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Episode 495: On Being Merciless with Peter Rubin of Longreads
0 Playsin 19 hours
"When I came in [to Longreads], I didn't come in and say, I think we need to grow aggressively. I said, 'Let's figure out who we are. Let's figure out what other people aren't doing, that we do , and that we can do better.' And so the only real thing that changed when I first came in was to try to make the editors known quantities," says Peter Rubin, head of publishing at Automattic, where he works primarily with Longreads, but also The Atavist Magazine.
Today we have Peter Rubin. He’s on the pod to talk about a lot of things, but he’s also drumming up attention for a membership drive for longreads.com, a hub of curation for the best longreads on the web, first started by Mark Armstrong. Longreads has since gone onto publish original works of criticism, journalism, and personal essays and won a National Magazine Award for best digital illustration in 2020. In conjunction with with Oregon Public Broadcasting, they produced Bundyville, the hit podcast that made Leah Sottile something of a household name (shoutout to her new season of Hush).
He spent many years at Wired Magazine and he’s also the author of Future Presence: How Virtual Reality is Changing Human Connection, Intimacy, and the Limits of Ordinary Life, which came out in 2018, but with Chat GPT going full porn for verified adult users (what could possibly go wrong?), Peter’s book seems oddly of the moment … also it’s only seven years old, but I guess in tech that’s like the stone age.
You can learn more about Peter from his very stripped down website ptrrbn.com, yeah, he hates vowels, don’t come at him with vowels, or on the gram @provenself.
In this conversation we talk about:
- Finding diamonds in the rough
- How he cultivated his editor eye
- Being merciless in the edit
- Figuring out the new identity of Longreads when he took over in 2021
- Curation
- And the Longreads membership drive
Visit longreads.com to read more and to pony up … that’s what I’m going to do, for you people who think I get handouts, just know that I’m not that savvy.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Upcoming Events & Podcast Announcements
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey CNFers, any people in and around Bend, Oregon on Sunday, October 19th? Anyone? Anyone? I'll be at Dudley's Bookshop and Cafe from 1 to 2.30, doing a little lecture, doing a little Q&A, signing a little book called The Front Runner.
00:00:17
Speaker
And if you're in Eugene on Sunday, October 26th, the fourth and final live podcast recording of 2025 will be taking place at Gratitude Brewing, 1 p.m. We started something special with these live podcasts.
00:00:29
Speaker
We're going to keep them coming, baby. Also, call for submissions for the next issue of the audio magazine is up. The theme is codes. For more information and submission guidelines, visit brendanomero.com. It's the top pinned thing on my homepage.
00:00:45
Speaker
And let the you just be the you that motivates the perspective rather than the you that narrates the perspective. That's where the power of of personal writing, I think, really comes.
Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Podcast
00:01:02
Speaker
Alright, CNFers, it's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where i speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, punk-ass bitch of CNF.
00:01:14
Speaker
This is the first CNF pod after Mark Maron's sunset at WTF, which has really bummed me out this week, not gonna lie. I've had friends and peers compare CNF Pod to WTF and, by extension, compare me to him. And I take this as a compliment.
00:01:30
Speaker
I never sought to rip off Mark. I'd be just as grouchy, bitter, and resentful had I never heard of him. I applaud him for walking away at the height of his powers so he can find meaning in other work.
00:01:43
Speaker
I look forward I hope he keeps up his weekly newsletter just so we can be a passenger to his thinking week to week. It's always been fun. The monologues were always one of my favorite things about his podcast.
00:01:59
Speaker
I don't know when I'll sunset CNF pod, but it's going to be a long, long time. Sorry to
Meet Peter Rubin: Career & Insights
00:02:05
Speaker
disappoint. Today we have Peter Rubin. He is head of publishing at Automatic, where he works primarily with longreads.com, but also helps out his pals at the sister magazine, the Atavis magazine. You might have heard of it.
00:02:18
Speaker
He's on the pod today to talk about a lot of things, but he's also drumming up attention for a membership drive for longreads.com, a hub of curation for the best long reads on the web, first started by Mark Armstrong, he of a few episodes ago on this podcast.
00:02:34
Speaker
ah Long Reads has since gone on to publish original works of criticism and journalism and personal essays, and they won a National Magazine Award for Best Digital Illustration in 2020. Yeah.
00:02:47
Speaker
In conjunction with Oregon Public Broadcasting, they produced Bundyville, the hit podcast that made Leah Satili something of a household name. Shout out to her new season of Hush. More about Peter in a second, okay?
00:03:00
Speaker
Be patient, you mongrels, you insatiable monsters. Show notes to this episode more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, there. You can peruse for hot blogs and sign up for my two very important newsletters, The Flagship, Rage Against the Algorithm, and Pitch Club. Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com.
00:03:17
Speaker
Also, if you care to support the podcast with a few dollar-dollar bills, y'all, visit patreon.com slash cnfpod. There are some rad perks, but most are just happy to throw a few bucks into the guitar case.
00:03:28
Speaker
Okay, so a little more about Peter. He spent many years at Wired Magazine, and he's also the author of Future Presence, How Virtual Reality is Changing Human Connection, Intimacy, and the Limits of Ordinary Life, which came out in 2018.
00:03:43
Speaker
But with ChatGPT going full porn for verified adult users, what could possibly go wrong? Peter's book seems oddly of the moment. Also, it's only seven years old.
00:03:53
Speaker
But I guess in tech, that's like a stone age ago. You can learn more about Peter from his very stripped-down website, ptrrbn.com. Yeah, he hates vowels.
00:04:07
Speaker
Don't come at him with vowels. Or you can follow him on the gram, at ProvenSelf. In this conversation, we talk about finding diamonds in the rough,
00:04:18
Speaker
How he cultivated his editor eye. Being merciless in the edit. Figuring out the identity of Long Reads when he took over in 2021. Curation. And the Long Reads membership drive.
00:04:30
Speaker
Visit longreads.com to read more and to pony up. That's what I'm going to do. For you people who think I get handouts, just know that I'm not that savvy. Parting shot on my week in Idaho and sleeping in and on top of my car in the power of friends.
00:04:46
Speaker
ah But for now, here's my new best friend, Peter Rubin. Huh.
00:04:57
Speaker
When that's on my plate, you know, then it's the fear of the deadline. I work backwards from deadlines. It's not fucking personal, but it feels so personal. I am effing done. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:22
Speaker
I in Indiana, lit out for different pastures as soon as I could, which was college. And I left college having no real idea of what to do. i hated creative writing when I was growing up.
00:05:33
Speaker
I wrote by assignment only. And then my first year out of college, I was working at a think tank in Washington, D.C. And I remember being on a flight maybe flight to visit my family and I grabbed ah an issue of Esquire and this was David Granger's Esquire that like that was the lightning bolt and it was almost immediate. I was like, that's what I want to do. You know, it's it's reading Mike Sager and Tom Junot and like the murderer's row that was there. But even beyond the features, the magazine as a form, I just, you know, I grew up reading magazines, but not thinking about them.
00:06:10
Speaker
And Esquire, you know, that moment was the first time I remember like Thinking about a magazine as a work unto itself and what the front of the book was and what its function was and so I was living in DC and I knew I was gonna go to New York because that's where all my friends were and now I had a ah real reason right? yeah So I ended up going to grad school for journalism.
