Transcript
Speaker: Got anything to do on Saturday, October Yeah, you do. Gratitude Brewing at 1 p.m. Chuck Klosterman is coming to town for a live recording of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. We'll be talking about his new book, Rock, a mainstream alternative history of alternative mainstream music, and his book, Football, and Writing in Voice and Style.
Speaker: He is singular and you can see him in person. RSVP with a free ticket at the link in my newsletters or my Instagram profile at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. The place will be, or it better be, packed. Secure your free ticket. It's only for a head count. You don't need to show it at the door. But this way, gratitude will be adequately prepared for the onslaught of Chuck Klosterman fanboys and gals.
Speaker: Who knows? any Anyone? Oh, a new sponsor alert. This podcast is sponsored by the word pathetic. Adjective. Having a capacity to move one to either compassionate or contemptuous pity marked by sorrow or melancholy, pitifully inferior or inadequate.
Speaker: Pathetic. You're looking at him. My sports talk radio right here with Catherine Grace Katz. You heard it here first.
Speaker: OAC and Ever, just like Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell and the art and craft of telling. True Stories, I'm Brendan O'Meara. Who do we have today, Lachlan?
Speaker: Producer Lachlan. It's Catherine Grace Katz. Okay. who first appeared on the show back on episode 222 for her acclaimed book, Daughters of Yalta. And she's back in the saddle again for Shadow Before the Flame, the Hindenburg disaster, and the prelude to war. It's published by Viking.
Speaker: yeah Two things are ubiquitous about the Hindenburg. It blew up, and the journalist painting the audio picture of the disaster said, Oh, the humanity. Beyond that, what else is there?
Speaker: Turns out, um, quite a fucking lot, man. I didn't know there were survivors. i didn't even know it was a passenger vessel. Shadow will sit right beside the great historical yarn spun by the likes of Laura Hillenbrand, Eric Larson, and Hampton Sides, among others.
Speaker: I'm always amazed how writers make work of this nature suspenseful when you know the outcome. Like you know that Hindenburg blows up. No need to put spoilers there. It blows up.
Speaker: And you know that Trudy Ederly swims the English Channel. And yet, when it happens, you find that you are rewarded more than you could have imagined. Show notes of this episode more at BrendanAmerica.com. Hey, there you might also sign up for The Pitch Club, my monthly substack where I break down a writer's winning pitch with audio annotations from the writer who sold the story.
Speaker: If you want to sell more stories, Pitch Club is your ticket. There's also the flagship Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, which I might be rebranding as This American Life. Get it? O-American. I mean, it will still rage and it will still publish on the full moon and it won't fundamentally change at all.
Speaker: But that new title signals that it has more to do with me versus the algorithm in tech or some something like of that nature. You never know. You may also visit patreon.com slash cnfpod to contribute to the financial operations of this enterprise. We have a new patron at the $4 tier, Dana C. Letter C. Thank you so much for throwing a few bucks in the coffers. I'm glad you're aboard. That'll get you access to a coaching call eventually, as well as access to our writing group, which meets just about every Sunday.
Speaker: I don't take a single penny for granted, so if you have the opportunity or the capacity to share I will greatly appreciate it. And if you want to support the show, but you don't want to part with your allowance, you don't want to part with your milk money, leaving kind ratings and her reviews on Apple Podcasts or Spotify are a big, big help, as are ratings and reviews for the frontrunner.
Speaker: I think we're starting to compile a series of one-stars for the podcast, but that's going to happen. I'm an acquired taste, what with the potty mouth, what with the metal, what with this face. So Catherine is back, and what a fun time we had.
Speaker: can't believe it's been six years since she was on the show. October 2nd, 2020. Wild. Who would have thought that she's such a fiery New York Yankees fan? In this episode, we talk about the origin story of this book, the post-book funk. Step one of writing this book proposal, getting out of the story. We know how to get into the story sometimes, how do we get out of it?
Speaker: World building, capturing the little nuggets, how she's more rooted in feel, the murder wall, cutting yourself off from the research, the technology of Zeppelins, why they couldn't use helium, the echoes of history, not writing the present moment into the book, the one thing she's totally inflexible about, the biggest change between book one and book two, and her hottest of hot takes.
Speaker: Parting shot about me and Austin, Austin, Massachusetts. But for now, let's cue up that montage. Riff.
Speaker: But when that's on my plate, you know, then it's the fear of the deadline. I work backwards from deadlines. It's not fucking personal, but it feels so personal. I am effing done. This is going have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: I don't know, it's funny thinking back to the first book and that coming out during COVID and now with this book, it's you know finally having the full experience, it feels like, of a book coming out and being able to share that with people and gather with people and just the kind of the the excitement of like being able to gather and celebrate with the people in my life has been such a nice change from being a first time author during COVID. it's ah It's a great thing that you kind of bring up because um even after having written The Front Runner, know, after that, i was I kind of was experiencing this post book malaise and a post book funk of like finding a way to figure out to get the next one off the ground of which I'm still trying to figure out.
Speaker: Just for you, Catherine, just maybe after Daughters of Yalta, what was that experience of it it was out and now you're starting to think of another idea and that that kind of swampy feeling of like, oh, I don't know what what's coming next, but I want something next. And I kind kind of feel weird about this book being sunsetted. Now I need a new one. It's a it's a malaise kind of feeling. I don't know about what your experience is like.
Speaker: Well, the crazy thing was, is the Daughters of Yalta has had such a long tail. Like I'm still doing Daughters of Yalta events. Like I'm doing one on Thursday, which is crazy. And that book came out almost six years ago now. So that's been really wonderful to see it kind of continue to live and find people in different ways and just kind of, you know, have this like really unexpected, much longer life, you know, not having the normal book launch experience during COVID, but just like how it's been even better than I could have imagined at the time where almost like the day it came out, I felt really sad because, know, It felt like you know no one was ever going to find it. one was ever going to be able to walk into a bookstore again. And then like to be able to then have shared it and continue to share it with people in such a meaningful way this much longer you know after the book came out has been really special. But while I was kind of i was writing Yalta and when it was published and after that, I was in law school. So I was a first-year law student when I finished Daughters of Yalta. so
Speaker: I had definitely plenty to keep me busy. And so I you know had second and third year of law school, bar exam. I've been working full time also as an associate in big law. So i definitely had a lot on my plate. But the idea for this book came out, um it came to mind actually kind of not long after publishing Daughters of Yalta at Christmas time that year. um My family was watching the movie A Christmas Story for the millionth time. And in the movie, you you know, Ralphie wants his Red Ryder BB gun um and his little brother, Randy, Mr. I can't put my arms down in the snowsuit during the Scott Farkas affair. But on Christmas morning, when Ralphie comes down and he's looking for his Red Ryder BB gun and ends up initially with the pink bunny outfit from Aunt Clara, his brother Randy dives into the present pile and finds a Zeppelin toy with his name on it. And he's so excited. and he goes, wow, it's a Zeppelin and zooms it around with wrapping paper and falls asleep holding it that night, which is really charming.
Speaker: And after the movie, my own little brother, Oliver, say little, he's 30 years old, much bigger than me. um But he loves aviation, always has. And so he just said kind of like, can you imagine what have it would like to have flown on a Zeppelin and that, you know this would be a really exciting toy that a kid received for Christmas. Like, just imagine what it was like to look up and see this flying overhead, unlike anything that's ever flown before or since then.
Speaker: And then a beat later, he says, Catherine, you should write a book about the Hindenburg disaster. And being the somewhat know-it-all older sister, i was like, I don't know, it's such a famous event. There have been tons of really good books written about it already. And he says to me, well, I've never seen one, ah so you should look into it.
Speaker: And little by little, shortly after that, all these little things that related to the Hindenburg kept popping up in front of me. Like I was leafing through William Shire's Rise Fall of Third Reich. He writes about the Hindenburg disaster in it. In one of my law school copyright classes, the Hindenburg popped up in one of the cases that we were reading. And so it was like all these little signs from the universe just kind of propelling me towards writing about the Hindenburg. But what was really frustrating was that not so much like a malaise between books, but just i had the idea and I couldn't get any documents to start researching because everything was closed for so long. Archives were like one of the last things to reopen as kind of like a non-essential public service after COVID. So for like two years, I really couldn't make any progress on this idea that was just kind of swimming around in my head other than what I could get at the local libraries. When you're thinking of taking on something that um feels so culturally ubiquitous, and like to your point, you you're like, ah i sorry already been done. that this it's so fun
Speaker: It's like this famous thing. What more could be written about it? um what What ends up being step one for you as you're looking to maybe put together a book proposal for it? So step one is always kind of getting the the basics down with the research. And for me, for this was really delving into the National Archives collection of the Hindenburg disaster crash reports and investigation. so that was kind of looking at the Hindenburg disaster from all different sides, kind of you know personal observation, technical experts.
