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Episode 451: When Beach Read Meets a System with Lindsay Jill Roth

Friday, Feb. 14, 2025

Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, Dan Zak and Connie Chung will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

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When Lindsay Jill Roth (@lindsayjillroth) described her latest book as beach read meets system, that was pretty spot-on. There’s a breezy, conversational tone to Romances & Practicalities: A Love Story (Maybe Yours?) in 250 Questions (William Morrow). It weaves the research and interviews Lindsay did along with her personal story of finding her partner.

Lindsay is an award-winning television producer and writer, with novel under her belt as well, What Pretty Girls Are Made Of (Simon & Schuster). She has worked events like The Grammys, The TONYs, and The Masters.

Episode 450: Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, John Eisenberg Chronicles the Long Journey of the Black Quarterback

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John Eisenberg knew he wanted to write books from a very young age. He has written eleven … his latest being Rocket Men: The Black Quarterbacks Who Revolutionized Pro Football (Basic Books).

It’s an amazing history that tackles (pardon the football pun) the institutionalized/structural racism of the NFL from the perspective of the quarterback position.¹

There was a time when Black men were thought mentally incapable of handling the position, but they were encouraged to change positions to less intellectually demanding positions. Yeah.

You Have All You Need

Monday, February 3, 2025

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The joys of running with a notebook and pencil is you get a pretty good cracking idea every 1-2 miles and it behooves you to have a means to write it down.

I’m two weeks into a twelve-week plan (still have to register for the event I want to do at the end of April), and there’s a tendency to look at the gear I have, the clothes I wear, and think I really could use a wrist watch so I can have a hands-free stopwatch? Or maybe one that keeps track of distance and pace?

I quickly snap out of it. I have all I need. I have a hydration backpack that has a pocket for a phone, and phones have stopwatches. I don’t need fancy tech shirts¹, shorts, and shoes (though shoes are naturally a good place to upgrade).

The point is, with running as it is with writing, you have all you need. There’s often a rush to over-complicate things, to purchase that thing that will grease the skids or make you feel less like an imposter.

If you want to write, any writing implement and any piece of paper will do. You don’t need MS Word (unless Mariner Books demands it). Just use Google Docs or whatever free software you have. You don’t need to go on a retreat. You don’t need to attend exorbitantly priced writing conferences². Don’t be seduced by MFA programs to legitimize your pursuit.

I’m about to push my comfort zone into the YouTube Universe and I’m nervous about the gear or software I need. I remind myself. To get started, I have all I need. It was like when I started podcasting in 2013: I didn’t overthink it. I had a landline on speaker phone attached to a tripod by rubber band aimed at my laptop as I recorded the phone call. Now I have a nice set up that sounds way more polished, but I didn’t wait for the perfect set up to start.

It’s a good mantra: in most cases, you have all you need.

I have a couple from back in the day. By and large, I just deal with nipple chafing. TMI? Nah. ↩︎
Though, at some point, you’ll want to to build your community and to be a good literary citizen. ↩︎

Episode 449: Drew Philp Wants to Make Spanakopita Out of Spinach News

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It’s that Atavistian time of the month and this month’s story is heavy and chronicles what is likely, probably, a genocide in Tigray, Ethiopia … the hospital was overrun with victims. The medical staff risked everything to treat the wounded and believe the world ignored a genocide.

Drew Philp (@drewphilp.bsky.social) is the journalist behind “There Will Be No Mercy,” and we talk about how he pitched this as ER only in an Ethiopian hospital as that population endured unthinkable indignities. And this isn’t a historical piece. This happened within the last five years. Yeah. It’s a courageous piece of reporting, but even more courageous of the people at the heart of the story who literally are risking their lives to have this story told.

Episode 448: Evan Ratliff Returns … Or Did He?

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[Downloadable Transcript TK, CNFers]

Very nice to welcome Evan Ratliff (@ev_rat_public) back to the program, the special occasion being his incredible podcast Shell Game, the show where Evan created an AI voice agent in his own image and set it loose on the world.

It raises many questions about the ethics and the utility of the increasingly sophisticated world of voice agents. It won’t be too far into the future where they will be indistinguishable from actual humans.

Episode 447: Brooke Champagne Sits Back from the Suckitude

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By Brendan O’Meara

Brooke Champagne (@champagne_brooke) knows many things, but maybe most of all is that feeling of being able to sit and labor through shitty writing to get to the good writing. And get to the good writing she did in her brilliant essay collection Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy (University of Georgia Press).

You can’t put this essay collection in a box, unless that box is titled “really cool shit.”

Episode 446: Harrison Scott Key and the Plight of Memoir

By Brendan O’Meara

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Harrison Scott Key (@harrisonscottkey) has written three memoirs, and what’s key to them as the narrator is making yourself either the idiot or the villain. In How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told (Avid Reader Press) he was, for a time, the victim of his wife’s affair. But in deftly maneuvering and playing with structure he treats his marriage like a crime novel.

Harrison saves some of the biggest punches for himself as and his wife pieced together the wreckage into something lasting.

Harrison is also the author of The World’s Largest Man and Congratulations, Who Are You Again? He’s masterfully funny and handles the balance between jokes and earnestness with a skill few possess.

Episode 445: For Andrew Dubbins, It’s About the Love of the Story

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Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zak will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

By Brendan O’Meara

When Andrew Dubbins locks into a story idea, it’s got to tick (tic?) certain boxes. Above them all is it’s got to have a story engine, it’s got to be cinematic.

And so it is with his story for The Atavist Magazine, “The After Dark Bandit.” This is a wild story about twin brothers who robbed banks at the same time, thus confounding authorities about how, it would appear, one guy was knocking off two banks at the same time.

Andrew is the author of Into Enemy Waters: The Story of the WWII Frogmen Who became the Navy SEALs. He was journalist of the year by the LA Press Club in 2020, and his work has appeared in Men’s Health, Slate, the LA Times, Smithsonian, Alta, and The Daily Beast.

Episode 444: Stephanie Gorton Embraces the Messiness

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Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zak will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

By Brendan O’Meara

On the tracking of the podcast, I said that Stephanie Gorton hadn’t been on the podcast in 2.5 years. It’s been 4.5 years. But she’s back! This to celebrate The Icon & the Idealist: Margaret Sanger, Mary Ware Dennett, and the Rivalry That Brought Birth Control to America (Ecco).

It’s a tremendous book and one that has received a lot of positive attention in places like The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.

Episode 443: Jared Sullivan and the Subtle Art of the Cold Call

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Promotional support is brought to you by the Power of Narrative Conference, celebrating its 26th year on the last weekend of March 28 and 29. 300-400 journalists from around the world are coming. Keynote speakers Susan Orlean, Connie Schultz, and Dan Zak will deliver the knowledge. Listeners of this podcast can get 15% off your enrollment fee by using the code CNF15. To learn more visit combeyond.bu.edu … and use that CNF15 code.

https://combeyond.bu.edu/offering/the-power-of-narrative-conference/

https://brendanomeara.com/episode-281-susan-orlean-tackles-ledes-generating-story-ideas-and-on-animals/

By Brendan O’Meara

Jared Sullivan is here. https://jared-sullivan-kisp.squarespace.com/about

He is the author of Valley So Low: One Lawyer’s Fight for Justice in the Wake of America’s Great Coal Catastrophe. It’s published by Knopf.

https://bookshop.org/book/9780593321119

Jared’s book has gotten a prime review in The New York Times and was one of those four featured books in a recent issue of The New Yorker. You know the Briefly Noted section toward the back. It doesn’t matter what issue. What matters is that it was THERE.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/14/books/review/valley-so-low-jared-sullivan.html