Transcript
Speaker: Hey, we're coming up on it Saturday, October 24th at Gratitude Brewing 1pm. Chuck Klosterman is coming to town for a live recording of the podcast. We'll be talking about his new book, Rock, A Mainstream Alternative History of Alternative Mainstream Music, and his book, Football, Most Likely. and writing and voice and style because he is singular and you can see him in person. Please RSVP with a free ticket at the link in my newsletters or in the Instagram profile at Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
Speaker: The place will be, or it should be, or it better be packed. Secure your free ticket. It's only for a headcount. You don't need to show it, but do reserve a ticket. Ideally, multiple tickets.
Speaker: And Pitch Club reached 1,000 subscribers this week. And if you want to get better at selling stories or a podcast series or an agent or earn the trust of a source, Pitch Club is your resource.
Speaker: Read pitches that actually worked from working writers and hear them audio annotate their thinking. I'm not just the president of Pitch Club. I'm also a client.
Speaker: Well, it definitely felt intimidating to me. i mean, I can sit in a pile of documents and be perfectly happy, you know, in ah in a closet.
Speaker: Oh, hey there, CNF friends. It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. It's Brendan, ya boi. My neighbor was playing the podcast over his speakers, just as a joke, when I went to go help him load his canoe onto his truck, and I heard myself, I'm like, this sounds familiar. But why are you talking so slowly?
Speaker: You see, I edit this podcast at at least 1.5x, sometimes 2x speed. And so the normal 1x speed that most of you are likely listening to feels painfully slow.
Speaker: Talk faster, B.O. Today we have Elizabeth Shambly Birch, a professor at the University of Georgia School of Law and the author. Man, story of greed fear and exploitation. scam that targeted women who had potentially faulty pelvic mesh surgery.
Speaker: man it's a story of greed and fear and exploitation yeah a scam that targeted women who potentially who had potentially faulty pelvic mesh surgery only to have a shady network of cons terrify these women over the phone with vast amounts of personal information they got from a data breach, scaring them to have this mesh removed that effectively has ruined the lives of countless women.
Speaker: The pain brokers chronicles their plight, as well as the lawyers who sought justice and the predatory people at the spearhead of this scheme. So show notes to this episode. More at brendanomero.com. Hey, there you can also sign up for Pitch Club. Hey, we just heard about that, didn't we?
Speaker: The monthly sub stack where I break down a writer's pitch with audio annotations. If you want to sell more stories, Pitch Club is your ticket. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. Hey, and you can also visit patreon.com slash cnfpod to contribute to the financial operations of this enterprise because, as you well know, podcast is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap.
Speaker: And if you want to support the show but you don't want to part with your burrito money, leaving kind ratings and reviews for the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify are a huge help, as are kind ratings and reviews of the frontrunner.com.
Speaker: I think we're starting to compile a series of one stars for the podcast, but that's going to happen. I'm an acquired taste, and that's a good thing. That's a good thing.
Speaker: Right? I think so. Maybe? So Elizabeth's focus of her teaching is mass torts, which we get into in this podcast. What is a mass tort? I don't know.
Speaker: Still don't know. but But I kind of do. Class actions and civil procedure. She's been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and won the American Law Institute's Early Career Scholars Medal in 2015, among a few other saucy awards. Her academic work and commentary have appeared in the New York Times, a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Miami Herald, just to name a few. And you can find her online at ElizabethCBurch.com or on the socials like at Elizabeth C. Birch on Instagram.
Speaker: Now, The Pain Brokers was named one of the best books so far of 2026 by that rag, The New Yorker. And in this episode, we talk about making law interesting, goat chokers, locking in character to an idea, structuring part one seven different times, how intimidating it all was, getting IRL in real life, etc. You morons, the value we had as journalists, getting lost in detective mode. What the hell are mass torts? Mass tort du jour's?
Speaker: The granular details and how to get them, knowing where the landmines are, and what keeps her coming back. Parting shot on me being an idiot and replying to an email I should have recognized as a scam right away.
Speaker: But for now, let's cue up the riff. Huh.
Speaker: kind of hate it when people say that writing is fun. But every day is very much a pair of socks. And I love style. Don't get me wrong, but that style had better be adding something. Yeah, this could be good. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: As you're teaching, you have these wide-eyed owls, as you say, like, ah what do you see in them that ah is recognizable to, like, maybe when you started law school, you know, whenever you did? Yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't have any lawyers, really, in my family. I have an uncle who's a lawyer, but we'd never really talked about the law. And... It was all just new to me. And I think it's new to a lot of them, too. And, um you know, i tell them it's it's often like learning a new language because you're having to look up almost every other word that you're reading and it gets faster and it gets easier. But that's easier said than done in your first few weeks of classes. Yeah. And had you always wanted to study law or pursue some other avenue? i You know, I didn't really have a great idea what I wanted to do when I was growing up. um You know, I always thought that I wanted to be a writer, but it's tough to make a living as a writer. So and I was an English major and most English majors have to go do something else.
Speaker: Yeah. And ah yeah, having always wanted to maybe be a writer, what was some of the yeah inspirations that you drew from, you know, early on and in your life and even as an English major?
Speaker: Oh, gosh. I mean, i you know, I kind of grew up on fiction, less so on nonfiction. And I studied under Tony Early at Vanderbilt University, who turned me on to Lori Moore, you know, really sort of dark humor, dark stories um that take you into complicated spaces. And that's, that has been a big inspiration for me on the on the nonfiction side is is trying to show a reader a new world that they might not know about otherwise and make you a little uncomfortable sometimes, but keep the pages turning. Yeah, with any nonfiction, i imagine it applies to fiction as well. There are there are models in other books and even in the nonfiction world, like long ah magazine stories that inspire us either just from the sheer content of the story or the structure of it or the voice of it. So when you were you know similarly getting inspired by certain narrative nonfiction, what were some of those titles that excited you?
Speaker: Oh, gosh. I mean, I've read so much in this space over the years. ah You know, more more recently, Valerie Bauerlin's Devil at His Elbow about the Murdoch case has been fascinating to me. and This sort of deep dive look into people in the legal industry who are behaving badly, particularly lawyers, I think is just fascinating. Yeah, and there's, in fiction and thrillers, there's a long history of ah legal stories that are, you know, riveting on their own in their own right. I think in real life, maybe law might not be as sexy in so in some ways, but like, how have you, and what you know, how how are you trying to, don't know, imbue it with ah that that degree of, ah you know, vitality that maybe we read in fiction into the nonfiction world?
Speaker: You know, I think there are so many characters and the more you get to know these characters, the more you realize that they do have that quality. So in the pain brokers, there are a few of these folks. Vince Chabra is one of them. He's this guy who um is a first generation Indian immigrant. He got started really early on in the dot com boom when he was running an online pill mill. He was arrested. He was put into prison um for selling a number of drugs illegally. he got out.
Speaker: He was running an online puppy mill while he was in prison, which violated his parole when he got out because he was selling prescriptions for dogs. He was put back into prison, and then he gets out. He discovers mass torts. He makes millions of dollars in the mass tort space.
