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Episode 449: Drew Philp Wants to Make Spanakopita Out of Spinach News
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Drew Philp went to Ethiopia to report on the front lines of what was likely a genocide that largely went ignored. His story, "There Will Be No Mercy," is for The Atavist Magazine.
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Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
The Front Runner Pre-Orders & Promotions
00:00:00
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Oh hey, The Front Runner, the life of Steve Prefontaine, brought to you by Mariner Books. It's available for pre-order. I've got some nice notes from people who beat that link like it owed them money. You can visit the bookseller of your choice, Powellbookshop.org, HarperCollins, Barnes & Noble.
00:00:17
Speaker
Plunk down $32.99 or.98 or $98.97. I'm just spitballing. Everything helps. Every author you know under the sun begs for pre-orders. It's part of the game now. And you only have so many dollars at your disposal. So all I'm going to say is please consider it. Also, promotional support for the podcast is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference in Boston. Boston.
00:00:42
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Celebrating his 26th year on the last weekend of March, the 28th and 29th, hundreds of journalists from around the world are descending on Bean Town. Keynote speakers include Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zach.
00:00:57
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They're going to deliver the knowledge, as will Connie Chung as the closing keynote. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee, use the CNF 15 code at checkout, and you will get that 15% off. To learn more, visit combeyond.bu.edu, use CNF 15, and save some money.
Podcast Introduction & Patreon Shoutout
00:01:25
Speaker
Some precious burrito money.
00:01:28
Speaker
something really terrible has happened here and the world has ignored it.
00:01:38
Speaker
I know I didn't do the theme song thing with the clips again because they ran out of time and I don't i think I just got to scrub it and they're bare. ah So you got teaser quote from Drew. wellll We'll get to him in a second. It's a creative nonfiction podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. I'm your unreliable narrator and the voice of a generation, Brendan O'Mara.
00:02:05
Speaker
As we get rocking and rolling, I want to give a shout out to Matt Martin, a new patron over at the Patreon crew. Patreon gang. Thank you, Matt. And if you want to be a patron and get access to a pretty cool crew of CNF-ers and perhaps some coaching calls with me, window shop at patreon dot.com slash CNF
Ethiopian Genocide Reporting
00:02:23
Speaker
pod. It's that adavistian time of the month. Go to magazine.adavist.com to read but blockbuster stories. And this month's story is Oh it's heavy and ah chronicles what is likely probably a genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia. ah The hospital was overrun with victims, the medical staff risked everything to treat the wounded and believe the world has indeed endured a genocide.
00:02:50
Speaker
Drew Philp is the journalist behind this story, and we talk about how we pitch this as ER, r only in an Ethiopian hospital, and as the that population has endured unthinkable indignities. And this isn't a historical piece. This happened within the last five years.
00:03:11
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't hear about it either. It's a courageous piece of reporting, but even more courageous of the people at the heart of the story who are literally risking their lives to be on the record to have the story told. In this episode, we hear from Jonah Ogles, who hooked up his good microphone this time around to get his side of the table. This story is a a bit different for the activist. and that they don't identify as a news organization. And this story has that a more of a current event hook than what's typical. But it still has the propulsion of what you've come to expect from an activist story. If you don't subscribe to the activist, let Drew's story be the one that makes you punk down $25 a year. That's $2.08 a story. When you think about what you're getting for $2.08 a story, I mean, what a deal.
00:04:05
Speaker
magazine.adivist.com. No, I don't get kickbacks. Showing us to this episode more at brendanamare.com. Hey, there you can check out blog post, pre-order the front runner, I don't know, just saying, and sign up for my monthly rage against the algorithm news newsletter. I'm sorry, rage against the algorithm newsletter. I think we're all a bit miffed by big tech and permission assets divorced from the algorithm.
00:04:28
Speaker
is the place I want to live. Book recommendations, exclusive happy hour, cool links, first of the month, no spam.
Handling Heavy Topics in Journalism
00:04:36
Speaker
You can't beat it. I'll give Drew a more fleshed out bio soon, but first, buts let's get on with it. Let's hear from Jonah Ogles, Riff.
00:04:59
Speaker
This is one of the heavier pieces that I think I've ever read from me out of this and I wanted to see how as an editor and in working with Druid that you handle a piece of this nature. I think we just all tried to be really sensitive.
00:05:14
Speaker
you knowri i was I was telling somebody the other day that Drew was just so compassionate towards his sources. you know he really He really cared about them a lot, not not just their safety, which is a concern in this particular story, but but also how they were presented and and what aspects of their life we we sort of revealed to readers, I guess. And that's something that Drew was was insistent on from the beginning. And, you know, not that he ah had to insist very much because because we were on board with it. But, you know, Drew and Kyla, the fact checker, and I really had a
00:06:05
Speaker
really frequent conversations about particular details. And Kyla would circle back after she talked to a source and say, you know, so-and-so is a little concerned about this or, you know, they're worried about that.
00:06:20
Speaker
And so we we tried to just keep that in our mind at top of mind sort of throughout the process ah and try try to keep the like published piece in mind, you know, because it's it's easy when you're editing to just be like, well, you know, it gets reduced to words on a page, but and We tried to keep in mind that this will be published and they will read it and you know their their friends will read it and their enemies will read it. and how How is it all going to be viewed by all of those people? like you don't You can't forget it. you know You just got to keep it top of mind all the time.
00:06:56
Speaker
yeah and What experience have you had where you had to very much keep in front of mind that this will be published and be read not just by lovers of good story but you know the enemies of people who whose lives are very much threatened by their courage of coming forward?
00:07:17
Speaker
It's not something we often have to think about in activist stories. you know last Last month we were talking about true crime, although, I mean, look, even in that story, you know we were we tried to be aware of how the brothers were gonna react. yeah Punching in for a moment, that story was by Andrew Dubins. That was, I guess you would call it, January 2025, the after dark bandit.
00:07:45
Speaker
Especially as an editor, you know i'm I'm a step removed from from the whole process. i I don't talk to any of these people and it's it's easy. I think especially today as busy as editors are, it can be really easy to just be like, okay, get the copy clean and get it published because that's what we have to do.
00:08:06
Speaker
And one nice thing about the activist and I think most editors who are working on features, you know they want to be able to slow down and spend the time really, really working on a story, not just the the words and the structure and pace and all of that, but you know human sources and the the writer, I think can really drive that conversation.
00:08:34
Speaker
with with editors and and and remind them, you know or or not even remind them, but be upfront about these are the insecurities this particular person has, or these are the things they' they're sensitive about. We always have those conversations before we start fact check. you know Is anybody gonna be hostile? Is anybody gonna need a light touch?
00:09:02
Speaker
And we, and I've talked about this with fact checkers too, you know, these, these stories take a toll on, uh, and, and look, I am not like equating our, our experience with those are the sources of the story because obviously they're in a completely different state situation, but. You know, to, to spend this much time thinking about and talking about how a story might impact the person who's trusted you to tell their story. Uh, it's, it's exhausting. And we, we all, Kyla and Drew and I all frequently said to each other, like take a day off if you can, you know, like just, just like, if you need to step away, do it, like restore yourself a little bit because we owe it to these people that really bring like a fresh and clear mind to every read.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, that was a a
Challenges in Storytelling & Journalism
00:09:56
Speaker
note I had, yeah of course, not equating what ah what the editor, writer, fact checker, endure versus the people central to this story. But there is a ah residue and a taking on of the material and the story that can really fuck you up. And and drew Drew spoke about that when we spoke, how it just, you take on all these stories and and listening and and empathically listening.