Speaker: Navy personnel who are there kind of as part of the landing crew, you know all these different views on how this could have happened to piece it together. And through that, you get a really wide cross-section of crew members, passengers, observers, onlookers who just happened to be that there that day, and kind of just get a feel for what is out there.
Speaker: And for me, that was step one. like I couldn't progress towards writing the proposal until I could get those materials, which took a really, really long time because of how long the archive was closed. But to write a proposal, like I feel like I don't need to have all the research down. I need to have a substantial amount so that I feel confident that there is a story here.
Speaker: i have a very good sense of the direction the story is heading, which may not be exactly what I thought when I first kind of conceived the idea, because I believe that you really have to get it in the archives. Let the archive sources guide you you know The people who you think may carry the story may be different once you actually get into the letters and records and start interviewing folks.
Speaker: And I firmly believe that, you know, the people who want their stories told will like announce themselves to you. And Norman Maclean writes about this in Young Men in Fire, which is one of the most brilliant books ever. Both the book itself is such a harrowing, tragic, but beautiful story. But in it, he really explores the idea of what it takes to write a tragedy. and how people from the past, some are content to lie in the past and others are very much you wanting their stories to be told. And you see that through the archive records that have been left behind. And so I very much feel it's like an organic part of the process where it's kind of you're in conversation with the sources almost of you know who's carrying the story forward.
Speaker: And so I think you need to know that before you start writing the proposal. Yeah, there's always such a fine balance of how much research is enough to put meat on our book proposal skeleton versus what's, you know, maybe too much because you don't want to waste too much time in the event that the thing gets rejected and you've like kind of wasted all that time. um But you also don't want to do too little because if you try to go out with it, then it's it's thin and it might not prove to bear as much fruit. So how have you just over the course of your two books yeah kind of done the math about how much research feels like enough to go forward with it?
Speaker: Yeah, I don't know if it's so much math is feeling. Like, I think, you know, once you kind of have under your belt, like some of the core collections or, know, core, you know, if you're, if it's more like interview based, you depending on what you're writing about, just kind of having the basic foundation building blocks that are absolutely going to be inherently invaluable to the story. Those you have to have gone through. But then there can be other collections out there that you know are going to be really additive. They can be farther afield, just you know harder to get to.
Speaker: You can look through finding aid, talk to archivists, kind of get a sense of what's in there. You haven't been through it directly, but you have been a good idea of what kinds of sources exist and that they do exist.
Speaker: That you maybe you haven't talked to all the sources that you want to talk to, but you've identified them, maybe even kind of figured out if they'd be willing to talk to you. And so I think you need enough in the proposal to be able to have a very clear idea of what the story is, the main arc, and most importantly, and I had a really interesting conversation with a publisher um for my first book when, um like kind of in pre-auction discussions, and the publisher asked me, how are you going to get out of the story? And I think that's the thing that people often go into it, kind of having a really great idea of like two-thirds of a really good story, and you kind of know how it goes up through the climactic action of your narrative,
Speaker: But then there's kind of can be this like long trail off where people kind of can't bring themselves to wrap the story up or don't have not put as much thought into exactly how the story ends as they've thought about how it begins.
Speaker: And I think the most important thing as you're putting the proposal together is do you know exactly how where and how your story is going to end. And for both of these books, I knew that 100% when I started writing the proposal. Yeah. And this might be getting a little ahead of ourselves, but I'm thinking specifically of yeah how you get out of this book, too, because I think, you know, the Hindenburg crashes basic and goes up in flame and like page 225 or something like it's a little more than halfway through the book. And it's like, oh, wow. Like what? How's the there's still a lot of book left.
Speaker: yeah When the major event tentpole event happens and um we can talk about that right now, but we can also talk about it later. But it is like, oh, you you must have had a very ah sort of big idea for the I don't even want to say day no ma because it's like a whole other part that after the fallout of the event, the major event.
Speaker: Exactly. And i I think so much of the story Hindenburg is not just the crash itself, but everything that came after the investigation, the survivors, how those people kind of in the immediate aftermath went about their lives and then how this whole thing transitions into World War Two. And what was really important to me in telling this story is, you know kind of putting this disaster back in the context to which it belongs in history. And most people today, if they know about the Hindenburg, kind of everyone knows it sort of as the Titanic of the sky. But when you press them on it, they really don't know any details about it. people are wildly off of when they think it happened everyone assumes it happened in germany but it happened in new jersey most people are under the impression and understandably so that everyone died immediately on board but in reality there are almost 100 people on board between passengers and crew and two-thirds of them survived and how did that happen and so what is this the experience of the survivor afterwards how are they making sense with what they've just experienced
Speaker: And so that's ah as much of a part of the story as the crash itself, as are kind of these conspiracy theories that became rampant immediately after. And to kind of put this story back in the the context of the road to World War II, the rise of the Natsukis, how they used it for propaganda, how this moment made modern breaking news media as you know it today. It's not just the story of the crash, but it's also the story of how people learned about it and the impression that that made on society at the time, which was remarkable. And i think one of the things that has been very poorly understood about the importance of this event. Yeah, um what I love that you're you're getting at, and the context in everything, in that is is this idea of world building. Certainly in in history and narrative nonfiction, narrative histories, that we also we often associate world building with like fantasy and stuff like that. But world building is every bit as integral to the telling of great narrative history. as it is in fantasy. So just, you know, for you, how important is it to set the Hindenburg or even like the Yalta as well, like getting that context, getting that world building ah established as your backdrop?
Speaker: I think it's absolutely essential, especially for a story like this, which it's not fantasy, it is nonfiction, but the technology itself almost feels like a fantasy. And it was so short lived kind of in the the span of humanity that it feels almost like a fever dream that this incredible flying palace essentially, you know, did occupy such ah a key place in kind of 20th century technology. It was truly believed to be the way the future of aviation at the time. And there was a real question mark about whether it would be you know airplanes or airships that were going to be the transportation technology of the future.
Speaker: And I think that the idea of creating a world, you know it's not just the kind of helping people understand what happens, but I want you to feel like you're in the scene. I want you to feel like you're there with fully developed characters that you are completely invested in them and their fate by the time we get to the moment that we all know is coming, because it matters so much more when you understand that these are human beings whose lives are been being impacted by this.
Speaker: And creating the world, especially one that is so richly stunning as kind of this art deco airship where you had fine dining, multi-course meals prepared by a French trained chef in an all electric kitchen, a smoking lounge. you know The walls were made out of silk to cut down on weight and they were painted beautifully with these scenes of kind of what to you experience on a Zeppelin trip to South America in the dining room. And it's these kinds of things that are just so interesting incredible, as well as just the fact that people don't even realize you could sit along the promenade where the windows were, and the windows would be open and you could dangle your hand outside the window and touch the cloud.
Speaker: And so for this story, the the atmospherics and the world around it is just so remarkable. And it's so unlike anything that we can experience in travel and aviation today, that the sense of wonder of traveling by airship was essential to the story.
Speaker: what What's really yeah struck me about it too is the degree to which you're able to build character and build scene from an event that happened nearly 100 years ago, 90 or 80 some odd years ago. So just when you're building these scenes, how do you do it? How are you putting us there and building character from things that happened generations ago?
Speaker: Yeah, and I think in this way, I might approach writing a little bit differently than a lot of nonfiction authors. And i think a lot of that is because I primarily growing up read fiction. And I still kind of on the balance between fiction and nonfiction, I still read more fiction now than I do nonfiction.
Speaker: and you know I grew up in a family that loved movies and especially old movies and suspense thrillers like Alfred Hitchcock movies, where you have this really stylized, glamorous world, but with this high tension kind of running throughout the whole thing, like To Catch a Thief or Rear Window.
Speaker: or north by northwest and it's kind of that tension like i want you to feel as you're reading i don't think it's like a conscious decision necessarily as i'm going to that like i want this scene to feel like murder or to feel like you know murder on the orient express the aggristi books which were incredibly popular at the time but i think it's kind of not surprising that kind of just with that kind of having absorbed a lot of that time period and ethos kind of through the books and movies that I enjoyed growing up and still do, that it would very much kind of the cultural aspect of it was just so kind of deeply embedded within kind of all the things that I've read and watched that that was, like it kind of needed to come out.
