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Episode 351: Leah Sottile
395 Plays2 years ago
Leah Sottile (@LeahSottile) is a freelance journalist and her latest project is Burn Wild, a podcast about eco-terrorism and the lengths people will go to save the planet.
Social: @CNFPod
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Casualty of Words'
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and Efras, this podcast is brought to you by Casualty of Words, a writing podcast for people in a hurry hosted by me. It is a short little daily podcast, Monday to Friday right now, just a little about snippets of writing and writing advice or inspiration.
00:00:16
Speaker
And the time it takes you to brush your teeth, you can listen to an episode of Cash Through Your Words. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast Review Incentive
00:00:22
Speaker
And also, since they have a teensy bit more time on my hands, if you leave a review over at Apple Podcasts for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, that is, this podcast,
00:00:33
Speaker
I'll give you a complimentary edit of a piece of your writing up to 2,000 words. Once your review posts, usually about 24 hours or so, send me a screenshot of your review to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com, and I'll reach back out to get you started. And who knows, if you like the experience, you might even want me to help you out with something more ambitious.
00:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, I always say, I mean, I mean, I've made this analogy to you before, but it's like, I always say I'm like an outdoor cat. Like, I just can't go in again. Like, I just have seen the outside. Hey, CNFers.
Meet Leah Sattile
00:01:12
Speaker
It's CNF Pod, the creative nonfiction podcast. Show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara. How's it going?
00:01:21
Speaker
Leah Cetili, yes, she's back. Within a calendar year, I know, that's kind of bizarre. But when you have a year like she did last year, it's gotta happen. What a 2022 she had with the release of her first book, When the Moon Turns to Blood.
Release of 'When the Moon Turns to Blood' and 'Burn Wild'
00:01:41
Speaker
Lori Valo, Chad Daybell, and a story of murder, wild faith, and end times.
00:01:47
Speaker
and she released another blockbuster narrative podcast, Burn Wild. Put out by the BBC, produced with Georgia Cat, they present the story of two fugitive environmentalists, an eco-terrorist, and a burning question. How far is too far to go to save the planet?
00:02:07
Speaker
You might know Leah from Bundyville in 2 minutes past 9 in myriad long form features for places like the Atavist, Outside Magazine, and the New York Times. And I highly recommend her substack. It's free, but she accepts payment to help subsidize the amazing journalism she does. It's sort of like this podcast.
00:02:29
Speaker
It's free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. So go to patreon.com slash CNFpod to pitch in. But her newsletter is wonderful, I look forward to it. Every time she puts out a missive, it's just like, I don't know, a thousand word essay, maybe a little longer, maybe a little shorter about stuff. I don't know, I dig it, I dig Leah, okay? Is that so wrong? I can't say enough about her, her writing, her voicing, her generosity, and her love of journalism and the power of narrative.
00:02:58
Speaker
She's a damn good potter as well. In fact, I've commissioned her to make me a mug. I wish I had a cool hobby besides getting Blotto on IPAs three days a week. But here we are.
Importance of Support for Creators
00:03:11
Speaker
One last thing. Don't forget to head over to BrendanOmera.com for show notes and to sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. Lots of cool stuff. Goodies, raffles, happy hours. First of the month. No spam. As far as I can tell, can't beat it.
00:03:29
Speaker
So without further ado, I hate it when people say that, I don't know, let's just do away with the ado. Here's Leah Riv.
00:03:50
Speaker
Oh man, I think like this is a great way to dovetail into our conversation about, you know, the burn wild, the story behind burn wild and, and, and, and so
Challenges in Journalism: Passion vs. Pay
00:04:00
Speaker
forth. Um, but you said, um, uh, a little while ago, like, why do we do this? And maybe I should just ask you, Leah, like, why do we do this? Oh man. Uh, yeah. Yeah. You gotta start with that question. I mean, huh.
00:04:14
Speaker
I do struggle quite a bit the further I get into my career with why I continue to do it because the pay is not there, the jobs are not there, the sexy glossy magazine gigs are not there. It's funny, I recently had a student
00:04:39
Speaker
And one of my classes asked me, just so point blank, like, why write? Oh yeah, it was in your newsletter. Yeah, yeah. Okay, listen, I get it. There is some degree of newsletter fatigue going on out there and there's always a little joke around sub stacks and the like. That said,
00:04:58
Speaker
Subscribe to Leah's Substack. It's really, really good. It gives you a really nice insight into what she's thinking about in a given month. Really nice, just a really beautiful essay about just what it means to go about the work and do this kind of stuff. I look forward to it every time. Of course, there are paid tiers that you can elect to use to help subsidize some of the amazing journalism that she does, be it podcasts or in print.
Leah's Substack Newsletter
00:05:26
Speaker
Uh, and you're going to learn soon enough in this podcast here about burn wild, which we'll get to in a moment, but I just really wanted to celebrate her newsletter. It's one of my favorites and I really hope you'll subscribe to it in mine. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I, and it was so, it was just so funny the way I just answered, we were at a bar and I was like, because I feel like I'm helping and he just kind of cocked his head and looked at me and was like, who do you feel like you're helping? And I was.
00:05:53
Speaker
You know, I had to really think about it. And I mean, it's for every story it's different, but, you know, I think it's just like this thing that you figure out from doing it. And there are so many stories that I am not interested in and that I won't do, but it's like when I do find a story that I know, it's like, I know it when I see it, like I, and then I'm like, I don't even question why I make journalism when I'm working on a story that I believe in.
00:06:21
Speaker
Damn, there are so many barriers to getting there. I can't think of any other career that has so many reasons to not do it. I know. Just hitting you in the face every day. You might not get paid. This story might get killed, or your sources might back out, or you're not going to get a job. And that is just so dispiriting sometimes.
00:06:47
Speaker
And some of that is fine when you have like, like say a staff gig where your salary is steady and you're like, okay, if someone pulls out like, okay, fine, I'll move on the next thing. At least I'm still getting paid. But when you're doing it as a freelancer, it's like, God damn it, I just wasted all that time and I'm not getting paid for that. And now I'm behind on things or it's. Totally. It's funny, like yesterday I was thinking about this. I did like six hours of interviews yesterday.
00:07:17
Speaker
for various stories I'm working on, things I'm interested in. And I sat down on my computer today and I just, I don't know, I had this simple realization of like, oh yeah, if you're a staff writer, you just get paid to do that. But like for me and for you, I gotta make sure that those interviews are put to good use and that I get paid for them. And there's just this whole hustle around like, all right, I gotta parlay those hours that I spent interviewing
00:07:47
Speaker
and make sure that I get enough. And, you know, for me that has meant a progressively higher per word rate and, you know, for projects, like I won't agree to them unless they're, you know, higher in pay. And, you know, there are times where I feel like editors will look, you know, kind of give me the side eye. Like, are you seriously asking that much? And I'm just like, yeah, absolutely I am because I've put so much work, you know, just writing a freelance pitch.
