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Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to The Bob Left's podcast. My

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Speaker 1: guest today is Robert cole Curl, author of the best

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Speaker 1: selling book Hit in Value With Robert, it's great to

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Speaker 1: be here, Bob. Thanks so much for having me on

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Speaker 1: the show. Now you're like me. We're talking before we

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Speaker 1: started that you're Bob. Were you ever? Robert? I was

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Speaker 1: Bobby until I think the day I arrived for college

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Speaker 1: and um, someone asked me my name and I tried

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Speaker 1: to say Bobby, but I, um, I got stuck on

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Speaker 1: the second syllable. Something kept me from saying Bobby, and

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Speaker 1: I just switched to Bob immediately and that was it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was certainly Bobby growing up and occasionally in my family.

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Speaker 1: Certainly by time I hit college, I was not Bobby either.

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Speaker 1: But I have never been Robert. It's really kind of funny. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So you wrote this book Kin in Valley Road. It's

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Speaker 1: about a family, the Galvin family from Colorado Springs. There

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Speaker 1: are twelve children and six of them get schizophrenia. How

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Speaker 1: did you come and become involved with this story? Well,

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Speaker 1: my career really took shape at New York Magazine, where

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Speaker 1: I wrote a lot of true crime stories and other

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Speaker 1: dramatic and vivid nonfiction tales. And I just tended to

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Speaker 1: specialize in writing about people who never imagined that they

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Speaker 1: would get news coverage. So not politicians or movie stars,

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Speaker 1: but everyday people caught up in something extremely uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: of human interest. And my longtime editor there, John Gluck,

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Speaker 1: contacted me one day about four years ago. We both

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Speaker 1: had left New York Magazine years earlier and had lunch

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Speaker 1: every now and then. But he, uh, he contacted me

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Speaker 1: saying that he went to school with a friend of

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Speaker 1: his high school decades ago. Her name was Lindsay. They

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Speaker 1: dated in high school. And it's just because I've read

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Speaker 1: the book Is This Hot Kiss with referring to his

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Speaker 1: high school, the prep school that she ultimately went to. Yes,

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Speaker 1: they both were, um, you know, outsiders at Hotchkiss, sort

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Speaker 1: of not part of the preppy set, and they dated then,

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Speaker 1: and of course Lindsay wasn't really talking much about her

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Speaker 1: home life or anything then. But as the decades went

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Speaker 1: on and they stayed friendly, he learned the ins and

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Speaker 1: outs of her family, and he got to know her

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Speaker 1: older sister, Margaret also, and then one day in the

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Speaker 1: sisters came to him and said, we've been thinking about

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Speaker 1: for decades now, ways to try to tell the story

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Speaker 1: of our family, ways to let the world know about

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Speaker 1: our family. We believe scientists have been studying our family

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Speaker 1: for decades. The things that happened to us as children

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Speaker 1: are so extreme and unbelievable, no one would believe it.

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Speaker 1: And we've struggled, but we've decided that the time is

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Speaker 1: right to talk to an independent journalist about telling the

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Speaker 1: story and following the story wherever it goes, and talking

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Speaker 1: to everybody, not just making it a a story of

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Speaker 1: the two sisters. And so I got on the phone

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Speaker 1: with them four years ago, and this was the first

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Speaker 1: I heard about any of it. This is a family

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Speaker 1: with twelve children born during the baby boom. The oldest

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Speaker 1: in nt the youngest in nineteen. And we're since we're

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Speaker 1: being truthful, how old are you today? I am fifty one? Okay,

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Speaker 1: So the children were born during the baby boom, yes,

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Speaker 1: And a couple of years after the youngest was born,

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Speaker 1: the oldest started to get sick, started to behave strangely,

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Speaker 1: had psychotic breaks, was examined by psychiatrists. The parents were

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Speaker 1: desperate to try to mainstream him and have him kind

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Speaker 1: of grow out of it. And then another one got sick,

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Speaker 1: and another and another um six of the twelve, and

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Speaker 1: then there was abuse, and there were among the brothers,

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Speaker 1: and there was a murder suicide with one brother. As

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Speaker 1: sisters were telling me about this in that first phone

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Speaker 1: call four years ago, I was simply stunned and really

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Speaker 1: brought low. I thought to myself, how could all this

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Speaker 1: happen to just one family? And then I wondered how

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Speaker 1: they could even remain a family. You know, why would

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Speaker 1: either of these sisters want to stay in a family

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Speaker 1: like this given everything that happened to them. But they

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Speaker 1: were not that way on the phone. They were ready

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Speaker 1: to talk and to tell their story, and they believed

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Speaker 1: that everybody else in their family would too. Um they

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Speaker 1: felt like people could perhaps learn from their experiences. But

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Speaker 1: also they had done a lot of work in the

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Speaker 1: inter intervening decades. They had um a lot of therapy

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Speaker 1: and a lot of internal examination to try to move

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Speaker 1: through the traumas of their childhood. So they felt like

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Speaker 1: that could be a big part of the book as well.

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Speaker 1: I was more skeptical. I it took me some doing,

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Speaker 1: but I what I said, what to myself was there's

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Speaker 1: no way I would work on this unless every living

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Speaker 1: family member was supportive of it. I didn't want to

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Speaker 1: uh to suddenly being emotionally invested in writing this family

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Speaker 1: story and then see that there was opposition within the

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Speaker 1: family to even having it be out there. So I

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Speaker 1: decided to go very slowly and talk to everybody very gradually.

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Speaker 1: Let's let's let's go a little bit slower here. So

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Speaker 1: at what point did you decide there's a book here

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Speaker 1: and you wanted to do it? Um? It was about

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Speaker 1: three months after that first phone call. What I did

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Speaker 1: in those three months was very strategic, I said, um,

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Speaker 1: And I was very open with the sisters. I said,

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Speaker 1: let's let's take this slowly. Books take time, anyway. UM,

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Speaker 1: what if once a week I get on the phone

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Speaker 1: for an hour with a different family member of yours,

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Speaker 1: and then also with a few doctors who have talked

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Speaker 1: to the family and might be able to give me

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Speaker 1: some perspective on the medical side of things. And I'll

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Speaker 1: be very open ended in these phone calls. I'll just say,

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Speaker 1: so the sisters are interested in a book, what do

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Speaker 1: you think about that? And then just see what they

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Speaker 1: have to say. And I said to the sisters, we'll

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Speaker 1: all know at the end of three months or so

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Speaker 1: whether or not this is doable or not. And if

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Speaker 1: it isn't, I'll give you the tapes of the conversations

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Speaker 1: that that I've had with these folks, and you can

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Speaker 1: write your memoir whether it'll be my good deed for

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Speaker 1: the year, and and and they could go off and

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Speaker 1: do what they needed to do in their own way.

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Speaker 1: But um, being opened this way and being kind of

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Speaker 1: casual about it was helpful because I was able to

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Speaker 1: really really hear what each individual family member had to

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Speaker 1: say about their family, what had to say about the

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Speaker 1: idea of the book, and everyone was comfortable enough with

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Speaker 1: it so that a year later, when I got a

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Speaker 1: book contract and started working on it full time, I

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Speaker 1: really was up at full speed from the from the

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Speaker 1: get go. Then okay, let's go. So you do this

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Speaker 1: three month period of research, then what goes off in

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Speaker 1: your brain, and then how do you get the book deal? Um, Well,

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Speaker 1: after the three months, I thought, well, this is this

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Speaker 1: is really doable. I should get to Colorado, where most

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Speaker 1: of the family lives, and try to meet some people personally,

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Speaker 1: and most importantly, I should meet face to face with

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Speaker 1: Mimi Galvin, who was the matriarch of the family, who

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Speaker 1: at that point was years old, I believe, and to

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Speaker 1: start doing interviews with her to put together a book proposal.

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Speaker 1: And um, and then I, you know, I reached out

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Speaker 1: to my agents, who I had been my agents for

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Speaker 1: more than ten years, and were they really believe that

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Speaker 1: this was something special? Um. The more I talked about

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Speaker 1: it with them, the more I realized how unique this was.

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Speaker 1: There are wonderful, wonderful books about mental illness out there,

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Speaker 1: about the science and mental illness, and there are wonderful

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Speaker 1: books that are memoirs about the experience of either having

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Speaker 1: your own issue or um having a family member experienced

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Speaker 1: that issue. But nobody, to my knowledge, had been able

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Speaker 1: to do a three sixty degree omniscent you know book

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Speaker 1: that would read like a novel where you have every

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Speaker 1: input from every family member and everybody's perspective of woven

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Speaker 1: together so that it it really reads like some ambitious

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Speaker 1: narrative nonfiction. And so I felt like I had a

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Speaker 1: unicorn here, you know, something something that nobody else had,

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Speaker 1: and I wanted to see how far I could take it.

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Speaker 1: It really was a mystery at the beginning, whether it

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Speaker 1: would be a science book about an interesting case study

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Speaker 1: or a story of sisters surviving trauma. But by the

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Speaker 1: end of those three months I got invested in this

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Speaker 1: being much more ambitious. This could be an epic, an

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Speaker 1: intergenerational family saga that also is a medical mystery, a

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Speaker 1: book about a family where you get to know the

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Speaker 1: parents nice and slowly. You you walk in their shoes,

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Speaker 1: You live with them for years as they raise a family,

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Speaker 1: as they have dreams, as they realize some of those dreams,

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Speaker 1: and then as things start to fall apart, and then

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Speaker 1: in the whole second half of the book, the children

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Speaker 1: start to grow up and get new perspectives on everything

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Speaker 1: their parents have done. And because you've read part one,

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Speaker 1: you have all perspective on on the parents that you

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Speaker 1: wouldn't have otherwise had. And then interwoven you get a

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Speaker 1: little bit of information about why this family mattered for

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Speaker 1: medical research, which I think kind of raises the stakes

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Speaker 1: a little bit. Okay, let's really good. Down to the

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Speaker 1: nuts and bolts. You say this to your you tell this,

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Speaker 1: give the picture your agents. They immediately say, we're in.

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Speaker 1: They wanted me to do it before I wanted to

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Speaker 1: do it. Um, they understood how how different this was

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Speaker 1: and how potentially, um it could really connect with a

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Speaker 1: lot of people. And how do you sell it to

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Speaker 1: a publisher? Um, you write what's called a book proposal

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Speaker 1: when you're a novelist, and you do this often, that

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Speaker 1: means you've written half the book already, written some chapters already.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you've if you've written the entire thing already. But

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Speaker 1: with nonfiction, it's more of a perhaps you'd have some

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Speaker 1: sample chapters, but really it's more of a a high

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Speaker 1: speed version of what the book will be, like a

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Speaker 1: flyover of I'm going to do this, and I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: do that, and I already have done this, and I

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Speaker 1: already have and that, and this is how I envisioned it,

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Speaker 1: a little like a Hollywood pitch meeting. And I sent

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Speaker 1: that to How long did it take you right there? Oh? Um,

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Speaker 1: over Christmas time, so like a couple of weeks, and

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Speaker 1: then it went. Then my agents helped me revise it,

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Speaker 1: and then we sent it out in the spring. Um uh,

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Speaker 1: the timing of it. There was some particular reason to

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Speaker 1: send it out then, and um, something like a dozen

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Speaker 1: publishers received it, and I took meetings with ten of them,

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Speaker 1: and eight of them bid on it. And the interesting

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Speaker 1: part was that I have a good friend, one of

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Speaker 1: my best friends, Jennifer Senior. She she's an author and

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Speaker 1: worked with me at New York Magazine and most recently

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Speaker 1: has been a book critic and cultural critic at the

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Speaker 1: New York Times. She's on the op ed page now.

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Speaker 1: And she said, I predict that the people you meet

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Speaker 1: with who have the most people in the room are

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Speaker 1: the people who are going to bid the highest. What

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Speaker 1: was the thought there? The thought was that they were

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Speaker 1: so that there would be enough instito usitional investment in

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Speaker 1: the idea of the book, that there'd be people in

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Speaker 1: the house, would be so psyched about it that they

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Speaker 1: would want to try and put on a good show

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Speaker 1: for me. So um lo and behold, she was right.

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Speaker 1: Double Day had the most people in the room, and

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Speaker 1: and and they won the auction. And I could not

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Speaker 1: be happy. Or my editor, Chris Popolo, is one of

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Speaker 1: the best in the business. It's been a wonderful experience

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Speaker 1: the whole way through. Okay, how luquiative is a deal

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Speaker 1: like this, Well, it had to be enough for me

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Speaker 1: to work full time on it. Um Uh. That was

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Speaker 1: not the case with my first book, Lost Girls, where

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Speaker 1: I had enough time to maybe take six months of

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Speaker 1: leave from my job at New York Magazine at the

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Speaker 1: time and write it, and then I was working full

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Speaker 1: time and revising the book for the next six months

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Speaker 1: to a year. That that was difficult, But that would

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Speaker 1: not have been possible with a book like this because

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Speaker 1: while I certainly had access to the family and could

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Speaker 1: go and interview them any time I wanted to, the

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Speaker 1: science of schizophrenia was something I was starting at zero

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Speaker 1: with and I really needed to hit the books and

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Speaker 1: really need to needed to interview researchers and understand neurobiology

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Speaker 1: and biology and genetics and psychiatry and brain chemistry and pharmacology.