Speaker: And I also, i mean, to me, like this feels like Murder on the Orient Express in the sky. It's like all these wealthy strangers are coming together for this glamorous journey over a couple of days and, you know all thrown together in this very, you know, tight environment. And you know that they're all, not all going to make it out alive.
Speaker: Like that just... I don't know, there's something about like Jules Verne meets Agatha Christie and boom, you have the Hindenburg. But I think when kind of mining, whether it's historical documents or interviewing family members,
Speaker: I love kind of finding those little nuggets. And you don't know what they are before you go into the research, but you know them when you see them. And so I kind of really, i don't know, they those strike me. They can be, know, add a sense of levity and humor amidst a really dark history. you know, they really bring a person to life. You know when I'm talking to family members, I ask them kind of like, you know,
Speaker: to describe not you not the person that they remember in historical importance, but like, you know, what tobacco did your father smoke in his pipe? What perfume or cologne did they wear? It's kind of like the sense of smell almost of your loved ones or, you know, the clothing they like to wear or just, don't know, it's like the things like when you think about like when you remember your grandparents or you talk about your parents, like those little details that bring a smile to your face that are inherent ah to who they are.
Speaker: I think those are really important to capture and they may not be historically important per se, but they are absolutely essential to who this person is as a human being. And that's how we relate to them and care about them on the page. And, you know, when I find these little nuggets, I don't always know where they belong all right away. And so I keep track of them on sticky notes that I stick on a trifled poster, like the kind that we all used for um like class reports and stuff growing up, they all those class posts.
Speaker: book reports and state fair and you know what have you, i think kind of a universal experience of like American education. But I kind of keep them all on this trifle poster, like a murder wall in a detective show. And I don't know exactly where they're all going to go, but like as I start using them, I cross them off and i can you know take a bunch off and take them off to the library with me, kind of being like, I know that these all kind of generally fit into this chapter I'm working on, but I don't know where. And I don't know, it's just like a very portable murder wall kind of thing And that's like my favorite tool to use, which is very old school, like no rhyme or reason to the colors of the sticky notes. I'm not that organized. And I don't really outline and like in the true outlining sense, which is also weird. um But that's kind of how I operate. I love the the the portable murder wall. I love the i love i i just love i love i love the image of that. But you're also, you you just like ticked off a couple boxes because yeah you're, um as you know, I love talking about like research and organization and the degree to which we may or may not outline or map things out. But you seem like kind of by the seat of your pants and just kind of a go on feel, it sounds like.
Speaker: I mean, it's not, I wouldn't say seat of the pants, but it's definitely rooted in feel. Like I, obviously in writing a book proposal, I know where the story is going and being a historian, like the way that the story unfolds is somewhat clear. um But it is, there is a lot of feel to it And I get more of the feel the more that I write. I think the first two chapters for me are always the hardest because I don't quite have the balance of what's important to know right off the top and what gets revealed later. And you only discover that as you're writing it.
Speaker: And, but I, you know, I, I have like a kind of semi outlines, but it's more like on a chapter by chapter basis, kind of here are the key pieces of evidence I know I want to use. These are these really fabulous quotes that completely illustrate what I want to say where the person I'm writing about can, you know, sum it up in a few words better than I ever could with a descriptive paragraph and kind of set it up, let them speak for themselves and then get the hell out of the way. And that's kind of like, you know,
Speaker: That's the extent of out outlining that I will do, um just mostly so that I don't forget these great pieces of evidence and color that I want to use. But I'm not like Robert Caro, where I have like a fully baked outline pasted all around the room. My outlines are literally scribbled on pieces of scratch paper that no one but me can read because they're so tiny as I keep adding little things in the margin.
Speaker: But it is a very field-based experience and it kind of all runs through my head almost like a movie unfolding. And that's really hard to actually put down on paper for me. And I find that the more I try to outline, the more I get stuck in kind of having like mentally committed and emotionally invested in the way that I've set it up ahead of time.
Speaker: And so that a chapter ends up feeling really packed and there's like no breathing room in it. And it's almost like I'm just trying to stuff everything in as like, look how much cool stuff I found, which is a lot of really cool stuff, but it may not all belong there. And the coolest stuff may be drowned out by less great moments that kind of are superfluous to what I've already established. And I find that I have a much, much harder time editing down if I have a fully formed outline ahead.
Speaker: e And when you're writing something in this world of pre-World War two rise of Hitler and the ah war mobilization of Germany, ah i feel like maybe in lesser hands or maybe you had this experience as you're writing it, that could really overshadow the story you're looking to tell. And ah maybe in early drafts, it was like, oh, maybe a little too weighted on that. you're like, I got to scale this back a little bit because it's just going to hijack the story. So just as you're researching, as you're writing, how are you thinking about that? Because, yeah, Hitler and the Nazis could really you hijack the Hindenburg story you're looking to tell.
Speaker: They could. And I mean, that's, you know one of the things that's really challenging about this, especially as one who's fascinated by that time period. And, you know, it's the history that people are familiar with. And so kind of by giving them more familiar touch points, it helps them kind of feel more confident that they will enjoy and understand this other story that is lesser known that I'm bringing to light by kind of giving those those touch points that do feel familiar to folks.
Speaker: But I think you know one of the best pieces of advice I had um was actually from um when I was doing Yalta, Kathy Harriman's daughter-in-law, who was an editor at Knopf, she said that like one thing she always teaches her, she always talks about with her her authors, and yeah she wasn't my editor, I was just talking to her socially, was just that you you need to know when you need when you should cut yourself off of the research. Because you could go on researching World War II and Hitler and the rise of the Nazis forever,
Speaker: But the other thing that I think has really, really helped me, and I might have talked about this with you previously, but kind of the best piece of writing advice I ever received was from my friend, Gioia D'Alberto, who is an author. She writes both fiction and nonfiction and teaches writing at you know universities like Northwestern. And she takes her students through an exercise of asking them to describe their book.
Speaker: And if I asked you to describe your book, you'd probably give me you know a couple of paragraphs kind of of, here's the big theme and here are a couple of the characters and this is the broader point that I want to get across. But she will kind of stop me and be like, no, like, all right, we're going to describe your book in one sentence. And that's actually really a lot harder.
Speaker: and then she asks you to describe your book in a short phrase, like a log line for a movie. And then finally, she has to describe your book in one word. And that is so hard. And you have to really sit and think about it.
Speaker: And but yet that's kind of the most important piece of all to not stray so far from what's really important to your story. It may be important to somebody else's story, especially when writing about World War Two, because there's so many different directions that you can go. But for this book, the word at the heart of it was humanity. There's the famous Herb Morrison quote from the Hindenburg disaster. Oh, the humanity.
Speaker: And I as a historian, what I love to do is really bring kind of the human side of these you know grand events of history that we all know and make them feel personal. And so it's just was such a natural word for me to really center the story on that if this is not advancing, you know, the the humanity, the story of these people who are intimately tied to the history of the Hindenburg disaster, it's not necessarily it's interesting, but not necessarily relevant to this story. You're bringing up such a great point. This is late in the book where you cite this quote from General Milch of Germany is after the ship had gone down is something of a memorial service. And he's like, well, German aviation and the entire German people will never forget you you. know, big kind of oration. But then you write there was there was nothing personal about the ceremony, nothing individual. The humanity was already gone, replaced by myth.
Speaker: And I think your story and I think biography done well and narrative history, it will burrow beyond the mythology. And we have an idea of what that myth is. And so you are interrogating that myth and deepening our connection to what it really meant at the time.
Speaker: Absolutely. And how it became a myth in the first place, kind of like in Germany, where it became kind of this... you know, aura of, you know, tragedy and self-sacrifice kind of in the interest of furthering the state and kind of this noble sacrifice of young men men working towards a better German future where, you know, when their funeral procession procession is going through Frankfurt, I mean, almost none of them are from there. None of their families live there. You know, it's completely co-opted by the optics of the propaganda machine of the Nazi state.
Speaker: Nothing about this is personal to those who were the victims of this tragedy. And at the end of the day, geopolitical decisions, decisions around technology and risk and how to regulate that and safeguard against it, they're made at a very high level. But at the end of the day, the people who end up either paying the price for poor decisions or having their lives impacted by those decisions, good or bad, they're regular people just like you and me. And I think that's what makes history hit home.
