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Episode 463: Leah Sottile on Building Scenes, Sagging Middles, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age
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"It's kind of a mix of reporting to the very last minute to put off writing, and then when I have to write, having a panic attack, and then, like, booking a hotel room for a week and not leaving that room. This is the thing I have done until I figure it out," says Leah Sottile, in a live event at Gratitude Brewing.
She is the author of Blazing Eye Sees All: Love Has Won, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age (Grand Central). She's also the author of When the Moon Turns to Blood, an Oregon Book Award Finalist.
Leah is a freelance journalism whose work has appeared in The Atavist Magazine, the Washing Post, High Country News, and Outisde. She's the creator of the podcasts Hush, Burn Wild, and Bundyville.
In this podcast we talk about:
- The work of John Vaillant (See Ep. 376(
- How writing this book made Leah crazy
- How New Ageism and Far Right Extremism overlap
- Sagging Middles
- And not re-victimizing sources
- And much more…
Learn more about Leah at leahsottile.com and follower her on Instagram @leah.sottile.
Podcast Specific Substack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substrack.com.
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Pre-order Urgency for 'The Front Runner'
00:00:01
Speaker
Oh, ACNFs, we are less than five weeks away from the publication of The Front Runner, oh boy. So be sure to secure yourself a pre-order while supplies last. Call now.
00:00:12
Speaker
But seriously, go to your bookseller of choice and maybe pre-order it. but And it's almost time to just straight up order it.
Archer City Writing Workshops Preview
00:00:20
Speaker
Also, from May 21st to June 1st, the Archer City Writing Workshops at the Larry McMurtry Literary Center in Texas are having a workshop called Feature Writing the Reconstructed Narrative, led by Kim H. Cross, Hampton Sides, and Glenn Stout.
00:00:37
Speaker
Visit lmcmurtrylitcenter.org slash events to learn more. And no, I don't get any kickbacks or commissions, so get your cynical head out of your ass. It's not always about the money, man.
00:00:50
Speaker
You know, as a reporter, you're like, he did months of reporting to write that one sentence. That's so nerdy to read books like that. But that is how I read books is where I'm like, oh, I see how you did that. That's crazy. we did it.
00:01:10
Speaker
We did it again,
Live Recording with Leah Satili
00:01:12
Speaker
dude. The second live taping of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast happened at Gratitude Brewing, the podcast where I talk to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell.
00:01:21
Speaker
I'm Brendan O'Meara, your CNF and spin instructor who doesn't stop mid-ride and stand in the pedals and yells at you. I ride all the time with you. Thank you to Gratitude. This is with Leah Satili, making her fourth. I think it's her fourth. It doesn't matter.
00:01:36
Speaker
Return to the podcast. This time to celebrate her new book, Blazing Eye Sees All. Love is One, False Prophets, and the Fever Dream of the American New Age.
00:01:48
Speaker
It's published by Grand Central. I'm holding a hard copy that I bought with my own two hands. Headly assigned to raffle off the listeners who follow the Instagram page.
00:02:01
Speaker
I put out a few rules, you know, the classic like this, follow this tag someone and you're entered to win. One person did it correctly. Nice to see that the image got next to no impressions, even though between Leah and I, it was a combined like 2,500 total people it could have gone out to and like 10 people liked it.
00:02:21
Speaker
And one person followed instructions. So, the writer, Laurie Sebastianetti, appears to be the clubhouse leader. When one raffle ticket gets entered, is it even a raffle?
00:02:32
Speaker
Leah, man, it's crazy how this podcast gives me a real sense of kinship and friendship with the people who have been on the show. And I've met maybe 10 or 20 of them. I met Leah for the first time this past weekend and...
00:02:46
Speaker
It was like we had known each other for years. In a way, we kind of have. But we we met and just as if we hadn't seen each other for a few months versus, say, the first time ever.
00:02:59
Speaker
Pretty cool.
Brendan O'Meara's Online Presence
00:03:00
Speaker
Show notes of this episode and more at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, there you can read hot blogs. And sign up for the monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter. I'm getting more and more ragey CNFers. So if you want book recommendations, cool links, and good cheer,
00:03:15
Speaker
Sign up. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it. too And there's also a weekly companion pod stack at creativenonfictionpodcast.substack.com. If you want the transcripts and the text of the parting shot and some deep dives into the archives, just to remind you of the wealth that's way back there that you're too lazy to look up.
00:03:35
Speaker
No shade intended. It is a deep backlog. This is the newsletter to enrich in your podcast experience. I think it's pretty cool. You should totally mainline it.
Leah Satili's Diverse Contributions
00:03:47
Speaker
Leah Satili is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared. Too many places to name, but here's a couple. The Atavis Magazine, High Country News, Outside Magazine, and The Washington Post. She's the lead producer, reporter for Bundyville, Burn Wild, and Hush. Her latest podcast with Oregon Public Broadcasting. She's the author of the Oregon Book Award finalist, When the Moon Turns to Blood.
00:04:11
Speaker
And I hate to say it, but I'm sorry that the frontrunner will be going head-to-head with her for the Oregon Book Award. It's Prefontaine versus New Ageism. It doesn't get any more Oregon than that.
Challenges in Writing 'Blazing Eye Sees All'
00:04:23
Speaker
In this conversation, Leah and I talk about the work of John Valiant, see episode 376, how writing this book made Leah crazy, how New Ageism and far-right extremism overlap sagging middles, and not re-victimizing sources, among other things.
00:04:39
Speaker
Great stuff here, and a parting shot on playing not to lose. But for now, here's my live conversation with the one and the only Leah Satili.
00:04:51
Speaker
Riff.
00:05:00
Speaker
For me, it was like this record scratch moment. Oh man, I wrote that. I wrote that. But I'm also perpetually in fear of a moment when I don't have an idea. is This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
00:05:20
Speaker
All right, parental advisory, explicit lyrics coming your way, no doubt.
00:05:29
Speaker
All right. Lee and I, we've talked many times on mic and never in person, so this is really great. And I think a fun place to jump off of. in ah In an essay you recently wrote for Elle, you alluded to ah moment where you felt like your career wasn't getting on that rocket ship yet. but You know, you just that that tire spinning.
00:05:50
Speaker
And that really speaks to patience and having to be patient in this line of
Patience in Creative Work
00:05:54
Speaker
work. So how have you just navigated that patience that ah it is inherent to doing creative work and specifically freelance journalism and long-form journalism?
00:06:03
Speaker
That's a great question because I don't know that I am patient. In fact, I think I was just complaining about this this week to my husband. Like, when is this going to get easier? It doesn't. um I think that I know that I am programmed to do this. I do...
00:06:19
Speaker
feel that journalism is a little bit of an addiction and it the rush of it is big. And every time I say like, I'm not gonna do it anymore, which I have said, um i know that I'm just like lying to myself, first of all, but also the next good story that comes around, like it's just irresistible to me. So I get really impatient with the industry of journalism and and I get impatient with how a person like me fits into it.
