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Episode 306: Dan Schwartz
219 Plays3 years ago
Dan Schwartz (@danjschwartz) is a freelance investigative journalist based out of Colorado. He's got a new piece in the Atlantic about climate change and how local weathermen are the most trusted people to sound the alarm about it.
Social: @CNFPod
Support: patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes and newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
The Struggles of Writing and Content Creation
00:00:01
Speaker
I think every time we sit down to write, we feel a bit weird about it. Maybe it's just me. We're trying to lock in and the words seem like mud, all cloudy and filthy. And well, kind of like these words that are spilling out of my mouth, am I right? Kind of makes me want to say. Like the old newspaper reporter in me was like, come on, you fucking slow butt head.
Introduction to the Guest: Dan Schwartz
00:00:33
Speaker
Oh well, this is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. This non-award nominated podcast is where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. How is it going? His birth certificate might say Dan Schwartz, but you can call him a FOIA guy. He's at Dan J. Schwartz on Twitter and his website, which is amazingly designed by, uh, I'm gonna, I probably pronounced this wrong, but let's, let's just say JAMA.
00:01:03
Speaker
Nickman is danjswartz.com. You can find links to his work there, one of his latest pieces, depending on when you listen to this. Who knows? You might listen to this five years from now and it's not going to be his latest piece because you know what? He's a working journalist. But right now...
00:01:22
Speaker
March 2022. All right. Latest piece is for the Atlantic.
Weather Journalism and Climate Skepticism
00:01:27
Speaker
And it's about the people who have the best chance at convincing climate skeptics about the climate crisis. Oh, that's right. It's weather on the nines. It's the local weather people. Fun fact, I wrote a profile about a local weatherman who overcame a stutter to become a beloved, beloved weather personality. Bet you didn't know that, so you had efforts. Yeah, that's right. I do things sometimes. I do the thing.
00:01:52
Speaker
Anyway before that let's do some housekeeping CNFers want to remind you to keep the conversation going on Twitter at CNF pod net creative nonfiction podcast on Instagram It's a it's it's it's labor to type that in but once you find it, you know, follow it. Why not? It's what we do now I guess you can also support the podcast by becoming a paid member at patreon.com slash CNF pod slash
00:02:16
Speaker
As I say, this show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Members get transcripts, chances to ask questions of future guests, special pods in the work, transcripts, fun stuff.
Podcast Support and Structure
00:02:28
Speaker
I mean, you get it. You get it.
00:02:32
Speaker
Freeways to support the show. I get it. I understand sometimes forking over even a few bucks a month is a hard ask. I get it. But there are freeways to support the show. You can leave kind reviews on Apple podcasts or a rating on Spotify.
00:02:47
Speaker
written reviews for our little podcast that could go a long way towards validating this enterprise for the way we're seeing effort just strolling by podcast alley and be like hmm look at that in this episode with Dan Schwartz we talk about his fantastic piece for the Atlantic his struggles with reporting adding dollops of humor in to leaven the
Dan Schwartz's Path to Journalism
00:03:12
Speaker
bread
00:03:12
Speaker
structure, writing, you know, the writing of it. Duh. Being edited and interviewing for narrative. Ooh, that's a juicy one, man.
00:03:23
Speaker
There's also mention of Gloria Liu. She has episode 300 fame in this episode. She comes up a little bit with Gloria's dance partner and vice versa. So that was a gem of a conversation in the milestone episode number three, Hondo. Check it out, but not until we jam right here with episode 306. You ready? Let's riff.
00:04:00
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, my my interest in journalism was it it seemed like a viable way to be a writer. I
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, in high school, I had some teachers that kind of got me into riding and they praised me and I was like, oh, maybe this is something, I enjoyed it. And I thought maybe this is something I'm good at. And then in college, I was just obsessed with skiing and rock climbing and all that stuff. And so I didn't really, I just wanted to be an outdoor bro.
00:04:30
Speaker
but i was still reading a very crack hour of you i guess you're right yeah um god i was insufferable back then um i guess we all are in our 20s but uh oh for sure and what way were you insufferable oh like i just i had my shirt off all the time you know just
00:04:50
Speaker
It's really cringy now that I think about it. Just like my ego, like a scarf around my neck for everyone to see. But I'd be like slack lining, shirtless, and climbing in our little bouldering gym shirtless, making a lot of noise. Yeah, that's kind of who I was for a little while in college.
Influences and Inspirations in Writing
00:05:11
Speaker
But I like to read a lot.
00:05:14
Speaker
There's been a lot of Steinbeck in Hemingway and Vonnegut and Didion in college. And then Professor Bo Nackley, he was teaching political science. He pulled me aside. He's like, you should consider journalism. And he introduced me to Tyrone Shaw, who was my first journalism professor. And yeah, I think I was 19 or 20 at that point. Nice. That's kind of where it started.
00:05:41
Speaker
Yeah. So you mentioned several of the novelists and then Diddy and also who wrote novels too. But who were some of the maybe some long form magazine writers and even some of the narrative nonfiction book writers that you started to sink your teeth into around those times in your early 20s?
00:06:01
Speaker
don't like much of Hunter S. Thompson's work. His later work, I just feel like it's kind of off the rails and a little too undisciplined. But Hell's Angels was a book I read really early on. And I just thought, holy shit, this is journalism. I read some early Norman Mailer. I wasn't
00:06:22
Speaker
too crazy about that. I tried to read the executioner song and kind of lost interest in that. After I realized it was fiction, for some reason, I thought I was a work in journalism. My professor had us read like a bunch of old classic magazine stuff. And I can't remember the names of it. I think, I think like one of the
00:06:40
Speaker
early bits of magazine work that I read that really blew my mind was CJ Chivers, The School. It's
Techniques and Challenges in Journalism
00:06:48
Speaker
like one of Esquire's top 10 classics. I guess it's topical now, but I think it's about a school in Beslan, Russia, if I have that correctly, and some terrorists seized it. There was just a huge firefight and about one man trying to save his family and get him out of that because they were held hostage.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I think I read that, yeah, in college or just out of college and that kind of, that piece really, really blew my mind.
00:07:14
Speaker
Did you read any Joe Mitchell when you were in college, Joseph Mitchell? Yeah, I don't know why I didn't. I don't know why I didn't bring him up. Actually, my professor did his MFA on Joseph Mitchell. And it's so funny you mentioned him. Actually, yeah, it was it was I read his two of his compilations up in the old old hotel and my ears are bent, I think. And he was super influential on me. Actually, I read I read as much. Actually, he was probably the he was probably the journalist who influenced me the most in the early days.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah, just his his like level, his his empathy that he had for strange figures or people, most people probably wouldn't want to really give the time of day to. And also his level of detail. Just in scenes just just really, I was really impressed with that.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, the Professor Seagull piece, that real long one at the end of Up in the Old Hotel. That one blew me away when I read that. I had a great professor in college, Norman Simms, and I took a class with him. It was a literary journalism in the 20th century.
