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Episode 322: Leah Sottile
286 Plays2 years ago
Leah Sottile (@leahsottile) is the author of When the Moon Turns to Blood (12 Books) and the producer behind the podcast Bundyville.
Sponsor: Athletic Greens
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes/newsletter: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Issue 4 Guidelines & Decision on Issue 3
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey, seeing ever's guidelines for issue four of the audio magazine on the theme codes are at BrendanOmero.com. Hey, go check it out and consider submitting your essay. And I'm still working on issue number three. It's been a while. It's been more than a year since issue two came out on summer. Hey, it's summer. Happy summer. Go listen to summer.
00:00:23
Speaker
I've been debating whether or not to kill Issue 3 because I had a few withdrawals and it left a thin-ish remainder. But I think I'm going to plow through and make do with Issue 3 on Heroes and celebrate the work that remains. So stay tuned.
Challenges in Freelance Journalism
00:00:39
Speaker
on a story that's had a ton of media attention, you know, people get really tired of hearing from reporters from, you know, every single outlet in America. And then here I come do to do like, and I'm like, Hi, I'm Leah, I'm a freelancer. And they're like, Yeah, the media has screwed us. They've gotten it wrong. And I'm always like, Tell me more about that. Let's start where everybody else got it wrong. And I'll see if I can get it right.
Creative Nonfiction Podcast & Leah Sottile Introduction
00:01:10
Speaker
Alright, C-N-F-ers. Yeah. This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara. Are you okay? I wonder sometimes. Hank, who do we have today? Leah Satilly? Are you serious? Don't fuck with me, Hank.
00:01:35
Speaker
Damn! Yeah! Leah Satilly at Leah Satilly on Twitter, leahsatilly.com for all the deets. She also has a wait for it sub-stack newsletter. She's the wildly prolific freelancer superstar.
00:01:50
Speaker
behind pieces for The Atavus, Playboy, the runaway sensation of a podcast named Bundyville, you might have heard of it, and now she's the author of When the Moon Turns to
Leah's Work on Extremism and Religion
00:02:01
Speaker
Blood, Lori Valo, Chad Daybell, and a story of murder, wild faith, and end times. It's published by 12.
00:02:11
Speaker
This book is a trip, man. You can just picture Leah sitting in a chair, sipping on some iced tea, reading apocalyptic Latter-day Saints novels by a guru type that, in Leah's words, looks more like an IT guy down the hall, what with his Mountain Dew and Lightsaber collection, for reals.
00:02:31
Speaker
I added that last part, but the IT guy part, that's all Leah, 100%. Leah has been deeply immersed in far right extremism for the better part of six years, what with Bundyville, and much of her freelance work, and capping it off. Cappeting? Cappeting? You don't cap it. Ah, jeez. I swear, man.
00:02:52
Speaker
and capping it off for the moment with this
Engagement & Support for the Podcast
00:02:57
Speaker
book. We talk about her heavy metal radio show. Yeah, she did. Electric Mayhem. Her early freelancing wins and how being the last on the scene often helps her get access to people weary of journalists. I'm gonna take a sip of my free wave athletic non-alcoholic beer because I clearly can't speak. Just a moment.
00:03:24
Speaker
much better. But first, a wee bit of housekeeping. I'd encourage you to keep the conversation going at cnfpod on Twitter or at Creative Nonfiction Podcast on Instagram. Consider heading over to our Patreon page to help support this enterprise. It's a big ask. I get it. I'm already asking you for your time with this show. And on top of that, I have the audacity to ask for $2 or $4 a month
00:03:51
Speaker
But I tell you, those dollars, man, they mean a lot. What also means a lot are kind reviews on Apple Podcasts, and those are free. If you leave one, I'll read it right here. Haven't had a new one in a while, so why don't you step up to the plate? I'd love to hear from you. I think in this era, it's all the more important, especially as writers of our level, for the most part.
00:04:17
Speaker
I won't say our level, I'm sorry, my level, to leave reviews for the books we read and the pods we listen to. It validates the enterprise and might just persuade another, see an effort to join our little brigade here in the corner, here in our corner of the internet. My God, I can't talk.
00:04:36
Speaker
can't talk, addicted to the shindig. Show notes to this episode and a billion others are at brendanamerra.com. There you may also sign up for my up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. I no longer have pop ups for the newsletter on the website.
00:04:54
Speaker
So they're just right there in the right margin, the signup form, or you can click on the little image I made that said rage against the algorithm. You sign up for the monthly missive. It's pretty cool. Book recommendations, raffles, writing prompts, and some cool things that I stumble across on the internet that I think might nourish your life, your writer life. Why not? First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell, you can't beat it.
Leah's Journey into Journalism
00:05:21
Speaker
Oh, what a trip to talk to Leah, a fellow Oregonian, and a certified badass. She has a card, and I just made that up, but she is. I'm doling out the certificates, and she gets one. She gets a badass one. She brought so much energy to this interview, which is nice. Sometimes I don't get that. Some people are just going through the motions, and they're like, ugh, another podcast, another jabroni, asking me jabroni questions.
00:05:50
Speaker
But we had a great time talking shop and there's so much goodness in this interview that it shouldn't inspire you to get out there and do the thing. So we're going to do this thing right here, right now, CNFers.
00:06:15
Speaker
When I was just doing some of the research that I like to do about digging into people's bio, I have to ask you, tell me about these heavy metal radio programs you hosted. Just speaking my language of heavy metal.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yes, awesome. Real, real good idea I had. So I was a staff writer at the Alt Weekly in Spokane and I was the music editor. And, you know, I've been a long time fan of heavy music, definitely got more into it as I was writing about music in Eastern Washington. So I decided I got the opportunity twice, on two separate occasions, to host a show from midnight to 2 a.m. Mind you, I had to be at work in the morning, but
00:07:01
Speaker
I would host this show every week. And yeah, my first one was called Electric Mayhem. Both of them were kind of heavy adjacent. And then I quit because I was like, I can't wake up and get up and get to work on time in the morning. It was just kind of hard. And then I did it again. This was for a community radio station in Spokane called KYRS.
00:07:24
Speaker
And I hosted a show called miximatosis, which is a radiohead song and also a crazy rabbit disease. Anyway, I won't get into that, but I hosted it again from midnight to 2 a.m. And at that point I was a freelancer and I thought, well, you know, my time is my time so I can stay up till 2 a.m. But.
00:07:41
Speaker
And again, the time was really what killed me the time slot. So I hosted them pretty briefly. It was like maybe six, nine months apiece. But it was really fun. I mean, I felt like part of my job at the Inlander was to really advocate for local bands.
00:08:00
Speaker
Spokane at the time just had this like, I mean, it still has a great music scene, but it had this just really amazing music scene. The venues were awesome. There's all ages venues and there was just a really interesting artistic
00:08:16
Speaker
metal scene. So I would play, you know, all the metal that I liked, but then I would like bring in bands to do interviews and like stuff like that. So it was kind of, it was sort of, it wasn't a part of my job at the Inlander, but it was like, definitely helped along by the fact that I knew who all the bands in town were. So it was fun.
00:08:33
Speaker
That's awesome. So did you get very skilled at hitting the post and all that stuff? I mean, I guess a little bit. You mean like the button when people would swear? Oh, not even that. It's kind of like if you got that song cued up and it's kind of like the first introduction and you like you talk right up to like the first verse or like the first big drum downbeat.
00:08:57
Speaker
Hell, no, no. I mean, as we were talking about when we were starting this, I'm not a great technology person. And I feel like the thing that would always stress me out so much is I would like bungle up the like production because I was like, well, I got to play this song on a tape and this song from vinyl and this song from a CD and this song on Spotify. And it was just like I was always messing up. It was terrible.
