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Episode 519: Stephen Wood’s ‘Ocean’s 11’ Anti-Government Caper
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"I'm always calibrating when I'm interviewing somebody, like, how much of a prompt are they going to need, and what is what is going to get something out of them?" — Stephen Wood, whose Buffalo Raiders piece appears in The Atavist Magazine.
What is the meaning of this Wednesday podcast! Middle of the week! It’s hump day, this holy day! It’s April 1st, is this some kind of joke! NO! Point being, it’s that Atavistian time of the month and I’m trying to get back making the Atavist pod an extra pod, not just another Friday pod. So, consider your podcast feed warned, you filthy animal.
Stephen Wood is here! Find him on LinkedIn, the professional that he is. He’s a journalist who writes about sports, history, and politics and he’s here to talk about his Atavist story “The Buffalo Raiders: With thousands of U.S. soldiers dying in Vietnam, a group of young Catholics in New York embarked on a secret mission to bring the war machine to its knees.” I’ll give Stephen a more formal introduction — top hat and monocle — just before his segment of the show.
We’re gonna hear from Seyward Darby about her side of the table, which is always fun. Name another show where you get an editor talking about a piece, and then the writer talking about it. Exactly, visit patreon.com/cnfpod to contribute to the cause.
Also, head to magazine.atavist.com to read Stephen’s story and maybe subscribe. I pay $25 a year to subscribe and I don’t get kickbacks or commissions. Yeah, I pay, too.
Stephen Wood can be found at https://sbrycewood2.wixsite.com/ or, per his preference, at LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/hey-its-stephen/ … His work has appeared in The Guardian, Current Affairs, Jacobin, The Athletic, and McSweeney’s. He was a producer with Gilded Audio where he worked on shows including Snafu with Ed Helms and The Reason We’re All Still Here.
In this chat, we talk about:
- Calibrating an interview
- How sometimes podcasts hosts don't even do the interviewing
- What to do when there’s too much meat on the bone #toomuchmeat
- What’s a load-bearing element to the story
- Going in fear of the abstraction
- And a lot more.
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Upcoming Live Recording
00:00:01
Speaker
Need to start plugging this hard. The next live recording of the podcast is coming up, man. It's like, gosh, two weeks away. April 18th, 1 p.m. at Gratitude Brewing with the mighty Lydia Yuknovich. She's the author of The Chronology of Water, Reading the Waves, and the editor of a new collection on menopause called The Big M.
00:00:22
Speaker
We do this event in partnership with the Northwest Review and we have a student reader from the U of O kind of kick things off before the main event. Should be a rocking event. And if you're in Eugene or the surrounding areas, find the ah RSVP link in the show notes or on my various social platforms to reserve a free ticket.
00:00:41
Speaker
Need a headcount for this, CNFers. It's going to be a big one, man. Very loquacious. I will happily just sit down and write like a thousand words before I know what I'm talking about.
00:00:56
Speaker
What is the meaning of this pre-Friday podcast? Is this some kind of joke? No.
Reviving the Atavist Podcast
00:01:03
Speaker
Point being, it's that Atavistian time of the month, and I'm trying to get back in the swing of making the Atavist pod the extra pod, not just another Friday pod.
00:01:14
Speaker
So consider your podcast feed warned, do you filthy animal. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, how they go about the work, the art and craft of telling true stories.
00:01:29
Speaker
It's a me, a Brendan O'Meara. Go on, throw your blue shell. I can take it. So last week, I teased, quote, terrible news. In that tone, but I guess my tone may have been confusing.
00:01:42
Speaker
ah Paul Willits, the brilliant author from the UK, he of King Kong fame, of episode 112 fame, he reached out and thought I might be announcing a cancer diagnosis or something just as awful. I have a fear of getting ALS, the Lou Gehrig's disease. That, to me, it must be the most terrifying thing as you just start losing your faculties. Anyway, and I got some other nice notes from people to...
00:02:06
Speaker
of the keep your head up varietal. Yes, my book proposal was rejected by the imprint I thought would like it the most. And I riffed about that in episode 518's Parting Shot, so I won't rehash it here. It's a drag because the idea is a good fit.
00:02:21
Speaker
I know it is. But it goes to show that if your book doesn't sell well, and by this I mean the the frontrunner, it becomes a stain on your reputation. It's a shit stain on the underwear of your reputation. Ew. I understand there are far worse things in the world than a little book not getting accepted, but it still stings.
00:02:44
Speaker
You spend a year sourcing up, drawing up a proposal only for it to be turned down over coffee and assorted pastries, one presumes. Stephen Wood is here. He's a journalist who writes about sports, history, and politics, and he's here to talk about his activist story, the Buffalo Raiders, with thousands of U.S. soldiers dying in Vietnam.
00:03:03
Speaker
A group of young Catholics in New York embarked on a secret mission to bring the war machine to its knees. I'll give Stephen a more formal introduction, top hat and monocle, just before his segment of the show.
00:03:16
Speaker
As
Stephen Wood & 'The Buffalo Raiders'
00:03:17
Speaker
you know, show notes to this episode and more at brendanomero.com. Hey, and I know what you're thinking. Big deal. Who actually goes to the show notes? Well, in the show notes for a long time now, gosh, at least a year.
00:03:31
Speaker
I post links to 500, 400, 300, 200, and episodes ago. give the backlog a little bit of a a blow dry a a blowout as a As well as information about the writer, their recommendation, embeds to Pitch Club, which just had a nice little feature written about it for Pointer. Go check that out. um Let's keep building out the club.
00:03:56
Speaker
We're taking April off, though. Going to try and build the pipeline a bit. But there's 10 issues of Pitch Club to learn from. ah But first, as you know, we're going to hear from the lead editor of the piece, and it happens to be the editor-in-chief, Saywer Darby, about her side of the table, which is always fun. Name another show where you get an editor talking about a piece, and then the writer also talking about it. Exactly. Hit up patreon.com slash cnfpod to contribute to the cause. Also, hit to magazine.aheadofus.com to read Stephen's story and maybe subscribe. I pay $25 a
Supporting the Podcast & Reading
00:04:29
Speaker
year to subscribe, and I don't get kickbacks or commissions if you elect to as a result of this show.
00:04:34
Speaker
I do it out of the goodness of my own good heart. My own cold heart. Yeah, I pay too. This guy knows business. This would be me in a negotiation. Mr. O'Mara, I'll sell you that for $5.
00:04:49
Speaker
I'll buy it for $10 and no less. Maybe that's why this podcast isn't more popular. Riff.
00:05:02
Speaker
You fucking idiot, give me that! Which is like how I feel about myself. Okay, whatever, like you do you. if Mars had an arrow you could. Before I know it, I'm shot with an arrow and this thing has grabbed me. This is gonna have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:26
Speaker
What
Empathy in Journalism
00:05:27
Speaker
would you identify as something that, know, a lot of the really great writers and the great journalists, like the like what are what are they doing that um that we can learn from? The best of the best that you notice, commonalities, if you will.
00:05:41
Speaker
Oh man, that's such a good question. I think that the best of the best have an incredible amount of empathy. I think that they are people who are not just seeking to listen, but are seeking to understand.
00:05:58
Speaker
And so when they are interacting with their sources, telling their sources story, which isn't to say they you know want to please their subjects or make them look good, but they are approaching it with approaching these stories with an enormous degree of compassion and curiosity and are ultimately as interested in sort of the people as they are in the story. And, and I think that just,
00:06:36
Speaker
being a good human, yeah um i think is ah is something that really unites, at least the stories that you know I think are particularly great. um Because I think when you come to a piece, a project with empathy, ah you're going notice things you otherwise might not, you know if you were just kind of focused on the the TikTok of like TikTok feeding, the play by play, yeah not the not the digital platform.
Can Empathy Be Taught?