00:08:15
Speaker
you've got to put work into interviews for that. And it's like, I got to make my money back here somehow. And you never quite make it all back. I've often, even this past week, this past year, I think, I'm like, why don't I just like bartending and write novels? If I'm not going to make any money from writing, I might as well do writing that I find that kind of fun. I mean, yeah. I feel like that's like, I have those thoughts like,
00:08:44
Speaker
usually very late at night where I'm like, you know, I should just like go work at a bookstore or I should do this other thing. And then like in the morning I always convinced myself like, no, no, I can't, I can't, like, I feel like journalism makes it that all my interactions with people are like, tell me your story. And it's like, I feel like I wouldn't be able to just like normally interact with people like checking out their books or pouring a drink for them. I'd want to, I need too much I think from other people.
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, and it being, you know, the end of 2022, as we're talking, and this will come out in the early part of 2023, how do you metabolize the year that was so you can best plan for the year ahead? Hmm. Interesting question. I mean, I am always thinking pretty far in advance. So, so I'm pretty booked as far as it's,
Freelancing Reflections and Future Ambitions
00:09:38
Speaker
you know, into the next, I don't know, probably into the fall.
00:09:41
Speaker
I pretty much know what I'm going to work on. So I'm kind of thinking past that, but I'm, but I'm looking back at like lessons learned 2023 will be my 10th year as a freelancer. And, um, you know, I was just thinking about that this morning, like, Whoa, like what I just, it's been a journey. And, and I feel like I still continue to learn a lot about.
00:10:05
Speaker
you know, what projects are worth doing, how long things are going to take, you know, where my interests lie. I think those are, those are things that are shifting, you know, there's, there's a way to be a freelancer and I think stay on one beat or there's a way to be a freelancer and just sort of follow your curiosity. And that's kind of how I am. So, so I think that that's kind of what I'm doing looking into the next year is being like, okay, 10 years of freelancing. Like, what is the next 10 going to look like for me?
00:10:32
Speaker
Yeah. And what are some of those lessons learned that you think will help hopefully make the next 10 years fruitful and viable and scratch that itch of your ambition? Boy, I think that some of it is...
00:10:53
Speaker
I've been doing a lot on extremism, which I'm sure we'll talk about. That's taken the better part of the last seven years or so for me. And I've learned so much. I've learned so much about the West. I've learned a lot about the people of the West, political movements, the political divide in America, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I feel my curiosity going in other directions. I used to do quite a lot of work based around
00:11:23
Speaker
injustices, class divides and police brutality and religion culture, subcultures within religion and
Shifting Focus from Extremism
00:11:35
Speaker
things like that. So I kind of feel myself going back to those things and feeling like I'm, it's not that I'm not interested in extremism, it's just that it's very much the most popular beat in America now. And I'm like kind of,
00:11:52
Speaker
Like, okay, then I'm going to go work on other things. Cause this is like covered, I think. So I think that's one thing I've learned. I mean, I think, you know, there's also business things you learn along the way that projects take a really long time. You know, burn wild, which we'll talk about is took an excessive amount of time to, it took too much time. And you know, that's something that as freelancers, we have to account for. And that can be really difficult to know how, how to, okay. Because the story to me.
00:12:23
Speaker
It's stories not done until the story is done. Like I got to report it. It's got to be completely fleshed out there. There are things that happen in reporting that you can't account for. And I think that's really where freelancers suffer is that like a staff job, you know, if a story pivots and it gets better or changes, you're still going to get a check. But for freelancers, it's like, then you're, you're more is just stretching a checkout. So, so yeah, I think things like that, you know, accounting for more time on stories and.
00:12:51
Speaker
always being more vigilant in my contracts. I think that's a thing I continue to learn with each progressive contract. So as we, you know, you start thinking about, you know, burn wild and how it's going to manifest. Yeah. At what point does the, the earth liberation front and invite eco-terrorism get on your radars and you start to dig, sink your teeth into it?
00:13:21
Speaker
It's a great question. I mean, so I grew up in Oregon and I was a high school student in the 90s and very much aware of the Earth Liberation Front. I mean, I grew up in liberal Portland and
00:13:35
Speaker
Uh, you know, went to a protest when I was like 16 years old, uh, that was like a logging protests and things like that. So like, I was just, it was, it's something that's been, uh, around for a long time. I was aware that there was this kind of radical group,
FBI Conversation Sparks Eco-Terrorism Interest
00:13:50
Speaker
but like as a kid, you don't really know what that means, or at least in the kid in the nineties, he didn't know what that meant. So flash war and, you know, much.
00:13:57
Speaker
Later and I was doing an interview with a former FBI former FBI FBI director and I was interviewing him quite a few years ago about far right extremism and the Patriot movement and kind of these circles around the Bundy family. I was doing reporting for Bundyville at the time and in this I said something I can't remember exactly what my question was but this this person said
00:14:26
Speaker
You know, don't forget about far left extremism. And I kind of looked at him and was like, what do you mean? Like, tell me, tell me what we're talking about here. This is around like 2016 we're talking. And he said, well, you know, like eco-terrorists. And, you know, I kind of logged it away in my mind because I was like, I'm not aware of any major acts of eco-terrorism, but maybe they just slipped past me. You know, I've been focused on the far right. So it was something I really kept in my mind for quite a few years, kind of watching.
00:14:55
Speaker
for instances of eco-sabotage, trees spiking, all these things that I had heard about as a young person, I didn't see anything. So when I kind of finished up Two Minutes Past Nine, which was a podcast I did at the BBC about the Oklahoma City bombing, I said to Georgia Cat, who is the producer on Burn Wild as well, I have this idea that I've kind of had in my mind for a while about doing something on
00:15:22
Speaker
ecoterrorism? Is that real? Is that actually a thing? Is that a factor right now? How much is law enforcement seeing that? She was really intrigued, but what really got her, I think, was I had told her that because this is the kind of person that I am, Brendan. I keep an eye on the FBI's most wanted list and things like that.
00:15:46
Speaker
You know, ages ago, I had been looking at it and I saw this woman on there, Josephine Sunshine over acre, and saw that she was connected to some Earth Liberation Front actions in the 1990s in Oregon. And I was like, no way, wow, Oregon, like the place I've always lived. So I just kind of logged that away in my mind. And there was also a man named Joseph DeBay and also connected to the same group with the Earth Liberation Front. And in 2018, he was caught.
00:16:14
Speaker
using biometrics flying through Cuba. He'd been missing for like 12 years. So I tell Georgia, you know, I'm really interested in there as liberation front, but they actually caught one of them. And so I think that there's something really interesting there if we could get an interview with this guy. So that's kind of how the whole thing began was me kind of wanting to interrogate this thing that someone very high up in the FBI had said was a problem.
00:16:39
Speaker
and understand, is it
Securing Interviews for 'Burn Wild'
00:16:41
Speaker
a problem? But also look at this Oregon connection that I had access to in a way that other reporters wouldn't.