00:06:34
Speaker
i had no idea no one I didn't see that. I didn't see it growing up. I didn't see it in college. No kids that I went to school with went into media or journalism.
00:06:46
Speaker
There was like one that I had heard of, but I didn't know him. So I just didn't know what that world looked like. um So I got some grounding. in the basics i i hated news reporting and i knew that wasn't me and i always knew that i wanted to like go magazines and go culture writing specifically so i ended up getting a freelance fact checking gig at gq that was the foot in the door so you know you hang around and you wait for an assistant to screw up and you know you wait for your chance to like redo some deep captions or whatever it is and
00:07:21
Speaker
one little you know One little bit leads to one more little bit. And this was the end of Art Cooper's tenure. Right? So the another legendary editor. So like when I envisioned working in magazines, it was David Granger's Esquire.
00:07:37
Speaker
But somehow... through just like ah bizarre stroke of fortune, I found myself at Art Cooper's GQ and the writers who were there, I mean, it was Lucy Kalin and Brandon Hawley and Michael Haney, and that was in-house, Devin Friedman these and ah Adam Sachs. These were the people that I learned from.
00:07:57
Speaker
And I, over ah the period of a few months, I ended up jumping out of fact checking over to the editorial side as assistant editor and then became a staff writer.
00:08:09
Speaker
And it was it. I mean, at the time, this was everything that I thought I ever wanted. Your first magazine job to turn into that. So it was I wanted to write about any and everything.
00:08:20
Speaker
um And then as my career went on, it it became more cultural than anything else, which was like the original goal. ah So I went and i you know I wrote around. After I left GQ, you could have a ah thriving freelance career writing. and And so I did that for a couple of years. And then I missed people.
00:08:39
Speaker
And and so I ended up going to Complex and then to Wired. um So in 2011, Wired Wired's culture editor left and and they were looking for someone. And so that I ended up getting that, which took me from New York to California.
00:08:55
Speaker
And I spent almost a decade at Wired. and had an absolutely incredible time. And so that is when my like writer, your writerly remit expands, right? So you know i was, i should also say that I started as a writer, but you very quickly become an editor also.
00:09:15
Speaker
you're You're steeped in it. And this was a time when the culture of mentorship was sort of baked into magazines. So whether it's you're writing a cover profile and you're down the hall from the editor,
00:09:28
Speaker
You see how they work on it. It's not it is not an email relationship You are yeah you know, you are there and and you really soak in the DNA of magazine making and long and and and feature editing and feature writing so you internalize the sort of structural beats in a way that are so difficult to do from outside, you know just the good fortune of being like right at the end of the like glitzy or
Evolution of Journalism & Magazine Industry
00:09:54
Speaker
condi era.
00:09:55
Speaker
Like I saw the town cars and I saw the editors getting into their, you know, getting into their fancy places. And I wasn't I was nowhere near there, but I saw it. um But that was also a time when magazine journalism started to contract in a really fundamental way. And being at being at Wired, it brought me more into the doing more tech journalism, obviously.
00:10:18
Speaker
I'll always ah suffused with what it meant for culture and what it meant for larger, larger ideas. And then I left Wired to help a friend launch a publication at Medium. And this was Medium's like last final, ah final push as a as a kind of separate editorial publisher. They launched a bunch of a bunch of titles in the like 2019.
00:10:42
Speaker
time So and then and then a little pandemic came around and that changed some things. And so I ended up coming to to automatic to long reads in the atavist in 2021.
00:10:54
Speaker
And journalism for me has always been about curiosity more than topic. And so. I love any place that thinks deeply about journalism and storytelling. And so they both those titles have such a storied history and tradition of long form journalism that it's been a real, real joy being there.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah. I love ah when when you said that you yeah hated creative writing at one point. And I'll never forget, I tried ah taking in college, I tried taking like a creative writing class.
00:11:29
Speaker
I would probably love and nerd out on it now. But at the time, the instructor, we were looking at like the first sentence or two of Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. And like the first sentence, it like ended with fish. And the second sentence began with in.
00:11:46
Speaker
And we spent like way too much time, like the fish and it would be like in. So like it was gonna catch it. You know, it was that, that degree of really nerdy bridging of sentences. I'm like, i just want to write cool stories. This is, this, this is a little bit too deep for me. And I ended up withdrawing from the class, but I think now I would really like it. But at that time I was like, ah, this is bullshit.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah. You, and, and I've always envied those people who claim any sort of like, inborn need to write. um right Because that sort of motivating energy propels you through your life and and you're always, you know you find the joy in the in the creative urge. And that is something that's emerged over time for me, but was it was nowhere, nowhere. like I liked writing poems and i was i was I still am, but I was super into hip hop when I was a kid. And so like rap was my
00:12:44
Speaker
That was what I wanted to write. And so you you know the idea of expressing your thoughts through writing wasn't completely anathema to me, but the idea of sitting down and writing a story felt like you're asking me to do something that is just not in my DNA, but you have to be exposed to the thing that, that lights you up. And, and there are so many flavors of creative writing and, and, and creative nonfiction that once you, you know, for a lot of people, myself included, it's, you just have to see that thing, find that thing. And that's what, that's the thing that you, you know, you connect.
00:13:20
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and David Granger's Esquire was that kind of turn that world from black and white into color for you. And I love what you said about the the mentorship being kind of baked into these places where you worked.
00:13:32
Speaker
And what was that experience like of you know being able to suddenly see things that you weren't seeing before because you were exposed to a new kind of vernacular? I mean, the thing that that i I remember so much is the, like,
00:13:48
Speaker
those Those books and those two books in particular, these were like the men's books. And so I want to try to rest the free of any sort of gendered language in talking about this because every magazine had this.
00:14:03
Speaker
And that is the idea of a house tone and a house voice. And what is like, who is the we? But those books in particular wrote with an authority that bordered on swagger.
00:14:15
Speaker
And it was before the word swag was ever being used, but the the idea that a book like that was seen as aspirational. People read GQ and Esquire in part because they wanted to level up.
00:14:30
Speaker
Maybe it was their personal style, maybe it was the stories that they were exposed to. But the thing that... was really inculcated in me was the importance of being able to um embody that that house tone while also, while not sacrificing your personal writing voice to it. Obviously, everybody who writes, who has written at a book like that, you know, you had people like John Jeremiah Sullivan and Matt Teague and Chris Heath and and Elizabeth Gilbert and all these legendary people go through those titles and
00:15:04
Speaker
they became who they were and they had this indelible voice that didn't go anywhere, but it was sort of in concert with ah magazine that knew what it was and knew what it was to people.
00:15:18
Speaker
And the sort of seismes, the upheaval that magazines have gone through, I think that's one of the things that's fallen by the wayside is the idea of the DNA of ah of a magazine and that writers often find themselves feeling like they are writers who then need to connect with with a magazine.
00:15:44
Speaker
But it's it it's not a um it's not as much a sort of pool of Like these magazines were talent pools. And, you know, I grew up reading Mad Magazine and you had the usual gang of idiots.