00:06:49
Speaker
We're past the time of like magazines that wanted to have long form journalism. and you know there There are still some, but there are few and they don't pay great. and you know I'm not going to write an investigation for $200. I can't do much with that. so um I get impatient with that, but I think that with each successive project that I've done that I'm proud of, there's been someone on the other end that felt that it was helpful.
00:07:17
Speaker
So whether that's like the subjects of the book or people in the communities that I write about that felt seen or heard or like somebody didn't come in and you know, try to like generalize their community, which I think is another big impatience I have with, you know, the industry of journalism.
00:07:33
Speaker
I think that
Film Study in Journalism
00:07:34
Speaker
that's just kind of what keeps me going. And I always love getting a sense of film study. And I use that term just like as an athletic term, you know coaches will go to the tape and they break down various defenses or offenses and to get a sense of how the inner workings of something works.
00:07:52
Speaker
I love getting a sense of how a writer might look when, ah be it be it audio or print, and you look at something in the film study that goes on where you're really breaking down a lead, a middle, a kicker.
00:08:07
Speaker
What's your film study look like when you're breaking down a piece that really inspires you? I've thought of like a lot of times when I teach, like I am leaning hard on a lot of old, you know, long form journalism where that I really love. And, you know, I'm not a great study of like what's happening right now. I think just like anybody, I'm kind of not sure where the good creative nonfiction is is happening. Like I listen to your show to find those things.
00:08:35
Speaker
I think for me, a scene that hits really hits for me. Like I do really love the way long form journalists can play with time and reality. So so for example, um this is not an idea unique to me, but the way that you can make like a year be a sentence and a second be a whole paragraph, like that really excites me where you can,
00:09:01
Speaker
you know slow down time and keep the reader in, you know almost like flag to them, this is very important, you need to understand this moment. I love that. And that's, for a while I did breaking news for the Washington Post. Like I was just a stringer in Oregon, but I covered a lot of protests.
00:09:17
Speaker
And I think that's that's why, because I really liked that idea of putting people in a scene and and trying to make them feel the energy and excitement of that scene. So for me, it's it's all about scenes.
00:09:30
Speaker
Are there any particular pieces or writers that you revisit to kind of relearn how it's done, inspire yourself, be like, ah, that's how it's done? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot. Right now, the person that comes to mind for me is John Valiant, who wrote a book called
Influences and Inspirations
00:09:46
Speaker
Fire Weather. If anybody hasn't read that book, it life-changing. It truly is. It makes you look at the West and wildfire really differently.
00:09:55
Speaker
um There are some scenes in that book, I'm like getting tingles right now, just thinking of them, where I'm like reading this and just... blown away by the reality, but also by the writing. Like that to me is like, that's the spot. That's what I'm always trying to get to. So John Valiant's written a few books. He wrote one called The Golden Spruce that is really good. So for me, right now, that's what like, he's kind of my true north in a way where I'm like, I want to write like that.
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, that book is incredible. was a National Book Award finalist a year or ago, yeah maybe last year. Yeah, I was really struck by... The opening of that book, just the the pacing of it is it's like impeccable. It's like, this is a roadmap to how to do this. Yeah, I mean, and the just like the meticulous reporting that went into it. and like And there are lines in that book where, youre you know as a reporter, you're like, he did months of reporting to write that one sentence.
00:10:49
Speaker
That's so nerdy to read books like that, but that is how I read books, is where I'm like, oh, I see how you did that. That's crazy. like I respect that sentence. Yeah. And ah kind of piggybacking on the the whole patient-eyed theme from a moment ago, and sometimes I love getting a sense of you know what a successful writer or a journalist looked like to you you know maybe at the start of your career and how that's evolved as you've been in it for so long.
00:11:16
Speaker
That's such a good question.
Defining Success in Journalism
00:11:18
Speaker
um I think that I thought that if you were a good enough writer, you could like feed yourself at a minimum. ah Now I see things, you know, I i am ah obviously I'm able to feed myself, but it takes a lot of hustling. um And I think that for me, success means that people want to know your perspective on a thing that's happening, you know? So, um so I feel that, you know,
00:11:45
Speaker
i'm i'm goingnna I'm actually going to surprise myself by saying this. I think that I feel successful because there are times where a thing happens in the West and someone far away will say, hey, what do you think about this? Should we write about that? And I'm like, okay.
00:11:59
Speaker
This feels successful to me. So to me now it's about like subject matter, expert expertise. I think that feels successful. And also occasionally getting enough money to you know pay your bills is successful.
00:12:14
Speaker
Yeah, and so many of your projects are they're massive, be it through audio or books or long form reporting for a magazine. know um like How do you budget your time over the course of a year to stick the landing on a Hush, ah Burn Wild, and then in the midst of it you're writing
Managing Large-Scale Projects
00:12:34
Speaker
you know two books also. So like how how are you budgeting ah your day on a micro level, but a macro level too?
00:12:40
Speaker
um I really like to work. So it's not, ah I think, yeah, I do i do work a lot, it's but I've kind of created a life where that's possible. Because to me, work is just, it's more than just like producing fact-based journalism. It's about me trying to figure out the world. so So yeah, I mean, I wake up in the morning, i have ah cup of coffee and then I get to work. you know Right now that means that I do a lot of work on Hush, which is the podcast I'm making with Oregon Public Broadcasting.
00:13:11
Speaker
It takes a lot of time because there's a lot of records requests that you need. There's a lot of phone calls to be made. So I try to you know get that stuff done. but Yeah, when I also, you know, there was a moment where I was writing Blazing Eye Sees All, I was working on the first season of Hush, and I was ah working on articles for High Country News.
00:13:29
Speaker
Those were some anxious days. But, you know, I really just, ah I work backwards from deadlines. So um i know that any story I work on will have to have like a lot of historical context.
00:13:42
Speaker
and research and needs good scenes. You know, I might be going on the road to get a scene, whether that's just like a what it looks like at an intersection that's gonna play a role in my story or things like that.
00:13:54
Speaker
But yeah, it's kind of a mix of reporting to the very last minute to put off writing. And then when I have to write, having a panic attack and then like booking a hotel room for a week and not leaving that room, this is the thing I have done until I figure it out. So that's, yeah, I have kind of an intense process when it comes to writing. Like I just, you know, I become very um difficult to be around until the writing is done.
00:14:25
Speaker
How does that difficulty manifest? Yeah. it It just means that everything feels like an imposition, like i where I'm like, I need time to think, like I need to be left alone. so um but But to me, like writing the whole... Like I do love reporting. I love the chase. I love, you know, interviews. i love meeting people and going to new communities and meeting, you know, people who are are unlike me.