00:09:22
Speaker
Oh, this is that sounds great. Do you have any of that tape left over from your time DJing this? I do. I do. I think, you know, my husband is like he's the he's the tech person in our house and he's got a pretty good archive of stuff. In fact, he made me the most incredible promo for Electric Mayhem, which was like this, like
00:09:42
Speaker
you know, World War Two air raid sound and like, you know, the sound of like a crowd cheering and it's just the most like over the top promo. And I swear that's the only people reason people listen to the show because, you know, once they turn tune in, I was like, you know, dropping calls and like, you know, barely doing this. So he's the brains behind the tech operation.
00:10:06
Speaker
Oh my God. I feel like, you know, amidst all this incredible freelance work you do and, you know, Hawk in a Book and podcasts, I feel like you really need to, like, start up Electric Mayhem as your own podcast now. You know, it's not a bad idea. I mean, actually, you know, I never thought of that. That might be something
00:10:26
Speaker
I got time. I can do it. Like, I mean, why not? I think that it's it was it was really, really fun. And like it just I think that that's one thing that's tough for me now where I'm at in my career is like, I just don't get to have a ton of fun with what I do. And I also don't get to talk about music very much anymore unless I write like a random essay about something. So not a bad idea. If I do it, I'll let you know.
00:10:51
Speaker
Nice, yes, please. Please, I'm just down the five. Let me know and I'll be there. Your guest spot. Yeah, yeah, we'll talk my weekly spot or we'll talk like Metallica and Godsmack and Gojira and all my favorite bands. Incredible. Yeah, so give me a sense of when you got the bug to get really into writing and writing, you know, writing specifically nonfiction, how did you get into it?
00:11:22
Speaker
I mean, I've wanted to be a journalist since I was a kid. So my dad, he was on TV. So he was a TV reporter and then he became a weather guy, which is how we ended up in the West Coast.
00:11:38
Speaker
Um, he worked for a station in Portland. One thing that was really cool was like, he would be like, he worked the night shift. So he did like the six o'clock news and he'd come home for dinner. And then he would go back and do the 11 o'clock news. And he asked my brother and I sometimes like, Hey, do you want to, do you want to come to work like tonight on like a Friday night, you know, when we didn't have school the next day. And.
00:11:59
Speaker
So sometimes we would go with him and like I swear like the bug for journalism was planted because I would go in with him to the newsroom like you know for the 11 o'clock news and it was just buzzing like it was just so exciting there was so much going on there was always like you know the personalities in the newsroom were really like I could see why my dad really fit like he was just really you know on top of things and funny and boisterous and like he fit in that tv thing so
00:12:29
Speaker
I started to be really into that. And then we subscribed to the Oregonian when I was a kid, and it was a much bigger operation than it is now. But I just devoured it. I was just really into it. And so I would make my own newspapers at home and stuff. And pretty much just as soon as I could, I worked for my high school newspaper, and I knew I wanted to be a reporter since I was 10 years old.
00:12:54
Speaker
But I really fell in love with it when I was in college and I worked for the college paper. I went to Gonzaga University, which has the smallest journalism program ever. I could have gotten in-state tuition at U of O at an incredible journalism school, but I was like,
00:13:12
Speaker
I wanted to go to Gonzaga, so real great choice. But lots of student loans I'll be paying off forever. But I really fell in love with journalism working at the college paper. And it was when I took a 300 level journalism class where we were studying these practitioners of new journalism. And I read Joan Didion, and it just changed my life. I was like, wait.
00:13:38
Speaker
this is journalism, like I could do this. And that was kind of when like, I just like fell so hard for it. And I mean, I spent even it's funny, because I'm always like complaining that I'm like, I work all the time. But
00:13:51
Speaker
I've been like that for a long time. Like when I was in college, I worked at the school paper. I was the editor for a semester that were just semester long positions. And then I also started my own newspaper. So like I started a paper that was for it was a street newspaper. So like these papers that advocate and like tell the stories of a houseless population. So I like started this street newspaper. So I was just like doing journalism all the time. And I have been since I was like 20 years old.
00:14:22
Speaker
The fact that you say doing journalism, I think that's such a great way of phrasing it, especially when people might have a hard time being like, how do I break in? How do I get noticed? How do I make clips? And sometimes you just have to be industrious and do journalism on your own. It might not get a whole lot of traction on its own, but at least you're showing that you can do work. And then you can parlay that into something.
00:14:51
Speaker
as a freelancer now, professional freelancer now, I imagine that that was good practice for you at that point.
00:14:56
Speaker
For sure. I mean, it's like it's been it's just it definitely is. I don't think I've ever thought about it that way. But I think it's like journalism has been with me for like a very long time. And it's it's almost like an affliction for me. Like it's like I can't I just do it. It's just what I do. And even when I have tried to consciously tried to not do it, like I quit journalism for a few years, I was still freelance. Like I was still trying to. It's like I can't not do it. And so I just sort of accept that.
00:15:26
Speaker
at this point and just go with it and hustle. What was that period of where you say you quit journalism?
00:15:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I had been a staff writer at the Inlander in Spokane after I graduated from college for a few years. And my husband was the art director. We met there and we decided to move to Portland. And I was up for a job at Willamette Week, which is an amazing all-weekly in Portland that was really, really awesome in the 90s. And I'd always wanted to work there. And so I interviewed for the job and I didn't get it. And I was like, well,
00:16:04
Speaker
I could apply for an unpaid internship. So I decided to quit my paid job and we moved to Portland and I got an unpaid internship at Willamette Week and just got schooled. Like I just didn't, I did not know what I was doing. Like being there made me realize like,
00:16:24
Speaker
that I, you know, I was making journalism and journalism comes in all forms, but like Willamette Week was like hardcore. They were like, you know, public records junkies and just like they knew everything about how the city worked and I just couldn't keep up. So when I was done with that internship, I was just like, I don't think I'm cut out for journalism. I don't think that it's
00:16:44
Speaker
I don't think it's meant for somebody like me. So, so I quit and I worked at a comic book company and marketing for a year. And then I worked for like a toy company for, for a couple of years. Like I had incredibly cool jobs that actually paid me really well, but I was like, all I want to do is make journalism. So I went back. It really didn't last very long. I tried other things and like really had a good shot. Like.
00:17:11
Speaker
what's cooler than working at a comic book company? Like, you know, I mean, it was so fun. And I got to go to like all these comic conventions and like talk to people in Star Wars costumes all day. But it just, you know, for me, it was just like I knew where my heart was. So when I went back, it got back into it. I then I just doubled down and was like, okay, I got to be I got to get better. I got to push myself.
00:17:34
Speaker
Where did you feel like you had a deficiency in terms of your reporting?
Reporting Skills and Freelance Growth
00:17:41
Speaker
I think that I felt like I was somebody who was, at Willamette Week, the people there were really, really good at vetting what was a lie. I think I felt kind of gullible. I felt like I was maybe naive and not as world weary as other reporters were. And I lacked some basic skills.
00:18:03
Speaker
what was a public record and how did I get those things? And, you know, I just didn't know a lot. Like I'd been making journalism for a long time, but really what I thought was it was just so much about storytelling. And I sort of lacked a lot of the nuts and bolts of what it took because I didn't have a job that was like, I never was really a beat reporter. I worked briefly at a rural paper in Washington before I got my job at the Inlander.
00:18:32
Speaker
You know, I didn't have, you know, a job where I had to cover city hall and you just sort of like learn everything by just doing it. So, so I felt like I really needed to gain a lot of that stuff. And so when I did go back to journalism, I started taking on stories where I felt like I had some kind of like thing I needed to learn. And I still do that now. Like if I'm not learning something new, then I, then I tend to avoid it.
