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Episode 441: Seth Wickersham Gets Them Out of the Building
529 Plays1 month ago
Seth Wickersham (@seth.wickersham on IG) didn't always want to be a sports writer, but he found his way to it by being a high school quarterback, covering the University of Missouri Tigers, and "crashing the party" at the Super Bowl with fellow writers Wright Thompson and Justin Heckert.
This episode was a chance to revisit his amazing story on its ten-year anniversary, "Awakening the Giant," about Y.A. Tittle. Seth also is the author of It's Better to be Feared about the New England Patriots dynasty, a book twenty years in the making. He's a senior writer for ESPN.com and often collaborates with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Don Van Natta Jr. on deeply reported pieces on the NFL.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Opening and Patreon Shoutouts
00:00:01
Speaker
Hey, top of the show, some Patreon shoutouts to Pablo and Dave Monroe for signing up and putting a few bucks in the CNF pod collection plate. Thank you very much. It means the world. It really does. If you want to join in on the fun, visit patreon dot.com slash CNF pod, window shop, pick a tier. Some get phone calls with me because sometimes you just need to talk it out, man.
Power of Narrative Conference 2025
00:00:27
Speaker
And okay, but listen, got a little placeholder here for a promotional ad with the Power of Narrative Conference celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 2025. Three to 400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers include Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zach.
00:00:48
Speaker
They're gonna deliver. They're gonna bring the heat. They're gonna bring the knowledge, man. To learn more, visit com.bu.edu. you There will be a discount code soon for listeners of this podcast. But I just wanna prime the bomb. I want you thinking about it. It'll be here before you know it. I'll be there. I'm gonna be talking. I'm gonna do a thing. Yeah, me.
00:01:15
Speaker
You boy, BO, the porch of his hotel room, having a cigar after the Super Bowl or, you know, whatever
Introduction of Guest: Seth Wickersham
00:01:21
Speaker
it was. I mean, he just had this amazing access. And I would ask him, like, how do you do this? And, you know, he'd say, you know, you just got to get people out of the building. You got to get them out of the building.
00:01:36
Speaker
Oh man, I've been listening to a lot of Lamb of God lately because their lead singer wrote a new memoir and he's going to likely be on the podcast. And um, my tinnitus or tinnitus, whatever the fuck it is, it's on like ludicrous speed. Hey, this is the creative non-fiction podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. Hmm. I'm Brendan O'Mara.
00:01:59
Speaker
We're closing out the year here at CNF POD HQ, and my god, we got a certified banger.
Profile on YA Tittle: Dementia and Family
00:02:07
Speaker
Seth Wickersham. I'm gonna repeat that. Seth Wickersham, senior writer for yeah ESPN, investigative reporter, and the author of It's Better to be Feared, the New England Patriots, Dynasty, and the Pursuit of Greatness.
00:02:21
Speaker
The occasion for this for this podcast happened to be that a 10-year anniversary of his amazing profile on the late great YA Tittle. A story he wrote for ESPN the magazine in 2014 about Tittle's dementia and Tittle's daughter's mission to bring her father um back home to Louisiana. They lived in California but Tittle grew up in Louisiana.
00:02:45
Speaker
bring it back home to Louisiana for this reunion party that they they had every single year. And it's a masterpiece and a profile I read time and again and yeah, i it's 10 years old but you read it today and it's it's just it's just brilliant. It is a brilliant profile, a brilliant piece of writing and reporting on a sensitive subject, masterfully executed and handled.
Host’s Favorite Conversation and Energy
00:03:11
Speaker
So we talk about that, we talk about book writing, we talk about reporting, we talk about interviewing. This is perhaps my favorite conversation of the year because it just ticked all the boxes of things I love talking about and Seth just showed up with all his his energy and and in knowledge. And also because the arc of Seth's career and his close friend Wright Thompson They're the arcs that I wished I could have traveled, but for, I don't know, lack of not a talent, ambition, grit, dedication, and vision, it didn't come
Accessing Show Notes and Feedback
00:03:42
Speaker
to pass. Show notes to this episode and more at brendanomare.com. hey There you can find blog posts, services, and you can sign up for the monthly rage. It's the algorithm newsletter. I raffle off books. I just raffled off my Aaron Rodgers biography to someone. Whether they claim it or not is up to them, but if you're on the list, you effectively have a ah raffle ticket.
00:04:03
Speaker
in perpetuity Also, there are literally dozens of pending subscriptions on the email list. That means you need to confirm signing up for the list through that two-step verification thing going on. So, ah get on that. Anyway, first of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
00:04:26
Speaker
quick aside. I got several nice notes from listeners and newsletter subscribers ah from from the last rager I put out on the first of the month. ah when i When I shared the cold hard analytics of the show from 24 and the precipitous decline of listenership, ah it means a lot. i mean And I ain't going nowhere. Nobody does double negatives like we do here. I just wanted to share a little bit from behind the curtain.
00:04:53
Speaker
I'm bullish on the direction of the show in general, the assuredness of it. So thanks to those who who who share a sliver of their 168 hours, you are allotted every week with this show. It's brilliant guests, and well, ya boy, B.L. Seth Wickersham, man, where where to start? He often partners with the Pulitzer Prize-winning
NFL Investigations and Reporting
00:05:17
Speaker
journalist Don Van Natta,
00:05:20
Speaker
in their investigative pieces with ESPN dot.com. van datatta He of the Sunday Long Read newsletter, I'm sure some of you, most of you subscribe to that. It's now celebrating its 10-year anniversary of
00:05:33
Speaker
not not aggregating, that's the wrong word, but ah curating ah the list of ah the week's best long form and the best journalism in general. And they often solicit ah guest editors to to curate that list. In any case, go sign up for that, by the way. Go look it up.
00:05:52
Speaker
So the the pair of these these guys, they they write deeply reported investigative pieces, primarily on the NFL, the most powerful sports league in the country, and certainly one of the most powerful ones in the world, if not the most powerful, though I don't know how soccer, football operates in Europe, there are probably some more powerful leagues, but the NFL is right up there. ah Seth is one of the greatest sports reporters in the nation, and that's not hyperbole. He's especially gifted in that he can write and craft like deeply reported magazine-style stories that give you more they bring the information with some narrative heft. But he can also change speeds and write wonderfully evocative, long-form features. he's ah He's what you call a five-tool player, man. He's at work on a new book, and you better believe he'll be back on the show. But until then, you're in for a treat, CNFers.
Challenges of the Writing Process
00:06:44
Speaker
You're also in for a really, really nice treat in the parting shot. Like, really, I think it's ah it's a certified banger.
00:06:51
Speaker
Here is, at, Seth Dot Wickersham, best-selling author. And seriously, man, one of the good ones, Riff.
00:07:09
Speaker
and then you just get to a point and I know you've done dealt with this be it the longer investigative pieces or even the features and certainly the book work you've done where you're just the the idea of having to go back and like start over for your you know your tenth revision or it's just it's something that it fills me with so much dread to just go back to the go back to the start again and go through and have to I know it's all in service of a better product in the end, but it's just like the thought of having to always go back and do it again and do it again. It just it drives me insane. It's no way to live. Exactly. and And yet it's also a great way to live. That's the problem.
00:07:54
Speaker
It's just like, anytime I catch myself complaining about it, which I do incessantly, I'm just like, oh my God, youre you're you're writing a book. Someone's paying you to actually write a book and spend time with an
Seth’s Shift to Journalism
00:08:04
Speaker
incredibly charismatic, iconoclastic figure. How dare you complain? And there's this and yet, there's a lot to complain about. Yeah, I know.