00:14:48
Speaker
The writing part is where the magic is for me. Like I really... um get excited about that. And, you know, book writing has made me realize how much time you need to really, to write something that excites, maybe excites other writers or that readers appreciate, you know, the craft of a sentence that just takes a lot of time. So,
00:15:09
Speaker
When you're reporting, is there anything that gives you anxiety or pause about any part of that you know process, be it cold calling, door knocking? What gives you you know the heart palpitations? Because I've i've got something that gives me mine, but I don't want to imbue that on you. Well, I'm curious what yours are, actually, because not a lot gives me. I do really i like knocking on doors. Oh, yeah that's great. Good for you, Leah.
00:15:34
Speaker
Sorry, let's talk through it. what what Let's talk through your issues. Well, i hate cold calling. ah Yeah, cold calls are hard. Yeah, I hate the 20-second salesmanship that you need to go if you even get them on, if you're not even leaving a voicemail. Like, voicemail, thank goodness.
00:15:50
Speaker
that for that I'll often have a script up that I read from to make sure that I'm getting everything I can in like 15 to 20 seconds, trying to sound as warm ah and not telemarketer-y as possible.
00:16:02
Speaker
um But I'm always i'm living in fear of the person who's just telling me to fuck off and it just never call me again, I'm gonna come, you know, sue you. yeah Yeah, right, sure. A threat of a lawsuit is not a thing that I like, but. Yeah, those are great.
00:16:17
Speaker
so so I I sort of do a thing where I'm like, hi, my name's Leah, I'm a reporter. um Sometimes I've started saying journalist lately because sometimes I've had people construe like I was a reporter for the state or something. That's happened enough times where I'm like, okay, have to say journalist. So I'll say, hi, I'm Leah. I'm a journalist.
00:16:36
Speaker
this is a This call is totally out of the blue. And i it's sorry to lampoon your day, but I'm curious, you know did you know this person 1965?
00:16:46
Speaker
And sometimes people really like that. They're like, what a surprise for my day. um Yeah, but I've had people hang up on me and you know say unkind things. Yeah. And they're like, how did you find me? And I was like, oh, well, there there's kind of this online phone book. and then I always say the internet.
00:17:02
Speaker
yeah Yeah. The internet helped me find you. Yeah. like i i use the Do use fast people search at all? No, I use Family Tree Now. Family Tree Now, okay. Yeah. yeah Yeah. And i the thing is, with Fast People Search, you can actually have your name removed from it, but I never tell sources that. Right, right, yeah. But like Pro Tip, you know, that's a great one.
00:17:22
Speaker
I mean, it's very easy to find people. And if there's you know people aren't on whitepages.com, you can find them on Facebook. Yeah. And, ah you know, classmates.com is a great resource for yearbooks. And you just find all these people. But Facebook's great, too. And if you're looking for ah class reunion pages and you find that admin and that person is the node to like 400 people. And that's like that's the juice there when you get a roster of people. You're like, right, going It just got really nerdy really fast.
00:17:54
Speaker
Oh, my God. yeah How do you professionally stalk people? Exactly. I know. that People would be very surprised where how how easy it is to find them. Yes. But that's our little secret. Yes.
Writing Retreat in Montana
00:18:08
Speaker
Take me to the moment when you're writing the book proposal in a miner's cabin in Montana for your latest book. Just put it put us there as you're starting to think through what's going to become the the next book.
00:18:22
Speaker
Yeah, so i um i am an I am a workaholic, but I'm also perpetually in fear of a moment when I don't have an idea. So I had finished up When the Moon Turns to Blood. I can't remember if it was actually published yet.
00:18:37
Speaker
i I had ah like a nugget of an idea for another book. And so, ah you know, like I was explaining earlier, like I need time and space. I need to be left alone. And I happen to know some people in Butte, Montana who run a writing residency there called the Dear Butte Residency. So I applied for that and they said, yeah, you can come and stay for a week.
00:18:56
Speaker
And it was great because there was it the temperature became like 30 below and you couldn't leave. And I was at the top of a hill. And it's it's it's a hard day when Butte, Montana, ah you can't drive like that. That town can pretty much put up with any sort of snow. But I couldn't go anywhere. And had this idea. And so I just sat there and and knocked it out. And the impetus for me was, you know, I had kind of.
00:19:22
Speaker
brushed up against new age ideas in a few different ways in my reporting, in my life. And I started kind of digging into the history as i as I like to do. And I read about Helena Blavatsky, who was this you know woman in the 1850s who was big in the spiritualist movement in America.
00:19:39
Speaker
So I just thought, well, if I can write a pitch around her, i really thought that the book would be kind of primarily about her. And like, you know, here's this, you know, you see crystals and kind of new age vibes everywhere. And here this woman is sort of the the genesis of those ideas.
00:19:56
Speaker
So yeah, so I stayed in that cabin and I wrote about Blavatsky until I couldn't anymore and left pretty much with a a book proposal. When you're starting a book proposal, like what are what are a lead domino, so to speak, that that really gets the and grease the skids to get to get going?
00:20:14
Speaker
Right now, I feel like I'm trying very hard to come up with another book idea. So I'm like, I don't even know. I don't even know how to write anymore. But um I think in this case, it was just ah seeing some sort of historical relevance that could explain a moment that is modern.
00:20:30
Speaker
So in that case, you know, there's a lot of different things to talk about with like the idea for this book. But for me, I was just kind of trying to understand how New Age ideas became so ubiquitous and like why I was seeing them on social media so much and why there was sort of this surge in COVID around, you know, health coaches and spiritual gurus and things like that.
00:20:52
Speaker
So for me, you know, when I encountered Blavatsky's story, I thought, well, maybe this is the historical thing that can answer that. So I think I'm always looking, you know, or at least I have in the last few years, that's always been the first domino, as you say.
00:21:06
Speaker
i don't know that it always has to be that one, but that's something I can turn to time and time again for new ideas.
Exploring Female Spiritual Leaders
00:21:12
Speaker
but And when there are certain characters in in the book as well that have been featured, be it documentaries or in books, um yeah over the decades. And so how do you bring a fresh perspective to something that is ah that has been done before in some capacity?
00:21:30
Speaker
Well, I think in this case, a lot of the people that I was interested in either hadn't been written about in a big way or they had been sort of cast aside as a little bit of a joke. So one theme I think of the characters in this book is they are women who were spiritual leaders in some way, whether or not you know they were likable.
00:21:50
Speaker
But they all were like on talk shows at some point. So like one was on Oprah. One was another was on like a Ted Koppel news program. One was on Merv Griffin. They were all just sort of sideshow acts.
00:22:03
Speaker
And for good reason. But I think that what became interesting to me was that that was sort of where the media left. them was sort of like a curiosity of society.
00:22:15
Speaker
And I think that that's a big theme in my work is treating people, communities, ideas that are just kind of like, that's weird, like brushed off by mainstream media where I come in and you know ask more questions. So like with this book,
00:22:28
Speaker
you know Specifically, the woman who was on Merv Griffin, her name is Jay Z Knight and she channels a spirit called Ramtha. I'd known about her for a long time and i was interested in the way she'd been portrayed in media and the fact that no one ever really wrote about that like thousands of people would come to her events in like countries all over the world.
