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Episode 245: Phil Hoad and his Atavist Story 'Cat and Mouse'
135 Plays4 years ago
The journalist Phil Hoad comes by to talk about this Atavist story "Cat and Mouse" about a rash of pet murders in London.
We're also joined by lead editor Jonah Ogles, who unpacks Phil's pitch and what made the story irresistible.
Keep the conversation going on social media @CNFPod and sign up for the monthly CNFin' newsletter at brendanomeara.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Thrill of Midnight Exploration
00:00:00
Speaker
I mean, you know, it's great being out with them. It's quite exciting and kind of being in a car kind of at midnight, getting driven around sort of random London estates, you know, looking for this, you know, supposed killer.
What is the Creative Non-Fiction Podcast?
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey, it's that time again, CNFers, where we bring you the cherry on top of the banana split that is the creative non-fiction podcast, the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories, is the time of the month where I have the esteemed pleasure of speaking with the featured writer about the featured piece for The Addivist magazine.
Phil Hoad's Unique Stories on Animal Rights
00:00:39
Speaker
In a moment, we'll hear from Phil Hoad, who is this week's, oh, this month's, I should say, writer for the Atavis, who lives in the south of France, which gave me some serious Tender is the Night vibes, and who wrote this month's piece about a couple of pet detectives, if you will, animal rights activists in England who sought to solve a rash of pet murders.
Engagement and Interaction with the Podcast
00:01:03
Speaker
The beautiful piece.
00:01:06
Speaker
It's good stuff. It's great stuff. Before that, we'll of course hear from Jonah Ogles, the lead editor on this piece about what gave the story legs from the start in a few matters of pitching that is always helpful in elucidating. Wow, that's a five-syllable word and out of bounds for this enterprise. Usually when we stray from three-syllable words, we start getting into dangerous territory, man.
00:01:34
Speaker
Before I turn you loose like a school of piranhas on Jonah and Phil, be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. And be sure to head over to BrendanOmero.com for show notes and for show notes to this episode and like a trillion other interviews I've done with memoirs, essayists, and maybe more germane to you guys.
00:01:57
Speaker
Narrative journalists like Susan Orlean, David Gran, Patrick Radden Keith, Eli Sazlow, Ted Conover, Tracy Kidder, Laura Hillenbrand, many more. I mean, come on. If you're feeling froggy, leave a kind review on
Upcoming Highlights: Conversations with Jonah Ogles and Phil Hoad
00:02:13
Speaker
Apple Podcast.
00:02:13
Speaker
always rises the tide here at cnfpodhq i deleted the facebook page because you know whatever for the show and uh and i'm on the fence about the other two but if you want to keep the conversation going by all means follow cnfpod on instagram and twitter
00:02:32
Speaker
for all kinds of great content. Which usually just means audiograms and pictures of zines I make. Yeah, we're living our best life over here. So let me just extend my Covidian elbow and say hello. Maybe now and why not waste any time? So now let's get the band together and get into it. First with Jonah and then with the journalist Phil freaking Hoad.
How Important are Characters in Storytelling?
00:03:13
Speaker
Yeah, those two characters, and to Phil's credit, he knew that he had good characters when he pitched that story. Sometimes you assign a story and it's sort of a happy accident that you find characters who are honest and open and vulnerable with you. Sounds like a
00:03:43
Speaker
I'm talking about The Bachelor or something right now. But he knew it going in. He knew they were just gold and that they were colorful and lively and complicated and flawed and really interesting.
The Pet Murders: A Human-Caused Mystery
00:04:03
Speaker
human ways that I think a lot of people can relate to or I hope a lot of people will relate to when they read the story. Why don't you just tell us a little bit about what the story is about and what made you want to sink your teeth into it as the lead editor on this piece? Yeah. Well, the story is about a couple of, we call them pet detectives.
00:04:31
Speaker
two individuals who have a long history of rescuing animals and are incredible lovers of animals and our pets. And they noticed that animals start showing up dead in their area of London.
00:04:50
Speaker
And so they embark on a quest to try to stop these deaths from happening.
The Art of Pitching Engaging Narratives
00:04:57
Speaker
It quickly becomes apparent to them that this is probably the work of a human being rather than just an accident or a one-off thing. It's a sustained series of killings. And they want to protect these animals and to stop this individual, whoever they may be.
