about it and there was this
01:02:18
Speaker
thing of this court case or these legal things going on where they couldn't speak or felt like they couldn't speak. And I think that's probably true with a lot of people that work at the hospital too. They just don't feel comfortable responding or they still work there and are afraid for their jobs or what have you. And so, yeah, I just felt like, I don't know if this is going to work out and no one will talk to me. These people want to and they can't or they can't because of X, Y, and Z. And so, yeah, I just felt really
01:02:47
Speaker
unsure about what we were going to get. But I think, yeah, I don't know. Like I said, the people I did talk to were amazing. We're so forthcoming with something so vulnerable. And I really feel honored to be able to speak with them about it and that they trusted me with something so vulnerable. And so yeah, I mean, eventually I got to a point where I was more at peace with
01:03:15
Speaker
with what it looks like and what I'm missing, but yeah, there's definitely kind of a, uh, I know what this could have been. Um, but also just as a, with this doctor and with his patients and his stories, there's so many people who are affected that you could write one of these stories for every single patient, probably because they're so affecting and there's so many lives were changed and so many horrific things were done.
01:03:44
Speaker
And so yeah, at some point you have to decide what to include.
01:03:49
Speaker
What would you identify as your strengths in your craft, be it the reporting, the research, or the writing, the rewriting, editing, and so forth? How do you maybe try to double down on those instead of a lot of us, we were like, I'm shitty at that, and I'm just going to focus on how crappy I am. I definitely do some of that, too.
01:04:15
Speaker
Um, I think, I think my strength is definitely in, in reporting and researching. Um, I want to tell the clearest story, but I don't know that I'm like a writer Lee writer. Like I, I just don't know. I, other people I think are way better at wordsmithing than I am, for instance. Um, but I think that I can find, I can find people, I can talk to people, I can find,
01:04:43
Speaker
documents, I can make connections. I think I'm good at talking to people. I think I've talked to people about some pretty vulnerable things and I tried to get some good details and try to listen to their story and I think I'm good at listening. I think I'm definitely stronger at reporting and researching than I am at crafting a beautiful sentence. This story I think is so
01:05:11
Speaker
Like, you don't have to be a beautiful writer to tell this story. It kind of tells itself. It's like the things that happened are what's important. And so I think, you know, simplicity and clarity is what's important.
01:05:23
Speaker
in this case for this kind of story. Oh 100% I think a lot of people they might get into this thinking they can write their way out of a reporting problem and the better reporter and researcher you are the easier the writing is
01:05:43
Speaker
And the more you can just let the story do the heavy lifting, all you're doing is you're kind of just a messenger for the story and just greasing those skids with all that great research and reporting that you did. And then you don't have to try to light fireworks on the page. There's a time and a place for that. But in a story of this nature, you don't want to get in the way of everyone who, like you said earlier, that you were honored to tell their story. You don't want to get in the way of that.
01:06:13
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And like I said, they're so harrowing and so emotional on their own. Yeah, it's like you don't need me to dress up what happened to Deborah. Like she did that. She did that on her own and what she went through and what she said about herself is way more interesting than what I could say about her. And so, yeah, it just and I do feel like it took it was so I feel like it was so much so much reporting and so much information.
01:06:43
Speaker
to distill and to go through. But that also meant that if we had a question or were wondering about something, I usually had the information available to answer that question or to fill in. So I think because of that, it was helpful in the editing process or if someone was like, well, what happened at this point? It's not usually because I didn't know. It's because I maybe didn't
01:07:14
Speaker
you know, worded clearly the first time around or something like that. Hmm. And what kind of systems have you put in place so you have good access to all the information you, you know, you've you've curated so you can access that as you craft the piece? Yeah, it's a process for sure. So I use Scrivener to write and I have folders for
01:07:43
Speaker
a lot of different things. I have folders for the sources that I talk to, the interviews and the information about those women. I have folders for the locations, the hospitals, what happened there, their addresses, information that I need on those. I have folders for the court testimony and I put the PDFs of the testimony in there and then as I was reading through them, I would make my own index.
01:08:13
Speaker
um, of like, here's on what page this person starts talking. Here's who they are. Here's like a couple keywords of what they talk about. Um, and so that was a way for me to be able to search through my own files to find what I needed and to be able to look at kind of like, uh, you know, an index or a table of contents, almost of, of the court testimony itself, which I said is like thousands of pages. Um, and so.
01:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of a process. I had a timeline that I created in Excel. In the timeline, I would have the date, the thing that happened, and the document that I found it from, and the page number that it was on. That was something helpful for me so that I could go back to it and find it, and also helpful for our fact-checker, hopefully, so that I could share all my documents and
01:09:12
Speaker
the timeline and the index. And if we had a question about where did we get this information or can we clarify x, y, and z, I could look and say, oh, that's on day five of the testimony. Here's what page it's on. And here's the witness that was speaking. So that's what I did. And that's kind of, I mean, I guess it was a process that expanded as I started working on it. But one thing I wanted to be sure and do was have that timeline and be able, when I was reading and taking notes on the testimony,
01:09:41
Speaker
to make sure that I had who was speaking and on what page they started and stuff like that. And when you're done with the piece and you submit it, and it's by and large pretty well done, what's the prevailing feeling that you experience at the completion of a piece of this nature? Oh, relief, for sure, relief. It just feels like a huge weight lifted. And even, I'm sure,
01:10:10
Speaker
At the point I'm talking to you, it hasn't been published yet, so I feel like I'm sure there will be things that come with that and feelings, but every step we get closer feels a little bit lighter, a little bit like, okay, that weight was taken off, let's go to the next thing. The first time I turned in a draft, I've been working on it for months and months.