Speaker: Yeah, it's getting the... yeah Coming down the ladder of abstraction and like getting your feet on the ground of the history really, it humanizes it and actually like kind of puts us in their shoes. And the fact that you were able to create, have this, or curate this cast of characters, I was really surprised because I didn't know anyone survived. I actually didn't even know it was like a passenger craft. I just thought it was, i don't know, like a surveillance thing that just was up in the air and kind of just floated along like a ghost. and um more of a symbol than anything. And so I just learned a ton that. I was very naive to the whole thing. But yeah, to your point, you know when I was so surprised, I'm like, oh my God, like how is Catherine finding these characters? And very clearly, there must have been survivors because these accounts are too vivid. And it was just great to you know experience that alongside you know your research
Speaker: I think probably one of the reasons why it's been kind of an understudied topic where there isn't a great book about you know definitive history of the Hindenburg disaster, there are aviation specific accounts or kind of chapters about the airships and Zeppelins within bigger histories of aviation. There are a couple of very conspiracy theory centric accounts from the 1970s that are really not authoritative and advanced some really, yeah unfortunately, some wacky ideas that kind of put some people um up as kind scapegoats for this tragedy. But I think that everyone's under this assumption that everyone died and you can understand why. And so there's kind of this, you know, reaction of, you know, why would I research this if there's no one left to tell what happened?
Speaker: But it is just so remarkable that people did survive. And the accounts of survivors are really varied and it's so much kind of like how different kinds of people respond to tragedy. There are people who, you know as soon as they realized the ship was going down it was on fire, it's like their minds went blank and the next thing they realized was they were you know a quarter of a mile away being helped off kind of you know with this smoking blackened wreck behind them having no idea how they got out.
Speaker: Other people remember everything, know, moment by moment, like this slow motion movie unfolding in front of them, this almost like out of body experience where they're seeing themselves like crawl through the flames to safety.
Speaker: And so just seeing kind of the different reactions the way that people remembered this, mean, it's almost like an exercise in historiography as much as it is scene painting because of the way that we all remember history. And you can really see this kind of different array of memories of a personal history through the kinds of accounts that were left over.
Speaker: Yeah, I love the the cast of characters that you have because you have like this you know vaudeville performer and then a 14-year-old deckhand, for lack of a better term, ah you know a woman with three children who you know they they all get out, and one guy who had a ticket on the Lusitania and didn't get on that ship, but he gets on this one. And it's just this whole, this what a cast of people. And I imagine as you're curating it, like you're selecting them because like they're just such such a varied and charismatic, you know individuals that help populate your your narrative.
Speaker: Yes. And I think so many of them really represent unique slices of the time and they kind of help to illustrate society in different ways. you know, there is you know a successful American businessman who he's know he's cajoled his best friend into traveling with him so the guy can make it home to surprise his family in time for Mother's Day. but you know, they kind of represent this, know, the booming kind of American um kind of nation on the rise, you know the sky's the limit kind of attitude coming. They're both from Chicago, this sort of, you know Midwestern can do attitude. Then you have um an American woman who's an expat in Italy and has seen Italy really change around her in the last number of years. You have a German Zeppelin captain who is not assigned a Nazi party member, but he appreciates the investment that they've made in the technology to which he's staked his career. and his life and he wants it to succeed and meanwhile is dealing with other personal tragedies that kind of make any of this you political concern kind of become very secondary to his personal family um tragedy and so you have kind of all these different segments of society that are represented through these characters and i will say it was not a deliberate choice to say kind of we need the german voice that represents
Speaker: this kind of average German person or we need like the American businessman or we need i mean, there is a Jewish German immigrant to the United States who has set up a successful business and is bringing his family members over. You know, it wasn't like, oh, we need like, you know, all these different voices per se. But in the way that the materials that were left over, the memories that were kind of you know preserved for history, it is almost like they're just certain individuals who reach out from the past, demanding have stories told. And those are the people that end up carrying the story while other people are you know very content to kind of, you know, lie quietly in peace.
Speaker: So I think it's it's less deliberate on my part of who was carrying what parts of the story and more is just there's a very natural feeling for whose voice voices were speaking about what aspects of this. And, you know, it just becomes like kind of through that feeling, like very obvious of who's demanding to be heard in what moments. And Echner, who is someone who is a champion of the technology you talk about with the airships, ah on its surface, these things are are filled with very flammable, unstable hydrogen. These are up in the air. And you think, well, these things is just a powder keg of ready to go off at the at the first lightning strike. But these things are very
Speaker: Well engineered, despite how ah the precipice of danger they seem to be on the surface. maybe you can just explain Yeah, like it kind of maybe explain to us the degree to which it's engineered so it can actually sustain lightning strikes and diffuse that stuff without going up in flames every single time it takes flight.
Speaker: Yes, I mean, it really was a modern engineering marvel and the Germans deserve a lot of credit for what they created. Airship was invented by Count Zeppelin, kind of in the you know the rigid airship form that we think of when we think of these Zeppelins. We have balloons and ballooning was kind of had been around since you know, the days of, you know, Marie Antoinette. um But kind of this rigid airship was devised by Count Zeppelin, who was a German nobleman or Graf Zeppelin, which is Count in German. And people used to make fun of them for these flying sausages that he was building and flying over the Bodensee.
Speaker: And, you know, flying sausages because they looked like sausage and also because the early gas cells were actually made out of a material that was like animal intestine, which was at the time like the least permeable um material to use to keep gas inside, to keep it from leaking out.
Speaker: um So Zeppelins had been a technology around me know long before the Nazis. They invented at the the turn of the century. They were used to bomb cities like London and Antwerp and Paris during World War I. They were really you know a menace of the sky, conducting the first true aerial bombardments that the world had ever seen until you by 1917, airplane technology had advanced to the point that they could fly as high as the Zeppelins much, much faster and shoot them down. And so by the end of World War I, they were obsolete as a military technology, but they they became this remarkable civilian technology. And an airship, a British airship, actually can ah flew across the Atlantic Ocean
Speaker: in 1919, completing a journey that would only be possible with a heavier than air airplane of kind of like one a European or American capital to the other nonstop.
Speaker: That wasn't possible until the jet engine age of the 1950s. And so it was you know this kind of like almost very futuristic Jules Verne like technology that he had predicted in one of his books.
Speaker: The Germans were just at the top of the game for zeppelins. They had the most sophisticated engineering. They had been flying zeppelins without a scratch to any passenger, absolutely unblemished safety records since the end of World War I. They had been conducting regular passenger civilian service since 1928.
Speaker: They flew on a round-the-world flight in 1929. There was regular service to South America from Germany to North America. They would do you know these beautiful cinematic arrivals over San Francisco or Wembley Stadium or over Tokyo. They would fly on scientific expeditions to the ah Arctic in the early nineteen thirty s And so people really saw these as kind of like the first German thing after World War I that anyone was excited about. And they were people were absolutely obsessed with them. And it was kind of this calling card of a new Germany. um And people like Hugo Eckner, who was the head of the Zeppelin program after World War i he was an international celebrity. He met multiple presidents. They had a ticker tape parade from him when he arrived to deliver the USS Los Angeles, which was actually a German reparation payment to the United States. ah The USS Los Angeles was a US s Navy airship.
Speaker: but it was built by Germany. And so they were, know, this thrilling futuristic technology. But by 1937, the Hindenburg had already done a whole year of passenger service in 1936. Its sister ship, the Graf Zeppelin, had been around since 1928. And so people were almost becoming accustomed to seeing them. so while they were still really thrilling to take your family for you know a picnic and a nice day out if you live nearby in New Jersey, it wasn't like the kind of headline making news that it had been by 1937 because people were like, oh, there's another German Zeppelin flying over New York City. And that's just kind of, you know, had become somewhat commonplace.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think what's kind of fascinating as well is the they used hydrogen because it was plentiful, even though they knew it was inherently dangerous. But the United States had something of a monopoly on helium so yeah mining or whatever you want to call it or extraction. Yeah, a total monopoly at the time. Yeah, so there was like they were trying to be in dialogue with that, but yeah fdr was just like, i don't know if I want to give helium to these guys.
Speaker: Well, it was, um it's kind of like the 1930s or even 1920s equivalent of export controls laws that we use to protect our technology today, you know, in thinking about what foreign entities should be able to receive the technology, purchase technology from us.
Speaker: Helium at the time had been discovered in the American Southwest and nowhere else in the world and as a byproduct of natural gas extraction. It can't be extracted from the air. You can't kind of artificially create helium. And so it was a very scarce natural resource. The United States did have a Navy airship program, including flying aircraft carriers, which is just also an unbelievable thing to think about. You could have airships flying that smaller airplanes could fly up, hook themselves on, get winched up inside the airship, and then lowered back down into the slipstream, cut the ne connection and fly away. It feels literally like sci-fi or some crazy Hollywood thing. They actually show this technology in ah
Speaker: ah Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, if you remember him escaping with his dad from and a Zeppelin by airplane, which is so cool. But helium is not flammable, while hydrogen is. And hydrogen is widely available and very cheap. They're the only two gases that are light enough to lift an airship.
