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Episode 513: Cutting the Toothbrush in Half with Melanie D.G. Kaplan
557 Plays6 days ago
"I wanted to keep reporting, and I'm like, it's not ready yet. And [a friend] reminded me over and over that this is a sales pitch. It's a proposal. The agents and publishers just want to know you can put a story together and tell a story that's longer than 2,000 words, and that there's some narrative arc to it," says Melanie D.G. Kaplan, author of Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research (Hachette).
Today we have Melanie DG Kaplan, author of Lab Dog. Not gonna lie, if you’re an animal lover and a believer in animal rights, it’s a tough read. I don’t mean it’s a bad book, it’s a very good book, it’s just … tough. Brought no fewer than 88 tears to my eyes at various points. The late Jane Goodall called it “remarkable.” So, there you go.
Melanie is a journalist, an author, and when she’s feeling brave an ukulele player. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, among many, many others. She interviewed Miss Piggy. How many people can say that? Lab Dog is her first book and it chronicles her and her rescue beagle Hammy as they illuminate the world of animal testing and thus the testing that Hammy was subjected to for the first few years of his life. They find out where he was born, where he was subjected to various cruelties and indignities all in the name of science and progress. Her book details the advances in technologies and models that are proving to be just as effective as animal testing without the torture.
In this conversation we also hit on:
- The dialogue between the animal research world and the animal activist world
- Changing her physical environment so she can focus and write
- Overcoming not being a “name” in this business
- Book proposal craft
- And the power of tech shabbat and how she turned me on to the “Light Phone”
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Promotions
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, hey, CNFers. This podcast shares a promotional sponsorship with the 2026 Power of Narrative Conference taking place March 27th and 28th in lovely Boston, Massachusetts at Boston University.
00:00:14
Speaker
This year's keynote speakers include Ken Burns, Patrick Radden-Keefe, Angela Patton, and Natalie Ray and Sarah Stillman and Asma Khalid. There's a handful of CNF pod alums on the total roster.
00:00:27
Speaker
so you're gonna really want to take advantage if you use the promo code narrative 20 at checkout you get 20 off your fee that's some serious cheddar visit combeyond.bu.edu to register repairing restoring reconnecting through storytelling you can't make this shit up there's just so much out there that's crazy and um and those those facts tell the story
00:00:59
Speaker
Network, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm Brendan O'Meara, bringing back the Lip Bro Bro. Today, we have Melanie D.G.
Introducing Melanie D.G. Kaplan and 'Lab Dog'
00:01:11
Speaker
Kaplan, author of Lab Dog, a Beagle, and a Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's published by Hachette. Hatchet. Not going to lie. If you're an animal lover and a believer in animal rights, as I am, it's a tough read. I don't mean it's a bad book. It's a very good book.
00:01:29
Speaker
It's just tough. Brought no fewer than 88 tears to my eyes at various points. The late Jane Goodall called it remarkable. So there you go.
00:01:42
Speaker
This podcast is also sponsored by the newsletter Pitch Club, the monthly substack where you read cold pitches and hear the authors audio annotating their thinking behind how they sold and crafted their pitches. The colder, the better.
00:01:54
Speaker
How to pitch an agent, an editor, a feature, an essay, a source? You're going to go to welcomethepitchclub.substack.com forever free. Read a little, listen a little, learn a lot.
00:02:06
Speaker
I think my proposal for the next book is just about done. Knock on wood. The last round of notes I got from my agent are not that bad. I can actually knock it out with 90 minutes of focus. Therein lies the problem. I need that paper, man. Otherwise, your boy is going to start an OnlyFans page for lonely bookish women and men.
00:02:26
Speaker
Gotta make that paper. Melanie D.G. Kaplan is a journalist and author, and when she's feeling particularly brave, an ukulele player. I learned one time that it's pronounced ukulele, not ukulele.
00:02:40
Speaker
But you do you. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, among too many others. It's, it's, ah you really, who are you trying to impress, Melanie? She interviewed Miss Piggy? Come on.
00:02:56
Speaker
How many people can say that? well Lab Dog is her first book, and it chronicles her and her rescue beagle, Hammy, as they illuminate the world of animal testing, and thus the testing that Hammy was subjected to for the first few years of his life.
00:03:09
Speaker
They find out, you know, where he was born. born, where he was subjected to the various cruelties and dignities on the name of science and progress. Her book details the advances in technologies and models, the history of animal research, but those models that are proving to be just as effective as animal testing without the torture. In this conversation, we also hit on the dialogue between the animal research world in the animal activist world, changing her physical environment so she can focus and write, overcoming not being a quote name in this business, book proposal craft, and the power of ah Tech Shabbat, and how she turned me on to the light phone, doing some serious research on that.
Kaplan's Writing Journey and Influences
00:03:50
Speaker
Could be a game changer. No better time than now to cue up the montage. Riff.
00:04:05
Speaker
Tell it to me like you're watching a movie. One tiny lowercase lol will fucking sail me through. Editing is about helping the writer think. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:04:28
Speaker
started writing when I was really little. My mom encouraged me to write. And so I was writing poems about animals when I was really little. And then I became editor of my high school newspaper. And I just really enjoyed hearing people's stories. and And then as I got a little bit more advanced in my own career, getting comfortable telling my own story. Mm-hmm.
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah. How did you or what were those growing pains, I should say, of yeah trying to get more personal with narratives versus you know maybe leaning on you know telling other people's stories?
00:05:05
Speaker
I think a lot of it was just time and experience. i mean, I've been freelancing for more than 25 years now, and many of those years were for trade publications and business journals. And I always had this dream of going around and spending time with different people in their jobs. and And so I really enjoyed learning about new things and new careers and um Every freelance piece has been different and I love that. And i think when I started doing travel writing, somebody said to me, you know, as an editor who said, if this idea is interesting to you and if you get really excited about it, it will be exciting for readers too. And I really just learned to trust that in my mind everything
00:05:52
Speaker
you know If I was super curious about something and went off and had this adventure, then somebody out there would would appreciate it and enjoy the journey with me. So i think that's that's really helped me feel more confident in pitching and also just using my own voice. Yeah, the the confidence can be hard to come by, especially early on. And who are some of the ah mentors maybe that helped put fuel in your tank as you were trying to get experience and altitude?
00:06:21
Speaker
Oh, gosh. You know, i I actually didn't read much travel writing when I was a travel writer. I've loved Mary Roach. I mean, she's the best and funniest science writer out there. You know, I just think I read a lot of New Yorker and Atlantic pieces and dug into nonfiction much more, i guess, as an adult. I wasn't a huge reader as a child, but guess in my twenty s and 30s, I really started appreciating nonfiction.