Speaker: And you see him you know down in Miami buying his mistress's ah platinum pinky rings and you know all kinds of craziness. And so it really is just finding those little gems that bring those characters to life and hopefully help them leap off the page. Absolutely. Yeah. And you do that in the paint brokers extremely well with the the ensemble that you're able to procure through your research and reporting. And i yeah we'll tug on those threads a little more um as as we proceed. But I'd also love to get a sense of, you know, of course, you you know, you you know study law and you teach law, but you've also locked into the MFA program you went to at Georgia.
Speaker: when I talked to Jarrett Van Meter for a Pitch Club episode, he's like, oh, you're talking to Beth Burst? like, oh, yeah, yeah. He's like, you got to talk to her. Just like a lot of us came in not really knowing what to write, but she came in with like guns blazing, like a book. She had a book she was working on. And ah so just, ah you know, take us to that moment of maybe why you felt that, ah yeah, that that degree of and MFA coaching was going to help you stick the landing on your book project.
Speaker: Oh yeah, I mean, it was instrumental to me. i you know i'd been I've been teaching law for 21 years now, and so you get kind of steeped in the language. And you know it's really hard to unlearn your ways of thinking and unlearn your ways of writing. And um I came in knowing that I wanted to write something about mass torts. I had just come out of a study where I talked to a whole bunch of plaintiffs who felt like they'd been screwed over by their lawyers, many of whom were in the pelvic mesh litigation. um But I didn't want to write a book about old vaginas. And so it was how do I find this kind of follow the money story?
Speaker: And, you know, going through that MFA program and the editing was instrumental. I mean, the mentors that I had would would just, you know, tear up my manuscripts and say, you know, one of them would circle big chunks of paragraphs and write goat choker on there. You know, I know I think, well, this isn't legally. This is perfectly understandable for a normal human being. And boy, was I wrong.
Speaker: All right Goat choker. Tell me what that I've never heard that term before. So I think it my understanding is that it is, you know, chock full of ah legalese that was not understandable to someone else. And that was too dense, too information packed that I needed to tease it out, unpack it. weave in ah information into the narrative itself when it becomes relevant, as opposed to just, you know, kind of dumping information in and really boring long ways. and When I was, ah who was I talking to? Oh, yeah, it was ah Josh Robinson about his his book that he co authored the playbook about machinations of the NFL and the ideas and how they front offices have changed to yeah maximize the benefits within the salary cap, blah, blah, blah. And so it's like a big idea book, ah but without character, ideas are going to die on the vine. And I think similarly with with your book, without good characters, it will get drowned out in legalese in the process and you're going to lose people. So how important was it for you to like lock character to idea?
Speaker: Oh, it was so important. I mean, there were, you know, this such a big story that one of the most difficult tasks for me was figuring out who should carry the story, who should carry which parts of the story. And it still probably has too many people in it. But it was an important aspect of the book for me to name names, because these are people who are still out there. They're still operating. They're still working in the space. But trying to figure out who my main characters were. And you know Barbara Bennis, who is the defense lawyer who comes in, she was actually a relatively late addition into the story. So I'd already written big hunks of it with J.R. Baxter as the main character and um you know really trying to figure out, OK, but J.R. doesn't come into this conversation.
Speaker: Until really kind of later in the story. So I need to go back a little bit and wrote Barbara Dennis and explain who she is first. When did you know you had like a book on your hand when this idea came to you?
Speaker: you know I didn't really know. the idea came to me um in the form of a whistleblower. So you know as ah as a professor, I get a lot of crazy calls from time to time, and most of the time you just you know kind of write them off. But I was, I guess, a month and a half into the MFA program when I got an email from Ron LaSorsa, who turns out to be one of the main characters in the book.
Speaker: And he told me this story that was so crazy and so fantastical. I thought, oh, this cannot be true. This is just nuts. And I started looking into it and it turned out that it connected to the pelvic mesh litigation that I'd wanted to find a way to write about in really a way that was so serendipitous that you just couldn't say no to that story. And the more I checked it out, the more I realized he's he's right. um And so this is something I've got to dig into. Mm-hmm. And as you're kind of crafting yeah the the book in your in the research, of course, like what were what were some of the the growing pains and hiccups that you found experienced along the way?
Speaker: I mean, structure is so hard. um For me, the structure of this book was was really tricky. i think we restructured part one maybe seven different times at least, you know completely undid it and restructured it. And um you know I originally had a lot more background about Vince Chabra, who's one of the kingpins that's involved in this mesh mill. And, you know, edited that down. And so it's just, it's a lot of, for me, playing with it and trying to figure out what works and what tells the story and gets all of the players out there, but in a way that hopefully keeps the reader interested. I know with structure, what I find helpful and ah is by no means original, but it's finding other models out there that kind of act like stencils in a way. And it's like, okay, it's been done before. you can color in that stencil with things that are unique to your research and reporting, but there's no sense in reinventing the wheel. You can kind of just change the tires. and ah so for you, what were some, yeah, some structural modalities that were like, oh, this makes sense to the story I'm looking to tell.
Speaker: Well, I started reading every kind of braided narrative that I could find, whether it was in nonfiction or in fiction, where you're introducing different characters, and then in another part, you're bringing all of their stories together. So, you know, trying to find those books and trying to understand, okay, how are other people doing this in a way that is compelling was really, really helpful to me. Yeah, and with a braid of that nature, it can be challenging to make sure everything is balanced. you know You're not getting too far away from one character before you introduce another one or or before you bring another one back. So just what was that experience of like just keeping it as balanced as possible?
Speaker: Well, I do think it's hard. you know One of the challenges that I faced in editing was where to introduce J.R. Baxter because his main role doesn't come in until part three. And my editor at first wanted to take him completely out of part one where you see him in law school as just sort of a ah fresh faced 1L like the people who are in my Torts class right now. um And, you know, I fought to keep him in part one because I wanted readers to have him in the back of their mind that there is this hero who is coming. And to also understand how green he was when he took on Jerry Plummer's case, that this was not a lawyer who had been out for many, many decades, who was willing to pick this up, that this was someone who was relatively new to the profession and who was really willing to roll the dice on a case that was hard and that had been overlooked by many people at that point.
Speaker: In what way would you say your're your training and your experience in law as a lawyer and a professor equipped you to take on you know this the story and the research and the writing?
Speaker: Well, this is ah it's a complicated story. There are a lot of different layers to it. There is a layer to it that deals with third-party litigation funding that I think a lot of people don't really know anything about and might have a hard time digging out. um And so...
Speaker: Coming to it from the legal aspect was both a detriment to me in terms of writing, but also an advantage in the sense that, okay, I have a sense as to who these players are, i have ah an idea about the space in which they fit.
