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Episode 487: Robert Weintraub and the ‘American Hindenburg’
748 Plays21 days ago
Robert Weintraub is a best selling author and, most recently, wrote "American Hindenburg" for The Atavist Magazine..
We’re going to hear from lead editor Jonah Ogles about his side of the table and how he advises people to model their stories after previously published ones and how there’s never really a wasted moment by doing as much research as possible. Either you find out there’s nothing there, or you find out there’s there there and you have more grist for the mill.
Robert is the best selling author of No Better Friend, The Divine Miss Marble, The House that Ruth Built, and The Victory Season. He has a Substack called NYC 1000 where he counts down the top 1,000 sporting events in New York City. That’s at weintraubr.substack.com.
Robert cut his teeth as a television producer at ESPN, but soon began writing for Slate, The New York Times, The Guardian, Grantland, and now The Atavist.
We talk about creating these historical narratives and grounding the characters in their present, looking at a magazine and then thinking what kind of stories you can pitch there, and how his Atavist story started as a book proposal.
You can learn more about Robert at robertweintraubauthor.com.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Upcoming Author Events
00:00:01
Speaker
Oh, you see, and ever as the frontrunner strides into the fall. And i have three events in September. September 20th, I'll be at the Coos Bay Public Library for an author talk at 2 p.m.
00:00:13
Speaker
September 21st, I will be in Portland in conversation at the Oregon Historical Society, also at 2 p.m. And on September 27th, I will be a featured author alongside Ruby McConnell for the Florence Festival of Books in Florence. It's all day, but the conversation is at 4.30 p.m.
00:00:33
Speaker
So stay clued in to the newsletters, Rage Against the Algorithm, Pitch Club, and BrendanOmero.com. And secondarily, on Instagram, at Creative Nonfiction Podcasts.
Call for Audio Magazine Submissions
00:00:46
Speaker
Oh yes, call for submissions. The audio magazine is back. it's going to try to come back. The Mandalorian and his kind lived by a simple code.
00:00:58
Speaker
Always punctuated by saying, this is the way. We're looking for codes, baby. What codes do you live by? What codes were you but one time or another told to live by?
00:01:09
Speaker
Do you admire codes in singular devotion or do you feel unfairly shackled to a way of life as a code led you down the right path or the wrong? Essay should be no longer than 2,000 words, which approximates to a 15-minute read.
00:01:23
Speaker
Bear in mind that in the end, these are audio essays. Write accordingly. Simple words, short sentences. Email submissions with codes in the subject line to creative nonfictionpodcast at gmail.com.
00:01:36
Speaker
Original previously unpublished work. Only please deadline is October 2025. There is cash the there is cash on the line subsidized by the O'Mara grant. So send me your best fully formed pieces and consider becoming a patron to help put money in the coffers for the podcast, but also put money in the pockets of writers. We want that burrito money.
00:01:58
Speaker
Hey, it's also that atavistian time of the month. So, you know, spoiler alerts. Okay. You've been warned. You know, generally I'd just take a really big hammer and smash my hand over and over again into the desktop. And then I figured anything after that, you know, great. It'd be that bad. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
00:02:22
Speaker
ACNF is sort of in a good mood. Don't know why. Don't know how. Just going to roll with it. It's a creative nonfiction podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell.
Growth of Pitch Club Newsletter
00:02:32
Speaker
Today for episode 487, that's getting up there.
00:02:35
Speaker
We've got Robert Weintraub, a New York Times bestselling author, and his Atavis piece is titled American Hindenburg in the Early Days of Flight. Airships were hailed as the future of war.
00:02:47
Speaker
Then disaster struck the USS Akron. It's at magazine.atavist.com. Consider subscribing. I don't get any kickbacks. And I finally subscribed. I paid $24.99 for a year to support this blockbuster journalism. You think I get Freedies?
00:03:03
Speaker
Then you don't know how stupid I am. Show notes of this episode more at brendanomero.com. Hey, hey, there you can peruse for hot blogs, hotter nudes, and sign up for the two very important newsletters, the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm.
00:03:18
Speaker
And Pitch Club, a flood of new subs to Pitch Club, which is great to see. Want to see more and more and more. Issue four with Cassidy Randall just dropped. It's pretty great. Would love for Pitch Club to catch fire.
00:03:31
Speaker
It is catching fire. Let's keep doing it. Pitches that we might have book pitches, agent pitches, radio pitches, doc film peaches. pe Peaches?
00:03:41
Speaker
Yes, maybe some peaches. Yeah, it'll never cost a dime, but someone pledged 25 bucks a month for it. And maybe I'll turn pledges on at some point, but not this day.
00:03:55
Speaker
All I ask is for your permission because platform is currency. Both are first of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat them. And you can also elect to check out patreon.com slash cnfpod to throw some dollar bills in the cnfpod coffers, help support the audio magazine, and gear upgrades, keeps the lights on here.
00:04:15
Speaker
You can earn some face time with me if you dare. Check it out, friend. First ever AMA, had to change the date, is ah for paid members, September 11th at
Interview with Jonah Ogles on Editorial Approach
00:04:24
Speaker
4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
00:04:27
Speaker
Okay, we're going to hear from lead editor Jonah Ogles about his side of the table and how he advises people to model their stories after previously published ones and how there's never really any wasted moments by doing as much research as possible.
00:04:44
Speaker
Either you find out that there's nothing there and you save yourself from prematurely pitching or you find out there's there there, and you have more grist for the mill. It's all great stuff.
00:04:56
Speaker
Of course, that's what you've come to expect from Jonah Ogles. So let's hear from Jonah right now. Cue up the montage. Riff.
00:05:11
Speaker
Does everyone know I'm a fucking genius? Thank you, everybody. Remember what Brendan said. Got in because we're sadistic motherfuckers. Go lemurs. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I mean, I had no idea that... America airships and ah large you know a few of them um and that they had this disastrous history and legacy.
00:05:49
Speaker
It was one of those that came in that came in as a draft basically. And we we read it and we were just like, oh my gosh, like how have we never heard about this before?
00:06:00
Speaker
And when you receive a draft, pretty much, what do you like seeing in in something that's fully formed or like on on its way to being fully formed versus something that is very nascent, maybe just in pitch form?
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I, I think we pay, i i mean, I like to see good writing, you know, I think the standard might be a little higher on ah a manuscript that's sent in because there's an assumption that the writer has spent significant amounts of time on, on the piece.
00:06:36
Speaker
um So we want it to be well-written, which in, in Rob's case was, you know, no problem. It was great. It was a great read from the get go. you know and And I think we're we're looking for a sense of story, like they're trying to get a handle on the writer's sense of story. And and I don't think a piece needs to be perfectly structured for us to take it as a manuscript.
00:07:02
Speaker
But i do think we're paying attention to, you know do they have a pretty decent sense of how to pace this stuff? Do they have a sense of like, where certain information should go.
00:07:15
Speaker
Is it easy to follow, even if we might have some structural you know feedback, which which we did in in this story, um ended up cutting a ah lot of ah lot of stuff, especially in the first like third of the piece.
00:07:31
Speaker
might have even cut maybe all of the first third of the piece or something like that. So yeah, it's more I think it's a little more important for it to feel like the writer has really put something into it and they they kind of know what they're doing. Not that we would be stopped you know if the story was just incredible.
00:07:52
Speaker
we We don't have a problem really helping somebody. You know, we know writers get too close to pieces. I get too close to pieces after four or five drafts. But yeah, we we just want to see that it's it feels ah that it's a good read, really. And structurally speaking, how did this change from from what you saw to what it eventually became?
00:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, well, there was there was a lot more context in the in the early going, you know more background on the Navy and airships and sort of the the depression, you know, that era and in American history, you know, we wanted to get to it, ah get to the action a lot faster. And so one of the conversations Rob and I had was, so where do we do that? The option we went with was the christening of the ship.
00:08:48
Speaker
Here's the ship newly built. ah You know, hasn't even taken its first flight yet and start there. The the other option I had floated to him was there was a, you know, later into its career and I forget how long, but there was a ah mishap on the West coast where it wasn't properly moored to the ground in the heat of the day, which heated the helium caused it to rise. And some, some of the ground crew was lifted, lifted up into the sky.
00:09:16
Speaker
you know like That also would have been a fine opening, I think. you know a little A little more immediate in terms of getting to the action. and Then obviously we would have had to back up and probably would have lost some of the christening scene and and just done you know more of a broad overview of it It was built in Akron, which gave its its name and yaday yada, yada.
00:09:40
Speaker
You know, so I think either one could have worked. And I sort of threw out the two options to Rob and said, do what you want to, you know, what does one of these sound good? And if so do it.
00:09:51
Speaker
and And I think we'll be fine. I'm sure this boils down to a matter of experience and taste and having been in it for a long time. ah But how do you know that perhaps a story is getting a bit too weighed down in context or world building?