00:07:08
Speaker
um
00:07:09
Speaker
ah you know I think probably having like an instinct for it, but then also really working to kind of develop that muscle and get better and better and better about being constantly curious about other people and trying to understand other people. I think to the people who really get how to do this are often always thinking about like the whole picture um as they go. i mean Understanding that you know the whole picture might take a while to to totally come into focus. But I think that, you know, people have in mind, I'm not just going into it because I'm interested and want to know more. It's like, I'm interested and I want to be able to tell this story. I want to be able to convey this to readers in such a way that they're going to feel like they're beside me. They're going to, you know, really... um
00:08:07
Speaker
I don't know, feel like they're, yeah, just feel like they're inside the story. and And I think that, again, that's something where if you kind of have it in mind the whole time, you're going to be reporting differently, asking different questions, you know, sort of absorbing different details. And so you're you're just always thinking about the whole picture, not just tell me what happened, but, you know,
00:08:30
Speaker
How did it make you feel? Like, do you remember what you were wearing, where you were standing? Like, you know, i don't know, just, you know, really kind of trying to to to get people to get sources, subjects to almost relive. And so i think that and then i think the best of the best are very open to collaboration, meaning journalism is not a solo project as much as I think some folks think.
00:08:58
Speaker
would like it to be sometimes. i think they have all the answers. um I think the best of the best recognize that telling the best version of a story and you know involves letting other cooks into the kitchen. Not too many, obviously. But you know being willing to respect when either an editor or a reader, you know and an early reader meaning, um or a fact checker or somebody you know points out not just you got something wrong or you know I think you might want to talk to this person or whatever, but also just, but have you thought about this? Have you thought about this approach to the story? And just being really willing to to hear that out and incorporate that kind of collaboration into their work. I'm sure there are other things, but those those are what immediately jumped to mind. Especially with respect to the empathy component, can that be taught?
00:09:52
Speaker
Oh, man, what a good question. don't know. Wow, I don't know. um like the sort of cynic in me says no. um because Because I think like you know some people are better journalists because they are just people who come with sort of that instinct, that gene, like whatever you want to call it. um That being said, I think you get better at it. like I think I've definitely gotten better. I mean, I'm still improving like as I go as as a a a reporter. you know like
00:10:26
Speaker
I think going into something without expect learning to go into situations without expectations, meeting sources where they are um emotionally. This is actually something that Rana and I talked about in our presentation at the Power of Narrative Conference about how particularly when you're dealing with vulnerable or traumatized subjects, you know you kind of have to meet them wherever they are. And that might be way over, I'm pointing to the left one day, and then way over, I'm pointing to the right another day. That is that is an exercise in empathy, right? i'm Not expecting somebody to be in the same place every time or to be on your terms. And I do think that that's something that you can
00:11:08
Speaker
develop an instinct for and get better at um about being less prescriptive, being less I don't know, seeking to control you know situations. ah And I think in terms of can that you know can i can we teach that to people? i mean, i think you can teach it in so far as you can show by example. And you can also, i mean, more or less, that was what Rana's and my like our presentation was about, was trying to give people takeaways that I think ultimately all really
00:11:43
Speaker
shared an interest in empathy. So I'm trying to remember, I think our first takeaway, it was, ah you know, absorb risk, meaning, you know, understand that maybe a story is not going to go the way that you expected to establish trust, keep it, don't hide or hide from complications. Sometimes complications are part of the story. Sometimes they're the whole story. And so anyway, you know, I think that there are ways in which we can I mean, I know that we can teach other people to be good people. That's not really what I'm saying, but I think you can sort of offer insights and advice about approaching this work more empathically.
00:12:27
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's great. And I think we can segue into Stephen's story here, which is kind of ah this kind of cool anti-war, ah yeah rage rage against the machine kind of kind of story. It feels of the moment, too, given that we're in this nonsensical war that's likely going to turn into some maddening quagmire.
00:12:47
Speaker
And ah so in any case, Stephen pitches you the story.
Stephen Wood's Story Pitch
00:12:51
Speaker
What did it look like across your desk? And what was it that was like, ah, yeah, this ah this is a good one? Steven's just a really good writer. So I'll say that like his pitch was very just like well articulated. it was very vibrant insofar as he, you know, it's this whole sort of cast of characters, all these young friends who were resisting the Vietnam War. And, you know, we've all heard stories about people resisting the Vietnam War in one way or another, movies about it. But this just felt like he had insight and access into this one particular group. And I think, you know, all of them,
00:13:29
Speaker
are alive, except I think maybe two, maybe three people. um But he had already just done these incredible interviews. ah Very clearly, you know he comes from, has a podcast background. He's very good at interviewing. And it just felt like, oh, these these people are going to pop off the page. And their relationships with each other are really going to to sing in the story. ah so So I think it was definitely that. And then to your point, I think that there is a contemporary relevance. you know We assigned this before the Iran situation, quagmire, such as it is, whatever, um started. But you know we were still you know looking at a highly militant government um and a government arguably waging war on its own people um on the streets and you know building up this paramilitary force against people who disagree with them and and also immigrants in this country. And so I think there was also this...
00:14:28
Speaker
without it being you know very, very obvious, it was like, ah room the story is a reminder of the ways in which you can resist and nonviolently resist. I absolutely love the end of this piece when you kind of get to know where everybody is now And, you know you've got, i think it's Mike Hickey, who is like, he happens to live near where I live. And he's like, still involved, like actively involved with like the peace movement and a movement to put an arms embargo on you know, shipments to Israel out of like, the Oakland port here. And like, it was just...
00:15:04
Speaker
I mean, I said this on social media yesterday when we published the story, it just, this story reminded me to have a little faith in other people, um which can be really hard ah lately. and And I think that the combination of sort of Stephen's vision for the story, his access, some of the sort of amazing details about like how they pulled off these actions against draft boards. And then on top of that, that feeling of like, man, we we need to be reminded of these kinds of stories um of of resistance and solidarity. Yeah. And it's an unusual, not unusual, but like we, in this piece, because his interviews were so strong, we actually pulled out some clips of the activists talking and you can like click on them in the story to hear them sort of elaborate on some stuff.
00:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, and they were just good interviews. like that There's that one Sally Hanlon when she talks about how she, as a little girl, like desperate the they're all Catholic, right? They're very, very Catholic. And part of the Catholic left in the 60s and 70s. And she's like, I really desperately wanted the stigmata.
00:16:12
Speaker
as a child. um and And she would be like, Mom, why don't I have the stigmata yet? And her mom be like, keep praying. you know like These incredible little like anecdotes, I think these they were just good interviewers interviewers. They were good storytellers, which you know is also, Stephen, like I said, being a very good interviewer.
00:16:30
Speaker
Or the fact that you know the the raid that they tried to pull off in Buffalo involved, among other things, crochet needles, fondue forks, an inflatable kiddie pool, fabric dye, and then also they did it in their underwear. like It's just the whole thing is is just kind of outrageous, but at the same time so righteous. And so i think just all those ingredients made it exciting for us.
00:16:56
Speaker
And it's always great getting yeah your side of the table in terms of the unique challenges to this piece, be it structurally or however you saw fit to bring the best possible version of the story to light. So what were some challenges that you encountered? Yeah, I think in this case, it was very much, again, Stephen's a very good writer. He had a very good sense of what the structure was going to be. obviously knew his characters. And I think that um in this case, it was really...
00:17:26
Speaker
winnowing down because there were just so many little details there were so many quotes so many interesting things that these people had said and i mean i would have to go back and look but if if i recall correctly the the main edit that i did was really just first of all it didn't take that long it was actually a pretty quick turnaround like he filed it and i was done with it two days later more
Crafting Compelling Narratives
00:17:48
Speaker
or less and it was because it was just like OK, here we have Jim Good saying three things. um They're all really interesting, but like we don't actually need all three of them because we're like, how do we keep the story moving? And so we got pick. like What do we think is like the best quote here that Jim uses? And so it was really interesting.
00:18:08
Speaker
Yeah, figuring out how to kind of winnow things. And one of the things we talked about was, are there a couple of moments where we should pull out an audio clip? um So like ah one of the examples, Chuck Darst in the story, ah when he was being interrogated, said that an FBI agent like dangled him out a window and he you know refused to give his name or give anything up. And when the guy pulled him back in the window, they ended up having this I guess, kind of profound conversation about just war theory and about um nonviolence. And it was one of those things was like, that's really interesting, but actually kind of hard to, it slowed down the action of the story. And it was like, well, let's just have Chuck say that in an audio clip. And you can you can hear him say it if people feel like it.