Impactful Stories and Journalism Satisfaction
00:08:24
Speaker
And so we read a lot of he assigned up in the old hotel and I remember reading that the professor seagull piece at the end and it was like very long but I I remember staying up late that the entire night I read that to finish it because it was just like so wacky and funny and you know not really realizing at the time but it was almost
00:08:43
Speaker
like allegorical for Mitchell who like struggled to write the novel he wanted to write and here's like Professor Seagull saying like I you know I couldn't you know I've got this book that I'm writing but I can't show it to you yet and then you know all that all that was going on it was like really just really him overlaying his experience on Seagull so it's like a really cool parallel track
00:09:03
Speaker
Oh man, I actually, I never even, I got to read that stuff again. I feel like... It's been forever for me. Yeah. The problem with like reading all this great stuff when you're young is you don't really quite have the analytical brain for it, I feel like. Yeah. But then you can never read it again fresh, I guess, unless you get like some head injury or something.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, Joseph Mitchell. That's so funny. You bring him up. I'm ashamed. I didn't remember him him like Joseph Mitchell Steinbeck in Hemingway. Unfortunately, all three white men, I guess, Joe, Joe Didion, too, though, she's a little too intellectual for me, like those those three in particular, though, were very formative for me in my early days.
00:09:41
Speaker
Yeah. At what point do you realize you want to do more sort of that long form kind of narrative work versus, you know, some of the more just pure reporting stuff that's more like reports versus story, if that makes any sense.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, no, it makes it makes total sense. I mean, news versus story, narrative versus the article. Immediately, I am. Yeah. As soon as I started taking the journalism classes, all I wanted to do was long form. And this was just this, this was like a conflict that ran through my career until recently, like when I can actually do it now. But, but
00:10:16
Speaker
Yeah, I had that ambition immediately. And then I talked with some journalists. This one guy, Neil Shea, who's like a lifer at Matt Gio, he's done so much incredible. I mean, he's just one of the most incredible magazine writers I know. He mentored me a little bit, or quite a bit in the beginning. And he said, it'd be tough just to jump straight into the magazine journalism. You need to learn the basics, and you need to work in newspapers first. And a few other people told me that too.
00:10:46
Speaker
And I hated newspaper work initially, and it was so goddamn hard. I couldn't even listen to people attentively enough to take notes on what they were saying, and then forget about taking notes by hand. But I wanted to do magazine stuff from the beginning, but I knew I couldn't jump straight to it.
00:11:07
Speaker
Right. With that introductory reporting, if you will, what were some of the growing pains that you were experiencing as you were trying to learn those skills?
00:11:18
Speaker
Oh God, they were mini and they were profound. I got my first newspaper job, I think. So I graduated, I'm 33 now, I think I graduated in 2011 or 2012 and I got my first newspaper job up in a little town, Kenai, Alaska. And that was just hell on earth. I mean, it was great in so many ways, but I just had no idea what I was doing. Initially I struggled with just the practical basic skills like,
00:11:47
Speaker
like attentive listening, actually hearing every word that someone speaks. And then I also struggled with capturing
Balancing Personal Life and Journalism
00:11:53
Speaker
what they said and capturing the relevant parts. At first, I used a recorder. But as soon as the recorder started playing, I couldn't pay attention. I was having a hard time paying attention to the person because I feel like I was being lazy. John McPhee feels that way, too. But I mean, granted, he just turned 91. But that was always his thing, where the recorder actually makes you lazy and actually turns your brain off.
00:12:16
Speaker
It depends. You can go either way with it. Either you can listen better because you know you don't have to scribble like crazy and you're going to mess up and you can't read your handwriting, or you zone out because you're like, okay, this thing's doing the listening for me.
00:12:28
Speaker
I think, actually, that sounds familiar. I think I've read something about him, given his opinion on that. I'm in his camp in that regard. My girlfriend, Gloria, who you interviewed, I think she uses the recorder a lot and she doesn't have that problem. And I've worked with other journalists who record everything too and don't have that problem. But it just, I don't know, maybe I'm different now, but I'm afraid of the recorder because it kind of shut off my brain. But I had to develop, this is really hard, just kind of a way of taking notes by hand.
00:12:58
Speaker
And yeah, and I find it took me a long time. I got a lot of corrections. And my first newspaper job, which with many, many years in between those, and now I've been able to mention without breaking out in a sweat. Did you develop your own shorthand? Kind of. I actually wanted to develop, is it Gregorian shorthand? Like, I actually wanted to learn. Greg shorthand, yeah. Oh, Greg shorthand, yeah. I actually wanted to learn.
00:13:28
Speaker
Learn that, but then that guy Neil Shea was like, No, don't don't waste your time doing that. He's like, I just developed kind of a chicken scratch. And it works for me. And, and so yeah, I, I did, I wish I brought a notebook down here, but I developed my own kind of shorthand and only I can read it. And then if too much time passes, then I can't read it at all. So I have to, I have to go back and kind of like correct it with red pen to make, make sure I've memorialized certain notes.
00:13:53
Speaker
I'm with you. See, I tend to lean on the recorder just because whatever
Pitching and Writing for The Atlantic
00:13:58
Speaker
my... I like that it captures everything because I tend to... I'm kind of like you. If I don't go back to my notebook quick enough...
00:14:09
Speaker
I won't be able to read that word and then even though I'm scribbling like crazy and I'm getting taken down what they're saying like the quote isn't you know verbatim and and then if I have to spackle in holes from what I can't keep up with them I'm then patching in those holes with like kind of words that just kind of make sense to me even though maybe they didn't say it exactly that way
00:14:30
Speaker
So I don't know. I've always wrestled with it because I really love the idea of just the pencil and paper and that those are the tools. I'm not having to bring in something that needs a battery and all that. It's just like I love that very old-school mentality that you know Gay Talise would use on his the old shirt boards that he would cut up and of course McPhee and he got great dialogue and great things from just using a notebook and slowing things down, making people repeat things and and all that.
00:15:00
Speaker
Yeah, I admire and I really like it, but I've just kind of it I feel like it's a weakness in my own sort of tenmanship. I'm like, all right, man I just got to put this thing out there and then or then then there's your other moment, too So all right, like if you're walking around with someone do you have the thing just like running the entire time? Yeah, there's the walls in those conversations at least with your notebook out, you know, you can Just start when they start and then if you're quiet, you know You don't have to worry about this thing running in the background the whole time. I
00:15:28
Speaker
I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. For kind of less structured interviews or like, uh, in the summer I had to, I had to like, I was doing a story about a search and rescue team and we went on this hike and stuff. And, and, and I was just taking notes on my moleskin as we were writing. And I was like, man, if I had a.
00:15:46
Speaker
Yeah, if I had a recorder, I'd be having that problem. I have like an hour of dead air or whatever, you know? I like the pen and paper. I think initially the aesthetics appealed to me, but now it's part of my system and it's also like, I feel like it's kind of integrated into like my brain. It seems to, I don't know, it's all pretty seamless now for me.
00:16:08
Speaker
that's cool yeah I like that. My favorite notebook to use actually I've got a one right here. It's I like the field notes heavy duty notebook it's a little small it's about the size of a phone. So this guy but it's got a really good chip board.