00:16:48
Speaker
And not too long ago, you tweeted how you were able to get access and interviews to certain people who had turned down very high profile outlets. And this particular podcast really hinged on you getting very privileged access, specifically Joe DeBay. So how did you lobby to get that degree of access that you needed to tell this particular story?
00:17:15
Speaker
Well, I think it's just like a simple matter of not being a helicopter journalist. There were New York Times reporters that tried to do a story on the Earth Liberation Front last year and like Joe DeBay slammed the door in their face. And that was partially because the New York Times had offended like printed wrong information about him in the past that he was very aware of and he told them that. But it was also because he had an agreement with me. And so
00:17:39
Speaker
The reason I got that agreement was because Joe DeBay's attorney was somebody that I knew from covering federal court in Oregon. So, you know, he'd gotten calls, his attorney had gotten calls from, you know, every big magazine and newspaper around, but he agreed to go with me because he knew my work. He knew my face. I'd interviewed him a ton of times. And so he, so his attorney could say to Joe,
00:18:02
Speaker
Look, these people want to make a podcast. This woman has a really good track record and I know her. So I trust her. And, and I think that you're going to probably get the best shake, um, from her. So, you know, that that's pretty amazing. Like when does that ever happen to her freelancer? But, you know, it's just from being there. Yeah. Showing my face.
00:18:22
Speaker
And now, so as you start to get access to principal figures, at what point do you start to, you know, start the reporting and then kind of see how the story might play out, like if you were at a storyboard? It was interesting because I knew early on that I was going to work on it with Georgia and we had a conversation about it. She has an excellent podcast that she does. It's called The Missing Crypto Queen. It's about this woman who's also on the FBI's most wanted list. It turns out
00:18:52
Speaker
who is a crypto guru and is missing and swindled people out of millions of dollars. And the podcast is really her and the host kind of traipsing around the world actually literally trying to find this woman. And so we had an early conversation about, could we apply that same sort of narrative model to Josephine Sunshine over acre? And pretty quickly,
00:19:18
Speaker
We were like, that is not possible because she has been missing for so long and the FBI has no idea where she is. There's no way in hell we're going to find her. Whereas, you know, with the missing crypto queen, there's, she's much more recently disappeared. So, so we kind of scrapped that model and it became about, well, let's focus on Joe because Joe DeBay has said he would do interviews with us. You know, let's just really, really embed
00:19:46
Speaker
with him and Georgia gave me a lot of space to do my interview style, which is, you know, we're gonna have a few, we're gonna have quite a few conversations. These conversations are gonna be hours long. And we just started getting to know him and trying to understand, you know, what the movement looked like in retrospect through his eyes. You know, he'd lived in Russia. He'd lived in Syria. He'd been through the Syrian war. He'd, you know, had so much happen in his life
00:20:15
Speaker
that it really made us wonder, you know, did he have feelings of regret about the things that he took part in? You know, so that was kind of the beginning. And also, I should say, you know, it took a long time for Joe to even admit to us that he did what he did. And
00:20:33
Speaker
That might be a little bit of a spoiler. Sorry about that. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of how the reporting started to take shape was, okay, we started with Joe. We just started really organically then he would tell us some things. We go do some phone calls with other people, with other experts involved in extremism, with people in the environmental movement. And then at a certain point, it's like the reporting just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger because we had the American side of things.
00:21:00
Speaker
We were like, you know, Joe is one person. How, who else could we get from the earth liberation front? That's maybe willing to talk. So we got Chelsea Gerlach who had not spoken about what had happened, you know, with the earth liberation front and her time in prison.
00:21:15
Speaker
And then we got Daniel McGowan, who actually is the subject of an excellent documentary called When a Tree Falls. And, you know, he was a little reluctant because I think, you know, that movie is really kind of, I think the end all be all of his story, but, you know, he was intrigued. Here was the BBC calling and wanting to put a little bit more of a global perspective on it, but also revisit it after so, these events after so much time.
00:21:43
Speaker
So we built all the reporting around the American movement and then we started kind of looking wider, you know, at Extinction Rebellion in the UK, at Just Stop Oil, you know, all these different kind of movements that have really, really been taking hold in the UK and just asking bigger and bigger questions because
00:22:03
Speaker
we realized that this, like, the reason to do this story in this moment is obviously this pressing threat of climate change. Well, that's not an Oregon problem. You know, that doesn't, that's not restricted to the forests of Oregon. Like, you know, the conversation was in the 1990s. So, you know, it's a global problem. And so we kind of had this mantra that we really repeat over and over again through the podcast of like, how far is too far to go to, to save the planet. And that was really born out of the reporting of just,
00:22:32
Speaker
talking to people about what they did and how they feel about it and them all being really reflective of like, you know, I, I searched hard prison time. It was horrible. It, it ruined my life, what I did, but also I don't think I was totally wrong for doing it because look at the state that we're in right now with, with climate change. So.
00:22:59
Speaker
So that's kind of how it all started to kind of come together was like these puzzle pieces sort of slowly falling into place.
00:23:06
Speaker
Now when you say that the reporting was getting bigger and bigger and bigger, how do you and Georgia wrap your heads around it and organize it?
Organizing 'Burn Wild' Narratives
00:23:18
Speaker
Because it is like there are puzzle pieces and they're all over the place. You don't know when one might fit, one might not fit. So how are you keeping your head around everything as it gets bigger and bigger and bigger?
00:23:30
Speaker
Uh, that's a great question. I mean, it's part of the reason I think that it took so long for us to make this was it wasn't just the story of one person. You know, it could have been just about Joe, but it's like, you can't really tell the story fully if you're just focusing on one person. So yeah, I mean, it kind of became like this.
00:23:54
Speaker
We had a pretty scattershot method. I will say, you know, it's a lot different than doing your reporting all on your own and you can kind of use your own systems. Like we had a really big challenge in that, you know, we're pretty different reporters and we also live eight hours apart from each other. So like, you know, for a while, I would say the reporting was a little all over the place. It's like we had.
00:24:22
Speaker
you know, Summa Jo, we had some Chelsea, we had some Daniel, we had a bunch of stuff about, you know, just environmentalism over a 30 year period and you know, so much stuff. But I think what really was the thing that made us kind of click into place is that when COVID restrictions lifted, Georgia was able to fly into the US for the first time. So she came to Oregon for two weeks. And we basically spent that entire two weeks
00:24:49
Speaker
like 10 plus hours a day together, like reporting, driving around, writing, like kind of figuring out like how this is going to all come together into a narrative. So, I mean, it is kind of funny because it's like if there was something about just being physically in the same place, I think was one thing. But, you know, podcast narratives, I think it's a real kind of, it can be hard, but I think that
00:25:17
Speaker
what we really hung it on was Oregon and the ELF. So like throughout the series, you kind of get these snippets of like rural Oregon or Eugene. Obviously we have a whole episode devoted to Eugene. And like, I think that those things allowed us to kind of put a little bit of boundaries on the reporting. Like, okay, you know, we need to get to Eugene and we need to talk about why Eugene is important, but why what happened in Eugene
00:25:44
Speaker
ripples out across the world and stuff. So it was kind of that, putting these sort of Oregon colored glasses on and then just seeing everything through that. And when you're reporting to, at what point do you start to think about the structure of how you want to organize the entire scope of the story?