00:18:58
Speaker
What are some of those things that you still find that you're learning and be like, oh shit, I didn't really know about that or how to ask for that or that kind of repartorial stuff? Hmm. That's a good question. I definitely, let's see, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure if I,
00:19:18
Speaker
like, like a budget type story would be a story I would never do, you know, like just stuff where it's like the ins and outs of how like a government organization works, probably gonna probably gonna feel like, you know, maybe, maybe I need to learn some things there. But um, I guess
00:19:38
Speaker
I do take on stories now that tend to like, I know something, like I know, like I write a lot about extremism. And so like, I might take a story where I know something about the type of extremism that is being explored, but I don't know everything about it. So then I kind of use that as an opportunity to learn more and that kind of thing.
00:20:02
Speaker
Yeah, I find that, and not that I'm a great writer by any stretch, but I'm like, I'm a better writer than I am a reporter. And I feel like I'm more like the John McPheezy and reporter where you just kind of like hang out, you know, like ask a couple questions, but more or less you're just kind of taking it all in, the whole fly on the wall thing. Like that's more my speed and my style. I'm not like a fast reporter guy. I'm not a real pushback kind of guy.
00:20:32
Speaker
I don't know about like, just that's what I know about myself. I know I need to get better about that, but I wonder like for you, like, did you notice there are certain holes in the way that you went about, you know, the way you interview or the way you hang back or when to challenge and what not to challenge?
00:20:47
Speaker
And maybe I think that the way that freelancing has worked for me has been just like, for a long time, I would say yes to things knowing I didn't know how to do it and just sort of fake, like I would sort of fake it. So like, for example, as a way of making, I needed to make money, I started getting offers to do breaking news stories for the Washington Post.
00:21:10
Speaker
I didn't have breaking news experience. Like I'd worked pretty much exclusively for weeklies. I'd freelance stories for magazines, but I'd never done that quick, you know, breaking news stuff. So, um, you know, but they didn't need to know that, right? Like, so I just was like, sure. Yeah, totally. I would totally cover this thing that you want me to do. And then I would just figure it out. Um, and.
00:21:35
Speaker
It was, you know, I think I learned after a couple of years of that, that breaking news was not my passion. Like, it felt good when I knew that I could do it. And, you know, specifically for the Post, like they would ask me to do stuff that would happen in Oregon or Portland or Washington. And so like that ended up being a lot of the same kinds of stuff. So like I was covering protests, and that was really crazy at first, but then once I'd done it for a while, I kind of figured out like,
00:22:03
Speaker
Okay, I should talk to these people. These are good sources. So I kind of built sources really quickly. So I proved to myself that I could do it. And I think I just had to be under duress to be able to like, you know, figure that out. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. What would you identify as an early win in your freelancing career that helped get the flywheel moving?
00:22:27
Speaker
That's a good question. I think that what sticks out to me was when I started getting features about the, about the occupation that happened in 2016 at the Malia National Wildlife Refuge. So that was a big story in Oregon. I'm sure it's one that you followed, but it was, I'd been freelancing for quite a few years at that point. And I was just not nailing the types of,
00:22:55
Speaker
big profiles that I really wanted to be writing. I was writing for Playboy every now and then, and they were giving me a lot of really great freedom, but nobody was really seeing it because it was hard to see online. It's actually strangely hard to find an issue of Playboy, too, if you want one. I was doing all this work that I was super proud of, but not a ton of people were seeing it. When the occupation happened,
00:23:22
Speaker
I started chipping away at it like features writer, you know, there are so many people on the ground that were covering the day to day of what was happening there. But I felt like my first big, big, you know, win quote unquote was writing a profile for outside on the last
00:23:39
Speaker
person to leave the refuge after a very, very tense standoff with the FBI. It went on for hours. It was all recorded. It was being live streamed, and I was just riveted listening to this man try to negotiate with the government. Save is going to kill himself. Save is going to come out shooting.
00:24:01
Speaker
it was the most exciting and insane thing I'd ever heard. And so I wrote a profile on him with a lot of interviews with his parents. And he'd driven all the way from Oregon in the middle of January from Ohio to be there. And that occupation was like so many armed militia guys and want to be ranchers and sovereign citizens and just kind of a who's who of the anti-government movement and extremists.
00:24:30
Speaker
But then this kid was like 28 years old. He driven from Ohio. He was Japanese. That was like pretty rare to find a person of color at that occupation. He was like a computer nerd and he sort of came and was like, hi, I'm just excited. You know, and I was like, why, what in God's name would lead this kid to be there? And that was really what that feature was. And I felt like it was, I was finally able to show what I, what I felt that like I could do.
00:24:58
Speaker
For that piece, how did you go about getting the trust and garnering the access that you needed for this person, lobbying to write a profile about him?
Building Trust and Influences in Writing
00:25:09
Speaker
I started, I'm pretty sure I started where I start with a lot of the stories that I do because I'm usually the last person to call, you know, on a story that's had a ton of media attention, you know, people get really tired of hearing from reporters from, you know, every single outlet in America. And then here I come do to do like, and I'm like, hi, I'm Leah, I'm a freelancer. And they're like, yeah, the media has screwed us. They've gotten it wrong. And I'm always like, tell me more about that.
00:25:39
Speaker
Let's start where everybody else got it wrong and I'll see if I can get it right. And sometimes I do and sometimes I don't. I mean, that story in particular, I really had long, long conversations with David Fry's parents about what happened and what they believed in their life. And
00:25:59
Speaker
I don't think they were very happy with the story in the end because I think that they had started to listen a lot more to the sort of Trump era politics that I think informed that occupation and started to see me as like a fake news type person, which is, you know, I was really disappointing, but in the end, I felt like I wrote the best possible story about, about that person and what was going on in all the influences that drew him there.
00:26:26
Speaker
And you mentioned Didion earlier, who kind of turned the world from black and white into color for you. And in terms of these features and these long features that you've written for, you know, like Playboy New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Atavist, you name it. Who are some of the magazine writers that were just lighting up the fireworks in your head? You're like, ah, man, I really want to do that.
00:26:49
Speaker
Hmm. I mean, I was at an all weekly when it seemed like there was a real Renaissance happening at men's magazines. So, you know, I was reading, uh, Chris Jones and just like, just blown away by the stuff he was writing in Esquire. Um, and the, and just the, the sort of beauty and the sort of pace that he brought to stories. I really fell in love with the writing of, um, someone I believe is that sports illustrated.
00:27:17
Speaker
or maybe CNN now. His name is Thomas Lake. And he has written some just beautiful stories. And
00:27:28
Speaker
I was, I don't know, I, there was just all these kind of writers, I want to say in like the late aughts that were doing really, really exciting long form. And then, you know, we started to see like a lot of those magazine crumpling and a lot of those jobs going away and stuff. So, um, but, but a lot of those, I mean, I would say probably Chris Jones, like his story about the Zanesville, um, animal relief. Like, I don't know, do you know what story I'm talking about? I don't.
00:27:55
Speaker
So he wrote this story in like probably like 2006. It was Zanesville, Ohio. And this man owned like 20 tigers and like a bunch of bears and like all this stuff. And he essentially let all of the animals go. And it was like this town was all of a sudden like besieged by like wolves and tigers and cougars and like, you know,
00:28:19
Speaker
So it was about the police trying to like figure it out. It was horribly violent. It was, it was just really, really intense story, but it had been told and Chris Jones came in and then he really told it. And that was, that was a really like aha moment for me that I didn't always need to be first maybe. So, um, yeah, I mean, I could nerd out about writers forever, but those are two that come to mind.
00:28:46
Speaker
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Adapting to Journalism's Challenges
00:30:20
Speaker
You mentioned too with the magazines crumpling and the space shrinking for people like us who want to do that kind of work. So how have you managed to keep doing the kind of work that excites you given that the landscape is always changing at almost like an avalanche pace and it's just really hard. That ice flow is really shrinking under our feet.
00:30:44
Speaker
Yeah, it's rough, man. I definitely thought that if I quit my job at a paper and I did the best possible job that I could as a freelancer, that I might get attention of the big publications in the East.
