Transcript
Speaker: Tomorrow, Saturday, October 24th, Gratitude Brewing, 1 p.m. Chuck Klosterman, you heard? It's coming to town. We're a live recording of the podcast. I don't know. Have I been talking about it enough?
Speaker: We'll be talking about his new book, Rock, on mainstream alternative history of alternative mainstream music. as well as his book, Football, as well as whatever the hell we want to talk about. Writing, voice, style. He is singular, and you can see him in person. ah RSVP with a free ticket at the link in my newsletters or the Instagram profile. That's at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. The place is filling up. The RSVPs are actually getting up there.
Speaker: I think we're at around 30, which is pretty nice. Would love a few more. ah RSVP, or just show up. It's free and open to the public, okay?
Speaker: And new sponsor alert. This podcast is also sponsored by the word despair, utter loss of hope, great unhappiness or disappointment, a cause of hopelessness, despair. You're looking at it.
Speaker: Only a normie would try to do stupid things like that. yeah Much better to wing it and do what feels right.
Speaker: I say new sponsor, but I think Despair sponsored this podcast at one point or another a few years back. It's great to have him back. You love repeat sponsors. very It's very validating, right?
Speaker: Right? AC and Efforts the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell, the art and craft of telling true stories. But then again, you knew that.
Speaker: Who the hell do we have today, Kevin? It's Robert Coker. hu Returning to the podcast to talk about his latest book, which is, I have to say, the odds on favor to win the second annual CNFE for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence. Last year, Cassidy Randall won the wooden plaque.
Speaker: If all awards are ultimately meaningless, I'm happy to contribute. Oh yeah, you probably want the book title. It's The Vanishing Family. Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia. It's published by Doubleday. I don't say this is hyperbole. This book is a freaking masterpiece.
Speaker: Bob is also the author of Hidden Valley Road, a number one New York Times bestseller, and a selection of Oprah's Book Club, and a top ten book of the year by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and those fat cats on Wall Street at the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker: Also the author of The Lost Girls, which was made into a Netflix series or a movie. Not sure, but it was adapted, which is pretty cool. The Vanishing Family was one of those like noted books in the back of The New Yorker in a recent issue. so yeah, it's that good.
Speaker: I'll give you a little more about Bob in a minute. Show notes to this episode more at brendanamera.com. Hey, hey. There you can get access to the vast archives of the show and blog posts, like my most recent one, ah a publication audit for the 2026 volume of Year's Best Sports Writing.
Speaker: My website is pretty old school, and I love it. too You may also sign up for Pitch Club or the Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, which might get a rebrand to This American Life or not. I don't know. Who cares? Does anything matter anymore? There's also patreon.com slash cnfpod if you have the means to support the podcast with a few dollars. Show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. This economy has been bar-rootal for the Patreon gang. And i greatly appreciate those who still support it.
Speaker: There are creators out there and magazines I subscribe to. And I'm like, can I still afford this? Because even this little bit on top of that other little thing on top of that other little thing suddenly adds up to the price of a bag of rolled oats.
Speaker: I don't take ads, you know this. This podcast is listener and host supported, and it always will be. That might not make business sense to all you people out there who are smart at business, but I'd rather put the power in your hands and mine.
Speaker: Mainly mine. This is our show. My show. Our show. I never want to be handcuffed and worried about offending an advertiser. Sometimes I take promotional swaps, but that's different.
Speaker: yeah We keep it punk rock here. We keep it metal. Not like James Hetfield. Fuck. James, just don't say anything at all. oh If you know, you know.
Speaker: fuck Bob Coker is a writer for the New York Times Magazine and his work has also appeared in the Atavis Magazine. Check out his latest appearance on this podcast, episode 385, where we talk about is out of his Atavis story.
Speaker: His journalism ah most often takes the form of gripping humane narratives. He's a National Magazine Award finalist with work appearing in WIRE, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, Businessweek, Oprah Magazine, and New York Magazine. It's impressive.
Speaker: Learn more about Bob at robertcoker.com and follow him at Bob Coker. You're in for a fun ride with this podcast. Among many things, we talk about the gear he uses, timeline files, his crisis of confidence at the start of a story, what is the self, the power of timelining, his repertorial approach, interviewing chronologically as a means to creating a rough draft, balancing the confidential information of the family in his reporting, in this book in particular, and a lot more, a lot more.
Speaker: More parting shot this week about having an emergency book nearby. I recorded this as a video for the Patreon crew. I didn't put B-roll in. I just didn't have time, but I was experimenting with the whole video thing. But I might go in and pretty up my parting shots as vlogs for either the Patreon gang or maybe for YouTube or maybe like Patreon gets it first for a little bit and then I chuck it up on YouTube.
Speaker: I don't know. Just trying to play around, fuck around, have some fun. I like doing video. I find it fun. Visit patreon.com slash cnfpod to see the first video of the emergency book parting shot. Again, no B-roll. It's just me riffing. Speaking of that, let's cue up the montage.
Speaker: Riff.
Speaker: Don't, don't ask this question. Don't go there. if structure should be as simple as it possibly can be. I think email is like the death of all all creativity. This is going to have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: Yeah, it's great that way. um I'm learning that the book is really an extreme example of of dilemmas and situations that that all of us have or are worried about having. So anyone with dementia in their family's life wonders if the person is still there, you know what about their personality still remains, and that's that this family has that times 10. And then the the list goes on. like Everyone goes to a doctor's office and just for a regular checkup. And then there's a second there where suddenly that flashes in their head. Wait a minute. Is this going to be the day my life changes? Is this the day the doctor is going to say they're concerned about something? yeah And this family has that times 10. They're constantly wondering, should I test for this?
Speaker: What happens if I have the mutation? Will it change my destiny? And so forth. I think maybe ah something that might be kind of fun just to ah to start things off with, as ah as journalists, i i i know and I know people who listen to the show who like to kind of like geek out about just the various things that we you bring with us when we're yeah reporting out a book or or whatever, kind of like the gear we use. What are the tools at your disposal? What kind of notebooks do you like yeah writing stuff yeah that that's in your and your' and knapsack as you're you know doing some reporting?
Speaker: I guess like like a lot of people, i'm I'm taking fewer handwritten notes and I'm relying more on recording. I have a big notebook, like a journal size notebook that's like ah like a larger size that would be, it's like a competitor to Moleskine whose name I've forgotten. It begins with an L, lecterm or whatever. Yeah, I know who exactly what you're talking about, ye um And that becomes a a journal with notes and all kinds of information that I keep for the length of the book. So I fill one or two of those journals for the length that I'm working on the book. And that's great because then I can put a sticker on the back of them saying that that's for that book and it can sit on the bookshelf and I always have it.