Speaker: you know I'm not starting with a blank slate there. So you know a lot of the people I think were maybe willing to talk to me because I have been in that space for a lot of years. And so that was a bit of an advantage. Sometimes I liken the reporting as ah as a journalist and whatever it might be to, and I have no law background or even I might even be massacring this term, but I kind of liken it to discovery. and like i like i call research discovery, reporting discovery in case I get a little skittish about reporting and cold calling. i'm like, no, this is this is discovery, just getting him getting the information and loading the files. And It's just ah from that point of view for you is, you know, how did you, ah ah you know, approach that and ah yeah maybe defang it so it didn't feel as overwhelming or intimidating?
Speaker: Well, it definitely felt intimidating to me. I mean, I can sit in a pile of documents and be perfectly happy, you know, in ah in a closet under the stairs. um But the idea of calling somebody and talking to them or you know, going into meet meeting them face to face was was terrifying to me when I started out. And, you know i think it's in part just because, mean, I'm sure this isn't true for all writers, but a lot of writers are shy people. That's certainly true of me. And so, you know, the idea of sort of putting yourself out there and really, you know,
Speaker: going into someone's life in a way that feels uncomfortable to them and maybe uncomfortable to you and just being willing to stay there until that discomfort passes is it's hard.
Speaker: Do you recall or if you can recall, it what was your first you know cold call experience like? So J.R. Baxter was my first cold call and and he was very kind. And I think, you know, a lot of people are willing to have that first initial interview. But then it's when you're when and I then say, hey, can I come to Arkansas and hang out with you for a little while that it becomes, oh, you know, why are you, you know, why are you digging into my life to this extent? So, um you know, that's where it can get a little problematic and where people, i think, balk a little. And you're dealing with a lot of very sensitive material, especially with, um you know, Jerry and blanking on the other two women's names. Sharon and Barb. Sharon and Barb. So very sensitive, traumatic experiences with these three women, representative women of a bigger group. bigger case, of course, but they carry the water for you in this in the story. But with dealing with very sensitive material with them, you know, how did you i just get comfortable with that degree of ah probing that's necessary to, you know, round out their character, but also, you know, get the information you need from people who have been deeply harmed by this?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, these are people who have not only been victimized by a medical device, but then who are victimized a second time by the justice system. And I certainly didn't want to add, you know, a third layer of trauma to them.
Speaker: i think it helps that I am a woman and have, you know, you know, you have kind of a base of knowledge and understanding that you can come into those sorts of discussions with, but talking with people about um you know incontinence and surgeries. And these are not things that we generally discuss in our everyday lives, but it helped to get to know them over time. i went to see each of them in person. Most of them I was able to see in their homes, which was a great way to get to know somebody. And you just sort of slowly build that level of trust. You know, when I found out new information, I let them know about it. And before I published the book, I read each of their pieces to them just to make sure that it was true to their experience and that they knew what was coming.
Speaker: Yeah, and these days, yeah we're so digitally interfaced that ah it can be, even even through a video call, it can be, ah I'll say, a bit challenging to build and foster trust. And you need trust so much in narrative nonfiction. Just to what extent or how important was it for you to see them in person to foster that degree of trust? Yeah.
Speaker: I think it makes all the difference. I mean, it's, you know, it's one thing for us to talk over video. That's certainly better than talking over the phone. yeah But to really get to know somebody, you have to go into their lives. You have to be able to see them in their home atmosphere, the way they interact with people, what their world looks like.
Speaker: And so, you know, I tried to do that. I did do that with with all of my main characters, with Sharon, Barb, Jerry, JR, and Barbara Bendis. Yeah, there were a couple ah reporters for the Atavist magazine who went on ambitious reporting trips, ah more or less to prove to their sources that they were that they had skin in the game, that they were willing to go that extra mile, quite literally that extra mile. And they're both of their cases, thousands of miles. And in one case, and with Andrew Phelps, it was pretty ah risky for him to get to Ethiopia, where
Speaker: a lot of gnarly stuff was happening. But it was when he made that effort that they realized he was kind of on on their side and they were willing to share and go on the record and, yeah, really risk their lives to get that story out there. So I just think that's really important to hear you underscoring this.
Speaker: If you can, I know it it costs money and time, but to get in person is when journalism and this kind of storytelling really gains elevation and where you can really get to the good stuff. I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, particularly in this age of AI, where so many people think, oh, you know, I can just go online, you know, the value that we add as journalists is bringing, bringing facts into being, um you know, telling these true stories that aren't always available on the internet. So going out there and gathering that information and building that trust and, and you know, being vulnerable with the people that we're asking to be vulnerable to us. Yeah. well And it's all the more harder because when you're talking about you being shy people, like I'm very, on top of being shy, and pretty introverted as well. So like being, having conversations, you know, like this or even reporting calls, like just drain my battery. Like after we're done, I'm probably just going to lie on the floor for 20 minutes.
Speaker: and And then it's like, let the, let the battery come back up a little bit. Cause then I got another pod to record. in a couple hours. But it is so important to make that investment. It just goes, it goes so far and it it cuts against our character in so many ways. But as draining as that is, and sometimes as scary as it is, how energizing have you found it as well?
Speaker: I mean, you know, for me, it was going into someone's life who is not like me. um And I think over time, so much of us tend to sequester away with people who are like us. you know Our friends are people who are like us. They're the same sort of socioeconomic class, same sort of education level. um you know I spend my days surrounded by other lawyers and for you know students who are wanting to become lawyers. so For me, you know going to meet Jerry Plummer, who was living at the Capri Inn at the time that I met her and
Speaker: who was there with her grandson and kind of pulling up and seeing her living conditions and seeing the fear when her ex-husband, Michael, pulled up in the truck next to us and you know seeing how real that is for her. It's not something that I could have just imagined or you know you just you would have all these sorts of questions, but when you see it firsthand, you really begin to understand it. And in a way that you wouldn't otherwise. So, yeah you know, it's it's a real learning process for me and it's, you know, it's energizing in that way, but but also depleting. So I get back from a reporting trip and, you know, like you, i kind of, you know, go into a cave for a little while. yeah Yeah, and it's also a detail like that that you can't get on a phone call. you
Speaker: you know The way – be it – yeah, the fear of seeing the you husband come in and like that degree. you can almost see the cortisol spike you know coming and that's like a very character revealing. And so that's always something you can note and and ah and of course – I, all these other little details too, like, you know, what they choose to put on a bookcase or hang on the wall or how their glasses slide down the bridge of their nose. Like those are like little silly details, but like when you're in person you notice those things, it it can just bring everything to life.
Speaker: It really does in a way that, that we don't get over the phone or even over videos unless we're, you know, in person with someone, the equivalent of having a beer with somebody, having a meal with somebody, it it changes things. Yeah. Part of what I love about, let's say, like you and Allison working together on like the, your book proposal kind of lecture or workshop, I found that ah really illuminating. I took screenshots of all your slides from Instagram because they just think, oh, this is really like the way you guys are thinking about it and structured. I'm like, this is so, so smart and so generous to put that out there for people. For the book proposal process for this, yeah, what was that experience like for you?
Speaker: Well, I did everything backwards. So, you know, what I tell people to do is not what I did. um You know, I didn't, I was kind of coming into this without a lot of knowledge. And i had written the majority of the book before I wrote the book proposal, which in some ways made writing the book proposal pretty easy because doing chapter summaries, well, I've already written the chapters. Now I just need to summarize them.