00:06:51
Speaker
Yeah. the Did you ever have a like ah what as you were drawn to writing that you wanted to do yeah ah maybe maybe fiction or novels or short stories and then you just kind of got turned on to nonfiction in a way that is just like, oh, wow, this just feels more interesting to me.
00:07:09
Speaker
I haven't done any fiction since some writing programs, probably in high school and college. And i think the more freelancing and more reporting I did, the more I realized you can't make this shit up. There's just so much out there that's crazy. And, um and those those facts tell the story. So I haven't really been drawn to fiction every once in a while, I think could I do this and could I create these characters?
00:07:37
Speaker
And i just time after time feel like there's there is enough out there that I want to tell, at least at this point in my life, that I'm sticking with nonfiction. Anytime I noodle with fiction, which ah which I do just for fun every now and again, but not often enough, but it always ends up regressing to the nonfiction mean anyway. And it's And I just like, it gets to the point where I'm like, I might as well just try to report this thing out. Because it it ends up being such a thinly veiled nonfiction thing. I'm like, i as well just make it nonfiction anyway. and And just go that way and take the imaginative component out of it and just report it. And it to me, that ends up just being more interesting.
00:08:19
Speaker
Or yeah, if I wrote something that was fiction that was like based on my life or people in my life, it's like, well, they would know anyway. yeah So I don't know how much I could spend that. a yeah You brought up Mary Roach and in you so reading some Atlantic and New Yorker pieces. ah i always love getting a sense of a writer's film study, if you will. It's always like a sports term I lean on. You know, the NFL or football coaches, you know, just watching film, like dissecting things and replay and play forward, rewind, go forward and so forth, dissecting these things and trying to get into the bones of something. And um similarly, I like to do that with ah reading as well. I'm very active with the text, always writing in the margins, underlining things, circling things. So like just just for you, what is your film study look like when you really lock into a piece of writing that you love?
00:09:07
Speaker
I have a whole folder of New Yorkers from the last probably 30 years torn out and stapled together. And I i actually go back and read them. nice And, you know I try to figure out, okay, how did they get into this story? How did they start these sections?
00:09:22
Speaker
How often are they reminding us of the characters? Although I have to say, I so often have to go back in New Yorker stories and be like, who was that? You know, I don't I don't write in margins, but I do use little sticky notes quite often. And, you know, I like to reread my favorite books. So they're they're all on my bookshelf. And, you know, I definitely pull out my favorites from time to time in terms of books that really helped me. with my book very early on, I knew there was going to be some parts of memoir in my book. And so the situation and the story, the art of personal narrative by Vivian Gornick was super helpful. I read that a couple times and the memoir project by Marian Roach Smith. But I think that the book that really stuck with me the most was Story by Robert McKee. You know, it it got me thinking about a lot of fiction elements to work into the book. And i read it early, put a ton of, you know, sticky notes in it, took notes from it. And then I kind of forgot about it and hoped that it was still in my brain. But I i did think about, you know, characters and plot and characters. setting and the climax. I had this really fortuitous thing that the Invigo breeding facility was shutting down over a period of nine months while I was reporting. And so we had this very dramatic undercover investigation that came out and then a hearing and lawmakers got involved. where There's a lot of drama and it really ended up being the climax of the book and these beagles all get adopted out across the country. Thinking about fiction techniques as I was writing nonfiction ended up being really helpful.
Nonfiction Techniques and Challenges
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, there's a tendency as journalists to ah throw information in. and To be a storyteller and a narrative storyteller at that, you'd be like, oh, I'm sitting on this information. I kind of know the arc of this. But you do have to learn how to like plot it out so it plays out over the arc of the entire thing. And the coming up in newspapers or something, you're just like, here's all the here's all the shit in the first two paragraphs or something. But to do a book, it's like, okay, you know, I got to wait. Got to like tease it out and yeah get people turning the page, which is, that's hard to learn. And yeah, and taking cues from fiction or screenwriting can really help you be like, okay, yes, let's let's let's lengthen this out so we can so it's a satisfying yeah story and a satisfying arc and narrative.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, that was that was actually really fun for me. And maybe that's the the creative part of the nonfiction, but just, yes yeah like you said, teasing it out and dropping some little clues here and bringing characters back to help tell the story. And so so was that was fun.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, the structure element is where yeah the real creativity can come in for you know a nonfiction text. like that's the The facts are the facts, and that's all verifiable, but where that creativity can come in, like ah John McPhee thinking of ah his various story structure forms you know and how he plays with maybe tenses and stuff like that to yeah to imbue ah some artfulness onto the facts, and that's always satisfying, and that's where you know some of the fun can really come in. i It's a puzzle piece and it's hard, but it's kind of where the fun is. Oh, yeah. No, I think that the the sections and passages that I'm most proud of in the book are the ones that I reworked a thousand times just to to get them right. of the The timing and the tenses. um So some of it came easy and some of it was a lot of work, but it all feels good.
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, when you were in like the thick of rewrites, and I know this to be true for me, it was nauseating because ah the rewriting was very heavy for the front runner. Everything was a mess. I feel bad for my editor. is yeah But it was such a heavy lift for both of us, really. But it was getting into those heavy rewrites and being so sick of my own writing. like When you were in the thick of rewrites, how did you just you know lean in despite how sick of yourself you might have been? ah you know I think that part wasn't as bad for me as the deadlines for the chunks of chapters because i i mean i had this crazy idea at the beginning once the book was acquired. i just thought...
00:13:57
Speaker
talked to the the first editor who ended up leaving shortly after that. And I said, All right, I'm just gonna send you the whole manuscript at once at this final deadline. And then the second editor came in and she's like, all right, I need to see it what you've been working on. And it was just so ludicrous to think I would write the whole thing and turn it in like, as though it were a 2000 word article. So, um so we had these regular calls, and I would send her maybe two or three chapters at a time. And before each of those deadlines, it was just such a mad rush. I mean, I barely got dressed every day and I was just so intense.
00:14:32
Speaker
And I ended up sending her these chapters that were incredibly messy. Like it was just, I had just had to get over myself because they were, um you know, I would just dump things in there and I knew they were too long and They just were not clean copy. Yeah, it just horrified me.
00:14:50
Speaker
And once I had that, and once she got back to me, she's like, okay, that's not bad. I mean, she knew that they were messy, and she knew they were going to get cleaned up, but she was just looking for the bigger picture of how this flows and how it prepares readers for the next chapter and consistency with the characters.