Speaker: um But I have a little Olympus recorder that has a USB connector to my laptop. And because for the last couple of books, the the interviews have been so extensive and often the science interviews so confusing, I really rely on tape recording so I can go back and listen and read transcripts.
Speaker: And so I upload those immediately. i use Scrivener on my computer to keep notes on all my meetings and and all my interviews, but also more importantly to start almost immediately, a huge timeline file um about the family and then a second timeline file about the science. And these are not names and date timelines. These are note dumps essentially where like a big episode in the family happens and I dump in, you know, hundreds of words of transcripts from one person's recollection of that event. And then
Speaker: I write another point of view from so and so, and then I dump in theirs so that it's all in one place and in chronological order. This way, it's almost like I'm working on a rough draft from the start, but I don't really look at those big files until i I've done a full round of interviews with people. And it's it's useful for me to look at them early.
Speaker: i often print them out. um this see This time around, I printed them out. I didn't want to break my printer, so I i had them printed somewhere else and had them hole punch it and I put them in a binder and then I got away from my computer and I sat somewhere else like outside or or ah just just somewhere where I could see the sky or something. And I went through the binder and I just sort of circled the things that needed to be in the book.
Speaker: And ah those are scenes or or or major points or major turning points in the family story. And then I realized if I could make a list of those things that I circled, then that's the beginning of an outline, really. That's a that's a list of things that need to be in the book. And then you can fiddle with the order if you want to, but at the very least,
Speaker: I've tricked myself into into getting going on a first draft. um i I find getting started very difficult. I feel i have no confidence. And um and so i I have to um immediately forgive myself and say, you this is going to be an awful first draft.
Speaker: And ah this outline that you've come up with based on the things you've circled in your binders, it's not going to be the real outline of the book. It's just a way to get started. And and as long as I tell myself that I can change everything later, I can calm down a little bit and try to have fun with it. Actually, that that's the other part. I can say, why not enjoy yourself during this early round? You know, you can change everything later anyway. yeah So so let's not let's not pretend that you're sitting up on stage and everybody's watching you.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, I love the this notion that, yeah, you are ah have a crisis of confidence sometimes or early on to get to get started. And ah for someone with it's such a wonderful body of work that you have, it strikes me as a very very confidently delivered. But have certainly, of course, at the start, you are wrestling with those issues. So, yeah, how do you, i don't know, dance with it and then get over it so you do get into, yeah, the meat of things?
Speaker: The part where I'm frightened is from the very beginning. I think, you know, i I might screw up, I might say the wrong thing, the person won't talk to me or will be have less confidence in me or just won't return the call entirely and then the project will be in jeopardy.
Speaker: To get started is to allow for the possibility that something might go wrong. And so... um And so i I tend to, I do all the things that, you know, all the procrastinating things. I take care of all the, I answer all my emails, you know, for half the day. And then lunch comes around and I say, i still haven't done the big thing yet. I still haven't tried to reach this person or send an email. And then once I get over that initial hump, once I'm once i'm really,
Speaker: done with those first couple of interview requests, then suddenly I pick up steam because suddenly I feel a little more confident and I'm ah i'm a little more at peace with what I don't know. i realize i don't have to have all the answers at the beginning, that just being able to ask the questions is enough and to pay attention is enough.
Speaker: as As they all say, you really should be listening and not talking anyway. So yeah as long as you've persuaded people that it's in that that you're going to be a good listener for them, then you're you're in decent shape. I have a really soft spot in my heart for the people at the start of a book project who ah who grant you time when maybe nothing is secure yet. Like you don't have either like a magazine commission or even a book proposal. Like you're trying to get the story altitude and you need those people to trust you at first. And like... There might be you know fewer than 10 people, but that might be enough to get meat on the bone of a proposal when nothing is secure, and yet they're still granting you that time. And then more people down the road would be like, once things are secure, they're more apt to share that time with you. Or like, oh, you talked to them already. Okay, I'll talk to you. But my gosh, I don't know how you feel about those first people, but i really they're so crucial, and I really hold them dear. Yeah.
Speaker: Certainly. Absolutely. With this last book, it's a family that had nine siblings, all of whom were adults and most of whom were had had kids already. Some of them had grandchildren already. So these nine siblings are living all over the country. It's not like they all...
Speaker: came together in a group and knocked on my door and said, write a book about us. it it was a very, very careful, tricky process where even i wasn't even persuaded in the beginning that it would be possible or that it would be a book.
Speaker: What happened was two of the siblings, two sisters came to me knowing about my previous book, Hidden Valley Road, which was about a large family. And what they had to say to me really blew my mind. It it was so different from the previous book. Instead of being a a disease that no one knows what it causes it, like schizophrenia, this was a disease, a form of dementia that they could look and under under a microscope and see the genetic mutation that actually caused it. They knew it.
Speaker: And yet no one could cure it anyway. that Something about our miracle of gene editing hasn't made it to these people yet. And then, of course, what happened to the disease transforms personality so much that it raises the question of what is a self? What is a personality? If all it takes is one genetic mutation to change your entire self in middle age.
Speaker: And the questions just kept spilling out from there. So I was interested in pursuing it. But again, I'd only talked to these two women and it's controversial. It's for a family. You don't want to start a fight within the family. You don't want some siblings to stand up and say, what are you doing? And then you're caught in the middle of it.
Speaker: I wasn't going to plant down a flag and say, i will i promise this will be my next book because then it's a then Then suddenly you're perhaps starting a fire in the family or setting off a bomb in the family and the family's already suffered enough. And so I just had to be very careful. And I looked into it as a magazine story first. And that turned out to be the right decision in this case, because...
Speaker: I worked for the New York Times Magazine. They they they had a they had a um very specific take, the emotional journey of the family that that seemed like the right and responsible and tasteful take to have. And this way, i i had an immediate leg up in the process because then I could say to everybody in the family and everybody who knew the family, I'm working on a story for the New York Times Magazine and and this is the approach that we're taking.
Speaker: And that kind of legitimizes the whole effort a little bit. And then once this magazine story was done, everybody could look at it and and make their own judgment about how it went and whether it was a good demonstration for what might come next. In this case, the the family talked for months before agreeing, okay, a book is all right.
Speaker: you know And, of course, I had to be very careful and say, listen, I'm not asking you to sign away your life rights. We're not making a contract here. This is just a work of journalism. If you don't want to talk to me, you don't have to talk to me. If you want to write your own book, you can write your own book.