Speaker: But I, of course, learned, okay, first you're supposed to write the book proposal. Then you write a query loud letter and you try to get an agent. And ah then you revise the book proposal based on your agent's input.
Speaker: you know I remember going into those editors' meetings with my agent and my agent saying, okay, I know you've written the book, but if you could maybe just not say that, that you've written the whole book right now, that would be great. So um you know I would get questions like, well, you're a law professor. How do you think you're possibly going to find time to write the book? And I was like, I think I can get it written. um so you know it was it was a little awkward in that way.
Speaker: but um you know I think the book proposal process really helps to flesh out structure. So if you have those questions about structure, then sitting down and writing that proposal can be really illuminating. ah it ah It underscores how much actually ah research and writing has to be done ahead of time. So you do get a sense of the shape of the thing, though that can change over the course of reporting and research. So yeah, maybe on the one hand, maybe you did a little too much. But the fact of the matter is, the fact that you did all that is probably what made it a successful proposal. A lot of people shortchange it and don't do enough research. And then it feels thin or like, we don't know, is there enough there there?
Speaker: You were able to flesh that out. So it's like, there is a sweet spot. But I would err on the side of you of having done too much because, yeah, you were able to prove that there was, in fact, a story here.
Speaker: I would agree with that wholeheartedly. I mean, I am in the midst of my second book now and had done at least two years worth of reporting and writing just to write the book proposal for the second book, even though I had not written the whole book for the second one.
Speaker: Yeah. So yeah, even, i mean, that kind of gets way ahead of us, but yeah, when you're researching on and on ah on a topic, be it for the pain brokers or your or your new book, um, Yeah. How much like sort of time are you budgeting for yourself to try to see if there's enough meat on the bone there, given that you do have this other day job? A lot of people listening to the show have day jobs and they like have to figure out how to research these things in the nooks and crannies of their lives. So they just how are you ah shaping your days to to do that?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it can be difficult. i have the benefit of having an occasional research semester. um In the fall, I teach two classes, so it's usually pretty busy. It's hard to slot in that kind of extended writing and research time. But even if you have 30 minutes or an hour, there are little pieces of a project that you can break off and dive into. so so You know, in terms of the research, you know, i don't know about you, but I can get lost in detective mode. And so sometimes it's good if I know, okay, I only have an hour, i'm going to see what what can i learn about this one person in an hour. And then, you know, just sort of take it in those little pieces. And then when I have big times, um
Speaker: then I can get some writing done. Yeah, my favorite place to be, i I'm finding this, is newspaper archives and seeing the you know history from 50 60 years ago, even more, like coming to life in the archive. It's just, it's wild. Like just... seeing all the ads, seeing like the weather of the time and the photo photography, uh, the way newspapers were, were just the be all end all, you know, in the seventies, eighties so forth. And before that too, I just see these things that I'm interested in and just seeing it come to life. And it's just like, that's where the juice is for me. I don't know about you.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely. Newspapers.com has made that a lot easier, but it certainly doesn't include everything. And so you know going into the dusty bowels of the library and getting on the microfiche is is still one of those experiences that can be invaluable. And it can be you know the sort of time-consuming tunnel that you enter into. But when you find that gem, it makes it all worthwhile. Yeah, I remember at i was at the U of O library i is looking through microfilm, and it's so tedious because there's no you can't search anything out. So it's like you truly have to go page by page, or at least in my case, it was going like to the sports sections. And unfortunately, like I missed some things on Prefontaine because he like had won some... i know. He was honored for something like in the style or like Oregon life section that was out of the sports section. So I like completely missed this one, like really juicy article.
Speaker: but That's neither here nor there. but But there was a student, there was like a 19 year old kid behind me who was like watching me page through this stuff. And he was like, what are you doing? I'm like, this is, this is Google before Google. Like this is, you have to like page through all this film. He's like, those are newspaper scans. Like, yeah. He's like, I'm like, it's tedious as hell, but like this is it he he was blown away. And ah it made me realize that like if you can get comfortable doing that, especially now with like when people are just, if they can't find it on through an internet search, they give up. But if you can get comfortable with that microfiche, you're going to find some gems in there. And it's so cool to hear you talk about that, too, because that's like where there's friction there.
Speaker: We can often find things that other people aren't willing to but kind of do that legwork. Absolutely. i mean And even to take it one step further for the new book that I was working on, there was some really old news coverage and documentary footage. And I had to, first of all, i had to ask for an interlibrary loan for ah a vc for a VHS tape. And then I had to go into the library because who has a VCR anymore? Get on this old VCR and, you know, queue up this VHS tape. So it was, you know, it was a similar experience, not quite microfiche, but the next generation of it. Yeah, it's wild. Like, yeah, when whenever there's, like, wherever there's inconvenience, and if you can learn to sit with that inconvenience, you can often, know, kind of level yourself up or at least create separation between you and other people.
Speaker: And that's where you can really find these, you know, these diamonds in the rough. And, you know, if you can afford it for the time to do it, there's just so much, there really is so, so much rich, richness in, in, in the history and the, in the relatively recent history too.
Speaker: Absolutely. I mean, i think the challenge for me is moving out of detective mode and into writing mode because I could, you know, I could just sit in those bowels forever and be quite happy. Well, you know, with um so, you with with the pain brokers, so much of it is, ah you know, this this idea of mass torts. I didn't know what mass torts was, but um for people who are maybe unfamiliar with that, know, what ah what are mass torts?
Speaker: Sure. So and maybe I should back up for just a tort. A tort is a harm. It's like a punch or a kick. Sadly, it's ah not the layer cake that we all love. That's, you know, tort with an E. um Mass torts is when you have harms on a massive scale. So the opioid epidemic is an example of a mass tort. The BP oil spill is an example of a mass tort. And in this case, this was a medical device that had gone wrong on a massive scale. There were over 100,000 women who were suing over pelvic mesh. It was ah um originally designed for men's hernias and mesh device makers thought, well, if it's good enough for men's abs, might as well stick it in women's vaginas. And it turns out that is not the case because It's a very different type of tissue. And when women move, it can fracture with inside of them and pierce other organs.
Speaker: Yeah. And also, yeah. what What are some of the other yeah what's ah what the side effects of yeah this ah this pelvic mesh when when ah yeah inserted into women?
Speaker: Yeah. So, I mean, it's designed to deal with incontinence. It's designed to deal with pelvic organ prolapse. It's not the first thing that people used to turn to. It used to be that they would use their own tissue to kind of form a protective hammock under women's organs, but you can't sell your own tissue. So the device makers realized, oh, hey, we can we can sell this as a medical device and make a lot of money. So there are a ton of different side effects that can happen, and it can cause pain, it can cause piercing, as I mentioned, into other organs, it can cause infections. And there were a number of women who were experiencing those side effects. but it wasn't all of the women. So, you know, mesh wasn't a great product. It's no longer being used for pelvic organ prolapse. It is still being controversially used for incontinence. um
Speaker: But not everybody who had it in needed to get it out. Okay. And so what's the the timeline for when issues with the pelvic mesh are starting to surface in a, you know, on, on, on scale at scale?