00:26:06
Speaker
So we knew that people needed a character to follow for this to be interesting. Like we couldn't be talking about people unless their voices were being heard. So we really, I think when we got the interviews with Joe and then got interviews with Chelsea and Daniel, we knew that there would be sort of this like triple character braid kind of throughout the podcast. So you could kind of follow
00:26:32
Speaker
their stories um so i think that that and then we built around that well you know where was there a common place that you know chelsea and daniel both lived but also several people lived okay eugene the government accused both chelsea and daniel of having to do with a fire at a tree farm out in klatsk and i oregon so it's like okay well we gotta go to klatsk and i so they kind of became these sort of
00:26:57
Speaker
Uh, the narrative was sort of formed around the people and the places and everything else kind of filled in from there because that's what I would want to listen to in a podcast is I want to hear voices. I want to get those like Textural elements, you know of of in the woods and and that kind of thing so we so we knew we really knew that we wanted to create a podcast that was like had a lot of nature sounds and like birds and snow and
00:27:24
Speaker
trees and wind and things like that. So it was like we had this sort of palette of people, places and sounds. And we thought, like, how do we write to that? And, you know, to me, I feel like I'm such like an artist about writing. That was like a great challenge for me was like, OK, like, so make it narrative now. Like, how do how do we do that? That probably doesn't make any sense, but it does to me. Yeah. Well, because of the soundscape and everything you were able to accomplish, it did strike me as a very like immersive experience.
00:27:55
Speaker
Mm hmm. Yeah, and that was that was the intent is that we really wanted it to feel, you know, Georgia and I both are pretty voracious listeners to podcasts and neither of us could think of one that had largely like a soundtrack of nature, you know, and we thought, you know,
00:28:14
Speaker
these are the things that'll be lost by climate change, our bird sounds and trees and things like that. We also have this sort of landscape of fire sounds that go throughout. And so we were kind of trying to tell a little bit of a story there of like, you know, fire interacting with nature and birds in trees and that vacant space when they're gone and stuff. So we did know, you know, we had a lot of,
00:28:41
Speaker
We put a lot of expectations on this podcast, as far as getting interviews people couldn't get, getting access where other people had had trouble, doing things with the music and the story. And it was a great challenge. And I think it tired us both out though, because it was like, we both put a lot, we put our whole lives into it. So when something like that is done,
00:29:10
Speaker
You're just like, boy. I mean, you and I have been talking about this. You're just like, God, I don't know if I can do that again. Right. Well, you were talking about how long it took you guys in terms of the reporting. And of course, there's the writing and the editing and everything that goes along with producing it. And in the end, you're dealing with basically right around eight hours of content that can be literally listened to
Challenges in Podcast Production
00:29:35
Speaker
in a day.
00:29:35
Speaker
and you're like you spent like over a year if not like about two years working on this so it's got to be like it's just like all that work for like what amounts to very little end product in terms of it's just like oh my god yeah it's wild i mean like the the i can't even tell you how many hours and hours of interviews we just have with
00:30:01
Speaker
just Joe DeBay, you know, and we have hours of interviews with people that didn't even go in the podcast. Like, um, so, but that's what, that's what reporting is. And I think that this is where the podcast medium is so tricky business wise is that, you know, podcast companies want to make sure that they've got a sure bet with the story that you're telling, but you know, good journalism happens from,
00:30:26
Speaker
figuring it out. And that was the one thing that BBC really allowed Georgia and I to do is they give us a lot of space to figure it out on our own and go where the story needed to go. And, you know, they weren't gonna force us to go, like I said, traipse around the world and trying to find a fugitive that the FBI can't find. Like they wanted to make sure that we were telling the right story that needed to be told in this moment to advance the conversation beyond the kind of true crime narrative and look at
00:30:57
Speaker
the bigger takeaways. So, um, so yeah, I mean, that just takes a really long time. Then, you know, do it with an eight hour time difference. So there were times where Georgia was staying up until three in the morning to do interviews. Um, there were times that, uh, you know, I was waking up at five in the morning so we could talk on the phone before a bunch of interviews that we needed to do in the morning and stuff. So it became this sort of like,
00:31:24
Speaker
really, really rigorous process, you know, and it was like a daily call that we had to have to kind of say, all right, what do we need next? What have we got? Like, where are we going? And both of us are living, you know, mostly in COVID for this. And so we'd like kind of lament to each other, like, maybe the BBC should like pay you to come live in Oregon, or maybe the BBC would like pay for me to come live in London for a little bit so we can just sit in the same room and think of this damn thing.
00:31:51
Speaker
It didn't happen. At one point, it's been a while since I listened to it, but there was a hat tip where you're like, you would be drinking your morning coffee and she would be on her glass of wine. It's a really kind of cute storytelling choice to put in because it shows how you guys are on different parts of the planet trying to work on this thing.
00:32:16
Speaker
It's one of those things too that it doesn't necessarily advance the narrative, but it is nice color So like I want to just even for a small decision like that You know why you elect to include some some some people be like yeah, that's really cool I think it's really funny and gave you guys a little snippet of your Personality and some people will be like no take it out because it what does it really serve in your global warming? Yeah
00:32:42
Speaker
I think that there was, it was important, you know, it was the second project that Georgia and I had worked on together and we sort of established, it's this very unique thing to my life. I don't know if this has happened with anybody else, but it became this really reliable
00:32:59
Speaker
working friendship that I had that was born in COVID. Like for the majority of the time that I've known Georgia, it has been through a Zoom screen and we just became a big part of each other's lives because work became so big during COVID. We were all at home, we're working all the time. Well, it just so happened I was working with somebody who lives halfway around the planet. So I think that there was a bit of anticipation in the first time that we would meet each other and, you know, see and talk, but
00:33:27
Speaker
I will say that when we both heard the Trojan Horse Affair, which was the serial podcast made by Brian Reed, and can't remember the UK journalist's name. You see, isn't this the beauty about these little asides, these little interjections, the journalist that Leah is referring to, and I will likely butcher the pronunciation, but the journalist's name is Hamza Syed,
00:33:57
Speaker
Trojan horse affair. But they, they were doing a similar thing. And we heard that and thought, wasn't that interesting? Like that they worked in this sort of goofy, good cop, bad cop relationship between this American and British reporter. And we talked a lot about what, what use that had to that narrative. You know, I don't know if you've heard that podcast, but
00:34:24
Speaker
It's a big part of the podcast. It's a big part of them realizing what the story is. And so we started, you know, we'd already been recording our phone calls at that point. It just was something that we did early on in our process. But we thought, you know, maybe it's more interesting for people to hear two female reporters who are writing about extremism, which is a pretty risky beat.