00:10:22
Speaker
it It's impossible not to take some of that on, so yeah, to be able to find a way to restore yourself. I don't know how you do that. I've never had to work on anything that heavy, but you know you had to read this draft a a number of times. And you know you know for you, when you have to step away, like what's the nature of that, you know given the heavy heaviness of the story of this nature?
00:10:43
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I frequently walked away from this story and went and just made one of my kids give me a hug. You know, whatever I had to do to bribe them. Whether it was candy or, you know, let's sit on TV and cuddle. um You just kind of need some, some like innocent, ah like pure innocence and love in your life. Even the other stories, you gotta, I mean, I think it's different for everybody.
00:11:13
Speaker
you know like and I could say all the the easy like cliche things of like take a walk or like go do yoga and those things help you know like I keep a guitar near my desk and because that just sort of disconnects my verbal brain ah So that kind of helps me. But I think you almost have to find a way to be in tune with your own like inner frequency and and recognize when you're so wound up about it that you you aren't able to sort of process things in a clear way.
00:11:53
Speaker
And that's the moment you need to step away, you know, and they're like, look, writing the draft, I know it was hard for Drew. I know it was. And I know talking to the the sources was difficult for Kyla, but he just Yeah, he'd step away and then you'd dive back in because you you owe it to to these human beings who have put their trust in you. And he shared with me a photo of his, basically his storyboard and index cards, of which we had to delete right away because they had other sensitive information on it that could potentially be zoomed in and screen caught and everything. But he was he was kind enough to share what the structure and all the storyboarding looked like. and
00:12:40
Speaker
And that's always a fun bit of craft to talk about. So what were those discussions like as you were seeking out to plan ah plan out the the story part of this article?
00:12:52
Speaker
Well, yeah, it's tough. I mean, we knew we knew that the that one of the challenges of the story when we assigned it was that it would be a multiple character story, you know which which isn't... yeah All of our stories have multiple characters, but for the most part, there's a protagonist or two, and you're able to just kind of stay close to them and follow them. In this story, though, there are four of them.
00:13:20
Speaker
And though they overlap at the hospital, you know, they're otherwise having fairly distinct experiences, all the shared sort of in ah in a broader way. And the way it ended up working best, I thought is, well, you you have in the narrative sense, the gift of a shared timeline. You know, they're all experiencing the conflict at the same time.
00:13:50
Speaker
And so you you you have that chronology to serve as your backbone. And then you're finding you know the the emotionally resonant points or sort of the the geopolitically salient points and for each character and finding where those each fit and and trying your best to to stick with the character For a decent amount of time, yeah know one ah one of the things I often say to writers is, like look, if we're not spending 500 words with this person, we we need to talk about whether this particular scene
00:14:33
Speaker
belongs here. you know Because I think where pieces like this start to fall apart is, you know here okay, here's a graph on this character and here's another graph on this character and it ends up feeling disjointed and and ah at least I and I think readers get kind of whiplash you know, but I'm seeing between so many characters and in such a short amount of space in the story. So you try to find those those moments where you can really dwell with a person and and be with them, not just for like a fleeting thought or a fleeting moment, but for like a sustained experience. And that I hope, and I think I feel pretty confident that that leads to a more powerful connection with that character.
00:15:24
Speaker
And when you take on a ah story of this nature, there is a ah responsibility inherent to it. And I wonder for like, when you when you and Sayward were like, yeah, this is something we want to run with, in you know what do what do you hope ah for a piece ah like this when when it does go live? Man.
00:15:44
Speaker
ah I mean, you you hope the right people read it. yeah I think that's part of it with this particular story. Because look, we are we are usually very hesitant to wade into things that we feel like belong like in the New York Times, you know in the first few pages of the of the New York Times, because we're not a news organization. And we feel like there are places that that do good work on that front.
00:16:15
Speaker
But in this particular case, it wasn't getting news. you know It wasn't getting covered. It was this buried conflict, you know and in part because of the Ethiopian government's blockade of of the region and of reporters getting there and information coming out of there.
Drew Philp on Narrative and Journalism
00:16:36
Speaker
And so we felt we felt like there was an opening as well. So that was part of it. We felt like there was an opening for us to to talk about something that should be discussed, which is kind of what you what you want to be able to do as an editor.
00:16:53
Speaker
tell stories that make a difference. And and Drew also had a ah good approach. you know We felt like even if the news started to pick up on the conflict in Two Grade, we had an angle that would help it stand out. And of course, the news didn't really pick up all that much. The Times ran a story.
00:17:12
Speaker
a couple of weeks before we published, but that's kind of it. But honestly, for me, like the the most powerful reaction is we heard, Drew heard from one of the sources who who said it felt true to her, that she hadn't she hadn't read anything that that so captured what her experience was like. And and she even noticed how She she was reminded of how much it changed her
00:17:44
Speaker
And over the the course of time that she was talking to Drew and like that, when I read that, I was like, okay, it like it doesn't matter ah beyond this, you know, like i'm I'm not in control of whether the policy changes, but we, we published a story that, that feels true to the people who lived it. And like that is all I could ask for.
00:18:10
Speaker
Oh, wonderful. Well, John, it's always nice getting your side of the table, and and especially in a a story of of this nature, which is just ah going to rip everyone's ah hearts out. But it's it's one of those important stories that people need to need to know about. Yeah. Yeah, I hope so. Well, thanks thanks so much for having me, Brendan. Thanks for for talking about this story. It's an important one.
00:18:43
Speaker
Moving on, moving along. Drew Philp is an author and journalist. He wrote the book, A $500 House in Detroit, Rebuilding an Abandoned Home and An American City. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Buzzfeed, and he delivered a TED Talk with more than a million views. He also works as a copywriter, a screenwriter, a critic, a games writer, like video games, and yeah.
00:19:11
Speaker
which really rounds out the whole portfolio, you know what I'm saying? We get into the kaleidoscopic means of income that helps subsidize the kind of journalism that lights them up. You can find them at drewfilp.com and drewfilp.bluesky dot.social on blue sky, blue ski, as I like to call it. I believe that's it. Hold on, let me go into the machine here. and I'd hate for his handle to not be what I just said.
00:19:39
Speaker
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Yep, that's all right. Drew Philp, got it, nailed it. Blue Ski, because that's where we're hanging out now, I guess. Brendan Ameridot, Blue Ski, Social. This episode, as many out of us ones, ran a bit long, so no parting shot today. I know, boo. In the meantime, please enjoy this conversation with Drew Philp. Hit that solo.
00:20:09
Speaker
One of the things that struck me was your ah you know your your passion for games or and gaming and like the the narrative and study around and story around that. I wondered like ah what what might be some of the the games where the the story itself is every bit as gripping as like the gameplay itself for you.