Speaker: I mean, the big big mass tour was really starting in 2013, 2014. And that's when the pain brokers really begins. So there was a data breach in India, but the women, of course, didn't know this. So you can imagine, maybe you're standing in your kitchen at night, you get a phone call, and the person on the other end of the line knows just an inordinate and from amount of information about you. They know your name, they know your birth date, They know the date that you had this medical device implanted, your name of your doctor, the name of your hospital. And all of a sudden it starts to sound much more legitimate, like a legitimate call as opposed to a scam. And then they tell you, you've got a ticking time bomb in you. You've got to have this removed immediately or you're going to die. But don't worry. We're setting up appointments within two weeks down in South Florida.
Speaker: We'll fly you down. We'll have it taken out. We'll get everything taken care of. And so for a number of the women, they thought that this was a device recall, just like you might get a postcard in the mail saying that you have a a car part that's been recalled. Hey, bring it by the service center. We're going to take care of it for you. Yeah. Were you surprised that so many people didn't see it as a scam right away?
Speaker: I mean, i I think in retrospect, it's always easy to say, surely they knew this was a scam. But I think the difference is that they knew all of the information that you would normally have as a red flag. So it's not that these people were asking for their date of birth or were asking for their social security numbers or were asking these other types of questions. They already knew that information. And so when somebody calls you and has that information queued up already, it starts to sound like, okay, they know all these things already. They know something about me that I don't. I'd better pay attention. I'd better listen to them. That's one of the reasons that I wanted to start the book with Sharon, who has a master's degree in special education. she's in charge of special education for Horry County, South Carolina. She's not somebody that you would think of as a dupe or you know somebody who is gullible that would fall for a scam like this. And early in the book, there's basically ah a chart and a diagram of how the the machinations of this scam are. And it's very complicated. Lots of layers, fake law firms that sound like law firms and this, that, and the other. So for you I'm sure you've gotten pretty adept at explaining this flow chart, if you will. So like how would you, if you were to audibly diagram it, how would you audibly diagram the whole scheme?
Speaker: You know, these phone calls originate. There's some question about whether they're originating in India or whether they're originating in South Florida. The way that this was set up is that the Indian call centers would cold call women and they would hot transfer them to people in South Florida to set up the travel for them to come to South Florida to have it taken out. So ah maybe it's easiest to describe from the women's perspective that they get this phone call, they say, you've got to fly down. They get a DocuSign packet, which I think we can all identify with signing one of those. The DocuSign packet was programmed to jump immediately to the signature page. So they sought thought, oh, we're signing consent forms, we're signing HIPAA forms. Many of them didn't realize that within that DocuSign packet was a lien against their future settlement proceeds, as well as an attorney-client retainer agreement. So they were hiring lawyers, they were taking out a loan agreement.
Speaker: all as part of this kind of scheme. They were flown down to South Florida. They were picked up at the airport, taken to an outpatient surgical center, many of which were in strip malls or in old chiropractic clinics, not places that you would want to go for any kind of surgical procedure.
Speaker: They realized in in Sharon's case, after the fact that she was talking with Barb, who she had met at the CVS afterwards, who said, who's your lawyer? She said, lawyer, I don't have a lawyer. um And she realized, you know, later on that this was part of this DocuSign packet that had auto populated her initials throughout it.
Speaker: They're then put up at a hotel overnight, and then they're shipped back home the next day. So within all of that, you have lawyers who are partnering with this call center. They formed this quote unquote law firm called Alpha Law. They do this through a DC loophole, which at the time was the only place that you could have non-lawyers become lawyers. And then you've got the law firm, you've got the call center. The call center is called Law Firm Headquarters, which makes it sound a lot like a lawyer's office.
Speaker: You've got doctors who are getting kickbacks from the travel company who is run by Blake Barber, this you know six foot plus tall hulking man with a flamingo pink goatee who desperately wants a capuchin monkey as a pet and dresses like a teenage skateboarder. And you know it's just this kind of crazy cast of characters who are all in this cabal together getting rich off of the women.
Speaker: Yeah, it's wild. And the original title of your book was The Body Shop. And that gives you an idea of the degree to which yeah these schemers are just using these women to extract every possible dollar and cent. And at the very end, you know they're left with basically pennies while everyone else is skirting off with you know potentially millions of dollars off of them, leaving them like just ah to deal with the wreckage of now they're like you know barely functioning bodies. It's... ah I mean, it's it's the the greed is is so offensive and tragic in this case.
Speaker: It really is. And, you know, I think, so I did the best that I could to try to profile the quote unquote villains in a way that humanized them too. So ah the Chabras never talked to me, but Ron LaSorsa, Blake Barber, and Chris Walker all spoke with me. and you know, to the extent that I could, I tried to give their side of the story too. of course, nobody paints themselves in their own minds as a villain. So, you know, they all thought, oh, well, I'm doing this to help these women. And, oh, I got all these thank you letters from these women. I should have kept them so you could see them.
Speaker: You know, whether that's true or not, I don't know. But the women that I talked to certainly wouldn't be sending thank you notes. So how does how do these grifters target, say, the the mesh in this case to start putting these gears in motion?
Speaker: So there is almost always what I think of as a mass tort du jour, right? What is the big case that's going on at the time? um how can we sign people up as clients? And the mesh cases were the big mass tour of the day. There were over 100,000 women who had sued. And the women who had the product in place, their cases were worth far less than those who had the product removed.
Speaker: So the idea was we need to jack up the settlement value of these cases by encouraging women to have their mesh removed, whether it needs to be removed or not. And so that was where these folks came in and they were not limited to mesh. ah Blake Barber testifies at the end of the book that he had been recruited to do this for hip implants. He'd been recruited to do to do this in the East Shore sterilization devices, essentially any kind of medical product that becomes a tort where you can increase the value of a lawsuit by having some sort of surgery. There is an incentive for these grifters to come in.
Speaker: yeah As someone who's taught law for 21 years, yeah how offensive do you find this, that there are lawyers on the other side of this that are okay with you know scheming scheming very vulnerable you know populations of people?
Speaker: It is horrendous. I mean, it is and antithetical to our justice system. And it's one of the reasons that I wanted to write about it, that this isn't how justice is supposed to work. It's not how we think about having our day in court. you know If you watch the old Matlock reruns or Perry Mason or you know pick whatever your legal reference might be, none of it is about getting lured down to South Florida to have surgery so that everybody can get rich off of you. um That's just not what we think justice should look like. And it isn't.
Speaker: So, you know, i think the more that we learn about this, the more we can change the system. Yeah. And you're kind of alluding to it. But ah in what ways was this book and this project personal to you?