00:15:57
Speaker
It was the same people contributing. the the the The satire and the spoofs were always different. But you had that feeling in a lot of magazines for a very, very long time. And you still have it today at the Atlantic and New Yorker and places like that.
00:16:11
Speaker
But I think it's those places that have a print history that have managed to retain that. I think the few places that you see that now are in the are in the like cooperative model, the defectors and the 404s where it's owned by the journalists. And these are the journalists that you read and and love day in and day out.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, there's something to be said like when you would you would get one of those ah magazines and you if you started to have a connection with the writers. like With The New Yorker, the first thing I look at is the table of contents because I'm like, all right, who are my favorite who are my favorite starters in the lineup? Are they starting this week? yeah And I'm like, oh, cool. like There's Nick Palmgarten. I'm like,
00:16:53
Speaker
I know I'm in for this kind of ride and here's Lauren Collins. I know there's going to be something from Paris or something in that story. And it's like, i it's like, oh, cool. Like this is, i like this, ah this lineup ah this week. and And then maybe there's someone I haven't heard of. like, okay, I'll, when I, ah whenever I may get a chance to open this and actually read it, because let's face it, those things just pile, up pile up to the sky and you're like, you don't read them and you feel all guilty that you're not reading them.
00:17:19
Speaker
but the But the fact is, it's like, yeah, to to your point, you start having a connection with those those readers in that lineup and ah what they're bringing to it. and you're like, okay, yeah, cool. Like this feels like my crew. Yeah, absolutely. And it's, there are so few magazines that I think have been able to maintain that kind of feeling. And the New Yorker has been obvious.
00:17:39
Speaker
Obviously the New Yorker is going to do it well, but they've done a really nice job of evolving so that they have you know Even the folks who are maybe not in the building, they do a really good job of ah bringing in names that you just love reading, whether it's Gia Tolentino and they've got Hanif Abdurraqib now. And so like your favorite critics and they've managed to feel like a reflection of a different generation, which was always the knock on the New Yorker as it felt just sort of rarefied and and older, but they are more vital in some really surprising ways than others.
00:18:15
Speaker
the the younger me would have ever given them credit for being. Yeah. So you're coming up in in magazines and then you know when it was maybe not at a peak, but still going strong. And then you you know you're in the thick of it as you're still trying to get traction yourself as things start to yeah contract. like So how are you metabolizing what was going on around you and looking out into the landscape and thinking, oh my God, like where do I fit into this now?
00:18:42
Speaker
Yeah. I'm going to say this word so many times in the course of this conversation. I was so incredibly fortunate to... When the when the winds really got tough, I was lucky enough to be somewhere and and to be on staff somewhere, which was you know going through...
00:19:00
Speaker
the recession slash media apocalypse of 2008. And you saw title after title after title, title fold and friend after friend after friend after acquaintance, you know, losing, losing journalism jobs.
00:19:16
Speaker
um That was, you know, I was at complex when that happened and that was the first title. Those first magazine where I worked, where it actually very mindfully,
00:19:29
Speaker
evolved from being print to a print digital hybrid. When I was at GQ and this is in the early aughts, Conde's Conde magazine, the Conde Nest magazines didn't have their own web titles there was style.com there was epicurious and i think there was probably a third one but like there was no gq.com there was style.com and the just people didn't consume journalism at the time the way online the way they did and so it at complex was the first time that
00:20:04
Speaker
I and everybody else on staff, I was executive editor there. We all became web editors too. And we all started thinking in different story forms. And thankfully I had a i had ah a real grounding in putting together a front of book sections, right? So you're thinking bitsier and it's almost like roundups and listicles before they were called roundups and listicles. So we were doing, we had a feature well,
00:20:30
Speaker
I was editing you know reported work and profiles and Q&As and all that stuff, but at the same time, we were learning what people read online. And without that, I mean, without that, there there wasn't a ah ah staffed up journalist who was able to opt out of that evolution process. So then when I went to Wired,
00:20:58
Speaker
Interestingly enough, they had a print staff and they had a digital staff. Now this was the place that had like invented the banner ad, right? so like they knew they knew digital presentation and they knew what ah what online media could be.
00:21:14
Speaker
Yet they had two different groups of people separated. it was the same floor, but there was a door you had to, you would walk out of the print side, you'd go down the hallway, you'd scan your card and you'd go into the and in the digital side and and they called it the Berlin hall.
00:21:32
Speaker
And it made no sense. So at some point, the culture editor, The online culture editor ah wanted to go back to writing and the culture section needed an editor. So I went to them and i was like, look, I'm editing.
00:21:47
Speaker
for the well, and I'm putting together this front of book section. What if I just took over the the culture section? They were like, why haven't we done this? so like That sort of grounding and being hybrid, print and online, served me really well because then the Berlin Hall started to finally dissolve. and I'm not saying that I did that. What I'm saying is it was the beginning of a lot of people becoming hybrid. so It's such a rarity now to find anybody who works solely in print for any for any magazine.
00:22:20
Speaker
But it was a sort of long history of of being in the right place at the right time and adding that one twist to the thing you do that helps you stay abreast of what the shifts are.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yeah. And when you were doing, let's say, more ah reporting and writing, know, I hear it like down there, just have classic reporter notebook down here where I scribble little notes in. I always love getting a sense of how people um like gather their information, you know, but, you know, I'm always putting a pin in notes and stuff. yeah You know, just when you when you were reporting and writing stories, and even even today when you when you step out to do that kind of work, ah yeah, how how do you equip yourself for for reporting?
00:23:02
Speaker
it's It's really dependent on the, and still does depend on the situation. If I'm a fly on the wall, then it's a notebook. Especially if I could be somewhere unobtrusive, right? if i'm what if i'm If my subject is doing something and I'm not with them, I want to capture everything that I'm thinking about them and the way they carry themselves, speech pattern stuff, whatever it is.
00:23:25
Speaker
If I'm spending time with somebody, it it was probably always a little foolhardy, but I always depended on the recorder. yeah Because you just put it, ah you put it down and it recedes and then it's you and the person.
00:23:38
Speaker
And then those conversations, I've, I've just never felt comfortable taking notes while I'm talking to someone. It reminds of them that they're being surveilled, right? It reminds them that the things they say and do are being noted.
00:23:55
Speaker
And it, it puts up a you know little bit of ah of ah of a layer there between the two of you. And i don't think it's a it's an inhibitor for everybody. I found that it was for me.
00:24:08
Speaker
And so I was always sort of dual mode. If I was like sitting somewhere, i i do it notes. um I might have a recorder going in case something happened, but the recorder was was really for those, just the intimate moments of of talking to folks.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah, oh for sure. It's funny. i you know in I love talking to people about like notebook first recorder. and that ain't that Over the years, there are some people who ah they they like having the notebook out too because that it that in and of itself is kind of a reminder that yeah Yes, things are being taken down and like, well don't get too, too comfortable um because they we are in fact reporters.
00:24:50
Speaker
and And so there's there's that if it's out, it's it's a reminder of work being done and things are being recorded um because some people can get a little too comfortable. i've got I've been in situations like that where some people are like, they got a bit too loose. And then when I would talk back to them or in a certain, this is long time ago, but yeah,
00:25:08
Speaker
He was just like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, brother. I had no idea that that was on the record. It's like you've really got to take that out. Yeah. It was kind of a book project that never came to be, but it was just one of those one of those deals. And it's like, OK, yeah, it's like got to make sure I'm very forthright with these tools to kind of protect them from themselves, you know, in the idea of in fairness and accuracy. Yeah.