Speaker: If you are in the middle of an interview with me and I ask you a question that you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer it. You're not you're not in court. you know let Let's just keep it all very voluntary. And if you want to talk to me, talk to me. If not, you don't have to talk to me. But this is my this is my approach. This is what I'm going to try to do. I want your story to open people's eyes about not just your condition and and the hopes for a cure, but what it has to say about all of us. And and enough of the family was and was ready. And so i i at that point, that's when I got on planes and and visited for days and sat and had long conversations and lunches and dinners um with as many family members as possible. That's when the real interviewing began. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the the family first approached me four years ago. The magazine story came out a little less than a year later. And then it was another few months before suddenly I was really working on the book. So it was it was way more than a year, like a year and three months before I really started the book. Do you find that even just as the the writer and journalist in you that approaching an ambitious project as a maybe as a magazine story kind of lowers the stakes a little bit so you don't get overwhelmed by the bookness of it all and that it's a way to kind of stress test the story to see if it can sustain for, you know, whatever it ends up being, 100 or 120,000 words?
Speaker: Absolutely. Absolutely. with With this book, there were there were structural things built in that that meant it was a bad idea to try to do a book first. The first was that it was another family with another condition.
Speaker: I would probably need to convince publishers that it was worth doing a book on after having done a book that did so well like that. Yeah. you know you know, it it wasn't gonna be too samey. But the bigger one was that this family had confidentiality concerns.
Speaker: They have a family illness that involves early onset dementia. And what if what if there's a family member who's 22 or 23 or 24 years old and entering the job market and is applying for jobs? And the employer Googles their name and sees that the person's last name is tied to a book about early onset dementia.
Speaker: Like, doesn't that change their life a little bit, even even though we are supposedly medical information is confidential? And so i for the magazine story, I kept the family's last name out of the out of the entire story.
Speaker: And I thought that that perhaps would be the end of it and that there wouldn't be a book after that for that reason. But it turned out that the magazine story went but worked out just fine without a last name.
Speaker: and And the publisher was fine without a last name too. So so I could just do it again. So it was a ah chance to demonstrate that the but that the story would still be all right without a without an identifying last name. Yeah, it's wild. they Even that you bring that up. Like I read the entire book, of of course, and didn't even realize there were no surnames. I just like it it just didn't even hit me. I didn't even notice.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's a it was ah it was a new one for me because I come out of magazine journalism, and and um but the world of books is different. and And sometimes magazine stories are different too. And so it it was a growth experience for me to see like, well, the story still works, the whole the whole situation works without the that... that that element of journalism going for it. Yeah. And, uh, you know, earlier you you talked about some of the transcript dumps that you put into the, your Scrivener timeline, just to get some notes printing them out, circling things, you know, trying to find the, some, the, or, and then some of the shape there. And I wonder for you, Bob, when you're doing, know, be it a long magazine story or, or the books you've written, like when the, when the shape starts to reveal itself over the course of your research or your reporting,
Speaker: Yeah, that's a good question. the For my previous book, Hidden Valley Road, i had um I had the shape in mind from the very beginning. I thought that there would be a part one with the parents having kids and living the dream until things go badly.
Speaker: And that part one would end when things are at their worst. And they can't deny that they're is a huge problem with the family. And that part two would be the kids grown up, ah reevaluating their childhoods, thinking about their parents' decisions, reckoning with everything that happened in their childhoods.
Speaker: And it would be a little like a little like East of Eden, right? Like part one is the parents and part two is the kids grown up. um But for this for this book, I didn't have a certain number of parts in mind.
Speaker: um i and I had a spine from the magazine story that's centered around one of the children, the youngest in the family, who becomes sort of a crusader for a cure after being the baby in the family for so long.
Speaker: And she lives for 10 years wondering whether or not to be tested, and that's a whole whole thing that kind of defines the magazine story, but the book was too big for that, that she needed to share the stage with other people. So it was, a i really kind of had to feel my way through the whole thing. And then there was the question of where the science goes in.
Speaker: It was, there was a lot of trial and error and, and, um, uh, i I start with chronology, but then of course, chronology only gets you so far.
Speaker: When I was younger and starting out, I thought things like outlining and timelining were like, that that they weren't rock and roll enough. Like they weren't, they weren't, the the they they were nerdy.
Speaker: Only a normie would try to do stupid things like that. yeah Much better to wing it and do what feels right. But yeah, Nothing excites me like chronology now because it it makes me ask better questions. i go through i go through a a family timeline file like the one I've assembled, and I realize two things. The first is that I've been so excited to talk to the people who want to talk to me that there are huge holes that I need to fill from people who I really need still need to call back a third time and beg to talk to me to please fill the holes in the story. And then the second thing is
Speaker: there There's a whole category of difficult questions that I haven't asked anyone yet because I've been too afraid to talk about the thing that's that's so tough, that the the the third rail subjects, and that I have to go back to the people who i I've already interviewed and talk about tougher stuff with them.
Speaker: And the sooner I learn those things, the better. And so the timelining gets me into both. Oh, and then there's a third thing. Timelining helps you ask much smarter questions because you draw associations that nobody else has said to you. You see like, wait a minute, so-and-so's wedding was two weeks after the mother died.
Speaker: You know, everybody at the wedding must have been talking about, must have been reeling from the death of their mother. You know, what was that like? So you you start to see things that that people haven't said to you explicitly. And the the subjects wind up very impressed by that. They trust you more because you they see you're really listening. Yeah. Well, and also sometimes asking those, you know, the really, the those harder questions.
Speaker: It's such a fine math and ah and a fine feel, really, because like if you ask the the question that's really hard, um maybe they don't want to be forthright. that They could just shut you off altogether. Or they can be forthcoming and it's like, OK, this is the good stuff. this We're really reaching a a level of depth here. But yeah, then they you might ask the the wrong question to the ah wrong person at the wrong time and then they run interference on everyone. Say, don't talk to this person anymore. And then then you're kind of screwed. And um but yeah, so I imagine like you're you're kind of holding those grenades in your back pocket. Like, do I pull the pin now or wait a little? Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, from your vantage point, Brandon, talking to so many different journalists, you must see a you must be an expert now in talking to people who obsess over these little interactions with sources like, will I say the wrong thing and alienate them? Will I ask the wrong question at the wrong time? how do People who really are concerned with controlling everything that happens and then when do you give up control and just hang out and watch them do their thing and and shut up?
Speaker: and not think about your list of questions at all, just let spontaneity happen. these are these are the These are the main concerns, I think, of most people who write long, it seems to me. And yeah, and at some point, you have to throw up your hands and say, you know, you're never going to get it right.