00:16:24
Speaker
Oh, that's nice, yeah. Yeah, and Field Notes also makes a reporter one that's long, but it's too flimsy for me, so I like this really firm one. And it fits in the palm of your hand, back pocket, and so that's kind of my go-to. I love geeking out on notebooks. Yeah, me too. Yeah, so you said moleskin is kind of one you use?
00:16:46
Speaker
Yeah, I like the the large moleskins there. They're too big to fit in your pockets. What I'll often do is like when I'm hiking or something and don't want it in my hand, if I have a backpack on, I'll like tuck it in the waist waist strap
Humor and Serious Topics in Writing
00:16:59
Speaker
of the backpack. Or if I don't, I'll like tuck it in the back of my jeans and then like it'll like live on the top of my butt and then come like my lower back. I like those. Yeah, because they're they're fairly water resistant and they're rigid and there's just a lot of pages in them. And yeah.
00:17:16
Speaker
They're very elegant and very expensive. Yeah. Yeah, exactly So what we could as you're sort of developing as as a reporter as a journalist thing What can you point to maybe as an early early win in your in your career? They started to put more of that fuel in your tank that you're getting on the right track Yeah Well, it wasn't in Alaska. I quit that job because I was so
00:17:43
Speaker
demoralize, and then the same day I got an offer for a job in Farmington, New Mexico, which I took. Very bizarre. And it was in Farmington, New Mexico. I went to a two and a half day workshop taught by IRA investigative reporters and editors, and it was just on some Excel tricks, namely this application in Excel called Pivot Tables, and it allows you to do some basic analysis of data.
00:18:06
Speaker
And they taught me that. And I went back and I did this story about our
Interview Techniques and Emotional Storytelling
00:18:09
Speaker
secretary of state at the time, Diana Duran. And I think this was 2015. But basically, I discovered looking at her data, she wasn't enforcing campaign finance laws. A real geeky story, but it was good for a newspaper and did that story. And I wrote it in kind of a nice way. It felt like it had a little bit of a narrative flow and then also had that hard data.
00:18:30
Speaker
And, um, I got a lot of praise for it. And then, um, the attorney general's office congratulated me on it too. Cause without, I didn't know it at the time, but they had a parallel probe into her, uh, discovering she was embezzling her campaign or like her, her campaign donations. And, uh, so that was cool. I feel like felt part of the action and.
00:18:49
Speaker
won a little award on it. And that's when I was like, hey, actually, like, okay, newspaper reporting, it's a rush. I'm enjoying this as well. I think that's the first time I really started feeling a little confident. But
00:19:04
Speaker
I don't know, confidence comes and goes, even today. Oh my God, yeah. In your lower moments when the confidence is waning, what is it about the work that we do that kind of drags you down and be like, gosh, shit. The writing isn't matching the vision that I have in my head. I can't seem to find the right people to talk to. How does it manifest for you?
00:19:31
Speaker
I mean, at newspapers, I was like a speed freak. You know, when I was high, I was high. When I was low, I was low. And if I was having a slow, you know, on the heels of that investigation, I was elated for a week because we had follow ups and I was just center of attention. You know, it was really fluffing my ego and I just all of that stuff. And then I had a slow news day and I just was like so depressed. And I was like, what?
00:19:56
Speaker
What's my purpose? Like, why am I even doing this job? Like, I'm just a shitty reporter. I can't even find a story today. You know, it's just that was like a Tuesday. And on Monday, like I was like writing this follow on the story about the Secretary of State was getting grilled by lawmakers and all this stuff because of my story. And it was it was incredible. My metabolism is slower now, I think also just by being virtue of older. I am more resilient, but
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I had a slow period recently, and I was kind of doubting myself. That Atlantic piece just came out. But I was kind of depressed, and that just happens with me sometimes. Yeah, I was kind of questioning, like, what am I doing? That happens from time to time. But it's less...
00:20:42
Speaker
I know there's going to be an end to it, and then I'll come back out and just be my normal, like, ambulance self. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, with freelancing, too, if you're prone to those dips in mood or depressive episodes that it can be prolonged or short, freelancing can be really, really hard.
00:21:06
Speaker
turbulent waters, if you will. So how do you navigate that, the ups and downs of freelancing with the ups and downs of personal depression, too? Yeah. When I was a teenager, I was really depressed a lot. And then in my 20s, I mean, I was really depressed throughout newspapers a lot. It was very stressful, but I think
Personal Growth and Challenges as a Journalist
00:21:27
Speaker
I was still figuring out. Now, I've got it figured out. I've got good routines and stuff.
00:21:34
Speaker
Yeah, it still comes. I go through like three or four days in a row, sometimes once every other month, maybe a whole week.
00:21:44
Speaker
Or I'm like, all right, here it comes. And it's like, I'm not sad, but it's depression in the sense that I'm just low energy. And I don't know. I guess I'm sad too. But that seems to proceed or follow moments of great excitement. It's almost like not manic, but you get super excited about a project. And you're running on high for so long. And then that excitement just naturally peters out. And then I think without that external stimulation, I start kind of getting a little bummed.
00:22:14
Speaker
It's not a good quality. I attach too much of my self-worth to work, but then I also, Gloria and I, we have a lot of activities we like to do outside of work, like skiing and biking and dirt biking and climbing. And I think I use those to see value in myself as well. That's not healthy, but I need external stimulation, I think. And if I'm not getting it from work, I need to get it from these other activities.
00:22:41
Speaker
kind of my hack around it. I wish I could just find inner peace, but it's eluded me.
00:22:48
Speaker
Well, exercise and being outside are super, super therapeutic and regenerative, too. It allows you to really sustain the ups and downs of writing these kind of pieces because it can, for a day or so, kind of like you're alluding to. You're like, oh, I feel like I'm king for today. Like this piece I put out, it's getting a lot of attention, a lot of tweets. You know, you feel like that center of attention.
00:23:14
Speaker
invariably within 24 hours it's like it never happened and you're like oh like how do you fill in that vacuum and it sounds like it's like at least with a lot of those outdoor activities you've got going on and especially a partner in Gloria where she's kind of into the same thing it's like okay you guys have an escape hatch to like
00:23:33
Speaker
to do that thing and you both do the same kind of work. So the same industry anyway. So it's like, yeah, you do have that release valve. You're like, okay, there is meaning beyond just these words that you crank out every now and again.
00:23:49
Speaker
It helps. It helps. Yeah. Um, I, I blew out my, or I had knee surgery in September. Uh, and so I like, haven't had that outlet and it's, I've, so I've been like pumping iron and for the first time, like a gym rat and that's been, that's been fun, but not really as soul enriching. So that it's kind of been tough. I thought I was going to be really depressed without like my outdoor activities. Um.
00:24:13
Speaker
But I think instead I've like really doubled down on work, which maybe hasn't been so healthy and like really, really kind of like putting a lot of my self worth in that. But I need to diversify that.
00:24:23
Speaker
Right? Yeah. So with this Atlantic piece, I want to first talk about how you arrived at it and how you started crafting the pitch for it. And also just how you go about the pitch process and how much reporting and pre-reporting you put into that before you start feeling confident that you can shop it around to a major place like the Atlantic. So what was the lead domino for this piece that you recently had in the Atlantic?