00:18:53
Speaker
but you know we're not getting bogged down in like an extra one hundred words where again, interesting thing, but also the kind of thing you don't just want to say he pulled him back in the window and they had a conversation about just war. Like that doesn't, like that's not enough, but then going on longer and longer,
00:19:09
Speaker
would kind of start to feel um a little a little shaggy, a little loose from a narrative standpoint. So I would say that was like the number one the number one thing.
Collaborative Editing with Sawyer Darby
00:19:18
Speaker
But it was also very easy. And Steven was really easy to work with and totally was like, basically, I want an editor to to do this. like I wanted somebody to go through and sort of prune this story.
00:19:28
Speaker
Nice. Well, it's always a ah pleasure getting to talk to you about these kind of things and ah you know delve into you know what makes a particular atifice writer so good at what they do. and um So in any case, it's ah just great to talk to you, Sayward. And now we're going kick it over to Stephen now and hear what he has to say.
00:19:45
Speaker
Thank you so much, Brendan.
00:19:53
Speaker
Nice. Didn't say we're great. She set the table up nicely for Steven Wood, who can be found at sbricewood2.wixsite.com or just go to his preference, which is LinkedIn.
00:20:09
Speaker
It's
Stephen Wood's Work History
00:20:10
Speaker
like, hey, it's Steven. You'll find him. It's Steven with a PH. Okay. All right. Okay. His works has appeared in The Guardian, Current Affairs, The Jacques Aubin, The Athletic, and McSweeney's. Those last two are kind of like gold publications for me. He was a producer with Gilded Audio, where he worked on shows including Snafu with Ed Helms and The Reason We're All Still Here.
00:20:34
Speaker
In this chat, we talk about calibrating an interview. That's actually pretty cool moment. What to do when there's too much meat on the bone, hashtag too much meat. just threw that one in there. What's a load-bearing element to the story? How to interrogate for it. Going in fear of the abstraction and a lot more.
00:20:52
Speaker
We also talked for 10 minutes about sports writing, but I cut it out because it was kind of weighing down the thrust of the podcast. But I plan on sharing that audio on the Patreon page. So visit patreon.com slash cnfpod for those DVD extras.
00:21:06
Speaker
Why don't we get after it, CNFers? Cue up the riff. Huh.
00:21:23
Speaker
I always love getting a sense of what actually professional producers do. I know what I do on this side of the thing, and which is everything. But like for but for you, like what was the the nature of producing shows?
00:21:37
Speaker
I find it really fun. And it's like... producer to produce, like very vague terms that I really had no idea, like watching or listening to credits, like what that was until I started to to work in an industry where, you know, I actually met and and worked as one. But yeah, I mean, i would say like my job, it it was pretty full service, which was just very fun because I mean, everything from figuring out topics for shows and like mapping out entire seasons worth of narratives um to doing a tons tons of interviews like usually say i feel like it's probably been 50 50 in my career like doing prep for interviews that someone else is going to do versus uh doing them yourself and like you know lot of times um
00:22:23
Speaker
when you're listening to an interview on a podcast, it was actually a producer doing that interview. you know um i'm always amazed by like how well some people are able to like stitch it together to make it sound like ah the host was the one doing it. um Oh my God. See, I didn't know that either. So so does like on on the back end, does the the actual host come in and kind of track in a question even...
00:22:43
Speaker
even though like they didn't physically ask it to the person. Yeah. And I actually, what I've been told is that that happens in news, like radio quite a bit, which I don't have any experience in news, like hard news, but ah yeah, that's, that's a thing. And also like a trick that we would use was, well, you, you do, you do like an in-depth interview, like a producer does an in-depth interview first and you get a ton of tape from that and you get the person's story and then you do like a half hour where like the actual host or whoever talks to them. And so like,
00:23:12
Speaker
you have tape of them talking to you to make it clear that they talked and nobody has to know that they that there was an ah extra hour or whatever. But but yeah, I mean, and like in addition to that, like i mean it depends on the show, obviously. Some things are just like talk format. It might not be as heavily edited. But I've worked mostly on stuff that's scripted and edited. So like yeah, for Snefu, which is the show that this article kind of grew out of, um We did a lot of rounds of scripting. You do a lot of rounds of scripting before it gets into audio. And then like ah you might, I've stood in for Host before, just like on the first version, like just to to hear it. you know um
00:23:50
Speaker
A lot of tracking with Host and a lot of piecing stuff together. I had to learn Pro Tools on the job, which was um scary but also it feels very empowering uh once you actually learn how to like you know manipulate audio like that so uh yeah and even yeah like i we had input on like the uh the titles of shows titles of episodes like the art that went along with it uh yeah it's and you know obviously different producer roles like you might just be doing kind of a sliver of that but uh i was really lucky i think to have like ah a depth of experience and all that stuff yeah it's cool it's so like you it's just it feels very hands-on
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah. Well, in ah paramount to doing be a narrative audio or narrative writing is this ah interviewing, of course. But then there's like a pre interviewing component also. And usually that pre interviewing can come in with with written stuff. Be like, OK, let's and let's have a little like speed dating thing. and We'll get into greater depth later. It's like ah you you might be getting good information, but it's like, OK, hold off a little bit. So like for for you, be it in your audio experience or doing something longer like you did with the Atavis, what is your ah you know your pre-interviewing ah yeah experience like with with sources?
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, I've done a lot of that and and in situations where I was going on to do an interview and not. But yeah, I think for like the people in this article, for example... um There's an element of like winning people's trust over it and I think just like getting them to open up. I think that's very important is just like anything you can do to make it easier to have a conversation will make yeah the actual substance of the interview easier.
00:25:28
Speaker
It's, it's, it's very important because people are not, what I realized I think is that the people are not necessarily like, it's important for the guests to, to like, to be pre-interviewed and, um, People are not not going to come knowing exactly what what you'll find most interesting or like what the like the most pertinent or like juicy as part of what they're going to say is. So it's very important to like to keep your ears open for that.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah, but i I do think of it kind of as just like trying trying to get a sense of like the scope of like what can be talked about. I mean, like again, like for this, I just had to like start by asking people, how many government buildings did you break into? Do do you remember? um but'll We'll get into the details of why later.
00:26:07
Speaker
But yeah, I guess like scope and and just kind of just loosening listening people up, I think are very important. Yeah, for sure. And yeah in that kind of pre-interviewee kind of stage is, ah especially as a freelancer, it's kind of talking to them and in sort of that source pitching is is is hard because you're like, hey, i i really I'm really attracted to your story. I'd like to get some information. i want to pitch this to maybe a B, and C. i don't know if they're going to take it, but I still want to like some of your time, but I don't want to monopolize your time because this thing might not get picked up. you know Those are real conversations you have to have with sources. like yeah I hope it gets picked up, but I can't guarantee it. Yeah, yeah absolutely. and i was i was To be clear, it was it was easier than than usual, honestly, with this piece, um with this out of his piece, because I'd already been in contact with Ken Mutey, who's one of the the characters, and he was very eager to talk and very helpful about like getting other people on board. So like I think a lot of the... initial hesitation that you would expect or or just people being like, you know, what is this um was assuaged because it was like their friend, Ken, coming to them and and being like, you should you should be involved with this.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah. So how did you arrive at the story? It feels like a really long journey. um so That's so true with so many Atavist stories. Some people many people can be working on these things for like 10 years, but not consecutively, but like the the germ of the idea comes a long time ago and it takes a long time to coalesce. But when it does, it's like it's magic. But yeah, yeah can keep going. Sorry to interrupt. don't No worries. And actually, yeah I mean, based on like other stories I've read in the Atavist side, i might this might be one of the shorter, shorter like lengths. It's like, yeah.
00:27:51
Speaker
I wasn't writing it for, i don't know how long it was, a couple of months. but um But yeah, i so in my former job as a podcast producer, I worked on a couple of seasons of the show called Snafu with Ed Helms. Season two was the one that I was most like deeply involved in, and it was just very, ah it's one of my favorite things that I've worked on. It was extremely in my wheelhouse. It was about this in March of 1971. yeah.