Speaker: um yeah know through displacement. And so the Germans had been lobbying for a long time to be able to purchase American helium. This was barred by a 1925 law that Congress passed, the Helium Act of 1925, which prevented the export to any country as a ah essential natural resource.
Speaker: There was a lot of goodwill, though, that supported Germany being able to purchase helium, which even FDR was somewhat favorable of you know before and even after the Hindenburg disaster. But for various reasons, you know that so much changed as kind of the political winds shifted in Germany. But zeppelins and airships were so popular that passengers and you know the general public wanted to see more of them. They wanted to see them flying. And so there was a lot of goodwill towards giving helium to the Germans at the time. um But Congress still had not amended its law to make that possible. Yeah. Speaking of like seeing them in the air you know, I am in Eugene, Oregon. And so the U of O, know, big football program. And like last year, the Goodyear blimp was overhead. And yeah, but that's like a a little mini compared to what the Hindenburg was, which is like 800 feet long, which like nearly three football fields long to like put that in perspective. It's insane to see that.
Speaker: in the In the sky. But they are kind of eerie. Like, they floating up there? Like, that must have just been wild, especially back then, to just see these things kind of just, yeah, they're just like crawling across the sky. It's like, it must have been so bizarre, but like awe-inspiring at the same time.
Speaker: Yes, and ah just the there's never been anything as big as the Hindenburg that flew. I mean, the 747 is less than three times, or there the Hindenburg is more than three times as big as the 747. It's as big as the Capitol building flying overhead. And you today we're accustomed to seeing airplanes flying ah up in the sky, but that was not a common sight at the time. Airplanes were tiny. And to see just the shadow that this thing casts, you know, dogs would start barking, freaking out. What is this um massive shadow flying overhead? You know, deer would dolt dart into the woods.
Speaker: um When they'd fly over New York, it would tie up traffic below in midtown for ages until it passed. And it was you know this incredibly futuristic thing to look up and see. but the craziest thing of all was that you have this massive you know art deco, silver shimmery airship of dreams.
Speaker: It's kind of like the flying manifestation of the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. but it's painted with a Nazi swastika on the tail that can be seen for miles around as it comes over the Eastern seaboard and flies over the iconic New York skyline. And that is so jarring to think about now.
Speaker: But at the time in 1937, was kind of this odd lull where people were feeling a little bit better about Hitler, that he had you he had been you know determined to kind of right these wrongs that had been done to Germany in the post-war peace agreement, in the Treaty of Versailles that he'd humiliated Germany.
Speaker: created economic turmoil. um Now, finally, through the steps that he's made, consolidating power in Germany, where he you know becomes dictator through legal democratic means, um but then goes on to consolidate power, eliminate his enemies, tear up the Treaty of Versailles by re-militarizing the Rhineland. kind of He says that he's you know restored Germany to its you know rightful place of pride and respect and dignity on the world stage, and that's enough, and he's not doing any more.
Speaker: you At this point, The Anschluss hasn't happened. The Sedaten crisis hasn't happened. Munich hasn't happened. That's all in 1938. And so people are starting to feel like, OK, maybe this Hitler guy's actually kind of he's done what he wants and like this is all he's going to do. And now he's going to be a normal leader, kind of a normal country in the international community. And so it wasn't as alarming to people then as it would be now, knowing what we know, of course, history, you know hindsight being 2020. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah Well, and um also as you're looking to build to your your major set piece too, as as a writer, sometimes it can be ah your your excitement for it can make you like rush and through you just right through it so fast, but you got to like slow down, get granular and and let this thing play out over several pages. So I just, how did you, when you're up against a big set piece, you know, how do you make sure you're slowing down so the reader gets to experience the full sort of thrust of the event?
Speaker: Yeah, especially for something that transpired over 34 seconds. to hidden andburg Take me out to the ballgame is like. yeah Yeah, like completely destroyed in the time it takes to sing, take me out to the ballgame. eight All 800 feet of it, just gone. That's how fast hydrogen burns.
Speaker: And so knowing that you if you write a scene that like you know unfolds over 34 seconds, that's a pretty boring ah climax to a ah pretty thrilling story. I knew that we would all we would get into this moment through the words of Herbert Morrison. Herbert Morrison was the radio broadcaster from WLS Chicago, this you know small regional radio station who happened to be there kind of having persuaded his station bosses to let him do this on his day off for no pay to test some new recording recording equipment and do kind of this experimental new sort of essentially paid ad for this fledgling airline called American Airlines, which wanted to advertise its
Speaker: connecting service with its brand new DC-3 passenger planes that would pick up passengers arriving from the Hindenburg and ferry them on to destinations across the United States. They were looking to piggyback off the reputation of these very safe, glamorous, luxurious zeppelins by marketing themselves as literally zeppelins with wings. And it's really wild to think about too, but very creative.
Speaker: And so Herbert Morrison had gotten know some folks at American Airlines and he really wanted to push the radio field forward. He was an amateur pilot himself. And at the time, radio was only live. It was live entertainment. It was not a news source.
Speaker: Recorded elements on the radio were not allowed um for various reasons, including people at you know station executives fearing that If listeners were hearing recorded content, they wouldn't believe it was as authentic as something that was live.
Speaker: And technology that you know had made it such that ah recordings were not as, that sound quality was not very good until you know very soon before Hindenburg disaster. And so he was there kind of on this whim with no guarantee that what he recorded that day, which was supposed to be a very reasonable ah very you know normal run-of-the-mill arrival of the Hindenburg,
Speaker: kind of as a perfect test case that was like cool, but not like catastrophic. It didn't work out. um And that was the only reason he was there. There was no other radio journalists there. There really weren't radio journalists at the time that didn't really exist yet. um So it's just interesting to think about why he was even there in the first place. And so his words, oh, the humanity, which have now become just kind of enshrined in historical memory,
Speaker: I think even for many people, they've heard this, but they don't know it belongs to the Hindenburg. um But his Oh, the Humanity broadcast was the first recorded content that was ever played on the airwaves. It was that remarkable that station executives were willing to break this ban on recorded content to allow Americans across the country to hear it.
Speaker: And so I knew you know his famous words were always going to be the lead into this disaster. His words, his reporting, his broadcast were going to frame the way that we experienced that. But inside the Zeppelin, in the midst of a disaster and an emergency, time unfolds in a different way. And the way that people reported kind of experiencing this It was like you know some of them, their minds went blank, but others time slowed down. And they were moving slow motion, and they just remembered so many different little odd moments. you know One person saw a man try to jump out of the Zeppelin and removed his false teeth and put them in his pocket before he jumped out. you know These odd little things. And so through kind of triangulating the different perspectives and it's
Speaker: illuminating how people individually and collectively experience these harrowing moments, you get this very well-rounded view of what was happening inside, outside, and how people collectively experience this moment so that while it does go by in 34 seconds, the way that you're reading it has a sense of urgency and immediacy, but also this kind of you know expansion of time that happens as people experience a disaster happening as you know they're living through it
Speaker: Yeah, that's really well put. and I know in the the two books I've written with Six Weeks in Saratoga and The Front Runner, like the major race set pieces, it's like having the race announcer, like that tape, it's kind of like Herbert Morrison's announcing of this, you know, you're able to like pipe that in.
Speaker: throughout and you are able to dilate time in that way and it's giving that actual commentary on the ground and and then you're changing camera angles by finding someone else who's giving you that inside the perspective then on the ground and then you know this guy and then yeah then as you're pulling on all these sources you're really triangulating the scene and building something that and no individual person could experience but now you're giving the reader the totality of it all Exactly. Yes. And, you know, everyone experienced it differently, but just the the various observations that day, it's just remarkable kind of how each of you to think about how would you respond in ah in an emergency.
Speaker: And yeah I've been thinking about this a lot with the 9-11 anniversary that just took place and hearing all of the accounts of people who lived through that day on the ground in the Twin Towers at the Pentagon, seeing the planes fly overhead just before the moment of impact. And kind of the like collective experience of everyone's memories painting this really rich tapestry that brings the humanity out in the midst of an incredibly tragic moment, but it's also this shared experience at the same time, while it is individual, but it also is collective. And just thinking about how we kind of collect narrative around these moments that we all have some relationship to, you know i think that that is kind of a just a...