00:24:52
Speaker
So I got that idea a few years ago. Well, I had that fact stored away in my head that whether the meteorologists are probably the most trusted messengers on climate change for the general public. And I just thought that was super neat. And I don't think I tried to do anything with it in 2019 when I learned about it. But I just stored it away. And then I don't know what got me interested in it again.
00:25:20
Speaker
But once I was interested in it, I think this was like in August. I made the pitch in August, late August. So early August, I started calling people and what that pitch looked like, I think I called, probably spoke on the phone or slash Zoom with about 10 people, I think.
00:25:37
Speaker
And then I read some studies and I think all that, including writing the pitch took about two weeks, which I felt like was pretty fast for me. Got pitches can take me forever. But since I had some background knowledge in it already, I kind of had the structure of down of what I wanted to say in the pitch. So two weeks interviews, reading studies, writing the pitch to sending the pitch.
00:26:03
Speaker
And how did you settle on, as Lawrence Wright would call it, the mule, like your main guy for this piece? How did you find him to tell the story? That's funny. I've never heard that before. I guess shell was the mule, I mean.
00:26:17
Speaker
I'll send you the link of this great talk that Lawrence Wright did. It's incredible. It's like 25 minutes long. It's awesome. He talks about the research and reporting and finding your mule to tell a story.
Leveraging FOIA in Journalism
00:26:34
Speaker
I please do. Yeah, that makes so much sense. I mean, he basically means like the mule to carry the narrative like momentum. One hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's I like that. I'm going to start referring. I'm going to find my mule. I got I got the I got all the facts and I understand that. But I mean, I'm mule through this story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's kind of the the other thing I want to talk to you, too. Like you can talk about how you found found your mule for this piece, too. But it also gets the heart of like an idea for a story. One idea versus a story. And Gloria talked about this when we were
00:27:04
Speaker
on the mics a few weeks ago but it is like once you can have an idea like oh yeah you want to write about climate change okay like okay big idea but how are you how are what's the story you know and so you landed on meet local meteorologists in this particular guy
00:27:19
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So to find Shell, my affable mule, I call 10 of those phone calls, give or take 10. I think about seven of those were two meteorologists around the country whom I got connected with through Source at Climate Central.
00:27:35
Speaker
And right away, I was intrigued in Shell because he lived in Texas. And I just thought, well, climate change, it's a scientific topic, but it's been made political
Recommendations and Importance of Empathy
00:27:43
Speaker
and often seen, of course, as a liberal political thing, which is dumb and unfortunate.
00:27:51
Speaker
And I thought, oh cool, it'd be like fun to explore this topic in super red Texas. And yeah, Shell was the most charismatic of the people I talked to. He also had, I thought, the most compelling backstory.
00:28:06
Speaker
Because the really interesting thing about the meteorologist thing is they, 10 years ago in 2010, 12 years ago now, I guess, only about half of them were hip with climate change. The other half were just didn't really think it was a big thing or didn't believe in it at all. And then 10 years later because of the work, in large part because of the work of Climate Central and George Mason University and those folks, they and some other people as well,
00:28:30
Speaker
They got the climate, the meteorologist to be more like 98% on board with climate change. And so Shell went through that transition. He was never a climate denier, but he just
Episode Wrap-up and Final Thoughts
00:28:44
Speaker
wasn't convinced it was a big issue, which I can relate to. I mean, back around when Shell, I think in 2008,
00:28:53
Speaker
nine, 10 is when he was kind of in that mindset, which is about mirrors mine. And then he went through that transition and now he's very, very alarmed and very informed on the subject. So yeah, Shell was charismatic. I knew we would get along for that reason. We kind of had same energy, like bubbly people. He was in Texas and yeah, his backstory like really organically would move this larger story forward.
00:29:23
Speaker
Yeah, and you're right in the piece, too, that many of these Americans are drawn to conservative media, and their consumption of it invigorates their denial, which stimulates their consumption of conservative media, which invigorates their denial, which I thought was just a great sentence. But it gets to the point of what conservatives can do. But I think liberals can be guilty of this, too. You just start listening to the things that just sort of reinforce your worldview, and then you get more and more dug in.
00:29:49
Speaker
For sure, for sure. I didn't mention in the piece because entrenched liberals are, you know, they're going to believe, they're going to accept the facts around climate change, entrenched conservatives are not just because that's their, you know,
00:30:05
Speaker
how the politics bring them. But yeah, I mean those studies were saying the same thing happens with liberals as well. They described that process as kind of an echo chamber effect and liberals are just as susceptible to it as conservatives.
00:30:21
Speaker
And how did you, so as you're reporting this piece, you know, at the end, sort of the final quarter of it, final third of it, if you, you know, that's when you kind of come into it and you find these couple farmers, right? Are they farmers? Oh, two 4-H moms. So yeah, they bring their kids to like the 4-H shows and they show off the animals. Yeah, so you're at that point in the story. So like just structurally speaking, like how did you arrive at that?
00:30:51
Speaker
Yeah, I wanted to have that kind of towards the last third of the story, because I feel like in these magazine pieces, at least I'm trying to hit an inflection point there. So basically, I'm trying to hit that classic narrative arc, like some introductory stuff, and then plot twists and rising action, and more exposition along the way, blah, blah, blah. And then you're approaching your climax. And I was trying to build some conflict there, and also some humor.
00:31:20
Speaker
But I put them there because it was, I feel like they came before Shell delivered his climate change speech, right? Now I can't remember. I think so. I think you're right. Yeah, I was trying to build some more tension to proceed the imminent climax. And yeah, just show like.
00:31:42
Speaker
Because I think that's the first time we really talked like the reader actually met some people who thought backwards things about climate change. And so I just, I thought it would have a pretty, pretty powerful effect and make people be like, Oh, wow. So like, this is what all these studies are talking about. But yeah, I'm also trying to incorporate more humor. I was listening to an interview George Saunders did somewhere recently. And he was saying, well, he's trying to do like,
00:32:09
Speaker
the measure of like, like one thing that a lot of good writing has is that it puts humor and, and, and just, you know, sad, sad stuff right next to each other or heavy and humor right next to each other. And I was trying to do that a little bit there.
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah, I said there was a part in the piece where after a page break and you're like, you know, and we're back. And it was like this very, you know, the new the newscasters are coming back from commercial break. And it was like a kind of a fun little it was a fun little gray snow. I'm like, I can tell Dan's having a fun time writing this piece in this moment.
00:32:45
Speaker
Oh good, thank you. Yeah, that was me. I'm really trying to work in more humor in this stuff, especially the dark stuff. I feel like readers need that. It establishes more of an emotional range, I feel like, and then you feel the lows more deeply and the highs more deeply. I don't know, but I was trying to do that there.
00:33:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's such a hard balance to strike with humor too, because if you don't hit it right, if it's not perfectly in tune, not only will it land flat, but it'll just come across as a writer trying too hard. And I'm definitely guilty of this, and a lot of the drafts of my stuff where I try to be too witty or too
00:33:27
Speaker
or too funny, oftentimes it's just like, what ends up being really funny is when things just flow naturally out of the story and it's like very situationally funny. It's not me telling a joke, it's just like, oh, this is just an absurd situation, just told straight, but the situation is funny. So it's a matter of kind of like trying to distill the funny situations and get out of the way of the scene, let the scene tell the joke.