00:05:19
Speaker
the idea came to us and it was one of those pitches that I read and before I had finished reading it, I wanted to do the story. And part of that was Phil's voice, the way he writes. He walks a really fine line in the story between being glib
00:05:45
Speaker
about it, but also being honest about the impact that it's having on these individuals and about the impact that it might have on readers. It's a tough story to read at times.
00:06:06
Speaker
I have a cat and a dog and I love them both dearly. And so it can be a difficult one for readers to read about. And Phil already knew how to tow that line, how to be lighthearted without dismissing the gravity of the situation.
00:06:33
Speaker
So that was one aspect of it, but also these characters, Boudica and Tony, they just came off the page right away, right in the pitch. I wanted to spend more time with them. I got a taste of who they were, what their personalities were like. I just wanted more. Before I had even finished the pitch, I knew I want more time with these characters.
00:06:58
Speaker
What was it about the way Phil framed it in the pitch that elevated Tony and Boudica to be like someone before you even finished the end of it? You're like, oh, I want to hang out with these people longer. Yeah, it was the scenery in the pitch. And by that, I just mean the
00:07:18
Speaker
you know, there were quotes from them in a scene rather than in an empty space. And so often we get pitches in which writers say, I have amazing characters, but then there are no quotes or there's no description of the person and
00:07:40
Speaker
Not even necessarily what the character looks like, but how they move through the world. And that can mean physically how they move through the world, but more often I
00:07:54
Speaker
I think of it in terms of like, what type of person is this? And Phil was able to really make them feel alive because he had spent time with them. He had already gone out on some of the calls with them where they were reporting to
00:08:15
Speaker
you know, injured or dead animals. And he already knew who they were. And when you have that under your belt, it's a lot easier to make those scenes really pop and make an editor feel like they know the person you're writing about.
00:08:35
Speaker
Do you find in your experience that a lot of reporters, whether they be younger or even mid-career, a little more seasoned, that they sometimes fail to do enough legwork early on? Or they discount the amount of legwork you have to do early on in order to create an evocative pitch that says, okay, yes, let's take the bridle off and turn you loose?
Crafting the Right Tone in Storytelling
00:08:58
Speaker
Yeah, it is pretty common, especially among younger writers, but there are some experienced hands that seem to fail to do it. And I always feel bad as an editor asking writers to go out and spend a bunch of time reporting unpaid time and energy on those things.
00:09:27
Speaker
but it really does make a huge difference when you're pitching and the other thing that happens sometimes is writers will just get really close to a subject and they they will be so focused on maybe the paper trail that they've spent so much time digging up that that they forget that
00:09:51
Speaker
editors, you know, editors assign pieces, at least at places like The Atavist, based on the story that we can tell. You know, the reporting is great. I don't mean to undervalue it at all. The great reporters often make great writers. But when you're pitching a story, I think writers do sometimes forget that the pitch is a story, too. You know, and so it's great to tell us everything that they found in the course of their reporting. But editors want
00:10:21
Speaker
that scenery they want. They want proof that the writer both has gone out and spent time with characters, but also proof that they are capable of doing that and then translating it onto the page because that's a difficult thing to do and not every writer is great at it.
00:10:42
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm guilty of it. My batting average with pitches is abysmal. But sometimes when I frame it, it's essentially kind of like a movie trailer. It's this thing that is a self-packaged thing of some of the highlights. And it's, oh, this is a bite-sized version of what the bigger thing is going to be. And if you can do that, ultimately, it's like, OK, how can I
00:11:09
Speaker
How can I make how can I grease the skids in such a way that you it's your only answer is to say yes That's the only option. I love this trailer. Yeah, that's that I've not thought of it that way but that's the perfect analogy and I so often tell writers the first two paragraphs of your pitch should probably be just
00:11:28
Speaker
the same as the first two paragraphs of your story. And I don't mean literally the same words, but it should feel like the first two paragraphs of a story in the same way that the opening of any piece should feel really immersive and alive. You want the pitch to do the same thing.
00:11:49
Speaker
And then you can move on and tell us about how many sources you've talked to and all the reporting you've done and how you see the shape of the story coming into view. But really, the introduction, the thing that's going to get any editor to pay attention is the writer showing off a little bit. See how good I can be at this scene stuff?