00:15:10
Speaker
You know, I think that that was that was the most awful part for me. In general, I was surprised and delighted, like how much I could just decide where this was going. Having not written a book before, I didn't know what the editorial process was going to be like. For example, I wrote the the prologue in third person. i don't know where that idea came from, But I just started writing and I'm like, all right, I really like how this goes. And i so I thought for sure I was going to hear back that, no, I don't think we can really do that. That's not how this works. And nobody ever said boo about the third person. So it just, it was such a joy to have this much space to kind of figure out how I want to tell the story and then just see that with a lot of refining after that, it actually came together. And i have heard a lot of writers say that they're completely sick of their books after they came out. And i don't think I could ever read it again cover to cover because it would just feel too much like editing.
00:16:15
Speaker
But i have to say it surprised me that now I use it as a resource, like because I'm doing all these talks about this and I i use the index. It's like, oh, wow, this is how other people are using the book. I'm kind of looking up. different, different people and different quotes and trying to remind myself what's in there. And so I never expected to be using my own book as a resource. But it is kind of cool to have it now to remind myself what I did for the last five years.
00:16:41
Speaker
But bringing up those features and you're like, how how do they get into the stories? Like, I always love like thinking of like those entry points and also kickers and closers and how how to how people are thinking about ah sinking into the piece, getting into the hot tub of the piece. So just like oh when you're sitting down to write, how are you thinking about those entry points into either you know a feature or a chapter or something?
00:17:07
Speaker
i I've noticed, I mean, i don't I don't know that I think about it that much in terms of transferring from other writers to mine, but I'm sure I've internalized this. And I also haven't gone back to look at my writing too much to see, oh, I definitely always do this. But but I did notice at one point with my travel pieces, you know, they sometimes end on this like feeling of...
00:17:32
Speaker
not quite sadness, but maybe a wistfulness or longing. I'm sure I was trying to avoid something that was cliche or too punchy, but i do feel like, you know, somehow I've, I've picked that up and try to work that feeling into pieces because, you know, travel's not all joy and it's not all happy. And there's often sadness in it or sadness that you're coming home or that you didn't experience what you thought you were going to experience.
00:18:02
Speaker
And, you know, I think that that's true for all of life is that you've got all these different emotions. And so I try to work that feeling into my my pieces. And, you know, in terms of getting into a piece, you know, I don't, I just don't know if I have a rule of thumb for that, but I definitely need to have the beginning written. I'm not one of these writers that can just start off writing the meat of the piece and come back and do the the top. I need to know how it's going to start.
00:18:31
Speaker
yeah I think that's how Susan Orlean John McPhee have have long approached their long stories. like They cannot proceed until the the lead of their story is, I'm not going to say totally ossified, but they have to be pretty damn satisfied. with the light that that is illuminating for the rest of their path through the piece. And ah I think some people can be a bit more piecemeal. I'll be like, I just need to progress and get somewhere or have a placeholder of some kind in the middle at at the top. but But yeah, I'm kind of like, I can kind of go anywhere, but I but i totally get the people who like really need to have that you know beginning secure.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like, you know, there's a rhythm when a reader reads a piece. But as a writer, i think that there's some kind of rhythm to, know, I want to feel that beginning, you know, sense and what, you know, what that movement looks like and sounds like and how the words sound. And and from there, it's just always an easier jumping off point to feel like, okay, this is this is where we're going. Yeah, and even with endings, ah some some people like to have it almost be a mystery before they get there. and I'm someone, and a lot of people I talk to, you know like to have their ending as soon as possible because it feels like something they're rowing their boat towards. Like, oh, that that feels that feels that feels good. like and Every word is now in service of getting to that destination. and So how how are you thinking of endings, or when do you like to have an ending in place?
00:20:03
Speaker
I think the endings just show up. I don't feel like I rush to get to them. Sometimes in my reporting, I know right away, like, okay, that's the kicker. I don't know. It's funny hearing these questions because i some of these things just happen. That's so hard to explain where they come from.
00:20:22
Speaker
You know, I do think that the endings, like for me, it's what it's what stays on the reader's mind. And so... That's just as important to me. I mean, really i try to make the endings as beautiful as I can. Yeah, a great ending, at least at least for for me in my experience is something that makes me want to just go back and start rereading the thing, be it the piece or even the book. Or I love seeing it. If it does the ending somehow echo how the book started, like Melissa Fibos is the dry season that came out a year ah yeah last year, I guess, maybe two years ago or a year and a half doesn't matter.
00:20:57
Speaker
ah Like the ending and the I think the first and the last sentence are the same. So it's kind of like, it's kind of fun to see the writer tie those or braid those together or just knot them together and so in some way. I know my editor for the Front Runner, he's big on ending the book with some sort of a scene.
00:21:13
Speaker
And ah so I had ended the Front Runner in a different way, a different kind of, like just a really great quote from Pre. um But he's just like, he pushed me to find a scene and like I was just really...
00:21:26
Speaker
digging around I went to the Hayward Field Museum here in Eugene and like found a really great photograph that finished with Steve alive and it was just such a symbolic photograph and I just really described that scene and ended up being a great ending um that gave like his agency and his life back at the end of the book and it was just one of those things and now I'm thinking of that like yeah really good a good scene you can describe seems like an awesome way to end a book or just ah ah or a story Yeah, that makes me think of um in my book, and I didn't even know I was doing this until afterwards when I was editing the manuscript.
00:22:05
Speaker
There's not a scene repeated at the end, but there's one word that I use to describe my beagle hammy's ears. on page four at the very beginning and I pulled it into the end, you know, page 314.
00:22:18
Speaker
three hundred fourteen And so, you know, all these pages in between, I never use that word again. And somehow um I brought that into the ending. And then when I realized what had happened, I was like, oh, that's perfect. And I didn't even know it. So Yeah, I think that sometimes things are happening in the back of our brains and thank God for those because otherwise I don't know if I'd even be writing.
Maintaining Focus and Overcoming Self-doubt
00:22:44
Speaker
Yeah. yeah With writing, it can be awful hard, especially nowadays, to really get into a good rhythm ah with the way our attention is so bifurcated and trifurcated and quadruple flicated everywhere. Yeah. So how do you ah ah create good boundaries around, you know, your work and your workspace so you can, you know, establish some degree of rhythm?
00:23:07
Speaker
More and more, i have to go places where it's just really quiet. mean, when i when I wrote the book, I was lucky enough to be able to borrow a friend's cottage down in the northern neck of Virginia. And I really cut everything else out of my life.