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Speaker 1: It was very daunting, and so there was no way

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Speaker 1: I could do what so many people I admired you,

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Speaker 1: which is, you know, wake up at four in the

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Speaker 1: morning and write for three hours and then go to

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Speaker 1: their day job. It just wasn't going to happen with

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Speaker 1: a book like this, so that the advance had to

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Speaker 1: be enough to sustain me for a few years while

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Speaker 1: I worked on it. Luckily, I had written one book before,

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Speaker 1: so I had a bit of a track record. So

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Speaker 1: I wasn't. Um, I wasn't somebody coming in out of

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Speaker 1: absolutely nowhere saying I got a book idea and you

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Speaker 1: gotta give me a lot of money. I had a

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Speaker 1: little legitimacy. I get it. Okay, did you do any

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Speaker 1: other work while you were writing this book? No? It

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Speaker 1: was all full time. And then if you say you

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Speaker 1: started four years ago and ultimately the deal was six

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Speaker 1: months after you started, how much time did you actually

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Speaker 1: spend writing the book? I mean we start drinking in writing. Um. Well, um,

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Speaker 1: the from the I I first met the Galvins on

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Speaker 1: that phone call in the spring of and I handed

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Speaker 1: in a manuscript in um September. Um. But it really

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Speaker 1: was a year and a half of full time work,

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Speaker 1: not two and a half years, because um uh, that

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Speaker 1: first year I was still you know, talking to the

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Speaker 1: family and putting the book proposal together and whatnot. How

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Speaker 1: how come the book was turned in in September and

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Speaker 1: didn't come out for another sixteen eighteen months. That's the

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Speaker 1: book business. It's really unbelievable. Um. But but things moved

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Speaker 1: very very slowly. The book was pretty much ready nine

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Speaker 1: months before its publication date in April, UM what what

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Speaker 1: the publisher needed was time to build buzz. Because this

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Speaker 1: is a big book. It's a thick book. It has

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Speaker 1: lots of footnotes, you know, it's it's heavily researched. It

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Speaker 1: is not realistic to however, just saying people who have

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Speaker 1: not read the book, it's not dry in any form

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Speaker 1: or fashion. I don't want to make it sound like

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Speaker 1: a toll. Oh yes, of course. Um and uh you know,

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Speaker 1: god willing you read it and you think, oh, it's

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Speaker 1: like a novel, you know, lifts off exactly. That's a

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Speaker 1: great thing about it. Um. But it's an ambitious, big,

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Speaker 1: big book of the year. And with an ambitious big

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Speaker 1: book of the year, they don't want to just dump

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Speaker 1: it on people and say, Hi, review this for next

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Speaker 1: week please. They want to start building up interest and

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Speaker 1: sending it out early and getting it to critics and

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Speaker 1: getting it too bloggers and getting it to uh special

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Speaker 1: readers on good Reads, just to get people starting to

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Speaker 1: talk about it. Um. They put me in front of

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Speaker 1: the media in December with people like um People magazine

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Speaker 1: or the Wall Street Journal, places that plan their news

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Speaker 1: coverage way in advance. So so it really is a

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Speaker 1: function of the book promotion business. It's not about it's

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Speaker 1: not about the physical act of publishing, which of course

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Speaker 1: they could do with the push of a button and

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Speaker 1: get it people's kindles tomorrow. To what degreed is the

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Speaker 1: success of the book align with your personal expectations. It's done,

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Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's been overwhelming. It's more than I

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Speaker 1: ever could have imagined. I am. I had in my

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Speaker 1: fondest dreams. I imagined it would be very well reviewed

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Speaker 1: and respected, and everyone would say, oh, it's a very

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Speaker 1: noble book, when very well intentioned, and how interesting that

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Speaker 1: you did all this work. And the people in it,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure they're very happy to tell their story told.

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Speaker 1: But you know, big nonfiction books like this that are

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Speaker 1: narratives that are about a specific issue, they all are

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Speaker 1: like that. They're all big swings for the bleachers. And

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Speaker 1: they either either get published and people say, oh, nice,

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Speaker 1: good job, and then move on to the next thing,

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Speaker 1: or they build up ahead of steam and momentum and

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Speaker 1: really connect with a lot more people. And so I'm

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Speaker 1: when I write a book. When when I write books

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Speaker 1: like this, and this is my second one, they are

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Speaker 1: bets at the big at the High State table for

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Speaker 1: sure in that sense. Okay, Uh, what day did the

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Speaker 1: book actually come out? April seven? Okay, so right in

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Speaker 1: the heart of the COVID nineteen era. I've talked to

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Speaker 1: other people whose books were in the pipeline, and they say, traditionally,

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Speaker 1: other than the big media you're talking about, the Wall

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Speaker 1: Street Journal, at the Times, Washington Post, they go on

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Speaker 1: a tour, which, needless to say, you cannot do now.

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Speaker 1: So was it a good or bad thing to put

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Speaker 1: out the book then? And how did you promote it

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Speaker 1: beyond the traditional outlet? Um? I had book dates set

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Speaker 1: up at bookstores around the country. It was going to

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Speaker 1: be a solid week of running around basically every region

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Speaker 1: very quickly. UM. And of course all those dates got

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Speaker 1: scrubbed as soon as the shutdown started happening. UM. I

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Speaker 1: had one huge advantage and I and I don't want

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Speaker 1: anyone who's listening to think that I would complain about

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Speaker 1: publishing in the time of COVID at all, because I'm

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Speaker 1: in a very privileged position. Because the book got selected

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Speaker 1: for Oprah's Book Club, and uh that I knew about

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Speaker 1: that a few weeks before it actually was announced. So

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Speaker 1: I had a few weeks there where the pandemic was

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Speaker 1: was coming, and without Oprah, I would have been very,

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Speaker 1: very despondent and sure that my book was going to

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Speaker 1: fall off the face of the earth. But because it

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Speaker 1: was part of Oprah's book Club, I knew it was

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Speaker 1: going to get a huge publicity push. No matter what

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Speaker 1: that a lot of people would order it online. Even

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Speaker 1: if Amazon wasn't shipping packages on April seven because of

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Speaker 1: a world economic collapse, people could still read it on

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Speaker 1: April seven. It gave me a bit of calm, and

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Speaker 1: so I don't want to give anybody the impression that

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Speaker 1: that I was cool in the pool while other people

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Speaker 1: were sweating for for no good reason. There there was

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Speaker 1: a very nice turn of events for me that I

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Speaker 1: don't take for granted. Okay, in April um Amazon went

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Speaker 1: out of a lot of physical bestsellers. Did that happened

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Speaker 1: to you. There was a little bit of a lag

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Speaker 1: at some point where, but but I think that was

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Speaker 1: mostly because they were prioritizing shipments for essential supplies. So

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Speaker 1: normally Prime members could get the book in a couple

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Speaker 1: of days, but they were getting notices saying it's going

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Speaker 1: to be a week or so because we need to

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Speaker 1: send out hand sanitizer to people around the country. Um,

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Speaker 1: And that that that subsided after a little while. But

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Speaker 1: that was minor that issue, okay. And how did it

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Speaker 1: become one of Oprah's picks? Well, as far as I know, Um,

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Speaker 1: the books editor at Oprah Magazine heard about the book

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Speaker 1: early during that press period that I was telling you

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Speaker 1: about earlier, and she put it in front of Oprah

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Speaker 1: because Oprah was planning to do a TV special for

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Speaker 1: about mental health. She was going to work on it

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Speaker 1: with Prince Harry And I don't know if she's done

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Speaker 1: that yet or that's still in the works. Her deal

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Speaker 1: is with Apple Plus, the streaming service, and so she

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Speaker 1: was going to put together a special for Apple Plus.

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Speaker 1: And so this is the way it works. Apparently people

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Speaker 1: put books in front of Oprah and she has a

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Speaker 1: bunch of them, and then one of them, you know,

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Speaker 1: she just says, let's make this the book club book.

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Speaker 1: And that's what she did this time. She went back

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Speaker 1: to Lee Haybor at Oprah Magazine and said let's make

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Speaker 1: this the book club book. And Lee said okay, And

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Speaker 1: she okay. In talking with me, she said, I mean,

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Speaker 1: mental health is a big issue for her. It's important.

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Speaker 1: You spoke with Oprah? What what was that like? Well, I, Um,

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Speaker 1: I did not have one of those moments where she

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Speaker 1: called and I said, you're kidding, it's not you know,

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Speaker 1: your your friend playing a joke on me, Like she

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Speaker 1: sounds exactly like Open Winfrey. So I immediately knew who

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Speaker 1: she was. And as I said, I was sitting there

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Speaker 1: at home sweating out pre publications. So the minute she called,

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Speaker 1: I started laughing. I burst out laughing because I knew

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Speaker 1: there could only be one reason why she was calling

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Speaker 1: and um and uh, and that I was suddenly being saved.

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Speaker 1: I was being being really helped out tremendously by a

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Speaker 1: tremendous act of kindness by her. So I was I

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Speaker 1: was hyperventilating, and I was laughing, and then I was

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Speaker 1: thanking her a lot and telling her how much it

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Speaker 1: would mean to the family too, you know the family. Uh.

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Speaker 1: The girls say that they would watch over show as kids,

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Speaker 1: and they would say, the people on the on her

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Speaker 1: show have nothing on us, like we should really be

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Speaker 1: on her show. So I think that might be why

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Speaker 1: Oprah was interested too, because it is that the family

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Speaker 1: at first glance would be a good subject for the

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Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. Okay, did you have a substantive conversation

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Speaker 1: with her, or was just basically I'm calling to congratulate you.

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Speaker 1: She um, she was calling to congratulate I. Um. I

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Speaker 1: said to her that, you know, I love I said, I,

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Speaker 1: but I was extremely grateful, and I said, it was

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Speaker 1: the challenge of a career to be able to weave

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Speaker 1: together so many different perspectives of so many different people,

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Speaker 1: to to juggle so many characters, if you will, it's

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Speaker 1: not characters because it's nonfiction. A juggle twelve kids and

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Speaker 1: two parents in a book and have readers actually be

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Speaker 1: able to keep track of it all was a huge challenge,

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Speaker 1: and that I wanted to try to make it like

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Speaker 1: something like East of Eden. And I mentioned East of

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Speaker 1: Eden to her because I know that that was an

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Speaker 1: Oprah's Book Club pick a couple of years ago, and

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Speaker 1: that she liked it and that was an influence on

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Speaker 1: me as well. And she got it. She said, Oh, yes,

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00:21:21,160 --> 00:21:23,280
Speaker 1: of course, this is a lot like this makes me

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Speaker 1: think of used to be eating a lot. I see

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Speaker 1: what you're saying. So she definitely read it. Oh yeah,

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00:21:28,280 --> 00:21:31,520
Speaker 1: she definitely read it. She's a reader. The other day

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Speaker 1: in the prior to her leaving television, the book would

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Speaker 1: also get a TV segment. So they say, it's great

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00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:43,520
Speaker 1: having Oprah picket. But what does it that actually mean

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Speaker 1: today other than, you know, giving a higher level of

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Speaker 1: notice to the book. The new version of Oprah's Book

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Speaker 1: Club is a promotion deal with Apple, so she um.

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Speaker 1: Obviously the books available everywhere, including Amazon, but when she

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Speaker 1: promotes the book online, she said, has swipe up to

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Speaker 1: buy it on Apple Books. And when she does a

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Speaker 1: TV show about the book, it's a special for Apple Plus.