Speaker: Well, I mean, as I mentioned, this is something I've been working on for 20 years. It's an area that I got really frustrated writing in. um You know, at some point in 2020, 2021, I thought, what you know, what is the point of continuing to write another law review article that very few people are going to read? And Those who do read it have no incentive to to to change because they're often getting rich off of the status quo. So that was when I decided to get an MFA in narrative nonfiction so that I could tell the story for a bigger audience and hopefully try to pressure for the change that needed to happen many years ago. And yeah a little while ago you were talking about how um speaking with ah Ron and was it was it Blake or some someone? Chris chris Walker? Yeah, Ron and Chris. Chris Walker and Blake Barber. Yeah, so they're on the, you know, you might classify them as the more on the more villainous side of the of the spectrum. And ah how were you able to you garner trust with them and get them you know talking openly about you know this yeah malicious scheme of theirs?
Speaker: Well, Ron was my whistleblower, so he was more than willing to talk. And we talked many, many, many times. And we met in person several times. and It was harder with Blake and with Chris Walker. um And I don't want to give away the ending of the book, but they did have...
Speaker: a criminal case pending against them. And so it took a really long time for them to be willing to talk to me. And, you know, going back to our advice that you have to show up in person, and you know, this was all happening during COVID. And I flew up to New York for their criminal sentencing. I remember being, you know, like double masked on the plane and going through all the, pro you know, kind of COVID pro covid protocols in the courthouse. And And that was really the first time they saw me as a person. i had been emailing their attorneys. I've been emailing them saying, yeah, I'd really like to talk with you you know Maybe you could talk with me after this is over. And even then, you know, it took a while after that, but they, they had a name and they had a face now to go with the name and they eventually did talk with me.
Speaker: And what's wild too, about the removal of the mesh, like if done well, it's like a five, six, seven hour surgery. And these women were flown down there. And, and I guess in some cases, if I'm remembering correctly from reading it, like Dr. Walker would do multiple of these surgeries a day. So you get a sense that they're just basically going in and you kind of tearing it out. and yeah Basically, I mean, it's more complicated than that, I imagine. But based on the amount of time that a correct surgery takes and how many they were performing, they are basically pulling off a very intricate band-aid. And it just gives you an idea of how callous they were with these women's bodies.
Speaker: Absolutely. I mean, mesh is, it's it's kind of like rebar and concrete. It's supposed to go in and the tissue is supposed to then grow around the mesh and that scar tissue is what creates that protective hammock.
Speaker: So when you go in and take it out, it's not like you're just ripping off a bandaid. It's that you are literally unwinding threads from living tissue. Dr. Walker was taking out at least five of these in a day.
Speaker: He was at another mesh mill taking out other people's mesh when Jerry Plummer came through his center. And so he had outsourced mesh removal to um an OBGYN who ran a nearby Metispa in Ormond Beach. And she was the one who removed Jerry Plummer's mesh.
Speaker: And when I emailed her about fact checking, she wrote back that she was going to sue me if I used her name in the book. um But then I talked to her and she bragged to me that she was taking these meshes out within 15 minutes. Jesus.
Speaker: That doesn't compute, right? I mean, you know, like I said, done right, this can take seven hours because it is living tissue that you are unwinding. um I will just say that Jerry is now permanently incontinent. You know, she hasn't even been able to have a surgical fix to fix the fix. Yeah. yeah like Her life is like categorically ruined as a result as as a result of it.
Speaker: It really is. I mean, she doesn't even want to go to the grocery store because she's embarrassed that she's going to have an accident. So it really has fundamentally changed her ability to live and to interact with the world. Yeah, and also something with with ah cases of this nature, as you all know and as you write about, they they can take a long, long, long time to settle. And, you know, you write at one point, like, although the statute of limitations is interred ah to protect citizens against long past charges where memories and evidence have faded, it can also protect people who have violated trust and injured others. And you almost get a sense that the statute of limitations is what is weaponized to get people out of having to be responsible, be held responsible for this.
Speaker: It certainly was in this case. And, you know, I won't give anything away, but it can it can make it really difficult for prosecutors to prosecute cases. It can make it difficult civilly to be able to sue doctors. It can make it um almost impossible. So it's almost like if you can get away with it long enough, then you're scot-free. And when you you bring up Dr. Walker and you were trying to humanize some people on the more nefarious side of this scheme, but he was someone that you kind of felt for in a way because he was caring for his aging parents and ah you know he got swept up in that that Ponzi scheme and he's just like, how do I recoup his money? He's a Jamaican-born doctor and he's... trying to make a go of it. And he's like, all right, you get a sense of like, oh i maybe you can see and understand how someone in his position would get sucked into this thinking like, oh, I can, I got to make this money back. I'm good at what I do. Maybe I can, maybe I can, maybe fool, even fool myself into thinking I'm helping other people just to get back on my own feet.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think that's absolutely right. And it and it also speaks to health care in the United States that, you know, when we have these big HMOs, you realize, I mean, I don't think I realized how little doctors get paid when they're going through an HMO. And so when they can get, you know, triple, quadruple the amount that you would get paid through insurance by doing this kind of ah lean-based protective care,
Speaker: it can be really attractive to doctors to kind of go into this path that, you know, they don't really realize, I think, in some ways that that it's dark money. And there's, there was a moment too, that I just flagged as a great detail you picked up on or reported on in a, It was when, it's very innocuous kind of thing, but it was like J.R. had just come home. and like J.R. called you know one of his clients. He just said, called her. She's at home, but he's putting his wallet and keys away on the bathroom counter when she called him back. And that's like one of those details. Like if you're there, you can totally see it. But like, how did you? was not there for that one. Right. It's like, how do you how do you get a detail like that when you're not there to witness it
Speaker: um Yeah, you know, it can be difficult. I think it helps when it or when it occurs around pivotal moments in a case. So, you know, when you're reporting, i try to explain to the people that I'm interviewing what I'm trying to do and why I'm asking these weird questions. Because I will say, you know, i understand you had this call. I understand it from Barbara's case. Do you remember where you were when you had this call? Do you remember like what was happening and and what you were up to? and um And in that case, that was when and Barbara had just gotten off the phone with the FBI.
Speaker: And so it was it was a pretty pivotal moment in the case for JR because he thinks, gosh, maybe the Calvary is coming after all. And so, you know, he remembers, oh I was, you know, i was in my bathroom. had just gotten home and Barbara called me back and That's where I was. So I don't know if he knew that I was going to put those details in there. but but oh I love hearing you articulate that because when you're interviewing people for scene like that, those details, they look at you like you're crazy. Like, how is yeah what does this matter? And i'm I'm telling you, like, if I was here and I could witness it these little details, they they matter in terms of building scene and just making it pop. But in the event that I'm not there, like pretend I'm a little birdie. Like, what am I seeing? What am I smelling? What am I hearing? What are what are you wearing? Like all these weird little details. And I'm like, trust me, it'll come together in the end. that You just got to bear with me, man.
Speaker: Well, I love that you put it that way. The birdie on your shoulder is really helpful. But yeah, you know I try to do the same thing that you're you're just trying to explain to them. this is why I'm asking you all these strange questions and i'm trying to put the reader in your shoes. Yeah. And I was i was with the front runner. I'm interviewing ah primarily old older men, asking them things from like 55 or 60 years ago. And they're like, but like buddy, i I couldn't tell you what happened yesterday. I'm like, I know. I'm like, I'm...