00:22:50
Speaker
I think media was so like coming down as like this lady is dumb um that they weren't seeing like why it was attractive to people. So so that's kind of you know where i I sort of rely on that zone.
00:23:02
Speaker
yeah What are the the conditions that make certain people susceptible to you know following these guru types, these new age types? from the reporting that I did, i think that there's a couple of things. So a lot of the people in the... mot There's like a modern context to this book.
00:23:21
Speaker
I think a lot of people were looking for answers around COVID and were really afraid of what was going on in the world you know for various different reasons. They had a sort of fatigue in their own life going into COVID. And then COVID either made work really hard or you know homeschooling their kids really hard.
00:23:39
Speaker
And they just were desperate for community. So I think that's one thing. But historically, I think a lot of these people found purchase because specifically with women, because the spiritual ideas that they were preaching were giving women power in a ways that you would not find maybe in more traditional spirituality. So to me, that's like interesting and exciting and and subversive and worth talking about in a big way.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, what is the, aside from gender, the the connective tissue, say, between the Fox sisters, Helen Blavatsky, Elizabeth Prophet, and i know what was it? Jay-Z Knight. Jay-Z Knight, and then Amy Carlson, too. You you see this, there is there is a thread there, and there are beads on that thread. Yeah, I mean, i think that some of the the common ideas are, you know, God is in you. God is a woman.
00:24:33
Speaker
ah sense of personal power that you don't have to farm out your spiritual decisions to other people. That's, you know, one big theme in the New Age, which is like a huge umbrella for a lot of different things is is just...
00:24:46
Speaker
engaging in practices that give you personal power. I think each of these people are charismatic in a way and and curious you know curious in a way that I think attracts people.
00:24:57
Speaker
But as the book talks about, they also pretty much all of them have a history of talking about you you know, anti-Semitism, you know, they they have anti-Semitic ideas, they have hyper-nationalistic ideas, sometimes outright racist ideas. So those are also things that I think are in the background of of the new age that I, as a reporter, was trying to understand this world of love and light and goodness.
00:25:23
Speaker
Then how how is it all those things, but also exclusive and bigoted? um Oh, for sure. and yeah And you're someone who's covered the far right for so many years. you know, what what have you noticed as like, and to use that connective tissue again, between yeah the new ageism, but also far right extremism?
New Age Beliefs and Extremism
00:25:42
Speaker
Well, unfortunately, a lot of things, and I'll be honest with you, when I started writing this book, I was explicitly trying to not write a book about extremism. Like I was trying to take a break from it because it's a very exhausting, it's an exhausting way to spend your time if you're a journalist and you're a person like me.
00:26:00
Speaker
So, you know, some of my background is like, I never really meant to do this. Like I'm a, I was a music journalist. Like that was my thing. extremism kind of fell in my lap and became really politically relevant and I, you know, went with it.
00:26:15
Speaker
So after my first book, which is about extremism within the LDS church and, you know, a lot of really violent stuff, I was like exhausted and very like, I need a break. I just want to like think about people who like crystals and like are down with aliens. And that is what this book is, but I,
00:26:33
Speaker
you know As I did my reporting, like I would, i started to kind of just like run head on into anti-Semitism and racism. And I was like, oh no.
00:26:45
Speaker
not I have found an extreme, like I just, I did not mean to do this, but you know, um I don't, I don't really know what to make of that other than i think I'm just kind of like a bloodhound for this stuff. Like I just sniff it out and that's what I was doing there.
00:27:00
Speaker
There's a lot of intersections. I think that sometimes people, including myself, get caught up in the aesthetics of the far right. you know You can see a guy wearing camo and can carrying an AR-15 and be like, well, that's what that looks like.
00:27:15
Speaker
You could see people within the New Age movement that are wearing like yoga pants and carrying crystals in their pockets and think it's different. um What I found is that, I mean, this book kind of occurs at the intersection, I think, where the supposedly far left and far right meet and share ideas. And I think that we started to see a lot of that during COVID, that that people were finding common cause with each other, specifically around vaccines and you know what Dr. Fauci was telling people to do People who maybe wouldn't have been in bed together all of a sudden realized that they were allies.
00:27:51
Speaker
and Speaking of that, you just the all these various leaders, you know you you wrote in a recent essay that you know power is held by those who claim it. And I think that's got to be part of the appeal that some of these leaders who might be pushing up against patriarchal structures are just saying, like, screw this, I'm going to go forge my own path. And claim claim some power and build some followers, all the more leveraged by social media now. Yeah. I mean, i i found that really interesting about Helena Blavatsky. So at one point she, she was this person who would kind of perform tricks like, and say like, Oh, it's because I'm getting messages from the masters who are telling me, you know, what you need to do. and,
00:28:33
Speaker
you know she would She would do things like ah there were like bells would ring and she'd be like, ah it's the masters listening to us. So late in life, as she was getting older, she kind of gets found out and including and one very funny scenario with a journalist where she, oh, the masters are those bells are and the masters listening. And she literally drops the bell on the floor and like picks it up.
00:28:54
Speaker
and And this journalist calls her out and says like, you know, basically you're a fake, just say it. And she's just really nonplussed by that. and it's like, yeah, I mean, in order to rule men, you have to deceive them.
00:29:07
Speaker
like sort of a shrug. And I just thought, God, that's so interesting. Like I think, you know, as a person who has grown up in America as a woman, like this is a society that I think I've been waiting to give me some power and it never does. In fact, just keeps taking it away. So why not just take it you know And I think that that's one thing that I think is really interesting about all the women in this book is like, there are some objectively bad predatory things that each of them does or continues to, but each of them created a space of power for herself. And I thought that's very interesting.
00:29:47
Speaker
How did you establish through line and a narrative backbone for this book that goes into so many different places that on the surface don't feel cohesive, but you make it
Connecting Themes and Characters
00:30:00
Speaker
cohesive?
00:30:00
Speaker
Yeah, i've I figured if I could like, it yeah, I'm glad to hear that because there was a moment where I was like, this feels crazy. Like none of this makes sense. So if it makes sense, that's great. um I think that one, you know, in addition to Blavatsky, one early interest for me was the story of Amy Carlson, who is the leader of a group called Love Has Won in Colorado. She died in 2021.
00:30:24
Speaker
In all of the stories I read about her very dramatic death were of people and journalists repeating, you know, she believed she had been reincarnated over 500 times, that she had lived as Cleopatra and Joan of Arc and the Queen of Lemuria.
00:30:40
Speaker
And, you know, as a journalist, I was like, what is Lemuria? Like, what I found out is that it's like ah people believe like Atlantis that there's this lost civilization that dropped into the ocean. And it was a spiritually realized utopia um that, you know, human sin basically destroyed.