00:28:16
Speaker
a couple of months before the events of the story that I wrote, this group of really just ordinary citizens, ah citizens concerned about the war, people who had been protesting and and come to suspect that the FBI was spying on them, planned this just You know, it was all kind of simple, but it was just a very meticulously planned burglary of an FBI. You can call it a field office. it It doesn't even really rise to the level of field office. But um they they broke in to this building where they suspected there might be compromising files, you know, explaining like FBI malfeasance. And they found just more than anyone could have possibly predicted. And like...
00:28:58
Speaker
I think very people very few people seem to really know about the media burglary, but I think a lot of people know about what came out of it. It was the first time that COINTELPRO had been ah publicly exposed. um a lot of like It was really one of the major factors in the church hearings being convened. And and you know one of the first things they discovered was that every Black student at Swarthmore College outside of Philly was under surveillance by the FBI.
00:29:20
Speaker
that that was basically happening all over the country just you know massive infiltration of the black panthers of like every leftist organization you could you could think of uh the government was actively trying to break up uh and uh yeah they they they stole all these files um because hoover had such a uh like rigid system of like cc-ing everyone they basically got like you know They were able to tell that this was happening all over the country just by burglarizing this one office. ah They got away clean. It's incredible. they They got away clean and didn't publicly surface until I think 2014 was when they started to. And the last person to come forward didn't do it until they did it on on our show in, I think, 2024.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah. And so like, it was, it was this really important anti-war action or anti, it grew out of anti-war stuff. I mean, it, it it became, i guess, chiefly about like FBI surveillance, but the, it grew out of war resistance and these people had these burglary skills essentially, and kind of, they knew they could do it. And they they understood the the basics of how to put the plan together because most of them had experience raiding draft boards and,
00:30:31
Speaker
i I just never heard of that. And like even as I was researching quite in depth this one robbery, this the media, Pennsylvania burglary, it was still hard for me to find information about draft board raids. And like all of our sources, nearly all of them, had participated and they talked about it a little bit. But it was just this real sense of like, I'm just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
00:30:53
Speaker
Tip of the medberg was the pun that we used because that was the name of the FBI's investigation into the media burglary. But um they did not have creative... ah So I yeah, and then, you know, that the show came out and we were working on season three, but I remember like very clearly meeting with um my colleague and and friend, ah Betty Medzker, who she was the journalist who published these files once they were burgled. And I think a very important detail about that story is that they were sent to multiple reporters and multiple congresspeople.
00:31:22
Speaker
Everyone sent them to straight to the DOJ except for Betty and the Washington Post who published it, um which like it's just wild. we wouldn't have even They went to all that trouble and it might not have even come out if not for her and the Post's courage in publishing it. ah but so she she's been She's been covering this movement since I think since she was in her like twenty s and We both had the sense that there just wasn't really enough about it. It was like a missing part of American anti-war history.
00:31:50
Speaker
And that was December of 24. So like you know everyone's just massively depressed and waiting for the new Trump administration. And I think we just had a sense of like,
00:32:03
Speaker
this would be a worthwhile thing for us to to look into. And so she um just kind of serendipitously um had been in touch with Bob Good, who his he shows up in in my story, another collaborator and and friend of mine um who was part of the media. ah Sorry, Bob was part of the Camden 28, the busted rating Camden. And he, I guess they had gotten in touch with Ken and and the Buffalo people. So Betty and Bob and Ken and I just said, hey, let's start recording these stories. like These are really cool oral histories. And you know i I had an eye towards eventually making something out of it, um but wanted to just get the interviews done and find out what we had. And yeah, thankfully, because we were working with Ken and he was very enthusiastic, basically the first group of people I talked to outside of the media and Camden people were the the characters in the out of his story, the the Buffalo folks.
00:32:54
Speaker
As I was reading the piece, there was a very like Ocean's Eleven kind of feel to it. Especially the way you kind of sketch out you know some of the main characters. There'll be like a graph about them and it's like a little micro biography. is who they are. It's like bang, bang, bang. And then even in the sort of epilogue of the thing, it's like here they are now. Like bang, bang, bang. ever Reminds me of that scene at the end of the recent Ocean's Eleven. They're all sitting at the fountain and they all get up one by one. It kind of had that... vibe to it for me for me as a reader i'm that you don't know what that means to me that that's pretty much that's my favorite movie like since i was a kid i i love heists and i that just stylistically dialogue um the characterization in that i love it so thank you that's actually that's like the nicest thing you could have said ah
00:33:43
Speaker
Well, it's speaking of style and voice, I love like right in the first paragraph, like the last sentence is like, consider yourself advised right off the bat. This is a story about Catholics. And i ah i highlighted that mainly because like that's just such a a great demonstrative sentence that's going to show you that this there is a degree of whimsy to this, the to the approach to this, to the writing. And the story is going to be kind of wacky. Give me a sense of how you think about you know voice and style and what you bring to a particular story if a certain voice and style is invited by the material.
00:34:18
Speaker
I do kind of feel like this fell into my lap because it's very it is it's serious in the sense that I mean, it's about war. It's about they're trying to stop. just ah you know the most horrific things you can imagine from happening. And they they knew it was happening and it's all happening in the background, but they got real goofy with it. And like i it's very it's very hard, people who who know me would tell, it's very hard for me to to tell a story straight or without trying to make people laugh regardless of how serious the subject matter is. So I think it i think these these people and their personalities and and their approach back 1971 fed very nicely and into my approach as I was writing it.
00:34:56
Speaker
I mean, you know, they were they were terrified and they they went through a lot of stuff that we would probably say is is traumatic. some Some really bad things happened to them over the course of it. But like, it really, it was clear to me from the way they talk about it and and the tone with which they reflect on it that they were having fun at the time. So I felt like, you know, I really, i wanted it be clear that there was, it was kind of like a,
00:35:16
Speaker
I don't know. It was like ah a group project or something um in addition to being like a federal crime. Yeah. And I wanted that to come through and I wanted it to to feel like I wanted people to be able to picture themselves as like a part of the group. um And rather than, well, I don't know, rather than what, but I wanted people to be able to feel like I could have been in the living room talking about this, this break in with them. Like I can imagine myself, you know, staking it out and freaking out or just like, yeah. um So I think that's what I'm shooting for.
00:35:46
Speaker
And there's a ah a pretty big cast of characters too, and that can be hard to keep everything straight you know in an 8,000 or 9,000 word piece. or yeah I think this might be around 11,000 actually. Even still, that's you know for the amount of characters, that is pretty lean and you've got a very propulsive story. So when you are you know dealing with a lot of characters, a big cast, how do you keep it you know straight and organized in your materials so you can you know write without yeah confusing yourself and by extension confusing your reader?
00:36:16
Speaker
i should caveat it by saying maybe I didn't keep it entirely straight. um every Every time, not every time, but there there were a number of fact check things where it was something that I just thought I knew so cold that I hadn't checked it myself before writing it. And then it was like, this was actually said by you know a different person. The interviews like run together in my mind. But um again, i guess I think I have a habit coming from podcasting of trying to start with tape. So like you know we use this program Descript or Descript. And i just have all my transcripts in there already. like
00:36:50
Speaker
Before I started writing it all, I went through and did, like we would call it pulling selects in podcasting, just highlighting good good bits. um So i think it was I think I realized very early that, yeah, there's just like a ton of characters. And i mean, there are people who had a lot to do with the story who who we basically had to cut out of it, who I did interview, i mean sort of. and And there are more people who I wasn't able to interview who would should have featured prominently you know if we'd been able to talk to them. so Yeah, I mean, i didn't want I wanted to make sure that it felt propulsive and that we were never like lingering on one character too much. And um I kind of just felt like I want each of them to get a couple of good lines in, like rather than making sure... And Sayward might laugh at this because i I'm sure I had big biographies of a lot of people that got cut down like a lot, but...
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah, I just kind of figured, like, I hope I want to want to see to it that the main characters all get their chance to shine, but that it not, you know, we don't we don't have to follow each and every one of them through every plot point. So yeah, I think, yeah, just like referring back frequently frequently to the tape and like trying to pick out the good bits. And I think like trying to let those do the characterization for me was, yeah.