Speaker: In the spirit of trying, I'm going to ask you, and a ah sometimes they have like very incredibly sharp memories, but other times like, man, I couldn't, I couldn't tell you what event I ran that day, let alone that i interacted with pre or whoever. Uh, but you got to try. i mean, this can't make it up. So you gotta, we gotta to keep probing with these questions.
Speaker: That's right. And like you're saying, you know, sometimes remembering those details, like if you can say, hey, I saw that you were running the, um you know, the 400 on such and such a day and Priya was running this other race. you remember, then that sometimes can jar their memories. Yeah. Well, and over the course of of writing the book and yeah dealing with rewrites, I know with me, I'm always dealing with like a 2 a.m. m voice that just tells me I'm a piece of shit and and I'm never going to be able to like stick the landing on this this. And yeah, like what business do you have writing this? This is going to be, that's but that's what I'm wrestling with on an almost nightly basis. It's usually between two and three in the morning. What is your equivalent of your two or three in the morning voice? So I have the same voice. um
Speaker: You know, oftentimes, if if it's not a voice that you can't pull it off, it's this, you know, little birdie that just feels kind of overwhelmed by the amount of information. i mean, the book that I'm working on now is probably 10 times the information that I'm trying to weave together than I had in the pain brokers. And it does feel overwhelming. And you keep wondering, all right, what am I missing?
Speaker: um You know, like I'm trying to get everything, but I could still you know do another year's worth of research and I might dig up a couple more details. So this question of you know when do you stop that and when do you start writing and when do you decide that you're going to keep digging a little bit more and and and think that it might be worth it. that's the That's what I think about at three in the morning. And usually I can't go back to sleep, so I just get up and do it. Yeah, well, that is such um that is such a great, ah great, great thread to pull on of like when does because you research for a lifetime.
Speaker: I mean, talk to Robert Caro. I mean, a guy can't put a cap on LBJ and ah hopefully he's all he can at least live to see the final volume come out because he's in his 90s, I think.
Speaker: But it's one of those things that, yeah, we could research all day long. And eventually you do have to turn that faucet off. And um yeah maybe because you had the concrete experience with the pain brokers ah versus what you're working on now, which is more open ended. um When did you know that you were like, you know, I got to be done. i i need to be writing now.
Speaker: um Well, I have ah have a deadline. those help I have to turn the manuscript in in March. So it's just like, all right, you got to turn it off. You got to start writing. And you know some of the writing I think is easier and faster than other parts. you know I find the narrative piece, the the kind of bridge work that gets you from scene to scene to be the most challenging to try to do it in a way that is Interesting. But, you know, it can take me two or three days to write two or three paragraphs that cover, you know, an entire case and kind of figuring out, okay, what details do I pull? What do I keep in? What do I take out? um I think it's really challenging and I'm not very fast at it. hmm. Do you find that when you're researching and, you know, you it might be in a particular book, let's say, um speaking from experience, sometimes even if I know I just want a little thing from this book, I i feel like I have to read the whole thing because I never know. Like maybe there's a stone there that is unturned. Like I'm paranoid that I'm going to miss a stone that I could have unturned that I could have flipped over or whatever. ah Do you feel that way too? like Once you start that book, even though you target maybe one particular chapter, you're like, I gotta read this whole thing because I can't be and leave any doubt on the table.
Speaker: Well, I'm glad you're as compulsive as I am. Yeah. you know Going back to Robert Caro, I think about his advice to turn every page. And you know that kind of lives with me because what am I going to miss if I don't turn it? I do think once you start to see some repetition and what you're finding and what you're seeing, that gives you some comfort that you're seeing the structure and the picture emerging and that you should start writing. And there will always be more details that you can unearth, but sometimes it's just important to get the story down. Yeah, I'm i'm finding that at least in trying to get my head around like a major book project or a major personality to write a biography on or something that ah and I kind of drew this inspiration from Keith O'Brien's latest book on ah point my right show. Heartland. Heartland. Yeah. about it. It's right behind me. I'm reading it with my son right now. Oh, no kidding. Like, that's so cool. um And I grew up Massachusetts, so like Larry Bird is like, I grew up on, you know, born in 1980, so i like I was there basically for Bird and everything. But like his, Keith's biography on him, it's like origin story. It's a slice.
Speaker: It's not like a definitive birth to death, birth to AARP life. It's a slice. And I sometimes think of that scope of like, oh, you know, this is so big.
Speaker: Can I narrow it? You know, can you write about Larry Bird as an origin story and cut it off right at Indiana State? And thinking about you, like how you're um this project you're working on now is it's big. And I'm thinking like, OK, like.
Speaker: maybe you're starting to think, oh, can I maybe take the slice of it here and make sense of that? i don't know. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a real challenge. I, um you know, I have a ah list of characters a to Z, and it is 200 single space pages just on, ah you know, just on, you know, because I've gone through all this stuff. And you find all this information about people, and they relate to the story in a lot of different ways. But of course, they're not all going to be in the story. So it is just figuring out what line you're going to follow and knowing that the book can't be about everything.
Speaker: Yeah. Do you feel like you have to you have to do the whole thing and then try to pare down instead of... I do. Yeah. But yeah I mean, that's just how I think. And you know if I feel like if I don't know the whole story, if I don't know where the landmines are, even if I'm not going to include some of them, I need to know they're out there. Yeah. When it comes to writing, I'm a bit of a maximalist. where I will overwrite and then whittle down. I think my rough draft of the front runner was like 160,000 words and like, yeah, it had to be around a hundred in the end. And it so like ah almost cutting like a book's worth of words to get down to that. And like, similarly for you, like, how do you like to approach the the writing in that regard?
Speaker: I mean, I feel like I'm like you. It's always easier once you get something on the page to edit it down. But I also spend so much time getting it on the page that I wish I could be more efficient on the front end so that I could just write that. what And, you know, I think, okay, well, if I do all this research on the front end, then I can write more efficiently. but It hasn't happened. i think my process is similar to yours. Yeah. When I talked to Josh Robinson about ah his book, The Playbook, that he co-authored with Jonathan Clegg, like they are basically they've written four books in the last nine years together.
Speaker: And they are very efficient in that first draft. Like they do a lot of that upfront structure of what they call the big pages stage where they really map it out. And then they, he he was honestly, like, honestly, like that first draft, like we write basically two drafts and that's, and it kind of comes out fully formed like that. And granted, there's two heads working on one story and they're similar. So they almost have a shared brain, but it's, i'm you talk about being efficient on the front end. Like those guys are doing it about as efficiently as you possibly can. It's like, no wonder they could write ah four books in nine years.
Speaker: Well, I'm the opposite. I'm about as inefficient as possible. you know I've been working in some form or fashion on the book that I'm working on now for about five years now. And i you know it just to me, I want to know everything. I want to know everything about the people that I'm writing about, even if it's not going to be on the page. Yeah. oh And how to stay with a subject that long, ah the pain brokers, I imagine, took you while. You've been you know noodling on this for five, as you say. So what keeps you coming back to it?