00:30:59
Speaker
So, you know, it stuck in my mind because I was like, this is not a real thing and it's being reported by journalists like it's a real thing. But then also, when the more reporting I did, i realized she was not the first person to say that she was the queen of Lemuria. There was other people in the spiritualist movement and in New Ageism who had, you know, claimed these like ties, familial ties to this place.
00:31:23
Speaker
um So that was one through line. And I think that, you know, the more I dug in I started to just sort of realize there were a lot of shared beliefs, sometimes so shared that like they're just outright stolen. So the book, you know, goes through history and kind of shows this lineage of theft and,
00:31:41
Speaker
you know of just outright plagiarism by these female leaders where they're like, ooh, I really like this. I'm just gonna revise it a little and call it, you know calm instead of calling them masters, I'll call them ascended masters. and um so So it was like mostly the ideas that I think gave the the book its backbone.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah, and Amy Carlson, she was born in Kansas and kind of raised in Texas yeah and makes her way, meanders her way west to Colorado where she really found creates a base.
00:32:11
Speaker
But there's a Eugene overlap. There is a Eugene overlap. Yeah, I can't remember what the name of the... It sort of looked like a ah like a kind of hippie collective of people all living together and you know...
00:32:25
Speaker
Living in community, sharing food, sharing you know resources, raising children. um Maybe it was called Dancing Heart, I want to say. Okay, all right. Did that sound familiar to you? I got right there. Okay, all right, yeah. No, I mean, like, did, when you read it, had you heard of it? no. I had never heard of it. Yeah, so I tried to find those people. I couldn't find them on web pages. Mm-hmm.
00:32:46
Speaker
But yeah, so that you know and that was a little bit of an affirmation for me because I think some of my earliest knowledge about like the New Age movement was just from growing up in Portland and coming to Eugene. My brother went to the University of Oregon. I had tons of friends that came here.
00:33:03
Speaker
So you know coming down and sort of having like a sense of the kind of hippie roots of the community and that you know people do live in community and things like that. So i mean Amy's journey, I think, is really interesting because you see her sort of going around to different places. She came to Eugene. She went to Mount Shasta. She spent time in Ashland. She went to Sedona. like She was kind of kind of dabbling in all these communities where this is like, it's just a part of the culture of the place. She wanted ah to be a part of that.
00:33:33
Speaker
yeah What was it about the Pacific Northwest and maybe even Mount Shasta that spoke to the the entire movement, but even Love Has Won? I mean, so there's, I think, two ways to answer that. There's the journalism way, and then there's, like, the New Age mindset way. So, like, the journalism way is, like, have you ever seen Mount Shasta? It's amazing. Like, you go there, it's so striking. It pops out of the landscape.
00:33:55
Speaker
you You know, historically, back to, you know, the Wilkes expedition that mapped the Northwest, like, there or have been people who've just been really struck by that mountain. And so, so to me, that's the journalism answer. The New Age answer is that it is a um It's one of the Earth's chakras. So there's a system of chakras, like, you know, people apply to the body in yoga that people also apply to the Earth.
00:34:21
Speaker
And so it's ah it's a power center. It's um a place where some people will say, you know, ley lines come together and that those are places that are spiritually charged.
00:34:32
Speaker
In even more extreme ways, people who believe in Lemuria believe that Mount Shasta Was a part of Lemuria they believe that there's a Lemurian city within the mountains so lot of ways to answer that question i Love how you describe it as a Shasta is widened unignorable a chaotic lump of stiff meringue Thwacked down from the sky all alone a commands attention and like I just love your phrasing of that. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, i um I really wanted to make sure that Mount Shasta was a big part of the book because I did a lot of reporting there, but pretty much all of the people that are in this book applied some kind of spiritual significance to Mount Shasta or even ran their operations from Mount Shasta at a certain point.
00:35:20
Speaker
Yeah, and and some of the genesis of your reporting for this book was you know during pandemic times, and you were getting into tarot cards and having hours-long Zoom conversations with your friends, and ah you know just being online, being on Instagram and doing that, you were...
00:35:36
Speaker
you it was starting to worry you as you wrote. Yes. And you know it stopped you. But that moment of worry sometimes sends people to the cult. Like, what i not what why didn't you go and go go by way of the cult? But what did you notice in you as you hit the break? Yeah, I think so. ah So just for background for people who haven't read about that part of things. So during COVID, you know, everybody's like baking sourdough bread and, you know, but woodworking. And I was just taking a lot of online classes.
00:36:06
Speaker
That was just how I kept myself busy. And specifically, I started to take classes from this amazing poet in Portland who is a tarot card reader. And she would give these classes through literary arts about tarot and tarot history and art history and how that...
00:36:21
Speaker
Tarot can be a um like an artistic inspiration. It can lead to other pieces of writing and things like that. So really academic classes, but within those classes, I would start to see people talk about how much they believed like their fortune was being told in tarot.
00:36:37
Speaker
I was like, huh, that's not, I'm just not programmed like that. So I would start to have conversations with this friend of mine. We would do tarot like every Saturday night. We'd talk for hours about, you know, oh my God, can you believe the crazy things that happened in the news today? And also like, let's do some tarot to maybe feel better.
00:36:53
Speaker
I started to worry, like, is this like how you become in a cult? And I would like, I would pull my husband, Joe, like into the zoom call and be like, are we in a cult? And he's like, just don't worry about it. Like, it's okay to enjoy something. Like, I think, i think you're fine.
00:37:08
Speaker
So, um, but, but I think that, that like, that is my like reporter brain a little bit being like, so So if this isn't, if it's not going bad for me, how where does it go bad? Where does this become damaging? Does it become damaging?
00:37:22
Speaker
You know, I also grew up going to Catholic school. So things like tarot was seen as like the occult, you know, like Satan and stuff. And, um you know, while that's not entirely scary to me now, um I think, you know, that that kind of was in the back of my head, like, this is a bad thing.
00:37:40
Speaker
So, you know, I started doing reporting and then I realized like that was an overlap that I had with some of these people who objectively I couldn't disagree with more that are in the book.
00:37:51
Speaker
They also saw power in these cards or inspiration in them. So I thought, well, that's interesting. Like it's not every day that i feel like I can find overlap with people I would consider to be pretty extreme.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah, and going back to those Jesuit days, you you know you you selected Agnes as like your, yeah as you i don't know what you call it, but you selected Agnes, kind of a punk rock ah spirit, if you will. Talk a little bit about Agnes and what appealed to you about her. Sure.
00:38:20
Speaker
Yeah, ah so so Brendan is referring to an essay I wrote to promote the book. That was actually chapters that were in the book that were removed. So I'm, you know, I don't let anything go. That's a great writer business thing to do. No wasted work. Use it to promote the book. So um nothing goes to waste.
00:38:36
Speaker
So when I was, um I grew up, you know, in a pretty like non-religious household, but I went to a Catholic high school and I went to Catholic college. When I was in high school, I decided on my own to convert to Catholicism. And, you know, my parents were like, Okay, whatever, like you do you.