00:10:06
Speaker
What's your gauge? What's your meter on that when you're reading that kind of stuff? Yeah, I mean, it it it's most simple. There's a gut feeling of like I get a little bored, you know, like I feel like I've been away too long.
00:10:20
Speaker
ah But i I often tell writers that like if they've been gone from the action for 1500 words in ah in an atavis story, ah ah that's about as long as we want to go on about something not related to sort of the central plot.
00:10:36
Speaker
you know like i just I think you need a plot point every 1,500 to 2,000 words, something to kind of drive us forward again.
00:10:47
Speaker
So you know i'll often if my gut is telling me I'm a little i'm bored here, I think we could get through this quicker. The first thing I do is is highlight it and check word count. And almost always, we're at 2,000 words.
00:11:04
Speaker
You know, like a it just, I don't know why, maybe, maybe there's something human, something in in human nature that when we're telling stories that that's about as much as we can do. But it it, one of the most common notes I send is cut this in half and, or I, but or I will do it. I'll ask the writer if they want me to do it instead.
00:11:24
Speaker
Cause that, I think a thousand words is really the sweet spot in an atavis story. Yeah. With Robert's story, you know what was what were some challenges that were and that that were presented to you you know with this with this draft that was like kind of unique to the story?
00:11:38
Speaker
Yeah, well, we had towards the end of the editing process when Sayward gave it a top edit, she had a really good note, which was like, okay, there's an incredible disaster story here with really good on-the-ground scenes.
00:11:56
Speaker
And so what? You know, I mean, not not that she was dismissive of it, but like, so why or why why are we talking about this? um Aside from that fact. And, you know, so what we did, we beefed up the this forgotten history of the airship age. you know and in In the draft before she had read it, there was mention of the admiral the admiral who sort of led the charge for these airships.
00:12:24
Speaker
um There was mention of him butting up against opposition and in Congress and in the Navy, but we we didn't get too into it, you know which is, I talked earlier about an editor getting too close. That's probably a function of of me really trying to cut the context down and just getting like a little too ruthless you know and and not realizing that i've that I've cut stuff that might actually be interesting just in in as I try to get things to move a little faster.
00:12:53
Speaker
so So we went back and we added I don't know, three, 400 words in the early going, and then a couple of other times when we mentioned sort of Congress or the Navy or or a mishap that that prompted some backlash, we would flesh that out with another 100 words here, 100 words there.
00:13:14
Speaker
You know, it's one of those things that like, i I think most readers, if you had them read them back to back, they might not even be able to recognize that there was all that much different. But it it does add just like a little bit of weight to the story that makes it feel more historically important, in addition to being just a really good, well reported disaster story.
00:13:38
Speaker
it It goes to show that sometimes all it takes is just a few dozen or a couple hundred words. Like you don't need to add entire chapters or thousands of words. Like it's just, it's it can just be these little ah a little accents that that lift it up.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I mean, all especially as a draft gets later into the editing process, sometimes it's just like you said, like 12 words, you know, like really a short sentence can do a lot of work.
00:14:06
Speaker
And in a lot of times it's it's just sort of clarifying something we've already said in the story, you know, but it's just like almost repeating it so that readers have it stuck in their head as they move forward.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah. And what's great too is I, I, over the years we, uh, of the disaster stories that the activist likes, uh, that runs frequently are these real nautical ones. And yeah, there's a nautical component to this because this thing falls out of the air, but it's kind of, kind of crazy that, know, there was just so much, so much, ah you know, tension and drama here in this, uh, very, an airship disaster with, you know, all the all the weather. And then when it crashes and,
00:14:47
Speaker
the people who are able to escape, you know, the, the ship and, and hang on for dear life. It's a, it's just ah an amazing story and it's, it's a different kind of context. here Like we had air, like an airbound disaster story, which just adds a whole new level of, ah yeah, it's just a new level, new backdrop.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, totally. And, and you mentioned the survivors and I mean that like really that's the thing that makes this piece is that there were great survivor accounts of it.
00:15:17
Speaker
you know which is a note I give a lot of writers when they're pitching historical pieces because a lot of times they have the broad strokes and it is really interesting. you know but But then we send them a story like this and we say, can you get us this close? you know like Basically, I want dialogue.
00:15:35
Speaker
And a lot of times that's the thing that writers haven't done. is like They know that something exists in this archive. They don't know what exists. you know, but they they're pitching it now because they because they're eager and they want the assignment before they start doing more work.
00:15:50
Speaker
And, and I always apologize because I realize I'm asking them to do more work without an assignment, but really like getting that stuff makes such a difference because it saves, it saves writers time too. If it's not there, then you don't really have a story. And if it is, then, then you know that you actually have something worth pitching.
00:16:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point to underscore. I know when I was dealing with the Prefontaine book proposal, I was constantly counseled. I needed just a bit more of a lot of this depth that you're talking about. like You just need this extra scene bit of reporting and research. And I would always just go up to the line of what I thought was enough without doing too much work because of the uncertainty of it maybe not being accepted.
00:16:38
Speaker
And here's the thing, like, had I just gone whole hog, I would have found out quicker whether there was something there. it turns out there was, but I, um, and the, but then if there was, i would have had all that research there and i would have expedited the timeline for it having been accepted and would have afforded me six more months that I desperately mourn to this day. Yeah. And so it's to your point, it's like, there's really no wasted work. You know, you're either going to find out there's nothing there, or you're going to find out there's more than than you there than you thought. And it's not wasted research anyway. So you might as well just go all in as fast as you can and then see what happens.
00:17:12
Speaker
Yeah. 100% agree. it I mean, it doesn't, yes, it's, it's more work, but ultimately I think it does save you time or may buy you more time to work with something.
00:17:23
Speaker
ah you know, when someone is doing the research and maybe they're not quite there and you can like point to say Robert's story, be like, can can you get this close? Can you get us closer? Do you often like share like a a story or an ad of a story or two? Be like, this is, this will help you get, this will help your cause. your cause Like this is evidence in, you know, in your favor. can do this. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, we, we try to, when a writer is close,
00:17:49
Speaker
or the writing, the idea seems promising. and even if not, we try to share examples, you know, it's just, ah it's helpful for writers to sort of see what a similar story is doing. And even if it's a different subject, um,
00:18:06
Speaker
you know like I often send like Sayward's piece about the abuse at a school in LA when we get pitches that might have composite characters, or not composite characters, but like a bunch of characters, you know not just one one character we're going to follow throughout a piece, but we need to see you know three or four in order to tell this story.
00:18:28
Speaker
I'll send that out and be like, look, we don't do this very often, but when we do, this is how you make it feel intimate still and like their stories are connected and we want that same type of connective tissue so we we have examples sort of offhand or off the top of my head that uh that i usually am aware of and if not like we'll talk about it in pitch meetings you know what's what's the story that we've run that would be helpful for this writer to read We get a lot of pitches, unfortunately, from people who have not read the magazine.
00:19:01
Speaker
Starting there is is a good is a good place to start, definitely. Well, yeah, well, a great pitch hack is, it sounds simple, but read the magazine. But also when you're pitching a story, be like you know when i it's like this story is going to maybe rhyme with these three I've read in the past. But it's it's different, a different backdrop. But it's got a similar shape or similar kind of tone to it. And then it it proves they've done their research about the market they're pitching. But also it lets you know, like, oh, okay, cool. Like if we can, if they're locked into this degree of...
00:19:37
Speaker
thinking like, okay, that that's going to elevate the story. Plus they know what the magazine's about. Yeah. And it can even be a good model for the structure, honestly, you know, like a disaster, a disaster story. You could, you could look at the way this is structured or Nick Davidson's piece um earlier this year or Robert Kolker's piece. there's an interesting one yeah yeah Yeah. Another, another balloon story.
00:20:00
Speaker
You know, I think the structures will be pretty similar and a writer setting out to write at first draft would probably save themselves some time if they just wrote down what was happening section by section in those stories.
00:20:13
Speaker
It's going to, you know, swap out some characters and events and it's going to be a pretty decent guideline for telling the story. Yeah, that's the game tape I always talk about. like You find these stories that you admire, and it's like really, you know, like print them out or something and lay them out and like annotate. What's going on here? Okay, yeah what's going on in this break? It's like that's the the slow work, but the analytical work that you can then model because it's not, a lot of these stories have a similar stencil, but if you imbue it with your own reporting and research and different characters and different backdrops, it'll still feel fresh every time.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Very nice. Well, Jonah, as always, it's so cool getting your side of the table. and Is there anything out maybe we didn't touch upon that like that really struck you about this piece that maybe we should thread in there?
00:21:02
Speaker
No, i mean, it's it's ah Rob did such a nice job with it, and he was so great to work with. Yeah. Yeah, it's a fun piece. It's a great example of of how to tell a historical drama.