00:34:54
Speaker
And seeing what that looks like through our lens, maybe that will be more interesting for people, or interesting in the same ways that the Trojan Horse Affair was. So there was a bit of inspiration there in trying to kind of capture that. And I don't know, somehow I've become a character in a lot of the audio projects I've done, and I think it's just,
00:35:22
Speaker
that I have a pretty off-the-cuff style. And Georgia really kind of liked that. And so I think I was like, well, I'm not going to be the only character in this thing. You're coming in with me then, because we've worked on this together. It's truly half and half. So that's some of the logic behind it. Yeah, there was a moment, too, where it was like you had seen each other for the first time off a Zoom screen. And she came up to you. She was like, wow, you're tall.
00:35:46
Speaker
We were both struggling. I mean, I am like 5'10", so I usually am like the tallest woman in most rooms that I'm in. And it was just so funny. That was the first thing we both noticed is that we were the exact same height. And we had, you know, we hadn't asked each other, you know, how tall are you? So it was really fun.
00:36:06
Speaker
Now a key component of a huge component of the whole of the whole series is this idea of labeling the perpetrators of the eco terrorism as like stone cold terrorists.
00:36:21
Speaker
And this really plays pivotal roles in how long they're put away, even though their acts of violence didn't kill any person or really any animal. So speak to that and the importance of that as that bubbled up to the surface in the story that you were telling.
Examining the 'Eco-Terrorism' Label
00:36:41
Speaker
Well, I think it's born out of that initial conversation I had with the person that was formerly in the FBI. Don't forget about ecoterrorists.
00:36:51
Speaker
I think that what we started to realize is that, you know, the FBI deeply, deeply wanted to get Joe DeBay and they still very much want to get Josephine Sunshine-Overacre. I mean, we have that FBI agent in the podcast saying like, I don't want to retire until I get her. Like that would be the cap on my career is to find this person. So that struck me because we have seen so many acts of
00:37:19
Speaker
domestic terrorism in the past few years. When Georgia and I were working on Two Minutes Past Nine, January 6th happened. We recorded in real time our reflections on that and that was a part of that podcast. Was it looking at the 25 year on legacy of the Oklahoma City bombing, then January 6th happens as we're making that podcast. It felt very much hand in hand with the legacy of Oklahoma City.
00:37:47
Speaker
So our focus had been seeing, you know, all these acts of, you know, domestic terror, January 6th, the takeover of the Malia National Wildlife Refuge, the standoff at Bundy Ranch. Like, there's been so many things that have happened that have been armed takeovers. People have lost their lives. You know, police officers lost their lives at January 6th. But then we also were getting into the history of white supremacists motivated
00:38:15
Speaker
mass shootings, so like in El Paso, Texas, and in Buffalo, and in Charleston at the church with Dylan Roof. And what we started to see was that around January 6th, there was a lot of talk about that not being terrorism. This is something we're still talking about today.
00:38:36
Speaker
that the El Paso shooter still has not been charged with terrorism, that the Buffalo shooter, there was debate whether or not he would be charged with terrorism. These were people who committed their acts of violence because of their expressed racially motivated ideology. So we wanted to talk about how does that square up with a bunch of people who burned some buildings down? We're not saying that that's not a crime.
00:39:06
Speaker
but should it be called terrorism? So much of our reporting became about trying to understand how the word terrorism gets applied by the Department of Justice, by the FBI, by police, and by the public. And at a certain point, we realized that the term eco-terrorism had by many accounts been purchased by industry, by very powerful lobbyists who
00:39:36
Speaker
said, you know, this is, this is a, these, these acts are, um, you know, they're, they're, they're hurting our business and politicians heard that. And that was something that we heard in our reporting quite a lot with people who'd worked in Homeland security, with people who worked on this case in the FBI, who said there was political pressure to get these people. And, um, you know, that was a point of obviously of curiosity for Georgia and I, but at a certain point, particularly for me,
00:40:06
Speaker
It became a very big point of anger because, you know, I've been working on stories of far-right extremism for a long time and have seen, you know, not as many consequences as one might think. And then to look at sort of what had happened with the earth liberation front, it was, it just, there was a big disparity there. So, so yeah, that, I mean, that really ends up being the focus of the podcast. It's like, what is terrorism? What is terrorism?
00:40:33
Speaker
In the mind of of the law but also in the mind of the public in this kind of post 9-11 world Like what does that look like? So, yeah, I mean it was a fascinating thought experiment
00:40:47
Speaker
And you're someone who is, you know, I would say your body of work obviously is primarily written and, you know, print-based and web-based. So when you're doing narrative audio, how does your writing change, especially as you look to integrate the quotes, which are literal tape?
Crafting Engaging Audio Narratives
00:41:07
Speaker
It's a great question. It's been something that has been probably one of the funnest challenges for me is to try to, you know, typically
00:41:16
Speaker
I mean, not only, like you said, is my body of work written, but it's like long written stories, like 10,000 stories. And when I made Bundyville, I had really, really good teachers in the producers of that podcast who kind of taught me how to write for radio, which was not a thing that I knew how to do. And what I learned is it's like, you've got to be able to talk
00:41:41
Speaker
You've got, you've got to write like you talk, but you also have to be able to explain complex issues to people conversationally while also not talking down to them. Yeah. So it's a bit of like this kind of like, it's a real like, all right, now try to boil down your story that you would typically write 10,000 words to a, you know, two minute bit in it. So it's, it's, it's very difficult, but, um, but to me, I think that that's like,
00:42:11
Speaker
It's a good, it's a really good challenge. I think it makes you a better writer. You know, I used to work for an alt weekly back in the day and maybe like, okay, we're going to put out our like best, best of the city issue. And you have to write about the best barista and the best laundromat and the best, like, you know, bartender and stuff. And you've got 50 words. I always thought of that as like a really fun writing experiment is like, you got to write something punchy and 50 words. And.
00:42:39
Speaker
And I think that like that's kind of a little bit of what podcasting feels like to me is like trying to, you know, not change the meaning of it, not overly like sexify something, but like just talk to people like you're like you're at their kitchen table, you just tell them the story and
00:42:58
Speaker
Yeah, I find that very fun. Very frustrating, but very fun. Yeah, and also just logistically, when you're working in print, if you have to move a quote around or even massage out some of the verbal tics or whatever, that's really easy. And if you need to be like, oh, this makes more sense higher in the story or lower in the story, and it's an easy cut and paste.
00:43:21
Speaker
With audio, it's much more complicated. And I'm not even a super duper producer. I've done a little audio storytelling where I have to do clip audio here and there. And it's a pain in the ass. It's very hard because there are a lot of moving parts. Like literally, you got to be really delicate with how you move around the audio.
00:43:39
Speaker
So what was that process like for you since your episodes contain so much tape, so much narration, and it's a lot of strips across your daw.