Speaker: That person who you should have called sooner you know you're just going to have to deal with the consequences with not calling them sooner. Now they're going to be suspicious of you because you waited so long for them to call ah to call them. you know that it's It's not going to be perfect. And that this obsessiveness obviously works well when you have to sit down for hours and hours and write all alone. But the the obsessiveness also works against you in terms of your morale sometimes. So you have to i find I count myself grateful that I didn't really write books until I worked on long magazine articles for a couple decades because i learned to manage some of the emotions of that, of of being able to feel like you were so the best writer in the world while you write your draft and then the worst writer in the world when your editor's reading the draft and and then having to mel you know reconcile those two points of view and revising. that Those are things that I...
Speaker: I get now emotionally in a way I may not have gotten in my 20s. Yeah. Yeah. I i think of yeah when we first spoke was about an out of a story you wrote a couple of years ago. And um and i in talking with another out of this writer for another story, like he knew he was sitting on a question that could potentially wall off his source. And he really hung on to it until like the very, very end. And like, sure enough, when he asked him, it it was totally like fundamentally altered the relationship. And suddenly it was like, Yeah, we're kind of done here. And it's like, yeah and he knew it was going to be the case. And I forget the exact context, but it was one of those things where he was like, I know I have to ask him, but if I ask him too early, I'm going to lose him altogether. So I better save it to the end.
Speaker: ah Yeah. ah You're making me think of a handful of magazine stories I did where, where the first person only shows up in the final paragraphs. Yeah.
Speaker: because i i yeah were were taught but he's that he or she is talking and finally i so I ask a question that's a consequential question and they answer it and then the curtain comes down and that's the end of the end of the story.
Speaker: I thought that was so cool. And then the third maybe the third time I did it, I said, well, maybe this is a shtick. Maybe this is a, you maybe this is, Maybe I shouldn't do it again. i don't know. It was was interesting. Yeah. Well, in in dealing with ah the sources of, ah you know, in this in this book, in The Vanishing Family, you know there are there are elements of or like earning earning trust. And it looks like your body of work helped.
Speaker: um grease the grease the rails a bit there. But you know as you're going and as the project is ongoing, you know how are you fostering that level of trust that you're going to handle the story with care, given that to that already the family suffering that you've alluded to?
Speaker: I think everybody kind of uses what they've got. i remember sitting at New York Magazine and some colleagues... would be on, you know, one coworker would be on the phone and he'd be berating the the person on the other line saying, answer the question, or you better tell the truth, or I'm going to do this because they're, you know, because it's ah like a almost a Woodward and Bernstein approach saying, you know, the world needs to know.
Speaker: And that was working for him. And then a few seats away, there'd be someone else who'd be saying to a source, come on, let's go out, let's have some drinks. We'll have a good time. It'll be fun. And it was working for them. And whereas I think for me, it's about it's about being um being a grownup.
Speaker: you know I think what I projected even at an early age was I've been doing this a while. i plan on doing it. for years to come. There's nothing about me that suggests I'm going to scoop up your words and run away and never be heard from again.
Speaker: i'm not leaving town. I'm not leaving the career. you know you're You can trust me because it's in my best interest to be trustworthy too. And then of course, I listen more than I talk, unlike this broadcast right now. I listen i listen more than I talk. And um and sort of project a certain willingness to hear the person's story.
Speaker: And so it's almost like an invitation for them to say all the things that have been on their mind if only somebody would ask. Sometimes I go into an interview and I end up being quiet from the start because they've almost, they've been rehearsing. They've been thinking like, well, once, once I finally get to tell my story, I'm going to really be able to tell them what I think.
Speaker: And they, They aren't necessarily coherent even, but they're excited to to talk. And so I just sort of sit quietly and absorb it. Whereas a different person might be more jittery or might want to get to their list of questions or be more pressed for time because they aren't writing long form, right? Because they're they're sitting there with the camera crew.
Speaker: and or they're a newspaper reporter who has to file that day. what What I'm trying to project to people is we have all the time in the world. We can talk a second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth time if you want to.
Speaker: ah Then they're fact checkers too. You have a certain amount of comfort when it comes to talking to me. Yeah, and you're bringing up the the idea of interviewing, too, and being more of a listener versus a talker. And i a lot of people get into the the trap of either overly front-loading a question or asking a question and then answering the question and then asking again or asking an entirely different question. I really subscribe to the school of thought for the most part of like ah John Sawatzky, who's like a Canadian investigative journalist who fosters um ah his main thing is like ask lean, open, neutral questions and like get out of the way. And I have a lean, open, neutral sticky tab on my monitor to make sure I don't get too long winded. Podcast form is a little different, but I still try to adhere to it when best I can. For you, Bob, is I get a sense that that's kind of your your thing, too. You're going to ask a question. Even if you might know the answer, you're going to be like, you know what? It's not my job to answer it. I'm going to give them the voice. So, yeah, how have you fostered that ah approach?
Speaker: Well, i I start by moving past the idea that this is going to be a natural interaction, that it's not just going to be just ourselves. just us kids hanging out. and and And I understand it's gonna be synthetic in a way. so It'll be synthetic because they're gonna talk more way more than I am, and I'm not going to be jumping in and interrupting them or or trying to answer the question for them.
Speaker: And it's synthetic because at a certain point, and this is contradictory to everything else, I am gonna jump in because I'm gonna want specifics. gonna say, so the wedding, you know what did the centerpieces look like? How big was the hall? How many people were there? What were you wearing? did any you know What was the most surprising thing that happened there?
Speaker: you You start to drill down in a way that you you wouldn't, if it was just us kids hanging out, you would never have this conversation. And this I learned too at New York Magazine. There was a a terrific reporter, older than I was, several desks away. And I would hear her on the phone saying literally, what color were the centerpieces? Like to to somebody, you know, like I need it for the story. And, you know this isn't, you know, we're not playing games here. Like I'm trying to write something. So let's, let's, let's get the show on the road. And so you got to kind of jump more gently than I just said it, you know, you know, make that happen as well.
Speaker: The one thing I do to try to calm everything down is to move chronologically in an interview. i imagine you've heard this from other folks as well. But I'll sit down and say, so we have a lot of time. why don't we start with the day you were born and I promise we'll move through the boring stuff fast. But then when we get to the stuff that's relevant, maybe we'll slow down, but we'll make a rule, which is um if at any point when you jump around in time, I'm going to stop you and we're going to go back in time. So if you say to me something like what I didn't know then was i'm going to go, ho, ho, ho, ho. No, I don't.
Speaker: I want to know it all through your eyes. I want to see how you experience it. Yeah. And they, Perhaps I said this the last on our last interview, but this this method is very helpful for the people who aren't making speeches the minute they walk into an interview. It's extremely helpful because it helps calm them down. It makes them realize that they're not on the witness stand and that they're not just sitting there going, okay, next question.