00:08:14
Speaker
ah ah But I thought a good place to maybe just jump off of would be to just get a sense of, you know, did you always want to be a sports writer or a journalist for sure?
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah. Well, first, thanks for having me on. um it's It's great to finally you know be with you in this forum rather than you know over email. But i um did I always want to be a sports writer? No. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for a long time. I grew up in Boulder, Colorado and in Anchorage, Alaska, and I kind of spent my childhood you know dabbling in a lot of different things. And then when I was around,
00:08:52
Speaker
when I say 12 or 13, I just became addicted to the idea of, of quarterbacking. You know, I decided that's what I wanted to do. And I worked incessantly. I was obsessed with trying to be my high school starting quarterback and for a period of time I was, but my athletic career was going to end in high school. And when I graduated, I just, I didn't know what to do. Now in high school, I had also written for the student newspaper for four years. I actually earned my letter in journalism before I earned it in sports, which probably should have been a ah big you know hint right there.
00:09:36
Speaker
After I graduated from high school, I spent a year at Montana State um kind of skiing, not really knowing what I wanted to do. And there was one, and I wrote for the for the newspaper there, I had a ah column about the NFL and I covered um some teams and it felt like, well, that's something that you know i'm I'm decent at and could make a maybe make a career at.
00:10:00
Speaker
You know, i I kind of, the more I thought about the the more passionate I got, and and I didn't know where to go to do it best I could. And um I remember I was, I think we ran out to go to Arby's with a friend of mine. I think we went to Arby's if I remember right, but a friend of mine was talking about his cousin who went to University of Missouri journalism school. I had never even thought about Missouri. I think that maybe I had watched the famous Tyus Edney NCAA basketball game, but you know, I had no clue. I thought I was going to transfer to like University of Colorado or University of Washington or something.
00:10:36
Speaker
The more I looked into Mizzou, the more I really um liked it. I went and visited the campus and it, the air there just kind of felt natural and it felt like a place I wanted to be. And um so I ended up going there and, you know, when I was like gonna go halfway across the country to go to college, I really wanted to get the most out of it that I could. So I was really driven and motivated to write as much as I could. I was covering the football team.
00:11:04
Speaker
I did internships during the summer and then and then really my senior year on the football beat, I i fell into a great group of guys who just happened to have that you know point in the curriculum intersect with mine. um Wright Thompson, Justin Hecker, one of your favorites. You you guys did a great podcast together. um Justin and I did have a really nice podcast together and that was on episode 417 talking about the book that was Matt Tullis's opus a documentation of a lot of his interviews from gangray the podcast so Justin and I talked a little bit about his career but also about that book that Justin as well as Seth Had a hand in bringing to light
00:11:48
Speaker
Tony Rehagen, Steve Olintek, Robert Sanchez. john he's done He's been an amazing writer. um So anyway, all those guys. We're really my, my friends and you know, we, we pushed each other and in really, um, ruthless, but heartfelt ways midway through my senior year, the team that doesn't even exist anymore, the St. Louis Rams reached the super bowl.
Super Bowl Coverage Experience
00:12:11
Speaker
And we had at ah as a sports staff, we had covered a couple of Rams games that year. I mean, that year they were like, I think they were the first worst to first team in NFL history, if I remember right. And Kurt Warner had, you know, come out of nowhere, literally.
00:12:26
Speaker
and Wright got the idea to apply for credentials. to go to the Super Bowl. And within a day, we were accepted. And so we left campus like the next day. It was me, Wright, Steve Olentek, and Justin Heckard. We drove to Atlanta from Columbia, each of us getting various traffic tickets or moving violations along the way and the way back. And um you know we covered the Super Bowl. And it was just really cool to do that. First of all, it kind of felt like we were crashing a party, you know being these college kids. And and second of all,
00:12:59
Speaker
I kind of was like, i you know, I need a job. I'm graduating in in a couple months and you know, ah Super Bowl is a great place to try to meet people. So one day I was at the media center and I i looked over and I recognized someone. It was John Papanek who at the time was the editor in chief of ESPN magazine and I had read a book by Michael McCambridge called the franchise, which was a history of Sports Illustrated. And Papanik was the former managing editor for Sports Illustrated and figured prominently in that book. And so I recognized him and i I came up to him and I introduced myself and we made small talk for a couple of minutes. And I think I told him,
00:13:39
Speaker
You know that I'm gonna write for you one day and he was like sounds great You know, that's my little version of like when Tom Brady went up to what Robert Kraft and said, you know drafting me is the best decision this franchise has ever made on the so pizza in his hands or something exactly so You know, I applied I applied to work there and I don't think that that introduction helped me along the way But I ended up starting there when I graduated from college in in May of 2000 and moved up to New York, and that's kind of how my career has gone. It's it's really bizarre to me that um i've been in it's it's just amazing that I've been in this job for 23 years now, 24 years, and you know it really hasn't changed. like My topics changed. Obviously, I didn't begin as an investigative reporter, so that part of it's changed, but
00:14:30
Speaker
It's really just incredible that all this time has passed and and I still kind of have the same job that I wanted when I graduated from college and have a chance to do the things that I wanted to to do and still want to do.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, in bringing up the investigative reporter angle, you know, there are any, you know, writers primarily, you know, a feature features writer, narrative features writer, and then, you know, there are other other people who are more maybe commentary driven. And, you know, and you and ended up getting into a lane of the investigative work that you and along with Don Venata and others have done. So how did you lock in to to to that particular lane?
Investigative Journalism Inspirations
00:15:09
Speaker
When I was in college, I did an internship at the Washington Post, and they had these intern lunches every week where they would bring luminaries from the paper to to speak to the interns. As a quick aside, I remember when they when they brought Ben Bradley, and you know he was so little, and you know he and he he sat at the head of the table, and I think we had calzones that day, and he didn't touch his calzone, and everyone was a little nervous of him because they were so in awe of him, and he was a little a little grouchy.
00:15:39
Speaker
And um I remember I asked him, when did you realize that the Watergate story was going to be the biggest story of of your career? And he said, every fucking year at the intern lunch. I i was i was like, I kind of retreated in my seat. But um anyway, Bob Woodward came to the intern lunch one one um week and he had just come out with a book.
00:16:03
Speaker
called Shadow. And it was kind of about the legacy of Watergate and how it impacted administrations that came after the Nixon one. And um he was very earnest. And he he wanted to talk about reporting issues that all the interns had had over the course of the summer. And you know as he talked about it and as he talked about his methodologies, I just thought it was interesting. And I was like, you know that's something I want to do someday. So I ended up getting hired at ESPN magazine. I was i was mostly doing profiles.
00:16:32
Speaker
And then we hired Don Van Natta. Um, I don't remember exactly when I think it was 2011 or 12. And I got to know him a little bit. I thought it'd be fun to team up with him at some point. And when he first got to ESPN, he had, but I think the first story he wanted to do, if I remember right, one of the first ones was, ah was about Spygate. He just saw like a massive coverup.
00:16:54
Speaker
and a lot of reporting to to try to do and learn about what would really happen there. And he spent a bit on it. He did a little bit of traveling for it and he just wasn't able to to get anywhere. It was just too hard. He he set it aside for a couple of years and then Deflategate happened in the spring of 2015. And we were both kind of, I told him I wanted to work with him on something and we just never really found the right project. And in this seemed to meld it.