00:21:17
Speaker
um So i hope I hope people check it out and enjoy it as much as Rob and I did working on it. Well, amazing. Well, as as as always, Joan, it's so fun to get your side of the table. We're going to kick it over to Robert now. But as always, thanks for the time, man, and insights.
00:21:31
Speaker
Yeah, thanks for having me. It's always a good time.
00:21:41
Speaker
All right. Now it's time to hear from Robert. Robert Weintraub is the best-selling author of No Better Friend, The Divine Ms. Marble, The House That Ruth Built, The Victory Season.
00:21:54
Speaker
He has a substack called and NYC 100 where he counts down the top 1,000 sporting events in New York City. That's at robertweintraub.substack.com. You can visit his website, robertweintraub.com.
00:22:07
Speaker
author.com to learn more about him. You know, and Robert cut his teeth as a television producer at ESPN, but soon began writing for Slate while he was over in Singapore.
00:22:21
Speaker
And then he's written for the New York Times, The Guardian, Grant Lant, and now The Atavist. You know, we talk creating these historical narratives and grounding the characters in their present.
00:22:32
Speaker
They don't know the outcome, even though we might. They don't. David Grant talked about that, too, when he's been on the show in the past. Those are those are pretty sick. ah Looking at a magazine and then thinking what kinds of stories you can pitch there.
Robert Weintraub's Career Journey
00:22:46
Speaker
Instead of like you got this story that you're trying to jam into a square hole and it's a round peg or the other way around. I don't know.
00:22:55
Speaker
I'm shitty at pitching. I am. That's why. That's big reason started Pitch Club. hey And how Robert's out of his story started out as a book proposal.
00:23:06
Speaker
Years in the making. It's great stuff. No parting shot for this episode because it's a bit longer. Plus, I don't even know what to say right now. I i don't even know anymore.
00:23:18
Speaker
So please enjoy my conversation with Robert Weintraub.
00:23:35
Speaker
I actually started as a television producer. I was in television for a large portion of my career before ah getting into writing um and in sports. Yeah, my first job was at ESPN. So, i mean, I was, you know, nice hardcore in that sort of realm.
00:23:51
Speaker
But, you know, the twists and turns of the whole career, we could kind take me in a lot of different directions, including dirigibles, as it turns out. so Yeah. Yeah, I mean, ah you know, for the most part, I've done a lot of sports and, you know,
00:24:04
Speaker
Three of my four books that I've written have been about sports or at least you know somewhat about sports. And you know it's it's kind of the still the organizing principle of my life for better or worse. And I take it from there.
00:24:19
Speaker
Well, I love that you brought up a you know ah ah moment ago about and the twists and turns of your career. And in a a lot of us take a very nonlinear path through this kind of through this kind of work. And it can be frustratingly nonlinear because you just get this vision of where you want to go, but it's all these twists and turns that ah to take to get there can be, can take a long time. It can takes a lot of patience. It can be very frustrating. So don't know, just for you and your path and those twists and turns, how would you describe, you know, where you started to to where you are now?
00:24:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because I did originally in my halcyon misspent youth want to become a sports writer first and foremost, you know, I grew up in New York. uh, was reading the times we had the times, uh, delivered to the house every day. I was always, you part of that tradition. And of course, you know, sports and sports writing in the capital of that really, it was New York for many, many years. So I was captured by that particular myth. And I wanted to, you know, get into that when I, I went to Syracuse and, uh,
00:25:23
Speaker
for my entrance essay, I wrote something about how I wanted to be like Grant Lynn Rice and writing about the four horsemen of the apocalypse and all this nonsense. don't know, but it got me in. So I guess something worked. But then, you know, once I got to Syracuse really, and i don't know, once I realized what modernity was all about, I switched over to television and became a television guy for certainly the of the early part of my career. And, you know, I thought that was just going to be what it was. And if I wrote anything, it would just be, you know, in my dotage or a memoir or something along those lines, whatever.
00:25:57
Speaker
He just kind of forgot about it. ah But, you know, life has its ways. And, ah you know, it originally, it all goes back for me to ah the sort of nascent days of the internet and slate.com, which I'm sure, you know, you've heard of and most of the listeners have heard of.
00:26:16
Speaker
I was actually living overseas. I lived in Asia and Australia for many years, and I was in Singapore at the time, and I happened stumble on this newfangled thing called a website and an e-magazine. Who would have thought? and you know I'd done a lot of – it sounds strange now to look back on it, but I'd covered a lot of basketball in Asia and this new gigantic – Seven-footer out of China was going to be a big ah an early-round pick named Wang Zhezhe. And then following him was another even bigger, more talented guy named Yao Ming.
00:26:49
Speaker
I'm sure people will have heard of them. And, you know, I had some insight. I'd seen these guys play on the Chinese national team and from when they were very young. And I didn't know that anybody else really in American basketball besides, you know, the scouts,
00:27:02
Speaker
and the GMs in the league, certainly nobody who was, you know reading in the sports pages knew anything about them. So i was like, all right, maybe I'll just write up something about them. And in those days you actually had to send a ah snail mail pitch. This how long ago we're talking about your first pitch to get into slate. You had to send a letter.
00:27:18
Speaker
So I did and, you know, promptly forgot about it. And then six weeks later or so I get an email from this guy named ah Chris Swellentrop, who was the editor, one of the editors at slate at the time. And he's like, Hey, I don't know what happened, but you're,
00:27:32
Speaker
your letter landed on my desk and was buried for the last month or so. I finally got a chance to look at it. And I think it's a good idea. Let's do it. And from that little, you know, serendipitous moment sort of became a whole nother career and one that really in a lot of ways took over my television career. You know, when I, you know, as I,
00:27:52
Speaker
proceed forward, the scales of justice, you know, from my TV career at a hundred and my writing career at zero began to even out. And then when I had, you know, kids and a family, you television, especially sports television, which is what I was mostly doing.
00:28:06
Speaker
and Obviously a lot of weekends, a lot of nights, a lot of long hours, not very glamorous, believe me. And, uh, you know, with a young family, I didn't, didn't want to have that know be my entire life. I wanted to spend some time with him. And Lord knows my ah ex-wife now at the time, she wanted me home as much as possible too.
00:28:23
Speaker
So i was fortunate to be able to have some something to fall back on that could keep me home a little bit more. And just as the years went along, it became more more of a writing career than a TV career. And then as my kids got older and they didn't want me around for sure. And I, you know, got sick of them too, let's face it.
00:28:39
Speaker
ah You know, went back to TV when, when required and I certainly they still do. So, you know, I've been able to, I've been fortunate to dip back and forth as the need requires. It's still, you know, fraught out there for both,
00:28:53
Speaker
writers and television producers of all kinds, of all stripes, of all ages. So there's always that in the back of your mind. But at least I have multiple strands or multiple abilities to put forth my ah my bizarre ideas.
00:29:07
Speaker
And the other thing about writing, as opposed to television production, is you know you get your ego boost or your name out there a little bit. Whereas in television, you know television producing is kind of like editing. You're behind the scenes. You craft it. It's, in a lot of ways, your baby, but you get no credit for it.
00:29:21
Speaker
for no credit outside the biz anyway. So at least this way I can, you know, I walk by my bookshelf and I see all the the books I've written with my name on it and all the translations and the various editions. And I can get that little ego boost to get me through the, yeah you know, months long ah horror show of of continuing in this terrible business. So at least there's that. I was fortunate. i You know, so many of us deal with, you know, frustrations and false starts and it can be hard to procure momentum or certainly keep momentum going. And, ah and then there's compounding the frustration sometimes looking over our shoulders and just being kind of competitive or comparing, you know, our path to others, you know, just how we see it, how we're translating what we see and that versus how we feel.
00:30:08
Speaker
And just for you, be it from your TV trajectory door or your writing trajectory, you know, when you've run into that degree of frustration, how have you metabolized it so you can adequately move forward?
00:30:19
Speaker
You know, generally i'd just take a really big hammer and smash my hand over and over again into the desktop. And then I figured anything after that, you know, great. It can't be that bad. Yeah, exactly. Make it worse in the other frames of your life. And then ah this doesn't look that bad.
00:30:35
Speaker
No, I mean, it's a great question and it's, it it can be hard. You see somebody getting a gig that you wanted and you're like, what the heck? you know I'm better than that guy. or you know this this ah This woman gets everything. Why can't she share the wealth a little bit? you know that's That's natural and that's for everybody. But you know from time to time, the main thing I do is I think of other people maybe looking at me and thinking, and why is that guy you know able to write books? And why is he getting these assignments? Who's he?
00:31:03
Speaker
So I guess it goes both ways. All you can really do And, you know, this kind of dovetails into a lot of the stuff I've been doing lately is just kind of put out your own stuff that you're really passionate about, that you really want to do, that the stuff that keeps you working, keeps you writing. You know, I mean, writing is so easily not done, for lack of a better phrase.