00:23:25
Speaker
i mean, one of my friends who's a hiker, described it as you know when you go hiking or backpacking and you've just got to take as little as possible and you're really worried about the weight and you actually cut your toothbrush in half so you don't have to carry the extra half of the toothbrush. And he's like, that's what you're doing. You're like cutting the toothbrush in half. And and it's true. i didn't have much time with my friends and my family and my partner. And it was just feeding myself and my dog and and working out and writing. And certainly i don't have that luxury all the time. And when I write articles, I still have to go sometimes reserve a room at the library because my home office is great when I i'm here most days and when I'm answering email and reporting. But when I really need to focus, I just have to get out of visually like everything in my office and my house and my yard that needs to be tidied up and weeded. And yeah um as you know, there's a million other things calling your name.
00:24:24
Speaker
I know. I just, I work at home and there's always a chore to be done. yeah there's There's dishes to be cleaned. There's dishwasher to empty. There's the floor to sweep or to mop or...
00:24:39
Speaker
that any There are any number of these chores that they will nag and niggle at my head, and my headspace. mike I should be doing this now instead of editing a podcast or curating some articles for the next book project or getting into sending an important email or following up on an invoice or whatever. like It's amazing what we'll do to to not do what we actually have to do. Yeah.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah, the house is never cleaner than when I'm on deadline. It's really it's a sickness, really, Melanie. But ah so that's great that you that in ah in certain circumstances to be able to change those contexts and get to a different you know room of the library or or or a cottage. But if you are at home and there are those other things trying that are like picking at your brain, you know how do you facilitate or some some measure of of focus when you really need to drill down, cultivate? That's the word I was like
00:25:36
Speaker
How do I cultivate focus? you know It really gets down to just the deadline. And you know and i i can wait pretty late yeah on deadlines and then end up cramming, which I don't like doing. But i mean, without deadlines, I just I wouldn't get anything done. I have a real hard time setting them for myself. So you know there's all the things I have to do to feel like, ok I'm ready, like you know have my tea next to me and check the email, close the email down, check the weather, check the, you know, headlines real quick. And, and I can extend that for quite a long time, all of the checking things and making sure that I'm ready. And then sometimes I'm writing for and a half half hour and then I've like got to go back and check everything again. So it's, it's real hard getting out of that pattern. And I'm finding myself doing it more and more and being able to focus less and less, but yeah,
00:26:33
Speaker
like I said, changing the environment, even moving from my home office down to the couch, which isn't best ergonomically, but sometimes I can focus a lot better there than in my normal desk environment.
00:26:44
Speaker
In any project, long project, especially book project, there's any sense, any number of feelings of of doubt and insecurity creep in. I know happens to me. yeah I call it my 2 a.m. voice because naturally I wake up at 2 a.m. and suddenly I'm just getting bombarded with With ah you're not going to be able to find anything new that your main sources are going to block everybody else from talking to you. And how are you going to do that? Like it's just all these fear and anxiety responses. So like how how do you how do you deal with that that niggling feeling of, ah you know, of doubt that in just inevitably creeps in for any writing project, but especially the more ambitious ones?
00:27:23
Speaker
I think I do really keep, you know, what I told you before about just believing in the idea. i mean, that that has been so foundational for me. And so I just have to say to those voices, you know, hush. um It's, you know, this this is working. There is a way. There's a reason why. and and i had a...
00:27:46
Speaker
you know a number of different votes of confidence along the way with the book. i I got a fellowship based on a proposal about the book. And then of course, each step of the way, which I never thought would come, finding an agent and finding a publisher and and each step, I just felt like,
00:28:02
Speaker
okay, I'm going to listen to their voice right now. It's more important than mine. And I'm going to keep moving forward. You know, i think that having having something on the page, of course, is is much better than having nothing on the page. So sometimes I just force myself to...
00:28:18
Speaker
to get a little bit written rather than just staring at my notes and circling around. you know I also, just in terms of changing the environment, I will go out and go for a walk. And nine times out 10, something pops into my mind. I was like, oh, this is how i'm going to start this thing. Or this is how i'm going to organize this section. I've learned that just moving, you know being physical and moving my body affects my brain in a really good way. or even like when I'm swimming and I try to do a lot of that. And I come out of that feeling, just feeling like, okay, we can, we can move forward. It's not the end of the world.
00:28:57
Speaker
Especially when it came to writing Lab Dog, like when did you know you were ready to start writing? I waited a long time to start writing. And it's only because i have a good friend, Jason Darian, who wrote Killshot. And he got a fellowship at the Night Science Journalism Program.
00:29:19
Speaker
And he suggested I apply for it, which I did. And that was amazing because I got some grant money to stop freelancing for a while. And so I reported for about And and I kept talking to Jason and he's like, get the proposal out, you know, start, start writing that it doesn't have to be perfect. And of course I wanted to keep,
00:29:43
Speaker
reporting and I'm like, it's not ready yet. And he really just reminded me over and over that this is, it's a sales pitch. It's but a proposal. The agents and publishers just want to know you can put a story together and tell a story that's longer than, you know, 2000 words and that there's some narrative arc to it. and So actually met with an agent that somebody put me in touch with in DC before I really had anything put together. It was just kind of a favor. She met with me for a few minutes and said, well, she she didn't sound too optimistic, but she's like, send me ah proposal and i'll I'll take a look at it, which I was very excited about. And I said, well, I have to give myself a deadline. So it's going to be December 1st. And that's the only reason I got started on the proposal, because this one agent was Waiting or at least, you know, I told her that I would have her have this proposal to her by by that date.
00:30:37
Speaker
And then it was just cramming for a few months and it felt good to do it to switch from reporting. I think once I got the ball rolling, i realized like, OK, this is, you know, this can happen. And I ended up writing two chapters and a prologue for my proposal.
00:30:55
Speaker
you know Since I am not a big name in journalism, I knew that I was going to have to put everything I could into the proposal to make this the best sales pitch possible. And it ended up being 70 pages. and um And I think it really gave my agent and and the publishers a good idea of what this book was going to look like. ah Yeah, totally the same. My agent's very good at telling me how not like a non-name I am and and how hard I have to go in a proposal to to sell it because you're like, yeah, you don't write for the New York Times or The Athletic or ESPN. So I'm like, okay, any anything else, Susan? You want to...
00:31:35
Speaker
like Come on, just lay it on me. What else am I not? And ah so in any case, that's ah that's my my experience with the proposal. But there are probably therere you know people listening to the show who no doubt want to feel like they got a book in them. They got to go through the book proposal process. And it, of course, is a very overwhelming thing. Yeah, my Prefontaine one was in the 70 pages range and yours for Lab Dog was as well.
00:32:00
Speaker
You've already alluded to a bit of the experience of doing it, but when you sat down and you tried to yeah digest the work ahead of you for the proposal, yeah what was that experience like? How did you get it get into it? So you yeah you were writing two chapters of prologue and all the other stuff that comes with it.