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, in a certain measure of tonality and that the pitch is of the same world as the story that's probably coming your way too, in terms of just mood and the way you're evocative because you want to make sure that it's congruent with the bigger thing. And I imagine it can be, they can be kind of disparate sometimes that the pitch reads a certain way and then the longer story doesn't feel that way and vice versa, I imagine.
00:12:41
Speaker
Right. And that was one of the things that stood out with Phil's pitch. He had the tone right from the very beginning.
How Should Writers and Editors Discuss Story Endings?
00:12:51
Speaker
He was writing in a voice that I thought was right for this type of story and what I was imagining.
00:13:03
Speaker
And you can imagine a version of this pitch where you just start really dark because there are murdered pets in it. You could write it as dark as you wanted to. And he had an instinct, and I think it was the right one, to not be as dark as he could be, but to present it honestly and also be honest about the moments of levity that we were going to encounter.
00:13:33
Speaker
And we even, before we assigned to the story, I talked to Phil about the tone, just to make sure this is what you're planning, right? You don't want to veer too far from this. This is the tone. This is the way to tell the story. And that's what he wanted to do, which is exactly what I wanted to hear.
00:13:52
Speaker
Excellent. And when I was speaking to Phil the other day, and he said that, you know, one of the concerns or one of the, at least the point of conversation between the two of you was how he was going to, you know, land the piece, how it was going to end. So maybe without giving too much away, maybe you can just kind of let us a little bit behind the curtain about how you both went about making sure that, you know,
00:14:18
Speaker
this piece was synthesized in such a way where the ending did, it paid off in a way that felt, you know, you know, congruent with the, you know, the piece. Right. And this is something we deal with a lot, the activist, and something we talk to almost every writer about from the very beginning
Phil's Transition: From Film Critic to Storyteller
00:14:39
Speaker
is where is this going to end? And how do we do it in a satisfying way? So I think it's smart.
00:14:45
Speaker
for writers and editors to try to have that conversation early because it helps set expectations. Because I think writers and editors are both prone to getting a little bit overexcited sometimes and having an idealized version of the way the story is gonna end. But the truth is that ending is probably not the one
00:15:13
Speaker
that you'll land on, ultimately. And so with Phil, we just talked about, okay, well, what if X happens as you continue to report? What if Y happens as you continue to report? And for us in this particular story, we felt confident enough in,
00:15:37
Speaker
the two characters that we spend so much time with and fills access to them and how open they were willing to be with us, that we felt confident that sort of regardless of what happened with the plot and the plot points, that we were going to be able to move readers through the story with these two characters in a way that allowed readers to see
00:16:05
Speaker
growth and failure and change in these characters and then ultimately land it in a place that felt satisfying even if not expected.
00:16:19
Speaker
Well, it's great. It's a great piece and I can't wait for readers to dig into it. So, well, Jonah, thank you for giving us a little peek behind the curtain about the mechanics behind the piece and thanks for hopping on the podcast here so we can properly tease out Phil's wonderful story about this, you know, with two very cool, quirky and passionate people at the center of this. So thanks for the time and we'll get right to Phil Hoad now. Thanks so much for having me.
00:16:56
Speaker
Why don't we jump right in and maybe you can tell me a little bit about how you arrived at this story? Well, basically, I mean, I was in France, I'd moved to France in 2015 and I was sort of starting to break out of what was my kind of previous career of being a film critic and I was looking for kind of longer stories, I mean, often linked to France. But in this case, I'd read something in the British press, I think at the end of
00:17:27
Speaker
2017 about this kind of spate of serial pet murders that were being investigated by an animal rescue group called Snarl. And it just sounded like such an intriguing kind of story that I began to look into it, you know, as potential for something to sort of hook a larger kind of story into. And it kind of quickly became apparent, you know, that the people involved, Boudicca and Tony were sort of
00:17:53
Speaker
really eccentric kind of people. So really interesting people and extroverts. And so, I mean, it appeared to me immediately that there was sort of potential to turn it into something larger. And at the time in Britain, there was a kind of a lot of coverage of the story. It had gone into all the kind of British nationals, I think, because of these kind of pretty quirky kind of elements. And I think it appealed to a kind of side of the British kind of psyche that's, you know,
00:18:23
Speaker
very concerned with anything sort of domestic and suburban and so he was getting a lot of coverage and at the time I mean I thought I was going to kind of write it for a British outlet and that fell through for kind of various reasons but then it became a question of you know where I could how I could develop the story for another kind of publication.