00:31:25
Speaker
You know, it's very easy to just kind of. you know, open up your laptop and mean to write something and then spend the whole time surfing the internet or whatever instead. So, you know, to actually do something and get something on the page or, you know, the digital page, it takes, you know, a real, you know, fire in your belly to actually want to do it. So, you know, I have a, I have a sub stack that I do, which is basically, you know, just for me and the handful of people who really enjoy it, you know, I,
00:31:55
Speaker
I count down the top 1000 sporting events in New York city history. i mean, it's as insane as it sounds. And, uh, you know, I, it's not certainly not doing it for the dough, you know, uh, but it's, uh, it's caught on a little bit and people enjoy it and people are looking forward to the next entry. So that's really all I can ask for.
00:32:13
Speaker
And, uh, as long as I can keep my head afloat in terms of, you know, paying the mortgage or whatever. And, uh, you know, beyond that, everything to me is, is just doing the stuff that you really want to do and,
00:32:25
Speaker
gets you to your typewriter or your laptop or your notepad, whatever. Because if you start dwelling in the, you know, what other people are doing or what I should do to try and chase what other people are doing, it it screws you right into the ground. You'll never get anywhere.
00:32:40
Speaker
For better or worse, you you just have to, you know, keep your eye on what motivates you kind of let the chips fall where they may. That's kind of life, you know, in general anyway. So no different than any other walk of life, really.
Newsletter Platforms and Audience Building
00:32:52
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And having sub stack like that or a newsletter, it's so critical to that platform building. You know, even if you're not maybe maybe not making a lot of money from a sub stack or any money at all. But if you've got people giving you their email address and they're looking forward to the next sporting event.
00:33:11
Speaker
on your roster there while not directly paying you and maybe they are, but while not directly, like that is stuff that you can leverage for your next books. Cause you're like, I have this audience. I have people who are eager about this thing. I have an email list of x amount of people on it and, and agents and publishers, they like, okay, they're like, okay. So now if we invest in you, there are people on the other end who are like, are going to buy hopefully, you know, at least one, if not more copies of your next work.
00:33:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's currency you don't really get from other you know aspects of writing. even you know i mean I've obviously been very fortunate to be able to write four books or to write a piece in The Atavist that we'll we'll talk about or you know everywhere else.
00:33:51
Speaker
But a lot of times you don't really get a sense of how many people or you know the level of interest in that. you know sort of you know You get sales figures from time to time or your books maybe. or I did have a book.
00:34:03
Speaker
reached the New York Times bestseller list so that at least let me know that somebody was into it but generally speaking it's all kind of in a vacuum a lot of times when you do this kind of work so this is like you say much more you know direct response and you know for sure even if they're deleting it right away at least you know you're sending it directly to the people who have either signed up for or you know let you know there's some interest in it directly and as you say in this modern age that's what that's what you know, the sort of the quote unquote gatekeepers are looking for, if anything, or you can elude the gatekeepers by doing it directly yourself. And it's a great way to know if you're actually reaching anybody, which is you know always nice to know you you do it for yourself, like i said, in the last answer, but you also want to know that somebody is reading it. And, you know, you get a lot of interactions and a lot of fun people that you wouldn't necessarily even know or know that they are interested in your work, you get a chance to interact with them. And that's just that's just the best for
00:35:02
Speaker
Those of us who are otherwise you know cooped up in their little imaginations and their warrens and don't necessarily get outside nearly as much as they should. So it's definitely recommendable, even if you're not, like you say, making a ton of dough off it. It's not really about that easy to say, but it isn't about that.
00:35:17
Speaker
And yeah, you said the writing being what it is that it can be easily not done. And I had a question to just a kind of a crafty writerly question about things you might drag your feet on. I know what it is for me. If I have to cold call people and make those things like I'll drag my feet all day on making cold calls.
00:35:36
Speaker
It's so much part of the business, but that is something that I just dread. ah but But for you, what is something that you find yourself over the years and to this day, me like you just kind of you drag your feet on it, but you know you got to get it done.
00:35:49
Speaker
Yeah, god cold calling for sure is something that I'm not gifted at or eager to do in any way. A lot of times I've chosen as my subjects tend to be history pieces because that way everybody's dead. I don't have to call anybody. I just kind of research what they've said already. It's handy.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, you know, there's certainly the element of just, and I think for nonfiction, this is an advantage for me. It's just like, how do i get started today? And where do I want to go with this? Like, what's, you know, what's going to get me moving? Because, you know, it's the original motivation is where it really comes from me. Once I get going, I'm usually, you know, I can, I can find two or three hours go by and I've actually been productive, much to my own surprise. So in terms of working in nonfiction, and this is something that, you know, i learned right away, really, when I first started doing this, it helps to have that, like, quote, you know, that somebody said, or somebody did something in your file in your document, that you can just cut or paste, cut and paste right into your, you know, kind of working file and build around it, you know, you don't, you don't have to think about how to start.
00:36:57
Speaker
That to me is, you know, really a key element, you don't have to you know, you don't have to come into it with this grand outline of how you're going to work that day or you're going to get this article structured, you know, think big picture about it all. Just, you know, get a few strands onto the paper itself, onto the file itself. I keep saying it like it's a physical thing. It's not the anymore, obviously, but, ah you know, you just have something that you can just hold on to, you know, it's like an life raft almost.
00:37:26
Speaker
And from there, everything, you know, tends to sort itself out. You'll know At least if you have you know a day's work built off of whatever it is you just put into this into the story and or not, you know you know if it works.
00:37:40
Speaker
And you know that that's really what has always been the most difficult part for me is just really getting going beginning, you know, there's always something to distract you. There's always something else you could be doing. There's always another story you could be looking into writing, you know, unless you're right on deadline, which is, you know, always an unpleasant and pleasant place to be for various reasons. ah You know, there's always something to get you away from your, your task at hand. So,
00:38:07
Speaker
you know, having, having that solid ship to sail on in, in, in your notes or in something and somebody just said, or, you know, just a straight thought that pops in your head, just get it down on paper. That just starting out with that is really everything for me. why You know, once you get that, it all flows from there really.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah. And when you're, you know, researching, be it for a book or a long article, you know, when does the, the shape of it start to develop for you?
00:38:39
Speaker
Um, that's a good question. I mean, in terms of like the structure, generally speaking, when you're writing about history, an event, you know, a a baseball season, which I've done, you know, a natural crash of an airship in this case, uh, uh, this piece for the atavist will, you know, the the structure really is already there. You know, it's kind of reveals itself, whether it's chronological, which is generally speaking, what it is when you're doing something historical, you know, the, at least the,
00:39:07
Speaker
sort of is it exo or endoskeleton whatever the uh the bones of the of the thing are there and you don't have to worry too much about how am i gonna you know start and finish this which of course is always your first thought when you're thinking about these things what's what's the arc you know and in terms of generally speaking if you're doing a historical piece the arc is self-revelatory at least ideally so and then the real challenge is you know how do you you know maintain the subject. How do you maintain that arc? how do you How do you research itself? You know, how do you, what do you go about looking for that's going to stay on this particular path that you've already started to hack out and, or has been hacked out for you in this case?
00:39:49
Speaker
And that's really where the where the, you know, sort of, I wouldn't say difficulty, but that's where it's, that's what it's all about. That's what separates your piece from something that's been written before about that subject or captures the reader's attention. You know, what everything you're going for is from that.
00:40:03
Speaker
You know, that's what writing fiction to me is far, far more difficult because of that. You don't have that set and sewn structure necessarily. And, you know, your mind can take you anywhere and you're free to do it, which is, know,
00:40:17
Speaker
A freedom that I find very, very disturbing in a lot of ways. So, you know, when it comes to nonfiction, you're fortunate, least I've been fortunate enough to generally speaking, have the bones of where you're going, where you're starting and where you're beginning and ideally a midpoint.
00:40:32
Speaker
And then from there, you know, you, it's It's on you to really make the rest of it happen and and do it such a way that people care about. But you shouldn't have to, at least for me, if I find myself having to spend a lot of time about thinking about how I'm going to start and end it, then I know I probably don't have the right subject because it's going to be way too much work for me. I'll just go back and do some TV.
00:40:56
Speaker
are Are you the kind of writer who likes to have ah the lead in place and then you can go from there? or yeah like To what extent do you like to have that secure...
00:41:08
Speaker
I mean, it's definitely important. I love to have it. It doesn't necessarily always present itself to me, especially, you know, like we were talking, if you're you have a deadline that's not six months away, but something you've got to get sorted out the door, that's when just putting anything on the paper serves your purpose because at least this way you can, you know, write other portions of it. And a lot of times the lead will then occur to you because of what you've already written, you know.
00:41:35
Speaker
um I definitely... would prefer in a lot of cases to have that lead or at least that opening scene set in, set in stone and know exactly what I want to do. um And this piece in the out of this actually is a good example of something where I thought I had a good opening scene and it seemed to work.