00:32:17
Speaker
Well, one chapter was easy to pick because it was was probably the the least controversial, and it's a controversial topic, you know dog research, animal research. And I had gone down to Florida to see, it's called Cindaver, is the company that makes these model dogs that are used in vet school, and they're incredibly lifelike. Yeah. And the vet schools and vet tech schools use them for students to practice all sorts of procedures and surgeries and administering anesthesia. And so i saw this happening. I saw a student being tested on her knowledge of anesthesia with this big Cendavar dog.
00:32:58
Speaker
And you know so it was lots of color, and it was just a great story. And it was a feel good story because you're replacing dogs with these models. So I felt pretty good about being able to tell that chapter as kind of a standalone chapter. And then I ended up writing. The two other chapters were much more personal.
00:33:19
Speaker
um One was a prologue and about the day that Hammy came out of the lab. And then the other one was about when Hammy and I drove to the breeding facility where I learned he was born in Virginia.
00:33:35
Speaker
And so I had just taken a lot of notes on those and just felt like I could put them together as one piece without... too much of the weaving through that I knew was going to eventually happen in all the other chapters.
00:33:49
Speaker
You know, I think as as standalone pieces, as those worked in terms of the chapter summaries. i again, it was like, this is a sales piece. I don't know what it's going to turn out looking like, but let me just do my best trying to, trying to explain where, where I want to go with this. I think one thing that was really important for the timing of the proposal is that in um summer of 2022 is when the big beagle breeder in Vigo ended up closing down. And there were headlines all over the country. These 4,000 beagles were adopted out because the breeder was was shutting, which is which was unheard of.
00:34:31
Speaker
So that had just happened. And I figure if anyone is going to have heard about this, it's now because of all these headlines and they were in the news and they're beagles and they're adorable. And so I just thought, okay, this is this is really timely now. It's not only like, you know, I've spent a year plus working on this and I've spent many years living with this beagle who was in a lab, but now it's in the news. And now I can reference, you know, all these things because members of Congress are talking about it. and um Celebrities are talking about it and it's it's everywhere. And so I think that was really helpful just in the kind of initial pitch on the proposal of why why now, why me? you know I just, I did my best and got it out there. Yeah. How were you able to really sell the project given how, I mean, it's ah it's tough to read. A lot of it is very hard to read, it especially for me. I just found it i found it very hard to read in a lot of places. That was just like tearing me up. It was tough. It was tough reading. um So naturally, it that's ah it is a hard sell. andm just I'm just curious how you were really able to stick the landing on it, you and your agent, really.
00:35:41
Speaker
Well, my agent told me that, um i can't remember if this was one or two editors that she reached out to said, we love her writing. Let us know what her next book book project is. We're going to pass on this one. And and my agent told me from the very beginning, i mean, her first correspondence to me said, and it was not the initial agent that I met with. This was um this was somebody um who came a couple agents later. And and she said, you know I've never done a dog book.
00:36:12
Speaker
This is a tough topic. I don't know we're going to be able to sell this. she was willing to take it on. And she just wanted my expectations to be realistic about it. you know In terms of writing it, I knew that Hammy as the main character, he was going to be a big part of this and a big part of humanizing it because, as you said, it's just, I mean, some of it's really, really hard to read. And it was hard to imagine him in any of these scenarios And there's so much that I left out. I think that was the key is really trying to balance what readers need to know to move the story forward and to understand the history of dog testing and how we've benefited from it. But, you know, I didn't want there to be gratuitous, you know, just gore and details. And I wanted my mother, who's very squeamish and sensitive, to be able to sit down and read this and not have to...
00:37:11
Speaker
you know, put it away. So i tried to have that balance of here's the science. And here's where I was with hammy and here was our life together. And we're growing older together. And he's got some medical issues. And And but here's the science and here's where at what I learned about his background. And here's some more science and and here's, you know, a loving scene with him, which I had more of those and more scenes of us traveling together. And those had to be cut because, like you, i i wrote very long. And, you know, one point, my editor said, okay, we're going to have to cut down like 10,000 words. So, um so unfortunately some of those hammy scenes had to go, but I think, I think what we ended up with is a good balance. I've just been getting some, some nice feedback on that, that people are reading and just when they feel like they've, you know, couldn't read anymore, than a hammy scene comes. And so I, I don't know
00:38:15
Speaker
I don't know if I ever totally visualized what that was going to be at the beginning. i just had a sense that this is going to be different from other science books in that we've got this very personal character and very personal story, but I've got to figure out how to weave them together. Yeah. Well, you need you definitely needed that as a ah as a pressure valve release after reading some very heavy things of ah how various animals and specifically dogs are treated in these labs. they like You need to step out of that and have something that kind of makes you feel good because you set it aside for bit and then you can come back to you know more those touching scenes. It was... I imagine that was just you're you're really like playing like by feel and that and the shape of that probably revealed itself ah over time. They're like, yes, this is heavy. OK, we got to go light now. And then that ebb and flow, I imagine was yeah kind of struck you you know somewhat naturally, I imagine, through your rewriting.
00:39:17
Speaker
Yeah, it did. and And I'm fortunate because I did a lot of this first person narrative in my travel writing and often Hammy or my previous Beagle Darwin were with me. And so i was I was used to having those scenes, kind of spattering those scenes throughout a story. This, of course, was different from anything I'd done before. I'd really never done any investigative journalism before. And I'm not a scientist. I don't have a science background.
00:39:44
Speaker
you know i think my I had a fantastic editor, Emily Tabor, and and she really helped me get that balance right, too. What was your sort of your grand hope and your grand vision for this book from the outset?
The Impact of 'Lab Dog' on Animal Testing Dialogue
00:39:59
Speaker
For years, i would introduce Hammy to people and i would show them the tattoo in his ear because all of these dogs bred for research have tattoos. That's how they're identified. And all I knew is that he came from a lab in Virginia And so time after time, people would say, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that we experiment on dogs. um You know, is that legal? How is this still happening?
00:40:25
Speaker
And so it wasn't until the pandemic when I lost all of my travel work and then i got a really bad concussion and just wasn't working for a while.
00:40:36
Speaker
i i started thinking about this as a as a book and. you know I think my my overarching goal was to tell the story through this one individual and and really to shed light on something that most people don't know about. i mean, and it was I was reminded of that so many times. I remember i um had a short media fellowship at Vermont Law School. And so I was just immersed in this class on the Animal Welfare Act.
00:41:07
Speaker
And we had um ah attorney from the Department of Justice who actually argued the case about Invigo. And she told me, or she told the class, that many of her colleagues at the Department of Justice that work on animal cases didn't know that there were dogs used in research.