01:10:33
Speaker
it just felt like, okay, I can actually like relax this weekend. Like I don't have to be working right now. So that was good. It was definitely really for sure. But I still, I mean, to be honest with you, I still haven't like closed all my computer tabs. Like I still have my Scrivener dock open. Like I'm, I haven't shut the door yet because I'm afraid something else will come up. Yeah. Just that sense of panic. This living thing is just, it's never going to die. It's always going to be there.
01:10:59
Speaker
Right. Yeah. Very nice, Ray. Well, before I let you get going, the thing I love to ask writers at the end of the show is just a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And that can just be anything you're excited about. So I'd extend that to you. What might you recommend for the listeners out there? Yeah. I have a podcast recommendation, actually. The Retrievals came out from Serial earlier this year, and it is about a fertility clinic
01:11:29
Speaker
where a person that worked at the clinic replaced fentanyl and pain medication with saline solution. So women were undergoing procedures without pain medication at this fertility clinic. And the podcast is just really wonderfully done. And it's another thing that takes women's pain seriously. And it kind of shows the cracks and the holes in the system that allowed
01:11:58
Speaker
these things to happen. And it shows how, again, women aren't necessarily taken seriously when they talk about their pain and the real repercussions that that has. So yeah, the Retrievals podcast was a really tough listen, but really, really wonderful.
01:12:17
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Ray, just this piece is an incredible piece of journalism. And yeah, it was a treat to read as hard as it was as the subject matter. It was truly a gripping read. And yeah, I hope this shines a light in the end. It definitely does justice to the people who entrusted you with their story. So thanks for the work and thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. That means a lot. Thank you so much for having me.
01:12:49
Speaker
Hey, thanks for listening. CNFers, thanks for another fine year of CNF pod. Thanks to Sayward for keeping this Atavistian train going. Thanks to Jonah as well. And for this particular episode, thanks to Ray for making the time and talking some shop.
01:13:07
Speaker
It being the final episode of 2023, I know many of you are likely looking to the new year with new goals. You know, be it for your writing or maybe your body or your mind, or maybe you're like, I'm not getting on that resolution treadmill at all. I'm sick of it. And I'm just gonna call it a win to merely get out of bed in the morning.
01:13:34
Speaker
I have one goal, it's not really a resolution, and it's to just be sure I hit this deadline, which is accelerating at me. I'm at the Event Horizon.
01:13:46
Speaker
And by the time you hear this parting shot, I will have crossed into the 80,000 words territory. None read, by the way. None of it divided into chapters. I have no idea what I'm doing. I still have a ton of research and interviews to conduct. I still have to clean up transcripts because Otter, the transcribing service is terrible and you have to comb through it all.
01:14:14
Speaker
You have to. And it is illegible. It'll come up with these words and be like, that's not right. That's not even close. Okay, but after all that throat clearing, this is my point. I'm reaching the phase where I have to just resign myself to the book that's in front of me and not the book I want to write anymore. I'll never track down certain people. And after a dozen voicemails, they're not gonna call me back.
01:14:42
Speaker
You know, sure, there's likely a hundred articles and random newspaper archives. I have no idea exist that will lay untouched by me because I couldn't travel to them or access them. Or like I said, didn't even know they were there on account of maybe not having quite enough time. I mean, they did have enough time and I wasted it. You know, it's a morning, the book that might've been for the book you have to complete.
01:15:07
Speaker
So, no, I don't feel good about what I've done and what will hopefully come out if my contract isn't voided. Did I not hustle enough? Did I not ask good enough probing, deep, non-superficial questions? Did I cheap out by not physically traveling to places? Though I couldn't because of certain home circumstances. There's just no way I could leave. Did I waste too much time on newspapers.com or sportsillustrated.com?
01:15:36
Speaker
doing research, not just reading random stuff. Did I start writing too late? There was a point where I worried whether or not I'd reach 85,000 words, which is the low end of the contractually obligated word count.
01:15:51
Speaker
You know, finding relatively new material. Uh, now my worry is that I'm going to have, like, is there going to be enough time for me to just write through my timeline? Yeah. This, this draft might be, I mean, it feels like it's on pace to be 120,000 words long. I hope for everyone's sake. That's not true. You know, with little more than three months to go.
01:16:12
Speaker
We're likely looking at more writing and rewriting. And if I'm lucky enough, maybe I'll land a few new phone calls here and there that I can pepper out throughout. Gotta follow up with certain people too to flesh out other details. You know, then so be it. It's just about...
01:16:29
Speaker
that time where you just have to surrender to what you've got. And I'm grossly unsatisfied with what I've got, which is a bummer. It's sad for the story, and it's sad for my future writing books. I mean, if this doesn't pan out, it's bartending time. That's about all I'm qualified to do. Anyway, 2024 is here. I dread it. I wish it wasn't coming.
01:16:54
Speaker
But for the person who is so scared of not finishing almost to the point of paralysis, I can feel good about this. It's a fucking leap year, man. One extra day. Happy New Year, CNFers. If you can't do, interview. See ya.