00:18:44
Speaker
And what did the calculus of that development look like? And how did you know how to shape it in such a way that a narrative evolved from
Reshaping the Narrative for The Atavist
00:18:56
Speaker
it where it seemed germane to pitch to Adivis. And I suspect other places too. What were you thinking there? Well, actually, I didn't pitch it to anyone else. I mean, after this first kind of outlets, I sort of sat on the story for quite a while.
00:19:14
Speaker
And there were some quite dramatic developments. I mean, without wanting to spoil everything, the Metropolitan Police in London were involved in investigating these crimes alongside the Animal Rescue Centre. And they pulled out very abruptly the case in 2018. And after that, all kind of all interest in the case, because the Met police said that they believed it was not an actual human who was killing these kind of pets.
00:19:44
Speaker
Foxes is what they concluded and and pretty much all the kind of British media at that point just lost interest because they took that as the kind of official verdict of the case and that and the case wasn't worth following anymore so I think what what the point at which I began to realize that there was scope to sort of do something much bigger was was the point at which pretty much all the domestic press kind of lost interest in the case and and then I kind of thought I kind of ended up just following what was happening kind of
00:20:11
Speaker
quite low key kind of way on Facebook and Tony and Boudicca's Facebook pages and Snarl, the Animal Rescue Group's Facebook page. And various things began happening in their kind of private lives after the public interest in the story had gone. And these things kind of made me so sort of interested in carrying on telling their story, which to me had begun to sort of deepen and become a lot more kind of interesting and a lot more kind of
00:20:40
Speaker
tragic in some ways, I think. And it just appeared to me that there was a kind of a whole dimension of human interest that would snare the kind of interest of publications from outside of the UK. It was just a kind of universal story that was talking about humans and animals and
00:21:05
Speaker
And so I didn't pitch to anyone else in the end. I mean, I pitched straight to the activist and, as I say, the kind of sort of unbelievableness of the story was, I think, enough for them to kind of take an interest and then it really became a kind of issue of how are we going to shape the story.
00:21:19
Speaker
Yeah, I'm always interested in the shaping and the structure and how the reporting informs one or the story informs the kind of the reporting in a way. For lack of a better term, struggles in trying to find the right structure and the right through line as you follow your two main characters throughout this story.
00:21:49
Speaker
Um, well, I mean, there, there was a natural kind of entry point into the story in that they were trying to get the official authorities to be interested and to, to sort of accompany them and help them support them and, you know, and essentially lead the case. Because I mean, you know, these are two people who were, who were kind of one of, one of whom was working, um,
00:22:12
Speaker
And, you know, they didn't initially want to have to sort of take the responsibility of dealing with these kind of bereaved pet owners and, and they didn't have the forensic resources to really look at the case, look at each individual cases, you know, and, and by 2017, which was the first real full year of the case, there were already hundreds of different, different incidents of cats being mutilated. So, I mean, there was a kind of natural buildup in terms of them
00:22:37
Speaker
trying to get the RSVCA who are Britain's main animal protection kind of agency and the Met police involved. So, I mean, that was the initial kind of part of it. And then, I mean, I guess after that, the Met's withdrawal was another big kind of anchor point in the story and examining whether or not that was justified and how Snell were treated in the kind of aftermath of that.
00:23:04
Speaker
But after that, I mean, as I say, without wanting to spoil the story, I mean, these personal events kind of lent a kind of natural arc to things. And then I think the main difficulty from my point of view was, I mean, I've kind of got an obsession with, and I guess I suspect a lot of writers do with kind of texture
How Did Tony and Boudica Deepen the Story?
00:23:19
Speaker
and detail. And this case is so kind of complicated and involved like so many hundreds of incidents at different people's homes. I think there was a sort of tendency to want to overwhelm the story with the detail and incident.
00:23:33
Speaker
So, I mean, that was one kind of difficulty, and I think that was something my editor, Jonah, had to kind of deal with. Yeah, so, and then I guess the final obstacle was the ending, and that was, again, I mean, when a picture story didn't really have an ending, I mean, they were still investigating the case, and that was something Jonah asked me immediately was, you know, how are we gonna resolve this story, you know, to the satisfaction of the kind of readers? And we, you know, I mean, I guess when,
00:24:03
Speaker
readers look at the story, they'll see how we tried to do that, but it wasn't obvious. And that was the real stumbling block in terms of selling the story to the activist. I love that you brought up obsession with detail. And to me, a really through line of this piece is how obsession can drive people, but it can also drive people apart. And was that something that kind of occurred to you over the course of your reporting? It was just sort of this double-edged sword of obsession.