00:38:53
Speaker
And as a part of that, I chose a confirmation name. That's not something that's, you know, done very often anymore, but I was pretty excited about it. So my confirmation name was Agnes, who is this wild, you know, saint within the Catholic canon, a young woman who sort of spurns some Roman suitors. And because of that, they decide to kill her.
00:39:16
Speaker
And ah because she wouldn't have sex with them basically. And so, ah you know, they do everything to try and kill her. They like drag her through the streets, they stone her and try to light her on fire and nothing works.
00:39:27
Speaker
And so they chop her head off as is done in history to women. And I remember at the time just thinking that was like so bad ass. Like, yeah, that's cool. like You know, now it's it's it's so funny to look back on that because I fell away from Catholicism because, ah for many reasons, but one being that, you know, women don't have a lot of power.
00:39:49
Speaker
And ah that was a thing I had to learn, you know, as somebody who came in it wide-eyed and thinking, oh, you can be like Agnes and, you know, not really understanding what that story was used for in the Catholic canon.
00:40:00
Speaker
Yeah, so I think that that, you know, that's something that now I look back on who I was and I think I've always been somebody that's, interested in seeking, you know, in spiritual seeking and entertaining ideas about, you know, spirituality or what lies beyond or how we got here and all those things.
00:40:19
Speaker
So it's been kind of fun to be able to apply that to journalism and try and ah you know, well apply a super serious lens to a thing that's pretty squishy. You know, people's spiritual ideas are not always like fact-based.
00:40:32
Speaker
There's a moment in the book about a third of the way through where you wrote, ah there are times new ageism feels like an unsolvable Rubik's cube, a puzzle of never ending correspondences and synchronicities and unprovable promises.
00:40:44
Speaker
what It made me think of maybe the the writing and the reporting of the book might have similarly felt that way given how many moving
Balancing Truth and Fact
00:40:51
Speaker
parts are in the book. So like can you speak to that nature of all these pieces putting together, try to align something that is uniform and coherent and satisfying?
00:41:00
Speaker
It made me feel crazy, like very very bluntly. like you know How do you write about Lemuria? That's not a real thing. it's not it's not like its Science does not prove it. It's just it's not possible for a land mass to sink into the bottom of the ocean. It can sink, but not drop away completely.
00:41:20
Speaker
so but But it's real to people. So to me, you know what is my job as a journalist? Is it to say, like well, this isn't real, so just disregard it? Or is it to take it, well, why do people want to just turn a blind eye completely to science and think about this concept as a real thing? And I think that's i think that's a good example.
00:41:42
Speaker
I think that this book also made me realize Journalists get really high up on their horses about truth. I have also. But I think that this is a book that really plays with truth versus facts.
00:41:54
Speaker
What's true for me may not be true for somebody who believes in Lemuria. so So I tried to apply a fact-based lens to things, to that fluid definition of truth. if I don't know if that and even makes any sense, but that's kind of where I was trying to, where I realized like the research for this book was so extensive where I'm like, okay, if I'm going to write about Lemuria or Atlantis, I got to read a lot about these things.
00:42:21
Speaker
Things disproving it, things proving you know proving it to certain populations of people so I can kind of hold this like squishy water bed of... i ideas um in a way that I can you know say something definitive about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in given that you know the book covers ah yeah just a wide swath of of characters and in Lemuria, Atlantis, you name it, yeah a lot of books can suffer from like a sagging middle.
00:42:51
Speaker
yeah Momentum can drag. And it's a a struggle for all of us trying to keep the pace, keep the momentum going. to honor people's time to read 300 pages of whatever, fill in the blank. So how did you just navigate the writing of it so it did feel just even throughout and that you could carry a reader through?
00:43:09
Speaker
I think that um I had a really good editor on this book. So my editor, Maddie Caldwell, she she came in, you know, and and would tell me the middle is sagging here, Leah. Like there's some things.
00:43:21
Speaker
Because at a certain point in the history of the new age figures that I was writing about, like I was writing like a complete biography of each of them. So like, you know by the time you get to like the fifth section of the book where we're talking about Elizabeth Clare Prophet,
00:43:35
Speaker
you kind don't need to know everything because the ideas have now been talked about for the previous four sections. she know she Again, it was this lineage of theft. So I think that that was important for me when she gave me that feedback because I realized, like, it's really not about rehashing these ideas again and again and again. Like, at this point, everybody knows...
00:43:55
Speaker
what you as the narrator are saying about Lemuria. So keep it going. um I also think that I started to rely on scenes because as this book marches forward, you know, in page count, you're also marching forward to the more modern moment.
00:44:11
Speaker
So I had a lot of Merv Griffin and Oprah that I could, Dr. Phil, that I could describe to sort of bring this out of this kind of gauzy historical place and more into like, this is how this is playing out in the 80s and the 90s and the 2000s. So the book gets a lot more scene heavy, and which for me as a reader, i kind of need that. Like I want it to move and...
00:44:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah, it's real important to have not just quotes, but dialogue and white space on the page. It just accelerates the reading and it just it pulls you in and in a way. It's like it's it's swimming down current.
00:44:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And there's a few places where like the chapters get really short. You know, they're like, there's some that are really long. And then there's a couple of like, you know, palate cleansers where it's like just a really short thing.
00:44:58
Speaker
And um that's because that probably was a very long chapter before that I just hacked down to two paragraphs. One of those ah palate cleansing paragraphs comes towards the end where you actually you basically do a set piece, probably 2,000 words, maybe a little more, on lemurs. like just say there There is actually something of a thematic tie-in with their societal ah structures. i yeah I'm sure you can talk to that. mean, lemurs are the unsung hero of this book. like They really are. um so i so
00:45:29
Speaker
Okay, for the interest of this audience, hopefully this is interesting. um So Lemuria was originally a theory floated by a ornithologist who was writing about why lemurs were present in on Madagascar and in India.
00:45:45
Speaker
And you know this is before the science of like plate tectonics and continental drift has been discovered or you know written about. So he he writes this paper that is published where he sort of says,
00:45:57
Speaker
perhaps there was a continent here that had, that's how it was there. And that continent just fell into the ocean and we'll call it Lemuria. That's literally like his his whole thesis. ah Later in life, you know he's like, yeah, that maybe wasn't such good science, but like at that point it was out of the bag and people within the spiritual community who were very upset about theories of evolution, hated Charles Darwin, were like, scientists are killing the mysteries of the world.
00:46:26
Speaker
they could lean into this story of Lemuria as like, oh my God, the lemurs were there. This was this beautiful civilization. People probably lived there and they were like evolved. So what ends up being so very like really ironic to me is that the people who who ran the furthest with this Lemuria idea were people in the new age where women have a lot of power.
00:46:49
Speaker
In actual lemur society, it's a naturalal it's a matriarchal society. It's like the only matriarchal primate species. And I found that to be really like sad because, you know, the lemur population is is totally endangered, completely getting decimated by climate change and a variety of other things.