00:20:30
Speaker
You know, I think there's two ways to kind of think about this question, right? First is like the kind of Last of Us games where you're playing this amazing story written by somebody else.
00:20:41
Speaker
I think the other half of that equation is games like RimWorld, where it's you creating a story that's these kind of open ended, maybe, you know, like, quote unquote sandbox games, but you're able to create this story. I think part of the reason why games are so interesting is because it's a really young medium. I don't think that us as like a society or game makers um or writers have really kind of exhausted all the possibilities for storytelling yet within that medium, and it's still coming. And it's kind of like film, you know, 40 years or so after film became a thing. There was this incredible flowering of the medium. um You have people like Kurosawa coming out to the scene and just doing things that are completely different, like Rashomon, for example. And I think we're about at that time in video games right now, and I think we're going to see more kind of story-driven things happening and story becoming more important.
00:21:34
Speaker
in that, but but for but for my money, it's it's those two sides of the thing. And I like them both. I mean, The Last of Us is an amazing storytelling accomplishment as is kind of every game of RimWorld.
Journalism Financial Strategies & Personal Choices
00:21:46
Speaker
Well, that's cool. yeah I remember, you know, I'm not i like a huge gamer by any stretch, and I have just based on my age, I'm more of a Nintendo guy. And I i remember in in college, you know, my one of my roommates had N64, which I had never owned. ah But he had Ocarina of Time, Legend of Zelda game. And I remember just getting so immersed in the story behind that. And there are elements to it where yeah it truly Tugged on various emotions and you're like, you know and at the end of the game, you know You kind of felt that emptiness of having read a really good novel. You're like, I kind i kind of miss these guys yeah oh yeah Yeah, yeah, you know, it's your friends and I think one one area where I really haven't seen it Well, I guess we're just kind of where we're just kind of starting like there's a game called this war of mine which is an amazing an amazing indie game that
00:22:41
Speaker
deals with kind of war. ah But I think there's a pretty big um area for nonfiction to step into these games too. And I think that's one of the areas that this this medium is going to go into, is being able to kind of tell non-fictional stories through games. What that looks like, I couldn't tell you right now, but it's it's pretty exciting. I don't think we've really seen any of it, aside from a ah handful of, a handful of indies.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think maybe the closest, and just off the top of my head, where a nonfiction-y element is more of a nonfiction backdrop. I'm thinking of like war World War II Call of Duty games or something like that. yeah and you know I've been thinking about this lately because of what Post Advisor to the President did at the inauguration the other day. and My grandfather was a soldier in the Second World War.
00:23:31
Speaker
I've been doing some research on that lately. My mother sent me a photograph of him. And I actually played this game when I kind of started working in video games and game game narrative, ludonarrative, they sometimes call it. um I was kind of playing through these classics like this. And that game, Call of Duty that you described, starts with the invasion of Normandy. It's very realistic.
00:23:55
Speaker
you know You have these soldiers vomiting as they ride these kind of boats to the to the shore. And you know I cried, man. And I was like, my my grandfather wasn't there. he was He fought in the Pacific. He fought in the Battle of Okinawa, um which is the bloodiest battle of that theater. But I was like, you know I had to stop and and think. And I'm like, you know for a whole lot of people, this was the worst day of their life. And now we're playing it as entertainment. yeah Um, and very powerful entertainment. And I think that's something that we need to think about and consider and how we're doing this. So I think there's some kind of ethical questions around gaming too, that we don't necessarily have in these other mediums. Maybe we do. I don't know. Maybe we do. Yeah. But I think that there's a visceral way to, that, that, that hasn't been, that part of the equation hasn't been quite figured out yet.
00:24:46
Speaker
Oh, for sure. you know Looking at your website and your breadth the breadth of work you do, you know you even you mentioned like some of the more contract work you do that's outside of narrative journalism, which is kind of like the thing you like you really like to do. and and i I love seeing you hat-tip to this other stream of work that helps maybe subsidize the journalism you want to do. and Sometimes it's the work that people don't tweet about.
00:25:14
Speaker
and yeah and And when we don't talk about it, you know, when you publish a piece, say, with the activist, someone from the outside who desperately wants to do that might be like, man, how is how's Drew like making a go of it? Just like writing these 16,000 word features. and But the fact is oftentimes it's it's copywriting. it's ah It's doing content marketing. And I just wanted to get a sense of how you fold that into the fray so you can do the deeply reported pieces that I think you truly love to do.
00:25:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think this is a great question. And I do, uh, do some copywriting from time to time. And for me, it's, it's, it happens in chunks, right? So I'll do, you know, three months of copywriting or a month of copywriting, and I'll work as hard as I can doing that. And that, you know, we'll pay, we'll underwrite the next year of other work of fiction or non-fiction like this, um, things like that. So I try to work in big chunks, um, when you can.
00:26:13
Speaker
and you know just extract as much money from that as possible, obviously while being honest and and respectful to the people I'm working with. And then you know I'll have 10, 11 months of the year to do these other things. I've also, I think one of the things that's been really important to me as a writer is really tried to mold my life around being able to do this. I mean, the kind of stories that I tell aren't very commercial necessarily. um You know, like you don't get rich writing stories about genocide in Africa. yeah So I've had to kind of mold my life around that. And one of the biggest things for me was I've built my own house. i
00:26:53
Speaker
i bought a $500 house in Detroit, rebuilt that with my own hands, and a lot of my storytelling has written around this. But what that did very practically for me was take has taken rent out of the equation for me. ah you know like i I know how expensive it is in places like New York City. um And you know if you don't have to come up with $2,000 in rent every month,
00:27:20
Speaker
um That's, I mean, more or less, that's a penny saved, a penny earned, right? you know That's $2,000 in profit, $24,000 a year that I don't have to deal with because I did this thing. And I think that's been very, very important um to my process because you know if I don't make a bunch of money one month, I'm not going to be kicked out. you know I got to come up with the taxes and some insurance and stuff like that. But but there's less of a kind of there's there's less pressure.
00:27:45
Speaker
um when that when you have something like that. And I would encourage other young writers to look for opportunities like these, that where you can kind of reduce the overhead. My overhead is pretty low.
00:27:56
Speaker
Right. Yeah. I think that's it. That's ah that's a really good point to underscore to instead of like sometimes running faster up that hill. It's like well maybe yeah maybe subtract something like said penny saved penny earned like that's a more ah ah ah frictionless way of maybe it doesn't feel like earning but if you're saving something that in a way that's that's like pocketing making making a bit more by saving.
00:28:21
Speaker
And that's a big deal, man, because I see so you know some of some of the folks like the folks that I see. i don't I don't know people real well, but on the internet, you know they're filing like hundreds of stories a year. It's like, man, how do you have time for what you really want or what's really important? you know Not to knock these people at all, but I just can't live my life like that. you know I have four to six hours per day, five days a week, maybe six, really good brain power to do what I have to do. and You know, i I just can't kind of, this is one of the reasons why I have to do this copywriting and and stuff in chunks, because I can't switch from, um you know, writing about, I don't know, whatever, you know, like automobiles or something to writing about this kind of thing and have the, have that same brainpower available. I think that's a pretty limited resource.