00:17:21
Speaker
his gut kind of told him that the the punishment that Tom Brady was getting went back to Spygate. So I called an owner and you know he was like oh absolutely this is you know it was it was time for a makeup call for how Spygate was handled. So we saw a big story there that you know we could collaborate on and um we both you know worked our asses off and you know we we put out a story that came out in um September of 15 and really told the secret history of the Patriots cheating operation and and the cover-up by Goodell and and you know how it looked like the league was complicit in the cover-up and how that came back to to haunt the Patriots when when Tom Brady got busted for a pretty minor infraction. and so That was fun and we just kept doing it. like you you know Then all of these teams were relocating, you know the Chargers, the Rams, the Raiders.
NFL Relocations and Trump Controversies
00:18:14
Speaker
You know, we we we tried to tell the inside story of of of how the politics of those relocations worked and how power worked in the NFL. And then in the fall of 17, Trump president at the time came after the kneelers and all of a sudden the NFL was just in in the president's crosshairs. And we, you know, really wanted to, you know, own that story as best we could. And so we wrote a couple stories about how things were handled inside the meetings.
00:18:41
Speaker
you know we we had the can't you you know You can't have the inmates running the prison reporting on from Bob McNair that he said in that meeting. I remember exactly where I was, where I learned about that. that was ah When I learned that detail, i mean that was a ah funny little reporting story on its own. So anyway, that's how I became more in the investigative space, and and Don and I have have worked on a lot of but a really hard stories together, a lot of stories that had high degrees of difficulty. you know The CEO of Disney, Bob Iger, was in one of our stories when he kind of led a failed attempt to relocate the Raiders to Carson, California, so we had to write about him.
00:19:22
Speaker
um Okay, so why that's a big deal? Bob Iger, overlord of Disney, and Disney owns ESPN, and Seth and Don write for yeah ESPN.
Investigative Writing Challenges
00:19:32
Speaker
so you So you can see how thorny that could get. So, you know, it's been a fun adventure, but that's kind of how I got interested in that space and what I've tried to do with it. And you say you had a funny reporting story around that McNair quote. ah you know What was the the circumstances around that? Well, yeah I was um getting drinks with an executive of a team and and we were about to, um we had written one story on the kneelers already. There was kind of a quick turnaround. We did it in like less than a week. And then we had, the story didn't go away. So we kept reporting on it and we were on yeah ESPN magazine deadline. So the story was like about to close and then it would post on the internet the next day.
00:20:17
Speaker
So we were like within like maybe 48 to 72 hours of it closing and um I was out to drinks with a team executive and i I asked him about something that McNair had said in a different meeting and he misheard me. And he kind of put his hands on his forehead. He goes, oh my God, that was horrible. And I was like, wait, what?
00:20:37
Speaker
And I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like, well, what are you talking about? And, you know, he told me that McNair had gotten up and said, you know, we can't have the inmates running the prison. And it had started, you know, it just didn't go over well. And Troy Vincent of the league office got up and spoke against it. And it it then Jerry Jones was stepping up and backing McNair. And it was just a brutal spectacle. The the meeting had happened like a week or two earlier. So, you know, that was a pretty locked up and in very detail. And I called another executive that night who was in the meeting and i I asked him if it happened. And he was like, yeah, it was horrible. And um so I decided to reach out to Amy Palcic, who at the time was the um PR
00:21:24
Speaker
head of the Houston Texans. And you know I said, like this is what the reporting shows. you know Is there any context to this? um Anything I should know about it? you know She was like, give me a morning. And you know she was able to get me some some context and and you know how McNair felt when he said it and what happened afterwards. And so we were able to um add all of that into the into the story and then I think it published like a day or two later and that was a pretty um it was a pretty wild couple days you know it was a big big piece of reporting that transcended sports um you know LeBron James was talking about it Jay-Z was talking about it it was just one of those moments where you kind of just see the reach that all of these little things that you've done over the years from
00:22:12
Speaker
wanting to partner with Don Van Natta and partnering with him and developing all of these sources within the ownership ranks and the executive ranks and getting lucky and you know all these things and you know I appreciated how McNair handled it you know he didn't try to deny it he didn't try to spin it he he tried to explain what he meant and Um, how it took place from his point of view. And even though it was, it was a, you know, it was a comment that that went horrifically in that room. I appreciated that, you know, he, he kind of just fessed up to it and, and rather than trying to go to war against a piece of reporting that everybody knew was true.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah that's amazing and it just goes to show how the, it's hard these days because it's resource intensive and time intensive but the best kind of journalism is really slow journalism. The information you were able to dig up here was a result of building a body of work in your reputation over the years, but also being able to, you know, just, you know, sit and have a drink and a conversation with and info with a source, and then you're able to cobble together that information over time, so to speak. It is it is a slower burn, but it it leads to it leads to better better work and better journalism.
00:23:26
Speaker
Yeah,
Building Trust with Sources
00:23:27
Speaker
no doubt. I remember when I was in college, i I met Michael Silver, who was at Sports Illustrated, and he was doing you know so many awesome profiles. you know They'd all begin with John Elway sitting on his the porch of his hotel room, having a cigar after the Super Bowl, or you know whatever it was. I mean, he just had this amazing access. And I would ask him, like how do you do this? And you know he'd say, you know you just got to get people out of the building. You got to get them out of the building. and um you know So I always kind of kept that in mind. you know If you can meet someone,
00:23:57
Speaker
It's always preferable to to meet somebody in person rather than do it over the phone. Sometimes you have no choice. You have to talk on the phone. but um And if you can meet with someone to do it somewhere a little bit more relaxed outside of the confines of of the building, whether it's a player, coach, executive, whatever it might be. So um all those things kind of came together in that moment.
00:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think um the great investigative journalist Corey Johnson talks about that too. And he's he's very big on door knocking. You know, it's very old school journalism, just like face to face, handshakes. And nowadays with social media and even just Zoom, everything is so digitally detached that we almost forget that it's a it's ah journalism at its best is a as a human business and a person to person business that tells tells great stories and it's built on trust and trust is best manifested face to face. Yeah, and it's in it's difficult. you so i learned I've learned a lot from Don, but one of the things I learned is you know he you know he kind of we have fact checkers at ESPN who help us with things and they're there're there're always incredibly valuable. And Don you know kind of fact checks his own work at times, you know right before the story comes out where he'll call a source or the subject of the story or whatever.
00:25:15
Speaker
and, you know, verify a couple more things, you know, or pieces of reporting that we have and and kind of just tighten the screws just a little bit tighter. And it's really a um You know, it was one of those lessons that I learned that I really appreciated because he kind of helps get a lot of the arguments out ahead of time, you know, and he might, the source might disagree with the piece of reporting it it is or whatever, but like before the story prints and before.
00:25:47
Speaker
you know, the world sees it, you know, Don gives them kind of another chance to verify things or to add context or whatever. And, and, you know, I just never, I never done that. And and watching him do it was eye opening for me. And it was yeah ah just another example of you mentioned time and just having the time to be able to do that. And often you get, you know, a lot more great stuff in those last, you know, hours before the the story um posts online or or heads off to the printer, you know, and again, it's like, you know, just having the blessing of of the time to be able to do those things has just been, it's hard to imagine doing it a different way.