00:47:08
Speaker
And I just thought, isn't that funny that we as humans have to like create something completely fake where there's actually a thing that's an answer for this that we could all be like leaning into harder.
00:47:20
Speaker
So, um, yeah, there's a lot of lemurs in this book. It's probably more interesting on the page than the way I just explained it, but go lemurs.
00:47:30
Speaker
And the reporting of this and finding sources who are willing to go on the record who might experience some shame or you know discomfort talking either about you know the family members who We ah went into these various belief systems and then know the children of say Amy Carlson.
00:47:49
Speaker
How do you approach? Them to garner their trust so you can speak openly and you know try to just shed the the most honest and true light on them fair light as possible I think that, I bet you and I have talked about this before, but oftentimes when I come to a story, I'm like the last person. like ah So you know something has happened and like the media has come in and painted it a certain way or or you know done good or bad reporting, maybe sensationalized it, and then they've all moved on to the next thing. And then here I come and I knock on the door and I'm like, hi.
00:48:24
Speaker
What has everybody else gotten wrong about this? um I'm not trying to pander to people, but I am trying to understand the ways that... I'm i'm very you know eyes wide open about that media doesn't always do a good job.
00:48:37
Speaker
So in this case, I was very aware of how Amy Carlson's death had been portrayed. It was kind of a big joke. And in some regards, I think people portrayed it as really sad. and But I just...
00:48:49
Speaker
I found her mom and you know Amy Carlson went by Mother God and I thought, well, what is it like to be the mother of Mother God? and so you know Very early on, before i before I even wrote my book proposal, I reached her and I just said, you know I've written about things like this before.
00:49:05
Speaker
i am not here to re-victimize you, but I think that there's a story in understanding Amy that might be really instructive. And she agreed, you know, and that was that was great. So we didn't talk a lot at length, but I did talk to her children, Amy's sister, you know, people who knew her through her life.
00:49:24
Speaker
And I'm really open with people that I realize I'm arriving in their lives to talk about something really hard. you know Someone dying, someone that they loved. and um And I take that really seriously. So I ah think that that that works to my benefit that I'm like, look, I know that this sucks. like And it's a weird thing for me to be asking you these things. So I'm just going to try and do it do my best. And if there's something you don't want to answer, that's okay.
Understanding Beliefs and Vulnerabilities
00:49:51
Speaker
Yeah, there is ah when you talk to Cole ah towards the end, it comes in the final few chapters where he appears and Cole is Amy's oldest son oldest oldest child and who's the one who actually has something of a memory of of her before she abdicated.
00:50:07
Speaker
ah yeah he wrote you what he said something like, instead yeah writing you know you write about her and then this is him saying it too. you know you i think you write, like instead she ended up, this before she...
00:50:18
Speaker
Before she left, she ended up a manager at McDonald's, a single mother of three children. And he says, i think that in her mind, these were not things befitting of Amy Carlson. He called her Amy. He didn never called her mom.
00:50:31
Speaker
They were not important enough, big enough. You don't really have a choice in our system. You settle. I think a lot of people have to settle on something that's not their dream because they need to eat. They need to pay for the roof over their head.
00:50:42
Speaker
And i think that speaks to a kind of a, you know, that quiet desperation and certainly the vulnerability that leads people in these directions. And I think this book in a lot of ways is an exploration of the travails of vulnerability. Yeah, yeah, I'm glad to hear that. I thought that that was really powerful that Cole really seemed to have the most clear eyed view of his mother. He was also really angry about what happened, but also like, could have he had enough of a distance. And I think that this is one thing as a reporter, like, you know, there were a lot of other people that came in and then there was a lull and then I called.
00:51:20
Speaker
And I think that there had been time for people to process a little bit further about like what this all meant. and and I think that you know learning Amy's story was really interesting. She was somebody who wanted to be a famous singer.
00:51:32
Speaker
She was really talented. She didn't get anywhere. you know That's a more common story than getting somewhere, I think, in America. so you know He had these really smart ideas about that she wanted to live a great life,
00:51:46
Speaker
she was not living that life and she was potentially suffering from some kind of mental health issues. And that combination of things just pushed her to create a life where she was a goddess. And that's just that. That's what happened.
00:52:00
Speaker
You know, I heard this really great quote in a book I was listening to on the way down here this morning that we want to we want to make it so our monsters like ah manifest, not more material, like that they come out of nowhere and that they don't,
00:52:14
Speaker
come from a circumstance. And so what I was trying to answer here is like, what culture produces ah person that calls herself Mother God? Like what leads to that? And it turns out a lot leads to that. And it's, you know, celebrity culture, it's spirituality, it's patriarchy, it's a lot of different things. So I'm glad this ah all came together for you in the book.
00:52:37
Speaker
Without spoiling anything, because after I read the book, I i always like going back to the opening chapter and just see see what what might echo. And you do quite a, there's something of a magic trick you pull off, ah something of a tarot card flipping.
00:52:53
Speaker
And without giving anything away, how cognizant of you, were you of that, that if you go back to the front, that go back to the front you're like, oh, this this reveals itself in a way that didn't the first time around.
00:53:05
Speaker
Yeah, i am that's delight that delights me. Thank you for saying that. um i i Because it's so, like writing a book is such a nerdy, insane thing to do. So when somebody else like gets it, it's like very cool.
00:53:16
Speaker
um Yeah, I think that you know some of the, when you read the first pages of this book, you know you are picking up a book with a big giant eye on the front that says it's about the fever dream of the American new age. But the first chapter of the book is about the way the earth formed.
00:53:32
Speaker
And so I wanted that to be a bit of a head scratcher for people. Like, wait a second, I thought I was reading a cult book, not a book about science. um And the reason for doing that was I really wanted this to be grounded in that questioning of what is Lemuria? Is it possible for this, you know, continent to fall into the ocean? And just the how that simple question 200 years on has led to like female gurus and right? Like it's a it's a it's a wild trip through the human imagination to to to read this, I think, and like get to the end and go back and be like, oh my God, like why do people think of these things? So yeah, I was trying to do that. I wanted it to have that science-based reporting, but also um the story of the end of Amy's life at the beginning.
00:54:21
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And you hear the, is speaking of that scene building you were talking about, you know, the the the tires crunching along the road up to their compound in in Colorado. And then when you when you realize you when you come to the end of the book, you realize that you know where we are.
00:54:37
Speaker
ah or where we had been all along. And and it's a it's a pretty stunning, ah stunning reveal. And I'll just leave it at that. Sweet.
Leisure and Relaxation Choices
00:54:45
Speaker
Thank you. Well, Leah, you've been on the show a number of times, but ah you I always love ending these conversations by asking the guests, you in this case, for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners, just anything you're excited about that you want to share. And it's always, it could be a brand of coffee, brand of socks, a fanny pack, a You're right. You always do do this, and I didn't even think of it. um So I'm going to say the book that I was listening to on the way down here blew my mind. It's called Someday We Will All Be Against This by Omar Al-Aqad. He's from... port or Well, he's an Oregon writer. i think he's at some point lived in the Portland area. i believes He lives in the Willamette Valley.