00:38:03
Speaker
Yeah, and always the challenge in an atavist story in particular is you know narrative drive, beginning, middle, and end. They're very unique in how they compose the stories and the stories they accept. And ah that degree of reporting ahead of time before you can even feel comfortable pitching is often challenging for for ah writers and reporters to see. so When did you know you had enough sort narrative meat on the bone to to really lean full in 100% to pursue the the story to its fullest extent?
00:38:38
Speaker
I almost feel like... The problem was that there was too much. ah there's There's a number of raids. like I've interviewed people who took place to who took part in a number of different raids.
00:38:50
Speaker
And this was kind of just the one that was like the most obviously telegenic. things like like that And already shaped like a long form story or a movie plot. kind of Because I think... ah you know, the just having having the raid get busted and having the threat of like going to prison, hanging over so many of the characters. And then just naturally, just because that's how it unfolded, there's this middle section where they do more burglaries. And then going into the trial, I mean, I i think the struggle for me was more trying to make sure that we're keeping beginning, middle, and end like that, because there's so many directions that I could have gone off in. like
00:39:31
Speaker
I easily could have included a lot more about Camden, which I think would have made things very confusing for the reader. yeah i I was looking at a lot of different raids and I knew I wanted to write about them and i was trying to find something that I thought could he fit just could fit easily into ah a piece like this without having to do like so much explaining of something else. And I mean, there's there's a good bit of context about the draft board raid movement in there, but I think to write about a lot of them It might have been like you have to do more of that kind of scene, more of that scene setting and there might be actually less material to work with. Whereas with this, there were, you know, they they did four of these actions and had a two week long trial.
00:40:10
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like as it went on, I was just like, could they have done one less? Like it might just fit a little bit nicer. It felt to me like there was just a lot there the whole time.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah. So how are you thinking about the structure of the piece once you have enough of the material to to run with and really start composing? I did have like a a perverse urge to try to mess with the timeline, and I'm really glad that I didn't follow that. um Maybe it's like I wanted there to be, like I don't know, a cold open. or you know But ah luckily, it proceeds pretty much chronologically, and and the events worked out nicely. The the history worked out nicely. um In terms of like starting to construct it, again, i like I don't think I literally did this where I literally like copied and pasted all the quotes together. But in my head, I was just kind of trying to stack like moments and tape that I knew had to go in, that I knew would be good. I did um i mean, I think this was in like fifth grade. I had to do this project where we had to write an essay. Mine was about the Kennedy assassination. but We had to do it entirely with other people's quotes. So just like firsthand quotes and then... like you know um
00:41:16
Speaker
secondary sources. And it was probably, i think it was meant to teach us about research, but I really liked that approach because I'm very loquacious. I will happily just sit down and write like a thousand words before I know what I'm talking about. So so not doing that and and trying to start with the tape and then think like, what do i need to fill in?
00:41:33
Speaker
I try to maintain that approach in order to just, yeah, to to stop myself from going off the rails. So I guess the tricky part was like, how do i how do I introduce the fact that there is this whole network of of raiders and and this whole constellation of raids happening? Because it's not like you can just say, you know, this guy came up with the idea and then he went to Buffalo and planned it. like It was nothing like that. So like figuring out where to put that context in, figuring out how much was necessary, there's
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah, but I i think that like i knew i knew we had great tape like about the the the burglary itself and and getting busted. um i knew that the court scene, like the court scenes, there's just like there's the Spartacus moment that like just naturally has to you know has to be a big moment.
00:42:22
Speaker
I was actually surprised the structure didn't change more. The first section, as it is going to appear in the article, is was the first section to begin with, which I feel like is actually kind of rare for me. I feel like I usually end up doing something, trying to get too cute with it or something, or that's what I did the first time. And then we have to simplify it. But yeah, I think that's rare for Jonah and Sayward too. Usually they find like a very charismatic lead that really hooks you. And then you start kind of backfilling and usually chronologically from there. But usually there's that, there's something kind of like that, ah like in a Marvel movie, how it just starts out like boom, out the gate, big set piece.
00:43:01
Speaker
And then we kind of sink more into the story and get that gives that opening its context and everything. Yeah. I i think I have a natural inclination to want to do a cold open on everything. um But yeah, it was kind of, it was kind of refreshing to to go back and like read edits, read drafts of this and be like, oh wow. It was in chronological order.
00:43:22
Speaker
Isn't that simple? Yeah. ah but Yeah. Writing stories that are this long and this ambitious have a lot in common with a a book writing, too, and i'm I'm sure like, you know, very long narrative podcast, too, where you really have to be real organized about how you're plotting these things out and maybe having a good system in place. You know,
00:43:42
Speaker
be it for your quotes and all your archival material and stuff of that nature, know, what's the the system that you like to employ ah for, you know, kind of as a central nervous system for a piece of this nature?
00:43:57
Speaker
I guess I think a lot about the, it's just like the simple metaphor of like, you know, stories that are like ah a plane ride from point A to point B versus like episodic, like a train and just trying to keep in mind, like kind of,
00:44:11
Speaker
imagining being above it, like looking at everything proceeding and and like, is this clear? Is it actually going linearly? ah you know In some, according to whatever whatever you' decided. um How do you tend to organize your, even just getting maybe a little granular here, um and then maybe you can telescope it out from there, but just like your tape and quotes, like you do you organize that by character or maybe by like sort of a chapter, if you will, like even if they yeah even if those characters yeah appear across multiple places or you know you just have like a dossier with Bob's quotes and then you kind of be like, okay, this will go somewhere something.
00:44:48
Speaker
yeah I do have that. I mean, I do just, I keep the transcripts and and the selects and, um but yeah, it's also like something that I will do is, is put in way too much and then cut most of it and, ah or someone else will cut most of it.
00:45:03
Speaker
ah But yeah, and that like, you know, stacking up like if I have a couple of good quotes about the same thing, my first draft might have all of them in there. And then I know that they're all going to go away. Most of them are to go away. Yeah, it's kind of like giving yourself different options. um And yeah, and that it is it is helpful to keep that chronological. I wish I could say that I actually did that throughout the piece. but As we went along editing in places where things needed to be sweptpped you know swapped out or something had gone away and now we need a new thing, like yeah, having done just a little bit of of thinking and organization there, it's like, OK, I know what to pull from, or at least I know roughly like where in the tape to look. um
00:45:43
Speaker
ah This isn't an actual example, but just if there's some something that Chuck said got cut and now this section doesn't make sense, like I know there's a Mo quote that I can pull from to to kind of gloss over it or something like that. Yeah, it's kind of like a tag team wrestling. Yeah. all right you're You're out. yeah You got to go in now. I had that feeling. there Yeah, and it's hard not to to feel personal about it because I really i can get really invested ah in a specific to turn of phrase or tone of voice that that someone uses, you know and it's a bummer to have to ah take out a quote to kill one of your darlings, as it is as it were. But yeah, yeah you know you're tagging somebody else in.
00:46:24
Speaker
Yeah. And over the course of the writing and composing and generating of the piece, and you know there's all any number of times along that ah timeline where ah you know you're going to encounter a certain measure of doubt about whether you're able to stick the landing, whether you're good enough to do it. Like, why did they even accept this? Like, I'm a piece of shit. like yeah all that All that stuff. how How do you wrestle with those feelings, Stephen? I do it all the time. i have to wrestle with it all the time. And I always love...
00:46:52
Speaker
Pulling on that thread with ah people who joined me on the microphones here. Oh, yeah. That's a good question. I'm trying to think, because I did kind of struggle with how to land this. I mean, I i knew that there would probably just have to be a some, like you're saying, that the fountain scene. There'd have to be like some...
00:47:12
Speaker
wrapping up of all these these people's stories. But yeah, it's hard. I mean, i i honestly, I think the way that I dealt with it in that specific case is just i I didn't have any kind of satisfactory conclusion on my first draft. And having sent it to the editor that way helped us both get to one, I guess.