00:25:29
Speaker
um And it depends on the source, of course. and you know This guy was like a horse trainer, ah media savvy, but not like a politician or something where you'd be like, no, like know fuck you guys. Everything you say is on the record.
00:25:40
Speaker
And you're right. The the sort of ah the counter argument there is to do it that way and put the recorder down and let it recede. It requires a little bit of source education. right You need to be very upfront. Be like, everything we talk about from here on out is presumed to be on the record.
00:25:55
Speaker
um Because you got to lay the ground rules. Because how many times have you... been interviewing someone and they've said something and then say, oh, that last part was off the record. yeah Well, no, I mean, that's that's that's not the way that it works. But if a person doesn't know that, then you're playing on, it's an uneven playing field. So it is always, you know, and also shout out to the TP7 Olympus microcassette recorder adapter, which was that little earbud you could put in and make a phone call and have everything get recorded.
00:26:25
Speaker
that like That was the mainstay for for so, so long for me because like obviously in-person reporting, there's nothing like it, but you're also doing a ton of phone work. All your secondaries are going to be phone. And and that was such a, um in the analog days, and even you know after smartphones came around, it was it was just the like, though what's the one tool a working journalist has to have? And it was that.
00:26:51
Speaker
Yeah. So I love getting a ah sense of the the editor's eye, too. And, ah you know, in the little blurbs I used to send over to you guys, just little, like, and you know, just a little podcast excerpts, um you know, just how even the those little intros, which are only, like, a couple hundred words, ah seeing how, like, you or Krista or someone else would mark that up, I was like, wow, even in this, like, little 200, 250-word blurb, like this thing is, like,
00:27:19
Speaker
really, really cut apart. And I love like, I love seeing that because I'm like oh, I'm seeing what the editors are seeing, which helps, helps me become a better writer. So like, just so when did you start to see things with that editorial eye that like a lot of writers just, um, it doesn't come natural for them. Yeah.
00:27:38
Speaker
I mean, the again, use the word fortunate, that was always there from the beginning. And I think that as ah as a writer, my career built from the caption up.
00:27:48
Speaker
And the shorter a piece of writing is, the more the economy and clarity and punch of it matters. So when I'm writing 15 words and it needs to feel like it does something, you just like, you are trained and you eventually internalize the absolutely maximum impact per square inch of type.
00:28:12
Speaker
And what's interesting coming from that background is that once you get into long form features and folks who have, have been writing sort of exclusively long form features, there's so much more play and you can't, obviously you can't apply that the same like that same economy thinking to long form writing that you would to a caption or ah or or a front of book item.
00:28:40
Speaker
But shout out to all the long reads editors. You mentioned Krista Stevens, but Kristen, Sherry, and Carolyn, and now Brendan as well. They are all, when we put together, we do this top five newsletter every week and It, you know, it has little magazine elements. There's a little bullet bullet points at the top with tiny little distillations of what each pick is. And then you write an intro to the newsletter and there's a larger blurb for, for these editors picks that, that long reads does alongside its original journalism.
00:29:13
Speaker
And so. And you're workshopping them together. So whether it's four words and how do we get the maximum impact to these four words, to what can you do with 200 words, to what can you do with a 5,000 word feature that you're editing?
00:29:30
Speaker
I think that, you know, working at those, at that variable metabolism is so important because each, whether you want to call it like an atom and a molecule and a, and a, and a,
00:29:45
Speaker
I don't know, a sentient or a sentient being. It each builds on the on the on the previous ones, but also long form feature writer can learn lessons from writing captions.
00:29:57
Speaker
And a caption writer can learn lessons from writing a long form feature. none of these things are hermetically sealed environments. um And there are rules that that for one that don't apply to the other, but I found that when I work with folks who came out of a magazine background, they you know they too sort of built their their writing or their editorial eye in this very Lego way. you know You start with these bricks and then before long, you're you're editing the Millennium Falcon.
00:30:34
Speaker
And it's a damn sight different from having like, i don't know, a little car and a minifig in it, but it does it does something magical. first Oh, for sure.
00:30:45
Speaker
and that And when you get to to Long Reads, what was the state of Long Reads when you got there in 2021? And you know how did you feel like you wanted to steward that ship?
State & Mission of Longreads
00:30:57
Speaker
Yeah, Long Reads was in a really interesting place. um They'd had a lot of success. ah Before the pandemic, they won a national magazine award, if I'm not mistaken.
00:31:08
Speaker
They had released an incredible podcast called Bundyville ah in in conjunction with Oregon Public Radio. And then during the, but you know, in 2020, like so many places did, they had ah a bit of a sort of contraction.
00:31:27
Speaker
And so they were they we it was running very lean ah when i when I came around. But it also had two kind of incredible things.
00:31:39
Speaker
One is that it had ah staff who had been there for a long time and really... lived and breathed it, really believed in its mission, which was to share the best long form storytelling on the web.
00:31:52
Speaker
And Longreads also enjoyed like a really incredible amount of goodwill among writers, among journalists, because, you know, you amplify good journalism. Those journalists who you amplify, it's always like, oh can, well,
00:32:09
Speaker
And at the time long form was around too. So like, can I get a shout out from long form or from long reads? And so when I came in, and i didn't come in and say, i think we need to grow aggressively.
00:32:21
Speaker
I said, let's figure out who we are. Let's figure out what other people aren't doing that we do do and that we can do better. And so the only real thing that changed when I first came in was to try to get, try to make the editors known quantities, not meaning like make them influencers, like, you know, people are doing now, but it was, let's start signing the things that we do. Let's make these editors' picks feel like they are written by somebody with a curatorial palette. let you know The editors were always getting credited at the bottom of the original stories that we would assign and edit and publish, but the curation side of long reads, that recommendation side, was sort of a black box.
00:33:11
Speaker
We sort of developed that, and so those editors' picks became more and more robust, and so it It used to be like when I, when I started in 2021, I'd say this is the biggest change you would see an editor's pick and it would be the title of the article and the deck from the article.
00:33:30
Speaker
And then a link to the article. And now there's a little blurb. There's a pull quote. We do a little like module of other picks that we've done on a similar topic because we want each of those editors picks to feel like a valuable piece of, ah as much as we all hate this word, a valuable piece of content.
00:33:47
Speaker
It's the starting point. um And so each of the editors, has their own sensibility. Some people go to stories about nature and conservation. Some people go to politics. Some people go to subcultures and obsessions.
00:34:01
Speaker
But you put all those things together and what you find is, and what I like to think is, Longreads, at least as a curator of the rest of the web and of long-form journalism on the web, gives this really well-rounded, diet diet And not just that, but publications that range from the smallest of the small to the largest of the large. you know There's a lot of places that round up great stories for you to read.
00:34:28
Speaker
And too often, and this isn't like any one entity, but you just see a lot of the Atlantic and the Times and the New Yorker and the Times Magazine. And of course, these are really like well-funded places that do incredible journalism. And and we recommend those stories too, but we also like like the editors at Longreads really, really value finding the brand new publications, the emerging publications, the literary journals that don't have a ton of readership, that haven't optimized their website so you can't like find their stuff elsewhere.