00:24:32
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, it's, you know, they're, they're, they're obsessive people to start with. I mean, I mean, you could call it obsession, I guess, but I mean, passion would be another word for it. And they, you know, they really love and believe in animals. And so they're sort of driven by, um, you know, this need to kind of protect them. And, and that's, and that's why they, you know, Boudica, who had a job started to spend all that kind of waking hours, you know, compiling incidents and looking at,
00:25:00
Speaker
you know, horrific photographs and Tony devoted basically his entire life to, you know, going out and collecting bodies and doing, you know, animal CSI on the, on these kinds of crime scenes. And, you know, so, I mean, you know, it started with, and it's obvious that it was driven by passion, but I mean, in their case, I mean, as soon as, especially as soon as I found out the kind of cost to their personal lives, which as I say, the, I mean, the media had a, the British media had a tendency to treat it as a bit of a,
00:25:29
Speaker
kind of quirky, amusing jokes kind of story. But I mean, once the Met pulled out and they, you know, in quite a disrespectful way, in my opinion, I mean, the Met didn't acknowledge the worth of the work, even if they were wrong about that being a human killer. The Met didn't really sort of give them the respect that, you know, you give your colleagues with whom you've been working for two and a half years. And I think given that loss of
00:25:57
Speaker
you know, dignity in some ways, and then sort of, you know, massive personal repercussions for them that followed, you know, out of the public eye, then, then I think there is there is a sort of side where where they, you know, passion led to led to something that has sort of essentially kind of made their lives very, very difficult. And I mean, the story does have kind of comic elements, and Tony and Boudicca are very sort of
00:26:22
Speaker
extrovert outspoken people with a really funny tone of phrase. But I mean, the effects on their lives, you know, I don't think it's a stretch to call them tragic. And, you know, and I think at the point of the piece, I compare the effect and investigation to the David Fincher film Zodiac, because it is that sort of case of an investigation that that just, you know, destroys the lives of the people on, you know, who are working on the case. And, you know, that and that became clear to me, really.
00:26:51
Speaker
As you're going about the reporting and you meet Tony and Butaker, what was it like for you joining them in their pursuit and trying to essentially crack this case? Put the boots on the ground, if you will. It was a slow process for me to get into that position because initially, I was one of
00:27:18
Speaker
dozens of reporters who were knocking on their door asking for access to, you know, what they were doing. And so they kind of, you know, didn't see me as being any different from all these other people who, you know, just have quite fleeting kind of engagements with them. So, I mean, initially I met them, you know, in a cafe a couple of times at the beginning of 2018, just to discuss the case in general terms. And I thought the story was going to be much shorter kind of thing. And then I sort of
00:27:47
Speaker
actually went out on a kind of crime scene with Tony in the middle of 2018. And it was this kind of, you know, pretty anonymous kind of London Street, next to a kind of church with, you know, this sort of dissected, bisected fox in a kind of alley, you know, so it's kind of stinking of, you know, just vermin and, you know, and obviously, that's pretty horrible. But, but also, I mean, seeing, you know, Tony deal with the family who
00:28:16
Speaker
who had spotted this animal that kind of next to them, next to their house, and were kind of living in fear of their cats. And there'd been a lot of media kind of for all around the case. So, I mean, you know, it was almost witnessing like, you know, the kind of media reaction to the case as well. But I mean, but again, you know, it's still at that point, I was still writing it for this other publication, and my engagement wasn't that deep. And I think just through the process of actually still
00:28:43
Speaker
caring about the story once everyone had stopped caring about it and being in fairly kind of frequent contact with them because I was, you know, I'm still living in France and I was just ringing them every so often to kind of get an update. And I think through that and through the fact that, you know, I just I just showed a kind of persistent interest. I mean, that sort of I think we've moved on to a slightly more kind of intimate kind of footing. And then and then the last sort of phase of reporting was, you know, it's quite intense.