00:43:54
Speaker
Before we let Leah even answer that question, let me explain what a DAW or D-A-W is. It's a digital audio workstation. My DAW is Hindenburg. Some people use Pro Tools. Other people use Audacity. So that is what a DAW is. It's basically Microsoft Word or a Google Doc for your audio story. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because
00:44:22
Speaker
The process of writing Bundyville and Two Minutes Past Nine were very different than writing Burn Wild. So with those podcasts, it was like, okay, what's the story we're telling? And I would kind of go through and write the script and think, okay, this quote would be good here. This good quote would be good there. And it was pretty straightforward. It was almost like writing a story. But with Burn Wild, actually Georgia took the first pass at
00:44:49
Speaker
the scripts in that she would roughly say, I think that this is the flow of the audio that's going to make the most sense. So now build a story around that. And, um, you know, obviously this is after we knew, okay, the, you know, third episode is going to be about Josephine Sunshine Overacre. Fourth episode is going to be about XYZ. So, um, but that was kind of the process was, it was, it was reversed. You know, it didn't quite make sense to me the way we were doing it that way, but in the end it did because
00:45:17
Speaker
Like you say, it's like you kind of, there's a part of me that thinks that you can kind of hear the story if you took out all of my narration and you only heard the quotes, you would hear the same story that we're telling. So it's about filling in those gaps usefully and in a way that supplements what our sources had already been telling us.
00:45:45
Speaker
And then there's, you've talked about Sunshine, and you introduce her early in the run, and I remember when, usually when a name gets introduced, you're like, okay, that's gonna matter. And because she's been on the lam for so long, you're like, maybe in this story they're gonna find her.
00:46:03
Speaker
And it's just one of those things I'm like, all right, are they going to or are they not? And spoiler alert, she's still on the limb. You don't find her. So for you, when you make the decision to put her in as something of a MacGuffin and she's not found in the end, so there isn't that nice clean payoff of like, here's this thing that came up and like, oh, we're going to find her in the end.
00:46:29
Speaker
So like how did you like kind of navigate around that knowing that you weren't that you didn't find her but still make it satisfying like sort of arc to your story even though she doesn't factor in in the way that would be like a neat little bow. Yeah well I think that there was a few things we did want people to think there was a chance that we might find her because we certainly wanted to leave ourselves open to that possibility.
00:46:56
Speaker
I do remember a journalist friend of mine halfway through the series coming out. She was like, Oh, you're going to find her. I know it. I know it. Like, you know, and I was like, Oh no, people think we're going to find her like, it's not wrong. But, you know, but here's the thing. I also have a lot of experience writing about people that I have not talked to. So like, you know, quite a few years ago, I wrote a profile for outside about the last man standing at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge occupation. And, you know,
00:47:26
Speaker
that story was assembled from phone calls that he'd made to the FBI.
Profile of Josephine Sunshine Overacre
00:47:32
Speaker
My interviews with his family, you know, I wrote a bunch for Rolling Stone about a politician that I just couldn't get any access to, but there was a ton on the public record about him. So, you know, when it became clear to Georgia and I that there was no way in hell we were going to find Sunshine, that's kind of what I said to her. It's like, look, just because we can't get an interview with this lady,
00:47:53
Speaker
does not mean we can't write about her because certainly people have, but I think that we can apply my expertise of extremism to her story. And then, you know, talk, try and talk to people about her, try and understand as much as we humanly can about her. And I think that we'll be able to tell a different story. So, um, and then
00:48:15
Speaker
You know, just being the kind of reporter I am, I mean, I was like pulling up high school yearbooks. I'm like pulling out all the stops and everything I could possibly think of, of like, what might contribute to our knowledge of who this person was. Because anything that's ever been written about her starts and ends with those arsons. And I'm like, but she was a person before that happened. You know, she was in her twenties. So who was she? Where was she from? What kind of family was she from? Where'd she go to high school?
00:48:44
Speaker
you know, what was her best friend's name? What'd she like to do with her time? And there was just still so many questions that I feel like I had about her that it became kind of an exercise in trying to like almost write a profile of her without ever having talked to her. And then obviously we got an interview in the end that made that secure for Georgia and I. I mean, and that interview really like did come chronologically, detail, tail, tail, tail end of our process.
00:49:15
Speaker
the ending would have been completely different had we not gotten that interview. Yeah, I was, I'm always curious when in, over the course of being at a magazine story or in the case of a podcast of this nature, when certain repartorial bits came in the course of the process, like, you know, did you, when you're having, I was having this conversation with Michael Shulman, who wrote a really nice profile on James Corden a while ago, and there was like a closing quote
00:49:42
Speaker
And I was just like, it's such a great closing quote. And I asked him like, did that come at like the end of your reporting? Or is that something he said in the first five minutes you were talking and you were like, kind of like earmarking, like, oh, that has the resonance of an ending and you put it in your pocket for the ending. And it sounds like probably that email you got from sometimes mother, it sounded like it came late in the process. And I guess I imagine that that throws a complete wrench into the entire arc of your story.
00:50:09
Speaker
Well, I mean, so, so really, you know, as people hear what happens in Burn Wild, that's the chronology that happened. And it's so much is it for us was knowing, you know, like you asked earlier about our relationship is included in the story, but also kind of our thought processes as we're trying to kind of untangle these knots. It was like untangling a big, you know, gnarl of Christmas lights. Like, you know, how do we make these things? Like, how do we straighten this whole thing out? So,
00:50:39
Speaker
Yes, about halfway through the process, I had been hunting just about as hard as I could for Sunshine's mom. And I felt like I had found her. And I'd been asking every person I could possibly think of about Sunshine. And to this day, I still don't know who told her that I was looking for her. But she signed up for my newsletter, for my Substack newsletter.
00:51:09
Speaker
You know, I saw, so I got a sign up and it's weird. Cause I don't usually read like all the, the sign up, you know, the emails that I get somebody signed up for your newsletter. But for whatever reason, on that day I did, and I was like, you know, first and last name, uh, you know, I don't want to give away her email address, but I was just like, no way. And I just sent the email, like, usually I would ask Georgia, like, Hey, I got this email. Should you think I should, but I just sent an email and was like,
00:51:36
Speaker
Call me crazy here, but are you just saying something over Acre's mom? And she went back and was like, yeah, I am.