00:35:01
Speaker
um But really digging and and trying to find those stories that feel like they're something that you might not have seen otherwise. And it's always gratifying when we pick something and then you see other places start to pick it too.
00:35:14
Speaker
yeah And it's like we've seen that long reads can be the fuse for for like a larger bit of attention that a piece might not have gotten otherwise. How do you find those diamonds in the rough, those diamond publications out there?
00:35:30
Speaker
Every time ah new publication launches, as soon as one of us gets wind of it, we share it with the others. And everybody has everyone on Long Reads has their own method. some you know ah Some people have ah just a giant one tab of like dozens and dozens and dozens of places. And like every week, they'll just...
00:35:49
Speaker
methodically go through them. I use something called um ah readwise ah Readwise, which is like a sort of a ah highlighting app for lack of a better term, it has a reader.
00:36:02
Speaker
And so that can function as an RSS reader, but you can also use all kinds of filters and stuff. And you can create RSS feeds for places that don't have them.
00:36:13
Speaker
So I've sort of got this weird Frankensteinian way of of trying to keep tabs on things. And so every day when I go through, I'm hopefully seeing a bunch of places that aren't on most people's reading journey but like we just have to pay a lot of attention to who's doing what um when something launches make sure you add that to the rotation we want to make sure we're not leaving anybody out in those sweeps yeah that's what i love about as as more of a sports writer and you're you know trying to find places to pitch stories like sure the main book has where those are published but then in the back are dozens upon dozens and dozens of the notable selections
00:36:55
Speaker
which have a lot of obscure publications that are doing the kind of work that you would want anthologized. And that's always been my goal. I just want to be doing the kind of work that typically gets anthologized.
00:37:05
Speaker
If I ever get anthologized, cool. That's great. And nice little feather in the cap, but I just want to do that kind of work. But yeah, you'll see like and plus one and ah a lot of other just things that you never heard of it. Like, Oh, cool. The the fact that they're in here means they're open to that kind of work. And,
00:37:22
Speaker
It broadens your reading palette and your pitching palette. So yeah, it's just that curatorial nature and finding all these other little places is so important to the ecosystem at large. Yeah.
00:37:33
Speaker
And i have to say one of the one of the most impressive feats of that sort of anthology curation that I've seen recently, I already mentioned Hanif Abdurraqib. Maybe he's on my mind because he's he's in the midst of ah of a series he's writing of essays for long reads, but he did ah Best American Sports Writing this past year.
00:37:51
Speaker
and the lengths to which he went to find the the pieces that went in there. If every anthology editor worked this way, I think we would have a lot more surprising anthologies.
00:38:06
Speaker
And like, illuminating anthologies and ones that really gave you a sense of discovery. Like the real joy of of doing that kind of work, of recommending pieces to to other people is that you want it to be a place they've never heard of.
00:38:19
Speaker
Like you mentioned N Plus One, which is one of my like all time favorite publications. They do such a good mix of things. And to me, they're like there are so many publications that are so much smaller and more obscure that like we try to we try to look for.
00:38:34
Speaker
But the yeah, the notable inclusions in those anthologies is such a great place. It's like the second stop. Obviously, you want to see what's in the anthology, but there so many great things that come out of that that appendix, that index.
00:38:46
Speaker
Yeah, and I love when you see the the guest editor's ah fingerprints on an anthology because the fact that Melissa Febos is batting lead off in that collection, as in a sports writing collection, it just gives you an idea. like She writes in a and a voice-driven way, in this in a way that Hanif writes. And it's you can see the taste filtered through the editor to to the thing, whereas...
00:39:15
Speaker
and and When Christopher McDougal edited the collection, surprise, surprise, there were some running stories in there. you know And and ah when Howard Bryan edited it, you know there were some tennis things in there and because he's really drawn to tennis. And you get a sense like, okay, these things aren't you know objective. There is a subjectivity that's going on too, which can be on the one hand frustrating, but on the other hand, like really invigorating because you're like, oh, this is the year's best, but filtered through a certain prism.
00:39:44
Speaker
Yep. yeah And then that that that curator, that editor, is there's more authorial power vested in that position than you ever think of.
00:39:57
Speaker
But as you said, like time and time again, these anthologies are a reflection of the tastes of the person who put it together. That is something that I know that for all these series, the editors take their take that job very, very seriously.
00:40:11
Speaker
And it also just goes to show that
00:40:16
Speaker
creating a surprising experience takes a, you know, it takes work. You can't just be like, what are the, like, what are the 10 highest trafficked sports stories of the year? Like what got people talking?
00:40:28
Speaker
um Like, you know, if you went off that, you, well, let's not go down that road, but it, you know, it it really requires work because it's the quality of the story. And then it's also,
00:40:39
Speaker
the subtext, like what gaps does this story fill? What voices does it come from or speak to that, you know, how do you create something that feels like a reflection of our entire world, not just the world of sports as it was dictated by beat writers for 60 years.
00:40:59
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And given that you know you've got a lot of original work going on with long reads, as well as this curatorial component, and just how do you, yeah just you personally, because everyone has their own methodology, ah you know just kind of break up your day so you are taking in some of the newer stuff and skimming the web for things that you want to recommend, ah while also you know keeping your eye on the ball of the the original content you have. what I hate that word content, but the original material you have coming through.
00:41:31
Speaker
It's a necessary evil sometimes, right? Because peace doesn't doesn't always do it. i'm <unk>s It's tough for me to answer that question because I work not just on long reads, but I do a lot of internal stuff at Automatic.
00:41:43
Speaker
um And you know i'd have some responsibilities that lie with the atavist. And so my day isn't always as neat as saying, well, it's time to do some curation. And then I've got this long-reads piece that I'm editing.
00:41:55
Speaker
yeah um so So I know that everybody, all the long-reads editors sort of have a different ah different answer to that question. for me if i put myself in the situation of reacting then i'll lose an entire day just because of the pings that are coming in and the other things that i will need to do so when i have a piece and and ah and i should also as another caveat i don't edit as much like i'm not editing as much original as many original stories as i would like to just by virtue of my job and and the time that i have um so i really try to reserve that but when i've got something
00:42:34
Speaker
I'm not naive enough to say I'm gonna spend my day with this piece, because that doesn't happen, it can't happen. What I can say is, I know that because I'm on the West Coast, late afternoons tend to be my most productive time. It's when everything quiets down, I don't have any more meetings, I don't have any more calls.
00:42:53
Speaker
And so often I'll just wait it out. Because like, if this wasn't borne out by repeated ah repeated exposure to this phenomenon, I would call it procrastination. But what I know very well about myself is if I start working on something at four, I'm going to get more done on it in the next 90 minutes to two hours than I would if I had set the whole day aside to do it.
00:43:17
Speaker
Because then by the time I got to four o'clock and I'd been meaning to do it, but all this other stuff had gotten in the way, I'd be completely demoralized. So now I go into it with the ability to focus on it and also the energy to focus on it. So as an editor, the afternoons are my time.