00:26:27
Speaker
I imagine that's really panic inducing too because on the one hand it's it's a very rigorous process i yeah and you're you're giving them like another reason to refute it or be like you know I don't want that I don't want that said well that's terrifying unto itself because you might have some really good things they're like I'm not comfortable with that anymore.
00:26:45
Speaker
or like you said to that maybe they add that extra patina to it that is like makes it even richer. And it's like you're you're playing those two against each other ah in the spirit of getting a spirit of accuracy and fairness.
00:26:58
Speaker
Absolutely. and he he always um you know A lot of our stories are not short. you know they They require an investment for the reader, and then the story is a day or two away from publishing, and you know after doing that, those last round of calls, you know Don and now me, since i i I do it as a matter of practice too, you know, we end up with just more stuff, you know, that we're like, okay, you know, can we, you know, is there a way to like put in a couple more details that are really important, um or that a reader might like or or that are new or whatever it is, you know, it's it's a, again, you know, it's it's it's just a blessing that we have that opportunity to
Conception of YA Tittle Profile
00:27:38
Speaker
do that.
00:27:38
Speaker
It was like I kind of was doing my routine rereading of your wonderful YA Tittle profile ah from 2014 and then I caught the date on it. I was like oh my god this is like I think it came with July 2014 so just over 10 years ago and I was like oh my god this piece came out 10 years ago. I'm like gotta reach out to Seth and maybe we can celebrate it and talk about it and see what you remember about just the reporting of that piece and how that came together. So so with the with the Tittle Profile from 2014, what do you most remember about you know getting getting that story altitude as you were reporting it? Yeah, what do I remember about a story about memory, right? yeah yeah um That story was kind of odd in how it came together. um
00:28:25
Speaker
We had an editor at ESPN Magazine whose parents, I think, knew YA Tittle's daughter and her husband. They were all from the Bay Area. He said, you know, it might be worth seeing what's going on with YA Tittle. I think he had heard that YA had dementia, which initially kind of turned me off to it. Like, I didn't want to write ah yet another You know, the stories at the time of the post NFL player, the plight of of of their later life were were very powerful, but they all started to read the same. And so I didn't necessarily want to like write about that, but I was in San Francisco working on a Tony Gonzalez story. He was the Hall of Fame tight end for the Falcons and they played the 49ers. So I went to that game.
00:29:13
Speaker
and And on that trip, I went to go visit with Diane Delott, her husband Steve, and then they took me to meet her dad, short five-minute drive from their house um in Menlo Park. You know, I spent a couple hours with him. His memory loop was was very tight, but he was very affable, and he was a happy guy.
00:29:32
Speaker
she Diane mentioned that every year, almost since he retired, he's been he had been throwing a party at um his his lake house and in Caddo Lake um in Louisiana, right in the East Texas border near where he grew up. And you know that they were trying to do it one more time. And that's when it changed for me. That's when I was like, this is a story. There's you know so many big ideas and thoughts and themes. and You know, YA almost didn't make it. He almost didn't make it to that party. He was having breathing problems, just getting him there. They initially wanted to take a train from San Francisco to East Texas and then that didn't really work. So they, they flew him and he, you know, it was, it was a hard process, but he did make it. And, you know, I was there to kind of just document what it felt like for him, what it felt like for her.
00:30:26
Speaker
on ah on a trip that at the time looked like it was going to be his final trip home. And to your point ah earlier about – you were talking about yeah invest sources about getting out of the building. like In a sense, this this story too had a get out of the building effect because there is there is motion. There is getting in from one place to another and bringing them home essentially.
00:30:47
Speaker
And so I feel like I can get a sense of the energy you were feeling, like, oh, wait, there there's actually kind of an arc to this versus, you know, a profile that largely looks back and in a tries to deal with the the memory thing. Like, there was like a true through line for this thing i in an event and a climax to it.
00:31:09
Speaker
Absolutely. And there was arcs within that arc. So there was the the giant arc of trying to have this party one last time. There was the sub arcs within it, which was what it meant to him, especially in the context of his career where he was really the first great quarterback who didn't win a championship and was kind of lived with that stigma for the rest of his life. He was Dan Marino before Dan Marino existed. um Yeah.
00:31:34
Speaker
And, you know, he was the first of that. And the the party every year kind of felt like a win for him in a way that he needed. And he felt deeply in his soul, even his as his memory and dementia arrived and his memory began to erode. And then there was the arc of of Diane, his daughter, trying to provide this moment for her dad. And, you know, there's just several moments in the story where she's either crying or on the verge of tears because the image she had in her mind and the reality of what was happening were very far apart. And, you know, it was, she just had, at one point I remember she so she told me it's in the story. She said, you know, you're with you're witnessing a family tragedy. And then, you know, the party arriving and it going well and actually having kind of a profound little moment at the end. And and memory is a strange thing. It's a magical thing and and how it,
00:32:29
Speaker
you know, something changed a little bit with him um for a day or two after that party. It it it impacted him in ah in a real way. And so that to me was just, you know, it was it was pretty rich from a writing perspective. I remember when I wrote it, i you know, I was pretty much just writing it, you know, the story of the party and chronological. I think originally I began being in his living room as as he was his daughter was trying to um show him photos to jog memories, to get his his brain working. And and I began with that.
Storytelling Techniques
00:33:04
Speaker
And my editor, Eric Neal, it was the first time, I think we had worked together on a story. We had just been partnered together. And I really was excited because I had known him as a friend for a long time, but we had never worked together. And I was just really excited to work with him. And he kind of had this idea of,
00:33:21
Speaker
reminding the reader who he is um through that that famous picture of him with his blood, you know, snaking down his forehead and what that meant for the NFL, what that meant for him, this idea of this kind of broken down warrior, but also a little bit of nobility in there. So he really had this idea to begin with the photo and kind of reintroduce him to the reader through that picture. And that was a real, um it was it was such a great, smart suggestion.
00:33:51
Speaker
But it also, you know, opened my eyes in a lot of ways to a new type of writing that I tried to implement in in subsequent works that you can begin a story wherever you want. You can begin, you obviously want to begin with an idea. And I knew that. But you don't always have to begin with a scene. You can begin with a thematic idea um if it works in concert with the story. And and that was something that i I learned from him and I learned um in that story.
00:34:22
Speaker
Right. I love unpacking or talking about entry points and even endings too. And it when you're doing your reporting it, you know, when are you starting to synthesize the idea of how you're going to get into a story that it could come at any point in the process? But I wonder for you, like when it tends to crystallize.
00:34:43
Speaker
often right before it's you know it's due to go. um This sounds a little bit of a funny um ah aside, but remember the movie Draft Day? It had like Kevin Costner, yeah Jennifer Gardner in it. So I got an email like, hey, you know we want to put sports writers in it. And the idea was you know you we put you in the movie, you play yourself, and then you know, you write about the experience, good, bad, whatever it is. You know, so it's kind of like you get the kick out of being in a movie and, you know, they get the publicity. So I did it. And um it turns out they they cut our scene. So they kind of tried to sprinkle. There was a company and a couple other people, but like they tried to sprinkle us in other scenes. And in my main scene was at the party, the draft party at the end. And we started filming like late mid to late afternoon.