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Speaker 1: So I was interviewed. Unfortunately it was on Facetown because

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Speaker 1: of the pandemic, but family members and I and experts

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Speaker 1: were all interviewed on FaceTime for a show that will

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Speaker 1: be out on June four or June five, I think

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Speaker 1: on Apple Plus on Apple Plus. But the big thing,

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Speaker 1: and the thing that I did not realize that she does,

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Speaker 1: is that she and the club actually read the book

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Speaker 1: together week after week after week. They've divided this book

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Speaker 1: into six weeks and they meet on Instagram on on

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Speaker 1: the Oprah's book Club account and each Monday morning at

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Speaker 1: ten am for the last five weeks. The last one

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Speaker 1: is next Monday. UM her account runs a short video

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Speaker 1: by Oprah who she's holding my book and she says, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so we've read chapters whatever through whatever, and this happened,

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Speaker 1: and that happened, and this happened. My question for you

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Speaker 1: is how what do you think Lindsay was feeling when

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00:22:58,560 --> 00:23:01,480
Speaker 1: she made that decision? And then in the comments section

432
00:23:01,520 --> 00:23:04,159
Speaker 1: of Instagram, hundreds of people start to weigh in in

433
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:07,399
Speaker 1: real time giving their perspectives on the book. So it

434
00:23:07,480 --> 00:23:10,040
Speaker 1: is a real live book club that is actually reading

435
00:23:10,480 --> 00:23:12,920
Speaker 1: the book. And for an author, it's been mind blowing

436
00:23:13,200 --> 00:23:16,080
Speaker 1: week after week to watch hundreds of people reading your

437
00:23:16,119 --> 00:23:18,359
Speaker 1: book and talking together about it, and I get to

438
00:23:18,359 --> 00:23:20,920
Speaker 1: sit in and look at it. It's it's more than

439
00:23:20,960 --> 00:23:24,280
Speaker 1: I could ever have imagined. It's just stunning. If someone

440
00:23:24,440 --> 00:23:28,200
Speaker 1: is picked by Oprah generally speaking, how many additional sales

441
00:23:28,280 --> 00:23:32,520
Speaker 1: do you get? Well, I only know that they increased

442
00:23:32,560 --> 00:23:35,440
Speaker 1: my my initial print run dramatically by like tens of

443
00:23:35,480 --> 00:23:37,520
Speaker 1: thousands of copies. I don't know if it's different for

444
00:23:37,600 --> 00:23:41,360
Speaker 1: fiction or if it's you know, or different for from

445
00:23:41,359 --> 00:23:43,600
Speaker 1: book to book, but it it's a it's a huge

446
00:23:43,680 --> 00:23:47,359
Speaker 1: leg up. Okay, So how many did they ultimately print?

447
00:23:47,359 --> 00:23:51,960
Speaker 1: Originally double day, Um, they print. Originally they printed close

448
00:23:51,960 --> 00:23:56,440
Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand copies and um hardcover, and now

449
00:23:56,480 --> 00:24:01,119
Speaker 1: they're up to like a hundred thirty three thousand hardcover. Okay,

450
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,080
Speaker 1: what's the arc of a book like this? So, I

451
00:24:03,080 --> 00:24:05,960
Speaker 1: mean every book is unique, but is it tend to

452
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:09,359
Speaker 1: be front loaded forgetting the paperback sales? Somewhere down the

453
00:24:09,400 --> 00:24:13,600
Speaker 1: future a hardcover book? Will it sustained for months? Has

454
00:24:13,640 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: it already peaked? Is it yet to peek? I think that, Um,

455
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:22,480
Speaker 1: this book's a little bit of an outlier because it

456
00:24:22,520 --> 00:24:25,719
Speaker 1: has because it's been very successful, so it has remained

457
00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:28,439
Speaker 1: on the best seller list. Um, the sales are not

458
00:24:28,480 --> 00:24:30,280
Speaker 1: what they were in the first couple of weeks. They've

459
00:24:30,359 --> 00:24:32,520
Speaker 1: they've gone lower, but the sales are still high enough

460
00:24:32,560 --> 00:24:35,359
Speaker 1: to keep it on the best seller list. But sometime soon,

461
00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:38,359
Speaker 1: you know, the house always wins, you know, someday soon

462
00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:42,360
Speaker 1: one week coming up, maybe next week, maybe two, three, four,

463
00:24:42,520 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: seven weeks from now, it will fall off the best

464
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:46,719
Speaker 1: seller list and then hopefully it will it will develop

465
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:49,720
Speaker 1: some sort of niche where it continues to sell let's

466
00:24:49,720 --> 00:24:52,399
Speaker 1: hope thousand cops a week or something like that, and

467
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:55,439
Speaker 1: then it becomes a regular earner for the company, and

468
00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,199
Speaker 1: then within a year the paperback comes and gives it

469
00:24:58,240 --> 00:25:00,520
Speaker 1: another jolt, and that that's at a different ice points.

470
00:25:00,560 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 1: So it really is, it's really appealing to an entirely

471
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,239
Speaker 1: different book buying public. There there are people out there

472
00:25:06,240 --> 00:25:09,280
Speaker 1: who never in the world in their in their lives

473
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:13,400
Speaker 1: have bought a big, heavy, first edition hardcover book because

474
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,760
Speaker 1: it's so expensive. They wait for the paperback, and so

475
00:25:15,880 --> 00:25:20,280
Speaker 1: that whole market gets reached. Meanwhile, electronic books, especially in

476
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:24,120
Speaker 1: the time of COVID, are basically half the sales. Um,

477
00:25:24,280 --> 00:25:27,320
Speaker 1: so wait, wait, wait, slow there half of Hidden Valley

478
00:25:27,400 --> 00:25:33,560
Speaker 1: Road was essentially kindled. Yes, but um, I'll be why

479
00:25:33,600 --> 00:25:36,679
Speaker 1: don't I be a little clearer. Let's say this. It's like,

480
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:42,840
Speaker 1: roughly is Kindle or Apple books or electronic, Roughly forty

481
00:25:42,920 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 1: or forty one is hardcover books, and then the rest

482
00:25:46,720 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 1: is audiobook. The audiobook sales are not trivial. They're they're

483
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:56,159
Speaker 1: over some Sometimes it seems like it's closer to audio

484
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,920
Speaker 1: books are a big deal. Okay, who reads the audiobook? Um, well,

485
00:26:01,160 --> 00:26:05,040
Speaker 1: anyone who drives? Um no, no, no, no. Who literally

486
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:07,960
Speaker 1: did the reading of the book for the recording? Oh?

487
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,440
Speaker 1: Um he's wonderful. Sean Pratt, he's terrific. He actually read

488
00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 1: Lost Girls, which was my first book, and they asked

489
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:18,160
Speaker 1: me if I was all right with using him again

490
00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:21,880
Speaker 1: and using him some bad term. He used me, I'm

491
00:26:21,920 --> 00:26:24,639
Speaker 1: really fortunate. He's a star. People love him and he did.

492
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:26,800
Speaker 1: My brother in law listen to it, actually said it

493
00:26:26,880 --> 00:26:30,680
Speaker 1: was great. Okay, you're obviously a student of the game. Uh.

494
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,240
Speaker 1: If you read the New York Times Walt Three Journal,

495
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:38,439
Speaker 1: kindle sales continued to decrease as the percentage of overall sales.

496
00:26:38,760 --> 00:26:42,000
Speaker 1: Yet in your case, they're really notable. Is it a

497
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:45,480
Speaker 1: COVID thing? What do you think's going on here? I

498
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:49,040
Speaker 1: think it's a COVID thing. And also the the book.

499
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:52,080
Speaker 1: A lot of bookstores just aren't open, and which obviously

500
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:54,400
Speaker 1: contributes more to the kindle thing. But it means fewer

501
00:26:54,480 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 1: people are browsing and seeing the Oprah's book club stand

502
00:26:57,640 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 1: and saying, oh, I'll buy this. So who knows, maybe

503
00:27:00,800 --> 00:27:03,720
Speaker 1: that will change. Maybe in the fall, um the hardcover

504
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 1: will be sitting at airport bookstores again and people will

505
00:27:06,400 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 1: be flying again. I'm being a little optimistic thinking that

506
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:10,200
Speaker 1: people are gonna be flying in the fall. But you

507
00:27:10,280 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Okay, you got your advance. When

508
00:27:14,640 --> 00:27:20,400
Speaker 1: will you see another check? Well, typically it's for payments, UM,

509
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:23,800
Speaker 1: so I'm gonna use fake numbers. You know, if the

510
00:27:23,800 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: advance is a million dollars, you get two dollars when

511
00:27:26,760 --> 00:27:30,760
Speaker 1: you sign, you get another two fifty when um, you

512
00:27:30,920 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: deliver the manuscript and the publisher decides it's good enough

513
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 1: to be edited and a play, see you on the schedule.

514
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:41,760
Speaker 1: So that might that's a little wiggly, that could be.

515
00:27:41,960 --> 00:27:43,520
Speaker 1: That could take some time because they might want you

516
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 1: to do another draft or do another revision. But once

517
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:50,000
Speaker 1: it's once it's put on the schedule, payment number two comes,

518
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:53,440
Speaker 1: and then payment number three comes on publication day, and

519
00:27:53,520 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: then payment number four comes a year after publication day,

520
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: which more or less usually coincide it's with the paperback

521
00:28:00,920 --> 00:28:04,240
Speaker 1: coming out. Well, in this particular, Kay, you're obviously have

522
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,920
Speaker 1: earned back the advance already. So in terms of royalties,

523
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:15,080
Speaker 1: those will come a year from publication. UM. I usually

524
00:28:15,119 --> 00:28:18,359
Speaker 1: get a royalty statement twice a year, in April and October,

525
00:28:18,640 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: and it's pretty much right up to the date. So

526
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,200
Speaker 1: if this book earns back by the end of the summer,

527
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:26,520
Speaker 1: which hopefully it would. I might actually see some royalties

528
00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:30,520
Speaker 1: in that October statement, Okay, with such a successful book,

529
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,440
Speaker 1: even though we're in the COVID nineteen era, did you

530
00:28:33,600 --> 00:28:37,240
Speaker 1: splurge it all in your personal life? No? It basically

531
00:28:37,320 --> 00:28:39,360
Speaker 1: gave me peace of mind in the COVID nineteen era.

532
00:28:39,520 --> 00:28:42,560
Speaker 1: It meant that, UM. It meant that I didn't have

533
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:46,280
Speaker 1: to worry about lining up a new project right away,

534
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:49,400
Speaker 1: that I could that I can sit and and take

535
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:53,080
Speaker 1: care of my family and and take it slow during

536
00:28:53,120 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 1: this difficult time and not sit and worry about the

537
00:28:56,400 --> 00:28:59,959
Speaker 1: house being far closed on. The book is a huge success.

538
00:29:00,200 --> 00:29:02,560
Speaker 1: S Has this even though we're in this crazy era?

539
00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:07,320
Speaker 1: Has this led to any new opportunities? Not yet. UM.

540
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:10,320
Speaker 1: I have a couple of ideas that are hopping, but nothing,

541
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:14,280
Speaker 1: nothing that's really book length. Um. The biggest opportunities have

542
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:18,320
Speaker 1: been uh meeting other people, UM who are in the

543
00:29:18,360 --> 00:29:20,960
Speaker 1: mental health community, people who have been touched by mental illness,

544
00:29:21,040 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: either in their family or through their work. And those

545
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:26,320
Speaker 1: people are emailing up a storm. And so I'm I'm

546
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:28,520
Speaker 1: handling a lot of reader feedback at the moment from

547
00:29:28,560 --> 00:29:32,120
Speaker 1: people who have really emotionally connected with the book, And

548
00:29:32,480 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 1: have you personally been to therapy, Yes, but not for

549
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:40,080
Speaker 1: anything but remotely like schizophrenia, and of course not, but

550
00:29:40,200 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: you had some experience in the field. We live in

551
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:45,640
Speaker 1: a world where many males or anti psychotherapy. That's why

552
00:29:45,640 --> 00:29:48,960
Speaker 1: I asked the question. Oh yeah, sure. Um, it's been

553
00:29:49,680 --> 00:29:54,240
Speaker 1: like regular meet and potatoes therapy for for for garden

554
00:29:54,320 --> 00:29:58,440
Speaker 1: variety anxiety and um and so I've done on and

555
00:29:58,520 --> 00:30:01,640
Speaker 1: off chid this and that with various people over the years.

556
00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:06,760
Speaker 1: Um and UM. I think it's terrific. And it's also

557
00:30:06,880 --> 00:30:09,360
Speaker 1: I mean as a writer and someone who interviews people,

558
00:30:09,760 --> 00:30:13,760
Speaker 1: I'm basically sitting and witnessing the therapists interviewing style and

559
00:30:13,840 --> 00:30:16,360
Speaker 1: getting pointers from them and tips from them on how

560
00:30:16,440 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: they how they listen and how they draw me out.

561
00:30:19,360 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: So I have an appreciation for that as well. While

562
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of it, Okay, you have the deal,

563
00:30:31,080 --> 00:30:34,680
Speaker 1: it's a go. You start. How do you start? Tell

564
00:30:34,800 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 1: us some of the story? Um? Well, uh, the story

565
00:30:43,840 --> 00:30:48,720
Speaker 1: is is the American dream that that is suddenly shattered

566
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: when when everything goes wrong. It's about a couple that

567
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:56,120
Speaker 1: falls in love during World War Two and raises their

568
00:30:56,160 --> 00:30:58,440
Speaker 1: family during the Cold War. And then by the late

569
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 1: sixties their model family that everyone else looks up to.