00:43:35
Speaker
my morning It's just I can't remember the last time i i could use my morning for for what you'd call creative work. um that goes That goes for writing and for editing. And and writing is something that I, I so rarely do at this point outside of the writing that I do for long reads, like writing as a, as a working journalist is, is very rare indeed.
00:43:56
Speaker
But, but when that's on my plate, then it's, you know, then it's the fear of the deadline. When do I, when do I need to have this? What do I need to do on this? How much reporting does it entail? but And then I'm, I'm much more likely to make a plan because that's a I can't think of the last time that I spent a month working on a story, but when that's the case, all bets are off. That's a, that's an all consuming kind of enterprise.
00:44:21
Speaker
I always love getting a sense of people who do a lot of editing. And then most of the people who listen to this show are are writers, but also editors. We can always give ourselves the best shot at landing stories if we become more skilled self-editors.
00:44:38
Speaker
So for for writers who want to be more critical of their work and the words they put on the page in the hopes of landing more work published, how would you camp counsel that?
00:44:49
Speaker
you know writers to just be to be better self editors. That's the that that's the $64,000 question. And I don't want to deprecate it by saying read your work out loud, right? Because it's cable stakes.
00:45:01
Speaker
Like if if you don't, if you don't already do that, then if you don't already do that, then that like that's that's art this one trick. um yeah But for me, it it is really about And obviously the writing of a pitch and the writing of a draft are very, very different things, right? So, so let me put it on the, on the draft um of the story that you're actually writing.
00:45:27
Speaker
Sometimes it comes down to being merciless with yourself, by which I mean, it's not kill your darlings. It's, is this bringing me through this piece? Is it bringing me through this argument?
00:45:39
Speaker
Is it bringing me through this story? When I was at Wired, I worked under a few different editors in chief there, but the last one was Nick Thompson, obviously, who is now CEO at The Atlantic and is an accomplished journalist in his own right.
00:45:52
Speaker
And at the time, i remember he would push back against stories with any sort of convoluted chronology. And if I was the writer of one of those pieces with a somewhat convoluted chronology, I was always like, man, why did, like, why?
00:46:09
Speaker
Like part of the art is hopping around, but I also wasn't being merciless with myself. Right. I was allowing every, every long form writer wants their work to be sort of cinematic or arresting.
00:46:26
Speaker
there are a lot of impulses that we indulge that maybe aren't the best impulses for the piece because we're doing them. They're like the pyrotechnic side of things, right? It's the, it's the fun part of writing. It's like, let me do this thing.
00:46:38
Speaker
Yeah. Um, well, first off that components, yeah the style component like first off that thing has already been done and it's already been done better. Let's not think that any of us are adding a a new dimension to a wheel, but
00:46:53
Speaker
And I love style, don't get me wrong, but that style had better be adding something. Because if that style becomes obfuscatory, if that style gets in your way, if it slows down the propulsion of the story, or it stops the reader from being clear on characters or setting or what have you,
00:47:12
Speaker
then that's a net negative. Then we got to find a way to scale that back. And one thing that I think is endemic to writers, particularly writers, I'm putting myself in this group, any any sort of writing with any sort of personal component or angle Some people are all allergic to putting themselves in their writing, which I think often can be good, but often you can adhere to that to the point of the detriment of the piece. Sometimes it needs a little bit of you.
00:47:39
Speaker
More often than not, it probably needs a little bit less of you. if If we're talking at Longreads about a pitch, and that pitch is an essay, one of the things that... i is a hobby horse of mine is this this there's there's no interiority to this piece.
00:47:55
Speaker
You're telling me everything. um And obviously there's the show don't tell rule, but but it's deeper than that. but When a writer describes something as the way they see it, then you're putting distance between me and the experience.
00:48:07
Speaker
If you're writing what you see,
00:48:11
Speaker
impressionistically but you are not there then i'm getting the sense of what it's like to walk through the world as you and that's what and that's what you want for writing with a with a personal element and so things that purport to be personal but feel arm's length that i think is the trap that like the vast majority of of personal writing can fall into, the more you can strip away and and let the you just be the you that motivates the perspective rather than the you that narrates the perspective, that's where the power of of personal writing, I think, really comes in.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yeah, that's really rich. I have to really think on that. That's really astute. And ah yeah, it's like there, like leave a nice long pause in the podcast. Let people just like think about that, that motivating component. like Everyone like take a beat, take a few breaths and just listen to what Peter just said.
00:49:08
Speaker
I don't know. if I don't know if it warrants all that, but it does. it it It is. ah and I don't know if there's even like a handy heuristic that you can apply when you go and you read your own work. But if it feels to you at all like you're you're telling us what you see, then just make it what the reader sees.
00:49:26
Speaker
Yeah. And to your point of, you know, of style getting in the way and then being able to somehow strip away from that and just you not get in the way of it. I reread David Foster Wallace, one of the ultimate stylists, his ah essay on Michael Joyce, the tennis player who was like the number hundred in the world. This is probably a piece you've read.
00:49:46
Speaker
um It's one I go to all the time. It's got my all-time really favorite kicker. And from the someone who can write a 300-word sentence, his kicker is three words.
00:49:58
Speaker
And it builds to it. and it's just this thing of the the the cards, of the the odds are so stacked against players who are so good. as a Michael Joyce, but they can't break through the qualities, or if they do, they run into the buzzsaw of the best players in the world.
00:50:14
Speaker
And then just at the very end, after you feel all this despair for him, he just says, wish him well. and And that is it. And it's the best kicker. It builds, and it's so tight from someone we don't associate tightness with. And he let his style get out of the way.
00:50:29
Speaker
And you you really nail something with that, which is the This is really akin to like read your work out loud to yourself. But the reason that you do that is so you get away from anything that sounds rhythmically monotonous.
00:50:45
Speaker
And that mix up, that short, short, long thing, or if you're David Foster Wallace, that like huge disquisition and then a three word punch. And a three syllable punch on top of that.
00:50:57
Speaker
I mean, the, they're, It's so arresting. And that's not style. I mean, it is, but it's it's what you're doing is you're letting the music of the the music of the writing be the thing that affects people, not the floridity of the phrasing.
00:51:18
Speaker
Right? Like adverbs, cut them down. We all know this. Like descriptive writing can get flowery fast. But when you think about the impact of writing as ah as a a rhythmic property rather than a descriptive one, you're really unlocking something. And like that is where the theug greats are.
00:51:40
Speaker
And if you can elicit that with the sparest writing, you can, like when when some like again, with Hanif. And so I bring this up because a couple weeks ago, we published the the first ah the first of these essays. He's basically taking...
00:51:56
Speaker
Albums that he loved that never got like a huge critical assessment and he's going back to them on their major anniversary So what he did in his first essay was um the the major label debut of ah of a rap group from North Carolina called little brother and it was called the minstrel show and what he does is he uses ah the menstrual performer or the vaudeville performer Burt Williams as like the spine of the piece and there are these moments Where the writing is just plain spoken to the point of minimalism, but it the it just the way that it hits you is like that's a masterclass in letting the rhythm and the honesty of the writing be the thing that affects people. Not the whiz bang candy color Tom Wolf cosplay out.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Like everybody does that at some point because it's fun. But the more you can strip away and still put some punch behind your words, that is the stuff that becomes timeless.