00:29:14
Speaker
Yeah. And you you wrote a book about your your 500 purchasing the house for five hundred dollars ah in in Detroit, which I haven't read, but i so I've seen it and I can now I'm like, oh, I really want to I got to pick up a copy of this and and check out this journey you were on and how you wrote how you wrote that book. And the name of that book is a five hundred dollar house in Detroit, rebuilding an abandoned home and an American city.
00:29:40
Speaker
and Now, since you live it in Berlin, is this this house do you do you rent this house out and that's what you know keeps you kind of living more more or less rent free on your own? um I have a house sitter. I i i yeah so i have ah i have a house sitter. I have somebody looking after that right now. um In terms of how I'm living here, a lot of it is my partner. ah She's got a full-time job, which is great, which has been great for this year. um And before a lot of money was, I was able to save up a lot of money during the pandemic and um also just kind of doing this copywriting stuff. I needed some time to really think after that $500 house story, I did a lot of reporting on Detroit.
00:30:25
Speaker
I understood that kind of to be a better, bigger person and a better, bigger writer, I really needed to see more of the world. I'd spent a lot of time there when most of my contemporaries were going to places like New York or Paris. So yeah, I just like ah basically took a year off to really think about what I wanted to do. And during that time I was working on fiction. The other thing, having a book like that,
00:30:49
Speaker
um especially if you are able to publish with a major publisher can underwrite years of writing.
Reporting on the Ethiopian Genocide: Challenges & Approaches
00:30:54
Speaker
That $500 house book has underwritten, the advances for that has underwritten many, many years of writing.
00:31:03
Speaker
And believe it or not, the literary world is one of the healthiest areas of journalism right now. And there is money there if you can if you can do that. So that's that's also been a big help. Probably do all kinds of stuff. Game writing, plays. I run a project in Detroit that's been going ongoing for five years now. We just got another grant to do it to publish fiction in the a local alternative news weekly called The Metro Times, kind of our version of The Village Voice. um So stuff like that, you know, you put it all together. Yeah. Well, it's great to hear you talk about the very kaleidoscopic nature to like kind of make a living as a writer and having ah having a partner with a steady paycheck.
00:31:47
Speaker
is It's huge. like the you my you um i always I take every opportunity I can to tell people that like right now like my wife has the steady paycheck and the health insurance and the acknowledgments of ah my book that's coming out in May, like I acknowledge at the very end and the acknowledgments, like, thanks for the health insurance. It's like these little these little things like that really make it possible for people like us to like kind of make a go of it.
00:32:14
Speaker
um when you have something steady to to bank on and a lot of people don't have that and some people might feel less than because they can't do it. I'm like well you know what I need to be transparent about the privilege I have to keep pursuing this to stay on the playing field because without her doing what she does like I would be splintering my time and with many myriad jobs to try to subsidize the enterprise but she takes a lot of that pressure off.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, i you know as I said before, i too, I think that can be in many different forms. If people don't want to or can't do that with a partner, it's also you know like having a house, owning a house, building it yourself, living in a place that's not necessarily trendy, that's much more cheap.
00:32:56
Speaker
i think those can can can be the that kind of stability as well too. um you know Before I had a long-term partner when I was in Detroit, ah my house was very much that. you know No rent is, people ask me what that house is worth all the time and I'm not sure. It's worth whatever you pay in rent every month.
00:33:16
Speaker
Exactly what it's worth. Oh, nice. and And when you're looking to tackle, you know, a big project like you did with the Atavus, it's a very titanic, very, very heavy type story, um deeply reported, of course. How did you come across this story? And, you know, once you kind of lock in, like, what how do you start reporting a story of this nature?
00:33:38
Speaker
Sure. um So this story came about through, like I think a lot of stories like this, through relationships. I was lucky enough to get a fellowship to study at Middlebury College in their language school, the Catherine Davis Fellowship for Peace. um They gave me a so full scholarship to study French there, because French is one of the languages. and That's most prominent in the NGO world, and that was a little bit easier to learn than Arabic.
00:34:06
Speaker
So I met a number of very, very interesting people there from all over the world, both students and adults. And I made a very good friend as one gentleman. He's actually thanked in the story. His name is David Moulton. At the time, he was working at ah as a war crimes investigator for a small Canadian nonprofit investigating ISIS crimes. um As his job, he transitioned to going to ah to get a JD. He was doing some volunteer work for an NGO um And I were friends, so he was telling me about it. And this NGO was was trying to publicize what had happened in tea gri Ethiopia. Tigray is the kind of northernmost state in the country. And he was saying that there has probably been a genocide there. And this i'm pretty pretty I follow the news pretty closely.
00:34:59
Speaker
um And I hadn't heard about this. I hadn't heard about this war, this conflict. It's one of the deadliest conflicts in the 20th century. And I was curious, and the NGO that he was working with ah was focused primarily on medical professionals, doctors, nurses, things like that. And so I began looking into this closer and closer and closer and closer. And I said, wow, there's a there's a really important story here that hasn't been told. um this is a This is something that I want to sink two years of my life into. Reporting for this story has taken two years. It's kind of worthwhile. There's there's
00:35:37
Speaker
something really terrible has happened here and the world has ignored it. And that's really in my kind of conception of what journalism and nonfiction storytelling is. That's right at the base. The first thing was to talk to people in there, in Tigray. People in Tigray were very wary of outsiders. I mean, they'd just been through a genocide that no one had in the rest of the world seemed to care about. So a number of people from this organization had come to ah Berlin to meet me, to talk about the possibility of doing a big story on this. They came twice. And during those times, we kind of worked it out. We kind of came to an agreement about what might that look what might that look like. And then people from that organization began to introduce me to ah doctors and nurses and other health care professionals at a hospital in the Kelly, which is the capital of Tigre.
00:36:32
Speaker
Um, and I began trying to build out this story. Uh, and I interviewed before I pitched this even, I interviewed, I don't know, two, three, four, two, three, two or three dozen people, um, that worked at this hospital to see what happened to, uh, and kind of find people that would be kind of quote unquote characters.
00:36:54
Speaker
Um, and so that's how it started. And from there started doing research about the conflict. It started researching subjects we might follow to profile and kind of breaking this down and thinking about how we might tell a story and what needed to be told, um, what was out there, what wasn't out there. And then I think a big part of this story, at least for me, something that makes us special is the conceptualization, uh, the story.
00:37:19
Speaker
is told in the third person completely through the eyes of ah people that went through it. um Me as writer, author, voice is not in there whatsoever. um And I think this is important for a number of reasons. We can talk about those if you want. um But I think the conceptualization of this piece was was was pretty important.
00:37:37
Speaker
Um, we were looking for, you know, something big to tell, but also characters we can tell it through. And that, yeah, you want to talk about the, you want to talk about the first person? Yeah. for person Yeah. Let's roll right into that. Go for it. And so I think a lot of stories, especially in Africa happen in the first person. I think a lot of long form right now is happening.