570
00:31:02,760 --> 00:31:07,520
Speaker 1: They're smart, they're charismatic, they're cosmopolitan. In what is basically

571
00:31:07,560 --> 00:31:10,400
Speaker 1: a very small town out in Colorado Springs, they have

572
00:31:10,520 --> 00:31:14,720
Speaker 1: a high profile, and they are self consciously invested in

573
00:31:14,840 --> 00:31:17,040
Speaker 1: being a model family toward others. It makes them feel

574
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: good that other people think that they're perfect. And then

575
00:31:20,840 --> 00:31:23,880
Speaker 1: the worst happens. Then this illness hits them, and and

576
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:25,960
Speaker 1: they have the bad luck of it happening at a

577
00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:29,080
Speaker 1: time where half of the experts want to blame them

578
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: for causing schizophrenia in their children, and the other half

579
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:37,520
Speaker 1: want to put them in institutions and medicate them into

580
00:31:37,600 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 1: a stupor for the rest of their lives. Um there's

581
00:31:40,800 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: no middle ground, and there's no no way to really

582
00:31:44,840 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 1: do anything without becoming scandalized, and so they try to

583
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:49,800
Speaker 1: cover it up for a few years, and then things

584
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 1: get worse and worse and worse. Another son gets sick

585
00:31:52,360 --> 00:31:56,200
Speaker 1: and abuses his wife and starts surreptitiously abusing the two

586
00:31:56,360 --> 00:32:03,360
Speaker 1: younger sisters. And then a third boy decompensates you know, uh,

587
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:05,560
Speaker 1: in the middle of his classroom at a young age.

588
00:32:05,640 --> 00:32:10,200
Speaker 1: He's only fourteen and then uh, in the worst possible moment,

589
00:32:11,080 --> 00:32:14,600
Speaker 1: the golden child Michael, sorry not Michael Brian, who has

590
00:32:14,640 --> 00:32:16,680
Speaker 1: gone off to California to be a rock star, he

591
00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:23,000
Speaker 1: kills his girlfriend and then shoots himself. Um, and everybody

592
00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,040
Speaker 1: wonders if it could have been prevented and what what

593
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:29,360
Speaker 1: is going on? And finally that the by five or so,

594
00:32:29,560 --> 00:32:34,040
Speaker 1: the family can't hide it anymore. They they they have

595
00:32:34,360 --> 00:32:37,120
Speaker 1: at least three mentally ill sons living at home. They

596
00:32:37,160 --> 00:32:39,239
Speaker 1: have two more with the warning signs. They have one

597
00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 1: who's dead. And um that the families in totally dire

598
00:32:43,760 --> 00:32:47,800
Speaker 1: straits and that that's when the father has a stroke.

599
00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 1: Um I I. As I tell the story, it sounds impossible.

600
00:32:54,840 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 1: But then um, interesting things happen. Stuff that's out of

601
00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:00,880
Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, like a wealthy family that's friendly with the

602
00:33:00,920 --> 00:33:03,680
Speaker 1: family with the Galvin family. They they pluck one of

603
00:33:03,720 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 1: the daughters up out of the family and they move

604
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: her in with them and they help her out. And

605
00:33:08,760 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: then Lindsay goes off to hotch Kiss and tries to

606
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: she changes her name. She actually was born with the

607
00:33:14,520 --> 00:33:16,760
Speaker 1: name Mary, and now she goes by Lindsay. She tries

608
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:21,160
Speaker 1: to reinvent her life. There's a quickie marriage that one

609
00:33:21,240 --> 00:33:23,440
Speaker 1: of them has in order to try to run away

610
00:33:23,520 --> 00:33:26,920
Speaker 1: from her family. There's um years of therapy where they

611
00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:29,720
Speaker 1: try to find a way to confront their abusive brother,

612
00:33:30,360 --> 00:33:33,480
Speaker 1: and then there's different levels of denial that their mother

613
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,920
Speaker 1: continues to go through because they can't understand why their

614
00:33:37,000 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: mother shows the six sons over them. They feel forsaken,

615
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:45,880
Speaker 1: they feel abandoned, and then, out of nowhere, in the

616
00:33:45,960 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: middle of the nineteen eighties, there's a knock at the door,

617
00:33:49,320 --> 00:33:52,400
Speaker 1: and it's a medical researcher from the National Institute Mental Health.

618
00:33:53,920 --> 00:33:58,320
Speaker 1: She's there to tell uh Mimi that her family has

619
00:33:58,360 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: a genetic disorder, that it's not bad parenting that caused it,

620
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:04,040
Speaker 1: that it's not something in the drinking water, that it's

621
00:34:04,080 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 1: not a contagious disease, that she's not to blame at all,

622
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:11,719
Speaker 1: And and they suddenly become studied by some of the

623
00:34:11,800 --> 00:34:17,799
Speaker 1: pioneers in mental health medicine, and and the story takes

624
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: an entirely new and potentially quite hopeful turn as the

625
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: daughters start to rebuild their lives, as everybody starts to

626
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:28,160
Speaker 1: see their parents with new eyes, and as further secrets

627
00:34:28,200 --> 00:34:31,800
Speaker 1: get revealed later on. It's the way I try to

628
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: describe it. It does sound enormously twisting and turning and

629
00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:37,600
Speaker 1: complicated with a lot of moving parts. There are interesting

630
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:40,640
Speaker 1: subplots to where one son goes off to a commune

631
00:34:41,080 --> 00:34:44,560
Speaker 1: and lives there and it changes his life. Um. I

632
00:34:44,680 --> 00:34:46,919
Speaker 1: wanted it to have this kind of epic feel where

633
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 1: you can follow the family on different detours and digressions

634
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:53,360
Speaker 1: and see how many different people experience their family in

635
00:34:53,440 --> 00:34:56,520
Speaker 1: different ways. I wanted it to have that kind of, um,

636
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,879
Speaker 1: big Russian novel kind of feeling, so that you got

637
00:35:01,000 --> 00:35:04,120
Speaker 1: so swept up in the families ups and downs that

638
00:35:04,320 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 1: you forgot that you were being spoon fed a lot

639
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:12,760
Speaker 1: of technical information about neurobiology. Okay, we covered your initial

640
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: conversations with Margaret and Lindsay, what were your conversations like

641
00:35:18,280 --> 00:35:20,240
Speaker 1: with the rest of the members. The father was already

642
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:22,799
Speaker 1: dead when you started then, and there was one brother

643
00:35:22,840 --> 00:35:24,959
Speaker 1: who was dead, but you spoke with all these people.

644
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,200
Speaker 1: What was that like. Well, the one big challenge was

645
00:35:28,400 --> 00:35:31,440
Speaker 1: to talk to the mother of the family, Mimi, who

646
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,800
Speaker 1: was nine. She was my first phone call after the sisters,

647
00:35:35,000 --> 00:35:39,720
Speaker 1: and it was it was it was really really quite wonderful.

648
00:35:39,880 --> 00:35:43,160
Speaker 1: This is a woman who, despite everything she's been through,

649
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 1: is a tremendous good cheer and really um tries very

650
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 1: hard to look on the sunny side of things. That

651
00:35:52,280 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 1: that means that she was very willing to talk to

652
00:35:54,719 --> 00:35:56,759
Speaker 1: me because she knew that this book would be more

653
00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,960
Speaker 1: about the genetics and less about UH judging her, and

654
00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:03,560
Speaker 1: she was tired of being judged by the medical establishment.

655
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:06,760
Speaker 1: That was really a big problem for her. The problem

656
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:08,839
Speaker 1: with Mimi is that she didn't want to really talk

657
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,960
Speaker 1: about unpleasant subjects. She was had spent a lifetime sort

658
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: of deflecting unpleasantness, and so it took the personal visit

659
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:18,359
Speaker 1: with her, with help from her daughters also to try

660
00:36:18,400 --> 00:36:21,760
Speaker 1: to nudge her into a place where she felt comfortable

661
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:24,239
Speaker 1: talking about the years and years of shame she was

662
00:36:24,360 --> 00:36:26,600
Speaker 1: made to feel for having this problem in her house,

663
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 1: the way that she was told that she was a failure,

664
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:32,720
Speaker 1: the way that she sometimes felt unsafe around her own sons,

665
00:36:32,840 --> 00:36:35,400
Speaker 1: and how she had to keep that to herself. Um,

666
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:37,640
Speaker 1: these are things that weren't easy for her to talk about.

667
00:36:37,719 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: But but but to her credit, she really did. But

668
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:44,000
Speaker 1: mainly I found her inspiring. I mean one of her

669
00:36:44,040 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: big sayings was you can't be heartbroken every day, which

670
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:50,880
Speaker 1: I think, you know, for someone who's been through everything

671
00:36:50,960 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 1: she's been through, is a pretty astonishing thing to say.

672
00:36:53,320 --> 00:36:55,279
Speaker 1: And sometimes if I'm having a bad day, I think

673
00:36:55,320 --> 00:36:57,880
Speaker 1: about that still, I think, well, it can't be heartbroken

674
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:00,880
Speaker 1: every day, and maybe maybe there's something to that. And

675
00:37:01,000 --> 00:37:04,480
Speaker 1: then I talked to medical before you leave, Mimi, since

676
00:37:04,560 --> 00:37:07,279
Speaker 1: you're with an observer and you wrote the book, how

677
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:12,240
Speaker 1: do you believe she coped? Um? I think she developed

678
00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:17,120
Speaker 1: a certain set of blinders where she decided, um that

679
00:37:17,480 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 1: that certain things were important than other things she was

680
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:21,920
Speaker 1: going to ignore. And I think that some of the

681
00:37:22,239 --> 00:37:25,160
Speaker 1: things that she decided to ignore were the healthy children

682
00:37:25,239 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: and her family, which was a you know, of course,

683
00:37:28,200 --> 00:37:30,560
Speaker 1: something the healthy children grew up feeling horrible about and

684
00:37:30,680 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 1: really judged her for. But this was her this was

685
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:36,919
Speaker 1: her survival strategy. She was going to focus on making

686
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:39,960
Speaker 1: sure that the sick boys like Donald and Peter and

687
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:44,439
Speaker 1: Matthew and Joe and Jim, not Brian because he had died,

688
00:37:45,040 --> 00:37:48,040
Speaker 1: We're getting all the help they they could have and

689
00:37:48,120 --> 00:37:50,200
Speaker 1: had a place to come home to if they needed to,

690
00:37:50,360 --> 00:37:52,520
Speaker 1: if they weren't in the hospital or in a group home.

691
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:56,120
Speaker 1: And and that meant seeing a million doctors and going

692
00:37:56,200 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: all over the place and becoming an advocate basically for

693
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:04,160
Speaker 1: her children. But it didn't It meant that if little

694
00:38:04,239 --> 00:38:06,400
Speaker 1: Lindsay or Margaret went to their mother and said I

695
00:38:06,440 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: have a problem, the response for Mimi would be, you

696
00:38:09,719 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 1: don't have any problems. You know, these boys have problems.

697
00:38:13,040 --> 00:38:18,399
Speaker 1: You You're fine. And so they they basically lost their mother,

698
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:22,000
Speaker 1: and and so that that that this was her strategy.

699
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:25,680
Speaker 1: And in a way, um you see as the book

700
00:38:25,719 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: goes on that that the children, as they grow up,

701
00:38:28,080 --> 00:38:30,279
Speaker 1: they start to understand her strategy better. They may not

702
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:33,880
Speaker 1: forgive her everything that she's done, but they get her

703
00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:35,480
Speaker 1: in a way that they didn't get her when they

704
00:38:35,520 --> 00:38:37,160
Speaker 1: were children. And this is something I think that we

705
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:41,400
Speaker 1: as readers can really um identify with. We all judge

706
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: our parents in a certain way when we're younger, and

707
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 1: then we all see them with slightly different eyes when

708
00:38:46,239 --> 00:38:48,360
Speaker 1: we get older. Sometimes it's because we have children of

709
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 1: our own, or sometimes because you learned things that you

710
00:38:51,120 --> 00:38:53,799
Speaker 1: weren't told when you were a child, or sometimes you're

711
00:38:53,840 --> 00:38:55,719
Speaker 1: just older and you get what it's like to be

712
00:38:56,400 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 1: fifty and have responsibilities or whatever. So um to me

713
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:03,879
Speaker 1: that that it was. It was exciting to be able

714
00:39:03,880 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: to try to tell that version of the story in

715
00:39:05,719 --> 00:39:08,239
Speaker 1: the book. But what it means is that in this book,

716
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:11,480
Speaker 1: the first part of the book, Mimi comes off pretty terribly,

717
00:39:12,040 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 1: but in the second part she comes off in a

718
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:17,600
Speaker 1: slightly more nuanced way. And I'm very very glad about

719
00:39:17,640 --> 00:39:20,160
Speaker 1: that actually, because I think there are too many stories

720
00:39:20,200 --> 00:39:23,160
Speaker 1: out there, both fiction and nonfiction, that really where the

721
00:39:23,239 --> 00:39:25,239
Speaker 1: mother really takes it on the chin, where it's the

722
00:39:25,280 --> 00:39:28,279
Speaker 1: mother's fault, you know that the mother has caused all

723
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:30,440
Speaker 1: the problems, and I didn't want this book to be

724
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 1: unnecessarily about that. Let's switch back to the father, because

725
00:39:36,200 --> 00:39:40,080
Speaker 1: on one hand, he's a real achiever. He enters the military,

726
00:39:40,239 --> 00:39:45,160
Speaker 1: ends up the Air Force, he develops the Falcon logo

727
00:39:45,400 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 1: insignia for the Air Force. But there's some subtleties. Actually