00:41:27
Speaker
And so I was just reminded time and time again that nobody knows this. you know i I didn't really understand much about any type of research, guinea pigs or mice or rabbits. i I knew that it happened. But how many of us are digging into this and trying to understand it? um Just like you know for people who eat meat, we we don't want to think about where that comes from. And we don't want to think about how we get our drugs and how they're tested. And it just you know these things just happen.
00:41:54
Speaker
i in ah In addition to wanting to know Hammy's background, i also just wanted to know how all this research and testing played a role in our everyday lives. And the deeper I got, the more I realized that it touches everything.
00:42:09
Speaker
you know, every chemical and every product we buy and the pesticides and the prescription drugs and the over the counter drugs. And of course, cosmetics is kind of a success story because they've really mostly done away with animal testing. But, you know, there's a history of it with with all of these products we buy and industrial chemicals and So I think that is really relatable to people. i mean, we all have had experiences with drugs or medical devices or procedures, and none of those were animal free. You know, I think that I wanted people to understand this was happening. And i guess my dream would be for the book to become animal
00:42:54
Speaker
part of the dialogue around this and that it become less polarized where people from the animal research community and people from the animal activist community who, you know i think we all want the same thing, or at least everyone says we want to move away from animal research. But how can we do better today? I'm convinced that we can. And, you know, what are the next steps we can take? Because right now, it's just it's so polarized that the two sides rarely talk and rarely, if ever, sit at the table. And i wanted to write a book that was, from a journalist's perspective, really interesting.
00:43:33
Speaker
being fair to both sides and listening to stories from both sides, all sides. So that that would be my wish is that, you know, if it could get into the hands of people that can make a difference.
00:43:47
Speaker
Yeah. What is the the best of both worlds situation to be able to conduct research that can advance science while causing the least amount of harm or no harm at all?
00:44:01
Speaker
Well, i I would say that immediately um there are things we could do like adding all animals to the Animal Welfare Act, because right now, mice and rats, which are the vast majority of animals used, are are not even covered under the Animal Welfare Act. So we don't even know how many there are.
00:44:23
Speaker
um Some estimates say over 100 million mice and rats are used every year. so you know, we can't stop animal research overnight. if If it is stopped or if it's slowed, it's going to be a process. But I think changing the laws to include more animals, to include something about the pain that they can undergo.
00:44:46
Speaker
so right now, if a researcher puts in his or her proposal that this animal can experience pain without painkillers and they can justify it to and i h or whoever's funding this experiment, then then that's okay. I mean, there's no upper limit of pain.
00:45:07
Speaker
And you know, if we cut back on funding to animal research, or find funding elsewhere, we can direct more of it to the development of these non animal methods, which I think are very promising. They are showing to be more predictive for human health than animal studies are, you know, more than nine out of 10 drugs that are successful in animals end up failing and human clinical trials because they're toxic, or they're just not effective. So The pharmaceutical companies, i mean, they want to make money. They don't want to spend billions of dollars and decades on drugs that are going to fail in and human trials. As a society, we all would want to move away from this. I don't hear anybody say, oh I really hope we can keep experimenting on animals because I love it. They say, well, we don't think there's a replacement for a full human body. We have to use them as models because obviously we can't experiment on humans. So I think there's more common ground than the sides realize, but I don't think that there's, i don't think they're coming together to discuss it and talk about, you know, all these ways we can move forward right now.
00:46:18
Speaker
yeah What are be it the computer models or these other synthetic models that are promising that can get away from actually yeah breeding these animals into these horrible conditions they're subjected to?
00:46:35
Speaker
So yeah, there's AI, computer modeling, organoids. There's an organ chip, which i went to one of the companies making them in Boston, which is called Emulate. And it's ah it's a little chip that's like the size of a thumb drive.
00:46:51
Speaker
And it's made of silicone and it's got these little channels going through it. And so the scientists put human organ cells in them. So there could be a lung chip or a kidney chip or a liver chip. And then they put in drugs or bacteria and see they see how the human organ cells react. So they're mimicking a human organ. So that's much more human relevant than a beagle organ or a mouse organ. And we don't have a whole body on a chip yet. So the people who say, you know, we're not there yet, including the chip makers, say that, you know, we can just do these organs, we can't see how the whole body reacts. But there there is still a lot more we can be doing with them, all the pharmaceutical companies are using them, the FDA is using them. And, you know, it's really a combination of
00:47:43
Speaker
that type of technology plus plus the AI and the computer modeling and vast amounts of human data that we have now, you know we need to start directing funding there and start training younger scientists to use these methods. Because you know if you go through school and get your PhD and you're researching on animals, that will likely be your track.
00:48:07
Speaker
You don't close an animal lab and say, okay, tomorrow we're using organ chips. So, It's, you know, it's a long process, but there's there's a number of things we can do now. What was your initial or you just your experience in general of seeing the the model dogs and what those feel and look like?
00:48:31
Speaker
Oh, they're they're really a little creepy looking because they um the models look like dogs that have been skinned. I mean, you see, at least the model that I look like you know just muscles and ligaments and bones. And i actually went to the factory to see where they were made and they're hand stitched together and they're um you know they're really pieces of art, but they also bleed and, you know, they they do things that the human body does. They they don't do other things like, you know, if they're cut, they don't heal. that material doesn't heal.
00:49:10
Speaker
You know, it's really a great way for students to learn and think about decades ago in vet schools where they used to all have their dogs that were that were bred for this. They'd order their dogs, they cut the dogs open and study their anatomy.
00:49:25
Speaker
Sometimes they would, this is awful, they would break a dog's leg, then fix the bone, set the bone, let the dog heal. and then anesthetize the dog again so they could check their work and then kill the dog.
00:49:43
Speaker
So, you know, these animals in all these situations are just seen as disposable and we don't we don't need to do that anymore. Yeah, yeah that that that particular one you described, that one stuck out to me. I had to put the book down for a moment like reading that. I'm like, this is gruesome and in inhumane beyond like this the torture they put these animals through. And then you know some of the euphemism they use, like, oh, yeah, now we've got to sacrifice them. And that's their euphemism for euthanizing animals. these poor critters that go through that went through this. And there are any, there are any number of things in the glossary, if you will, of some of the euphemisms they use. Like I didn't realize, you know, like clinical trials was also like lab science speak for like, Oh, that's when they're, that's the animal testing part of it. Like I was like, Oh, that never really dawned on me.
00:50:36
Speaker
I know. Yeah, there's there's so many, so many euphemisms. There's a whole section where I write about this journal that I think it was in the 20s.