00:53:02
Speaker
Well, awesome. Well, tell me more. Tell me a bit about this membership drive you've got going for for long for long reads.
Longreads Membership Drive
00:53:09
Speaker
Just, ah you know, the you know what what we can what we can do to drive some attention there.
00:53:13
Speaker
Yeah, so this is, we have not done this in quite a while. Actually, I don't think we've done this in a concerted way since since I joined in 2021. So really, Longreads has always been a bit of a an NPR model.
00:53:28
Speaker
um Give what you can if you do, that's great. But every you know where we there are no ads and and you can read everything on the site. ah We have this, you know, I mentioned that our top five weekly newsletter before. we did like This has such a vast audience.
00:53:46
Speaker
And so we're just trying to leverage that a little bit. And just it's it's really just sort of um an appeal to the goodness of folks' heart. We know how valuable Longreads is to to writers as well as to readers.
00:54:00
Speaker
We're just asking in a world where people ah shell out for ah a sub stack without a thought to do the same for a place that has a small but mighty team and is published as award-winning journalism of its own and is the longest running, most consistent, most surprising ah recommendation engine ah in journalism.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, I can definitely vouch for everything that you guys are doing, especially in concert with the Atavist and everything. It's just like it's such a ah unique, singular experience, be it the Atavist or what Longreads has done and is doing.
00:54:44
Speaker
And to put a few bucks in there to to you know keep it ad-free. And so things aren't bombarding you. And you're not you can you can sink into a story in a way you can't with, let's just say the New Yorker online. There's always a little video ad playing online and all that. And then it's just there. You want to swat them away. And and so, yeah, throwing throwing some bucks in the coffers of you know what you guys are doing just makes that possible and keeps the amazing work you're doing. Yeah, it keeps gives it the momentum and the heft it needs and the altitude it needs.
00:55:15
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate and that. deserve And yeah, we, you know, the Atavist and the Longreads are very much sister publications, right? And they they have a sort of different model, right? You know, obviously anyone who listens to the podcast knows the Atavist well, um but like the those 10,000 word cinematic stories, that's an Atavist story. Longreads doesn't...
00:55:35
Speaker
want to do those because like that is their their siblings uh bread and butter uh we are doing a lot more reported work now uh than we have done we're expanding our feature pipeline in that way so you know we we have always essay reported and personal has been our stock and trade we're building in more uh more criticism and more feature reportage and just really trying to be a more expansive but no less ah considered outlet.
00:56:08
Speaker
Well, that's great. i love yeah I've just always been such a fan of of what you guys do. And yeah, it's a very very exciting to yeah to you know be to to give some juice and have these kind of conversations with you and point people's work in that direction, point their eyeballs in that direction.
00:56:24
Speaker
um but But Peter, as you as I think you know, i I love bringing these conversations down for a landing by asking the guests for just a cool recommendation of some kind. So I would just extend that to you as we bring our conversation down for a landing.
00:56:36
Speaker
I feel like I hear a lot of ah food recommendations on here, so I want to make sure not to ignore that. So a quick one on that front is, as ah as a lifelong Dorito fanatic who understands that Doritos are maybe not the best thing you can put in your body, um I have found, so Popcorners, which are like, they look like Doritos and they're supposedly baked.
00:56:58
Speaker
It's not Popcorners as a whole, but Popcorners has a spicy queso flavor that I swear to you evokes the old quote, taco flavor that you could find in like the late 80s and 90s.
00:57:10
Speaker
So if you miss like taco flavored chips, Popcorn or spicy queso is a revelation. And then the other shout out I want to give ah is as ah ah the other lifelong, obsess I have a bunch of them, but another lifelong obsession of mine, Beyond Doritos is ah is word games. I've always done you know crossword puzzles and word games and that.
00:57:30
Speaker
And a couple of years ago, obviously, everyone knows the New York Times has gotten into this space in a huge way. So all those are great games. But there's ah an indie ah game designer named Zack Gage, who always made incredible, incredible games ah for mobile.
00:57:46
Speaker
but he and a team launched something a couple years ago called Puzmo, which is now it got bought by Hearst before it officially came out. So it can be syndicated. So maybe a newspaper you subscribe to has Puzmo puzzles, but you can also just like join. And every day they've got like,
00:58:03
Speaker
10 different weird little games. And it's such a nice, and they they think so deeply about what makes these enjoyable and what makes them a fun experience either by yourself or or with somebody.
00:58:15
Speaker
So it's it's one of those things that not enough people have heard of, but just brings me a ton of joy. So if if you find yourself wishing that there was more to life than just Wordle and Connections and I guess Pips, and then check out Puzmo.
00:58:31
Speaker
Amazing. Well, Peter, I'm so glad we were able to have this conversation and talk about ah the arc of your editing career and your writing career and ah to date. And yeah, and just all the amazing stuff you're doing with Long Read. So just thanks so much for coming on talking and talking shop. This was awesome.
00:58:46
Speaker
Absolutely agree. Thanks for having me on, Brendan. It was a blast.
00:58:53
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. We did it. We did it again, didn't we? Pretty great, huh? Check out longreads.com to help them out. And you can also stay abreast about what Peter's up to on Instagram at proven self.
00:59:07
Speaker
Same goes for blue ski. Be sure you're signed up with my long-running rage against the algorithm newsletter and Pitch Club. Next issue of Pitch Club is going to feature a pitch letter to a literary agent.
00:59:22
Speaker
Oh, what? You just thought it was about pitching features? Fools! Welcome to pitchclub.substack.com or the embed form at brendanamero.com. All right. So the author's subsidized book tour took me through Idaho from about October 3rd through the 8th.
00:59:37
Speaker
And I posted a few stupid videos on Instagram just about the author's subsidized book tour and poking fun at that. ah Letting everybody know out there that authors on on my level...
00:59:49
Speaker
ah we don't got money from the publisher. It is all out of pocket
Brendan's Book Tour & Reflections
00:59:54
Speaker
to do these things. You see a lot of these authors with a bunch of dates, and you're like, how the fuck do they afford that?
00:59:59
Speaker
I don't know, but I'm telling you that it's hard to afford it, but I did it. It cost, all told, this Idaho trip about $1,000 out of pocket. That's food, that's lodging, that's fossil fuel, and cocaine.
01:00:12
Speaker
Due to weather, I slept in the back of my Crosstrek on night One in Caldwell, Idaho, which is about an eight-hour drive from Eugene. was a good, ambitious day one of driving, which was um suboptimal, well we will say.
01:00:28
Speaker
i had a ah shitty air mattress, though it's an air mattress that is basically form-fitted for the back of a Crosstrek. But I can't say it was one of my best moves. I should have opened up my tent box. I have an iCamper Xcover 3.0 or some shit.
01:00:45
Speaker
um And then dealt with the moisture management later the next day. um should have done that. I did not. And it was... Not comfortable.
01:00:56
Speaker
um My next nights were in Ketchum for Legends Never Die, Ultramarathon, the bib pickup, and then i was at the finish line for most of the day out at Oregon Galt's Trailhead, ah just north of Ketchum.