00:37:58
Speaker
in the first person, ah or at least with the first person element. And I think that's happening for a number of reasons. There's some very notable exceptions to this, obviously. It's not across the board, but there's a lot of person first person stuff out there, and that can be really good, and that's okay. But it does a couple of things, especially in stories about Africa, the Middle East, places that many readers in the West are not necessarily familiar with. One of the things it does It's a lot harder to tell a story in the third person. The Adolphus is great. They have a wonderful team. Say we're Jonah, Kyla. These people have worked very, very hard to be able to tell this story because when you're when you're when youre telling a first person story, you can say, I saw this is what I experienced. And that's never wrong, right? That's never wrong. But yeah to put it something in third person, you have to say.
00:38:46
Speaker
This is what happened. And that's pretty scary. And it takes a lot of resources to be able to do, which is another reason why this story took two years. um you know And it just takes a lot of time. So I think it's kind of easier to do first-person things like that. But also, there's there's some other things that happen with this. um The first person also allows for change. When you're telling stories about these kind of atrocities or wars, I think ah Stories always need change, right? you know you're You're talking about like Luke Skywalker starts as a farm boy and ends up you know blowing up the Death Star. And that's that enormous degree of change is why that story is so well beloved. So in these stories, you need change. And it's often hard to find that change within the stories. People still have to be alive generally. There's a level of detail that's necessary that's very difficult to achieve. um So that's another reason why people
00:39:42
Speaker
put stories in the first person. But there's a third one, too, that I think is a little bit more insidious. And you know, of course, like it's, it's, it's okay. But what happens is, the first person gives Western readers, ah readers in Europe and the United States and avatar to experience this story through. And what that does, I think, very, very subtly, and again, this is not any kind of criticism, but it often dehumanizes the subjects, it says,
00:40:10
Speaker
You know, we need to put some kind of um link between between readers and subjects and not allow the subjects to tell their own stories. um So this this was very important to me that we didn't have the first person in there and we were able to tell the stories within their subjects. So that was conceptualized from the beginning.
00:40:31
Speaker
When we pitched this, when I pitched this to say word at the activist, you know, it was more or less pitched as ya the television show. I don't know. Are you familiar with this television show? It's from the 90s. It was Michael Crichton. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Yeah. Fantastic TV show. If you haven't seen it 100 percent, I get the first season, download it. It is fantastic. It was pitches er in the war zone.
00:40:51
Speaker
ah which I think is it's pretty apt is to, when i when I write, when I think about nonfiction, I always, there's two sides to it. What story do you want to tell and how to tell that story? And how to tell that story is particularly important to me because this is a subject that nobody wants to think about. Very few people want to think about ah war and genocide in Africa, but it is important to think about that. And that's important questions about society and just human nature,
00:41:20
Speaker
And to get people to be able to be able to interact with those questions, I think we need to put that into a story. nobody's you know We could have wrote a textbook about this and nobody would read it. The same goes for issues of you know housing policy and racism in Detroit. ah you know With the $500 house, you have to have a spine for the book. ah Sometimes we we call it journalism that people need to hear, but they don't want to hear. We call it spinach journalism.
00:41:46
Speaker
Uh, you have to eat your spinach, right? It's good for you. So what I try to do is make a spanakopita, like this kind of spinach, tasty spinach pie. I want to wrap these difficult ideas in a nice story, you know, in a love story or a story of heroism so that people in the West are more willing to kind of eat it and digest it. Yeah. We need, I need some butter in there. Exactly. Exactly. Some onions, some garlic. Yeah. It's going to be healthy, but I think it'll also be tasty too.
00:42:14
Speaker
And another, ah what's also challenging too, if going wholly third person, you are the reporting is very deep and you have to engender a lot of ah lot of trust in your sources and and the the material in the story is super sensitive, life threatening, and they've put their trust in you. And so you know how do you get to that point where they can confide in you and trust you with that with the story and what's going on?
00:42:42
Speaker
um Well, one of the first things I should say is Kyla Jones at The Addivist is amazing. She's an amazing fact checker. um So she was she did a lot of ah this work on the back end to kind of check these facts and do stuff. And I just want to make it very clear that she was great. So I think that trust starts with the normal things, being on time, not missing things, um and being honest and talking about why I was doing this. but Let's talk about this story specifically.
00:43:11
Speaker
Um, you know, I talked about why I was doing this. I met with people, you know, in the most personable way possible, which in the beginning was over video, um, to identify people that would be good who had good English, who had important, important stories to tell, who, uh, represented a wide variety of experiences during the war at the hospital. Um, and then I went there and I think that engendered a lot of confidence. Uh, that travel was,
00:43:40
Speaker
to the region, very few journalists have been there from the West. There's a handful starting now. But not many people have been there, and for many years, journalists were basically completely barred from the region. Going there was a pretty serious physical risk. And so going there and seeing the actual landscape and meeting people face to face was absolutely crucial for creating that trust. Because, you know, people said, well, hey, if he's willing to risk his life and his freedom for this,
00:44:10
Speaker
you know, I think he really means what he's saying. And I did, it's it's important to me, you know, I don't, again, don't do this for the money. Not that they out of this nothing, not that they out of this doesn't pay well, I think they do. But um nobody's getting rich off of this kind of stuff. Nobody's, you know, i'm risking your life to make a billion dollars. So I think that had a had a lot to do with it, to have some skin in the game, too. I think that was helpful for people. I also think that why I got the interviews that I did. I got some really incredible stories and and very difficult personal things. One of the subjects, the government killed his father, that they killed his dad, and they killed seven other close family members, numerous acquaintances. And he was willing to tell me this story. And I think the reason this is because the story really hasn't been told. The story, like there's very,
00:45:05
Speaker
few people know about what's going on here at all. Like I said, I'm pretty connected to the news and and I hadn't heard of it, you know, three years ago. um So I think that people really wanted it out. I think it's important. People are willing to risk their lives and their freedom to tell this story because it needs to be told, it demands to be told. You know, one thing we kind of write in the story is that it's still an open question in the world if what happened in Tigray was a genocide um and is a genocide.
00:45:36
Speaker
And people are willing to tell this story, people are willing to straight up risk their lives and their freedom to tell it, to more move the world closer to an answer on that. I think there are some things in this world that are just so odious that we cannot, that people have that they have to be told. They're going to be told one way or another. you know There was a line in the in the in the Bible about, you know, if if ah you know if the world's silent, the stones themselves will cry out. I think that's the kind of situation we have here. The stones themselves are crying out. We have some very, very brave people who are willing to tell these stories. And and and I think that's only part, ah you know, that's of course only part.
00:46:18
Speaker
ah Due to what I did I think I think there's a confluence of factors going on here Yeah, and that you know you're right at one point led the fact that many readers are likely unfamiliar with the war is no accident So how has it been no accident that this is just alluded the eye of so many? the biggest factor in this is the the the President of Ethiopia is named Avi Ahmed and um And he instituted basically a complete communications blackout in the region once the war started. um The NGO axis now called it, ah I don't i don't don't quote me exactly on this, but I'm paraphrasing, you know, the the most effective communications blackout, the most effective internet blackout, excuse me, in history. And it has been probably one of the most effective communications blackouts ever, ah because Ethiopia owns the telecom, almost 100% of it.