728
00:39:50,560 --> 00:39:54,600
Speaker 1: he's kinda pushed off the fast track. He's now in

729
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:57,680
Speaker 1: PR and then they you know, you say that he

730
00:39:58,520 --> 00:40:03,720
Speaker 1: ran this big Western States UH Arts and Development unit

731
00:40:04,400 --> 00:40:08,480
Speaker 1: and then he but in the in the interim, he

732
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:12,800
Speaker 1: had been into what will just labeled generally a mental hospital,

733
00:40:13,640 --> 00:40:17,280
Speaker 1: but bab on all your research, was this a stable

734
00:40:17,400 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 1: guy or was this guy? The other thing you did

735
00:40:20,080 --> 00:40:23,400
Speaker 1: say was despite there being twelve kids, he was not

736
00:40:23,640 --> 00:40:26,560
Speaker 1: that engaged and he had a fears himself. Well, what

737
00:40:26,760 --> 00:40:30,600
Speaker 1: was your insight there? Um, he was most certainly a

738
00:40:30,640 --> 00:40:33,680
Speaker 1: man of his time, and that he didn't he might

739
00:40:33,719 --> 00:40:36,200
Speaker 1: have taken intense pride at having such a large family

740
00:40:36,719 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 1: and really loved being the captain of the ship or

741
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:42,040
Speaker 1: the leader of the football team or whatever of of

742
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 1: of his little troop of kids, but that he wasn't

743
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:47,840
Speaker 1: gonna really just you know, concern himself with the minute

744
00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 1: to minute domestic issues in the house. And that meant

745
00:40:51,600 --> 00:40:54,279
Speaker 1: that at all, that that was the wife's job. And

746
00:40:54,520 --> 00:40:57,320
Speaker 1: also he had a globe trotting job. He in the

747
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:00,919
Speaker 1: beginning he was um with the military, Harry Flatt, going

748
00:41:01,400 --> 00:41:03,759
Speaker 1: around everywhere, and then as the years went on he

749
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:06,920
Speaker 1: was working nights to get his master's and PhD. And

750
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:09,319
Speaker 1: became an instructor at the Air Force Academy. And then

751
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: he didn't stop there. He became the head of the

752
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:14,720
Speaker 1: falconry program and traveled all over the country flying falcons

753
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,040
Speaker 1: at football games wherever the Air Force played, and tid

754
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:21,759
Speaker 1: doing speaking engagements about falconry. And then he didn't stop there.

755
00:41:21,800 --> 00:41:24,320
Speaker 1: Then he went and worked for NORAD and he traveled

756
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:27,360
Speaker 1: all over the country to give information sessions during the

757
00:41:27,440 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 1: Cold War about everything that Nora could do. And then

758
00:41:30,640 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 1: he didn't stop there. He went to work for the International,

759
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:37,239
Speaker 1: you know, for International for the Western States lobbying organization,

760
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:39,920
Speaker 1: and he went to Washington to lobby for more resources,

761
00:41:40,000 --> 00:41:44,280
Speaker 1: and he gave out grants to dance companies and arts organizations.

762
00:41:44,719 --> 00:41:46,800
Speaker 1: And he had Mimi on his arm a lot of

763
00:41:46,840 --> 00:41:48,920
Speaker 1: the time, but a lot of the time he was

764
00:41:49,040 --> 00:41:52,680
Speaker 1: off alone. So he was he was a mythic, iconic,

765
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:58,279
Speaker 1: highly idolized figure in the house. But when he came home,

766
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 1: he was about being everybody's buddy and not really necessarily

767
00:42:02,239 --> 00:42:05,640
Speaker 1: about being too too deep into what was going on.

768
00:42:06,200 --> 00:42:09,760
Speaker 1: And so the parents, the kids tended to just judge

769
00:42:09,800 --> 00:42:13,279
Speaker 1: their mother harshly because she was the disciplinarian. As the

770
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:15,840
Speaker 1: years went on and as they got older, they started

771
00:42:15,840 --> 00:42:19,239
Speaker 1: to ask themselves more realistic questions, like, wait a minute,

772
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,120
Speaker 1: where was Dad when all of this was going on?

773
00:42:21,400 --> 00:42:24,360
Speaker 1: He could have gotten out, She couldn't she stayed, you know,

774
00:42:24,560 --> 00:42:26,879
Speaker 1: she could have she could have blown out of town too,

775
00:42:26,960 --> 00:42:29,279
Speaker 1: and we all would have been on the street. Um,

776
00:42:29,719 --> 00:42:32,880
Speaker 1: but she didn't. She stayed. Okay, let's talk about the

777
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: oldest brother who first shows signs of schizophrenia. Don He

778
00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:41,759
Speaker 1: goes to Colorado State. He has an early marriage. One

779
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:45,239
Speaker 1: thing that is consistent through the book. Even though his

780
00:42:46,239 --> 00:42:50,000
Speaker 1: wife at some point ex wife moves to the Northwest

781
00:42:50,080 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 1: to pursue further education, he is constantly trying to win

782
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: her back in his mind. How long does that actually

783
00:42:59,200 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 1: go on for and what's the status? And did you

784
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:04,800
Speaker 1: ever speak with her and get her perspective? Um? I

785
00:43:04,960 --> 00:43:09,759
Speaker 1: never spoke with her, Um I I did, was never

786
00:43:09,880 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 1: able to track her down. UM. But I know from

787
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: the medical records and from you know, from written records

788
00:43:15,560 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: of the time that when he would break away from

789
00:43:18,680 --> 00:43:21,200
Speaker 1: the house or break away from a medical setting, it

790
00:43:21,280 --> 00:43:23,279
Speaker 1: often was to go to Oregon to try to find her.

791
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:26,160
Speaker 1: And then there'd be one line in the medical records

792
00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:29,560
Speaker 1: saying he was not able to see her, or he

793
00:43:29,680 --> 00:43:31,560
Speaker 1: made it to her house and they did not let

794
00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:35,080
Speaker 1: him in, or they talked for five minutes and she

795
00:43:35,239 --> 00:43:38,480
Speaker 1: told him to leave. UM. So it was it was

796
00:43:38,560 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: never very productive. His psychotic break was was contemporaneous with

797
00:43:43,640 --> 00:43:46,320
Speaker 1: the end of his marriage, and the marriage seemed to

798
00:43:46,400 --> 00:43:48,960
Speaker 1: be extremely important to Donald because it was the signal

799
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:51,839
Speaker 1: that he was a grown up, independent man who could

800
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: make his own decisions. Um, he really needed that in

801
00:43:55,719 --> 00:43:58,640
Speaker 1: his life, perhaps even independent of his mental illness. He

802
00:43:58,760 --> 00:44:03,440
Speaker 1: needed to be the the to to inherit the mantle

803
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:05,720
Speaker 1: of his father, to be the big shot of the family,

804
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:09,120
Speaker 1: to be everybody's role model. And for a time in

805
00:44:09,239 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: high school he was. He was an all state athlete

806
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:16,440
Speaker 1: and the wrestling champion, a star football player. He climbed

807
00:44:16,440 --> 00:44:19,320
Speaker 1: and repelled and jumped out of airplanes. He dated the

808
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:23,200
Speaker 1: general's daughter. He was really big deal in high school.

809
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:27,960
Speaker 1: But um, he was masking a lot of real difficulties.

810
00:44:28,000 --> 00:44:30,279
Speaker 1: He was having trouble connecting with people. He was really

811
00:44:30,320 --> 00:44:33,800
Speaker 1: happier outside repelling off of cliffs than he was hanging

812
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 1: out with friends. And once he was at college he

813
00:44:37,120 --> 00:44:41,319
Speaker 1: started to really become very strange and insecure. He would

814
00:44:41,360 --> 00:44:44,279
Speaker 1: do impulsive things that he didn't understand why he was

815
00:44:44,360 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: doing them. This is a hallmark of schizophrenia. He would

816
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:50,759
Speaker 1: he jumped into a bonfire and burned himself. He he

817
00:44:51,160 --> 00:44:55,160
Speaker 1: tortured and killed a cat. He wandered into health services

818
00:44:55,239 --> 00:45:00,560
Speaker 1: one day convinced that um he had his roommate had

819
00:45:00,600 --> 00:45:03,480
Speaker 1: syphilis and that he was going to give it to him. Yeah,

820
00:45:03,840 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: he's just started to lift off away from reality for

821
00:45:06,360 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 1: a little bit, and and he was troubled by it too.

822
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:11,840
Speaker 1: He was very anxious and upset, and so the marriage

823
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:15,480
Speaker 1: or dating and girlfriends was one way to tell himself

824
00:45:15,560 --> 00:45:18,120
Speaker 1: that everything was all right. You know, that if he

825
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:21,200
Speaker 1: could just get married, then he could become a man

826
00:45:21,360 --> 00:45:23,400
Speaker 1: just like his father. He could he could have a

827
00:45:23,480 --> 00:45:26,719
Speaker 1: family just like mom and dad. Everything would be fine.

828
00:45:26,880 --> 00:45:29,640
Speaker 1: But it wasn't fine. He and his wife, the marriage

829
00:45:30,960 --> 00:45:34,840
Speaker 1: was extraordinarily difficult. At some point she decided she was

830
00:45:34,880 --> 00:45:38,560
Speaker 1: going to leave, and that brought him back into therapy again.

831
00:45:38,719 --> 00:45:41,080
Speaker 1: And just when the therapist was convinced that he was

832
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:43,839
Speaker 1: starting to mellow out a little bit, he had an

833
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:47,800
Speaker 1: enormous psychotic break and almost did real serious harm to

834
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,200
Speaker 1: his wife and to himself. That was the end of

835
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:53,120
Speaker 1: the marriage, and that was Donald's first trip to a

836
00:45:53,239 --> 00:46:00,120
Speaker 1: real heavy duty mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado. Okay, you

837
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:03,720
Speaker 1: actually spoke to the schizophrenic brothers who were still alive

838
00:46:04,239 --> 00:46:07,360
Speaker 1: I did, and that was another huge issue going forward

839
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:09,839
Speaker 1: that I really overlooked earlier in our in our talk

840
00:46:10,320 --> 00:46:13,080
Speaker 1: that early on, I really I said to myself, I

841
00:46:13,160 --> 00:46:17,120
Speaker 1: can't write a book about six people with schizophrenia where

842
00:46:17,200 --> 00:46:20,080
Speaker 1: they just go crazy and that's the end of it.

843
00:46:20,200 --> 00:46:23,960
Speaker 1: I don't want to say. And then Joe went insane too,

844
00:46:24,239 --> 00:46:26,320
Speaker 1: and then we walk away from that. I needed to

845
00:46:26,360 --> 00:46:28,840
Speaker 1: be able to write about these people as people, not

846
00:46:29,080 --> 00:46:32,960
Speaker 1: just as a cookie cutter sufferers of the same illness.

847
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,800
Speaker 1: And so when I met the three surviving mentally ill brothers,

848
00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:41,359
Speaker 1: I was pleased. And perhaps I shouldn't have worried at

849
00:46:41,400 --> 00:46:43,520
Speaker 1: all about this, but I was pleased to see that

850
00:46:43,640 --> 00:46:46,400
Speaker 1: they were different people, where where their illness manifested in

851
00:46:46,480 --> 00:46:49,759
Speaker 1: different ways, and they had different personalities and and so

852
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:52,640
Speaker 1: it was not difficult at all to write about them

853
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:58,000
Speaker 1: as individuals. Peter is a peripatetic and high energy and affectionate,

854
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:01,520
Speaker 1: a gregarious guy. He loves to play the recorder and

855
00:47:02,560 --> 00:47:05,000
Speaker 1: and loves his family and knows and loves to recite

856
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 1: everybody's name and um. Matthew is cantankerous and grumpy and

857
00:47:10,200 --> 00:47:13,960
Speaker 1: self pitying, and often goes on long jags about how

858
00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:18,719
Speaker 1: the Stato's in money and how um he if he

859
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:21,120
Speaker 1: doesn't get what he wants, that big hurricanes are going

860
00:47:21,200 --> 00:47:26,120
Speaker 1: to happen um. But he is gentle as as can

861
00:47:26,160 --> 00:47:29,160
Speaker 1: be and and nothing never ever acts on any of

862
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:33,279
Speaker 1: his anger. And Donald, who we still spoke about a

863
00:47:33,360 --> 00:47:37,120
Speaker 1: moment ago. Donald has been through decades of difficulties but

864
00:47:37,280 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 1: now is quite quite serene and quite calm. He still

865
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:45,200
Speaker 1: has this intense hyper religiosity that he developed in the

866
00:47:45,280 --> 00:47:48,480
Speaker 1: seventies and never let go of, but he's quiet about

867
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:54,440
Speaker 1: it and and very very peaceable around everyone. Doesn't say much,

868
00:47:54,560 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 1: but knows exactly what's happening. You can ask him about

869
00:47:57,440 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 1: his family, and he knows who everybody is and who's

870
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:02,759
Speaker 1: related to everyone else. But then he will spin off

871
00:48:02,800 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: into his delusions. He'll say that he is h descended

872
00:48:09,719 --> 00:48:13,720
Speaker 1: from an octopus, or that um he actually his parents

873
00:48:13,800 --> 00:48:16,480
Speaker 1: aren't actually Don and Mevie Mimi Galvin. He was born

874
00:48:16,520 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 1: a few years before in Ireland to another family named Galvin,

875
00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:24,920
Speaker 1: and they sent him here and then he designed ten

876
00:48:25,040 --> 00:48:28,680
Speaker 1: thousand buildings because he's an architect, And then he has

877
00:48:28,800 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: eight thousand other careers and his favorite one is a

878
00:48:31,480 --> 00:48:36,200
Speaker 1: falconer um. You see, it's become sort of a word

879
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:39,560
Speaker 1: salad after a while. So he's not able to sustain it.