00:47:31
Speaker
Ending TK. Pretty much. i I don't think I literally had those letters in there, but that was that was the vibe. it kind of just I think my original draft was close to... like It was probably 18,000 words and it just like ended. ah so maybe Maybe another way of putting that would be like being comfortable with it not being complete. and yeah i mean In terms of yeah how to deal with the...
00:47:57
Speaker
that kind of like doubt or just like frustration of like where to go. I mean, it's probably a boring answer, but like just rewriting it a million times. Like I, i definitely have a sense of what's satisfactory to me and what's not. And even if I don't know why something is unsatisfactory, I will rewrite the same sentence or a paragraph for an hour later.
00:48:19
Speaker
Until I can look at it and be like, okay, whatever was bothering me about this before is no longer here. I've managed to like chisel out something that I'm, so that I'm happy with. I, I, I, yeah, I think it's just like, I think of it like sculpting a lot, like, uh, in that I'm not a sculptor, so it probably doesn't make any sense, but, but I just think of like chipping away at like what I wrote to get to like what I meant to write. or Early in your piece, I love the sentence you wrote for, ah it it kind of has a, not that there's nutcraft, but it's got kind of like a little vibe for that. And I really love this. It's what separated these raids from nearly all other anti-war actions was, to put it bluntly, their potential to be effective. In a world without computers, the physical documents containing the personal information of draft-eligible men might have been the only materials linking those men to the Selective Service Administration. and And a quote from Jim Good. I often thought, what about the women who worked in these offices? Did they see those files as death certificates? And it's like, wow. like
00:49:14
Speaker
That must have lit you. well When you get we talk about good tape, like that's that's great tape right there. That must have lit you up when you were having that conversation. Yeah, I i do remember... I think that quote was not in my first draft. And I remember a moment where I remembered it. and I was like, oh, that that has to go there. Yeah. And you think about what it was like, you know, for someone like Chuck to hold for anyone to hold a draft card in their hand and and think about what that meant.
00:49:41
Speaker
jim Jim had a couple of a couple of absolute bangers of lines that ah were always destined to go in the article. but um But ah yeah, I mean, the the the way that they thought about and talked about government property and files is very interesting to me. They basically, as a movement, had collectively decided that some property does not have a right to exist and that it was you know their rights as citizens basically to go in and check it out and get it and destroy it if they wanted to uh which is a real i mean i think that that's kind of the making that leap and then the the subsequent leap to decide to do something about it is that that's the journey that like they all went on for for that to make sense it's it's very crucial to to really like think about yeah just the the material and like um
00:50:29
Speaker
And yeah, i the raw practicality thing also, um that that does separate it for for me. like i i've I've always been interested in This period of time, i always been interested in ah anti-war activity. It was like, you know there's a lot about this that I, a lot a lot of related topics that I think are cool. But yeah, I just, every time i compared this to other things that were happening around the same time or even to to other actions since then, yeah there's just something really raw physical practicality about it.
00:51:01
Speaker
Yeah, some people bristle at process, but I always love getting a sense of how individual writers go about the work, how they structure their day around a particular project. If they have multiple projects or day job, like how are you getting these things, how you threading in the time to report out a piece of this nature amidst ah other things and juggling all other things? So you know for maybe this one in particular or just broadly, you know how what is the the process by which you warm up the engine and you know have a good session with your material?
00:51:33
Speaker
i feel like i I feel like I kind of was working on this all over the place and at many different times a day. i like Right now, I'm working part-time addition to to journalism part-time. So I didn't have mornings for, like I guess, most of the time that this was like in edits. I just, yeah, I would would come into the the home office where I am and in the afternoon. um I don't know I mean, ideally, I'm sitting in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden all day just writing and listening to a couple of albums on repeat. i
00:52:08
Speaker
I remember when my mom showed me this article about how listening to music while you worked was bad for you in like high school or college. And i have apologies, died just that's how I do it. It really helps me, I think, to be in some kind feel like I'm in some kind of rhythm. And yeah, i I feel like I spend hours of a day in headphones with stuff playing.
00:52:28
Speaker
I like to start to feel like I have a rhythm to thing to to to writing. And I think if I have that, I can probably do it under most circumstances. Coffee is absolutely vital. Otherwise, like...
00:52:40
Speaker
Yeah, i it's occasionally ah it'll be great to have like an actual day where I'm just like, I might go out to like a cafe somewhere, or I might just like sit in my armchair in the other room. Or if it's nice, I'll go to a park or the garden or something and and try to like you know work in in calm and like stimulating surroundings. But a lot of times, I think i think i I might have actually written the lead to this on my phone on the subway. ah some some Something early I remember doing that with.
00:53:09
Speaker
Yeah. i love Well, i love hearing that because, you know, not a lot of people have the up the the the benefit or the privilege to have like a very set time every single day. It's like, here's this thing I've got and I got to thread it around other responsibilities. And yeah, the fact that you wrote the lead on your on your phone, maybe on the subway, you know, like that's you've.
00:53:30
Speaker
had a cocoon of time and a bit of inspiration, maybe in an unideal place, but that was, this was a time to get something down while you were inspired to do it. It's a good way of thinking of it. Yeah. yeah um And I, I, as I was like, as I was finishing this piece, my partner is finishing her dissertation. so ah sometimes we were in the same office. Sometimes I let her have the office. It's like, okay, you know, this has taken me like six months, taken me like six years. So, um,
00:53:58
Speaker
you get precedent. But yeah, we we were some moving around a lot of moving pieces. um But I think, yeah, I think ah I like the thought of a cocoon. I think once once I can get myself in there, the like no matter where I am, I i can focus on what i'm writing.
00:54:11
Speaker
Yeah, sometimes like the the the context of putting the headphones on or maybe even just like noise canceling earmuffs and it just creates a condition where you're like, OK, you know, I might only have 30 minutes today, but it's this is what I'm going to do for 30 minutes and block everything else out and listen to Yeah, I'm a big fan of movie soundtracks for that that very reason. When I was writing my last book, i was um the Batman soundtrack was big, ah Arrival, oh ah the queen the Queen's Gambit soundtrack. Oh, that was good liked the lot. Yeah. Yeah, that one was really great.
00:54:45
Speaker
And um some Legends of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom. Nice. The score for that move ah for that video game was was integral. And a couple a couple other ones, too. I think ah Dark Knight Rises ah soundtrack and The Dark Knight, like those two, like ah those kind of things that can be a bit brooding. yeah um Always help me. I love a good brood. Yeah.
00:55:08
Speaker
Yeah, um that's a good choice. And yeah, soundtracks make sense. I've realized that I'm very, very, I pretty much can't help but like thinking about the lyrics of whatever I'm listening to. And if I don't know the lyrics, i have to like look them up. So I can't really listen to new music while I'm writing because I'm just going to be, that's all i'm going to be thinking about. But stuff that I know really well that like just washes over me or stuff in other languages that I can't understand are are things that are are good for that.
00:55:38
Speaker
what What might you identify as something that like you're better at today, having been in this for a while, than you were like five or ten years ago? Maybe something you struggled with a lot five or ten years ago that you feel like you're like, oh yeah, I'm pretty i'm pretty good at this now. and Maybe I'm more efficient at this now.
00:55:57
Speaker
I don't know. you You would think that I would have gotten more efficient over, say, a decade. i don't I don't know that I have. I mean, the first thing that came to mind was asking questions, um if that counts as part of the writing process. Oh, for sure. I mean, it's it's integral to everything we do. Like, we got interview well. And ideally, you take, like, the John Sawarski method of interviewing where he's, like, lean, open, neutral questions, like not being overly verbose, not answering the question for the...
00:56:25
Speaker
for your source, getting just, yeah, just being as economical as possible. And then usually those short punchy questions lead to very long answers. Like you just lay it out there real quick, quick shot clock, as I like to say, yeah and then, and then let them go.
00:56:40
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think the art of, um, of, I think of it as like, I'm always calibrating when I'm interviewing somebody. Yeah. Like how, how much of a prompt are they going to need?