Speaker: an enduring element of storytelling kind of in the face of tragedy. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, late in the book too, and I'll read this passage too, you you already alluded to 1937 being something of a sort of like ah a dead year amidst in the big historical context. And then the Hindenburg gets kind of plopped right into that. You're right. Like by contracts, 1937 has no such marquee event to which we peg our memories in Germany. It was a year filled with industrial consolidation and political planning, currency controls, party out, party rallies,
Speaker: And the passage of laws that further restricted civil liberties. None of these action created the types of banner headlines that came before and after. But of course, it is in the quiet moments that authoritarianism slowly tightens its grip. Each small measure is digested by the average person with mild concern, but without too much upset to daily life until the cumulative effects have fundamentally changed the fabric of society.
Speaker: And in reading that, I'm kind of it kind of feels like today in a lot of ways, doesn't it? It does. And you know this is kind of the the echoes and the rhymes of history with us today. People ask me, you know to what extent do I think that the nineteen thirty s and today are kind of a one for one comparison? i think they have similar elements.
Speaker: I don't think that they are kind of a ah repeat plug and play. I think we're not living through a second Nazi age. you know that's They have their very distinct features. But I think what is similar is that you see kind of a transformation of society little by little in a way. It's kind of almost like the you the frog in the boiling pot of water. where kind of each time the temperatures increase, but each incremental increase is not really noticeable to people.
Speaker: And, you know, while I certainly don't want to to say that this is an exact kind of replica of the 1930s, it has a very similar element to the way that we as a population experience change and that you have kind of like on the one hand, like similar elements of like mass psychosis of kind of how people, know,
Speaker: respond to really charismatic leaders for good and for bad. And I think that at no point did I want to write the present into this book.
Speaker: But in writing, i have a very clear memory of writing that passage where that's almost kind of like for a very brief moment of kind of me as the narrator almost kind of in in the epilogue kind of having the opportunity briefly to make the case for why understanding history is important to understanding the present.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, it's ah it's a masterful paragraph in a sense that it does imbue meaning and point of view and even commentary, but without like first person commentary. Like it's very much Catherine's voice, but it's not like this is how I feel. This is ah just like kind of like ah you're you're laying it out there in such a way where it does feel of your mind, but not overtly.
Speaker: Yes. And you know that's you i feel like kind of when you're writing history, you you are taking a particular view. There's a different kind of writing where you're being a commentator on current events, like and you writing an op-ed in a column, writing you know and an analysis of the world around us.
Speaker: That's not the purpose of this book, but there is a secondary... effect and a secondary purpose of the past informing the present and the future and how we as individuals respond to challenges in our world, how people have responded to similar challenges in the past and how we can learn from that going forward. you know, I don't think it's like ah you you look at the Munich crisis and like the one lesson to derive from that is appeasement equals bad. and I think you learn from the past by seeing kind of these different shades and different elements of the past that can inform the present. And oftentimes you don't even realize there's that resonance or a lesson to be learned until events in our own times challenge us to think about the past in different ways. At the end of the day, history is really studying human psychology and the way that people respond to challenges. And I don't think that that kind of fundamental aspect of human nature changes too much.
Speaker: you know, over the course of several decades, you know, several hundred years. But, you know, that kind of similar feeling of, you know if I were a person living through this challenge, how would I respond? And how could, you know the way that people have responded to and overcome challenges in the past inform the way that I'm going to you know, change my own behavior today? I think that is, you know, definitely something very valid and should be part of the conversation about, you know, applied history.
Speaker: Yeah. And, um yeah know, as a historian and ah the, you know, having written these the the two great books that you've written, you know, what are the the stories or even the themes that you just find yourself drawn to like iron to a magnet?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, you know both of these stories, they're really a slice of time where you see the world changing very quickly through a few days or just even a few moments. And you have a really fascinating array of characters who wouldn't all necessarily be in the same room together, thrown together for this very brief moment in time.
Speaker: And you're kind of understanding the human elements under you know underlying these these giant moments of history, many of which you know are junctures between past and future.
Speaker: Those are the stories that i love to tell. I want you to come away from the story understanding the role of the Hindenburg and kind of Nazi propaganda efforts, the road to World War Two, how it is integrally a part of that story, how it is a part of the story of technology and the hubris of innovation and thinking that you have taken every possible precaution to safeguard against risk, which is always discounted when you really want your technology to succeed and you are not an objective observer. What does that have to tell us about, you know, AI and the moment that we're living in now with these really, you know, society changing technologies that offer enormous benefits, but also enormous risks.
Speaker: We've been here before, slightly different ways, but it's a similar type of technological juncture. Similarly, with the story of you know the making of modern breaking news media, that is a fundamental story about the Hindenburg.
Speaker: Passively, I want you to absorb all of these themes, and I want you to understand that so much better through reading my work. But at the end of the day, I want you to care about this moment because you care about the people who lived through it, who are people just like you and me,
Speaker: And it is kind of the, I don't know, I'm a really happy person, but I seem to kind of like be drawn to these more tragic stories. You remember reading Anne of Green Gables growing up, and those were some of my favorite books.
Speaker: And, you know, her talking about how she'd rather make people cry than laugh, even though she herself was this really upbeat kind of imaginative dreamer. But I just, i don't know, there's just something about connecting with people in their lowest moments and kind of coming out of it with them as they rise above it that I think also offers a really hopeful reminder that even in the darkest times, there will be better times ahead. And I think that kind of full spectrum of human emotion is what I really, really love to write about. Yeah. How do you maintain your buoyancy while writing about tragedy?
Speaker: I think you know partly you know I really wanted to bring to light some of the like odd quirks of you know the experience of traveling in a Zeppelin that are funny, that you are laughing about. you know The idea that you know yeah they actually tested how much the airship could fly at a pitch before the bottle started sliding off the table and into passengers laps. like They were like, 10 degrees, that definitely starts to fall off, so let's just be safe and only fly at five degrees and no more than that.
Speaker: um you know The idea that you could like fly over a passing steamship and wave to the people on the ground below. Or you know just like yeah there's ah a vaudeville performer on board who has a a real sense of humor and kind of some of these humorous exchanges between himself and the Zeppelin captain. like They're just really delightful. And so just those elements are so important to me to bring forward. The fact that this is a German airship and they didn't really carry that much beer, even though it's Germany's national beverage, because pound for pound, it's much heavier serving than any other type of wine or spirits. So it's like these little things and like you're not i don't want to depress you. I don't want to depress myself while writing this. But like I like to feel the satisfactions of the highest highs and the lowest lows and then back to back to highs again.
Speaker: I also think, yeah and even though I am crazy of kind of working a full time at a law firm, kind of as my side gig for being a full time author and historian, I'm a normal person with friends and a normal social life.
Speaker: I've got younger siblings who make fun of me mercilessly. And I think that that's probably one of the best things to kind of keep a ah smile on my face. Well, you talk about the high highest of highs and lowest of lows. And of course, over the course of writing a book, you're going to experience all of that. And you know the the myriad formations and the manifestations of self-doubt. And um how do you wrestle with those feelings when you're in the full thrust of drafting a story?
Speaker: Yeah, I think it's kind of like on a technical level, like when I feel like things are just not clicking, i don't I don't ever feel like I have writer's block. If I'm feeling like a little bit of like kind of like lack of motivation to write on a certain day,
Speaker: i I mean, any day, but I think the biggest way that I kind of overcome any sort of like inertia to beginning is I always go back and edit what I wrote the day before, before I start writing something new. So on like a day to day basis, I think that's kind of one of the ways that I deal with kind of the the energy highs and lows of writing. But then once I'm off to the races, I could write for like 10 hours of a brief break for a peanut butter jelly sandwich and then I'm back to it.
Speaker: um I love my PB&J, eat it every day. i you know i have several like entirely inflexible but completely reasonable demands as a human being is that I have my daily peanut and jelly sandwich and cup of Earl Grey tea in the morning in the afternoon.
Speaker: Totally inflexible on that, but extremely reasonable, I think. So like, that's the only way that I'm being like a difficult creative person. Like I think I'm good. um But I think like mechanically when I'm drafting and I feel like it's just not working, it's usually because I'm wrong about something. And the answer is to always go back and do more research. Like I'm wrong about kind of the importance of this thing to the person or kind of the weighting that it should have, or kind of this is not the, like this moment is not as relevant to this piece of background information that you need to know. You actually need to know this earlier to be able to appreciate that this is happening now. And then once I figured out kind of where I'm a little bit off by correcting myself with more research, even just to kind of have a different perspective on a moment,
Speaker: it kind of then sort of flows through like a beautiful Excel spreadsheet, kind of like all falling at app praise into place when you've like corrected one of the small formulas. So I think that's that's part of it. But the hardest part for me is like I truly enjoy every day of writing and drafting and researching and like putting a book together.