00:29:13
Speaker
a process of going out with Uduka, who now has her own separate organisation, for reasons I won't fully explain now, but she's taken a very different approach to Tony. She is now not actively doing crime scene work anymore and collecting bodies. She's going on stakeout, profiling suspects, and drifting into this very
00:29:38
Speaker
gray area, sort of vigilante-esque activity. And, you know, and again, I mean, this is another thing that I was so, that made me so keen to write the story was that, you know, it's just this sort of contrasting sort of take on their contrasting forms of their obsession. And I mean, it was, you know, it's great being out with them. It's quite exciting and, you know, kind of being in a car, kind of at midnight, getting driven around sort of random London estates, you know, looking for this, you know, supposed killer,
00:30:06
Speaker
kind of in the small hours in the morning. And that's just quite exciting. And that was part of that sort of last phase of 10 day phase of reporting I did. And the other half was spent with Tony kind of doing what he's always been doing. And he's a very caring guy. And he's doing this kind of amazing pastoral work with families as well as picking up horribly mutilated and decapitated cats and stuff.
Balancing Respectful Access in Storytelling
00:30:32
Speaker
Um, so, you know, I mean, that, that was just a sort of tragic and, and, you know, weird as, as it's always been, but, but again, I mean, you know, I was very lucky that they've, they've given me such kind of sustained access to, to everything that they're doing and, um, you know, and being prepared to share, you know, so much of their lives and, and, and, you know, and they have sort of discussed that, you know, privatized to some extent in, you know, I had to make a big decision and, and sort of reassure them that I wasn't going to kind of abuse that access in any way. I mean, you know,
00:30:59
Speaker
know, the certain things that I was told that I just thought I just felt were kind of beyond the scope of what they would want in the story. So I had to make a decision about that kind of thing too.
00:31:10
Speaker
And given that a lot of the British press that was around this case was, as you said, pretty fleeting in a very sort of touch and go, come and go, how key was it, or what were you able to do in your reporting to engender the kind of trust with them that you weren't just going to zip in and zip out? You were kind of there for the long haul of this thing.
00:31:39
Speaker
Well, I don't want to downplay, you know, there was some very good British coverage and, you know, and to some extent my piece has been reliant on, you know, reporting done by other people who were present at crucial points in the story when I wasn't. So, I mean, not all of it was kind of trivializing. I mean, there was very good piece in Vice. The New York Times did a good piece. The Fantasy Fair did a good piece.
00:32:06
Speaker
But I guess, I mean, all of them had this tendency to kind of be there kind of in the initial phase of the story and once the sort of met police gave their verdicts that they didn't think there was a real case to follow then. I mean, it was a bit, for me, the main disappointing aspect was how easily most outlets swallowed that and that they didn't want to go any further. And I think it kind of raises questions about whether these kind of animal related crimes are actually worth sustained
00:32:35
Speaker
police resources and a worth our interest. And that's a kind of philosophical question. And maybe most newspapers and outlets just didn't feel that it merited any kind of sustained engagement kind of story. But I guess that's every publication has its own kind of angle on that.
Societal and Legal Views on Animal Cruelty
00:32:55
Speaker
And my point of view was that the human story was even more so the investigation kind of extremely compelling. And I think
00:33:03
Speaker
obviously Snell and Slaine, the two groups now have an interest in getting more kind of coverage for the story. So they had their kind of motivation for wanting me to carry on reporting on it, and they very kindly let me do that. But I mean, from my point of view, I just wanted to carry on telling the story, which I thought was amazing. And I think that interest was enough to kind of convince them.
00:33:28
Speaker
What do you think it will take for more people and even law enforcement to take the animal cruelty illustrated in the piece like this, that it's not isolated, this stuff happens. Speak nothing of the barbarism that takes place in slaughterhouses and the way animals are treated and industrialized.