00:31:01
Speaker
you know, maybe I'd get a job offer and I'd be able to get to do what I wanted to do from the West, which I, you know, continue to think it's just a criminally under covered part of the country. And, you know, that didn't happen. Like, I felt like I, you know, even when I put out my best work, it just, you know, it gets attention. But, you know, it just, I don't know, it just wasn't, it wasn't happening for me. And then it was also like, you know, all these magazines start
00:31:28
Speaker
closing, they're laying off their staffs, their, you know, Playboy decides to stop. They stopped printing for a while. You know, even the places I was writing for started suffering. So I started to realize probably later than
00:31:43
Speaker
an average person would, but that I couldn't probably not make all of my money off of writing. But that's not to say like I'm pretty unwilling to do anything but journalism. So I really tried to diversify my income. So like I do written stories, but then I also took on podcasting, which was something that I
00:32:05
Speaker
you know, never had intended to do. I really enjoyed podcasts when I sort of got an opportunity to do that. And it's beget other podcasts opportunities. So I started doing that. I started teaching, you know, works, writing workshops. And so I tried to just kind of branch out what I do because I knew, you know, there were years of freelancing where I was writing.
00:32:27
Speaker
56, 60, 65 stories a year. And that's like features that big magazine long form features, that's short breaking stories, that's stories I just didn't really care about, but that I took on because I needed the money. I was just burning myself out. I think I'm probably emerging from
00:32:49
Speaker
burnout. I think I think writing a book made me realize I wasn't burnt out anymore. So I had to do that to kind of realize it. But yeah, so so I'm writing a book that was another one of those things, which I was like, you know, if I write a book, that's one more thing that, you know, maybe it'll make money, maybe I'll be able to get royalties from it. So, yeah.
00:33:10
Speaker
When it comes to writing the book, did you feel like it was something that you needed to really build up to through the course of doing a lot of long magazine pieces and kind of building the endurance and be like, okay, can I
00:33:27
Speaker
Can I sustain the tension and the pace for 80,000 to 100,000 words versus something like 10,000 or 15,000? Did you feel like you needed to reach a certain point with your magazine stuff before you could be like, okay, yeah, now I'm ready to write a book.
00:33:45
Speaker
maybe I think that I it was a combination of of doing the long form work which you know I always have done I had that you know I did long format the all weekly that I worked at too um so it was long form but it was also podcasting it was learning how to write
00:34:02
Speaker
for radio and learning how to write a story arc because, you know, I did feel like I was pretty creative in the structures that I would use for my long form stories, but it really was when I learned how to write a podcast and write a good one that I felt like I really had to learn
00:34:22
Speaker
what makes something interesting and I started kind of after I learned podcast writing I started reading books differently and stuff and I'm you know a pretty avid reader too so I feel like I was just kind of digesting lots of forms of storytelling and sort of figuring out what I wanted to do because I knew I had the investigative skills to do a book but
00:34:44
Speaker
I didn't want to write a book unless I could put it together in a structure that felt interesting and creative because that's the kind of book I like to read. In what way did audio fundamentally help the way you go about writing and structure?
00:35:02
Speaker
I did not have any idea how to write a podcast and I thought I did. I think that that's a good thing is that I was like, oh yeah, I can write a podcast, no problem. And just got, I just really learned very quickly that writing for radio is a completely different skill. So I just figured, oh, specifically, so Bundyville was the one that I felt like I had to learn on the job how to write a podcast.
00:35:30
Speaker
I thought you know i've written all these long-form stories we could just like take those edited down boom podcast right but that's not at all how it works like there is a completely different structure to the written stories of bundyville than there are the narrative stories and so
00:35:48
Speaker
You know, it's like, I've made this comparison before, but it's like when you watch those cooking shows and somebody's like, I'm presenting you asparagus two ways. Like it's like you are, it's fried and sauteed or whatever. And that's kind of what I had to learn was sort of like, how do I tell a story a long way? How do I tell it a shorter way? How do I tell it an audio way? How do I tell it for a reader? And so I think that it's almost like, you know, working out, like you're working out different parts of your storyteller brain. And that was.
00:36:18
Speaker
That was really cool because when I, at first, when I realized like, oh, I don't know how to write a podcast, I don't think I can fake this. I had producers that helped me do that and did a lot of the writing too. And I had really good patient teachers. And then I think as soon as it clicked for me, I think they saw that it clicked for me too. So like the second season of Bundyville, I did a lot more of the writing because
00:36:43
Speaker
I knew what I was doing then and I could find my voice in it and I could find my confidence in it. So yeah, I think it's just good to like figure out how to serve a story two ways, I guess.
00:36:53
Speaker
Speaking of like the first season of Bundyville to the in the final episode I remember as you're you're you're building to this ending and you know the music's coming up too and I remember just like I was just really engaged by that and it just the end it felt like an ending was coming I could just sense it from the way the writing was coming across like it was just oh I feel like we're coming to something here
00:37:18
Speaker
And, you know, the music was helping in that regard. And it got me thinking, too, just about the importance of endings. And I wanted to get your sense of how much attention you pay to endings and when you start thinking about them over the course of writing a piece or a book and then, you know, trying to stick that landing so it raises the hair on people's arms or they want to go back and reread it.
00:37:41
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, it's such a good question. Oh my God, I love that you asked this question. I probably think about endings less than other people, but I know when I'm writing, typically, when I've reached it. So with podcasting,
00:38:05
Speaker
There are moments that you're like, well, this is going to be in there. This is going to be in the podcast somewhere. But this might be a good ending, specifically that first season of Bundyville, the part that we're talking about. I was like, I think that's the end. There's something there. I don't know what we're going to say specifically, but it'll come out in the writing. When I'm writing a long-form story or when I wrote my book,
00:38:30
Speaker
Um, it sort of arrives naturally for me. I did write a couple of different endings for the book, but, um, I remember one day I was editing, you know, it was like the third stage of editing. It was like brutal. And I, and I just, I just felt like that my editor and I thought like the edit, the ending is not quite here, but it's, it's close. It's going to happen. And.
00:38:54
Speaker
I think that's when I'm up really late at night listening to something really loud on headphones and I'm just feeling it, getting that feeling of the tone of where I'm going and then it just happens. And sometimes it can be really frustrating because when you're waiting for lightning to strike, you can't play.
00:39:16
Speaker
You can't plan for that, so that can be really, really frustrating. But yeah, that seems to be how it happens for me.
00:39:26
Speaker
Well, I think that underscores a great point that you just have to kind of like write your way there or work your way there. You can't just wait for the lightning to strike. Oh, like there's the ending. Like you have to maybe write just a thousand words that are basically going nowhere, but they're digging that trench. And then eventually you're like, oh my God, there it is. But you would have never gotten there had you not like quote unquote wasted a thousand words to get there. Like you just need to labor your way through it.
00:39:55
Speaker
Totally. I mean, and I think that like, I just, I have to think about like, is this, if somebody reads this story and this is what I'm leaving them on, I have to make sure that it expresses the intent of the entire story. Like, you know, I can't just end on some random scene. Like it has to end in exactly the place that I want people to know this was why I was writing this.
From Podcast to Book Themes
00:40:21
Speaker
And so, um,
00:40:23
Speaker
You know, it's a constant gut check as I'm editing to say, like, is this story going where I want it to go? Like, is it doing, is it, you know, it's all a big piece of art to me. And it's like, this is the takeaway. And if you leave someone, you know, it has to be satisfying, but it also ultimately has to be expressing the entire thesis of the whole damn reason you came to read the story. It has to be clear in that last line.