Speaker: By far the worst part is from the time that you turn in the manuscript to the time that the book comes out. Like copy edit, um jacket, copy edit, photo permissions, um booking travel for scheduling a book tour. Like I'm really privileged and lucky I get to do that.
Speaker: But like, i don't know, there's something about booking travel that just is like such a hurdle for me. Or even if someone else is booking my travel, like committing to a certain itinerary, just for forever for whatever reason, that's like a mental block for me. So it's like all the interim things between like book manuscript done and book in hands of readers.
Speaker: Like that like eight, nine month period is horrendous for me. And not I'm like worried that the book is going to flop. Like i really hope it doesn't flop. I hope people really like it and buy a lot um so I can write more books. But it's like the mechanical elements that are not writing but still essential to book coming out.
Speaker: Yeah, there's there's so of the pie. If you want to divide the writing career into a pie, there are we like to think that the whole pie is just like the writing and the research, but like that's like half of it. And then the other half is, yeah, the marketing, the positioning, the posture, the promoting and everything that goes into it, the speaking, coming on podcast, doing all this kind of stuff. i like because that's like a different form of storytelling where you get to tell your story and the things that are amazing about it that you're so excited to share with people. Like i love connecting with other people, seeing what resonates with them. That part I love. That's a really, really fun, just like different way of being a storyteller.
Speaker: It is like the like actual like mechanical aspects of like book production that is really, really hard. And it's like at that point, you're just tired of looking at your manuscript and you're like, I'm going to die if I have to copy edit this one more time. And I read the whole thing aloud to myself to catch any errors, to kind of like catch some like syntax that's not flowing correctly. Reading an entire book aloud to yourself is rough. but it is essential. um And I do it every time and it's just, I'm glad I do, but like the motivation to do it after I've like, I've read this book 80 million times, I don't want to read it again. And like, then when it comes out, I'm like, I'm afraid to actually leaf through it and touch it for fear that I find some typo that I didn't catch somewhere along the way. so I'm like, I want something with it. I'm like, I will never read my whole book again.
Speaker: But I don't know if you have that experience, but I'm really lucky that I have an amazing team at Viking. They are fantastic. Like, so the, the really harrowing part between manuscript done book in hands of readers, like so much better feeling like you're working with a team and not just like you in a room alone. Like I'm a team person. I played team sports all my life. And like, I'm so thankful to have this amazing team with me in the trenches on all of those elements.
Speaker: That's great. Yeah, I know in late And late stage of copy edits with the front runner and having to go through those rewrites, like to have to reread that manuscript again and again. I haven't I've only since the book came out in May of 2025, I have only read one passage that I typically do for readings and that's it. I haven't touched the book since I won't look at it. I can't I can't bring myself to do it because it's just like I'm going to stab my eye out. It's not like I like hate the story. It's just like I'm parented. I'm like, what if I find something that I really wish I had done differently? And like, I don't want to like find that doing a reread. And over the course of like, you know, promoting it and having dialogue with readers, I'm thinking like, damn it, I should. There are certain things that I wish I could add to the epilogue to just kind of
Speaker: tighten that bow on the story i'm like oh this you know it's just there are other things that i thought about like damn it i didn't think about that or damn i i forgot that one particular newspaper archive because i was just so swamped with other things and it's like i forgot that and it's like this could have been richer i could have tag teamed and got like other material in and swapped something out and it would have been richer and you drive yourself insane katherine doing It's not even like that level for me. like i'm not even like it's like I can't even go to like the second guessing myself. I'm like, oh, I should have gotten this whole other element in there. like, i'm like that's just like too far for me. like It's literally like I will drive myself crazy if I am reading a page. I'm like, oh my God, I used this word way too close to having used that word before. I really, really wish I'd used a different word. like That's the level of granularity. I'm like, I don't want to see this and even give myself the opportunity to have those negative thoughts.
Speaker: Yeah. Oh, 100%. And I just got a couple more things for you. And um I'd love to get a sense of, you know, from book one to book two, you know, what you feel ah more confident in having gone through two now versus, you know, the one.
Speaker: Yeah, I think in the first book, like, so i had, I was, In law school, at the time that book came out, I had written a thesis and a master's dissertation, never written a book before. i'd never had an article published anywhere like more impressive than like my local or college paper. like No one knew who I was. like I am so grateful to all the people who took a chance on me, especially the families who allowed me to come get to know them, to get to know their loved ones, read their family papers at their kitchen table. like That like leap of faith and trust is something that I will always be so grateful for. because that completely changed my life.
Speaker: Like that was amazing. That happened with this book too, but like at least now I have some track record. Like those folks, you have the Churchill, Rosemont, Harriman families, they were amazing. And just like the generosity of people and the kindness of people in the world to give you a chance, like that, it truly changed my life. And I hope that I can do that for someone else someday.
Speaker: The biggest thing for me is like, I think the first book I focused much like my own internal monologue was much more like I'm a historian rather than like I'm a writer or a storyteller. Kind of like really relying on my internal confidence of having a really rigorous education in being a historian to execute the book well.
Speaker: I think now I've almost like grown in leaps of bounds, like in my confidence of being a storyteller and a writer. And I almost feel like the history is the medium in which I feel most comfortable to tell these stories and to share this experience of kind of of humanity in crisis.
Speaker: And it's almost like you know like someone is a painter or a musician or what have you. It's a history is my chosen medium. But at the end of the day, I feel like I am first and foremost a storyteller now more than I felt that I was when I was working on my first book. So I think that's the biggest change for me from book one to book two.
Speaker: And i think even just some of the kind of elements of like self doubt as you're going through it, of kind of like, oh my God, can I write a whole book? Like, I know I can because I've done it before. This is my second one. If anything, my problem is that I have too much to say and I always write too long. And so I know I need to cut it back. And like now knowing that about myself too,
Speaker: It helps me even as I think about so the structure and the pacing and even like the revision process of kind of knowing what are my strengths, what are things that I know that I need to work on. i know I write a lot and that's kind of freeing to know like, OK, I know I've written a lot, but I know that the right elements will all be there at the end of the day once I've gone through this again and that I get stronger as I go along. Like if I'm struggling kind of chapter one, chapter two, by chapter three, I'll really be off to the races and just knowing that about my process.
Speaker: I think kind of like being confident in your process is something that's been really helpful for me now having done two books. Yeah, I've taken to what I call a having a compendium or is something Steinbeck did. And I um i imagine other writers. But i for each book project, I'm like starting its own like diary um that's also a phone book as I get names and numbers, like put them in there. And then like on a day-to-day basis, this is like what I worked on ah for those days where it feels like i i was at the computer for eight hours but didn't feel like I got anything done. And I can kind of itemize like, oh, here you know, you did. You logged 25 articles. You you left 15 voicemails. You talked to two people. It's like, okay, you you did actually accomplish something. You wrote 500 words. Good. And then, okay, this is how shitty I feel. Like, oh, I've been here.
Speaker: i have been here before. i i know what to expect. This has happened in the past. I will get through this and see the next day through. And it's like a a document that will prove to my future self that you've been here, you've done it, and you can do it again.
Speaker: Absolutely. And that that familiarity of like the, that you've done it, you can do it again. i think it's really, really helpful. I mean, that like most daunting part is getting started and, you know, that can be yeah on the whole project level or it can be just like on any given day. And some days feel more daunting than others. And so to kind of be able to touch back and be like, wow, I really accomplished a lot. That's a very motivating way to go about it. And so I, I might start doing something like what you do.
Speaker: Awesome. Well, Catherine, as I bring these conversations down for a landing, I love just asking the guests, you in this case, for just for like a fun recommendation for the listeners out there. it's just like anything that's like bringing you joy and you're happy to that you want to share out well with the listeners. Yeah. Um, reading wise, um, I read couple of awesome books this summer. Patrick Redden Keefe's London Falling. If you'd like to say nothing, you'll like this even more amazing page turning book. Could not put it down. um Same with Theo Baker's How to Rule the World um about his you know very unique first year at Stanford and kind of in ah you know an expose a almost on the Stanford within Stanford. um Absolutely fascinating, riveting, feels like a thriller, both nonfiction, both great. i
Speaker: love to read spy thrillers. I love spy movies. I love murder mysteries. That's my murder wall. I've been ripping through all the ton of French books. I have one left from the Double Murder Squad series, which I'm saving to read at like a you know, a break time so I can really enjoy it. Like I, those are some of the books I've been really, really loving. Um, I don't know.