00:33:52
Speaker
industrialized CAFOs. But what do you think it'll take for people to take these kind of crimes against animals as serious or at least a fraction as serious as it does against people? I don't know. I mean, it's a really difficult question to answer. I mean, it's almost a bigger subject for a separate article. But I mean, I think things are changing slowly. And I think the interest in this case is a sort of
00:34:21
Speaker
sign of that to some extent, although this is happening on such a wide scale, if it is one killer, then it's hard not to take notice. But I think there's a sort of general sea change in terms of more people converting to stuff like veganism, more awareness of animals and animal sentience and animals as beings with emotional lives that are comparable to ours that I think slowly but surely that will
00:34:51
Speaker
you know, have a kind of effect on lawmaking, crime, resource allocation, you know, I think, you know, because I think, you know, some police forces, obviously, within this case, we're inclined to take it seriously, others, others not. And, you know, so I think we're obviously in a kind of an estate of transition. And, you know, some people are affected by, you know, just, I mean, not even just the pain and suffering of the animals, but the kind of pain and suffering of the owners and the owners
00:35:20
Speaker
emotional relationships with those animals. But the Met did decide to pull out because supposedly their excuse was that there was no crime to investigate unless you count animals and animals as a crime. But I think their real reason was that they just didn't have the time or resources to spend on such a marginal kind of case from their point of view. And again, I think there is a wider
00:35:50
Speaker
philosophical argument to be had about whether or not animal crimes are equivalent to human crimes and, you know, and perhaps they're not and they never will be, but it doesn't mean that there's not some kind of middle ground between the two and that, you know, there couldn't be a bit more recognition of animal sentience and a bit more willingness to view animals directly as victims of crime. But I mean, you know, I think another point in the story, Boudicca says to me, you know, in terms of like,
00:36:21
Speaker
animal, the killings of animals being viewed on a par with like a human murder, she says. And there are some criminologists, this kind of school of criminologists called non-speciesist criminologists, who think that that should be the case. And Boudica said to me, we're never in a million years going to get that. And obviously that would make every abattoir like a kind of mass murder site. And that's just
00:36:47
Speaker
This doesn't seem feasible as long as we're a kind of meat-eating, consuming society. But as I say, I do think there's a middle ground, and I do think that middle ground will be more probed over the next couple of decades, I'm guessing.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah, and you also write towards the end of the piece that the Met got involved at all was a victory. It was proof that crimes against animals could be addressed with a seriousness of purpose hitherto unseen in the UK or anywhere else for that matter. So there is progress and this could be just a lever in that direction. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, but like I say, I mean, there is a danger that this case is so
00:37:28
Speaker
outlandish, that it's just a kind of novelty in some ways. But I do think that there will be some progress. And even though The Met kind of mothballed the case and in the end didn't take it with full seriousness, there were officers working on the case who did take it seriously. And that will hopefully continue in the future.
00:37:56
Speaker
At the same time, I mean, I remember Tony, something I didn't mention in the piece that Tony told me recently that he'd spoken to some policeman in a particular branch of the Met who had been asked to investigate an animal case subsequent to the Met pulling out. And basically he just couldn't convince his superiors, I think, to commit any resources to it because I think the pull out for the time being is made impossible for police officers to kind of justify.
00:38:25
Speaker
Well, police officers in his precinct, at least, to justify getting involved in an animal crime for the time being. So the case might actually, in the short term, have a kind of adverse effect. And that's unfortunate.
00:38:38
Speaker
And of course, you know, at the center of all this are these, you know, gruesome, gruesome deaths of, uh, primarily cats, some rabbits.
Phil's Reflections on Death and Change
00:38:48
Speaker
And, you know, I've read foxes and foxes. Yep. And, and I also read the, you know, a great sort of essay.
00:38:57
Speaker
that you wrote that you know kind of a review of Pixar's soul and at the center of that is you know how death and how Pixar is in this really obsessed with death and even kind of making movies that seem to pivot towards
00:39:16
Speaker
adults and you know given the the death at the center of this piece for Atavus and death at the center of at least that essay that you wrote in The Guardian I was wondering maybe what your relationship is to death and you know what you I don't know how it resonates with you as a topic to write about maybe something broader than that interesting question I mean I wouldn't have necessarily predicted you to to ask me about that but um and I've never consciously thought it's
00:39:45
Speaker
something that I would want to address as a consistent theme. But it definitely is a massive factor in my thinking. I've always been horrified by the idea since I was a little kid, pretty much. And now I'm reaching a certain age as well, where it's becoming more than a abstract reality. So yeah, I don't know. Maybe it is. And it's a theme.
00:40:16
Speaker
tangentially related to death. But I mean, change in general is something that I'm interested in. And I do think this story displays that as a kind of a thread throughout the way in which, I guess, Tony and Boudicca have tried to follow a consistent principle that it's obviously like a kind of stable thing in their lives, loving
00:40:44
Speaker
loving and protecting animals and standing by that as a kind of moral principle. But that sort of attachment to that kind of pole in their lives has ended up changing them and changing their lives. And, you know, and I don't know, I mean, to me, there's that idea of there's something deathly about that in some ways. But I wouldn't have said that death or the fascination with death or the actual sort of
From Film Criticism to Journalism: Phil's Journey
00:41:12
Speaker
physical aspects of these crime scenes which are pretty horrible in places that was something that particularly drew me to it. I'm not a huge fan of, I'm not drawn to like crime writing or detective stuff per se or anything like that.