00:40:54
Speaker
And naturally, from Bundyville, the first two seasons, there's obviously, and you don't have to be an incredibly deductive person to deduct this, but there's a certain through line that goes from Bundyville straight to when the moon turns to blood. So at what point do you, through the reporting that you've done on the far right and the podcast, and then of course it leads to this book, so at what point do you stumble upon this and you're like,
00:41:24
Speaker
There's a story here that I don't think a lot of people are telling that's not as salacious as one would think. And I'm going to really plant my flag on this.
00:41:34
Speaker
So it starts, I mean, in the first season of Bundyville, there is, I think it's the third episode when I realized that the Bundys are maybe motivated by this piece of LDS. I mean, it's not even scripture. It's like an urban legend. It's not accepted prophecy, but it's something a lot of people believe in. It's called the White Horse Prophecy. And it's just like,
00:41:58
Speaker
fascinating to me. It's this idea that somebody told the prophet of the church back in the 1800s that the LDS people were going to save the Constitution from the brink of ruin. And the church hierarchy was like, no, this is not real. Joseph Smith never said this. It's fake.
00:42:19
Speaker
don't believe in it. And people are, you know, most people didn't, but a lot of people did. And so it kind of continues on to this day that there's this sort of subsection of the church that says, you know, we're going to save the Constitution. It kind of braids together patriotism and
00:42:37
Speaker
their faith and I am someone who is eternally fascinated by religion and so to me that was like the big like what like this is you know it carries through a lot of Bundyville as me trying to understand more about how religious ideology can can make somebody do something take up arms against the government or what else could it make people do so yeah I did a lot of reporting on the white horse prophecy but after Bundyville season one came out
00:43:05
Speaker
I heard from a lot of people who said, you know, in the podcast, you characterized it as fringe and something not a lot of people believe in. But I'm telling you, a lot of people believe in it. And so I thought, wow, like, man, if there's an opportunity that I could do more on that, that would be really cool. So fast forward to the end of 2019.
00:43:26
Speaker
This story is hitting the headlines about this woman in Idaho, and she's a member of the LDS Church. And she's missing, her new husband is missing, and her kids are missing. And people are sort of saying to reporters, yeah, I think that her fringe beliefs made them disappear. And it sort of suggested that maybe they were hiding out in some bunker somewhere.
00:43:54
Speaker
And, um, and so I just remember seeing it and I was like, I wonder if she believes in the white horse prophecy. Like I wonder, that was my first thought. And so I started because I'm, you know, always unable to turn off journalism. Like, I just am like, okay, who's your dad? Who's her mom? Like, where can I find more about what this lady believes? Like that's not something you can really find easily without talking to someone.
00:44:20
Speaker
But I found like almost immediately that her dad had written this book about hating the IRS and why you don't need to pay your taxes. And it was like Sovereign Citizen 101. It was totally familiar to me from like the Bundy stuff that it seemed like he would very much agree with a lot of their ideologies. And then right there in the text of his book, he uses the language of the white horse prophecy. And I was like, Oh, no way. Like, I can't believe that I was like, I like,
00:44:51
Speaker
You know, my husband always laughs. People like always make fun of me. They're like, you have like this horrible instinct for this stuff. Like I just like, I knew that if she had these LDS beliefs that it was probably adjacent to something that I had understood. And so that's really where it started for me was I'd wanted to do more work on fringe LDS ideology and trying to understand, you know, how that got to be so big in certain parts of the West.
00:45:20
Speaker
And then then this story came along and it was like, boom. And I'd been wanting to write a book for a while. So it pretty quickly became an obsession. And that's how it became a book.
00:45:32
Speaker
Yeah, I had marked the part where, at page 65, my galley, he writes towards the end of the book, like, be aware, America's cherished constitution is hanging by a thread in 2020. And hanging by a thread is the whistle of people who talk like this. The Bundys talk about it. Without citing the White Horse prophecy itself when they say hanging by a thread, Leah's ears are like, oh, I know exactly what you're talking about.
00:45:59
Speaker
And that's so much of like writing about extremism is learning to understand like, you know, what, when I first was writing about it, there's so much coming at you that you don't totally know what the meaning is to the words that you're hearing. But when you do it for a long time, you start to see the way that people speak in code, the way that they dog whistle to other people.
00:46:21
Speaker
you know, the way that Trump, you know, would dog whistle to the proud boys or to white supremacists and stuff. And it was like so clear if you had done this work. And so, yeah, so, you know, I don't know if the, you know, the main character in my book, if her father knows that he's saying the white horse prophecy, but at that point in time, that language, hanging the Constitution, hanging by a thread was like so in the culture and in the air that it was like,
00:46:50
Speaker
Well, that's even more interesting to me because here I initially thought that this was like this fringe thing that only, you know, weirdos talked about. And it was like, no, it's like being talked about by all kinds of people. So yeah, yeah, my ear is perked up right away.
00:47:05
Speaker
And a big part of your research for this book was reading Chad Daybell's novels and all that. And there's a moment in the book, too, where you just picture you in your hammock and you're liking it, reading the Babysitter's Club's books as you're just immersed in this guy's world such as it is. So what was that experience like, just totally immersing yourself in this stuff? And just what was your impressions?
00:47:35
Speaker
I see what you're asking. What kind of person does this to themselves? I will tell you, I am that person. Like, you know, it's the pandemic at that point. And we're very much, you know, in lockdown and people are saying like, Oh, it'll be up by Memorial Day. And then that didn't happen. And so, um,
00:47:52
Speaker
you know other people were like learning to make sourdough bread and like you know knitting sweaters and here I was reading tons and tons and tons of apocalyptic doomsday LDS fiction and I was fascinated and and there was something just so like
00:48:13
Speaker
I don't even know what like I was like, why are these books so interesting to me? Like, also, why are they so easy to read? I was trying to get my I felt if I was going to do this book, I needed to get my headspace into that of a reader who would
00:48:29
Speaker
because that's ultimately what Lori Vala, the main character in the book, she was a reader of these books. So I was trying to really just kind of, you know, I couldn't go interview her because she was in jail, and I couldn't go do much reporting in the field. So this was kind of my way of doing that was like, well, at least I can get into the headspace of this person. So yeah, so I bought tons of books on, you know, wherever I could find them. I have several copies that are autographed.
00:49:04
Speaker
And I started color, like I came up with, it was like, I created a game for myself. Like I started color coding them based on what conspiracy theories he was talking about. Like I was reading them.
00:49:16
Speaker
also through the lens of somebody who's written so much about extremism and far-right conspiracy theories and anti-government belief systems. And so I just basically was like pain kiss for when he talks about conspiracy theories. Blue is when he talks about racist, you know, racist ideologies. And green is, you know, the LDS people saving the constitution and stuff. And so I just started to kind of try and recognize trends. And, um, but yeah, I would weirdly like,
00:49:44
Speaker
past the day, laying in my hammock outside, drinking iced tea and reading these books. It was just an exercise in immersive reporting, I guess.
00:49:59
Speaker
It's like, that's what I like to call it. Right. Remote, immersive reporting in this. But I knew, you know, as a writer, it's like you do say a lot about who you are and what you're thinking about. And even in, you know, I write fiction not very often anymore, but I do do it. It's something I enjoy.
00:50:19
Speaker
And I know that the things that I unpack in my own fiction are things I'm thinking about. So, you know, I figured, well, there's probably a lot I could learn about this person, about the readers of these books, but also the person who wrote them. So they were kind of a really valuable document I felt like I'd stumbled into.
00:50:38
Speaker
Oh, for sure. Because when you're doing this, whether it be biography or this degree of narrative, you have to build a world. It's nonfiction, but you do have to do world building. So I could just sense that was very much on your mind. If you're going to immerse people along in this book, you need to get somewhat into the headspace of some of these main characters. And without interviewing them, I mean, what better portal into the madness than these novels?