00:33:55
Speaker
I completely agree. I think I might be a funny person. But when I try, I'm not funny. But when I'm myself and stepping on my toes or just being too earnest or naive or whatever, I feel like that's when the humor comes out. I hear what you're saying. When you were setting down to craft it and generate it, what were you struggling with as you were trying to put the whole thing together?
00:34:23
Speaker
I really, I mean, what reporter what journals isn't like this but I love I love writing scene and you know those narrative elements and and so all that was super easy and I kind of had the narrative elements and the narrative structure pretty early plotted out but
00:34:39
Speaker
I was having a really hard time with the dense scientific stuff. And I spent like a week writing that middle section, I think, alone. God, it went so slow. And then I was going slower because I was angry at myself for being so slow. Like the old newspaper reporter in me was like, come on, you fucking
00:35:04
Speaker
slow butt head, like, move more quickly. And that didn't just slow you down. But I really, yeah, I really struggled with that. And I was having a hard time writing that. Well, first, just condensing the relevant scientific stuff and then making sure I'm right. And then writing it in a lively way. I really struggled with that. Yeah, this most of the second section took me at least a week to write.
00:35:28
Speaker
And that was kind of a blow. But once I got through that, everything else fell together really clean. And Michelle Niehaus was my editor on it. She was an incredible editor. She didn't have very many suggestions on the first go-through with the edits.
00:35:52
Speaker
And for a second, I was like, well, it was Michelle, like super busy. You know, she just kind of like kind of phoning in this edit. But then she went back and had more rigorous stuff. But.
00:36:00
Speaker
Yeah, I kind of, in this instance, I nailed the structure, which I was really happy about. On the first go around, doesn't always happen, but it was just the science in the middle and then everything else kind of fell together pretty cleanly. Yeah, once Michelle got back into those edits and did it more, had that more rigorous edit the next time around, what did that look like for you? Was it just total blood on the page?
00:36:29
Speaker
No, no, I had one of those experiences with the outside story I did about drones. I just kind of was off the rails. And there was a lot of blood on the page. And that was alarming. But this, there was a few rounds of edits. The first round, she didn't mark much, like a few structural tweaks. But the big strokes, she liked and kept. And then the second round, it was a lot of sentence level stuff.
00:36:57
Speaker
You know, can you add clarity here? Like this, the sentence is, is just like too bombastic. You need to, you need to simplify it. Yeah. She shortened, she shortened up a lot of sentences. Sometimes I write too long, complicated sentences. Yeah. A lot of sentence level stuff, more reporting, that kind of, that kind of stuff.
00:37:20
Speaker
Yeah, there's a moment in the piece too. It might have even been how you... I can't remember if this is how it ended or if it was just somewhere near the end, but you wrote, the facts here did what facts sometimes do when people are actually searching for the truth. They changed minds.
00:37:36
Speaker
And it got me thinking, it was just like, it's really hard to change people's minds. And I wonder if that was on your mind as you were reporting this piece, just like, man, here's one side, here's the other. Here's some objectively obvious science to a lot of people, but in yet, no one's gonna change their mind one way or the other. It's like, I have to imagine that was on your mind as you were reporting out this piece. Oh, Brendan, that's why I did the piece, because I had,
00:38:06
Speaker
This has resolved a little bit since doing the piece, but still it's a problem for me. But what led me to this piece was this cognitive dissonance that I would experience all the time, just talking to people who I love, like family or friends or people I bump into and think they're perfectly rational people. And then climate change comes up and they're like, yeah, climate models, who knows if they're right or what? And it's just like,
00:38:32
Speaker
It's like I thought we were living in the same universe, like the same reality, but like clearly you're on a parallel, but different track than me. And it's just, it really fucked me up. Um, and I just couldn't understand like why they, why they believe that. And so I wanted to, that's, that's really what brought me into this, this story. I actually, I didn't think, I didn't know, um, going into it. What I knew is that climate, that, uh, meteorologists were effective communicators, trusted messengers on climate change.
00:39:02
Speaker
I didn't know how effective they were. And so I thought it was gonna be kind of a doom and gloom story. I didn't think it was kind of...
00:39:13
Speaker
I mean, be an optimistic story. I don't know if you can say that. Our future on this planet is pretty bleak. But I was very focused on the mind changing aspect of the story. That was kind of the central thing that drew me to it. And I was kind of holding that in the back of my head throughout.
00:39:34
Speaker
Yeah. The weathermen are great media for the medium to do that because they are they are like these affable often just dad like personalities on TV or just like they're in your living there like literally in your living room. Well not literally but in your living room.
00:39:50
Speaker
Basically every night and so they are the perfect messengers and it's got to be it had to be impressive for or for you just to watch how they like kind of integrate into a you know, you know a forecast if you will like how they talk about it because
00:40:08
Speaker
You know, you kind of shadow your mule for a bit. And so it must have been pretty illuminating to see what he's able to do to like, oh, wow, how did you just kind of go off the cuff and fold that in in like the four minute segment you have? I don't know.
00:40:22
Speaker
It really impressed me. They asked me to do an interview with them to talk about the story, because they got a lot of feedback from their viewers. And God, I did so badly in that interview. I feel like I'm pretty articulate, but I just, like, as soon as the camera went on, I was like, ugh. It was an embarrassing interview. Yeah, and so I was really, I didn't know I would perform that badly, but I had a feeling I'd be at bed.
00:40:50
Speaker
speaker on camera. And so when I was shadowing Shell, yeah, his his composure, really inability to think on his feet, that really impressed me. Like his that whole segment he did on climate.
00:41:06
Speaker
He didn't have a teleprompter. I mean, there's a teleprompter running with some basic stuff that he produced like in kind of an automated way earlier, was running, but he wasn't even looking at it. And he was just talking from the top of his head and citing lots of numbers and stuff and had a very coherent structure to what he was saying. And I was really impressed by that.
00:41:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's what you said a moment ago, too, when you were on camera interviewing him, and you felt like you were bumbling around and stumbling around. It's so true because I listen to, when I listen to like Dan Patrick, I listen to his sports show every day on podcast form, and I love listening to the economy with which he asks questions, and that's very trained from radio.
00:41:55
Speaker
and he does what he does a really good job of especially in people of his ilk they'll ask the question and then they don't go on to like answer the question and then ask an entirely different one you know what i mean like drives me nuts in the podcast sphere that guys just in its guise they can't get out of their own way and it's just like ask the question and then stop
00:42:19
Speaker
You don't have to justify your own intelligence and answer it because you feel you're smart. Because all you're doing is answering the question for them. As you can tell, this is a big pet peeve of mine. So to that point with interviewing, where would you say your strengths lie as an interviewer to tease out story? Yeah, I think I've gotten pretty good at interviewing for narrative, teasing out story like you said.
00:42:48
Speaker
I feel like I really excel in interviews where we're discussing emotionally heavy subjects. Like the story I'm working on for Bicycling Magazine, which I'm really excited about. It's taken a little while to produce, is about a boy who was killed, a 13-year-old boy who was killed while crossing a street. It's about a lot more than that. And so I spent some time with the boy's mother and father.