01:01:10
Speaker
And that was pretty cool. And I stayed at an RV park just south of Ketchum, the Meadows. And it was a nice flat pad for me to unfold the the tent, ah but it was cold as fuck.
01:01:22
Speaker
ah One night it dropped to 27 degrees. That was chilly. And you definitely don't want to get up and have to go use the restroom when it's in the 20s. um But with all the windows closed in my tent and my winter sleeping bag, I was comfortable.
01:01:35
Speaker
um My neighbors in the ah RV site beside me saw me the next day and wondered if I had lost consciousness that night. But nope, that was just the beer. And holy shit, dig this. So I had about 60 books in my backseat. I overordered for various events and I'm in the hole for a lot of frontrunners.
01:01:54
Speaker
I told my neighbor at the ah RV park that I was in Idaho doing book events and he asked me what I wrote and I told him, I told him I wrote the frontrunner about Steve Prefontaine. Turns out this guy had run in Prefontaine classics in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters.
01:02:07
Speaker
And he played, get this, Emile Poudemans in Without Limits, ah who's a Belgian Olympian. ah And this is the Prefontaine movie starring Billy Crudup. Wild.
01:02:19
Speaker
And the guy was like, I'll be sure to buy your book. And you know what I did? This is how savvy writers are. I went into my car and I grabbed my fucking business card and said, check out this website to buy a copy.
01:02:33
Speaker
I had 60 fucking books in the backseat. Did I just clip my audio? I think I did. 60 fucking books in the backseat. I could have signed, stamped and sold them one right there.
01:02:45
Speaker
What the actual fuck is wrong with me? Coffee is for closers. I pulled out of my parking spot because I was leaving. I was packing up everything. And I realized it would be weird to circle back and say, oh, hey, by the way, I have a bookstore in my back seat.
01:03:02
Speaker
Stupid fuck me. Not the guy who played Emil Putemans. Oh, boy. So from Ketchum went to Boise. And thankfully, I have a best bud in Kim H. Cross, who let me crash in her guest room for three nights.
01:03:18
Speaker
It was the first time Kim and I had met in person, which is bonkers. But that's kind of the intimacy and bond this podcast has afforded me, where I feel a real deep kinship with a good chunk of the people who have come on the show.
01:03:29
Speaker
I owe so much to Kim. The frontrunner doesn't happen without her. Like, literally. She made the introduction to my current agent, with led which led to the frontrunner. She orchestrated this entire Idaho book swing.
01:03:42
Speaker
ah Four events total. Two in Ketchum, two in Boise. and In her community, which is largely a um um lot of mountain biking, a lot of mountain biking people, ah really came out for the kicker at the Lit Room at Old Speak Book Bar on the final night.
01:04:01
Speaker
ah the The Fleet Feet one, only like one person showed up, which, you know, I was kind licking my wounds. I go, only seven people RSVP'd. I'm like, oh, that sucks. ah But then six fewer than seven showed up. So...
01:04:16
Speaker
that's ah That's what happened on the author-subsidized book tour. um But at Old Speak, at the Lit Room, people showed up. It was great. It was an electric event in one of the coolest new bookstores in the country. I believe they sold all the copies of the Front Runner.
01:04:30
Speaker
Chelsea is doing some... Pitch perfect work there. But what I miss most about my time in Boise was having a co-working pal in Kim for a couple days. I was there for nearly three full days, which is kind of a lot.
01:04:42
Speaker
and um And maybe I overstayed my welcome, but there it's such such as it was. who that That's what happened. And after she unilaterally kicked my ass on um on the mountain biking trails on Sunday, I arrived there, Sunday afternoon.
01:04:55
Speaker
ah We spent our mornings and afternoons just working on our work. I was doing some proofreading work and podcast work, et cetera. And as she was up in her office upstairs working on travel arrangements for things and writing reporting. And ah she'd come down for a snack and we'd shoot the shit and she'd go back upstairs to work and I'd keep doing my thing.
01:05:14
Speaker
And I don't know what to say except that as freelancers, we're so often holed up and alone. you know, we're such weird, feral cats that we're unhirable. I'm O for this decade in job applications. I don't even get acknowledgments, which is all the more depressing.
01:05:31
Speaker
So it was like having an office mate and we chat on a coffee break or a protein shake break. and then maybe we'd go for a bike ride or if it was and it was really cool because we're in the same lane of narrative nonfiction. So we can like just kind of like talk through what we are maybe stu stumbling with or struggling with.
01:05:54
Speaker
And when I got home and and you to Eugene, I was kind of in a funk because it's not unlike when you come back from a conference and you're like buzzing from being all around your people. But then you soon settle into your into the the well-worn grooves of home and and the buzz wears off and you kind of mourn being around people who fundamentally get you.
01:06:14
Speaker
Buzz Kim did so much for me and wants the best for me even when I don't feel like I deserve it. So all I can say was that it was ah special time. And I'm deeply grateful and lucky to have people like Kim in my life, like Ruby McConnell, and my lady wife, all who see something in me that I unilaterally am blind to.
01:06:32
Speaker
Why? That's for therapy. But there's also the creeping specter of the clock. you know I'm 45. These self-limiting beliefs have perhaps wasted a good 10 years of my potential growth, certainly in my professional years.
01:06:46
Speaker
maybe Maybe I've wasted more time because I just... From an early age, being self-deprecating was very validating because I got a lot of laughs. And then you tell these self-deprecating things over and over again, and maybe you write them over and over again in your journals, and you start to believe them.
01:07:04
Speaker
And that's what's happened to me for decades. Okay. you know I've said this before, but I live in fear of future regrets. And I have visions of me on my deathbed lamenting why I wasted so much time and energy on bullshit.
01:07:14
Speaker
Assuming I get to a deathbed and I don't get T-boned by a car today when I go pick up the the final CSA veggie box. Like, i won't be upset if I die having, say, written nine books and not twelve. Like, whatever.
01:07:26
Speaker
So long as I gave it my all. But I will have regrets if I drag my feet and decide to not go all in for fear of failure or for want of comfort. Netflix and chilling without the chilling.
01:07:39
Speaker
Drinking myself into a nail-biting stupor. Not going to that conference. Living vicariously through avatars of accomplishment on TV and social media. I already mourn for having wasted my 30s.
01:07:51
Speaker
And yeah, maybe you can say that set the table for what's happening now. or what's going to happen, but I think I hid in plain sight. Instead of working on what mattered, i took menial jobs that robbed me of my purported vision and visions.
01:08:06
Speaker
Even my early 40s, sucked into the vortex of a pandemic, feel somewhat wasted, and maybe I need to throw some grace at that situation that I haven't fully recovered from it. And in that five-year span, of course, the frontrunner happened, and the podcast became a bit more popular than it was.
01:08:23
Speaker
I can only hope that that keeps going. I'm sure there are many of us who can feel the weight of future regrets, not to mention the ones that we're saddled with from our past. you So I don't know. Go on.
01:08:34
Speaker
Text that crush. Start a podcast. Start a YouTube channel. Fail spectacularly. Try something new. Try to have fun. i don't know what that is Give yourself credit. i don't know that is. Forgive a past version of yourself. Can't do that. Take a nap.
01:08:48
Speaker
I can do that. Run that race. Swim the channel. So I don't know. Stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interviews, say