880
00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:44,480
Speaker 1: But but he's I guess the point I'm trying to

881
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:47,760
Speaker 1: get at is that these aren't these aren't straight jacket

882
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:52,839
Speaker 1: maximum security hospital situations for these guys. They all are

883
00:48:53,040 --> 00:48:57,600
Speaker 1: under some level of care and and getting lots of prescriptions.

884
00:48:58,080 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: But you know, Matthew has been able to live independently

885
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,800
Speaker 1: most of his adult life in federally subsidized Section eight housing.

886
00:49:04,880 --> 00:49:08,279
Speaker 1: He can drive a car. Um the other guys, you know,

887
00:49:08,400 --> 00:49:10,800
Speaker 1: they can be with their family on holidays and on

888
00:49:10,960 --> 00:49:14,200
Speaker 1: weekends of they their guests and and so it's it's

889
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:19,600
Speaker 1: been interesting to see um how they have come along

890
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:23,520
Speaker 1: over the years. Of course, their their family only sees

891
00:49:23,560 --> 00:49:26,200
Speaker 1: the loss like they see what the people they used

892
00:49:26,200 --> 00:49:29,560
Speaker 1: to be. And Okay, so talking about the other two

893
00:49:29,640 --> 00:49:31,840
Speaker 1: brothers who are still with us, you could have a

894
00:49:31,960 --> 00:49:34,560
Speaker 1: conversation with them just like you're having one with me

895
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,200
Speaker 1: right now. Not just like it. No, they all have

896
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: cognitive issues. It's it's you're definitely talking with somebody who

897
00:49:40,640 --> 00:49:43,200
Speaker 1: is disabled in some way, and they all have convert

898
00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:45,160
Speaker 1: they all have subjects that they like to go back

899
00:49:45,239 --> 00:49:49,280
Speaker 1: to and become broken records about um. So you they

900
00:49:49,360 --> 00:49:52,040
Speaker 1: basically control the conversation and it's about one or two

901
00:49:52,719 --> 00:49:57,160
Speaker 1: or three limited subjects. Um uh. But in the in

902
00:49:57,320 --> 00:50:00,360
Speaker 1: the fringes, you sort of get little senses of their memories,

903
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: their childhood memories. You see the tenderness they feel towards

904
00:50:04,120 --> 00:50:08,040
Speaker 1: their their family members who come to visit them quite often.

905
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:10,560
Speaker 1: You see the gratitude that they have towards the family

906
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:12,560
Speaker 1: members who come to visit them, which is really quite

907
00:50:12,640 --> 00:50:15,759
Speaker 1: nice to see as well. So it's a at this level,

908
00:50:15,840 --> 00:50:19,120
Speaker 1: at this age, with this this many years of medication

909
00:50:19,239 --> 00:50:22,920
Speaker 1: behind them, it's become more a little bit more analogous

910
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:26,560
Speaker 1: to visiting a relative with Down syndrome, let's say, or

911
00:50:27,239 --> 00:50:30,640
Speaker 1: what comes syndrome with Down syndrome or something like that. Somebody,

912
00:50:30,680 --> 00:50:37,160
Speaker 1: they're just cognitive issues, right, But uh you did you

913
00:50:37,360 --> 00:50:42,320
Speaker 1: feel any danger being around them? Oh? Absolutely not. No, No,

914
00:50:42,520 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 1: They're all everybody's And then that's I think the trajectory

915
00:50:45,680 --> 00:50:49,040
Speaker 1: of this illness is that the volatility and unpredictability and

916
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:54,040
Speaker 1: anxiety it one people tend to mellow out a little

917
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:55,839
Speaker 1: bit by the time they're in middle age, and then

918
00:50:55,920 --> 00:50:59,920
Speaker 1: sometimes the drugs they've been taking for decades of muffled

919
00:51:00,000 --> 00:51:06,120
Speaker 1: the symptoms as well. Okay, so um, one thing even

920
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,560
Speaker 1: I know from writing about it. Uh, it's almost like

921
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:15,120
Speaker 1: the Democratic left in that some of the terms are

922
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:19,040
Speaker 1: very touchy. You know. You say that now schizophrenia is

923
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,640
Speaker 1: a spectrum, mentally ill is an issue. So what is

924
00:51:22,719 --> 00:51:29,280
Speaker 1: the proper terminology today? Well? I think, um, the safest

925
00:51:29,360 --> 00:51:31,880
Speaker 1: thing would be to say that someone has been diagnosed

926
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:35,799
Speaker 1: in schizophrenia. Um. I think these thing schizophrenic as a noun,

927
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:39,520
Speaker 1: like like, you know, three schizophrenics walking to a bar.

928
00:51:39,800 --> 00:51:44,799
Speaker 1: That's not cool. Um. It that the word schizophrenic, even

929
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: as an adjective, tends to be sound a little pejorative.

930
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:50,759
Speaker 1: And so I actually did a little house cleaning with

931
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:52,520
Speaker 1: the book late in the game, and I went and

932
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:54,920
Speaker 1: vacuumed out all the times that I use the word

933
00:51:54,960 --> 00:51:57,880
Speaker 1: schizophrenic as an adjective and or as a noun, and

934
00:51:58,160 --> 00:52:00,800
Speaker 1: instead I would say people with schizophrenic neo or patients

935
00:52:00,840 --> 00:52:04,560
Speaker 1: diagnosed the schizophrenia or schizophrenia patients. Just to make sure

936
00:52:04,600 --> 00:52:09,160
Speaker 1: that I wasn't seeming too cavalier. Um, I don't think

937
00:52:09,200 --> 00:52:12,920
Speaker 1: that that's a I don't think that these are these

938
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:16,919
Speaker 1: are huge abusive terms necessarily the way that some other

939
00:52:17,640 --> 00:52:20,440
Speaker 1: terms might be. But they but but it's that's the

940
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:24,680
Speaker 1: recent thinking on that stuff. Okay, John ends up moving

941
00:52:24,760 --> 00:52:28,840
Speaker 1: to Idaho and pretty much distances himselves from the family.

942
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: You believe that self preservation. He's working as a music teacher,

943
00:52:32,600 --> 00:52:37,600
Speaker 1: not making a huge income. What's your perspective on the well,

944
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:40,960
Speaker 1: his He's the third child, and the two older brothers,

945
00:52:41,080 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: Jim and Donald, they they feuded amongst one another, and

946
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,359
Speaker 1: they bullied one another, but they also bullied everybody younger

947
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 1: than them. So John was directly in the line of

948
00:52:51,719 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: fire of that. Growing up, the parents were so invested

949
00:52:55,120 --> 00:52:56,959
Speaker 1: in being a model family that they kind of turned

950
00:52:57,000 --> 00:52:59,840
Speaker 1: a blind eye to any rough housing and kind of

951
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:02,800
Speaker 1: orowed it off. But John was legitimately afraid. He was

952
00:53:02,840 --> 00:53:05,600
Speaker 1: getting beat up a lot. And then, of course you

953
00:53:05,719 --> 00:53:08,400
Speaker 1: can't discount the fact that there probably were early signs

954
00:53:08,400 --> 00:53:10,920
Speaker 1: of extreme mental illness in both Jim and Donald, and

955
00:53:11,040 --> 00:53:13,800
Speaker 1: so they didn't probably didn't know limits, and they probably

956
00:53:14,760 --> 00:53:17,759
Speaker 1: you know, things probably got pretty ugly. So I think

957
00:53:17,880 --> 00:53:20,080
Speaker 1: John was very happy to leave for college and then

958
00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:23,480
Speaker 1: very happy to meet and marry someone almost immediately, and

959
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 1: and and really not come back. Um. He came back

960
00:53:27,239 --> 00:53:29,520
Speaker 1: to visit obviously, and he has good relationships with a

961
00:53:29,600 --> 00:53:32,239
Speaker 1: lot of his siblings, but he really did not, um,

962
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:35,279
Speaker 1: you know, he really was glad to get out at

963
00:53:35,320 --> 00:53:38,880
Speaker 1: that time. Okay, the father at first, he's in the

964
00:53:38,960 --> 00:53:42,920
Speaker 1: year force. The mother doesn't work outside the home. How

965
00:53:43,000 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 1: does this work monetarily with twelve children? Is it just

966
00:53:46,400 --> 00:53:49,440
Speaker 1: a different era or were There's there a lot of sacrifice,

967
00:53:49,480 --> 00:53:53,080
Speaker 1: so there was enough money. Well, she made all their clothes,

968
00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:57,719
Speaker 1: she worked the sewing machine. Um. The Air Force gave

969
00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:02,239
Speaker 1: them health benefits obviously, so there wasn't that kind of issue. Um.

970
00:54:02,360 --> 00:54:04,640
Speaker 1: But no, money was very very tight all the time.

971
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:07,439
Speaker 1: And and that was the one good thing about writing

972
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:10,520
Speaker 1: about this particular family is that they really weren't They

973
00:54:10,680 --> 00:54:13,240
Speaker 1: didn't send anybody to the Meninger clinic. There was nobody

974
00:54:13,280 --> 00:54:16,960
Speaker 1: who who went to I don't know, to Sweden or

975
00:54:17,040 --> 00:54:19,680
Speaker 1: something to to deal with their psychiatric issues. There was

976
00:54:20,600 --> 00:54:23,319
Speaker 1: these were these were middle class people with with real

977
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:25,560
Speaker 1: money issues, and they often ended up in the state

978
00:54:25,640 --> 00:54:29,319
Speaker 1: mental hospital. But yeah, there was it was clear they

979
00:54:29,360 --> 00:54:33,920
Speaker 1: would have to go to state colleges and and they

980
00:54:34,200 --> 00:54:37,840
Speaker 1: when they bought their dream house in nineteen in the

981
00:54:37,920 --> 00:54:41,520
Speaker 1: suburbs on Hidden Valley Road. It was a ranch house

982
00:54:41,680 --> 00:54:44,879
Speaker 1: that it was extremely ordinary looking and that barely held

983
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:47,080
Speaker 1: them all. You know. It wasn't like they suddenly everybody

984
00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:49,760
Speaker 1: suddenly had a room of their own with twelve children.

985
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:53,000
Speaker 1: They had like three different rooms with two bunk beds

986
00:54:53,040 --> 00:54:56,920
Speaker 1: in them. Let's talk about the survivors. Who can we

987
00:54:57,080 --> 00:55:01,040
Speaker 1: say mentally ill? Because I got to blow back on that. Sure, Okay,

988
00:55:01,360 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 1: the survivors were not mentally Lindsay does a lot of psychotherapy,

989
00:55:05,719 --> 00:55:09,160
Speaker 1: gets her older sister Margaret, a little bit into psychotherapy,

990
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:13,800
Speaker 1: but Lindsay ends up being hands on and Margaret is

991
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:18,880
Speaker 1: definitely hands off. So of the remaining people with there's John,

992
00:55:19,640 --> 00:55:22,400
Speaker 1: There is it Michael who was in the uh, the

993
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:25,759
Speaker 1: farm or whatever it was, So there's there there for

994
00:55:26,040 --> 00:55:32,160
Speaker 1: any other ones who were not diagnosed. There's Mark Mark Mark,

995
00:55:32,200 --> 00:55:34,920
Speaker 1: who who has led a quiet life. He worked at

996
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:38,160
Speaker 1: the University of Colorado bookstore for a while and Boulder

997
00:55:38,520 --> 00:55:41,480
Speaker 1: and now is uh he's retired. That he married and

998
00:55:41,560 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 1: had a few kids, but he kind of kept to himself.

999
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:47,799
Speaker 1: Mark was a sad case because in any very large

1000
00:55:47,880 --> 00:55:50,960
Speaker 1: family that the siblings closest to you become your sort

1001
00:55:50,960 --> 00:55:53,880
Speaker 1: of family unit within the family. And so he was

1002
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: one of a foursome with with Peter and Matthew and Joe.

1003
00:55:58,560 --> 00:56:00,480
Speaker 1: The four of them played hockey to that they were

1004
00:56:00,520 --> 00:56:04,280
Speaker 1: on the same teams. They often were in the paper

1005
00:56:04,360 --> 00:56:08,880
Speaker 1: together about scoring goals together. They really were, we're tighter

1006
00:56:09,360 --> 00:56:11,799
Speaker 1: than than the rest of the family was to them.