00:43:19
Speaker
And God, those, those like, sometimes I have to try not to cry in those interviews. They're, they're, um, really painful in that sense, but in another sense, and I don't know what this says about me, but they're like, I enjoy them and like, I enjoy operating in that, in that like emotionally heavy space. And I feel like, um, I feel like, like I can really connect with people. I mean, I've, you know, I don't have any kids and there's, I cannot comprehend what it's like to lose, to lose one of your own kids in that way. Um, but.
00:43:48
Speaker
But I'm able to empathize with people I feel like, and they recognize that in me, and I feel like we're able to form a connection in these kinds of interviews. And yeah, pull out those necessary narrative details. Yeah, yeah, I noticed that in newspapers. I had to do, God, there was a, when I lived in Farmington, which abuts the Navajo Nation, Farmington, New Mexico, there was a fire in a mobile home on the Navajo Nation,
00:44:19
Speaker
The husband was able to get out of the window. The door was closed. There's a fire in the trailer. They're using a space heater in there. And he was reaching trying to get the mom and their little daughter out, but they couldn't get out and he watched them burn alive. And yeah, we went out the next day. And now that I think about it, we probably had no business going out there the next day.
00:44:42
Speaker
and had to interview them, me and a photographer. Yeah, same thing kind of happened. Again, I think we had no fucking business being out there. They should have had more time to process that, but I was like 25 and eager. But yeah, I noticed there was that weird emotional resonance I had between them.
00:45:01
Speaker
And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but for interviewing, I feel like it is an effective tool for me. Oh, for sure. Especially when you're trying to reach emotional depth with the piece too, where it doesn't feel like you're being exploitative of their trauma so you can spin a story that kind of fulfills your own ego to write something compelling. But I think if you're just genuine, and it sounds like you are, like you're able to kind of tap into
00:45:31
Speaker
That certain measure of empathy that you really need to to write those kind of stories and gender their trust and then You know and handle their story with care and it sounds like you know That's what you what you do or like that's an instinct you have It is it is yeah, I think I think I've been good at that for a long time and I think that probably came from I don't know I imagine
00:45:55
Speaker
Imagine it like I had, I mean, you know, I'm very privileged. My dad's a Jewish doctor. My mom was a nurse. I'm like, you know, a white dude who grew up in middle upper class world. But but yeah, I was like, learning disabled and had a hard time with that when I was a kid. And, and that caused me a lot of angst and depression. And I feel like
00:46:18
Speaker
That's not a problem for me anymore, but I feel like you go through something like that when you're young, like that's always going to be with you and you're going to carry it around. And I feel like that is a big part of where this thing, this like emotional thing comes from with me. Yeah. Yeah. So what would you say that you're better at today than you were maybe five years ago?
00:46:45
Speaker
I mean everything, of course. I hear what you mean. Yeah, yeah. But I've really...
00:46:55
Speaker
When I was at newspapers, which was about five years ago, I kind of was losing my focus a little bit on the reason I got into them in the first place, which was to improve my, I guess just become a reporter with the aim of doing narrative magazine writing. And I was really getting into this investigative reporting stuff, which is hard to do as a freelancer. So since becoming a freelancer, I've been really
00:47:19
Speaker
really working on my writing skills and both the narrative writing skills, interviewing for narrative and then writing it up and well from structure, the higher level stuff down to sentence level stuff. And I feel like, I mean, I'm pretty good at that now. And I think I've improved a lot in that sense. I think that's where I've improved the most in the past five years.
00:47:47
Speaker
Let's keep pulling on that thread of interviewing for narrative. There's interviewing where you just get information, which is great. How old are you? What did it smell like? What clothes were you wearing? Those are all great details. But then there's the scene building questions. I think that's really fun to unpack. How do you go about interviewing for actual narrative story blocks? Yeah, I love talking about this stuff.
00:48:17
Speaker
Yeah, what what I do is I try to I try to work chronologically in the interview, like, tell me what, like, start at the beginning, and we're going to work to the end. In that way, I can keep track of everything. And I feel like this is how people that's how people tell stories. Naturally, you know, there's they don't usually like start in the middle and, you know, flashback, you know, that's like a writing trick. Right.
00:48:41
Speaker
So there I was, the gun in my hand. And then you go into the history of this gun and the backstory of it. Oh, now we're back in the present. I know. People don't really talk like that. So I like to roll chronologically.
00:49:03
Speaker
And with the husband and wife who lost their 13-year-old son, I can remember that interview pretty well. I think it's best to meet with these people in person if you can, but I don't think, of course, it's necessary. But yeah, we started chronologically. So what's your timeline? That's the question you gotta ask yourself. And for that, I wanted to know as much of the timeline as I could. And I was like, so tell me,
00:49:31
Speaker
like, tell me about the birth of your son. And then we just, you know, we go from that. And it's like, well, what was that moment? Like, you know, like, what was he like as a baby? Like, and, you know, then they tell me about that. Then I, you know, they're kind of building little scenes naturally and how they say that. And then I asked her more details if the scene seems relevant. Like, you know, what time of day was it? Like one memory, because it's for Bicycling magazine.
00:49:57
Speaker
story kind of revolves around bicycles. They were telling me a bunch of like funny memories but one of them involved a bicycle and they're in Italy and this was the first time he rode a bike and so then I was like oh you know like was this at like a relative's house or something yeah it's a relative's house and I was like well what was the house like and like oh you know I was up
00:50:17
Speaker
up on this like mountain side and it was really scary because it was a gravel driveway and it was just cut into the mountain side and there's no guard rails and we were afraid it was gonna fall off and I was like what time of day and they said it was night and I was like oh wow that's that's crazy you know he's biking up on the side of this cliff at night and they said yeah it was really scary and you know got all these details and that kind of stuff but yeah I think the big thing is I work chronologically and then also as they're telling me this I try to build like a little movie in my head of what they're saying and if I can't
00:50:46
Speaker
conjure visual or just some of the sensory details, then I'll say, hey, wait, can we just go back a sec? He was doing this. He was peddling circles in this gravel driveway. I can't quite see who was there, who was talking, that kind of stuff. But yeah, if I can't play a movie, as they're saying in my head, then I try to circle back. But I also don't want to get in there way too much, especially with
00:51:15
Speaker
when they're recalling trauma or just gentle moments interrupting. So I'll also take notes, circle back on this detail. And then when they get to a natural end of the scene, because I think we all naturally, our memories are stored as narrative. So when they get to a natural ending of that part of the story, I'm like, all right, before we go on, can we just circle back and grab these details real quickly?
00:51:45
Speaker
get those and ask those as data point questions, like what color was his shirt? How loud was the car that drove by? What did you guys have for dinner? Get those, what was the dog's name? And then it's like, all right, I'm sorry. Sorry to interrupt. Let's keep going. And then they progress further into the timeline of his life and that kind of thing. And then that interview ended with the day he was hit by a car and killed.