Speaker: What's the next question? like Instead, they get they get feel a little more control over everything. And as we talk, I start to ask better questions saying, hey, wait a minute. Are you saying that you... um you would just come out of the hospital before the bank robbery. yeah That's crazy. And then, then suddenly they relax and they see like somebody really wants to know exactly what it was like. yeah And they, um,
Speaker: they have more confidence. So it's, and then of course there's the third benefit, which is that they, in a way are helping you write a rough draft because if you move chronologically, it, it gives you the beginnings of that draft. Yeah. Oh, that's a wonderful way of phrasing it and thinking it through. I love that. And another thing that struck me about the book as well is getting sometimes very detailed,
Speaker: They're they peppered through, not not a ton, but enough to be like, oh, wow, like you know Bob's really got some great access here in terms of what he's asking for and maybe what's delivered to him. Like some journal entries in ah you know Barb's list to make you know her like sort of cognitive checklist. I see that and I'm like, wow, this is this is crazy like that you're able to procure this information. So yeah how do you how do you get something like that so that's so intimate and private? that all of those primary sources came later after i had after we had been down the road a little ways and everybody realized that that we were all in we were all hitched up together and things were moving forward that's when people were said hey i've got this journal or hey i think we can get into my mom's computer and she has some jobs some some journal entries there or get some emails that that that they were almost never happened at the beginning
Speaker: And then the medical records are the same thing. the you know I come and meet in person and they say, you know hey, I knew you were coming, so I dug up some medical records. And I'm sitting there talking to them while I'm um using my phone to scan pictures from the medical records just to make sure that I have them. Yeah, yeah that's that's great. yeah And that's what the other thing, too, that piggybacks off the trust building. you You've spoken to them for hours and hours. And, yeah, you've developed a kind of rapport. we're Like, oh, i I can tell that...
Speaker: he's handling this with respect and care and decency. It's like, okay, I feel like I can be a bit, maybe even a bit more forthright to help with, you know the, the story in that nature.
Speaker: Yeah. There's some joyful and satisfying moments that come when you get that stuff. Yeah. that come independently of your face to face interviews. I remember I got some medical records and didn't even look at them, start to look at them until I was on the plane ride home.
Speaker: This is with Hidden Valley Road with my previous book. And then when I got home, I realized that for for some one member of the family, a guy, the oldest brother in the family who was long deceased, who I never would ever. and Oh, no, he wasn't deceased. He was long symptomatic. who I never would be able to interview about his life.
Speaker: suddenly there were his medical records where um there were interview notes with a psychiatrist from his college years. And suddenly I had a window into the kind of guy he was back then.
Speaker: And he emerged as a, as a, almost as much as of a full fledged person in the book, as many of the people who I spent hours interviewing um because I suddenly had all of these documents to help me write the story. And, um,
Speaker: that That's the exciting part about writing writing long is you you things go on for so long that surprises happen, interesting things happen. Yeah. And one thing that I love about the book and just in terms of its layout is this idea of ahead of every chapter that centers on the family is yeah ah basically a family tree of sorts. And then you know if they become symptomatic or test positive for this gene that leads to this frontal temporal dementia, which can onset around age 40, you know, they, sudden their names are like italicized and you start to see the accretion of this disease and it, it builds, it it creates almost this ominous effect of a really sense of almost doom that kind of hangs over the family. You're seeing it add up as the book goes on. So yeah, it's, yeah it's such a great little grace note as a reader, as a reader experience. Yeah, you see there are more and more italicized people as the book goes on. The the idea to have the little family trees
Speaker: at the beginning of every chapter came came from the previous book, actually, with another large family. There was obviously anxiety about, like ah are people going to keep people straight? But also, i was excited by it because it was a chance to almost signal to readers what the next chapter was going to focus on. So you'd have the people who are going to be the main characters of that next chapter are bold-faced. So it's a little like...
Speaker: a baseball program. Like it's the fourth inning. Who's at bat now? yeah And and and that these are who's at bat. And chapter four, it's going to be Barb and Sue. so we're going to watch Barb and Sue in chapter four. Yeah. Well, and you and you bring up Sue. like Sue is such a hero of the story and the degree to which she i don't know, the sacrifice is the wrong word, but she is so selfless ah in this story. She really comes through the love she shares for her, especially Christy. And ah it just, I was really struck by, you know, the degree to which she was like, yeah, I'm going to take this on and take care of my older sister.
Speaker: She's a wonderful person. And in some ways she's, um she ran in against the kind of person who I thought would be the ultimate caregiver. um I thought that a perfect caregiver would be someone who's a really touchy-feely person who cries a lot, who nurtures a lot, hugs a lot, and Sue's a terrific person, but she's she's she's not that way. And I ended up talking to to to a Berkeley professor who'd been researching caregivers and about what helps them be resilient. And he said that the the people who can compartmentalize are the ones who last longer as caregivers, the people who,
Speaker: Instead of waking up in the morning, you know, weeping or wondering what's what's going to happen and in their lives, they wake up thinking, what's next? What do I have to do next? What's the next thing I have to do? And then they cry at other times and they celebrate at other times. And that's the way sue seems to be. The thing about Sue is she she obviously is the hero of the family. She takes care of Christie for 30 years. But in talking with her, she almost says backhandedly, like, oh, yeah, and I also looked after Mary for a few years. Oh, yeah, and when Peggy moved to town, she stayed with me for a year. Oh, and after that, when Dutch came through town,
Speaker: There were like two or three years there where he was staying with me, too. She took care of them all at one time or another. it's It's miraculous what what she was able to do. And then the book also raises this ease, the ethical question, too, of whether or not the sibling should be tested and then expose themselves to the idea that they're either carrying or not carrying this mutation. And then in the face of that, you know, and then having children and whether you like if you didn't test and then you're you you are either burdening the next generation with the mutation or you might be burdening them with the care of you not knowing. And it's like that that tension was really intense in this book.
Speaker: they all have a crystal ball and they have to decide whether to look into it. And that seems like a like a science fiction thing, but I think we all but it's coming for all of us. They now can test people in utero for the probability of having different diseases.
Speaker: And of course, if your family has the breast cancer gene, you already have the crystal ball. and And for these rare diseases, you have it too. And and it they have to decide whether they their life is going to change now or later. do they want to Do they want to know the future now or do they just want to let it happen?
Speaker: And then, of course, it doesn't really affect them the way that affects the people around them, because for this illness, they are rather oblivious when they start becoming symptomatic. Your emotions are blunted and your your personality is changing. So your spouse could come up to you and say, you're changing too much. I want a divorce. And you would say, oh, OK. And you just sort of keep go back to watching TV. or you're more impulsive. Suddenly you're draining the bank account or drinking or having affairs.