00:41:53
Speaker
And then I read it again I was like, and it's not really that great. Let's try something else. And then I sent it in and the editors that be there were like, actually, don't you go with this? And we finally we put our heads together and found our way toward the lead and the opening scene. So it it's not a certainly 100% requirement in my case. that Certainly would be nice, but I think there's a lot of ways to get around it. And as long as you have sort of the basic idea of where you're going to go, the lead will present itself one way or the other.
00:42:23
Speaker
Yeah. Well, knowing where you want to go is, is crucial to, I liken it to having a lighthouse in the distance. Like if you can think of it, like this is where I feel like it's going to end or like an ending occurs to you somewhere in the reporting or maybe even the writing like, Oh, I'm not there yet. This is where I want to go.
00:42:43
Speaker
And when you can, the earlier you can get to that, at least for me, I find it so helpful because then everything starts serving that ending. and don't know if that's been in your experience too. Yeah, absolutely.
00:42:54
Speaker
And a lot of times you also find a way, find it that, you know, what you think is your ending or youre you think, all right, here's going to be the ending and then I'll, you know, wrap it up with this and that.
00:43:05
Speaker
And then you realize, you know, I don't even need those extra paragraphs or sentences or whatever to wrap it up. This is the ending. Where I thought I was going all along is the perfect ending. That's what you want to do. Yeah, in a lot of ways it is almost more important.
00:43:18
Speaker
where you know that it's going to end as opposed to where it's going to begin. You can write your way around the beginnings in so many different ways, but where you're going sort of, you know, kind of carries, as you say, not just what you wind up writing, but your thought process throughout.
00:43:34
Speaker
And if you, you know, can have that kind of be in your service the whole time, as opposed to sort of just writing and writing and figuring it out as you go, and maybe it ends here, but maybe...
00:43:45
Speaker
You know, again, that that doesn't work for me. I'm sure people have written great stuff and and not knowing, you know, well yeah like you say, what's coming over the horizon or what's just, you know, just out of sight.
00:43:57
Speaker
But I prefer to have a little bit more of a knowledge that, you know. the earth is flat, so to speak. I don't want to try and put it upon myself to look over that curvature of the earth. You know, I want to be able to know sort of at least in the general area within a square mile or two where I'm going. And, uh, I found for myself anyway, it works much better that way.
Discovering the USS Akron Story
00:44:19
Speaker
Yeah. That's a great way of phrasing it. And, and with this piece for the atavists, how did you arrive at it? Hmm. Great question. ah Well, and it it's been a while now. This is an unusual way. Most people probably have a little less circuitous method of finding a story that winds up running in the atavis. But, you know, it boils back to already now, probably about seven or eight years ago already. And, you know, i was just doing what I do. a lot of times I was researching for something else. And I came across across a stray mention of this story.
00:44:53
Speaker
airship disaster that was not the Hindenburg. Just to kind of put a sort of big picture on it, the story is about the USS Akron, which was an American airship, a U.S. s Navy airship, just like the Hindenburg, except American built and run, and it crashed in spectacular and devastating and tragic fashion several years before the Hindenburg even happened. And, you know, when I read about it, i just it was just a sentence, a throwaway sentence and something else entirely. And i was just like, oh, that's interesting. I don't even know what that is.
00:45:26
Speaker
And i was I was in our local library and i I went over to a different part of the reference area and I happened to just, I fell on ah yeah reference book about natural or you know disasters of all stripes, I guess it was.
00:45:40
Speaker
And that because I just read it, i was like, oh, let's just see if that airship is in here. And it was. And, and you know, mentioned the fact that this was a huge, huge story at the time, you know, Depression era 30s.
00:45:51
Speaker
And I fancy myself something of a historian, at least, and up to date, at least a little bit on American history. But I had never heard of it And I thought it was an amazing story. too you Twice as many people died in this crash as did in the Hindenburg. But everybody knows the Hindenburg.
00:46:07
Speaker
Nobody's ever heard of this. And this was, you know, our airship. quote unquote. ah You know, I thought, hey, that might make a big, a good book. And I was researching ideas for my next book at the time, obviously. And I wrote it up as a book proposal, not necessarily as ah as a, you know, like a long form ah magazine piece, is so to speak. And, you know, my agent was like, this is interesting. Let's, you know, change this or that. Let's see what I can drum up. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's not. You know, he was a little lukewarm about it as he tends to be. But, you know,
00:46:39
Speaker
basically, uh, you know, life interceded. I found some other project that was, you know, that I could get sold more readily apparently. And, uh, I really just kind of forgot about it and it, uh, just, you know, but I keep the files open at all times and I make sure that I added it to the list. And then fast forward to this year, eight years later, seven years later, whatever it is.
00:47:00
Speaker
And, uh, know, I was reading the long form newsletter that gets sent out by, uh, Don Vanetta, who I know a little bit. And, uh, You know, it took you took me to the Atavist. And I was like, oh, okay. Put two and two together finally. Maybe that's a good website that I could write for. And what stories do I have? Oh, yeah. I have this airship story that I'd completely forgotten about that I thought was awesome at one time in my life. And sure enough, they were into it. I reanimated in a big way about it. And lo and behold, here it is. You know, 10,000 words or whatever about ah this kind of forgotten
00:47:36
Speaker
ah incident in American history that at the time was hugely important. So I, you know, like most things that happen, like we were saying earlier, it's really a lot of serendipity and a lot of timing is everything. And you think it's going to be, you know, one thing and it turns out to be another, you know, I could say that about 99% of the things that have really happened to me in my life. So this is a perfect example of that.
00:47:59
Speaker
Yeah, well, your point about bring saying like keeping the files open, same thing, and maybe just sticking in the drawer. A lot of times it is timing and serendipity of just like clicking through an atavis and thinking, oh my God, this looks like it could be a good fit for them. And when I read this, I'm oh, this is just the perfect atavis story. It just has everything baked into It's very cinematic.
00:48:19
Speaker
It's got the disaster elements. it it It plays like a short movie, reads like a short story. It's just... It's got everything that's for them. And that's just, you know, a link you happen to click through and something you happen to have that you were able to reanimate. like So it is timing imp patience and never fully giving up on anything that you've ever done any research on.
00:48:39
Speaker
Yeah, and that's really critically important. If there's anything I've learned is that is that, you know, one stray file piece of information that you have, you know, that and you don't really even think that much about at the time.
00:48:51
Speaker
always keep it somewhere where you can go back to it because Lord knows my memory is not what it used to be. And it's, it's never that great in the first place. So I, you know, I can never count on the tumblers, you know, clicking together in exactly the right way, unless I can go back and have it written down in some form and then think to myself, Oh, you know what?
00:49:13
Speaker
And it's usually, In this capacity, the way it happened here, I see an outlet and then I wind up reverse engineering and thinking what would work for them? not necessarily, oh, here's an idea.
00:49:24
Speaker
Let me go hunting around and find something and find some place where it'll work. you know I mean, that's that's a viable way to do it, but it just doesn't seem to usually work that way for me for whatever reason.
00:49:35
Speaker
you know as you but As you point out, the story and the outlet in this case worked so fit so perfectly together. ah nut to bolt that, you know, it it really was destined to be almost in a lot of ways. And, you know, the atavis was a site I'd heard, you know, I knew about it, but it wasn't like I was religiously looking at it for ah and a month to month basis up until the point that it got referred to me, you know, strictly by accident and again. And then,
00:50:04
Speaker
ah Okay, let's let's go and see what fits them rather than the opposite way. If I tried to at any point you know figure, all right, have this idea for a story about an airship that crashed. Let's go spelunking around and try and find a website a publication or whatever for it.
00:50:24
Speaker
you know, I'm sure it would have been unfulfilled and it just wouldn't have happened. So again, did the the fates have you in their hands and usually it works out yeah for a reason. If it's meant to be, it is meant to be and you'll find the right outlet for your peace no matter what it is.
00:50:39
Speaker
What was it about airships at that particular time in a american American history that was so alluring for the people who wanted to build them?
Airships in 1930s America
00:50:48
Speaker
Yeah, well, it had been really World War I, and you have to put yourself in the shoes of you know these military planners who didn't want another war to happen, but were thinking about one over the horizon, especially a war in the Pacific with Japan. That was sort of everybody in the Navy, U.S. s Navy particularly, assumed that was the coming conflict. And in World War one
00:51:11
Speaker
Airships, dirigible zeppelins is what they were called by the used by the Germans were really very effective in terms of scouting reconnaissance and also dropping bombs on England as it happened.
00:51:22
Speaker
Didn't win them a war, but you know, they were they were highly ah effective and really a technological breakthrough in a lot of ways and a real step forward. And everybody sort of knew that aviation was the next frontier, ah but what form that was going to take was quite up in the air. And for a lot of planners, it came down to airplanes, which had their obvious uses, of course, but in terms of scouting and and recon reconnoitering, is that the word? Reconnoitering large areas, large swaths of ocean. You know, you just couldn't do it. They were slow and unreliable and very, you know, open to the weather.
