Are you holding onto a railing? OK, good, Isaac Fitzgerald (@IsaacFitzgerald) is here, CNFers! He’s the author of the incredible memoir-in-essays Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional (Bloomsbury).
Isaac is a frequent contributor on The Today Show, offering book recommendations to the masses. His CV has The Rumpus, McSweeney’s, BuzzFeed Books, among others. He’s also the author of How to be a Pirate, Pen and Ink, and Knives and Ink.
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Blink and you might miss Lauren Fleshman (@laurenfleshman). She’s a champion runner and the author of Good for a Girl: A Woman Running in a Man’s World (Penguin Press).
Her new book explores how broken our athletics systems are as they relate to women. By overlaying the female experience over the man’s construct (speak nothing of trans athletes, which is whole other ball of wax for another day), Lauren unpacks what a disservice that is for young women.
Lauren can officially boast that her book is a New York Times best seller, which is pretty bad ass. She wrote the book herself without a ghost writer, so, mad props. And in this episode we talk about:
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Not rare to have repeat guests, but somewhat rare to have them back so quickly, and what a treat! It’s Leah Sottile (@Leah_Sottile)! You might remember her from Ep. 322 when we talked about her book When the Moon Turns to Blood. You also might remember her from the podcast series Bundyville.
And she’s back with another killer podcast called Burn Wild, taking a look at far-left extremism, particularly the environmental movement of the 1990s with the Environmental Liberation Front.
It’s what I’ve come to expect from Leah: Deeply researched and thoroughly written, delivered in her pull-up-a-stool narration.
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By Brendan O’Meara
You’re in for a treat because Damon Brown is back on the show!
Damon’s laundry list of accolades and books and projects is too long to type. Too long, CNFers. But! He’s awfully proud (and he should be!) of his YouTube show Bring Your Worth. He’s got 300 episodes and counting.
Damon’s also the author of Career Remix: Get the Gig You Want with the Skills You’ve Got.
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It’s that Atavistian time of the month! This time we speak with Madeline Bodin, a freelance journalist based out of Vermont.
Her piece “The Curious Case of Nebraska Man” is the story of a fossilized tooth that spurs the debate over evolution and creationism and, as often happens in this country, pins science into a corner where it must be defended again, again, and again.
In this pod, I also speak with editor-in-chief Seyward Darby. Sidebar: She has a new piece in The Guardian about abused beagles. Is there nothing she can’t do? Maybe play drums …
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Carl Hoffman is here (@lunaticcarl and @carlhoffmanstories)! He’s the author of Liar’s Circus: A Strange and Terrifying Journey into the Upside-Down World of Trump’s MAGA Rallies (Custom House).
I read this quick, as most of you will, and it is a strange and terrifying dive into the virtual reality chamber of MAGA Trump supporters. Carl is a long-time travel writer, and he turns that gaze and immersion at our own country.
It called to mind a conversation I heard with Henry Rollins, who has traveled all over the world, where he said the place he feels most unsafe in the world is … America.
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It’s been a long time since we featured a writer from the Pipe Wrench Magazine roster, so it was it nice to welcome Emily Fox Kaplan to CNF Pod HQ to talk about her piece “Searching for Zarahemla.”
It’s a trippy travel piece that has a very David Foster Wallace vibe to it, though Emily hasn’t read any DFW. Just as well. Far be it from me to be a the bro to say, ‘You gotta read him.’
But read his tennis writing …
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Hey CNFers, Lyndsie Bourgon (@lbourgon) is here to talk about Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods (Little Brown Spark).
This was a nice conversation that dug into the serendipity of reporting, getting our heads around organizing research, as well as the cultural identity that’s tied to logging and how that leads to timber poaching, a $1 billion “industry” in the U.S.
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Sarah Souli (@sgsouli) is here to talk about her new feature for The Atavist Magazine called “A Matter of Honor.” Man, how’d she pull this off?
Three Afghan women were murdered at the border of Greece and Turkey and Sarah doggedly pursued the story to give names, faces, lives to lives of these three women. It’s not a story you’d read to your kid at night, but maybe once you put them to bed?
We dig into how she went about the reporting, how she faced the rejection of this story and kept going, refiled, and landed it with Seyward Darby and The Atavist. Lots of goodies here I think you’ll enjoy, like the clanging monkey hitting cymbals in her head. Yeah, it’s a thing.
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By Brendan O’Meara
Rachel Dickison is here to talk about her new book The Loneliest Places: Loss, Grief, and the Long Journey Home. It’s is published by Three Hills Press.
No way to sugar coat what this book deals with: Rachel’s son Jack died by suicide in 2012. He was 17. And this book stays within the boundaries of Rachel’s experience, her headspace, her grief.
Yes, her three daughters and her husband were deeply affected by this tragedy, but you won’t hear from them much, not really until the end of the book where Rachel interrogates her selfishness and withdrawal and, in some cases, abandonment. It would be easy to judge Rachel in this book, even her editor wondered how “likeable” she was as a character and that speaks to how honest Rachel was about her processing of this unthinkable experience.
This is something I’ve never done before, but I think it should be brought up, as I have heard other podcasts do this. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts and may harm themselves, call or text 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. This will route people to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline where they can speak with a trained counselor.
Continue reading “Episode 344: Rachel Dickinson”