Speaker: the Things change so much for you and you have no insight into it. You don't think anything's wrong. which is a blessing for you in a way, but it's not not for the people around you. So this crystal ball that you're offered at an early age...
Speaker: it might be more of a crystal ball for the people around you than for you. It matters more to them than for you. so you have to decide, for the benefit of my kids, should I look at this? For the benefit of my spouse, should I look at this? There are people who waited 10 years, other people still haven't looked at it. the The benefit of a big family story is you see 10 answers to that crystal ball question and readers can look at it and say, well, maybe I'd be more like this person.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, yeah. And then you I believe i believe it was Anika who when she ends up yeah getting tested and she has the other mutation and then she's about she's either engaged or about to be married. and she like or just in a very serious relationship and poses it like list.
Speaker: I understand if you want to get out now. And it's just, you you just, it rips your heart out to to know that there are two young people wrestling with that that question right right off the bat. You hurt for them.
Speaker: Yeah, it's astonishing. I say that, and what goes through my head is that I've i've reunited physically with, know, I've seen the family in person over this book tour now. So just a week ago Saturday, I was at a big dinner, and to my left was one yeah woman in her late 20s, and to my right was a guy in his early 30s, and they both have tested positive for the mutation. They both know that in a decade or 15 years, things are going to change for them.
Speaker: yeah One of them's married. you know they They both are are crusaders for some sort of cure or treatment. And yet we're just sitting and having dinner. It's stunning, really, to me, um what they've gone through. And to try to get it across in a book, is a it's ah it's a privilege and an honor and a huge challenge as well. Yeah. Just in in sitting sitting beside them, how have you noticed that you know the the degree to which they they carry it or or are weighed down by it or not weighed down by it? like What have what have you noticed?
Speaker: Well, Annika is a great example. she's And she has this in common with others in her family. She grew up and watched her mother become symptomatic without even knowing what it was because the family was keeping it kind of private.
Speaker: And so she wasn't sure if maybe her mother just had a drinking problem or something like that. and And when she finally learned it was this and learned that she might be implicated too, she was still so fixated on what was going on with her mother that she didn't have the bandwidth to think about herself. In telling her story, you get to know Annika at the age of 13, and then you see her again at 22, and then you see her again at 28. And so you see how she's grown, you see how she's matured as a person.
Speaker: She's gone from being a child who has been traumatized by by her mother's illness to gradually becoming a post-college graduate who is waffling on the question of getting tested herself.
Speaker: And then finally, a woman who's about to get married and has decided she'll only be tested after the wedding. And her husband's down with that, but her husband-to-be, but his family is not. you know she said that They're trying to pressuring him to tell her, please get tested before you get married. This is information we need now. But of course, he's he's on her side.
Speaker: He says to her things like, my family's got problems too. you know we we we have We have genetic issues too. yeah were nobody ah Nobody's bulletproof here. Any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow. like we're We're in this together. And it's Aside from being incredibly romantic, it's you know it's really very moving to see them go through it together. And then finally, you see her inching her way toward being tested and coming around to a different idea about what getting tested means.
Speaker: And and that that's pretty stunning as well. Have you... and Now, there's the the option, like they could... Anyone with this mutation, they could... spin the roulette wheel and have biological children themselves and then run the risk of the offspring. I met, have people considered doing some sort of, uh, in, not in vitro or implantation where it's a foreign, foreign egg that would, uh, yeah, that would, they would deliver a baby and meal like without the mutation.
Speaker: Yeah. You can screen your embryos. I guess they call it selective embryo. implant implementation and, and the, you you do IVF and then you can actually test the embryos for the mutation and you only implant embryos that don't have the mutation.
Speaker: So it's it's foolproof. You stop the illness in its tracks and you assure ensure the next generation won't have it. And yet, you know there's one family in this book that tried IVF four times and it never worked. And then the woman got pregnant naturally and she's 38 years old and she and her husband are talking and they decide,
Speaker: let's go back to the roulette wheel, like where let's have the kid. And the kid is now six years old and hasn't been tested. And then there's another family in the book where um ah the woman in the family is in her early 30s, she's married and she has two children and she hasn't been tested herself and neither have the kids.
Speaker: So ah who knows if her kids are exposed to this or not. and And she doesn't know if she herself is either and she's inching her way toward being tested too. And then you have the whole other end of the,
Speaker: of the spectrum, there's a ah man in the book who got tested in his early twenty s was positive for the mutation, he knows his future, and he got a vasectomy.
Speaker: He said, you know, there, that solves the problem for for me in terms of passing it on. Again, you get the whole range of reaction with a large family like this. Oh, my gosh. And then even hearkening back to the very start of our conversation, this idea of the self and identity, ah you know, towards the end of the book, you know, you you quote Harry Lesser, the British philosopher, um about this. And I'd love for you to just kind of run with that football about this idea of what happens. ah Yeah, the this idea that the the self is is changing, but yeah, it's an identity changes, but it doesn't mean like they're erased, essentially.
Speaker: Yeah. So, you know, this is the question I kind of entered the book with, which was, you know, I know that you know, that I'm a different person. If I lived at 80, I'll be very different from the person I was when I was eight.
Speaker: But I'll also feel as if I'm the same person. But knowing as I do that that we all change over time, what what value is that to someone who watches someone they love change so drastically with dementia, not just with FTD, but with everyday Alzheimer's, you know watching watching a beloved family member and wondering, are they still there? Are they still the same person?
Speaker: And it turns out that you know decades of philosophers have looked into this question as well. There's there's this lecturer, Harry Lesser, who had a very... Well, before I get to Harry Lester, there's someone in the mid-century, a French philosopher, who suggested...
Speaker: the idea of sort of embedded personality, that beyond a person's memories and beyond a person's even language or ability to speak, there are elements of them that that are embedded in their bodies and their physical bodies over time. So a sidelong glance, the way that they walk, the way that they breathe, the way that they laugh, these are things that that last and that you can tell the person is still there, their self still exists, even if they have no memory, even if they don't recognize you.
Speaker: um But that in a way is kind of, um thin gruel, right? for For somebody who is taking care of of someone they love for 10 years or more, yeah you you see the person, you see they're sort of still there, but it feels almost like a living death.
Speaker: and And it's very easy for people in that situation to say, well, they're gone, the person's gone, they're just gone. And what Harry Lesser argued is that that that whole idea that they're gone or that they're dead even before they're dead makes ah takes a very sad problem and it only makes it worse.