00:55:23
Speaker
It's a beautiful book. It's it's really, um really, really powerful. um So I would recommend that. I also... would recommend that we need ways to kind of unplug from all the terrors of the world. So I've been doing that by playing a lot of Zelda. oh my gosh. Which one? I play Tears of the Kingdom. oh my Alter hand. you know, would, so dorky. um Yeah.
00:55:47
Speaker
I really think like, I recommend this. It's like therapy. It's just calm music and you're just running around trying to find a horse. You know, it's a great thing. Everybody needs it. Oh, that's that's wonderful. Well, Leah Satili, your work is brilliant. i i I'm so excited anytime I get to talk to you, and I love reading your work. I see your byline, and it signifies that, you know what? I'm in for a ride. and Awesome. Thank you. just they thank you for the work you do, and thanks for coming down to Eugene for a live recording of the show. Happy to do it. Thanks for everybody coming out. Appreciate it. Thank
00:56:24
Speaker
your
00:56:32
Speaker
Yes. Awesome. Had to turn down the gain, man. The gain knob was a little too high, friend. Another live podcast in the book. Oh, man. That was good.
00:56:44
Speaker
That was good. Thanks to Gratitude for hosting. Thanks for you for listening. Thanks for Leah driving down. I felt a lot better about that one. I was less nervous ah about it than the first one with Chandler Henderson.
00:56:58
Speaker
My anxieties were the following, and in order, and I quote, ah attendance, admittedly a little thin, but it was Palm Sunday, and it was a cloudless 65 degrees outside, so tough to get people inside on a Sunday afternoon like that.
00:57:15
Speaker
Two, tech. No issues, actually. Great experience. Feel pretty confident about that. There's always little improvements, but the for the better, not because there are any real hiccups this time around.
00:57:26
Speaker
Three, the interview itself, but I slipped right into the pocket. And it was good. And I got some nice compliments from strangers. And it's always nice when you get someone like Leah who comes to play ball and she drove two hours down the five.
00:57:39
Speaker
We sold some books. We did the thing, man. I'm gearing up for the next book. You know, like the next book. I know, I haven't even talked about the shit I'm doing for Prefontaine in terms of events.
00:57:53
Speaker
I'll get to that one of these days. That book's dead to me, man. It's old news. But it hasn't been published yet, BL. It doesn't matter. It's dead. Gotta got move on. Not really, but gotta move on. But not really.
Mindset Shift in Writing
00:58:05
Speaker
As I've talked before, and once in my power of narrative talk, that I'm still, I'm working on a way to figure out how to get it into the podcast feed or the pod stack, but that's neither here nor there. Don't worry about it.
00:58:17
Speaker
Part of that talk was failing to go all in on research for the book proposal and how that cost me a good six months of time. Time I desperately needed.
00:58:30
Speaker
I came to a distinct realization, almost an epiphany, when I heard the 12-time women's basketball champion coach Gino Auriemma of UConn speak on the Dan Patrick Show.
00:58:41
Speaker
He was asked what his pregame speech was to his team ahead of the finals. He said, and I quote, again, this from the Dan Patrick Show, I'm introduced at some events. Ladies and gentlemen, Gino Auriemma, you know, he's lost 12 Final Fours.
00:58:55
Speaker
They don't do that. They say, Gino Auriemma, he's won 11 national championships. Now 12. So you know, nobody gives a damn about who loses. They just care about winning.
00:59:06
Speaker
So why worry about losing? Nobody cares. I try to make them understand to not be afraid to lose. That's what gets in the way of teams winning. The fear of losing is so powerful.
00:59:18
Speaker
It's my job to try and diffuse that as much as I can. Now, let me tell you, CNN, I made sure I bookmarked that segment and I replayed it about 10 times to make sure I transcribed it perfectly.
00:59:30
Speaker
That summed up what I was doing with my Prefontaine book proposal. I wasn't writing it to win. i was writing not to lose. Half measure, not full measure. I came to understand that you should research as if a deal's in place, as if it's a certainty.
00:59:47
Speaker
Otherwise, and I didn't have the language to crystallize this at the time, I was playing to lose. In that spirit for my next book, I bought myself a real nice hardcover notebook.
01:00:00
Speaker
And it's going to be um a very John Steinbeckian diary of the next book. It's going to have all my contacts. I mean, I'm going to have digital backups anyway, but it's going to be an analog thing for all my contacts. So it'll be a phone book for all my sources.
01:00:15
Speaker
It'll have a day-by-day accounting of what I did that day because sometimes at the end of the day, i often wondered, like, what the hell I even did? you know, for example, maybe I interviewed two people, left 18 voicemails and cataloged 100 articles, wrote 300 words, and drank 40 beers.
01:00:30
Speaker
I want to make sure i have a record of that. I've long kept a journal, almost 30 years, and I often riff about my book work, anxieties and insecurities, etc., and the O'Mara Chronicles as I named them back in 1997.
01:00:45
Speaker
But I plan on using this fancy new book, notebook, to riff on the bullshit I'm feeling on a given day as it relates to the book at hand. The notebook also is a symbol.
01:00:56
Speaker
It's a symbol of commitment. It symbolizes that I'm playing to win, not to lose. I could easily have used a 99-cent modeled black notebook. and it would have saved me 35 bucks if you want to know the brand of notebook that i did get i got the large black wing slate black dot grid notebook link in the pod stack but that would have been playing to lose if i got the modeled notebook even though it's perfectly fun functional oh if this book falls through i'd rather be out one dollar instead of 40
01:01:30
Speaker
I thought maybe just doing a long-running Google Doc that serves the same purpose with the added benefit of being easily searchable, not to mention no clutter, would suffice. Then I'd subconsciously begin my reporting and research with one oar in the water.
01:01:46
Speaker
In the end, maybe I do quote-unquote lose, but I'm tired of the losing attitude, which I've somehow made it this far in nearly 45 years on the planet, despite a rotten head.
01:02:00
Speaker
you know For you, maybe it's saving up for writing retreat or a long weekend in a hotel. Either way, putting that extra bit of skin in the game heightens the stakes.
01:02:12
Speaker
I don't want this beautiful notebook to sit on my shelf as a reminder that I play to lose instead of playing to win. I like the idea of having this one document or two or three depending on how long the whole book process goes. But you you understand, a compendium.
01:02:31
Speaker
That serves as a record for the experience of that book. The two or three ups, the hundreds of downs, and a reminder to future me. Hey, you've been here before.
01:02:43
Speaker
Every book is new. You've felt this way before, and you made it. You did it, and you'll do it again. It'll serve as a mentor for future me.
01:02:54
Speaker
And maybe by extension, future you too. So stay wild, CNAFers. And if can't do, interview. See