Engaging with Overacre's Mother
00:51:44
Speaker
But that happened about a year, a year and a couple of months before we actually got an interview with her. So, you know, much of that year was me talking to her on the phone and saying like, here's what I'm trying to do, you know, and, and kind of gaining her
00:52:02
Speaker
trust, but also just telling her about what we were working on. I mean, I think she's, you know, I've written a lot in the past about missing persons and I have a deep awareness of the trauma that that creates in families who don't know if their family members are alive or if they're missing or if they are in need of help. And so I realized pretty quickly that was kind of what I was dealing with with Sunshine's mom was like, this is a woman who
00:52:29
Speaker
who lost her daughter and she has no idea if she's alive. And, you know, really this is like a re-traumatizing thing for her. And at a certain point she said she didn't want to do an interview and I left her alone for quite a while. And then, you know, towards the end, we were kind of finishing up the project and Georgia and I were like, you know, she's pretty cool. Like maybe we could ask her one more time. And
00:52:56
Speaker
we went around and around on if that was ethical or if we were really going to be bugging this lady and and we landed on asking her and and that was that was the thing she agreed she was like yeah you're right i do want to talk about this i do want to be a part of your project so it was just one of those things that made us really happy that we had included so much of the sausage being made process because i think that the listener then
00:53:19
Speaker
is like, well, you didn't find sunshine, but you found just about as close as you could get to her. And that's, I think kind of satisfying to hear from her. Yeah. And I believe you basically give her the final word in the entire series too. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Because what we realized is like these questions that we were asking, they're questions that apply to protest movements. You know, they apply to, you know, all of a sudden Roe v. Wade kind of takes this big seat at the end of our
00:53:48
Speaker
of our project about environmental activism. And that's because I think part of Elizabeth and I's conversations was us sharing frustration, not journalist to subject, but woman to woman about what was happening in the United States. And I shared with her my frustration about Roe. And she was like, that kind of has actually something to do with this kind of greater story that you're trying to tell here. It's about, this is reminiscent of the
00:54:18
Speaker
of the Vietnam War protests that I participated in and the reproductive rights protests that I participated in. And Sunshine comes from that legacy of people pushing back against power. And Georgia and I just realized there's nothing we could say that would be better than that, that would have more weight. And I think that that was effective. I mean, I think that we've heard from a lot of different types of people who heard the project.
00:54:47
Speaker
A lot of people who started out hearing the series and saying, these people are arsonists and they're terrorists. And those same people at the end of the series would be like, wow, much more complicated than I realized. And, you know, they could share an Elizabeth's pride, I think of her daughter.
00:55:10
Speaker
And when you're out reporting for radio or podcasting, it's a slightly different hardware situation. And I'm always amazed that, or not amazed, but I'm always like, when do they hit record?
00:55:28
Speaker
Because oftentimes, it's like you're catching a lot of things and you're catching people approaching you from a farm. Like, all right. I think Jonathan Goldstein for heavyweight, he has a thing. He's like, always be recording. So I think for him, even before he knocks on someone's door, he's got his recorder on. And is that the fundamental thing? It's just like, you got to turn that on. Your memory card's empty. Your batteries are full. Turn that shit on.
00:55:58
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, it really is like, I, I think that, you know, I, I have this sort of luxury that I always get to pretty much always get to work with a producer on the podcast that I work on, you know, and I think that I would say on Bundyville, Ryan Haas was generally recording about 20 minutes before we got somewhere. He would want to, okay, let's start talking about what we're going to be doing. You know, let's start getting that audio. Um, I will say that Georgia cat starts recording about an hour or before. I mean, so it's like,
00:56:26
Speaker
She has a much different technique of capturing. I mean, it's really cool to see the way that she works. She's the kind of person that's going to have a mic to the wheel of the car and be like, OK, back up. It's like she's the kind of person that would go to the sort of nth degree to capture sound of the interviews.
00:56:50
Speaker
of the atmospheric kind of ambient sounds of conversations and stuff. I mean, I bet that she has some sort of like probably half broken BBC computer, probably hundreds of hours of audio for that reason, but it gives her a very big wide palette to work with.
00:57:11
Speaker
And as the story comes to a close and you put a bow on your final episodes, there comes the moment, too, of the post-publication gauntlet of having to promote the thing and getting in front of people.
Promoting 'Burn Wild' vs. Other Projects
00:57:24
Speaker
This is kind of a part of the process I think people sometimes are uncomfortable with or they don't really talk about very much. So I know for you, what is this moment like when you've published it and now it's like, okay, we need to get this out into the world?
00:57:40
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's been different for every project that I've worked on, you know, books, articles, podcasts. And I would say that for this one, weirdly, it is slightly low impact on me because we have to remember this is being put out by the BBC. So for the most part, it is being promoted where the BBC broadcast, which is, you know, half of the world, but not as much here in the United States.
00:58:07
Speaker
There's a lot of interviews that Georgia does. There's a lot of promotion over on that side of the world. But less so over here, which I've done quite a few interviews, of course, on promotion and things like that. But it is kind of a little bit of a slow burn of a promotion effort. It's not quite the blitz that I've experienced with other things. And I have to say I'm a little bit happy with that because
00:58:34
Speaker
I think both of us were so tired when it was done. But we also know it has a long tail. This is relevant for as long as people are going to use the term ecoterrorist. For as long as climate change is an issue, this is going to be relevant. So we tried to create something that would be timely and not have a quick expiration date on it.
00:58:59
Speaker
And just a couple more things, Leah. As you wind up the project, something that took so much time and bandwidth, it's finally out. What's the level of enthusiasm or energy you have to start anew for the next project, given how much time something of this takes from you and drains you? Does it leave you fuller, more drained?
00:59:28
Speaker
Drained, I mean, energy. Yeah, not a lot. Like, I don't know how quick I would be to run to make another podcast. And that's just simply because they are a ton of work. You know, we would often sort of say that, you know, I put out a book last June and I wrote that book faster than we may burn wild. And I think that, you know, that's a 320 page book, like,
00:59:54
Speaker
Um, and that's just, it's, it's because of, I think some of the hurdles we were dealing with COVID eight hour time difference, you know, literally working around the world from each other. You know, there was a lot there, but we were also following Joe D Bay's case and that was playing out in the court. So. We basically created the most complicated reporting experience we could for ourselves. And I think that that's really satisfying in the end. But like you say, you know, somebody can binge it. Yeah.
01:00:24
Speaker
So I think that the payoff of podcasts can be kind of small. The first question you asked me is, why do we do this? And I think that with each project I take on, I have to think about afterwards. How effective was that?
01:00:48
Speaker
In a way, I think that burn wild is insanely effective. I think it's prompted conversations that people didn't realize we needed to have. We wanted to create a podcast about climate change that was less about ice caps melting. I don't, I don't mean to sound like, you know, crude or anything, but like less about wildlife dying and more about like how people are going to handle this and if they are and how, um, what happens when people take things into their own hands. So.
01:01:15
Speaker
Yeah, I think that, you know, we created the project that we wanted to. But I think that, you know, the podcast industry is just so topsy turvy in terms of like, there are people that can pay millions of dollars to work on shows. And then there are people who pay for their shows out of their own pocket. And, and there's not a whole lot in between. And so I'm trying to figure out like,
01:01:38
Speaker
I like to podcast. I do think that audio is a very rich medium for storytelling and it's very powerful, but I can't be paying for it by myself.
01:01:54
Speaker
a tough choice to maybe have to make, but I'm also pretty tired from burn wild. Yeah, absolutely. But it was such a satisfying experience. And I think the Duffer brothers, the Stranger Things guys, that's something they've lamented too. They spend so long putting these seasons together and then people watch it in a day and they're like, God damn, it's like.
