What a treat to have Svati Kirsten Narula (@svatikirsten) on the podcast to talk about her Outside feature “A Mountain Called Her Home” about the life and death of Nanda Devi Unsoeld about “went went wrong during this controversial adventure, shedding light on an enigmatic young woman who lived without limits.”
This is a great chat about patience, not burning bridges, and the struggle of lobbying for access with people who have felt burned in the past and, despite a reporter’s best intentions, burning those people again.
Had a nice time around the CNFin’ campfire talking shop, freelancing, reporting on personal stories, and finding ways to make the “I” implicit vs. IN YOUR FACE.
She’s a former features editor for Outside Magazine, and it was a reported essay she wrote for outside about burnout and the meaning of life that prompted this conversation. Can’t find a link to that story, but her piece on garages is awesome, as is this piece on money, as well as the housing crisis in a ski town.
We chat about her journey in freelancing. She’s on her second rodeo with freelancing, after a stint as features editor for Outside. Her background is in finance and business, so we dig into some lessons she learned from that that help her in freelancing.
“I was a poetry major in college which was of course of great concern to my parents.” —Charles Bethea
Here we are with the first episode of 2016, No. 16, sweet sixteen, Charles Bethea. This was a fun episode as we talk about Charle’s start in freelancing, his love of breakfast, and one of his favorite quotes of all time.
Like Eva Holland, Charles’ writing takes you places. He’s funny and his writing has a smooth feel to it. Suddenly you’re done with the piece and it felt like nothing, like gravity did all the work for you.
Aside from having his work published in The New Yorker (where he has a regular sports column on its website), the now-defunct Grantland, and Outside Magazine, he was also a producer on the short documentaryFair Chase, about persistence hunting. If you read Born to Runby Christopher McDougall, you know that this is a theory about man’s early hunting by wearing down and overheating four-legged prey.
Anyway, point being Charles is a busy man with serious chops.
Here’s the link to the episode since folks with mobile devices still can’t stream it from the blog post (Podomatic is NOT on its game with this bout of customer service). Here’s the embed anyway.
Also here are links to a sampling of Charles’ work. You can find more at his website charlesbethea.com.