00:41:27
Speaker
Given that your primary background was in writing for cinema and you're kind of making this kind of a journalistic pivot, if you will, what was that inflection point for you that you wanted to take your skills in a different direction? Yeah, absolutely. I was working on the Guardian's arts desk for a long time. I was a production editor there. And I carried on writing. I was a film kind of reviewer.
00:41:57
Speaker
kind of pontific, professional pontificator. But I mean, when I moved to France, I just, you know, I just, I mean, I was kind of slightly severed certainly from that kind of London screening circuit and, and, you know, and I've been writing about film for a long time and I kind of just wanted to get, I don't know, stop doing, not stop doing, but move into doing stories with more of a connection with the real world and suddenly being out on my own here discovering a new country was
00:42:25
Speaker
kind of perfect excuse to do that. And so, you know, I wrote a long piece about Marseille, more of a portrait of the city. And then I started looking for other stories to write about and I ended up doing another couple of pretty long investigative pieces, one on an art fraud in a town near the border with Spain where 60% of the artworks in a museum turned out to be fake.
00:42:53
Speaker
And another story about another fraud story, actually. So maybe there's a current theme there about the woman called Jeanne Calment, who was France's oldest woman and the oldest woman to have ever existed in the world's oldest certified centenarian. And whether she'd been actually replaced by her own daughter for fiscal fraud reasons.
00:43:21
Speaker
of crazy story and so I did these two stories The Guardian but in actual fact I mean I'd started looking into the cat story before these two other stories and so you know I was just on the lookout for I mean long stories with kind of really compelling like just human angle and maybe that didn't revolve so rigidly around kind of thematic identifying themes you know and stuff like that a lot of film writing revolves around and you know and I still love
00:43:48
Speaker
film writing, I still love cinema, but I just found it was important for me to have a stronger contact with the kind of real world. And that's what I've been trying to do. I mean, it's just not that easy sometimes to find stories that haven't already been heavily covered by people, just to find little human interest items in often small articles in newspapers and just see that they've got the kind of scope to broaden them out into something
00:44:18
Speaker
something bigger and I'm lucky that people kind of lost interest in the cat story really. And I was there to carry it forward. Fantastic. Well, Phil, this is great talking to you and getting to unpack that story a little bit. Can you just maybe let people know where you hang out online and your website or social media in case they want to check you out and see what you're doing? I think the only sort of
00:44:47
Speaker
A very interesting thing I do on social media is just on my Twitter feed, which is at float, which is P-H-L-O-D-E. But apart from that, I don't do Facebook. That's pretty much it, really. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for hopping on the podcast, Bill, and thank you so much for the work.
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:45:08
Speaker
Thanks for having me, Brendan.
00:45:17
Speaker
I would say that was a toe-tapping good time, right? I think so. And my toes are always tapping. Now I usually go into a prolonged parting shot where I talk about all kinds of bullshit about my riding life and the mundanity of whatever bullshit I'm dealing with or going through. But I'll spare you because
00:45:37
Speaker
The episode prior to this one where I spoke with the great basketball writer Jackie McMullen has all kinds of Brendan nonsense at the end. So if you feel like staying abreast of that, by all means, listen to the end of that one. So thanks to Jonah for hopping on the pod to unpack Phil's piece and get into the intricacies of pitching. And of course, Phil, it's great calling all the way in from Europe.
00:46:05
Speaker
always always great across the great united continental u.s. and the the vast expanse of the atlantic ocean brought to you by zencaster and a couple microphones and boom there's phil hoad what a world we live in
00:46:21
Speaker
But, you know, today, like I said, I usually go into a huge diatribe of some kind or another, which I spare you by putting it at the end of the show instead of forcing you to listen to it or hit your skip-a-heads at the start of the show. But today, for this one, we're just going to close this out by saying that CNF Pod is a production of Exit 3 Media, produced, hosted, and everything by me, Brendan O'Mara.
00:46:45
Speaker
Check the show out on Instagram and Twitter at cnfpod and do me this one solid, will ya? Stay cool, CNFers. Stay cool forever. See ya.