00:52:02
Speaker
And obviously they needed land at the time. So, you know, the idea of an airship, a dirigible, that could not only stay ah up in the air for long periods of time and cover huge amounts of area. And also in the case of the USS Akron, which is what they were talking about and wanted to building, they could also carry airplanes that would exponentially increase the amount of range they could cover.
00:52:23
Speaker
And you're talking about estimates vary, but two, four, six times the amount of range of what the Navy fleet, the ships could actually find. And, you know, you think about it and,
00:52:35
Speaker
it's really tantalizing in terms of how they could have really changed history if they just didn't crash. You know, you think about the whole essence of Pearl Harbor and what that was, a surprise attack in the Pacific against the U.S. fleet.
00:52:48
Speaker
Would they, you know, if these airships have been out there, always on station looking around for enemy warships on their way, you know, toward America, toward Hawaii, would with if would it have, they certainly would not have been able to pull off Pearl Harbor attack, probably wouldn't have even thought about trying it. It would have counterfactually changed the entire essence of the Pacific war during world war two.
00:53:09
Speaker
Who knows if there even is a world war two in the Pacific, you know, of course that's all conjecture. And the fact is these airships were very vulnerable to thunderstorms as it happens. And,
00:53:21
Speaker
The Akron, as I write about, went down in this terrible tragedy, and then its sister ship also crashed, although far fewer lives were lost, thankfully. But that basically kind of you know put an end to the era you know with a a very sharp, almost a guillotine crashing down. It wasn't like in a lot of ways, like with the airplanes. you know Airplanes crashed too. Military airplanes crashed all the time, but the expense was less.
00:53:47
Speaker
And there was you know more of a sort of a flight test mindset to it all where you could say, oh, you know, these things are going to happen. And that's just what we do in the military. We push the envelope until we get something that works. But that ah wasn't really available to happen with such a colossal airship like this. It was too big, cost too much money. And It just didn't have the results to justify it. But it was a fascinating few years in there where they were you know sort of the bell of the ball. And you know what hugely popular with just the average American who
00:54:19
Speaker
Obviously, he was going through the Depression. you know and There was a lot of people thinking America was on its knees. and you know But here's something that we could build that was truly you know prideful and amazing to look at. And as it passed overhead, you could sort of dream the big dream. you know And the fact that they then crashed, like 2008,
00:54:38
Speaker
and wound up like everything else did during that era ah was really a ah psychological gut punch to people of the era. And it, again, you know, was something that knew nothing about. And yeah you sort of wonder how it is that this disappeared so completely from history. And, you know, things like things that aren't successful tend to do, I guess so. But it's interesting to at least revisit that era and put yourself in that mindset and think about what might have been in this case.
00:55:06
Speaker
Yeah, the speaking of the size of it, it was something like 785 feet long or something, which is insane to picture because and you know a football field is 300 feet long. So now you're talking almost like two and a half football fields of this of ah this airship, you know however wide it's going to be. The fact that it can carry airplanes and be the an aircraft carrier in In the air, just to imagine it, is it's pretty spectacular just to and picture in the air. And I did watch, there's a clip of video, some archival video and that I was able to see from the link in your story. And it was it just kind of wild, though this eerie thing floating along. and it It is just a sight to behold, really.
00:55:49
Speaker
Yeah, i i I would think a lot of times while I was writing it about, you know, Brontosaurus or one of these gigantic dinosaurs from, you know, the Paleolithic or whatever, Paleolithic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, whatever it was.
00:56:02
Speaker
Yeah, I haven't written too many science books. You can see why. Yeah. But yeah, they they were otherworldly. I mean, it's just, and the Akron in particular, as you put it quite accurately, 785 feet, it's, you know, the one of the largest things to ever fly.
00:56:19
Speaker
I mean, when you put think about it that way, and, you know, in retrospect, obviously, they were too big in a lot of ways, and, you know, you you could sort of see something like this happening and it wouldn't work and it's better to be smaller and nimble much like the mammals vis-a-vis the dinosaurs right but uh it's it was an astonishing sight it must have been incredible to just be your average uh joe looking up at you know in 1932 let's say and to see one of these monsters floating overhead and you know people didn't they weren't used to seeing airplanes going overhead particularly it's not like there was a lot of aviation going on and for
00:56:54
Speaker
you know A lot of people, the first thing they ever really saw fly over their head was this incredible behemoth. you know It's a blue whale almost. so yeah it's It's one of the things I tried to do in the story, really. was important to me was you know not...
00:57:10
Speaker
write it in retrospect, so to speak, not take the sort of approach of, of course, these were doomed to always crash. They were doomed to not work because of their size and because of their vulnerability or whatever.
00:57:23
Speaker
And just, you know, take it as somebody who is alive then and gazed upon what must've been to people at the, at the time, like the ninth wonder of the world or whatever, know, it's like this astonishing craft that was built.
00:57:35
Speaker
to such an enormous size and yet, like you say, it didn't leave any kind of footprint. It just kind cruised across almost silently in the air and it was part of the clouds and then it would just nose out or nose in and disappear completely into the mist or what have you. It's just, must've been spectacular thing to actually have seen and you know in live and in person and not on grainy old newsreel from 90 years ago.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yeah, and there's ah one scene of ah you know the airship you is kind of making almost like a campaign tour, if you will, ah in a public parade you know through the south and then into Southern California.
00:58:12
Speaker
And as it tries to dock in San Diego, a bunch of naval naval people see it. They're trying to secure it, trying to anchor this thing to the ground, and then the wind catches it. And there's a pretty terrifying scene of these airships.
00:58:25
Speaker
guys holding on to the ropes and you know some fall to their death, unfortunately, and then one guy hangs on for an hour on the rope hundreds of feet up in the air. It must have been terrifying. And you you write it so evocatively.
00:58:38
Speaker
Yeah, another one that i I guess I had to put myself into his sort of metaphorical shoes, but I was not happy about doing it. I tell you, that was an unbelievable scene. And yeah as you mentioned, yeah, the Akron was flying, you know, all the way across the country, partially as a promotional, you know, kind of show off. And also because it was going to do some war games with the fleet on the and in the Pacific, as it was designed to do.
00:59:02
Speaker
And I tried to dock at this Camp Kearney, was called in San Diego. And unfortunately, you know, but We talked about the size. yeah Not only is that incredible for the ship itself, but it required an obvious, enormous logistical operation to to backbone it. And they didn't really have that in a lot of places, especially at this place in San Diego. There was no hangar, not nearly one large enough to house this thing. So they tried to you know tie it down to a mast and to the runway, essentially.
00:59:33
Speaker
And as you mentioned, things went haywire. These were not experienced crew in terms of trying to dock an airship that most of them had never seen before. And it turned into absolute tragic and incredible scene when the ship went up and guys were still holding on to the ropes. And one man let go 15 feet and fell and just broke an arm.
00:59:57
Speaker
And three other guys went up and two of them fell to their deaths. And one man, his name was Bud Cowart, 19. nineteen I mean, you know, just a kid and somehow managed to hold on for, you know, a dear life. Incredible. I wonder what his hands were at the end of this, but I mean, you know, they kind of went over to Pacific just in case. And, you know, there's newsreel footage of it and all these brass and ah the mayor of San Diego and, you know, obviously a lot of newsmen and,
01:00:27
Speaker
And even cameras were all there looking to see what would happen when they when the Akron docked. And instead, they got this incredible scene you know human and human emotion and death as it happens.
01:00:41
Speaker
And you know the good news was they managed to pull this one kid, Bud Cowart, back up into the ship. He was just like almost, hey, let's do it again. i mean, his attitude was pretty amazing considering. i know But yeah, it was it's difficult to conjure and it's certainly not something you ever want to do. And trying to you know put myself into his shoes and then write about it gave me a couple of nightmares, I tell you. But it was just part of it. And this is even before the obvious drama of the ship crashing itself. So you had you know Even before it went to its ultimate demise, there were problems, and this was you know a stark reminder of that, to put it mildly.
01:01:19
Speaker
Yeah. Well, and given the setbacks and and other other things that were you know befalling this airship program, Moffat is the main the the main person always campaigning for this in the military. And you know you're write at one point, Moffat was forced to defend the program in congressional hearings, naval inquiries, and he said...
01:01:42
Speaker
yeah We'll not lose faith. We shall build and operate as many of these rigid airships as possible so that those men will have not lost their lives in vain. And it's just like, here's this thing. You're like, why? i Maybe it's us now thinking like these things are doomed. But in the moment, be like they they didn't see it as a sunk cost. I guess they saw it more as an investment in the future of the military. But sometimes they're like, oh, man, maybe maybe you should have.