00:35:38
Speaker
and then we went till maybe one or two in the morning and you know everybody was just the the thrill of it was was completely gone by the time it was like one or two in the morning everybody was tired and then you know but they kept shooting it from all these different angles from the side from the other side from floor level from up above and from out you know on stage and when the movie came out of course it's like ah the scene's a couple seconds but it you know it it It was a reaffirmation and a reminder about the creative process because you it's messy and you have to like look at things from every angle and then eventually you'll decide which one works best. And I think that the one thing that if I've learned anything about
00:36:25
Speaker
um writing over the course of you know doing this professionally for a couple of decades now you have to embrace the messiness of it and that's hard to do at times because yeah it's not efficient and it's not always enlightening or fun but you know these things tend to work out and for whatever reason um for me at least, you know often before a story goes, I i see it much clearly than i did much clearer than I did how from however long I was working on it. And I can see pieces of it that maybe don't need to be there or a point that I wanted to make, finding the exact words to make it that much more ah specific. And you know I wish that there was a way to speed up that process.
00:37:10
Speaker
You and I discussed books earlier. I'm writing a book on quarterbacks right now and um the process of it of for writing it for me has been so much harder than my first book on the New England Patriots. You know, it's like a daily reminder that I got to embrace the process. I got to embrace the messiness of this.
00:37:28
Speaker
Oh, 100%. I've beat the shit out of myself over the last year and a half or so like with the this rough draft that I had of the Prefontaine book I've been writing. It was 160,000 words. It was disgustingly big with no shape. And I hired an editor. I'm like, I got to get this down to at least under 120,000 before I send it off to my big book editor. And we we did. And then right now it's it's in a place where it'll probably be around 105, which is you know which is nice at a nice length for a a biography. it
00:38:06
Speaker
but like i have i I've written about this in my journals a lot. It was just like ah kicking kicking the shit out of myself or even having to have written 160,000 shapeless words and then to get it into a place where it's like it's starting to be look nice. And it's like, why couldn't I have made it look nice from the start? But the fact is, look to your point of embracing the messiness of the process. like Those 160,000 words, at least for this book and for me at this time in my life and career, it needed to happen.
00:38:34
Speaker
it And you have to just kind of surrender to that and not kick the shit out of yourself for that being such a a Bloated mess. It's like that needed to happen to get to where we're getting now Absolutely, and you know, the there's such an importance in not stopping. Yeah um When you're writing a book the worst thing you can do is stop like you just have to keep going you can always go back and fix things and once, twice, 50 times, whatever it might be, you can always go back. But if you stop, and if you lose momentum, it's really hard to get it back. And Wright has a new book coming out next week, called The Barn. And it's really a ah beautiful book.
00:39:14
Speaker
Yes, it's The Barn, A Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson. It's been out for a while now. You've probably heard about it. Ton of buzz around it. Lots of coverage. And deservedly so. He is a master, and that book is spectacular.
00:39:33
Speaker
And you know he sent it to me as he was writing it. almost For me, the experience of it was almost like a blog because he would send me each section that he wrote every day. And you know he ended up sending me about 260,000 words before he went back and and cut the book basically in half and then tightened it from there. But you know It was just a reminder that like the most important thing to do is to just keep going. like you know they owe The quarterbacks say on on two-minute drives, like you no negative plays. yeah You just have to keep going. A little bit of progress each day is better than perfection. and um
00:40:13
Speaker
It's something that I've tried to apply a little bit to my
Maintaining Writing Momentum
00:40:15
Speaker
magazine writing. I have a friend, um, Taffy brought us her actor who's, you know, brilliant writer in all kinds of different forums. And we were talking and she was talking about how when she writes profiles, she just, she does not stop. Like she tries to write it all in one sitting and then, you know, we'll go back and fix it or whatever it is.
00:40:35
Speaker
that's hard to do but I do think that there's a lot of virtue in that and as best you can just like just keep going just keep going you can always go back and and fix things so but don't don't lose you know creative momentum absolutely yeah and there's um you know in the in the tittle piece but my favorite moment in the whole thing is when uh ah da you know, you, Diane, and YA are at his high school football field, and she needs to get out and run. And that's such a and touching ah touching moment of the the stress that dementia puts on a family and that release, that release that you just need sometimes to get out from from under it. and
00:41:25
Speaker
And just I'd love you just kind of take us to that scene and how how you chose to you know report that out, like when to follow and when to give space, you know and how you decided to handle that. Yeah. So we were driving around you know his hometown. We went to his old house and you know he thought we he thought he still owned it. um you know he's like He'd asked Diane, you know what are we going to do with this property anyway? And she was like, dad,
00:41:52
Speaker
but someone else owns it. And it was really hard for her. And then we we snaked, you know, through town, Marshall, Texas, and then we rounded a corner and he recognized his high school like right away. He goes, this is the old high school and that's the old football field. And Diane kind of looked at him and she was like, that's the football field. And he was like, yes. And she just got out of the car. And, you know, I remember there was like broken glass on the ground and It wasn't like the prettiest and scene, but she, you know, that was where her parents had met. They met in high school and um her mom was a cheerleader on the football team. And, you know, he was obviously the star quarterback and she just felt this huge need to connect with that, to to connect with, you know, the ghosts that were there on that field.
00:42:42
Speaker
And she she got out, we we all got out and um walked to the field and then she just took off her shoes and she just ran from one end zone to the other. And, um you know, she just She needed to do that. Um, for her spirits to connect with whatever it was she was trying to connect with, you know, she was just so full of life when she did that. And shortly after we got back in the car, we rounded a corner and already his, his memory had blanked. And, you know, he, I remember he said, you know, did we, did we go by the old, the old high school? Cause, um, no, that's, that's how much of in a grip dementia had him at that point.
00:43:24
Speaker
Yeah, that moment yeah really really struck me. And the way you handle it too, which I think is you know speaks to your capacity as an empathetic and a sensitive writer, but also as a reporter. like you know So as as you're documenting the stuff filling up your notebook or breaking out your recorder, you know how are you just handling it? Because it is it is a very sensitive, ah delicate family story you're working with here.
00:43:54
Speaker
i just you know I had my notebook out the entire time. she's Diane is a writer. um She's a poet. She she kind of understood um you know what I was there for. And i just you know i just I just kept taking notes. I did use a tape recorder ah intermittently throughout it. It just kind of depended on you know the situation that we were in.
00:44:15
Speaker
you know, some of it was just, you know, you you hang out with a lot of people. There's often like a lot of silence. And so you want to capture the silence, but you don't always have to have a tape recorder going during it. That's kind of just how I handled it. Like I just constantly had my notebook out. and There was one moment when I put it away late in the night. People broke out guitars and they were playing songs. And um it was a big moment in the story. and And after after I had seen why I start to cry and at um a song that was being played,
00:44:45
Speaker
I don't know, maybe it was like a half an hour later, someone handed me the guitar and asked if I wanted to play a song. So I did. I think I played Highway Patrolman by Springsteen. And that was the only time I put the notebook down. I had to be a participant for just a second.
00:45:05
Speaker
and I'm something of a notebook nerd and i I love tactile paper stuff and I love the the tools of reporting and so what are what are the things that you like to lean on you know be it notebooks writing utensils even voice recorder if you lean if you lean on those every now and again Yeah, I mostly use a notebook that's about the size of an iPad because I put the iPad underneath it.
Preferred Reporting Tools
00:45:29
Speaker
So I have the iPad running recording often use my phone to record to just in case one of them doesn't work or whatever it is. But, you know, having the iPad there under the notebook as I'm taking notes.