00:50:49
Speaker
but If you don't mind, let me just check that real quick. Okay, I've got it. Sorry about that. So there was there was a journal in the 1920s. And the the guidelines actually talked about the words that should and shouldn't be used. And so, you know, you weren't to describe an animal as a he or a she, it was an it. And, you know, if they were crying out in pain, they might've just been vocalizing. If they were being starved for an experiment, it was something like, don't know, like reducing their food intake. And, and, you know, they didn't want, the experimenters didn't want animal activists to get ahold of this and use it in their propaganda materials. And I think a lot of these words,
00:51:37
Speaker
stuck. And, you know, now there's some people suggesting, well, maybe we should mention the specific animal used in these in these studies. And we should talk about who they were and mentioned if they had names, which most don't sometimes dogs and primates are named in labs, but um certainly the mice and the fish are not. And anyway, so there there's some people suggesting that but for the most part it's it's very sterile. Talk about sacrificing the animals they talk about. um
00:52:09
Speaker
Instead of like restraining them it's just, yeah you know, all these all these words are softened. And, and so i think it harms not only, of course, the animals and the public that doesn't know, but I think it's harmful for the people who work in the labs, because they they have to shut off a part of themselves to, to even do that their work, right to to do what they're doing to animals and then go home at night to see their cats and dogs. And, you know, I experienced that in the tiniest bit, even with the reporting, because i had to shut a part of myself off. I mean, it's, it's impossible just to feel all this, you know, read it all and, and understand what's happening. And if you're a feeling person, you can't, can't not feel awful about it.
00:53:00
Speaker
Yeah, there's one moment in the book where you ah visit one of the an older researcher who did a lot of animal research. And even when you brought Hammy over to his house, he like referred to it as the dog.
00:53:11
Speaker
And so that was like a vestigial a limb of him referring to an animal that he's not... like ah personally invested in ah that he yeah you could see the the muscle of the muscle memory of of his detachment right there illustrated perfectly in your exchange with him it it was It was really important for me to have Hammy with me, not only because he was a great co-pilot and I just loved being together with him, but i I wanted to introduce him to the researchers and the ethicists and the the people who worked at as veterinarians in the labs because
00:53:53
Speaker
for the most part, these people haven't met animals, lab animals outside of the lab. And so that part was important for me to just to see, like you said, how how they interacted, did they Did they treat Hammy like one of their lab dogs or like a pet? You know, were they interested in his story?
00:54:11
Speaker
You know, I think that them seeing him for for any of the people we met, you know, i think it really I think it really was meaningful because here's an animal who made it out, which rarely, rarely happens.
00:54:24
Speaker
and And he's got a full life now. This is the life that... you know, he he could have had and the first four years of his life were in confinement. And, you know, nobody likes to think about that.
00:54:36
Speaker
Yeah. And you express later in the book ah some degree of disappointment in and just in some of the exchanges you had with scientists, like you're looking for some measure of ah closure, maybe even remorse on their part. ah ah But, you know, what was your experience and what were you hoping and to hear from them?
00:54:57
Speaker
When I started the book, i I was sure that I was going to go out and meet the people who experimented on Hammy and the people responsible for breeding him. And I was going to take Hammy to meet them and they were going to apologize. it'd be a very tidy story. And that did not happen.
00:55:18
Speaker
um I did really try to find who might have known him and a filed um some information Freedom of Information Act requests and the lab said that they only keep records for three years and it was past that time. And as I as i continued reporting and realizing i was not going to meet these people, um I learned about, you know, in the idea of in restorative justice, there's this idea of a surrogate. so You've got the person who's harmed and the person who does the harm.
00:55:52
Speaker
And so in this case, Hammy was harmed by being confined and not being able to sniff and choose where he goes to sleep at night and experience new things. And so So that was the harm. And if I couldn't find the people who did that, I could find a surrogate, which ended up being two different dog researchers who spent their careers um doing studies on dogs.
00:56:18
Speaker
And yeah, even when I met them, i did not hear what I was dreaming of hearing. They didn't look Hammy in the eye and say, I'm sorry, I will never do this again, or I feel badly about what I did, because they all felt good about their work. They felt like they were making the world a better place, and they talked about rare diseases and how parents need cures for their children, and it's it's hard not to...
00:56:48
Speaker
believe that because because all of that is true. And yet there there are increasingly different ways to do that. And I think there's just such inertia now, especially with the universities of doing this research and doing it well and getting more grants that pay for more animals. You can do more research and So the funding at and NIH really needs to change on that level. and the good news is that this administration is actually talking about it more than previous administrations. The and NIH is no longer putting out requests for proposals that say we want a monkey experiment. It'll say, here's the question we're trying to answer. and
00:57:36
Speaker
Researchers then can submit proposals that have animals or non-animal methods, but it's it's different from saying, you know, we're going to do an animal experiment on this and, you know, please submit your proposal. So i think I think things are shifting, but until the the funding changes, it's it's going to be really slow going. Yeah, there's a moment in the book, too, where you write, you know, real change in animal research would come from economics, not ethics. And that's, like, so sadly the case in a hyper-capitalistic country where it's just, like, if you want change, it's, like, you've got hit...
00:58:14
Speaker
shareholders and corporations in their pocketbooks. You're not going to like win by pulling on heartstrings. You're going to win by, you know, depleting their war chest. And it's like, all right, that's the, and the backdoor way to make the change, especially in this country. And whether it's boycotting a certain retailer or, you know, finding a way to, yeah, to, to hit the, to hit the purse is the way to affect the heart eventually. Yeah.
00:58:42
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And there's so many different groups that I talk to and animal activist groups and pesticide makers. um I didn't get any pharmaceutical companies to talk to me. Actually, I take that back. There is one who This company, Vanda, ended up suing the FDA because they refused to test on dogs. So i did I did talk to them. But, you know, I think part of the divide is that the animal activist groups are just pulling on the heartstrings. I mean, they're showing these videos and these pictures and...
00:59:17
Speaker
they They're not talking about the economics, but there's starting to be a shift. Like even within PETA, there's a really robust science division where they are talking about the science. And they're like, yeah, this actually isn't good science either. I mean, it's you know it's not ethical. It's terrible for the animals, but it's bad science.
00:59:37
Speaker
that's That's encouraging because i think the science and the economics, i mean that's what's going to make the shift. Yeah. To your point earlier, too, about how desensitized, you know, the researchers often get. You said, ah quoting Nick Jukes, he said, using animals harm harmfully in education teaches the disposability of animals, which is not a good lesson for a vet student to learn. And then that just becomes further imprinted, really, as they go like, this how I learn, so this is how...