1007
00:56:12,320 --> 00:56:14,919
Speaker 1: But all three of those brothers all became mentally ill.

1008
00:56:15,120 --> 00:56:20,000
Speaker 1: He lost Matthew, Joe and and and and it was

1009
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:22,000
Speaker 1: really hard for him. It was like he lost his

1010
00:56:22,080 --> 00:56:27,200
Speaker 1: whole family. So, of the five remaining I'll say lucid members,

1011
00:56:27,480 --> 00:56:30,719
Speaker 1: to what degree are they affected permanently by this upbringing?

1012
00:56:31,600 --> 00:56:33,680
Speaker 1: I would say that the one thing they all share

1013
00:56:33,719 --> 00:56:36,719
Speaker 1: as a certain hyper vigilance that that even if they

1014
00:56:37,320 --> 00:56:40,560
Speaker 1: Michael may not acknowledge it because he's a, you know,

1015
00:56:41,080 --> 00:56:43,120
Speaker 1: sort of a child of the sixties and a hippie

1016
00:56:43,280 --> 00:56:46,440
Speaker 1: and feels as if he's laid back, but it's clear

1017
00:56:46,719 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 1: from my observation that he's And and Margaret and Lindsay

1018
00:56:50,239 --> 00:56:54,360
Speaker 1: and Mark that they all are are. They remember what

1019
00:56:54,440 --> 00:56:56,000
Speaker 1: it was like to grow up in a house where

1020
00:56:56,160 --> 00:56:58,239
Speaker 1: either you were going to go insane yourself, or you

1021
00:56:58,320 --> 00:57:00,720
Speaker 1: were going to watch somebody else in your family go insane.

1022
00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:03,160
Speaker 1: And so you would go to bed every night wondering

1023
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:05,960
Speaker 1: would you wake up the same in the morning, And

1024
00:57:06,040 --> 00:57:09,279
Speaker 1: then once you were up, you were wondering, I sure

1025
00:57:09,360 --> 00:57:11,759
Speaker 1: hope that I don't step out of line, or else

1026
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:14,040
Speaker 1: my parents will think that something is wrong with me.

1027
00:57:14,760 --> 00:57:17,040
Speaker 1: And so that sort of hyper vigilance doesn't really ever

1028
00:57:17,120 --> 00:57:20,560
Speaker 1: go away. And they all they all lead functional lives

1029
00:57:20,600 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: and are I you know, have had happy marriages and

1030
00:57:24,160 --> 00:57:26,720
Speaker 1: many of them have kids. And but but I think

1031
00:57:26,800 --> 00:57:28,800
Speaker 1: if you talk to them at length, you'll get the

1032
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: sense that they have a certain watchfulness and weariness about them. Okay,

1033
00:57:33,320 --> 00:57:35,760
Speaker 1: if you go into the science, which was threaded throughout,

1034
00:57:36,480 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: even when we get to the end, and I don't

1035
00:57:38,200 --> 00:57:40,840
Speaker 1: really think I'm giving anything away here, there is not

1036
00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:45,400
Speaker 1: a definitive solution in terms of what exactly is going

1037
00:57:45,480 --> 00:57:48,120
Speaker 1: on and how to treat it. Can you amplify that

1038
00:57:48,200 --> 00:57:50,840
Speaker 1: a little bit? That's true? And I didn't want to

1039
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 1: oversell the book that way. I didn't want to say

1040
00:57:52,800 --> 00:57:55,840
Speaker 1: that there was a smoking gun or a Rosetta stone

1041
00:57:56,440 --> 00:58:01,400
Speaker 1: that the family supplied. But um, I do think that

1042
00:58:01,520 --> 00:58:04,640
Speaker 1: they had something of value to offer that they were um,

1043
00:58:07,520 --> 00:58:12,640
Speaker 1: they existed at a time when we were just discovering, uh,

1044
00:58:13,320 --> 00:58:15,920
Speaker 1: how to understand the genetic code and how to analyze

1045
00:58:16,640 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 1: the human genome, and at the time there was a

1046
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: lot of excitement that if you just had a general

1047
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,120
Speaker 1: understanding of what a normal so called normal human genome

1048
00:58:25,160 --> 00:58:28,640
Speaker 1: should be, all you'd have to do is look on

1049
00:58:29,280 --> 00:58:32,720
Speaker 1: the computer and compare that with somebody who had schizophrenia

1050
00:58:33,760 --> 00:58:36,960
Speaker 1: or cancer or any other you know, disease, and just

1051
00:58:37,080 --> 00:58:40,280
Speaker 1: see what was different, and you would solve the problem

1052
00:58:40,360 --> 00:58:42,640
Speaker 1: by dinner time. Like you you you would be able

1053
00:58:42,680 --> 00:58:45,720
Speaker 1: to find the smoking gun genes that would cause the

1054
00:58:45,880 --> 00:58:48,800
Speaker 1: cause those diseases. But what we learned once the human

1055
00:58:48,880 --> 00:58:52,240
Speaker 1: genome got sequenced is that for complicated diseases like cancer

1056
00:58:52,320 --> 00:58:58,080
Speaker 1: and Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's and schizophrenia, it's not one gene,

1057
00:58:58,120 --> 00:59:00,640
Speaker 1: and it's not three genes, and it's not four teen genes.

1058
00:59:00,720 --> 00:59:02,840
Speaker 1: It's more than a hundred genes so far that they

1059
00:59:02,880 --> 00:59:06,240
Speaker 1: have found that have genetic irregularities that might play some

1060
00:59:06,440 --> 00:59:10,720
Speaker 1: tiny little role in schizophrenia. And that is that's been

1061
00:59:10,840 --> 00:59:13,480
Speaker 1: very dispiriting, but What that's meant is that the people

1062
00:59:13,600 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: like the researchers in Hidden Valley Road who have been

1063
00:59:17,280 --> 00:59:21,000
Speaker 1: studying families like the Galvin's, it means that they would

1064
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:23,400
Speaker 1: have been on the right track all along, because it's

1065
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:27,720
Speaker 1: those families who actually might be able to demonstrate exactly

1066
00:59:27,760 --> 00:59:32,520
Speaker 1: how the disease plays out in uh, not just in genetics,

1067
00:59:32,600 --> 00:59:34,600
Speaker 1: but in the brain because they all, if they all

1068
00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:37,360
Speaker 1: share a certain mutation, they can see how that mutation

1069
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:41,040
Speaker 1: might affect brain function. And so there's promise from them

1070
00:59:41,120 --> 00:59:44,040
Speaker 1: in that regard. That's kind of a long answer that

1071
00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:48,800
Speaker 1: the shorter answer to your question is um to me

1072
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:51,800
Speaker 1: that the science and this story serves the family story,

1073
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:54,520
Speaker 1: that the that the march of progress in science is

1074
00:59:54,600 --> 00:59:57,360
Speaker 1: not like not everything is polio and not everything is

1075
00:59:58,040 --> 01:00:00,520
Speaker 1: a horrible illness that one day we just solved and

1076
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:03,480
Speaker 1: then we we we all can go to bed um.

1077
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 1: Most sciences wiggily and wobbly and two steps forward and

1078
01:00:07,160 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: one step back. And that's been the story of schizophrenia

1079
01:00:10,880 --> 01:00:14,960
Speaker 1: so far. And this family is our window into that story.

1080
01:00:21,200 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 1: What amazing thing is because you know, you start early

1081
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:26,240
Speaker 1: in the last century and then the kids are born

1082
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:28,320
Speaker 1: in the baby boom era is. You know, you're talking

1083
01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:31,840
Speaker 1: about the research and then it's ten years later that

1084
01:00:31,960 --> 01:00:34,400
Speaker 1: these people come back in that you say, this was

1085
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:37,400
Speaker 1: not a wealthy family. They could necessarily seek out the

1086
01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:40,600
Speaker 1: best and the brightest. They're living. You know, people come in,

1087
01:00:40,680 --> 01:00:43,000
Speaker 1: we got the cure, and then they disappear for ten years.

1088
01:00:43,440 --> 01:00:45,480
Speaker 1: That must have been very depressing. I don't know how

1089
01:00:45,840 --> 01:00:50,200
Speaker 1: they kept it together, absolutely, and and I think one

1090
01:00:50,280 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: reason why they they finally decided to move forward with

1091
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:57,040
Speaker 1: the book is that they had some inkling from one

1092
01:00:57,160 --> 01:00:59,360
Speaker 1: research team that there was some work being done that

1093
01:00:59,480 --> 01:01:01,640
Speaker 1: they had a and in helping out with, but they

1094
01:01:01,720 --> 01:01:03,840
Speaker 1: really didn't know what was going on with the other team,

1095
01:01:03,880 --> 01:01:05,720
Speaker 1: and so they were hoping a reporter could help with

1096
01:01:05,840 --> 01:01:08,960
Speaker 1: that too. So I almost one of the very first

1097
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 1: things I did was I called up Dr Lynde de

1098
01:01:11,920 --> 01:01:16,400
Speaker 1: Lacy in New England and I said, you know that

1099
01:01:16,600 --> 01:01:18,720
Speaker 1: the family says that you studied them long ago, And

1100
01:01:18,800 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 1: she said, oh, yes, I remember them. I've been meaning

1101
01:01:21,240 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 1: to call them because we just found out something about

1102
01:01:23,560 --> 01:01:26,400
Speaker 1: their jeans. And I said, you've got to be kidding me.

1103
01:01:26,720 --> 01:01:31,680
Speaker 1: And so they connected them together in and a lot

1104
01:01:31,720 --> 01:01:33,520
Speaker 1: of the revelations from that are sort of at the

1105
01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:36,160
Speaker 1: end of the book. So let's talk about you for

1106
01:01:36,320 --> 01:01:40,320
Speaker 1: a second. You're from where originally? Um, My whole family's

1107
01:01:40,320 --> 01:01:43,320
Speaker 1: from Baltimore, and I um as a kid, I moved

1108
01:01:43,320 --> 01:01:45,640
Speaker 1: out to the bourb So I'm from Columbia, Maryland, between

1109
01:01:45,640 --> 01:01:49,040
Speaker 1: Baltimore and Washington. And your parents did what for a living?

1110
01:01:49,960 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 1: My my dad was a real estate developer who's retired now,

1111
01:01:53,120 --> 01:01:56,640
Speaker 1: and my mother for twenty five years was what worked

1112
01:01:56,680 --> 01:01:59,520
Speaker 1: in the in the psychiatric part of our little local hospital.

1113
01:01:59,640 --> 01:02:02,320
Speaker 1: She was she was not a psychiatrist. She was a

1114
01:02:02,880 --> 01:02:06,240
Speaker 1: She had a master's in counseling psychology, so she was

1115
01:02:06,280 --> 01:02:11,040
Speaker 1: a psychosistant. And this was a local hospital where you know,

1116
01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:13,800
Speaker 1: people would cycle through who maybe maybe there'd be some

1117
01:02:13,840 --> 01:02:16,440
Speaker 1: people with schizophrenia who would go into their health benefits

1118
01:02:16,800 --> 01:02:18,560
Speaker 1: ran out for the month and then they so they'd

1119
01:02:18,600 --> 01:02:20,240
Speaker 1: come for a few days at a time, but mostly

1120
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:24,400
Speaker 1: it was trauma from people who were in car crashes

1121
01:02:24,600 --> 01:02:27,920
Speaker 1: or teenagers with suicide attempts, you know, the sort of

1122
01:02:27,960 --> 01:02:30,280
Speaker 1: thing a local hospital would deal with. So she was

1123
01:02:30,440 --> 01:02:33,200
Speaker 1: and she was not a theoretician. She she didn't come

1124
01:02:33,240 --> 01:02:36,120
Speaker 1: home and talk about Freud and young with us. She

1125
01:02:36,320 --> 01:02:39,800
Speaker 1: was very practical and very pragmatic and really was really

1126
01:02:39,880 --> 01:02:41,920
Speaker 1: just there to help out. So it's I don't want

1127
01:02:41,960 --> 01:02:44,640
Speaker 1: to go to suggest that I got this fascination with

1128
01:02:44,720 --> 01:02:48,400
Speaker 1: psychiatry from my mother, but I did get her listening skills,

1129
01:02:48,480 --> 01:02:50,960
Speaker 1: for sure. She was a really, really good, active listener,

1130
01:02:51,040 --> 01:02:54,240
Speaker 1: and so I credit her with that. How many kids

1131
01:02:54,240 --> 01:02:58,160
Speaker 1: in the family, I'm the youngest of three, and so

1132
01:02:58,320 --> 01:03:01,400
Speaker 1: you go to college where um I went to Columbia

1133
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:06,880
Speaker 1: University undergrad and I got here in New York. I

1134
01:03:07,040 --> 01:03:11,640
Speaker 1: arrived in the fall of n when nobody wanted to

1135
01:03:11,720 --> 01:03:14,320
Speaker 1: move to New York, and so it was very easy

1136
01:03:14,360 --> 01:03:16,720
Speaker 1: to get into Columbia. And my friends and I from

1137
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:18,280
Speaker 1: that time we all say how we never could have

1138
01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:21,160
Speaker 1: gotten in now, because that's what they say. But leaving

1139
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:23,880
Speaker 1: that aside, at what at what point do you decide

1140
01:03:23,920 --> 01:03:27,000
Speaker 1: you want to become a writer? UM? I loved writing

1141
01:03:27,160 --> 01:03:30,200
Speaker 1: from from fifth grade onward. I didn't know what I

1142
01:03:30,280 --> 01:03:31,680
Speaker 1: was going to do with it, but I just thought

1143
01:03:31,720 --> 01:03:33,600
Speaker 1: I would keep going with it, and I really was not.