00:56:51
Speaker
um and what is, what is going to get something out of them? And yeah, i I had a job, um, where basically all I did was oral histories with people, not all of whom really wanted to do it. So like that, I think was a very good practice in, met a very wide range of people with a very wide range of like, you know, how,
00:57:11
Speaker
enthusiastic or talkative they were. ah And i think I think that helped me just figure out a variety of ways to to get stuff out of people. um but But also to answer that question, I think I mean, yeah, kind of boring, but like but structure. um i and I heard you talk about this on a recent podcast, so don't want to just um revisit it entirely, but um what Sid Field's you know screenwriting book I've read a couple of times. I think that's getting that name right. Being able to think about things like that and be very intentional about your structure.
00:57:45
Speaker
I always outlined, I always was intentional about structure, but I think thinking of it less through the lens of like, how do you like organize an argument or whatever, organize an essay and more of like, you know, you, you need to grab your audience in the first 10 minutes, um or maybe that's the first page or something in writing, or, you know, like you, the, the pinches have to come here and here, like you must do this work of characterizing. like Yeah. Having learning some steps and, and actually following them.
00:58:14
Speaker
Yeah, there's ah and also like when you're interviewing someone, it's like, are they the kind of, to your point of kind of feeling them out, like are they the kind of person who who might respond better if you share a little personal anecdote too? Like some people don't do that at ah at all, and but or some of some people overdo it, but then maybe you can feel like you can soften them a little bit. Or if you're like a former athlete, maybe you can kind of relate to the, if you're trying to get stuff out of an athlete, It'd be like, yeah, I listen. I was never as competitive as you. I never got as far as you, but I kind of understand the rigor through which you do this and you can kind of relate. And at at that point, like, oh, they're kind of speaking my language a little bit. um
00:58:56
Speaker
And sometimes that can soften them and you can get some good stuff there. Other times it's just like, yeah, like ask your question in five to 10 seconds and get out of the way. Yeah, right. Some people will, will, you'll, you'll be like, you know,
00:59:08
Speaker
Did you grow up in a house or an apartment? And then they'll just take you on like a 20 minute tour of like their early life. And like other people would be like, you know, like, can you, you know, like what what's, what's, you know, something important to know about your mother. And they'll just be like, Oh, don't know. She was nice. Like, know, it's just, it's a personality thing. And I, I'm interviewing athletes. I, I actually, I think that is a really good experience for someone well, not good, but a valuable experience for someone who like who really is trying to get better at interviewing because you know like athletes are trained to stonewall you. And even if they're not, they just kind of like, somebody could do, like just make the most incredible shot, like break a record, whatever. And my friends and I joke about this all the time, how you know every single athlete interview is just like,
00:59:54
Speaker
Yeah, you know, we wanted to win. The plan was to win. We went out there and i think we really executed. And so it was great to win for the team. Like, you know, like, so like trying trying to get them to say anything interesting is like always an uphill battle and um probably helpful in the long run if you want to like get good at asking questions because you really need to figure out something to ask. I always love getting a sense of just unique challenges that you faced, be it through the reporting or the writing, little hurdles that you, you know, places where you got stumped and you're like, ah this is ah this a bit of a challenge, yeah how you work through it, maybe how you had a dialogue with Sayward to like break you through a certain element. So just what was maybe ah a challenge or two to this piece that was ah maybe a sticking point ah that ah that you wrestled with?
01:00:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think one thing that I perennially have to deal with is just, ah there's i like I said, i it was kind of like there was too much meat on it. like there There was just so much, and I didn't even, um i mean...
01:00:51
Speaker
There's this whole side quest. um Several of them, Mo Considine told me about this, like several of them were invited to Attica Penitentiary by the prisoners there to be on the like the committee that was supposed to be bargaining with the state. um So there's this whole, that happened, like I guess, after the the string of burglaries, but before the trial. Yeah.
01:01:10
Speaker
I don't know if I have the dates right, but um letting go of stuff like that and just being like, OK, this is really cool, but not central. It's not load-bearing. You can take it out, um which that's kind of just how editing goes. But there was just so much to cover here. And i i really wanted people to have a sense of the time period that they were in and what else was like happening um because just so much was going on in that period. And I think a lot of that probably ended up having to get cut just because we had to tell a story, not just like a pastiche of what was going on. but um But another thing is memory. And I was thinking about this yesterday.
01:01:46
Speaker
i do feel like I was pretty lucky, not that people had total recall they didn't, but I think they were all pretty straightforward with me about their limitations on that. And that can be tricky because, you know, you don't you don't ever want to be caught out not remembering anything like and on the record, you know, it's just embarrassing. And especially like,
01:02:03
Speaker
if you're in your 70s or 80s, I have to assume you know you you don't want to be like, i yeah you want people to to think that you're just like, the recall isn't there. But um I think that everyone was very just straightforward with me about that. And so I knew it gave me confidence that the stuff they remember that they actually remembered. um And like, I mean, Jim, i because I feel like he said this a couple of times and would be comfortable with me saying it. He couldn't remember uh he could not remember how many offices he'd broken into overall like or where they all were necessarily um which does pose a challenge because i'm trying to write about it but um but you know there were some details that he just remembered like clear as day focusing on that and and kind of i don't think we ran into any real like factual like
01:02:55
Speaker
v log jams, but um I did, ah with with Emily the fact checker and I, had to kind of mentally reconstruct the building that the original burglary took place in. Because that was something where like, i probably every one of the five people I interviewed had a slightly different telling of like where they were, what was on what floor.
01:03:15
Speaker
And I don't even know if that's possible. I don't know if it's possible to go back and find a floor plan of this building from 1971 and to figure, you know, um so we kind of we had to basically just do this. It was like a logic problem where we were just like, okay, well, we know they escaped on the bottom level.
01:03:32
Speaker
We know they jumped down at least one flight from there. Like eventually I think, I think we came to the right conclusion, but it was, it was like cross-referencing like four different people's accounts and,
01:03:43
Speaker
having having to hold in your head that you know ah trust them on this detail it's sounds like they're getting it right or it's backed up by what other people said or um you know uh maybe it was the the third floor not the fifth or whatever whatever it was um we did have to do a little bit of yeah just like actually like mentally piecing together the building itself and and i guess also like the trial um I wrote about the Camden 28 trial for snafu and trials are inherently dramatic, but not, they're not written like dramas. So I think it's always a bit of a challenge to tell the story of a trial in a compelling way that makes it clear, like what happened in what order while, while actually pulling out the important moments and not falling into the trap of just like listing what happened, which can get really dry really fast.
01:04:36
Speaker
Yeah, I loved hearing you say ah various elements of the story being load-bearing or not, and that, especially with an atavis story or a short story, you gotta be you know very economical with the anecdotes you employ for the story.
01:04:51
Speaker
So be it yourself or and with Sayward, how are you interrogating the whether a piece, no matter, what or a moment, of no matter how much you love it, ah does does this bear load in the story?
01:05:06
Speaker
Short answer is um having having been on the side of editing other people's scripts and stuff, um as a writer, sometimes I'm like, oh, that's an editor's problem.
01:05:16
Speaker
And i I think this is all important. And you're going to have to convince me that it's not. ah So thank you, Sayward, for dealing with multiple rounds of that, um which definitely happened. But yeah, I mean, again, yeah i think going back to like what's actually moving the story along versus what is stuff that I find interesting color. um And you always need a little bit of that. You always need a little bit of extraneous like detail but that color things in.
01:05:42
Speaker
i'm trying to think of like an example of of what was cut out that I can refer to. But there were some there's there's a lot of interesting, interesting to me at least, ah details about the voir dire and just the the preparation for the trial. um Buffalo and Camden were, from what I can tell, actually Innovative, ah legally, legalistically. um the that It was one of the, two of the first examples of, I think what we would call scientific jury selection. Like they really put a lot of thought, like volunteer workers, like put a lot of thought into like studying the demographics of the area, um going out and trying to to convince people and like soften up the jury pool um just to kind of spread, spread, spread their argument throughout the,
01:06:32
Speaker
the the radius, you know people who could potentially be selected as ah jurors. But um but also, they they tried to figure out like demographic information of like who was going to be um most likely to to to feel negatively about the war and positively about war resistors.