00:45:41
Speaker
um I find is like pretty compact, you know, and easy. And it's, you know, everything's kind of congruent. Like it fits together. There's not paper falling everywhere all the time. So that's kind of how I do it. Nice. Yeah. When I was talking to Darcy Frey, who master wrote the masterpiece, The Last Shot, I had 30th anniversary of that this year, having come out. in ah He was – he made a decision very early on in his career that he would just be like pen and notebook guy. Like he wasn't going to use recorders. And it was just a decision he made. and um And so the last shot is reported in that and that capacity. And like he's often in his car driving these kids around. And I asked him like, like
00:46:23
Speaker
How are you? How are you doing this? He's like, because they're all talking and bantering and he's like, yeah, they'd be talking. I'd be trying to keep it in my head and we'd hit a stoplight and then I'd get out my notebook and scribble everything they said from my memory before the light turned green. And then it would be like the next block. And he just kept kind of like doing that. And that was just one example of how he maintained, you know, his ah his ethic of not using the recorder, but still trying to get everything down as seriously as possible. It's crazy. Yeah, it's a weird role with that we play and a weird role that the notebook plays, you know, in those social situations. I think, was it Gay Talis who said, you know, that he never took notes and he would just remember the things that mattered.
00:47:04
Speaker
like ah he would cut up shirt boards from his tailored shirts in his pocket and he would keep them in that inner pocket so he'd have these like bookmark slabs of cardboard and he would basically yeah he would kind of later kind of scribble down his notes and you have to have stacks of these at the end of the day but yeah he was never one to have the tools really out. Yeah I guess you know to each his own I just find that like The more detail you can capture in whatever moment you're there, yeah you know that's what you're paid to do. you know Your job is to like take the readers where you are and you often need every sense you know available to you to be able to do it. And so you know when you record, you have the peace of mind that you you have a record of it.
00:47:49
Speaker
an accurate record of it and it liberates you to take notes on other things knowing that the recorders are going. At times the recorder is obtrusive, at times it doesn't work, but you know for whatever it is that's kind of like how you know it's worked best for me.
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah, I'm kind of in that in that camp too. it's a It's an extra, it's a backup, it's a hedge against people who say, I didn't say that. Well, here we go, let's go to the tape if you're really want you really want to you know go that route. um But I've also found, like I remember interviewing Nick Zito, Hall of Fame horse trainer on the back stretch of Saratoga Springs.
00:48:26
Speaker
and I was just interviewing him and he's just like one of those guys he's just a quote machine and always has been but like in the background it was just you know it was a very bucolic kind of very it's just a very picturesque kind of day but they you know there's just like Blue Jays chirping and in the background and other birds And there are these little grace notes that you can put into a scene that you might otherwise miss because you're so furiously scribbling everything that's coming out of their mouths. You like you you miss the the robins and the blue jays in the background that just add that little extra ah seasoning to a scene.
00:49:04
Speaker
Yeah, there's no doubt. And, you know, just scribbling, you know, you're, you're kind of limiting yourself already. I mean, I just don't know anybody who can write as fast as people talk and get everything down to the comma. Now, there's moments that you can accurately, you can accurately capture um without a recorder.
00:49:25
Speaker
you know, interactions, dialogue, whatever it might be. But when you're sitting for an interview, you know, that's their time. So to me, the best thing to do is to like, you know, capture it every which way possible, and then, you know, figure out what to use later, then you don't want to be in ah in a moment where you're not getting things because you can't keep up writing, you know, scribbling into your notebook.
00:49:48
Speaker
100 percent. Yeah. Yeah. And when you um like I like I told you over e-mail I reread the Tittle piece over and over again because I just I love it. I think it's you. Yeah. a Dude it's it's to me it's ah it's just one of those timeless masterpiece profiles and it just it teaches you a lesson every time you read it. it's you know And it's 10 years on. And I wonder I'm someone who struggles some reading old work of mine because I just I You know as you develop as a writer you just worry that the stuff that your older stuff just doesn't hold up to your new level of skill and experience uh, you know when you maybe revisit a piece of this nature or something else I are you do you still have like oh, wow that you know that that's a that's pretty good I you know, I'm pretty proud of that. Yeah, um, I I have a collection that'll be out um After my quarterback book and so now nice intermittently I've been
00:50:44
Speaker
you know I i kind of know you know maybe my five best stories or the stories that I like the best, but I wanted to you know go back, especially in ah my work for like the first 10 years at ESPN Magazine and just see if there was anything that I had forgotten about, that I had totally forgotten. It was really a weird trip down memory lane where you saw how you wrote back then.
00:51:06
Speaker
And you know there was things I would observe or being 25 years old and doing that job that um being two decades older, you just don't. but you know And that was an interesting thing for me. you know I think that we're all kind of wired to move on, especially with the the nature of a of these in-depth investigative pieces or profiles. you know you just They're so intensive that you know once it's out there,
00:51:35
Speaker
it's really hard to kind of go back and and look at it. And plus, you know, there's always something new to to work on. So I haven't reflected on those things that much. um But I did reread the tittle story um before our call. And again, there's always little things in there where you're like, you know, that wasn't a bad observation I made or transition or whatever it might be. The the ending of that story is never like, I always felt like I would have done the ending a little differently if I could do it over again. But um It works for what the story is you know also like given that you're in more of the you know you do a lot of investigative work and there there isn't a whole lot of room and stories of that nature for like voice and style because you're really it's really information driven and You know a profile like you know tittle that gives you a chance to have some more voice and and be a bit more stylized even though you you tell it sensitively and pretty pretty straight, but
00:52:31
Speaker
getting a chance to write profiles of that nature, does that give you a sense of a bit more creative ah creative bandwidth, creating an let in ah yeah a bit more leash to express yourself in that particular way?
Creative Expression vs. Investigative Writing
00:52:44
Speaker
The investigative stories, yeah I want them to always read like a magazine story. yeah you know I don't want them to be a report. I need to have them be a story and explain why this matters now and why you should care about it. and you know But there are limits to that. Whereas like, there's no doubt that when you're writing a profile, you can play around a little more. Like when I'm stuck, I often write just pure first person. And then maybe I'll go back and take the first person out or take 90% of it out. But like I find that
00:53:14
Speaker
You know, your observations tend to come out a little better when you're when you're just kind of free to just put them on the page. Again, these are just all these little tricks that help manufacture that creative process. ah he And, you know, as a as a Patriots fan, like I grew up ah a little south of Boston, about 20 minutes south of Foxborough. And ah in reading, it's good. to It's better to be feared. like i I loved I loved that book so much. And that seemed to me like it was ah you know a book like 20 years in the making, so to speak, because you've been kind of following the team for a long time. And you know you had your developed your relationships over several years to like really bring that to to the fore. I thought that book was you know was masterful and just such a cool read for me, having you know grown up a Pats fan and gone to the shadow of the old Sullivan Stadium and the aluminum benches and everything.
00:54:06
Speaker
Yeah, no, thank you. And, you know, it's, it's, um, thank God, you know, because, um, thank God I had that, that 20 some years with them, because I had to write it during COVID. I thought I was going to be doing all this traveling, visiting all these people, going to all these games, and then the world kind of shut down, which kind of simplified it in a way for writing.