00:51:06
Speaker
Really? Exactly. And to see the escalation from novel to novel that, you know, Daybell as a writer initially, he always would write an author's note at the beginning. And his author's note was kind of humble at first. He would always think his wife and
00:51:22
Speaker
Um, for, you know, encouraging his writing and his family and stuff. But over time, they really started to change where he said, you know, this thing I wrote about in my last novel actually happened. And, you know, I'm really starting to think that like, you know, maybe I'm seeing things, maybe these are.
00:51:37
Speaker
These are more than just pieces of a story. Um, you know, but he would always hedge his bets and kind of say like, of course I don't, you know, I don't mean I'm a prophet. I would never say that, you know, he's trying to stay in the good graces of the LDS church wall. So kind of dip in a toe like out just to see how far over the line he could get. And then, you know, novel by novel, he starts saying like, my predictions are coming true. Like this is what's happening. This is what we can expect. And, you know, and it's just a,
00:52:07
Speaker
Yeah, he's clearly gaining confidence in his fringe belief system. What became the challenge for you outside of the, you know, the novel parts of like, you know, fleshing out the headspace of these characters?
Narrative Development in Writing
00:52:22
Speaker
And a lot of times the desperation that I felt of so many of them to want to belong and to believe in something, to be a part of a tribe, really.
00:52:32
Speaker
I think that one of the things that was so, so difficult for me in the reporting was this was a story that was just caught on fire in tabloid space.
00:52:47
Speaker
A lot of people had signed agreements that they wouldn't talk to other reporters. They were only talking to Dateline or they were agreeing to do a podcast or whatever. That's from the most main characters all the way down to tertiary characters.
00:53:08
Speaker
So it was like there was this big wall around the story. And I was just kind of like walking along the edges, knocking, trying to find a weak point that I could get through. And so finally, I think because quite a lot of time had passed, a lot of stories had already come out about this case, I reached Chad Daybell's brother.
00:53:30
Speaker
I reached out to everybody and said, will you talk? Will you talk? Will you talk expecting everyone to say no? And he actually said yes. He was like, I haven't talked to anybody. I've gotten a lot of people have asked and I looked at your work and sure, I'm willing to talk. And it started a series of conversations that we had. And that was a huge breakthrough for me because he hadn't talked to anybody else.
00:53:54
Speaker
And he was really open with me about his brother and about just the havoc that everything that happens in this book had wreaked on his family and them trying to not even pick up the pieces but just understand what the heck had happened. They were so confused.
00:54:14
Speaker
So that was huge for me. And it allowed me to say, is your brother the type of person that would do X, Y, or Z? And he could say definitively because it's his brother. Yes or no. And so that was very, very helpful. And then with Lori, with her story, it was even harder because
00:54:33
Speaker
She just didn't seem to have a ton of close friends and the ones that were around her had been signed agreements not to talk. So I had to go really far back to people she went to middle school with and start from there and start to try and understand, okay, what was it like to grow up in this town that she grew up in?
00:54:54
Speaker
What did they do for fun? And what was she like? And just kind of build and build and build from there. I've never had to use so many pieces to just, it's like, I would have little interviews that were like five minutes or I'd have an interview that was two hours. And I was just pulling in all of these like details from as many places as I could get.
00:55:17
Speaker
How did you end up finding the people that you went to middle school with? Where were you finding these names? I'm trying to even remember. I think that was like I found some yearbook database and found a yearbook. I think I had found an archive.
00:55:41
Speaker
It wasn't this but it was like a Geocities page or something for like a reunion that had happened at one point and I basically emailed all the emails that were on this reunion page and like you know if there were 50 names like
00:55:56
Speaker
42 of the emails were bad, but like eight went through. And so that was like people, and I do just classic reporting. When I talk to somebody, then I say, who else should I talk to? And then they give me a couple of names and I talk to those people and say, who else should I talk to? And so it's just sort of building out from there based on whoever I could get. But yeah, there was a lot of mining, deep, deep mining that had to happen to get that stuff.
00:56:24
Speaker
And the book has so many elements, like there's LDS and then there's near-death experiences, and of course there's the Laurie Chad thread that kind of goes throughout the whole thing. So for you, as you were synthesizing this book and trying to structure it to something that was satisfying, how did you go about making sure that you had the right degree of tension and pacing throughout the entire thing to carry us through from beginning to end?
00:56:53
Speaker
Well, the narrative of the book is just, of what happened is just fascinating. I mean, right? Like it's just the craziest movie you've ever seen. I think I even say it in the book that it feels like a Coen Brothers movie. It's just, there's so much weird stuff that happens in such a short span of time. And then there's just a lot of violence. And so, what I basically knew was that,
00:57:19
Speaker
I had this Excel spreadsheet that is just like this master document of like anytime anybody did anything. So that's not just sort of in the span of the book and like the events that concern it, but just like when Chad wrote a book and then like, oh, he looks like he posted on some weird website, like, okay, so I will like have this crazy chronological timeline.
00:57:45
Speaker
And I knew that that was going to make up the bulk of the book was this narrative. But the narrative would allow me to introduce these concepts of the culture that these folks were coming from. So I knew that I had to give enough real life events that happened. So I would write that. I would write that timeline straight.
00:58:12
Speaker
I'm trying to think like what happened in July 2019, like I would write that scene. And so I basically just had all these scenes and then I played with, you know, the order that they were going to go in. And then I found ways, like I felt like if I gave somebody enough scene and then something insane happens, then I would just like take a pause and be like, okay, put a bit in that reader. Now I'm going to tell you about what you just read, where that
00:58:37
Speaker
what that relates to in the culture. I don't know if that makes sense, but that's how I made sense of it in my head, that the spine of the book was going to be held up by what happened. But what made it a book was the context of the cultures, why these things happen and where they happened.
00:58:59
Speaker
And given that you've been doing so much reporting over the years on far-right extremists and so forth, what is that suggested to you about the nature of our culture right now in 2022? What do you make of that?
00:59:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's scary. I think that the longer I do this work, the more I think I'm getting closer to a conclusion on how to fix it. And I still don't know. I mean, I've been writing almost exclusively about extremism for six years. And so it's like, if I don't know, then I don't know that anybody knows. I think that what I thought when I started doing this reporting, like the very first story I wrote about
00:59:46
Speaker
the far right was I wrote about a doomsday prepper in like 2014 for Playboy. And it was a real short story, but it was very interesting. And the reporting was really immersive for it. And then I wrote about the Bundys. I wrote about the Mollier standoff. I wrote about, you know, what happened in Bunkerville, Nevada. I started to think that like extremists were just like, I don't know, just like sort of unhinged people that they had
01:00:15
Speaker
you know, real baseless ideas, or are they, you know, we're just neglecting to exist in the same world of facts that I was. What I have come around to is that extremism is much, much more normal than we want to believe. That this book, the Valo de Bell's story, is really proof of how extremism can exist in plain sight and nobody can even know it.
01:00:45
Speaker
there are these spaces in our current culture that really nurture people toward radical ideologies, towards violence. And somebody can be participating in that and the people around them might not even know their kids, their spouses. And that's super scary. I think that we just saw this
01:01:06
Speaker
than this U-Haul of 31 white supremacists get pulled over in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho on their way to stage a big confrontation at the Pride Festival a couple weeks ago. And I think that it was a sort of shocking thing for a lot of people to realize that the people in that van were not from Idaho. I think a lot of people want to believe like, oh, Idaho, like there's just like extremists over there. There always have been like, we don't need to worry about them.
01:01:36
Speaker
one by one, each of those people being revealed showed that they were from all across the country. They were from tons of different states. I think that I've started to see that extremists are everywhere. They are in cities. They are in rural places. It is everyone's problem to worry about. And I think that even now, people are not quite making the connection that
01:02:04
Speaker
this is a big movement. You know, we've seen, you know, when I started writing about fringe far right stuff, it was fringe and now it's mainstream.