Impact of Binge-Watching Culture
01:02:18
Speaker
It's like, what a compliment, but also safer is. Yeah, exactly. So I think they long for the day of the week-to-week thing where you can watch it and then digest it and talk about it instead of just this total binge culture, which sometimes I think does a disservice to just the titanic amount of work that goes into it. But a good book that really, sometimes they say,
01:02:43
Speaker
If a book read like the the writing or the production should be like, you know, that's an uphill process So the reading and the consuming of it can be a downhill process So I think it's a testament to people like yourself who put in all that effort that uphill work that it that it listens in Flows so well is a testament to how well you did it because that we can listen to it in a day or two days or three days and
01:03:08
Speaker
and want more is a testament to your skill as a reporter and a writer. It was truly a pleasure to hear you again take on such a thing. I'm glad. I am glad to hear that. It's one of those things that we finished. I get very postpartum about long-term projects, but when I'm done with them, I just don't know what to do with myself afterwards.
01:03:31
Speaker
Um, you know, I finished up burn wild and I was like, yeah, I think I'm done. I think I'm not going to do any podcasts anymore. And then, you know, of course I spend, you know, around the holidays doing a lot of baking and listening to podcasts. And I listened to that great podcast blown Valley, which is just stunning. I mean, it's just, it's a, it's a perfect podcast in my opinion. And I was just, was like, damn it. Now I got to make another podcast because it's so good. It inspired me to like.
01:03:59
Speaker
You know, keep going with it and and I think that that's, you know, it you do see that podcasting can can be really power. It's just really, really powerful way to deliver a story that people might not otherwise read. So I don't want to I don't want to make light of that because it is a hard process, but it's like
01:04:19
Speaker
It is very, um, when it works, it really works. It works on me. So yeah. And it's just the, I guess the real challenge in the end is like, you'd probably be more open to do it. If like, if you had like a steady, you know, if it, if it paid better or, you know, like, I mean, that's, it's just.
01:04:37
Speaker
it's an asinine thing to say but it's one of those things where like yeah the the drain of it be like oh it's okay like if i have a bad reporting day i don't feel like i just like ate it it's just you know i know i'm getting paid you know would be rad it would be rad to be like i had a bad reporting day i'm gonna go on vacation i'll come back refreshed but it's like no you don't get that as a as a freelance podcast producer you just
01:05:01
Speaker
end up being tired and then being like, well, that's done. Better get on working. I know. Yeah. Would you, would you be seduced by some like a staff position of some kind or, or are you like, yeah, like addicted to the freedom? Yeah. I always say, I mean, I mean, I've made this analogy to you before, but it's like, I always say I'm like an outdoor cat. Like I just like can't go in again. Like I just have seen the outside. I, you know, um,
01:05:30
Speaker
And I do think that that's true to some sense. I think the journalism staff jobs are pretty, yeah, like if somebody wanted to like dangle an attractive salary that I had to like never be home because I had to be on a plane all the time or something like that. I think that there's just a certain life benefits that I see that I get from freelancing that do feel
01:05:55
Speaker
good for me. But yeah, no, I mean, I can never say never. Like, I think if there was a staff job out there that fit my unique skill set, then I certainly would have to consider it. I mean, I would like to maybe retire one day. I know. Oh, my God. I mean, on the track that I'm on, that's not happening. So which is fine. Good thing. It's good that I'm obsessed with journalism. I'll do it until I'm dead.
01:06:21
Speaker
Awesome, Leah. Well, this is always a pleasure.
Praise for Leah's Freelance Journalism
01:06:23
Speaker
Like, I love whenever I see the Leah Satilly byline and hear your voice coming through the podcast airwaves. It always brings a smile to my face. And I know I'm in for a good ride. So just thank you so much for everything you do and for your work and insights into freelancing and freelance journalism, too. It's all so valuable.
01:06:43
Speaker
Well, thank you, Brendan. I really appreciate you being like that. Because as you know, it's like it could feel lonely sometimes. So that means a lot. I appreciate it.
01:06:55
Speaker
Oh man, that was great. Leah's great, you're great. Thanks for listening and for making it this far. If you liked it, if you liked what you heard, go ahead and share it across your networks. Link up to the show on social, spread it hand to hand. That's how this show has grown for nearly 10 years. That's how it's going to have to continue to grow.
01:07:17
Speaker
And always consider subscribing to my monthly newsletter for book recommendations, links to helpful, inspiring articles, and exclusive happy hour. That's how we rage against the algorithm. As you know, it does go from here and it goes up to 11. First of the month, no spam. Can't beat it.
01:07:36
Speaker
So I was deciding whether or not I should riff on my book proposal journey as it stands. My agent sent it to an editor at HarperCollins last week, and the editor is interested. He says, quote, I'm enjoying this end quote, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. That said, it's not a green light, far from it.
01:08:02
Speaker
editor goes on to ask some central questions I failed to answer in a satisfactory way and I hope what you glean from this is what you might have to do with your own book proposals pretty rare to get this kind of feedback even get this far in the process if you ask me and I want to share some of these insights now there's a huge possibility of rejection here
01:08:26
Speaker
I'm going to refrain from including the name of my subject, but the questions are relevant nevertheless. Okay, here we go. So this is the note from the editor. I would love to talk some things through with Brendan in a call. Most importantly, I want to better understand the new material he expects to uncover and how it will enhance, undermine, sustain the existing mythology.
01:08:49
Speaker
I'd like to get a clearer sense of the point of view that Brendan is bringing to this narrative. What does he think is misunderstood about the subject? How has the popular narrative failed? Why is this corrective needed to better understand his place in sports history? The anniversary is a great hook, but I think this book needs a larger sense of purpose. Why tell this story again? Now.
01:09:11
Speaker
Also, I'd like to really understand his vision for putting his story onto a bigger canvas, a la Jane Levy. I agree he's a figure that can support that, but I think it needs to be handled with a certain finesse. Given how much has been written about the counterculture of the 60s and 70s, it feels easy for this to go sideways. But I think if done right, there is a way to marry this larger cultural context to the revisionist POV that Brendan is offering.
01:09:40
Speaker
So those are some great questions, right? I think you'll really want to consider those questions as you patch together your proposals and maybe save yourself months of agony and rewrites and frustrating the fucking pants off your agent for not being able to satisfactorily answer them. I have about five days or so to meditate on these questions and essentially draw up a PowerPoint, if you will, like kind of like going on Shark Tank. I'm going to be sitting in front of Mark Cuban and company.
01:10:10
Speaker
to pitch this book. That's what you're doing. You're in front of essentially investors. You're asking for money and for publication, and they want to return on that investment. It makes sense. Sure, it's art, but it's also a product in the same way a pharmacist is. You have to believe in it so hard, and you have to check off the boxes because of all that risk involved. Those questions, I think those are pretty standard.
01:10:36
Speaker
across the board. They might change a little bit, but I think those are pretty standard animating forces for certainly biography in the case of what I'm doing. Those are what an actual, real, live, breathing book editor at a major publisher wants to see answered. I'd say if you can answer those questions, then you're in good shape.
01:11:02
Speaker
My meeting is Thursday, so I likely won't have an update come next week's pod, but you better believe I'll be fretting these next few days as I try to be assertive and speak with conviction. Otherwise, if you can't do, interview. See ya.