Speaker: I mean, I think it's finding those stories, those stories that not only have compelling characters, but that also tell you something bigger about the world. And so, you know, they they mean something to me because I want to tell the world about this thing that is happening so that this thing that is happening won't also happen to them. So it's both ah um looking at the characters and it's a cautionary tale, you know having kind of a two in one. And it's you know it's what wakes you up at three zero in the morning is what kind of keeps you going. And you're noodling on it in your head while you're sleeping and you wake up and you're excited to work on it. Well, and that's the power of narrative, right? That does it versus, like to your point, you were writing a like you know law review articles and like, this really isn't moving the meter, is it? But when you can attach it to actual characters, that's when you might be able to affect some degree of change or at least turn a spotlight onto it that i maybe a more esoteric publication yeah wouldn't.
Speaker: Right. We care about people. Yeah. Oh, for sure. well Well, Elizabeth, all right. I want to be mindful of your time here. And I think, as you know, as you bring these conversations down for a landing, I love asking a guest for a recommendation of some kind, just anything you're finding cool and fun that you want to share with the listeners. So I just extend that to you.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. So my friend, Diana Keogh, who was also in the MFA program a couple of years ahead of me with Allison Miller, has a new podcast coming out with Audible called Not From A Nice Family. And it has been in the works for longer than I have even known Diana. it is about um her family. She grew up in a really conservative Christian household and her dad was secretly a closeted gay person. who got AIDS. And, um you know, the opening of the book that she's been working on, she is a reporter at the time, and she slips a recording device in her mom's purse, as her mom gets a butcher knife from the kitchen and goes to confront her dad in the hospital.
Speaker: So that's it. Not from a nice family. Very nice. How can you not keep listening or reading? How can you not want to hear that, right? Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Well, Elizabeth, this is so cool to to talk shop and get ah get into the bones of the pain brokers and how you're going about ah this kind of work. So just thanks so much for being being so patient, for one. and We've had to reschedule a couple of times and for making the time to come on the show. This was awesome.
Speaker: It's been a thrill. Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker: Yes. Awesome. That was great, right? Thank you to Elizabeth Shambly Birch for being so patient. We had to punt her recording time a few times down the road, and she has been nothing but gracious and patient about it. So I'm so glad we were able to feature her in the Pain Brokers. Again, the name of the book is Pain Brokers.
Speaker: Buy it at a reputable place like your independent bookstore or bookshop.org. Great conversation. That was fun. And thank you for making it this far. You can always follow the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And just be sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.
Speaker: Ratings and reviews are great, but not necessary. We'll take them. I'll take them.
Speaker: And of course, subscribe to welcome to pitchclub.substack.com. Platform is currency for me. I will never nickel and dime you with Pitch Club, but I do want those emails.
Speaker: Give me the emails. Okay. let's Let's get this embarrassing moment out of the way. I feel like I should have known better, but here we are. We're going to call this a public service announcement, Okay.
Speaker: I got an email. And it's not a Nigerian prince email, okay? It's not one of those. And it's not like one of those sexy lady emails either.
Speaker: Oh, shit. He started his little anecdote with, he got an email. I got an email from Taylor Jenkins Reid. She is the best-selling author of many novels.
Speaker: ah By all accounts, it titan. Never read her work. Reese Witherspoon apparently loves her. Her books have been adapted for TV series and have been reviewed squillions of times.
Speaker: And I get this email from her saying how much she enjoyed The Front Runner. This should have been red flag number one because, let's face it, nobody has read The Front Runner. Red flag number two, she's a famous novelist.
Speaker: Now, it's not outside the realm of possibilities that a famous writer might stumble upon a no-name loser like me and actually like my stuff. But we're talking levels of probability lower than winning the lottery and getting hit by lightning at the same time.
Speaker: Red flag number three. It had a bit of that AI tinge to it. Here's an example. I hope you're doing well. I recently finished reading The Front Runner, The Life of Stieprefontaine.
Speaker: See, even adding the adding the subtitle should have been, all right let's call that red flag 3A or something, or 3B. And I wanted to thank you for writing such a compelling and carefully researched biography. Your work captures not only Steve Prefontaine's remarkable athletic achievements, but also the determination, ambition, and humanity that made his story so enduring. What stood out to me most was your ability to balance historical detail with engaging storytelling rather than simply recounting events. You placed them in a broader context that helped me better understand the era, of the sport, and the influence Prefontaine had on distance running in America.
Speaker: The depth of your research was evident throughout the book. I also appreciated your writing style. The narrative moved naturally while allowing readers to connect with the people and moments that shaped Prefontaine's life. It is clear that you approached the subject with care and a genuine respect for the historical record." It goes on a bit, and it sounds a bit robotic, doesn't it?
Speaker: But me being an insecure person, I was immediately too flattered to use my brain. So I replied, and after I didn't hear back for a while, I went on Instagram and actually DMed the actual Taylor to ask her if she had, in fact, written this email.
Speaker: She never got back to me, which seems more authentic when you think about it. I then get a follow-up from this faux-taylor, and it's even got her author photo in the email signature, so it really looks legit.
Speaker: And it's got links to her actual website and her actual social media profile profiles. like Yeah, whoever was putting this phishing scam together was doing it right.
Speaker: So red flag number five was the email address itself. It wasn't taylorjenkinsreed at gmail.com. It was taylorjenkinsreedzy at gmail.com, that S-Y at the end of that that of her last name.
Speaker: I then went looking for Taylor's actual contact info and could only find her publicist. And so I let them know what was happening and he wrote back right away. He said, thank you for flagging. The blow is not Taylor or Taylor's email, but people are impersonating her.
Speaker: I then reported this as a phishing scam, but I can only hope it didn't escalate any further given that I was foolish enough to reply in the first place. Yeah, i'm pretty ashamed. And this worries me as AI scams are going to increase and get more and more sophisticated. And all kinds of bad actors are going to prey on insecure artist types like me, maybe like you.
Speaker: If you receive a message from a famous writer, seriously dig around and make sure it's not a phishing scam. I get many of these, like, quote, book club phishing scams, um but I know enough to ignore those because those are just weird.
Speaker: um But I might have replied to the first one and quickly deduced it was a scam and moved on. ah So far, our bank accounts have not been compromised. And so far as I can tell, my identity has not been stolen.
Speaker: Nevertheless, I'm still pretty embarrassed. And if you get one of these emails, yeah check the email address, make sure it doesn't look scammy. Maybe try to verify through the person's publicist if this is actually something they sent.
Speaker: And yeah I guess we got to keep educating ourselves on AI as much as you might hate it. If no, if for no other reason than to protect ourselves and insulate ourselves from these scams, which I said, I think are only going to get more sophisticated.
Speaker: And I'd hate for us to, to lose, to lose money, reputation, stuff of that nature. So stay wild. See you in efforts. And if you can't do interview, see ya.
Speaker: you