00:52:12
Speaker
Uh, in, in, in, yeah, same, same kind of stuff. Uh, like, you know, what were you doing? What did you have for dinner that day? Um,
00:52:21
Speaker
That kind of stuff, yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. And I think maybe a lot of people who maybe don't do a whole lot of this reporting, they might think when you're writing that story, you're just getting it from maybe one interview, one sit down, or maybe a couple. But I think the, I know this is true with me, that oftentimes I'll be, it's kind of like you kind of put a pin in something. You're like, okay, that's some, probably want to circle back to that when the timing's right. And that could be that day, or it could be,
00:52:51
Speaker
could be down the road you know for you like how often do you find yourself circling circling back to certain scenes just be like uh just to fill in those holes like just to to make sure that you're getting the scene as three-dimensional as possible a lot i used to and this is kind of baked into me as a newspaper reporter it's bad instinct but i used to think you got to get it all in the first blush right yeah and i guess if you're writing for a four o'clock deadline you you have to but uh with the magazine stuff that's that's not the case and so um
00:53:21
Speaker
I'll get as much as I can in the scenes, but I always miss stuff. And you try to play the movie in your head, but you're not going to do a perfect job in that, or you're going to make things up without realizing it in your head. And so I don't really realize what I have until I'm writing those scenes.
00:53:39
Speaker
And then, especially with these, these like narrative interviews, I generally, you know, they're more emotional content. We're not talking about kind of like inhuman things like documents and data and dates and time, you know, stuff. So yeah, I have a build a good relationship with these people and then I'll
00:53:58
Speaker
I'll write through and mark mark what I don't have with TKs. And then I'll call them and say, hey, you know, that was, you know, great. It was really helpful. It was really nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah. I've written through this and I'm just struggling to with a few details that I'll ask those as kind of data point questions like, you know, you don't need to like
00:54:21
Speaker
live in the scene so much with them. You can just ask like A, B, C, D, what are the answers to these? And usually that's...
00:54:30
Speaker
Usually, yeah, just like I grab what I can of the interviews, write it, and then I just need to call them once more to fill it in. But I do try to, you had a good point. You're like, sometimes maybe people think you get this from one person, but I try to triangulate the scene, or like these narrative details as much as I can. So I'll try to talk to as many people as I can, especially people who have like different angles on that day. It's like the parents.
00:54:59
Speaker
the case of this boy and then like his friends who saw him that day and then the parents of his friends and you know and then and then you get a document document stuff like police reports traffic cam stuff everything everything's like another angle into into it and and you can if you get enough you can fully illuminate the same
00:55:19
Speaker
Yeah, I've got a sticky note on my monitor over here, and it just says, who else should I talk to? Yeah. Because I always forget when I'm talking to someone, because they know maybe five more people you can talk to, and it just grows exponentially from there. But I always forget, so I've got that sticky note there, like, okay, who are a few other, three to five more people you'd recommend I talk to?
00:55:41
Speaker
And yeah, that's how, yeah, like you said, triangulate the C&D, and you just get so much more lovely illuminating detail. I completely agree. I feel like that's the essential question for all sorts of journalism. Just like the more people you talk to, the better it's going to be.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Anytime that I read so many of those long pieces I admire, like in best American sports writing and all that kind of stuff, like what you realize, like, well, for one, you read it and you're like, how do they get this detail? Like, how did they build this scene? How did they find like that perfect quote? And it's because
00:56:17
Speaker
you know maybe Wright Thompson spoke to a hundred people for this piece and he's got the resources and to be able to do that kind of legwork but when you talk to 50-75 people you've got a lot of there's a lot of things you can pan for gold and I think that's ultimately how these guys and men and women who do these kind of pieces that's how they get
00:56:40
Speaker
Such great materials because they talk to so many people and eventually yeah You're gonna you're gonna find that perfect little grace note It's just like oh it just rings the balance perfectly in tune But you don't get that if you talk to five people to write a 2,000 word feature or something It's writing a 2,000 word feature where you talk to like 50 people and you're like oh, that's why you get so much good stuff Yeah, I completely agree. I think yeah, I
00:57:09
Speaker
Yeah, we went through a lazy phase at one of our newspapers we worked at, and our editor said, you can't do a single source story, which is a problem for a lot of reasons. But it kind of points to that. It's like, yeah, you need to talk to as many people as you can. Yeah. Yeah, because you definitely can. You can get away with, I've written 2,500 or 3,000 word features for just a regional magazine that I've done work for back east with talking to two or three or three or four people.
00:57:38
Speaker
It's serviceable and it's okay. But my God, even that same footprint of words, if you can talk to 15 people, it's just so much better. Every word just seems to have so much more weight behind it in that way where you feel like you're leaving good stuff on the floor. That's when you know you've got something good. Like, I'm leaving good stuff on the floor. That's how good this piece is gonna be.
00:58:03
Speaker
I know, I know, I know. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you only use like 10% of it, 5% of it. But yeah, but just to have everything in the back of your head, you just have that context. And you're like, all right, like, I now know this, this thing, this person told me represents the represents this truth the best. And so I can say it. And yeah, and then I will be supporting colorful things. Yeah.
00:58:25
Speaker
Oh, it's the best. And so how do you get the the FOIA guy Nick? God, that is a I know it's kind of funny because it's it's like.
00:58:38
Speaker
FOIA, Freedom of Information Act is a federal act, so it's for federal documents, but I do a lot of state stuff too. Anyway, so it's a bit of a misnomer. I got that. I've been doing this research for iHeartRadio podcast, and our cell to get me on that podcast was to brand me as the FOIA guy.
00:59:03
Speaker
And so internally, they're, they're like, Oh, this FOIA guy, who knew about this records request stuff, you know, their iHeartRadio, they're not like, they don't, they do storytelling, they don't really do a lot of hard edge journalism. And they, you know, they didn't know about records request stuff. And they're like, wow, FOIA guy, this FOIA guy that. And I thought that was kind of funny. I showed one of those emails. But, uh,
00:59:28
Speaker
But yeah, I with this podcast, I started in August mostly doing public records requests or like interviews with document people. My goal basically is to obtain documents, paper or audio or whatnot for the podcast. And I started in August and I've like really upped my public records requesting game with that. But I've always I've always been interested in and like public records laws and
00:59:55
Speaker
I don't know. I'm pretty nerdy in that way. I like it. I think it's really one of the best things about journalism is when you're told no, but you know that the answer is yes. You just have to wait them out and be really dogged. It really stokes that self-righteous bone in me.
01:00:15
Speaker
Well, I want to be mindful of your time, Dan. So as I bring this conversation down for a landing, I always like to ask guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And I always say this can be anything from a, it could be a book, but it could be an awesome pair of socks or a cool brand of coffee you're experimenting with or something. So I'd extend that to you, Dan. What would you recommend out there for the listeners? Oh, man.
01:00:38
Speaker
Well, I have probably the stereotypical response, but because it's a stereotypical, I'm going to give another one if I'm allowed to. Please. I'll give you the least stereotypical one first. So I had my knee injury and I had a big brace on and I was in crutches, so I wasn't really into pockets at that point. And I started wearing a fanny pack again.
01:01:02
Speaker
And this is this Mountain Smith fanny pack I bought some years ago when I lived in Santa Fe for for running. And it's black, but it's like sweat stained white, you know, and man, and I just I just keep using it. I'm sure I look like a dad. I mean, no offense to dads.