Awareness and Challenges of Extremism
01:02:15
Speaker
I mean, it's like the talking points of the Republican Party. So that is a that's a really sobering and scary thing for me. In trying to figure out what my role is in telling people and how much you know, like we've said, it's hard, it can be hard to get the attention of
01:02:35
Speaker
the public. I mean, there's millions of people who live in this country and most of them haven't heard Bundyville. And like, I'd love it if they did. I think we might not have had a January six if a lot of them did, but you know, it's, it's just, you know, I've come down to like this sort of difficult realization that like, I can do this work and I can like dive in as deep as I can and people will,
01:03:04
Speaker
you know, not everybody's willing to hear it. And so I'm the person that puts the information out there and what people decide to do with it is what they decide to do. Well, it goes to a point of that wonderful essay you wrote for The Guardian about the late Bill Morland. And towards the end, you know, you wrote, My anger lay solely on one question. How could a man write almost exclusively for 36 years about racism and extremism in America and die not seeing the problem go away?
01:03:33
Speaker
And I just, I get that sense too. It's just like you could be doing this for the next 36 years and you know, it might, it will likely still be prevalent. You know, that's just the reality, right? I'm so glad you honed in on that line because
01:03:48
Speaker
you know, after Bill's death, it was really difficult for me to figure out. I mean, when he died, it was I was having a moment where I was like, well, I don't I don't even think I want to do this. I don't even think I want to write about extremism. I used to write about heavy metal. Like, you know, I used to write about like, you know, I would write culture stories for the paper that I worked at. And I was good at it. You know, I wrote about porn stars and like observed people making a porn for like a year. And I wrote about, you know, I wrote about
01:04:17
Speaker
you know sex work and I wrote about all kinds of just fascinating people and cultures and movements and then all of a sudden this thing happened in my state you know and and I just couldn't look away from it and Bill was such a grounding presence for me because when we met it was just you know we were like 30 some odd years apart in age but like we just clicked and we would talk all the time about
01:04:44
Speaker
why we do the work that we do. And I was really questioning that. I mean, it was really difficult after January 6th. I had kind of a bit of a breakdown because I was just like, in Bundyville season two, you hear us ask a guy, what are you going to do if Trump loses the election? And he says, all bets are off. We'll do everything. We'll do anything.
01:05:09
Speaker
you know, my producer and I were like scrambled after that interview. We're like, Oh my God, we have to put the podcast out there sooner. People need to know this. You know, that came out a year and a half before January six happened. And it was so difficult to watch that and to just realize like you can, you can work really hard as a journalist and you can put your safety on the line and
01:05:33
Speaker
to do the work, to tell people. And it doesn't mean they're going to listen. And so, you know, I've been struggling with that and being like, you know, maybe I should just go write about music again. Electric mayhem podcast. Do electric mayhem again. Like, you know, we'll stay up till 2 a.m. and stuff. But I think that my answer was given to me when Bill died. I was like, I have to keep doing this. You know, I don't.
01:06:02
Speaker
clearly have a knack for it. And I don't know how I got to be that way, but I'm willing to do it because I care about democracy. I care about being able to continue making journalism. I care about the First Amendment. I care about equal rights. That's not me being biased. That's just me wanting to live in a functioning democracy. And we've seen in the West these very big instances of extremism
01:06:32
Speaker
And they were sort of kind of brushed under the carpet, I think, by the national media. They were just sort of seen as the work of aggrieved cowboys or whatever. And it's like, no, no, no, the same people who were participating in those things went and stormed the Capitol on January 6th. So I think that if I can help contribute in that way, then I certainly will.
01:06:56
Speaker
And I think you breached the subject in Bundyville too, and you were talking about, or with Bill, was here's this, there's two schools of thought. You're like, well, should we cover these white supremacists or white nationalists and how they go about their work and give them attention? Or do we ignore them or let it die on the vine? And it's kind of like, well, they're not going to die on the vine.
01:07:20
Speaker
So it's like that calculus of how to cover them without aggrandizing their movement. I imagine it's a calculus that's been hard for you to navigate and probably Bill too for the greater part of his entire career.
01:07:35
Speaker
Sure. Yeah, I think it absolutely is because, you know, I always say I'm one freelance journalist, like I'm a one-woman newsroom. There are so many stories that come at me that I just can't do, but the ones that I choose to do help sort of advance the conversation that we're having around extremism.
01:07:54
Speaker
And I think that what I have come to know, and certainly something that I talked a lot about with Bill, was this idea of ignoring people. It just doesn't work. Like, it doesn't work. I mean, you look at former state representative Matt Shea in Washington state. I mean, the guy was talking about super extreme things for 12 years of being in office. I mean, he was reelected again and again and again.
01:08:22
Speaker
A lot of people just ignored him and I took the tag that you couldn't ignore him. And, you know, he's not, he's not in office anymore. That's certainly not because of my reporting, but it was one, I was one of many reporters that were sort of like, hang on, why are we ignoring this? Like,
01:08:37
Speaker
because he's got a lot of power and he's got some real scary ideas, violent ideas. And I think that with the book too, that was a choice that I had to make because I think that you'll find within LDS culture, there are a lot of people who are like, why does
01:08:59
Speaker
the media want to keep talking about the story at the heart of Under the Banner of Heaven or Warren Jeffs and the polygamous communities. Why do they want to talk about that stuff? And I think that
01:09:13
Speaker
My answer would be exactly the same, that these communities at the fringes have committed violence. They have subjugated people. They've pushed conspiracy theories. If you're pushing the same conspiracy theories that are being pushed by white nationalists,
01:09:33
Speaker
It's just, I don't really care who you are. We need to talk about that. So I think that that's definitely a driver for the stories that I decide to do. Do we need to talk about this person? Do we need to talk about some random commenter on Twitter that has no profile pic that's like...
01:09:52
Speaker
saying, saying, you know, I don't know, it's not it's a very deliberate editorial choice that I think you have to make about which people you talk about, you know, certainly, they're in positions of power, they need to be held accountable. But if they're in positions of influence, then I think they also need to be held accountable.
01:10:10
Speaker
One of the last things I wanted to ask you was, in the acknowledgements too, you talk about Bill, which is wonderful, and you wrote that great essay for The Guardian. But there's also this moment where you mentioned that Sean Desmond, your editor, he left a voicemail of encouragement that you'll never delete, and maybe you could share what that voicemail was.
01:10:33
Speaker
Yeah. So I got it, I want to say I was like in November and I had written the book and then rewritten the book and then maybe sort of half rewrote it again. So it was like it had gone through a few stages and it was not easy to do that. And I came out of coffee with another journalist and I had this voicemail from him and he just said,
01:10:57
Speaker
Oh my god, Leah, I think we have an amazing book. This is really, really good. And I'm so over the moon. It was just such a nice note of encouragement that I was like, I think any time that I get down on what I'm doing and why I'm doing it,
01:11:16
Speaker
you know, writing not being very lucrative and journalism being sort of under assault. I could go back to this voicemail and hear this editor that I have a ton of respect for being giddy, actually, actually giddy about our book. So it's really cool. Yeah.
01:11:33
Speaker
I have an email that I've saved for more than 10 years, and it's at the crux of it. It's from the late Richard Todd, who is Tracy Kidder's editor, and among others, Darcy Fry, somebody I think maybe even Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, he's worked with.
01:11:50
Speaker
And he was a fourth semester mentor of mine for an MFA. I got back in the late aughts. And it was just something to the effect of, it was just like the crux of it was, well, Brendan, you might not have like a ton of talent, but...