00:47:10
Speaker
they're able to just shut off ah electricity, internet, phone service, everything to the region. So they were able to deport journalists, intimidate and jail others, and jailed many journalists. there I think if I remember correctly that the worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, um and the second worst on the on the African continent, total. So they were really ah able to control the narrative from the get-go. And because what we're just hearing as journalists and as people that are are trying to state facts, we're just kind of hearing stories, and that lessens the power.
00:47:45
Speaker
We can't get, um we
Character Selection & Storytelling Techniques
00:47:48
Speaker
you know, you hear a number like, okay, maybe 600,000 people were killed. That's just a number. It doesn't, if it doesn't have a face attached, it doesn't really matter. Stalin said something like this, you know, a million deaths is a is a statistic and one death is a tragedy. So one of the important things with this story that we wanted to do is we wanted to put faces on what was happening here. It's really hard to understand what 600 million people lives means. It's really hard to understand when almost 10% of the All the women of childbearing age in the region were raped, almost 10%. That's an insane number. It's still hard to believe and understand if you can't put a face to it. So that was one of the conceptualization of the story. That was extremely important that we want to put a face and a name ah to what was going on there.
00:48:34
Speaker
Yeah, and logistically, you know like you say, you put you really put yourself on the line and getting faceto face-to-face with people really you know solidifified kind of really ah solidified that bond that you're like, oh, yeah he's serious. He's not going to just do this from a phone or from afar.
00:48:52
Speaker
And ah so logistically, and you said it was heart challenging to for journalists to get to get to this region in Ethiopia. So how how did you pull that off just from ah from a matter of, ah yeah, like logistically to say that word again? So I have to be very careful about talking you about this one. Okay. If you don't want to talk about it, it's perfectly fine too. Yeah. yeah let's less so i you know The one thing I can say is it's helpful to know people there. You have to know people.
00:49:19
Speaker
in the region, you have to make friends. um And it can't just be kind of this, you know, I made some very, very good friends, people that will, I'll know for a lifetime, people that I think are some of the finest people I've ever met. And I think you have to get to that level of depth. I think in every single one of these interviews I did with people, ah while I was there, I spent about three weeks there.
00:49:44
Speaker
We, everyone cried, you know, you're talking about just some really heinous thing. You're talking about genocide and some really, really heinous stuff. You can't do that over zoom. You just can't, you can't do it. You know, you have to be there. You have to be present. Um, and that was hard. You know, the subject was cried. I cried. Everybody cried. And yeah you have to be there to do it. I'll say the other thing that figuring out how to get there it took many months. We worked with all different kinds of people to be able to do it.
00:50:14
Speaker
including you know former members of MI6, a number of different NGOs, like civil certain civil society organizations that do things like digital security, the digital security apparatus in Ethiopia is actually pretty good. um So that was a very big concern. We wanted to check our phones for spyware, things like this. It took a ah great degree of planning and you know at least a dozen people were involved with that, if not more.
00:50:41
Speaker
And you begin and end the story with ah this one particular ah young woman who's a doctor. A doctor in training then becomes ah becomes a doctor. and ah And what made me, ah you know, just singling out her, but there's also there is's also others. You know, you said you spoke to dozens of people at first before you settled on your main cast of characters ah to to carry the story. so When you're kind of auditioning them, what what was it about them that that made them such good vessels to translate and to carry the story? Sure. So one of the first things we're looking for is diversity. We want to represent gender diversity, kind of diversity of experience. So one of the things about the story is that is it really hadn't been
00:51:25
Speaker
told and in a kind of front to back narrative before. There's been other really good stories like, ah for example, Martin Plout and Sarah Vaughan's Understanding Ethiopia's Tiver War, a fantastic book. But what we wanted to do is kind of be able to put it end to end. And within that, there are a number of different issues within this conflict with standout ah that stand out. one and One of the first and most important is the issue of sexual violence. One of the most important is the issue of starvation, the government starved ah the region out intentionally, and at one point hundreds of people per day were dying of starvation. um You know, there's the issue of atro you know mass atrocities, kind of direct killing, things like that. So we looked for healthcare care professionals that were were able to speak with authority about each of these issues. um So, you know, we
00:52:18
Speaker
We feature one person in the story who is working specifically on sexual violence. Another who is an OBGYN working you know one with pregnant mothers. another who was the head of the pediatrics department, who was seeing this malnutrition in children and could confidently speak on these things. So that was important too to kind of, I think of narrative like a clothesline, like it's in your backyard.
Emotional Toll & Reflections on Sensitive Reporting
00:52:43
Speaker
And from that you can hang ah clothing from and you know, one like one shirt might be sexual violence, another might be intentional starvation.
00:52:56
Speaker
So we looked for people that could fill up those clothes. That's one that's one part of it. you So we wanted a wide diversity of people that could speak authoritatively about each of these issues. Because when this story comes out, inevitably it would be heavily criticized by powers that be that don't.
00:53:13
Speaker
like that would rather have this in the way. So doctors, medical professionals are, you know, we have this kind of idea in our society, of the good doctor. um But they're also very serious experts doing very serious research on this. So it was important to find that. So their, their testimony is on a peaceable. They were seeing some of these things.
00:53:33
Speaker
um from the front lines. There's also some other concerns, too, because we're working in a different language with a very different culture. People's level of English. How is people's level of English? What do they see? Where were they? And there's also the story. um You know, I talked to some people that had really interesting stories, people that walked for days, for example, from the north.
00:53:53
Speaker
that we just couldn't fit in because we need to keep everybody at the hospital. You kind of have to keep a lid on the story a little bit and keep it contained so that the reader can follow it and doesn't have to be jumping around. So unfortunately, we had kind of decided we're profiling just this hospital in particular. And so we had a had to nick some of those other stories that we would have liked to have told. um you know Maybe we will in the book or something, but there's this there's some other concerns like that as well. Oh, for sure. Well, and and the clothesline is such a wonderful metaphor and yeah sometimes identifying that clothesline, that through line.
00:54:28
Speaker
can be ah a challenge for the writer. And until you identify that, sometimes a story can be a hard sell if you're trying to sell a story. So how how did you, how early and how did you identify your clothesline so you could adequately start putting in those story beats and make it cohesive?
00:54:46
Speaker
That's the first thing. That's absolutely the first thing that we identify in terms of thinking about what stories to take to go all the way back to the beginning of conceptualization. um Just with with my buddy who was thinking about this, we had originally thought of ah doing a story in um Northern Africa about human trafficking, but we were never really able to identify this clothesline. We're still looking for it, in fact, and it might be one of the next things we do. ah We were never really able to identify this clothesline, like one character or one, you know, in this case, it's a hospital, it's a building where things happen that we're able to tell the story. In this one, um we knew this one
00:55:25
Speaker
was ah yeah It's a very important story to tell, but we we knew we were able to tell it because it had such a strong clothesline. We could focus on the doctors that were having to make these heartbreaking decisions about you know whether or not they give their patients expired medication or you know we're hearing stories of you know nurses passing out in the emergency room because they were so hungry and using the they used the flashlights on their phones to do surgery.