Speaker: i was watching the U S open lot, felt a little like I was really rooting for Ben Shelton at the end, but man, it just doesn't have the same magic without Carlos and Yannick both So like, You know, please, please, Yannick and Carlos, we need you both at full strength.
Speaker: And then tennis can be my joy again. um And my hottest take, I guess, in the world that's not related to history or writing books is I see you wearing a Red Sox sweatshirt. So i'm going to come out and say i am a a unapologetic Yankees fan, even though I am from Chicago. I was born in new York. My dad is a Yankees fan.
Speaker: Grew up in the Yankees. Had no respect for the Cubs growing up. I'm really, really sorry. Anybody out there, like I probably just cost myself a bunch of book book buyers by saying that. But the Yankees usually bring me joy. The Yankees are not currently bringing me joy. i am so mad about the way the team is being run right now.
Speaker: I saw I've been like rooting for Aaron Boone to go on his way for a long time because I don't think he is like the killer instinct Yankees mentality and like Hal Steinbrenner. God love him. He's no George. Like he Cashman Boone. Something's got to change. And going to be Hal because he owns the team. So like Boone Cashman, like let's try something new.
Speaker: i I hated Alex Rodriguez when he came to the team. i am Derek Jeter, diehard through and through. i hated A-Rod. I hated his attitude. Just like the guy like choked in the playoffs. I was like, ah, like any Yankees fan was just like, get rid of him. yeah I am now in the position where I am rooting so hard for Alex Rodriguez to come ah and be the manager of the Yankees. I want him all right to- Takeover for Boone. And this is the perfect moment to do it. First, he knows baseball more than anyone. He cares about baseball more than anyone. He lives and dies with winning in baseball. he is like the old Yankees mentality, like through and through.
Speaker: Aaron Boone just injured his knee playing long toss with Aaron Judge. A-Rod came to the Yankees because Aaron Boone hurt his knee playing basketball. Is this the moment that A-Rod comes back to the Yankees, thanks to an Aaron Boone knee injury, saves the team from this like mediocrity, like facial hair sporting, like Yankees of whatever world I don't recognize and restores them to their former glory. And it's the ultimate redemption arc and narrative. And here's where you come back to being like a historian storyteller. It's the ultimate redemption story for Alex Rodriguez. So that is, I will leave you with that.
Speaker: That is i think that oh my sports talk radio right here with Catherine Grace Katz. You heard it here first. That's amazing. Yes, the redemption arc of A-Rod's doping and who who knows what. And he gets into the Hall of Fame as a manager. As a manager. Okay. All right. we're gonna We're going to put a pin in this episode and we will come back to it in 10 years and see what happens. ah But, well, Catherine, this is amazing. The the Shadow Before the Flame. and What a book. Awesome book. So great to have this conversation again to celebrate it. So best of luck to you and thanks for coming back on the show.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me both last time, this time. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. And thanks so much for the opportunity to talk about the craft of writing and history and just really enjoy chatting with you.
Speaker: Yes. Awesome. Wasn't that great? Nice to see Catherine back on the show again. i can't believe it's been six years. It's incredible. um Amazing book, Shadow Before the Flame. Go pick it up. Thank you for listening to this podcast and coming this far.
Speaker: Be sure you're subscribed to the podcast. It's always free, as is Pitch Club, as is The Rage Against Algorab newsletter or This American Life. don't know what going call it. Whatever. Follow the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast.
Speaker: And like I said, make sure you're subbed up to the podcast as well as the CNF pod, Extended Universe. Ah, indeed. Yes. So I zipped into Austin, Austin, Massachusetts for a 36 hour blitz. The only thing I got to experience down in Austin, Texas was the 95 degree heat and humidity.
Speaker: As a result, I walked around a nearby REI to get dehydrated vegan chow, since, as you might imagine, Texas isn't exactly a vegan haven. The one vegan joint I knew about didn't open until 5 p.m., and by then I'd be off to the Dan Jenkins Awards for Excellence in Sports Writing. All in all, it was a fine night, and I was honored to have been nominated as a finalist in the Best Book category. It was the kind of event where everybody there seemed to know each other, except me. So I was standing around like an awkward loser, like not really talking to anyone.
Speaker: There was an open bar, but I wasn't drinking since I had to wake up at 4 a.m. to get back to the airport and fly to Portland for a wedding. If I looked like anyone, i looked like a server waiting to bust empty drink glasses in bowls of complimentary popcorn.
Speaker: ah There was an ESPN crew there um who kind of hung out together. Wright Thompson was there and, as you might imagine, made his presence known. He's got a big voice and you know he's in the room when he's around.
Speaker: i didn't bother introducing myself as much as I've invited him on this podcast in years past. I didn't want to. don't know. It just felt like it would have been weird. Like, hey, Wright, I'm that jackass from that thing. ah There were plenty of Texas students and University of Texas faculty. Thanks to some of the faculty ah for taking pity on me and coming over and shooting the shit. That was nice.
Speaker: You know, when it came time to eat, I'm guessing the organizers didn't take notice of my having checked the vegan option. When I asked for the vegan option after having been served... ah Not only ah a salad with cheese on it, but also a chicken dish.
Speaker: They seemed confused. Then they brought me a plate with five spears of asparagus, six green beans, three fingerling potatoes halved, sauteed in what was more than likely butter. um My stomach was empty by the end and quite upset. $350.
Speaker: Woof. um I met Scott Price, whose pen name or his author name is S.L. Price, longtime Sports Illustrated writer and author of The American Game, the winner of the best book.
Speaker: ah To the best of my knowledge, I was the only other book finalist that I could tell who was there. and got my picture taken with Scott, but he seemed mildly weirded out that I would care for such a thing.
Speaker: Another thing for me to feel awkward about for the walk back to my rental car. I ran into Roberto Jose Andrade Franco on the sidewalk on my way out. He was on the way out. He wasn't just like, you know, on the sidewalk. and We hadn't spoken at the event, but I recognized him. He's in the latest volume of Year's Best Sports Writing, so good on him for that. And he was also a finalist for Best Sports Writing for ESPN.com. This piece called Crawford Alvarez and the Decline of the Super Fight.
Speaker: Strangely enough, he recognized me. of all things, from the podcast and said he listens. It always surprises me when people say they listen to the show. and I don't get a ton of feedback. So I never know if it's actually landing or not. I trust that it does at times, but i like I said, I don't have that that validation where I know it's actually resonating.
Speaker: At times, I feel like I've lost my fastball, if I ever had one to begin with. um Anyway, running into Roberto was a nice way to end the night, since I felt so at out of place. I've never been so awash in imposter syndrome.
Speaker: um you know ah so The room was filled with you know major writers for major outlets, and here I was, this oddball freelancer who has no real clout, no major awards, and And listen, I get I was among them at this event for a reason, right?
Speaker: But it also felt like I didn't belong at all. The book, The Front Runner, that one, case you... I can't assume you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker: um It somehow earned its spot, so in a sense, I did belong. But I can tell you it did not feel that way. yeah Meanwhile, there's Tom Boswell, there's Joe Posnanski, and Wright Thompson, and Haley Grossman, etc.,
Speaker: I had gone into the night thinking I'd network and make appearances. After all, I paid about $1,000 in total to be there, all said. You know, that's like hotel and rental and the $350 for the plate.
Speaker: and And my flights were practically free, thankfully, from rewards points. But as soon as I got there... you know Thinking i you know i I got there, i was in a nice suit, and I was like, all right, I'm feeling kind of confident and good about myself.
Speaker: But as soon as I got there, I shriveled like a raisin. It was almost biological or chemical, You know, if it wasn't for the gracious Mike Butterworth who organized the event and some tenured faculty, there's a good chance I would not have said a single word all night, which made me kind of hate myself all the more because I spent a significant amount of time and money to make appearances and not appear like a sore loser for not winning best book. I wanted to go there and celebrate sports writing, sports journalism, and even though I didn't win, I wanted to make that a appearance.
Speaker: Despite all I just shared, I'm glad I went. really like Roberto and Scott will be on the podcast soon. And I think a few others as well. And you never know if by showing up at these things,
Speaker: that it might ah open up some opportunities down the road, even though I was highly dismayed by my wilting and behavior of just trying to disappear into the background. And i admittedly did a great job at that. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.