Speaker: it compounds the problem. And it's better to understand that what's happening with dementia really isn't so special after all, that we all in our way are vulnerable to change, even drastic change, and that dementia isn't some special unique thing that completely erases a person that sooner or later things will happen that will transform all of us drastically.
Speaker: ah Cancer changes a person. Depression changes a person. Physical incapacitation changes a person. Having kids changes a person. yourself will change. We are all vulnerable to to change, both good change and traumatic change. And so rather than put the people in dementia and ah in some sort of box or stigmatize them by thinking, well, that's a nightmare.
Speaker: And I'm sure I'm glad i'm not I don't have that. And it sure is a tragedy that my uncle or aunt has it, you could instead look at that person and reframe it and say, we we all have been vulnerable to to drastic changes. And this is the drastic change they're experiencing. They are incapacitated, but they are still them.
Speaker: And he's not being glib when he says this. What he really is saying is this is a ah way of of taking a bad situation and not making it worse. Yeah, that's a really well, like a astute way of of putting it because there is the tendency to be like, as soon as that that level of cognition is gone, well, now they're just basically a living corpse. Yeah, I got to pre-grieve it, mourn it, while even while they're still here instead of... Yeah, reframing it and be like, okay, this is just another another phase still worthy of embracing in its own tragic way.
Speaker: But there are elements of where you can bring in a degree of vitality. It's just not going to be the way it was. And I think it just takes a special brain to do that. But in hearing the way you write about it and the way Harry Lesser thinks about it's like, okay, I can understand that and maybe put a different top spin on that situation. Yeah.
Speaker: it it It hits home hopefully more in the book because you, as a reader, you've seen Sue live it you know Sue has been with Christy, her older sister, who she once idolized. She's been with her for 30 years by the end of the book.
Speaker: And Years earlier, he she mourned the the person who she remembered. And since then, she's become enmeshed with the new person, loves the new person, wants the best for the new person, isn't sitting there waiting for for the story to end, but is living her life with her.
Speaker: And they live for each other, actually. They really they really are intertwined as people. And it's beautiful. you You see her... um appreciating her even as she understands you know that this is a tragedy. um she's she She holds both ideas in her head at the same time. That's why I think what why I wanted to include what that philosopher wrote because it seemed parallel to what Sue was experiencing. Yeah. And what was your experience interviewing and speaking with some of the the sisters who were symptomatic of the mutation, but still very aware, but not 100% there? Jenny comes to mind too. Like she kind of seems like, oh yeah, like I pegged her for having it or like, I don't have it. But even though
Speaker: She's very clearly symptomatic. like how What was that experience like for you? Yeah, Jenny doesn't believe she has it, and she's still very conversational and very um cheerful, which is typical of this sort of FTD. It's a little different from...
Speaker: stories you hear about Alzheimer's where often the people are really suffering and in anguish and and upset. Jenny is is sunny and bright and talkative until she isn't. you know She kind of runs out of things to say and then kind of shuts down. And in talking with her, sometimes she, because she knew that I was writing about the family, she would try to offer up lots of information about the family that she had sitting in her databank. And one of the hallmarks of FTD is that you don't lose your memory early the way you do with Alzheimer's. So she would say, you know yes, Peggy is my younger sister. She's four years younger than I am.
Speaker: And you know I knew it. I saw it. I saw when she got the disease and and nobody else saw it but me. and then But then she'll say this something similar a few minutes later. Her language is kind of limited. so she You can tell that something isn't quite usual about her, but she's trying. It's almost like she sits she feels like she's in the middle of a quiz show and is being quizzed. And so she's like, oh, I know that one. Oh, I know that one. Yeah, I can give you the answer to that one.
Speaker: Her husband's incredibly patient with her and um and very loving with her. The last thing he wanted to be was her caregiver. He wanted to be her partner. And so he's trying very, very hard to to still have a relationship with her, even as he it's clear that he's the caretaker now. And so that that part is especially poignant to watch.
Speaker: Peggy, meanwhile, the other sister, she, she um again, is very cheerful, but she you know she kind of needs supervision. Otherwise, she would sort of walk out by herself into the world. And so her partner, Tim, cares for her beautifully, just watches her and makes sure that she is safe.
Speaker: She also doesn't believe she's sick. And if you ask her about FTD, she says, oh, yes, I have the mutation, but I don't have FTD because the doctor told me to drink ah two liters of a certain drink. And so I drank it and you know that's why I don't have it. and um And Jenny will say that in her sister, Jenny will say something similar. She'll say, I've been doing all kinds of mental exercises and I don't have it.
Speaker: So these are cheerful people and who who will answer who's again, they still have their memory. So they can say, I'm the year they graduated high school or what they like to do during high school. But the depth of conversation isn't there.
Speaker: That's why some people look at FTD as like a Benjamin Button disease where you're you're becoming more childlike, more more impulsive and and um and more simple in your attitudes. It's a little more complicated than that You're having almost a flattening of emotion, whereas kids don't have flat emotions. Yeah.
Speaker: um But yeah, you could I could understand why people would see it that way. Yeah. And I'm thinking too, i think what you do so well in the book too, in terms of the balance of it are these, oh for lack of a better term, we'll call them scientific intermission, where you you know you have like the guy the famous guy who gets like the spike through his head and um yeah through his eye and it like fundamentally alters his brain. Amazing how we survived that. I remember that from my you know my biology days. And yeah, and then sporadically throughout the the the tau proteins, the BAP protein, all all this stuff in the brain and brain science. And i I love how it's intermittent, but doesn't like weigh down the narrative too.
Speaker: Yeah, these are tricky things. and And for nonfiction writers, I think it's that it's kind of um one of the big challenges. Like when do you weave in useful information without making it seem like a Wikipedia entry or or something that breaks the flow of the narrative or It talks down to the reader, makes it feel like it's time for them to eat their vegetables, makes them want to stop reading. you know it's It's a risk every time you do it. And there's some there's some amazing nonfiction authors who seem to offer offer important contextual information at the exact moment that you need it.