00:55:53
Speaker
These are incredible details. i mean ah these are These are incredible things that human beings went to. And it's not just the details. It's what's behind that. Why would someone do that? What makes someone do that? It's a very interesting question. And I think those questions are big enough to get people, readers, interested in the story. And then we can kind of give them the spinach, like, hold on. There's probably been a genocide here. It's been ignored by the world, the UN. Europe, in particular, has been very bad about about ignoring this.
00:56:23
Speaker
um Why is this happening? Like what's up with this? Like what's going on in these mechanizations? And I think by being able to have that clothesline, it gets regular people, ah average readers to take a look at ah closer at this stuff. I think they want to, but people need a way in. People have to have a way in. Again, nobody wants to sit down and read a textbook about genocide unless you're a researcher, writer, or somebody doing, you know, nobody wants to do that. But people do want to sit down and watch yeah ER. And my belief is they, you know, they're willing to Read ER in Northern Africa as well. There's nothing to belittle the cost and the of the people who are central to the story, but because you and I are talking and this is heavy material and you were there and reporting and and conveying their stories and ah being deeply immersed in it. What what was the the cost and the toll this took on you, the the reporting and then you know just think you know in the writing and revisiting it ah the material?
00:57:21
Speaker
ah So there's, there's really only one way to say this. um And you'll have to excuse, you know, like, cover your ears if you don't, if you don't want to hear a bad word, but it's fucked me up. In a pretty serious way. I mean, when I went there, I saw children who were starving. um To look at starving children
00:57:44
Speaker
It's very difficult, you know, I'm sure as many of your listeners have seen the famous photograph from kind of Piafra famine in the 80s of the vulture overlooking the child with the distended stomach, who was starved to death.
00:58:03
Speaker
ah the the photographer of that killed himself soon enough. And that's real. The the psychological, tool I mean, what I've dealt with is is is small in comparison to what the subjects of the story i have dealt with in the and the other people, but it's still real. It's still part of my my job I see as a journalist, and this was a big question there we can talk about, is to really keep my heart and soul open to what people are saying.
00:58:31
Speaker
I forget who said it, maybe Mark Twain, but you know, somebody said no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. And I believe that. And I think that as as the writer, I haven't really been able to insulate myself from these stories and build up a wall because I need to tell them to other people in the most effective way, which I believe is in many cases, the most emotional way. So the psychological toll has been heavy, has been very heavy. And yeah,
00:59:01
Speaker
That's what I'll say about that. It doesn't come without a cost. However, in my opinion, that cost is worth it because it's an important story to tell. And these people that this happened to really deserve that. They deserve that. So one of the questions, I was hanging out with some of the journalists where when i was when I was there and in Ethiopia, Ethiopian journalists. And the question of, you know like hey, like sometimes this stuff makes me cry.
00:59:29
Speaker
seeing you know like i'm i'm ah pretty traditionally masculine. And I'm 100% not ashamed to say this. You have the discussion, you know are you allowed to cry in an interview? Do you have to keep have to keep you know quote unquote professional? It's very hard when you have to keep your kind of heart and soul open to what people are saying to internalize it, to be able to talk to it about other people. you know And there's two sides to this. like One, you know like if you do, you can
00:59:59
Speaker
make people feel uncomfortable because they're, because, you know, the they might, they might understand that they're, but what has happened to them is really that bad and and they can break too. And the other for me, you know, I'm a human being first, uh, before I'm a reporter and I just can't help it, man. You know, all other people cry. We, like I said, we all cried and yeah. And I think that's, that's real. That's like when you're getting somewhere and that's the stories that are.
01:00:26
Speaker
important be lying if I didn't say this the story did not take a toll on my mental health or my relationships or things like that it has been exceptionally difficult and then you have to go over it and over it and over it and over it you have to live you know like in the story we tell ah one story in particular is a very detailed account of a rape um a forcible rape And the reason why we tell that story is because people there, including important health care figures, believe that this rape was genocidal. Not this rape in particular, but the rape that happened. I mean, they raped almost 10% of the women there. It was explicitly genocidal. um And to kind of understand that, you need to take a close look at it. So we did. And that story was very difficult. I would cry well. I'm going to try not to cry right now thinking about that.
01:01:18
Speaker
um you know But to have to go over it and over it and over it is it's challenging, to say the least. I would not be doing this if I didn't think this story was important. you know If it was about something else, if it had been you know covered in detail before, it wasn't necessary, but I think that's the only that's the only... Yeah, who else is doing it? ah somebody's got Somebody's got to, and somebody has to take that, and i so I'm proud to...
01:01:47
Speaker
to be in a position where I'm able to do that, even though you know it does bend your psyche in a way that is difficult to be the same afterwards. All right. Well, in ah perfectly illustrated where that is, you know, the the young woman at the heart of it is one of them at the heart of it. Like at the start, she's very, very vibrant about to become a doctor. And by the end, she almost doesn't recognize that the person who had she's very hollowed out and in just kind of a ghost at the end, ah ah just in this telling. And, you know, she kind of mourns for that person. Yeah, indeed, ah in my opinion, she's kind of the
01:02:26
Speaker
The function of her in the story, you know as we were talking about function earlier, she was a she was a young person, but she's really the heart of the story. She's a remarkable young woman, um extremely smart. um And in the middle of the story, and I won't give it away because we worked real hard on keeping some kind of mystery here. but has to make a really big decision. about ah she you know She's a doctor. She's super smart. She can work anywhere. and She has to make a decision whether or not she's going to leave or not, um and she is offered the opportunity.
01:03:01
Speaker
um You know, she's to me, when we were kind of laying this out, maybe I know we're getting short on time, but maybe we want to talk about how this was laid out because this is a super long story. I think it ended up ah about 18,000 words. Yeah. And so this was laid out like many people lay out films and note cards. Uh, when I got back from, uh, the country, I actually, I got cholera, which was terrible. I spent a couple of days in the hospital. Yeah, that was awful.
01:03:29
Speaker
Yeah, that was terrible. And it's not a dignified disease, let me tell you what. um So I spent a couple of days in the hospital, but I was with my girlfriend and another one of my researchers in France, in this giant house in France. um And we spent about a month. Well, actually more than a month, we spent almost two months.
01:03:51
Speaker
um collecting these stories, putting them into scenes or collecting the scenes, um and then organizing those scenes like you might organize a movie. I'm actually looking at the note cards. We did this on big note cards and they're up on my wall right now. We broke the conflict down into a kind of a number of chunks, you know, like this, ah the war begins the first day and the war beginning and a number of chunks. And then we put those on cards and then we organized those and we thematically
01:04:22
Speaker
pick things out of there with different colored cards to be able to make connections to things. And to get back to the young woman in her name, her name is Saba, she uses her real name in the story very bravely.
01:04:34
Speaker
For me, she was this kind of the heart of the thing. She's the she's she's a kid. when the When the story starts, she's she's a kid. She's 24 years old. She's about to become a doctor. And by the end of it, she's gone through she's gone through what's potentially a genocide. um And that was important to me, to have that person in there, a real person, not just a character, a real person, who really may had was forced to make these decisions ah that you or I probably will never have to make, hopefully.