01:01:22
Speaker
I'm not one, but I'm sure I look like one wearing it. It's just so utilitarian and I like, I like it a lot. So I would recommend, you know, and I'm not talking about these like, what do they call them? Hip packs or whatever. I'm talking about like old school fanny packs, not like with all the hipster glitter and stuff. Just like old school utilitarian.
01:01:42
Speaker
When I was in elementary school, I had a Bart Simpson one, and this is like peak Bart Simpson, because I would have been in fourth grade in, let's see, 1991 in that area. That was peak Bart Simpson for the Simpsons. I had that thing going around the new Bedford roller rink.
01:02:05
Speaker
Oh, man. Yeah. Oh, I bet you rocked it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. You know it. So what's the other recommendation? Oh, yes, a book. You know, go figure. Go figure. Go figure. I read a bunch of Vonnegut early, like in high school and college, and then I just never returned to him. But I was saying, Oh, my god, he's so good. Yeah, I went through like,
01:02:32
Speaker
a big Vonnegut phase recently. I think I read three of his books, of his novels, Cat's Cradle. There was another one. I can't, shit, I can't remember what it was. But the one I enjoyed the most was Mother Night. That's my favorite one.
01:02:50
Speaker
That's my favorite of those two. Holy shit. That book is incredible. It's so moving. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, basically, it's like it's a book that's written by the protagonist slash antagonist. It's really. But yeah, there's this guy, I forget his name, but he's
01:03:10
Speaker
He takes place after World War II, and he was a Nazi, an American who went over to Germany and worked as a Nazi propaganda guy. But I'm not going to ruin it, but there's some plot twists that make you call into question, be like, did what he do, was that justified? But just the way he's like, he humanizes a fucking Nazi. And I mean,
01:03:38
Speaker
Nazis are Nazis. I feel like it's a problem when people compare people that don't like to Nazis. But that book was such an important lesson to me. I guess it made me think more about being empathetic and humanizing people in my writing. I actually read that. I read it actually after the Atlantic piece.
01:04:00
Speaker
But it got me thinking a lot about climate deniers who are not Nazis. I don't want to take that out of context. I'm not saying climate change deniers are Nazis. But it is a problem. They don't see reality for what it is. And I find that frustrating. But that book was like, hey, don't demonize anyone. That's not going to get you or anyone trying to think about why they believe what they believe.
01:04:25
Speaker
That book right now is actually on my coffee table. If I can't sleep at night, that's where I go out to the living room to read. Right now, that's the novel there to read. I'm thinking of just leaving it there. That's just going to be my midnight novel, and I'm just going to read it whenever I can't sleep. He's the same one. That or Catcher in the Rye. I'm just going to leave it on the coffee table and go back to it and be like, all right. Thumb through this for 20 pages. Hopefully that'll knock me out and go back to bed.
01:04:53
Speaker
Oh, I'm glad to know you like it so much. Yeah, it really, I thought it was his best work. Nice, man. Well, this is so great to talk shop with you, Dan. Thanks so much for carving out the time to do it. Keep up the great work. I love this Atlantic piece. I can't wait to read what you come up with next, man. Oh, thanks, Brendan. It was really fun to be on. I appreciate it.
01:05:18
Speaker
We've come to the end and as I am want to say that was a toe-tapping good time go Check out his piece for the Atlantic. It's in the show notes at Brendan O'Mara.com Hey there you can subscribe to my up to 11 monthly newsletter monthly first of the month
01:05:34
Speaker
where you can win books, get the best recommendations, and a secret code to the monthly CNF and happy hour over Zoom, your favorite web-based application. My crew of Laurie, Suzanne, and Betsy, we rocked another happy hour this past week. We did it. We did it again. Subscribe to the show.
01:05:56
Speaker
So you don't even have to think about it, man. Wherever you get your podcast. And if you have a moment, consider leaving those kind of reviews on Apple Podcasts and ratings on Spotify. And it's an amazing amount of percentage of written reviews to total ratings on Apple for our little podcast that could. Keep it up. You write one in, I read it at the top of the show and give you mad props. The maddest of props. The maddest.
01:06:28
Speaker
What was I thinking for a parting shot this Monday? Okay, earlier in the football season, this is way back, I think in October or something, Dan Patrick, who of the Dan Patrick Show fame, Sports Center fame, whatever, he's got his radio show, Dan Patrick Show, and I listened to it in podcast form. He was interviewing Justin Herbert. He's the quarterback for the, excuse me.
01:06:51
Speaker
It's late when I'm recording this. This is way past my bedtime. The quarterback for the LA Chargers, he grew up in Eugene and went to UO, but that's not germane to this little tidbit of ye olde parting shot. Dan Patrick asked him, you know, this young kid, he's 23 years old, stud, one of the best young quarterbacks in the league, you know, playing in Los Angeles of all places.
01:07:15
Speaker
You know, what does Justin Herbert do for fun when he's not playing football? He's got to do something, right? And Herbert was incredulous. He was like, football is fun. And here is someone so dedicated to his craft that the very idea of doing something other than football is anathema to his personality. Like, how dare you?
01:07:35
Speaker
dare you ask what else he might do. Football is fun. God damn it. And I think we as writers lose sight of that. Not that the football is fun part, but sure. Some things are, when it comes to writing, are like fucking terrible to write. Like say a loved one dying, be the human or pet, where you never knew you could cry that hard and you hurt for so long for years and sometimes it still hurts years after the fact.
01:08:02
Speaker
But we did romanticize the the struggle of the writing like oh my god. Hey all I have to do is you know To write all I have to do is cut open my arms and bleed on the page. It's like God Who said that was that Hemingway? Oh?
01:08:20
Speaker
as if the very act of typing out a bunch of words isn't just this really cool thing. We all get 26 letters, literally at our fingertips, and we get to play with these letters and make words and make sentences. If you like pretty sentences, by all means, write pretty sentences. Me, I like to write sentences that look like Charles Bukowski's face. Sometimes I call them palm muted.
01:08:45
Speaker
You've got your hand on the guitar, your picking hand, and you kind of put your wrist right on the... Is it on the pickup? See, I don't know. I don't know what the guitar... I know what palm muting is. It's just, you know, kind of put in there. And it makes the chords just sound... The strings sound a little chunkier. You know, a little dirtier, grittier, like Gotham.
01:09:07
Speaker
That's right. I haven't seen the Batman yet, but I've seen my share of Batman movies and I do like, I do love me some grit. And the thing is, the more skilled you get at this game, the harder it gets. It's science. There's a tendency in it to take it all too seriously.
01:09:23
Speaker
And if you know me, there are a few things worth taking seriously and writing certainly isn't one of them. Okay, like we all want to do well and improve. But when you're a kid playing ball growing up, whatever it was, playing tag, you didn't take tag seriously. You just went out and played. Why? Because it was fun. So say it with me. Writing is fun. Yeah, it's hard. It's difficult. And notoriety doesn't always go to those who deserve it.
01:09:53
Speaker
But if you're having fun spinning yarns, slinging words across the playground, then you've already won, baby. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.