01:00:04
Speaker
the next generation should learn too, because look where look where I came from. Right. And it starts so young. yeah It starts when we're dissecting frogs in school. And so I write a little bit about that and and how students in many states now have choices. If they don't want to dissect a frog, they're not going to fail their course. They can, you know, there's... there's large number of synthetic frogs. i mean, the same company that makes the dogs makes frogs that are amazingly lifelike and they have little pockets of organs inside. And so you cut them open and you see pretty much everything you'd see in a real frog, but they don't stink like formaldehyde. and um But yeah, it it starts very young that teaching kids that these animals are not important.
01:00:47
Speaker
We get desensitized and I think that's probably what the researchers feel because, you know, you you order and ah as a lab worker, you order these animals just like you order other supplies. I saw a packing slip once for some beagles from Invigo and they list all the beagles and their tattoo numbers and their coloring and then On the bottom, there's a place for the recipient lab to sign that they've received the beagles and they're all in good condition. um Just like, you know, you're ordering your television or dishwasher.
01:01:23
Speaker
we We just don't see them or they don't see them as living things. I mean, Like I said, particularly dogs can get some special treatment. They sometimes get named. They sometimes get toys. Sometimes they come out of their kennels and volunteers come to play with them. But that's that's not happening with the other animals. And dogs are just a very small percentage. Oh, yeah. And it just...
01:01:48
Speaker
going through the supermarket and you see everything, you know, packaged in the, you know, what my wife and I call like the death department. And and it's like that steak there, like that, that was an animal. Like it's not this a steak product in one of the frozen food aisles where it's just like frozen, frozen death. I'm like, Oh my God, these are all, all critters that ah deserve far better than this. When you have to look it in the eye and realize what it is, like it's fundamentally hard for someone to like be okay with that. But a lot of people would be like, you know what? I like the taste of bacon and I don't want to know what that whether what that pig is going through. that but I sure as hell loved my smoked cured meats.
01:02:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, we we humans are are funny species in that way. You know, Hammy, of course, had big personality and likes and dislikes and fears. And i kept reminding myself that that was the case for all of these animals.
01:02:50
Speaker
You know the ferrets and the rabbits and the mice and yeah, you know, he was just one. Yeah, for sure. oh very nice. Well, well Melanie, as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, I like asking the guests for just a fun recommendation of some kind ah for whatever is whatever's making you happy that you want to share with the listeners. So I would extend that to you.
01:03:13
Speaker
Well, I highly recommend some unplugged time. i um for a while, was doing something called a tech Shabbat that was coined by Tiffany Schlain, where it's like a Friday night to Saturday night, totally off screens. And I couldn't believe how much time I had.
01:03:31
Speaker
And, you know, if you need to call someone the next day, you have to write down their number and, If you want to go the movies, you've got to look that up beforehand. So it needs takes a little bit of preparation. But I was doing that for a while before I started working on the book. And and then last summer, after the manuscript was all edited and proofread, drove across Canada and spent a full week unplugged in Western Canada. And it was just amazing. I read books and made potholders and was just um probably more relaxed than I've been in a long time. How often were you like phantom reaching for your device?
01:04:12
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you, I don't have a smartphone. i have a phone that only texts and does calls. It's called a light phone.
Embracing Tech-Free Time
01:04:20
Speaker
It's a little startup. all right um and And so I love that phone, but I do have an iPad. And so I can do a lot of things on the iPad and of course my laptop. And, yeah, it's definitely it's definitely muscle memory, right? You just want to grab that thing. Totally. i know. And i I try to, I'm not great at it, but I try to some have periods of time, at least during the day, where the my phone is ideally out of the room and out of sight.
01:04:49
Speaker
But then so I'll be noodling around with any various tasks I'm doing. And yeah, I just I'll catch myself in like that a five or 10 second lull and just like my hand will just like go reach for it. I'm like, oh my God, what the fuck are you doing, man? It's like, holy shit, I have been so conditioned by this thing.
01:05:09
Speaker
It's like, oh man, like, you know, we're lab animals in that regard. Like we're getting... Tugged and tortured in ah in all sorts of different ways, too. Well, I really feel like we have to, you know, we as a society um are going to have to start proactively moving ourselves away from it. It's it's like...
01:05:32
Speaker
This is just happening to us. We're just getting tighter and tighter with these devices and these screens, and we don't even know it's happening to us, right? Whoever's conducting this big study on us. Yeah, for sure. And it's it's harder it's harder and harder to fight it.
01:05:46
Speaker
Big time. Big time. It's ah yeah it's tugging on the same you know feedback loops that you use like with rats and cocaine studies and all that stuff. It's like we we would starve to death most likely if we if we get the little a little heart in in Instagram and be like, oh, that felt good. And and you know there. It's funny because I have a podcast account and my personal account, but they're kind of like the same. um And so i I will and sometimes I have DMs going in different ones like a group chat in one. But then sometimes they do you know podcast outreach through the other one to book guests and all that stuff.
01:06:23
Speaker
So I toggle between the two. And oftentimes it's like ah if I go to one, i see a notification from the other account I just left. And it'll be like, oh, it's it. They're trying to like bait me to keep going back. They're like, oh, we probably have a reservoir of 30 likes, but we titrate it out. And like, that's what's happening. It's ah it's crazy. I see it in real time. Like, oh, I see what I see what you're you know, you're you're programming, your algorithm is doing to me and no doubt millions and billions of others. But it's pretty sick when you see it in action.
01:06:58
Speaker
Oh my God, it's awful. Disgusting. Awesome. Well, Melanie, thank you so much for coming on the show and talking some shop and and for writing ah for writing this book and you're really illuminating you know what's happening in these labs and yeah what we might be able to do with it moving forward. So just thank you for the the work you did.
01:07:16
Speaker
Well, thanks for having me on. I've been listening to your podcast for so many years and it's just, um yeah, such an honor and a dream to be here talking to you now.
01:07:31
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Thanks to Melanie for coming by the show. It's weird saying that that's my wife's name. And then this guest was Melanie's weird saying like, thanks to Melanie. Uh, thanks to the, the Melanie that, uh, I betrothed more than 15 years ago. She makes it all possible.
01:07:51
Speaker
Got to have that health insurance. And thanks to Melanie DG Kaplan for writing the book, for coming on the show to talk a little shop, to do the thing.
01:08:03
Speaker
You follow the show on Instagram, bull at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And subscribe to the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter by visiting brendanomero.com. As well as going to welcomethepitchclub.substack.com if you want to learn how to write better pitches.
01:08:17
Speaker
And if you write better pitches, you can publish more stories. And if you publish more stories, you don't have to start that OnlyFans page. I mean, you do you, but... You might not want to.
01:08:29
Speaker
But I've heard good things. So stay wild, CNAFers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.