00:54:26
Speaker
but you know freaked me out from a repartorial standpoint and you know if there's a lesson there it's like don't throw away notebooks don't throw away transcripts
Writing About Patriots and Tom Brady
00:54:34
Speaker
don't throw away you know keep that stuff and because when I was able to go back to the various times I had met Brady, you know, when he was just starting for the team and wasn't sure he was going to finish the season as a starter to, you know, he was a Super Bowl winner dealing with fame, too. He was a global superstar married to, you know, that a woman who is the best in her profession also, two two alphas kind of sharing a household and, you know, wondering how he was going to break out of this plateau that he had had in his career where he was
00:55:10
Speaker
you know, plateauing at the highest level possible, but still plateaued and not, not winning Super Bowls. Um, even if you would get there to, you know, being in into Super Bowl party, all these things, you know,
00:55:22
Speaker
all the times I'd interviewed Belichick over the years. Those words and their statements meant different, meant something different with with the passage of time and kind of knowing how it how it was going to end. And so that was invaluable. And, you know, even though, like, um I didn't You know, Brady, I think sat down to do a book interview with someone over the years and, you know, gave him like 40 minutes or something like that. I forget what it was. And even though I didn't interview Brady for my book specifically, I I would have.
00:55:53
Speaker
du rather had you know the experience that ah the experiences that I had had over that over the years, um when our paths would cross, when we would talk, when we would when I would work on stories on him specifically, and just sort of having that material to draw upon um for a project like that, much rather than you know sitting down for him for 45 minutes where you could probably hit a lot of topics, but not get deep with any of them.
00:56:19
Speaker
Hmm. How do you file all the all your old notebooks? So, yeah, like for this instance, you're like, oh, yeah, I have a notebook from 2002 where I spoke with Brady. Yeah. So I used to have ah an office at the ESPN magazine offices in New York City or had a desk and I had a you know, they have filing cabinets in the desk or whatever it might be. So I always kind of like kept folders of all my stories and I would put it in there when I was done and then I think they needed the desk for some reason, and I you know i didn't need to be in the offices much, so um someone there boxed everything up and just sent it to my house at the time. and um I never looked at them. like That's where they were. you know and i never i i we We've moved since then, and I um took the boxes with me, but like they were up in an attic, I think, um at at my current house in Connecticut. and
00:57:17
Speaker
you know I had to dive in to try to find them because they weren't that well organized in the boxes themselves. So it was kind of a funny trip down memory lane too where you know I'd see files from stories that I had forgotten that I had written or all these court records from a story, you know whatever it might be. Sometimes the files would be pretty thick, but that's that's kind of how I did it. I wish I had a better organizational system. I tried to be much more organized with my quarterback book than I was previously.
00:57:45
Speaker
That segues nicely into something I just want to talk about just from you know your experience of having done book one and then going getting into book two. you know what is a What are some lessons that are you've carried over from book one that are helping you in book two, even though book two is its own beast?
00:58:01
Speaker
Yeah, i might I might be better equipped to answer that in a year. I feel like I'm like i'm in the bunker with it right now. I would just say that, like you again, it's like you just cannot stop. like You cannot stop writing. You have to keep going. You can always go back, add, delete, filter in new reporting, refine, rewrite as many times as you need to. but like it If you stop and you find yourself at the bottom of a mountain of reporting, like you're just never going to get through it in any reasonable timeframe. I love Robert Caro. I love reading about his process.
00:58:39
Speaker
um But you know in a lot of ways, it'll fuck you up because yes here's somebody who has you know all of these benefits right that work for him, but not every writer gets to enjoy. and so Or that maybe just don't work for every writer. I do think that you know something that he that he does that mirrors something that um Chris Jones, former writer at Esquire and ESPN, fantastic journalist, is a friend of mine. you know He always said, i I write my endings first. And I had never done that in my career. I probably had been doing it for 15 or so years before I really
00:59:19
Speaker
saw him talk about that and thought about it and um carol always writes the last line of his books also and first and i don't always write the endings but i do think there's a virtue and a value in knowing how you're going to end the story because it gives you a destination and you know if you're heading there you can take whatever detours you want or side roads or main roads whatever it might be but you know where you're going and by virtue of the fact that when Brady left the Patriots, I knew the Patriots book might end there, although it didn't. He ended up winning the Super Bowl, of course. So, um you know, that was that was a better ending. But I knew that how this thing ended, like he left the team and then.
01:00:04
Speaker
with the quarterback book, it's way more thematic. But, you know, i I did know the notes that I wanted to end it on. And so I think that like, as much as those two projects can have in common, like, that's kind of the the takeaway that I took from it.
01:00:18
Speaker
Nice and you know primarily the listeners on the other the show are writers of all of all elks of the definitely ah in the nonfiction milieu if you will and I wanted to bring this down for a landing by just asking you you know some of the well either maybe the best advice you've ever heard or asked for or and you've offered some brilliant insights already or just advice that you've just earned from ah just hard earned through doing the work you know what you know what what might be ah one of the one of the better things you've learned over the years
01:00:54
Speaker
You know, the writing advice, I think i've I've said already, so I don't want to repeat
Effective Interviewing Techniques
01:00:58
Speaker
it. I will say that, like, ah you go to Mizzou, Syracuse, USC, um you know, all these great, you know, Northwestern, these great journalism schools. We never, I never learned how to ask questions. um I never learned how to report. They kind of just throw you out there. And um I want to say maybe 10 years into my ESPN career,
01:01:21
Speaker
around that time, ESPN hired this a guy who was an interview expert. His name is John Zawatsky. And um they made anybody at ESPN who might ask a question, take his course. And it was like two and a half days, and he had truncated it. And, you know, you have a lot of established, successful people in that room.
01:01:41
Speaker
who were very defensive about their their methods. And when I listened to him, when I listened to Zawatsky talk, I thought that his methodologies and his ideas were really smart. Like, I don't think they solved every problem for you, but they gave you a better chance of getting good answers. And although he kind of tailored it for TV,
01:02:04
Speaker
um I thought there was a lot of places to apply it in print journalism. and um you know his His methodologies are very simple. you know Ask lean, open, neutral questions. so Lean, short questions. Neutral. Don't put buzzwords in there that they react to rather than rather than answering the question. Open questions.
01:02:24
Speaker
who, what, when, where, why, how, you know, you want people to explain, and then you ask them follow ups based on those answers. And I think that like, you know, he he retired from yeah ESPN. um I'm sure he still does seminars, but, you know, i I refer to his methodologies quite a bit. And he was the first one who helped me understand that questions are tools. And, you know, you deploy certain ones at at certain times. And I think that Again, you know, you watch presidential debates or, you know, news shows or whatever it is, and you see how many interviews that maybe could have provided better answers if they had asked questions just a little bit differently.
01:03:10
Speaker
Well, yeah, the I think there's a tremendous insecurity on the part of the interviewer to want to sound very intelligent. And yeah yeah also and there's also like ah a conversational aspect. Well, you know, make it conversational. I don't really, you know, there's all these people are like, I don't really ask questions. I just have a conversation. And, you know, I guess that works for some people, but like I've always.
01:03:32
Speaker
You know, I think that there's, you can do both of them at the same time, but I think that you're there to learn from the person. So what's the best way to learn from them? Obviously you want to report with your eyes and your ears and all of your senses, but you want to tap into what they have to say. I remember I interviewed Belichick um once and yeah I had interviewed i interview him a couple times and I always felt like my interviews with him didn't go well. Like he was polite, but like there was just something where I felt like I wasn't really nailing it. And then after I had taken Swatsky's course, I really, the next time I was interviewing Belichick, I really tried to, up you know, deploy those lessons and tenets to this interview where it was really based on
01:04:17
Speaker
having a plan for the interview, knowing what I wanted to learn, asking questions that got him talking and then asking follow-ups based on what he said. And with someone like him who's been in pro football longer than I've been alive, I realized what he reacts to viscerally is interjections of opinion or assertion or whatever it might be.