01:02:07
Speaker
but But maybe that's just hindsight. They'd be like, you should have given up on these things. Yeah. And that, in in a nutshell, is what I to try to you know fight against, writing it in that way, because obviously, yes, and looking back on it, it was you know sort of ridiculous. What are these guys thinking? But you know they were true believers, and they really thought this was the best way to defend our country. These were, you know as you say, William Moppet, Rear Admiral, the head of the chief of naval aviation. I mean, this was a big figure in the U.S. Navy between the wars.
01:02:38
Speaker
He was... a very gifted bureaucratic infighter and someone who managed to, you know, shepherd this program, not just with these two that we've been talking about, the Accurid and the sister ship, the Macon, but earlier than that, what they built several other or bought several other airships as well.
01:02:57
Speaker
And they all crashed too. I mean, there was, you know, a constant sort of drumbeat of death and destruction around these airships. And yet it wasn't the mindset of, this is ridiculous. Let's put our energy and our money is more importantly elsewhere. It was look at the promise of these things. If we can just keep them in the air, if we can just get a fleet of these things built and operating so that, you know, if one crashes, we're not, you know, we're not doomed. We can, so we still have a huge program to fall back on, which is, you know, the Navy itself, the fleet was, they, you,
01:03:30
Speaker
thought of it much more in the sort of, you know, the promise of it all, not what's the worst that could happen. And unfortunately they were confronted with, you know, the worst, the worst possible scenario, you it's Shakespearean in its way. I mean, you know, the fact that Admiral Moppet not only fought so hard and for so long and had this sort of purity of vision about these things, but then literally went down with the ship, you know, his, his pride joy in the USS Akron,
01:04:00
Speaker
There's a real there' a real tragic and a real poignancy to that.
Writing Historical Narratives Without Hindsight Bias
01:04:04
Speaker
And yeah, again, it's it's it's hard to sort of envision it from a modern perspective why these things kept going and going, even though they proved to be very vulnerable. But you know that was what I had to avoid in in writing it. You have to look at it from in the moment. And this is not just this piece. This is writing history in general. You have to look at how people, the decisions they made and their actions that they took in the moment, you know, without the 2020 hindsight.
01:04:33
Speaker
And that's not that easy to do. And that's one of the you know more difficult aspects really of writing historical nonfiction, whether it's book or, you know, and an article or any kind of ah piece where you're looking back on things that happened and trying to figure out what these people were thinking.
01:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, when when I've spoken with David Grand, who's written amazing historical narratives, be it The Wager, Lost City of Z, Killers of the Flower Moon, his big thing, and I asked him about how he creates tension and suspense with these historical narratives that we kind of might know the outcome, but yet they're still incredibly gripping.
01:05:08
Speaker
And he echoed the exact point you made, Robert, where he's just like, they don't know how it ends in the moment. So we have to be in their shoes, in their present.
01:05:19
Speaker
And when when you write it like that and research it like that, it does still create an incredible amount of um tension. And we want to know what happens next. We want to keep turning turning or scrolling ah just because, yeah, like they don't know how it ends, even though we do. Right. And the fact that we do is what creates that tension, right? Because nobody wants to die. Nobody wants these things to happen. Of course, you know that sort in the back of your mind, you know, and that the the Titanic did not want to sink on its maiden voyage.
01:05:48
Speaker
So how in the world did it happen? like What is the rationale behind these decisions? And or were they just blind to the world, blind to the facts? It doesn't seem likely in a lot of these cases. Obviously, that does happen sometimes. But, you know, you're talking about, like I said,
01:06:04
Speaker
you highly decorated, military men in this case. oh you know Admiral Moffat won the Medal of Honor at one point, the highest decoration you could possibly win. This was not just some fly-by-night guy with a pie-in-the-sky attitude about, oh, these airships are going to change warfare and make my name go down in history. He was doing what he thought was best at every point, and it was a true believer in the potential of these things. And it's it's you have to put yourself, like like we were just saying, into why he was doing the things he was doing and
01:06:37
Speaker
what's the rationale at any given point, not just in the big picture with him, but, you know, even why is he ah on this? Why is he flying this head of the program? Why in the world would he on an airship on a routine mission when, you know, they didn't realize the severity, but there was still weather issues in the area. And, you know, you're, you're,
01:06:56
Speaker
Doing something that may lead to your ultimate demise. How on earth could you have gotten on board this thing, which is clearly a flying death trap, right? But that's obviously not at all the way they were thinking. and you know Admiral Moffat loved nothing better than to be on board an airship and thought of it as the know the the ultimate...
01:07:16
Speaker
proof of, you know, the ultimate moment of his career to get to fly on these things and to prove to everybody, you know, a lot of disbelievers and to people who, you know, were right there with him that this, he was right. And these were, you know, the way to go. And there's, there's no way you can sort of put yourself and re and write about it ah accurately without putting yourself into that mindset at the time. And so, you know, the,
01:07:41
Speaker
that's it's it's an automatic and you know it's not interesting if you approach it from oh look at these idiots what would they possibly thinking you know it's yeah it's much more interesting to understand the whys and the hows of their decision making and oftentimes you find it makes total sense and it's just you know it's it's just life that kind made it interesting for all of us to look back on and uh you know you know I think that the Hindenburg, obviously the Hindenburg was this terrible disaster, but its forerunner was a Zeppelin called the Groff Zeppelin, which you know flew a million miles or something before the Germans retired it and just carried people all over the world. And nobody's ever heard of it because nothing untoward happened, right?
01:08:23
Speaker
Everybody's heard of the Hindenburg because it blew up in spectacular fashion. it you know It wasn't fated to happen that way. Obviously, they thought it was just going to be a similar ah you know passenger ship to the Graf Zeppelin. So you do yourself and you do the readers a disservice by sort of looking at it through the lens of modern times and not as they were living it.
01:08:42
Speaker
Yeah, and when the Akron goes down, goes and and the way you describe it and the few surviving ah members who were you know in the ah in the ocean at the time and just you know starting to succumb to hypothermia and everything, it's like really riveting cinematic storytelling.
USS Akron's Crash and Survival Stories
01:09:03
Speaker
So how did you yeah convey that and recreate those scenes ah you know there in the ocean on the crash site? Yeah, I mean, obviously, these are the kind of things that writers and historians rely upon, because if everybody had died, we would never know anything about what happened, right?
01:09:21
Speaker
Only three men came back and, you know, were sort of limited to our knowledge of what happened based on what they remember. But you know you go with what you can. And fortunately, they you know one of the survivors was the second in command of the ship.
01:09:36
Speaker
His name was Herbert Wiley. And two others were you know dedicated and long-serving airmen who were you know knew what they were talking about. And you know they gave congressional testimony after the fact of what happened. Everybody, of course, was trying to figure out what happened. yeah you know pride The pride of the US Navy here goes down in a storm.
01:09:56
Speaker
what the heck uh so then they repeated their stories quite a bit there was a particularly important and you know kind of we're talking about you know not looking back but in retrospect you know they they had a little distance about 15 years after it happened a writer named john toland who's a well-known at the time anyway historian you know, happened to write, yeah interview these three survivors and get a lot of new details and a lot of specifics about what happened beyond just, you know, the human story rather than just this sort of technical, why did the ship crash?
01:10:30
Speaker
And so a lot of it, you know, I stand on the shoulders of of giants at all times, as do most writers. So, you know, I thank him for a lot of his, you know sort of legwork back in the late 40s, early 50s. And, you know, and then you just build upon it and you sort of, sometimes you ah you know, have to use a little conjecture about what, again, these guys must've been feeling. You're talking about one second you're in the most technologically advanced ship, you know, airship ever built. And the next minute you're swimming for your life in the freezing Atlantic ocean off of New Jersey.
01:11:03
Speaker
You know, how in the world can you possibly ah live through something like that? And what runs through your mind? And, you know, as it happened in these cases, they, almost did die. They came very close to losing all hands as it was, it was sort of a miracle that any of them made it out in that sense, you know, the inherent drama of that all was very easy. I mean, I, you know, as a writer trying to convey what it was a like, it mostly, I tried to stay out of the way and just give, you know, sort of their, their stories, you directly because not much I could do to improve upon it in terms of dramatic tension and in terms of,
01:11:40
Speaker
You know, holy cow, are these guys really going to make it out? Certainly the first time I read it, I was shocked that anybody lived and, you know, these three guys somehow or another managed to stay alive long enough to get plucked out of the ocean where, you know, 75 or whatever it was of there ah their crew members and crewmates didn't.
01:11:58
Speaker
never really even got a chance, you know, and but there was also a lot of things to look back on. And again, in in retrospect, you're like, well, how is this possible? But they didn't have life jackets on the ship. They had one life raft ah that sat 14 people, I think it was, and it went empty. You know, they it went down very suddenly and they didn't get a chance to prepare for it. But even if they had,
01:12:19
Speaker
there would still not you know really have been a lot of ways to prevent the huge ah loss of life. And then when the sister ship went down to Macon a couple years later, there were life preservers everywhere and plenty of life rafts and they'd learned their lesson. And that's why only a couple of people died instead of 75 or whatever it was on the Akron.