01:12:07
Speaker
But you have you have what a lot of writers with talent don't have and it's just like you you you stick with it It's just like you have you have a lot of perseverance and ultimately it really comes down to perseverance So I was like, all right, I can get a little bit better But I guess I have something that's intangible and I'd like to think I've done a little bit better But I do have the perseverance part and I haven't made it yet. But one of these days I
01:12:33
Speaker
It's so funny, like the things that we hang on to. I had an email exchange like, oh my God, probably 15 years ago, probably even longer than that with the writer Jess Walter, who's brilliant fiction writer. He wrote one nonfiction book, total mic drop on his part about Ruby Ridge. Like it's just the only thing, it's the first and last thing anybody needs to read about it. And I had written him when I had quit journalism and said, you know,
01:13:01
Speaker
I don't know what I'm doing. All I want to do is write." And he just said to me, no one's going to ever put a sign on your door that says writer. So you got to do that. And it was like, I kept that. And I had a great email exchange with Taffy Brodesser-Ackner, who's at the New York Times. And I'd written her and just said, I just love your work.
Advice and Personal Reflections
01:13:25
Speaker
how did you get to do the assignments that you want to do? And, you know, I thought she would never write me back. She wrote me back in like 15 minutes. And she was like, freelancers who are miserable put themselves there. And you just have to fight to do the work that you want to do and just don't stop until you get to do the work you want to do. And it was just like, it's so funny that you also keep these sorts of things because they're like kind of tough love, but it's sort of what you need to hear from the people you respect. And that's just so invaluable to me.
01:13:54
Speaker
That's incredible. And Leah, I don't know if you caught the email I sent you just before we were on the air, about 20 minutes before we were supposed to record. A question I like asking guests, as we bring this airliner down for a landing, is just asking for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners. And as I say, it can be anything. So if you saw that and the pump is primed, I'd love to hear what you might recommend for the listeners out there.
01:14:20
Speaker
I, um, man, oh my gosh, I have so many, I'm like literally sitting in the middle of like all of my books. So I'm like, which book do I recommend? But, uh, you know, this is, I'm going to sound like such a hippie, but I recommend going outside, um, because I spend.
01:14:36
Speaker
All of my time making journalism and what time I don't spend making journalism, I spend backpacking and hiking and being very immersed in the wilderness. And sometimes I come out of it and I think that the only thing worth doing is spending time outside.
01:14:55
Speaker
The way it calms your mind, the way it makes it seem like Twitter doesn't matter, is pretty stunning. So sleep under the stars, you know, have a campfire if it's not fire season and carry a heavy pack. That's what I recommend.
01:15:13
Speaker
Have you gone to Kentucky Falls on the coast? No. No, I haven't. I just read about it the other day, though. Dude, it is. Is it cool? Oh, it's amazing. Before the dry season kicks in, you got to maybe go. I imagine since we've had such a wet spring that it's still roaring. It's not that long a hike. It's a bit of a grind to get there on these old timber roads. But it's near Mapleton in Florence. So it's a little bit of a drive for you. That sounds wonderful.
01:15:41
Speaker
But once you get up there, it's you meander through these roads and there's a nice little parking spot. And then it's about a two mile hike in. So nothing too demanding. And there's there's an upper and a lower falls. But when you get to the lower falls, holy shit, it's like you don't see it coming. And then all of a sudden it's there and you're like, whoa. And we were just so lucky to live in this like state. I mean, it's like I've spent almost my whole life here. And I'm like, how is there still stuff I haven't seen? Like I've never been there.
01:16:09
Speaker
It is unbelievable. It's one of the most impressive things I've seen in my short time in Oregon. You would never know it's there. It's just tucked way in the coastal forest. It's very hard to get to, not very publicized. Yeah, if you got a chance, you got to check it out.
01:16:26
Speaker
Oh, I will so go. I love that kind of for the coast forest between the coast and like the coast range is just like, it's like, Oh my God. I'm like, if you could just build a little writer hut in there. Oh my God. Just a little, Oh my God. Like an 80 square foot tiny home. Yeah. Oh, it'd be perfect.
01:16:48
Speaker
It's amazing. Oh my God. Well, Leah, this was so wonderful to get to talk to you about the arc of your career in this book, this wonderful book you've written in the journalism you do. So I just got to commend you on an incredible job well done. Thank you. Yeah. And thanks so much for making the time to come on here and talk shop. It was wonderful. Of course. Anytime. This was so much fun. I really appreciate asking and thank you for reading the book.
01:17:19
Speaker
Can you believe it? You somehow did it again. I honestly don't know how these shows get made. Man, I really, really don't.
01:17:27
Speaker
Thanks to Leah, at Leah Cetilia on social. The name of the book is When the Moon Turns to Blood. It's published by 12. Go check it out for some true crimey end times fun. And if you could share or link up to the show on social media and I'll be sure to give you those digital fist bumps, James Hetfield gif, some social validation that I see you seeing the show. Today, so I'm reading this or I'm recording this,
01:17:58
Speaker
that's Thursday, the night before I publish. I just got back from doing a little story that got put on my plate because somebody else couldn't do it. I tend to pick up scraps for people. I'm like the little robot in WALL-E, it's like foreign contaminant.
01:18:17
Speaker
But there's some Ukrainian athletes in town, two high school age girls and they're a 31-year-old coach. And they've been basically refugees since the war in Ukraine. So I got to speak with their coach about being over here and they're competing as guests in a track meet, a U-20 track meet.
01:18:42
Speaker
That was pretty cool. The language there, I believe it's Russian. I know Katya Savchuk, who was on the show here, she spoke fluent from Ukraine and speaks fluent Russian. In any case, beautiful language. It was just like smitten by the language. And thankfully, the coach did speak some English, but someone had showed up who actually could translate, so that made everybody
01:19:10
Speaker
at ease. I'd never have spoken to anyone with a translator. So that was kind of a trip. I know some reporters are like, oh, that's old hat. But I had never done that. It was cool. It'll be an all right little story. It's one of those stories that you get at the last minute and you get to interview one person and write it. So whatever.
Ukrainian Athletes Amidst Conflict
01:19:29
Speaker
it'll be what it is but it definitely puts things in perspective. You know here they were competing in Turkey I think and then February 24th Russia invades Ukraine and suddenly they don't really have a country to go back to so they've been kind of hopping around the globe. Been in the States for a little while and they're training up to the world in Colombia and so that's where they're at. Like I said, perspective.
01:19:57
Speaker
You would never know by even just looking at them that there's this hell going back in their home country. Anyway, so this is a bit of a woo-woo thing for me to say and definitively off-brand like way the fuck off-brand. Are you ready?
Career Struggles and Realizations
01:20:17
Speaker
Right here right now is where you're supposed to be I'm sure we've all heard some version of that somewhere probably on some Yoga social media profile or something or some meditation app who knows but the other day it just kind of popped into my head like some sort of spirit I Think I was doing the dishes so maybe that spirit was like brother You got the skill just be a dishwasher Just doing man
01:20:47
Speaker
I've been one to spend the significant part of my days, nights, and weekends lamenting my place in the literary and podcasty world. Always comparing myself to others, always wondering how so-and-so got that break, or how so-and-so has been able to sustain it, or how so-and-so keeps getting anthologized, or how so-and-so keeps getting these grants and fellowships that I haven't even heard of, and how these people even know these exist in the first place.
01:21:13
Speaker
baffles me how so-and-so is on like four panels now like oh my god how do I manage but suddenly like a feather floating down and just brushing up against my skin that that phrase where where you are is where you're supposed to be gave me a sense of lightness I've rarely felt
01:21:34
Speaker
And this was before I talked to this Ukrainian coach. Anyway, I talk a big game sometimes about running your own race. But if we're being honest, that's real hard to put into practice when you're bombarded by the public successes of our peers and our rivals. So yeah, that's where I'm at on June 24th, 2022.
01:22:01
Speaker
I'm just going to keep slapping another coat of paint on this nauseating book proposal I'm working on. And if I get scooped, I will bash my head against the fire pit outside my studio, put some heavy weight on a barbell, and scream like I'm passing a kidney stone. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can do interview, see ya.
01:22:45
Speaker
you