01:04:39
Speaker
And that turns him off. Meanwhile, though, if you make him talk and get him going a little bit, almost any question can be asked within the context of the things that he's saying, because you're listening to what he's saying and your your curiosity is based on his words. And I and that one stands out, you know, in terms of like, you know, this is when this stuff can work the best.
01:05:06
Speaker
Yeah, just just one more thread on that. I violate this frequently, though I like to think I don't do it as often because I'm aware of it. But it's and a great peeve of mine is and you see it more in the podcast sphere is people ask a question, then they basically answer it for the person. Yeah. And then something to last the same thing again, in which case they've just led the witness and they're just going to basically parrot what you said. Or you've talked such a word salad around it that you ask an entirely different question than the one you started. So you just need to have a really good shot clock right off the bat and get out of the way.
01:05:41
Speaker
Yeah, lean open neutral because, yeah again, there's sometimes that someone might look at you when you violate all of those things and you know they're just like, what's the question? like what are What are we talking about here? like You can lose track of even what you were trying to do. It's just a asking Why is that? What happened next? You know, how did that come to be? Whatever it might be, those questions can be really effective in the right situations. And it helps earn trust. You know, people are always like, oh, you know, I have these conversations, so we have a rapport.
01:06:12
Speaker
You know, I think that when you show that you're listening to someone and you care about what they say and you care about it so much that you think about it and you ask questions based on what they say, I think that helps, you know, form a trust basis a lot more than you kind of showing up and interjecting opinions, assumptions, point of view and making them react to it. putting it Because it it almost puts them on the defensive, even if you don't mean for it to be that way.
01:06:39
Speaker
Oh, man. Yeah, that's one wonderful, wonderful points and brilliant insights. seth So, yeah, man, this was us I'm so glad we got to have this ah first, first conversation on the mics. You know, we've been in touch for a little while now. And it's nice that it's so wonderful that we were able to do this. And I look forward to doing this again in a year when your new book or whenever your new book comes out. So just so thank you so much for all the work you've done over the years and the work you continue to do and just i keep up the amazing work. And I look forward to when we can speak again. My pleasure, man. I will see you in a year.
01:07:14
Speaker
Awesome! Ah, thanks to the Power of Narrative Conference for being a promotional partner. That discount code will be coming, and it is not live yet, but it will be here. It will be here soon. And I don't get any kickbacks, so my recommendation is true. And I'm not selling a discount to get money in my pocket. I am doing it because they're cool. Visit combeyond.bu.edu to learn more about this amazing conference.
01:07:43
Speaker
And also thanks to Seth, my gosh. iss the He's top tier, man. he is He is doing the major league work. And he carved out some time to come on the show and to talk some shop. I hope he got a lot out of it. I know I did.
01:08:00
Speaker
He was instrumental in getting the late Matt Tellis' book stories can save us to print. He's also Wright Thompson's biggest hype man. Follow Seth on Instagram and you'll see just how much he loves his buddy Wright. I suspect it goes both ways but honestly there's a there's a feature there. Throw in Justin Heckert because they were all there at at Mizzou at the same time and you have this long-form narrative Hydra Three of the most accomplished narrative journalists in the country and they're still in their like mid 40s. It's a ni to meet Maybe a couple a couple years older pushing 50. Oh, well, fuck me
01:08:35
Speaker
What should we riff about this week? I did say at the top of the show that this is actually a really good parting shot. I'm actually in a good mood today. I don't know why, but I am. Maybe it's the caffeine. Book stuff. We're making sure certain photos don't get me or the publisher sued. Which ones are and maybe just not worth the headache.
01:08:58
Speaker
And some copyright stuff because there are some like we don't know who took the picture a certain person took that picture and we don't know it could invite a lawsuit and Don't want that they We just want to avoid that and it's like is having that picture in there. Is it worth the potentiality? It's mitigating risk man. That's what we're trying to do Returning the screws, going to the next phase, securing high profile blurbs, hitting the gym, you know the important stuff. What's exciting too is that my agent likes my idea for my next book. She likes the book idea and she wants to talk about it, so we're gonna talk about it in greater detail because the dream of all dreams is to overlap your first payment of the new book with the last payment of the prior one. BO wants a VW ID buzz and you know,
01:09:50
Speaker
now you know like maybe be able to afford the rigors of book research. which could take a There's no big anniversary for the next book I want to write, so it could take it could take a couple years.
01:10:03
Speaker
might actually um I might need that money to live, man. My great lesson from the Prefontaine biography, and here's the crux of this parting shot, the the greatest lesson from the book proposal was to not hold
Creative Endeavors and Research
01:10:17
Speaker
back. The big lesson is to assume the deal will go down.
01:10:21
Speaker
Throw it all into the proposal, like really lean in hard into the research. Research your material as if it's a guarantee, because if you don't, I guarantee you will waste time.
01:10:36
Speaker
I wasted probably six months of valuable book time in book proposal drafts because I had this governor on my edge and like my reasoning foolish as it was and I know this now and I'm sharing this with you was this I didn't want to go balls to the wall in the event that the book deal didn't go through and then I'd be left with this wasted pile of research.
01:10:57
Speaker
And like, what why go all in if it's not a certainty? You know, you need to hold back. Better hold back. Do just enough. I did that, but I think I got i think i got lucky with ah with this book because my subject was it was just too juicy to fail.
01:11:14
Speaker
There's no certainty in any creative field. You have to really embrace this idea that sometimes you're just gonna lean into something whole hog, not knowing if the book's gonna get published, the film made, whatever it is. i don't You can't research a proposal holding back and not fleshing out some semblance of an arc. Thing is, the more research you do, the greater your vision will crystallize, and the more authority you bring to your subject, the more evidence you're bringing to your case as to why you are the one to write this book. This shit really is Shark Tank. To use a law-ish metaphor, this is your opening and closing argument in the case of your book. Hook them, bring in your exhibits, show your evidence, lay it at the feet of the jury and the judge or the investors, leave no stone unturned, sell them on your talent, on your vision, why it matters to the audience and why it should matter to them.
01:12:11
Speaker
Make no mistake, you're making art, yes, but it's also a product with legions of people behind it, reputations behind it, editing it, fact checking, counseling you, reassuring you, pushing you, designing your cover, designing your interior. There are a lot of little hands, a lot of little sous chefs in this kitchen.
01:12:31
Speaker
It always helps for me to envision Don Draper as he makes a sales pitch to potential clients. Or Leslie Note from Parks and Rec, delivering an impassioned plea with multicolored tabbed binders full of rigorous research, the most rigorous research ever done. Sure, they're fictional characters, but there's a truth to their delivery and assuredness in the face of uncertainty. In closing, if you don't want to do too much research,
01:12:58
Speaker
For fear of wasting your time, I speak from a well of regret of how much time was wasted because of such a sentiment. Sure, maybe it won't sell, and you'll feel like it was all a waste. But you'll know it wasn't for lack of effort or rigor. Plus, you'll have a pile of material from which to craft something, could just be a magazine story, it could be something you've got, you've got marble to work with. in And as Mike Ehrenstraut from Breaking Bad once said, no half measures. So stay wild, singing efforts. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.