01:06:49
Speaker
if i If I'm remembering correctly, and I don't think this is 100% true, but i basically, i think I remember them saying that like the ideal voter ah was middle-aged Jewish mother. um And I really liked the idea that they were just shooting for a jury of 12 Jewish mothers. um But, and and I think it's fascinating that they went into all this and like, that that was a very big ah part of this resistance action was this like legal innovation. ah But yeah, we we we could tell the story without that. ah And I think as long as the like,
01:07:24
Speaker
i hope I hope that we conveyed like just the overall idea of like how the defendants and their attorneys approached it. And you cannot lay out all of the specifics of of of what they went into. But like i guess I guess maybe it's like, you know if you take it out and you're like, if I explain this to someone, they'd be like, oh yeah, that sounds that sounds like what they would do you know maybe like but But without...
01:07:50
Speaker
without it being something that, ah yeah, as you like the whole thing falls apart when you take it out. Yeah. What's a piece of advice, writing advice, that ah maybe a mentor has shared with you or ah or maybe just hard earned through your career that ah that is something you employ or offer other people too who might seek ah i seek advice from you?
01:08:14
Speaker
I think what I got to go with is ah an Ezra Pound quote. And I know that Ezra Pound was a fascist, um unfortunately. ah he could he could write. And um I have a um ah a mentor and and friend of mine, um Ron Smith in Richmond, Virginia, who ah is a is a big fan of Pound's writing and who kind of drilled this quote into me, no ideas but in things.
01:08:42
Speaker
And I have it on my Post-it note on my above my desk right here. ah I come back to that all the time because it is so easy for me and I think for a lot of people to just, to to for your writing to become detached from the material world, you know, and and to start, is sophistrating word? I don't think that's a word, but, you know, like, it's it's very, I think it's really helpful for me to remind myself, like, almost every sentence, every paragraph, this, like, what what where is the physical thing? stuff in this. like What are we actually talking about?
01:09:19
Speaker
if you are If there isn't a physical object in this, what are we like what are we referring to? um and you know i that's There are obviously so many instances in which it's important to write about ideas. um For fiction and creative nonfiction, to me, i yeah i just i have this quote on my wall because I Like if i if I'm reading through something and I can't really point to like the connection to the physical, then I'm like, I could probably lose this or I could probably illustrate it in a much better way that does actually give people an image in their minds and attaches it to the world around us.
01:09:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I think Roy Peter Clark writes about the ah person who another person who coined this term, but it's like going up and down the ladder of ah abstraction. And so the more you're at the bottom of the ladder, it's concrete and physical. It's kind of like what you're talking about. And when you're down there. Yeah. It's tactile. it's physical. It's easily understandable.
01:10:17
Speaker
climb that ladder and now you're starting to get into some ethereal stuff that's not as easy to grasp and yeah you might lose you might lose your reader if you're not like super like ah tethered to the material in some way that is just like so arresting in the prose otherwise it's like better get down the ladder and uh ground this thing that's a that's a great way to put it and yeah i think it was also pound um who said, go in fear of abstractions, which is a corollary to that. I think it was Pound. um But I think about that just as often. Yeah, go in fear of abstractions. like it's it's not that you It's not that you can never have a good abstract thought or sentence, but like do you? Do you actually? or Or even if you think you do, could you get an object in there? Could you could you get some some? Yeah, that helps me a lot. Just because you know it's very easy to start.
01:11:07
Speaker
It's very easy to lose track of that. For sure. Nice. Well, I love bringing these conversations down for a landing by just asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind, just something fun that you're enjoying that you want to share with the listeners out there. So I'd extend that to you, Stephen. Just what are you what are you liking?
01:11:22
Speaker
What are you digging that you want to share with the listeners? Yeah. um I mean, i pretty much, i got to say the music of Brian Eno. um I've just been engulfed in in Brian Eno's like early to mid seventies albums for several years at this point. um Has anyone ever said, ah
01:11:43
Speaker
ah oblique stratagems as an answer to this question. Are you familiar with those? No. Eno and um I think it was Robert Fripp, his collaborator, came up with this um set. You can buy them as like a box set. um they're called ah i think they're called oblique stratagems. it might be strategy. but um And it was just, it was a they basically, it's not really one method. It's like just a bunch of off-the-wall methods that they ah cra came up with in the studio.
01:12:11
Speaker
to break out of writer's block or just to like make sure that they were like mixing things up. um And they really run the gamut. like ah One of them is ah honor thy error as hidden intention. So like keep your mistakes or at least like think about them think about them as being intentional even if they weren't. And that's like pretty practical advice. um One of them is like ah a very small object. It's center, which i still don't really know what that means, but it's something to consider. um Sometimes it's like, you know switch the instrumentation around. like Should the verse be the chorus? Should the chorus be the verse? like um's it's just It's called oblique, I guess, because it's just it's just meant to to take you off of whatever track you were on and put you on another one. and
01:12:54
Speaker
it might not be good. You might realize that the other one was better, but like ah kind of shifting your, your like your frame of reference. So I think those are cool. And yeah, I just have to say Brian, you know, went on an absolute tear and I don't think people understand it. um Here come the warm jets taking tiger mountain by strategy, another green world. And then um before and after science, he's known for producing like Bowie and U2. He's known for making this more like ethereal atmospheric music, which he invented and it's wonderful, but the man,
01:13:23
Speaker
could write a pop song. I I'm a huge Beatles fan and discovering those four albums, I felt like I just discovered like four more Beatles albums that like f bridge the gap from like Abbey road to like talking heads.
01:13:37
Speaker
Check out Brian. Oh, amazing. Oh, cool. Well, well, Steven, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. And, and for this amazing piece you've done for the out of us, it was really cool to talk about, uh, you know, the piece and how you went about it. And just thanks for carving out time to do this. This was awesome. Thank you. This was so fun. Really appreciate it
01:13:58
Speaker
Awesome. Pretty fun stuff, right? I think so. I think that since this is a bonus episode and there will be a new one in a couple days or tomorrow, I don't know when this is running, I'll save my parting shot until then. I will say thanks for the kind notes I received from Melanie DG Kaplan, Paul Willits, Adam Sowers, Pablo Arasarese.
01:14:21
Speaker
and no I know I'm pronouncing that wrong, Pablo, but... Forgive me. There's a double R in there, so now got to roll my R. And i Amy Brooks. Anyway, and nice notes from people who are... Saw me licking my wounds and were like, it's okay there.
01:14:37
Speaker
Stop. Stop licking the wound. Put a band-aid on it. Stop pouring salt in it, goddammit. I will further couch that. I know rejection is the norm, but this felt like a round peg, round hole kind of deal, and it's a book proposal rejection, which means it was a year of work and waiting, unlike a rejection for a feature pitch or something, which can come pretty quickly. Sigh.
01:15:02
Speaker
And that's the quick and dirty. That's the quick and dirty of it all. A book rejection is almost like physical in its demoralization. But who knows? There might be some interest out there. I think I'll just keep picking away at it.
01:15:15
Speaker
And then maybe the proposal and the story will take greater shape. Maybe there'll be a bit more ballast that'll make it a bit more of a sell. So I'm not going to put my whole...
01:15:29
Speaker
person behind it, but I think I'll just chip away. We'll see. i have to have a conversation with Susan, my agent, whenever. Who knows? She's a kind of hard to pin down, so it'll we'll see what happens. She might say, who knows, an editor might just pluck it up and we're we're off in the off to the races, but it might be one of those things, you might want to choose a different subject, in which case, yeah, I'll back burner this, keep picking away at it, shelve it for a little bit, go to something else.
01:16:04
Speaker
But who knows, there might be some interest, and that's where we're at. You see, I'm in it with you, man, getting the shit kicked out of me, throwing bows. Be sure you're subbed up for the podcast and considering joining the rage of the Internet Pitch Club over at Substack. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com if you want to get better at landing your stories.
01:16:26
Speaker
I've got some good ones coming down the pike, so hopefully that'll carry you through the spring and the summer. And then you can tell me all about the amazing stories you've written because Pitch Club helped you out.
01:16:40
Speaker
All right? So stay wild, C&Fers. And if you can't do interviews. See ya.