01:12:38
Speaker
And so, you know, lesson learned, but boy, you really had to learn a harsh lesson to get there, unfortunately, which is usually usually the case in American history or world history for sure.
01:12:49
Speaker
And yeah, and when you're you know writing a piece of this nature, and I know um and know Jonah is a brutal editor in terms of cutting things. yeah He's very cognizant of pace.
01:13:01
Speaker
So how did what was your experience? so like you know If Jonah was just like, let's we're going to cut a bunch of words here, what's the dialogue that you're having? theyre Like, okay, I see that. Or, man, I i really want this piece in. and What was that those conversations like?
01:13:15
Speaker
Yeah, you know, you never want to give up anything that you've worked so hard to actually get down on paper, of course. But, you know, and in generally, ah you know, I tend to write long on those first initial drafts.
01:13:29
Speaker
Specifically because of that, you want the editor to be able to, you know, not just say this is, I'm going to cut this and this. It doesn't mean anything. But you want them to have a sense of what's available, you know, so that when the cuts do come,
01:13:44
Speaker
it makes a lot of sense. It's like, okay, yeah, we're saying this, but we said it already in such and such a way, or, you know, this is interesting, but it slows down the pace, whatever. And so you're not, you know, it's much easier to just carve away at the, at the ice sculpture a little bit rather than, know, hand in something and have it, you know, whacked in half. And then you're trying to find, know, a whole nother, you know,
01:14:06
Speaker
5,000 words or whatever to make it work. So it wasn't that difficult. You know, obviously, there were there were a handful of things that I thought should be in there. And Jonah, to his credit, had no issue. You put him back where I felt strongly about things. It was nothing major, certainly. It was, you know, word choices or, you know, somebody saying something that I thought was particularly relevant or interesting. not Not anything of any, you know, real major surgery for sure. So the process in this case, I thought,
Editing Skills in Storytelling
01:14:34
Speaker
worked very well. And Jonah, as you point out, has a real sort of excellent sense of pacing and and what you know what can be cut, even if it's you know so what you think of as important to the overall story, but kind of gets in the way of keeping the reader bouncing quickly between paragraphs. And I think that's very important. And it's a skill that took me you know a while to learn, even though
01:14:58
Speaker
I was in television and that's everything, you know, we're always cutting, we're always editing, making it faster and making it, you keeping the pace up, up, up. And, you know, i try to bring that to my writing, but you forget a lot of times and you also, you know, you fall in love with your story and you want as much of it out there as possible. So it's great to have somebody like Jonah there to, you know, rein you back in when you need to. But overall, I think the process was fairly straightforward and and very easy to work with for sure.
01:15:24
Speaker
How do you like to be edited? Yeah. ah with a very, very light touch and apologies well at all times. yeah Yeah, right, exactly. I want somebody who's going to reel me in for my worst instincts. you know I was fortunate in my books to work with the the same editor over all four who was outstanding.
01:15:45
Speaker
His name is John Parsley. And, you know, he he was always extremely, you know, insightful and would always manage not just in terms of just line by line editing, but sort of, you know, where the bigger picture wants to go, where you're, you know, kind of taking a tack that might not work in the big picture or might not lead to anything that's relevant. You know, we would have conversations and it was not just a matter of, you know, me turning in a draft and him.
01:16:16
Speaker
responding to it but you know kind of along the way editing as I like to say you know kind of pit stop editing um you know and in in the book format you can do that a little bit easier than you know in a case where you're writing something either on deadline or for you know something like the out of this which is you have some time but it's also you know that it's not like you guys you know it's not like I could sit down with Jonah for you know hours at a time and discuss the entire ah meaning of the piece and how it fits into life or whatever you know it's It's definitely a different scenario, but you know, you always ah want an editor who's got your best interests at heart. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what it all boils down to, whether it's, you know, keeping you out of your own, out of trouble, you know, keeping it from your own worst instincts or suggesting a ah pathway that works better, or, you know, just giving it a strong line by line edit. You know, they all, you know, there's a lot of ways to fill that bucket, but, you know, keeping you
01:17:13
Speaker
and you know, on the right path and keeping you and bringing out your best and making the piece work best as you would write it and not, you know, and you never want to look back at your piece and think, oh man, this would have been great.
01:17:26
Speaker
But for the editor and what he did to all this stuff or she, and that certainly wasn't the case with Jonah or in my books and not really, i haven't had that experience too often. It happens from time to time, obviously, occasionally the more you write, you're going to run into it.
01:17:38
Speaker
um But, you know, for the most part, the editors I've been fortunate who I've, work with have all done the job with a with a scalpel's touch and and more important kept me ah for making a fool out of myself and who wants to do that right That's awesome.
Personal Recommendations on Swimming Techniques
01:17:55
Speaker
Well, Robert, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for like a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And that's just like anything that you're finding fun could be a book, but it could also just be a writing utensil or a fanny pack or brand of coffee. It's like whatever you want. So whatever's bringing you joy, what would you recommend to the listeners? Wow.
01:18:16
Speaker
You know, what a wide open question. I told you before, I don't like fiction because it gives you such a open array of choices. I mean, come on. ah Well, there's a lot of ways to go. you know It's funny. I was just thinking about this and I was thinking I should write a piece about it. Funnily enough, so this goes back to I've been doing a lot of swimming lately.
01:18:33
Speaker
ah you know I'm a former athlete and I try and keep fit. and But you know as the famed ah nonfiction writer, Indiana Jones, once said, it's not the ears, it's the mileage. And you know my tendons and various body parts are feeling the ears a little bit. So Swimming, I find, is a great way to you know kind of do that without putting a lot of punishment on your body, at least not on the joints.
01:18:56
Speaker
and But you know it gets boring when you're swimming you know three miles a week or whatever, doing freestyle back and forth and back and forth. so And I've been breaking it up by using a stroke called the side stroke, which has garnered a lot of curious looks down at the YMCA. And a lot of people thinking, what in the world is that?
01:19:16
Speaker
And ah it kind of goes back to, and this will tie it back into the piece a little bit. um you know i I used to live in in Hong Kong, and I learned to scuba dive while I was living there. And for the certification, you know you had to swim a certain distance. And I did, and I found it was...
01:19:33
Speaker
exhausting, but that's a whole nother story. and And the guy who was actually the, you know, you know, the guy who ran the show there, he was a former British Navy underwater demolition expert or something like that. He spent a lot of time in the water, kind of like a Navy SEAL type.
01:19:48
Speaker
And he said, well, you know, don't worry too much about your freestyle, because if you're ever in a situation where you have to swim for your life, you're going to tire and drown if you try and swim the freestyle. You should do the side stroke. It'll keep you going. And you'll see where you're, keep your head above water. You'll see where you are, your hands out in front of you in case there's, you know, fish of some sort that you don't want to have meat with your face.
01:20:10
Speaker
And, ah you know, it's it's definitely worth, you know, keeping that in your back pocket. And I never forgot that. And fortunately, I've never been in a situation where I had to, you know swim for my life. But there have been occasions where I surfaced from a scuba dive and I was, know,
01:20:25
Speaker
far too, uh, distant from the ship, the boat that was supposed to pick us up for my comfort. And I wound up using it. And, uh, I, you know, and here I am using it in the pool on a regular basis and it keeps you going and it alleviates the boredom and it gets people talking to you about it. And, uh, I can have a story to tell. So it might not be, uh, particularly, uh, interesting in terms of, you know, book recommendation or movie recommendation. It's not, uh, you know Mahler's second symphony or anything like that, but the side stroke is, uh,
01:20:54
Speaker
Worthy of your attention if you're ever swimming and you want to break up your endless boring laps. Let me tell it works out well. Oh, amazing. i I love that. I love the sound of
Praise for The Atavist Piece
01:21:04
Speaker
that. And anyway, but the, yeah, this piece for the Atavist, it's great. It's 10,000 words and it reads like it's 5,000. It's just an awesome, awesome piece. Well-paced, just riveting stuff of these forgotten histories that I i love. i love coming across these things. Like, how did I not know about this? And the Atavist does such a good job of running stories like this. So just thank you for the work and thanks for coming on to talk some shop.
01:21:27
Speaker
No, thank you. It's been fantastic. I love talking about this stuff and I love being able to, you know, give my perspective on things for better or worse. So take it as you will.
Closing Remarks and Promotions
01:21:42
Speaker
So we did it. We made it. We did it again. Thanks to Robert, Jonah and you, kind listener, spending some time. with headphones listening to these conversations giving me a reason to live be sure you're checking out magazine.atavist.com to support the amazing work done there visit brendanomero.com hey hey as the hub for all things cnf pod rage against the algorithm and of course pitch club gotta keep growing pitch club gotta keep growing them all they're not intrusive your permission is currency i respect that
01:22:21
Speaker
Unlike a lot of people. All right, CNFers, stay wild. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.