Speaker: And then as soon as it starts to get boring, they like have a good instinct for pulling ah back into the story. There are a couple Michael Lewis books that do that very well, in my opinion. but they're they're they're just But you see it. Anytime you read a long magazine article, there's a section break and it goes to into some some contextual information and either it works or it doesn't. Either you sit and go, ah, thank goodness. I wanna know about this right now, give it to me. Or you say, oh my God, you know i feel like I just went back to school. i don't wanna read this section. so So it's terrifying to do it and takes a lot of trial and error and hopefully I did it okay. All I know is, um
Speaker: that sometimes in the middle of it, I'll say, you know, maybe this doesn't belong here and I'll yank it out and I'll jank out the whole, maybe the chapter should just be cut. Maybe there should, the guy with the spear in his head makes no sense for this book. Maybe I'm just bragging that I've done some research and we've all read nonfiction books where it seems like the author is bragging about all the research they did and it didn't work without it. So, so I, in my opinion, so I'm, I'm,
Speaker: hoping the best with those sections. But ah with again, as you said, the idea that this is a family story first. yeah it's um Yeah, the idea of the bragging, like you did this research, you found this thing, and maybe it was ah a hard thing to track down or a hard person to track down, and you and you got them. And it's like, I got to throw them in the book because I got to show you that I did the work. like I was the one that other people might have failed to get them, but I got them, and I got to show you I did it. But it's like, if it's not in service of the story, it's like, God, it's got to go. But it's so frustrating because you do you want to show your work in that regard. Like, look at what I did.
Speaker: It was there in the prison secretary's office that i opened that I opened the lower drawer and pulled out the folder that showed me everything. yeah you don't And then there there are other other books have a chapter that begins, you know, on a Tuesday November, I walk the steps of the Philadelphia Public Library to start researching...
Speaker: blah, blah, blah. And here I found this, the yeah that these things I try to resist. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Well, and well well Bob, i I want to be mindful of your time. And as they bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love just asking the guests for a fun recommendation of some kind that you're just something you're excited about. It can be anything from a book to a brand of socks to a kind of coffee you enjoy.
Speaker: Dealer's choice. So I would just ask you, you know what is ah what is something you'd recommend for the listeners out there to have fun with? Well, on book tour, I had three hours to kill and I saw You Can See Everything.
Speaker: um And I'm sure everybody's talking about that in nonfiction land and everybody has an opinion. I thought it was very good. ah Sometimes Nathan Fiedler's a little too, Fiedler's a little too um pranky for me, ah but but I thought it worked beautifully.
Speaker: ah One great nonfiction book this year is by Pamela Kalaf. I don't know if you've had her on the show or not. They had her run earlier this year for Catch of the Devil, yeah. Yeah, Catch the Double's excellent. It it's has this great double track of of seeing the um the human cost of of this guy's terrible, terrible deeds, but also knowing that the the justice system loved the fact that he was doing these things, that he was telling these lies and sort of ate it. He would spoon feed them lies and they would eat it up with a spoon. The justice system was benefiting from his dishonesty. And so it's...
Speaker: It's a terrific, terrifically constructed book. Oh, and that's apropos because when um when she was done with our conversation and I was asking her for her recommendations, she's like, I have Bob's The Vanishing Family and I can't wait to start reading this. So that's that's really great. that Look at that. Yeah, she read actually i didn't realize she she read it at some point and liked it. So that's nice to know. Fantastic. well that Well, Bob, thanks so much for coming back on the podcast and talking shop. The book's amazing and I just, like ah job well done. I continued success with it and just thanks so much for carving out the time to talk shop. This was awesome.
Speaker: Brendan, thank you. Great talking to you.
Speaker: Yes. Awesome. That was great. Yeah. Thanks to you listener for coming this far in the podcast. As you know, very few of you make it this far. Thank you to Bob Coker for coming back on the show. What a book name of the book again is the vanishing family. Go check it out, man.
Speaker: What a book. Be sure you're following along with the podcast at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. And you might want to check out Patreon, patreon.com slash cnfpod, and subscribe to the newsletters. Pitch Club at welcomethepitchclub.substack.com and the Rage Against the Algorithm new newsletter. All the embeds are at brendanamero.com. Hey, hey.
Speaker: yeah I'm in the midst of what's sure to be last of yet another and social media semi-sabbatical. I deleted Instagram, Blue Sky, Substack, and Patreon.
Speaker: Patreon on fumes? Threat of cancellation? Well, I got them off my phone. I allow these things on the computer, which isn't exactly better, but not necessarily worse.
Speaker: Okay, so I read August Lam's new book, You Don't Need a Smartphone. And while she's extreme, and I admire her for her tech activism or anti-tech activism, I don't know, or whatever. Some of her posture is a bit too extreme for most of us, but maybe that's because the algorithm has so cataclysmically fucked our brains that we feel we can't file for divorce and get joint custody of our brains in every other weekend visitation rights or something. You know, there's a moment during all our work days and man,
Speaker: Boy, do i need to make some money, but that's a parting shot for another day. We are more than likely compelled to pick up our phones in any you know dead second of free time.
Speaker: Say, while a file is exporting, a page is buffering, or you get distracted mid-sentence while writing an email you should have replied to 10 days ago. you know, to combat this terrible impulse, I have within arm's reach.
Speaker: A couple of emergency books. You know, one is the 2026 volume of best year's best sports writing. And the other is this random book I found at St. Vincent de Paul's called the the Gremlins of Grammar, a guide to conquering the mischievous myths that plague American English.
Speaker: And reaching for these is a means of at least nourishing my brain instead of feeding that goddamn algorithm. and With year's best sports writing as my pal, like I think he's my pal, but maybe not. Glenn Stout suggests you can shotgun leads and see how the best writers are getting into stories and get that into your bloodstream, as it were.
Speaker: Now, for a long time, listeners of this year podcast, you know, my grand struggle with social media and promotion and stuff of that nature is but and stuff I know I need to do. Or have i been fooling myself into thinking I need to do it? I don't know. Like posting videos and audiograms and engaging online, but i hate doing it because it interfaces me with other people on these platforms who are also just so desperate in their hustle for attention.
Speaker: And it's not a good look. Then I see people I genuinely don't like and how all they do is publicly masturbate about whatever it is they have going on.
Speaker: I see no giving. All I see is taking. And maybe people feel the same way about me. i don't know. Like when it comes to the live podcast, I have to hustle myself. these things because I have stakeholders in a bookseller who I love but doesn't really do jack shit when it comes to promoting, but whatever. The venue, much gratitude to Gratitude Brewing for amplifying the guests and amplifying the the thing, the event at hand.
Speaker: And the guest who is usually driving several hours to publicly interface and the audience who is taking two or more valuable hours out of their weekend to find parking and maybe buy food and drink and hopefully buy books.
Speaker: know, this gives me tightness of the chest. yeah I'm not actually worried about the conversation itself. You know, that I'm good with. Some people seem to think that I have performance anxiety and that is not.
Speaker: the case. My anxiety is making sure I'm not wasting the time of my partners. I can't have Chuck Klosterman show up and there be three people in the audience. That's unacceptable. It makes me look like I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, yeah. I put an emergency book on the desk and page through some craft or a passage or jot down a note or two, you'll feel better for shoveling coal into your own furnace, your own face.
Speaker: So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interview, see ya.