01:05:03
Speaker
and just do something that's really genuinely admirable. in a way that most people don't ever get to never get to experience. So that was important to me. And what are and were some of the guardrails that you put in place as you said you say in you know your opened up your heart and soul to this and in the the the psychological cost of it all. you know what what are What are those things that you have in place where you can metabolize it in a way that allows you to you know keep going?
01:05:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I have ah like a, I mean, ah a lot of that is my partner. My partner is wonderful, is brilliant, and understands when I need space and when I need care and comfort and things like that. So I want to be very clear that that's important. But the other thing too is that I have not dealt with this yet. The idea for me is that were I to begin to deal with this kind of psychologically, like a psychologist or something, it might affect and ruin what was happening in the story. And I did not want that. um So that's this this is the next part. So i don't I don't actually have a good answer for you about this, because it hasn't started yet. It'll only start when this is kind of um when this is out in the world, when it's when people have had a chance to digest it, you know the kind of promotion.
01:06:28
Speaker
ah for it is over And then I can start dealing with kind of my own psychology about it. I do think, with that said, that the writing itself is part of the part of the healing process for me, having this out there, having it a thing.
01:06:45
Speaker
You really get it outside of your own head and then it doesn't rattle around in it and there anymore. It's on the page somewhere. I think that's important. It's something I learned when I was doing this house about or excuse me book about my $500 house.
01:06:59
Speaker
ah the you know, those experiences sometimes feels like a different person than I was back then, because those are experiences that are on, you know, a bookshelf at the library. um They're contained within somewhere and they're they're no longer rolling around in my head. So I do think that is part of the process in terms of in terms of healing and doing the next thing. I mean, after this too, I think part of the next step is to keep doing things like this, is to I don't think I'm necessarily going to go back to, you know, I don't know, writing celebrity profiles or something after this, ah because ah continuing that work, I think is also part of the healing process by healing the world one can feel themselves. And I think, you know, we have a
01:07:44
Speaker
You know, really the only way to redemption for human beings in general outside of the story or outside of the writing, the only real way to redemption for human beings is by helping others. And I think by helping others, we heal ourselves.
Final Thoughts & Writing Recommendations
01:07:57
Speaker
So I'm sure that's going to be part of the process too. this This story has taken over my life. For almost the last year, you know, I'm not able to do other stuff. I've had to, ah you know, take a very big financial hit in terms of the other work that I was doing. i I haven't been able to deal with anything but this. And because it's owed to the people that I give 100% of my life and my the self to this oh to the subjects, it's owed to the story. But at the end of the day, I feel like I've done everything I could. I've i've done the best I could. And whether it's successful in bringing about some kind of change or bringing awareness or whatever or not,
01:08:33
Speaker
I know that I did absolutely everything I can, and I can hold on to that. That's something that I can hold on to and feel good about. So I do fill that with this story. I've i've given them my all, and if my all wasn't good enough,
01:08:48
Speaker
My apologies, but you know i I did give it all I had and I think that's where this That's where you really start to get great art, and you really start to discover who you are as a person um When you reach that point of ah just giving everything that you have to a story And I think it's really necessary in writing and art today because there's so much content out there There's just so much bullshit that you can see on Twitter TikTok or whatever right now if you want to and But I do think there's something special about really giving everything you have. And if that's it, if that's all I can say, well, that's enough. Yeah, I think we worked really hard to to try to get to keep people in it. Right. And it's it's not all I think I don't think it's all terrible and scary. I do think there are real points of light and points where people are
01:09:35
Speaker
um and like you know in the real truest sense of this word, heroic, and doing these things that help. Part of the part of the reason, again, why we chose to focus on healthcare professionals and why we focus to chose to focus on a hospital was because because there are these these people that hopefully readers can hold onto and say, you know, put themselves, what if I was in this situation? what what What would I do? And I do think ah many of these subjects and really heroic things and did things that hopefully will keep people in the story because there is some good here. um I'm sure the subjects of the story would let's not agree with this. I'm sure they they they're far too modest but there were some real heroics there and I think that's important in telling stories too. You have to tell stories and where of where audiences can can connect and you know maybe that's a 24 year old medical student. What would they do?
01:10:31
Speaker
And so so we I hope there's some of that in there too. I hope there's some bright spots. And although what these people went through was just horrendous, um there were some individuals, ah even including on the international level, that did take real risks to stop this and to mitigate what was happening. And I think that's important to acknowledge as well.
01:10:53
Speaker
Well, very nice. Well, well Drew, is a love and I love ending these conversations ah on a on a light note, being just asking the guests, you in this case, for just a recommendation for the listeners. And that's just anything that you're kind of happy about that brings a little joy into your life. And that can be anything from like a cool brand the socks came across or your favorite kind of coffee. ah So I would just extend that to you as we bring our conversation down for a landing.
01:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, sure. I want to talk about two things. One's a little bit less serious and one a little bit more. The first is my man, David Lynch. David Lynch tells stories in like basically a completely opposite way that I do. But man, I love the guy. He seemed like a really great guy. If you haven't seen any of the things he's made, I would suggest seeking it out. Maybe start with Blue Velvet.
01:11:37
Speaker
um But the second thing is a little bit more serious, and if it's if you're if you're a writer, young writer, or whomever, I guess, um and interested in this kind of third-person nonfiction storytelling, there are two really important things that I can recommend. The first is Hershey's Hiroshima. It was a story in The New Yorker.
01:11:58
Speaker
um that they, after the bombing at Hiroshima, they used the entire entire edition of the New Yorker to tell this like 30,000 word story. This story was pitched um with that story in mind. It was explicitly referenced in the pitched say word um as as kind of version of that. You can get it for free on the New Yorkers website. um And the second thing is a book called Behind the Beautiful Forever is by Catherine Boo.
01:12:24
Speaker
absolutely fantastic book. I hope this book never dies. It tells the story of a murder in a Mumbai slum. um It's told in the third person. The amount of detail is just impossibly rich. um i I do this for a living and then some in some some ways I don't know how she she got this information. ah The book won the National Book Award um and is just fantastic. So I would i would recommend checking that this book out as well. Oh, fantastic. Well, well Drew, this was a wonderful conversation about how you went about ah this incredible story you wrote for the Adivus. So I just got to commend you on the story. And thank you for carving out the time to do this and talk some shop around it. So then thank you very much. Yeah, thanks a lot, man. I always appreciate these ah these craft talks. I don't think it happens any other than that.
01:13:17
Speaker
Well, thanks to Drew, and thanks to Jonah, and thanks to you, CNFers. Thanks also to promotional support provided by the Power of Narrative Conference. And, oh, there's always the pre-ordering of the front runner, which would be super cool if he did. I mean, we could totally be friends if he did.
01:13:36
Speaker
I have so many interviews in the backlog that I really need to get through but it's like I can only do one a week and like this week I recorded like four so I'm like that's like a month's worth and I'm already have like two and a half months in the backlog it's a bit much is all I'm saying stay cool seeing efforts and if you can't do interviews see ya