1144
01:03:34,080 --> 01:03:38,560
Speaker 1: Didn't discover reporting until I was twenty three and out

1145
01:03:38,600 --> 01:03:40,680
Speaker 1: of college for a year or two and working at

1146
01:03:40,720 --> 01:03:44,920
Speaker 1: a little local neighborhood newspaper doing neighborhood news um when

1147
01:03:44,960 --> 01:03:47,760
Speaker 1: I was a kid in the eighties. But the people

1148
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:50,120
Speaker 1: who wanted to become reporters wanted to be Woodward and

1149
01:03:50,200 --> 01:03:54,680
Speaker 1: Bernstein or a foreign correspondent or Sam Donaldson. They were

1150
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:57,880
Speaker 1: you know, in the white House pool and these were

1151
01:03:57,960 --> 01:04:01,320
Speaker 1: things that I just never really connected with emotionally. I

1152
01:04:01,400 --> 01:04:03,600
Speaker 1: wanted to be, you know, maybe a movie critic or

1153
01:04:03,640 --> 01:04:08,720
Speaker 1: an essay writer or something. But then, um, I majored

1154
01:04:08,760 --> 01:04:11,240
Speaker 1: in history in college, and I love the narrative aspect

1155
01:04:11,320 --> 01:04:14,960
Speaker 1: of history, the the idea of different concepts coming up

1156
01:04:15,000 --> 01:04:17,280
Speaker 1: over and over again and following them through over time.

1157
01:04:17,720 --> 01:04:19,600
Speaker 1: And then as a reporter, I found that I was

1158
01:04:19,720 --> 01:04:23,600
Speaker 1: talking to people who where everyday people people who never

1159
01:04:23,640 --> 01:04:26,240
Speaker 1: thought they'd ever be in the papers, and they were

1160
01:04:26,640 --> 01:04:29,360
Speaker 1: dealing with situations on their block, like I don't know,

1161
01:04:29,560 --> 01:04:33,000
Speaker 1: fighting the local market because they were littering, or worried

1162
01:04:33,000 --> 01:04:36,520
Speaker 1: about a drug war happening on their block, or um

1163
01:04:37,200 --> 01:04:39,760
Speaker 1: fighting the skyscraper that was planned to go up two

1164
01:04:39,840 --> 01:04:42,360
Speaker 1: blocks away. And I would come back to them week

1165
01:04:42,440 --> 01:04:45,120
Speaker 1: after week after week, and it became a serial. It

1166
01:04:45,200 --> 01:04:49,080
Speaker 1: became like a like a soap opera, and I also

1167
01:04:49,160 --> 01:04:51,520
Speaker 1: developed nice relationships with those sources and got to know

1168
01:04:51,640 --> 01:04:54,560
Speaker 1: them as people. And so I was writing about everyday

1169
01:04:54,640 --> 01:04:58,960
Speaker 1: human dramas and UM. When my career really took off

1170
01:04:59,400 --> 01:05:01,880
Speaker 1: several years later and I got worked at New York Magazine,

1171
01:05:01,920 --> 01:05:05,080
Speaker 1: I was able to spin out reporting like that into longer,

1172
01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:08,320
Speaker 1: bigger feature stories with that that were about higher stakes

1173
01:05:08,360 --> 01:05:10,920
Speaker 1: issues and higher profile things. But I never really stepped

1174
01:05:10,960 --> 01:05:14,520
Speaker 1: away from that approach, which is to tell narrative stories

1175
01:05:14,600 --> 01:05:18,080
Speaker 1: about people going through difficult situations. Now, you did or

1176
01:05:18,160 --> 01:05:20,760
Speaker 1: did not go to graduate school. It's unclear here. I

1177
01:05:20,840 --> 01:05:23,680
Speaker 1: did not, um the way you were talking about that,

1178
01:05:23,760 --> 01:05:26,240
Speaker 1: I went to undergraduate school, not that you had to,

1179
01:05:26,400 --> 01:05:28,280
Speaker 1: but I was wondering whether it was a shoot a

1180
01:05:28,400 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 1: drop there. No, I'm smiling because I worked at the

1181
01:05:31,720 --> 01:05:34,320
Speaker 1: school paper, in the arts section of the school paper,

1182
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:38,840
Speaker 1: and and there was a reverse snobbery at Columbia's UH

1183
01:05:39,080 --> 01:05:41,600
Speaker 1: school newspaper where where everybody said, we don't have to

1184
01:05:41,640 --> 01:05:43,800
Speaker 1: go to J school because we're putting out the school

1185
01:05:43,840 --> 01:05:46,120
Speaker 1: paper at Columbia and you know, we're better than the

1186
01:05:46,200 --> 01:05:48,600
Speaker 1: J school and who needs J School? And of course

1187
01:05:48,640 --> 01:05:51,880
Speaker 1: half the people who who said that ended up going

1188
01:05:51,920 --> 01:05:54,480
Speaker 1: to J School, and and J School is great, but

1189
01:05:54,680 --> 01:05:56,920
Speaker 1: most of the many of the people I love in

1190
01:05:57,120 --> 01:05:58,880
Speaker 1: my career went to J School, but I just never

1191
01:05:59,040 --> 01:06:00,960
Speaker 1: ended up there for one reason or another. Okay, so

1192
01:06:01,000 --> 01:06:03,840
Speaker 1: how did you end up working at New York Magazine? Well?

1193
01:06:03,880 --> 01:06:06,840
Speaker 1: I got there when I was twenty nine. Before that,

1194
01:06:06,960 --> 01:06:11,280
Speaker 1: I really jumped around a lot. I Um, I wanted

1195
01:06:11,320 --> 01:06:13,360
Speaker 1: to work in magazines and wasn't sure how. I didn't

1196
01:06:13,400 --> 01:06:15,480
Speaker 1: know how to make that jump from little weekly papers

1197
01:06:15,520 --> 01:06:18,800
Speaker 1: to magazines, and so I worked at Backstage the Theater newspaper,

1198
01:06:18,880 --> 01:06:21,200
Speaker 1: and I edited articles for them, and I wrote articles

1199
01:06:21,280 --> 01:06:26,520
Speaker 1: for them, and then um, one day, Time Out magazine

1200
01:06:26,560 --> 01:06:29,040
Speaker 1: announced that it was going to launch its New York

1201
01:06:29,080 --> 01:06:32,400
Speaker 1: City version of the magazine, you know, the London Time

1202
01:06:32,440 --> 01:06:36,040
Speaker 1: Out magazine. So Time Out New York launched in and

1203
01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:39,400
Speaker 1: that was suddenly, in a very difficult time financially in

1204
01:06:39,480 --> 01:06:43,360
Speaker 1: New York. That was thirty new journalism jobs suddenly, and

1205
01:06:43,760 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: I was one of the people hired there, and I

1206
01:06:45,480 --> 01:06:47,280
Speaker 1: was part of a launch, which was great, and it

1207
01:06:47,400 --> 01:06:49,200
Speaker 1: was like being in college all over again. We worked

1208
01:06:49,200 --> 01:06:50,920
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day to get this thing off

1209
01:06:50,960 --> 01:06:55,439
Speaker 1: the ground, and I was writing City stories that were

1210
01:06:55,520 --> 01:06:58,600
Speaker 1: really that would have been at home at New York Magazine.

1211
01:06:58,600 --> 01:07:00,439
Speaker 1: And so it kind of makes sense. And in site

1212
01:07:00,480 --> 01:07:02,680
Speaker 1: that three years later, I got hired at New York

1213
01:07:02,720 --> 01:07:04,360
Speaker 1: Magazine to do a lot of the same sort of

1214
01:07:04,360 --> 01:07:06,920
Speaker 1: stuff that I was doing at Time Out Magazine, and

1215
01:07:07,680 --> 01:07:11,960
Speaker 1: you ultimately wrote a story about a superintendent of schools

1216
01:07:12,280 --> 01:07:15,600
Speaker 1: on Long Island that was just recently a very highly

1217
01:07:15,720 --> 01:07:19,640
Speaker 1: reviewed HBO series. Yes, I can take no credit for

1218
01:07:19,720 --> 01:07:22,840
Speaker 1: the movie, but it's the sort of thing that magazine

1219
01:07:22,880 --> 01:07:25,600
Speaker 1: writer's dream of happening, that one day somebody's making a

1220
01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:29,680
Speaker 1: movie and options your story and and uh and uses

1221
01:07:29,720 --> 01:07:31,040
Speaker 1: it and it makes it into a movie. And the

1222
01:07:31,080 --> 01:07:32,960
Speaker 1: New York Magazine has a nice track record with that.

1223
01:07:33,120 --> 01:07:36,920
Speaker 1: Hustlers came from a New York Magazine story, and American

1224
01:07:36,960 --> 01:07:40,000
Speaker 1: Gangster came from a New York Magazine story, and Saturday

1225
01:07:40,080 --> 01:07:42,479
Speaker 1: Night Fever obviously came from a New York Magazine story.

1226
01:07:42,720 --> 01:07:45,600
Speaker 1: But the in this case, I've been writing a lot

1227
01:07:45,680 --> 01:07:48,880
Speaker 1: of stories set out on Long Island. Um. I think

1228
01:07:48,920 --> 01:07:50,880
Speaker 1: it's because I live in Brooklyn, which is not so

1229
01:07:51,000 --> 01:07:52,680
Speaker 1: far from Long Island, and that I had a car,

1230
01:07:52,960 --> 01:07:54,720
Speaker 1: so they thought, well, you can go out there, it's

1231
01:07:54,720 --> 01:07:58,360
Speaker 1: easy for you, and they were all these kind of

1232
01:07:58,440 --> 01:08:01,600
Speaker 1: gritty narratives. This was This was a few years after

1233
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:04,360
Speaker 1: Amy Fisher enjoy Bafuco. But there were plenty of other

1234
01:08:04,440 --> 01:08:07,040
Speaker 1: stories like that happening out there. And this was an

1235
01:08:07,080 --> 01:08:12,520
Speaker 1: amazing story about UM the biggest public school system embezzlement

1236
01:08:12,560 --> 01:08:15,680
Speaker 1: scandal in America, all happening in a very high profile,

1237
01:08:16,240 --> 01:08:19,519
Speaker 1: very swanky part of Long Island where the kids all

1238
01:08:19,560 --> 01:08:24,000
Speaker 1: went to Harvard Um called Rosalind and Um the superintendent

1239
01:08:24,960 --> 01:08:28,519
Speaker 1: was a was a was a god um there. He

1240
01:08:28,680 --> 01:08:30,800
Speaker 1: was really held up in high esteem because he was

1241
01:08:30,880 --> 01:08:33,760
Speaker 1: delivering for everyone. And he probably would have done that

1242
01:08:33,840 --> 01:08:37,320
Speaker 1: for years and years more if if his if it

1243
01:08:37,400 --> 01:08:40,439
Speaker 1: hadn't been found out that he was, you know, stealing

1244
01:08:40,479 --> 01:08:43,400
Speaker 1: from the register. And so the question I asked in

1245
01:08:43,479 --> 01:08:48,280
Speaker 1: that article was did he swindle the town or did

1246
01:08:48,360 --> 01:08:51,679
Speaker 1: the town allow him themselves to be swindled by him? Because,

1247
01:08:52,320 --> 01:08:55,040
Speaker 1: you know, because they needed his success, they needed him

1248
01:08:55,080 --> 01:08:58,360
Speaker 1: to be delivering for them. And I never dreamed it

1249
01:08:58,400 --> 01:09:00,280
Speaker 1: would be a story. And then there was a young

1250
01:09:00,360 --> 01:09:03,400
Speaker 1: man named Mike mccowski who was a junior high school

1251
01:09:03,439 --> 01:09:06,800
Speaker 1: student at the time of the scandal. Years go by,

1252
01:09:07,000 --> 01:09:09,639
Speaker 1: he grows up, he becomes a screenwriter, and he decides

1253
01:09:09,680 --> 01:09:11,680
Speaker 1: to write about it, and he options my story. And

1254
01:09:11,760 --> 01:09:13,960
Speaker 1: I know, I don't blink an eye, like I think, well,

1255
01:09:14,600 --> 01:09:17,200
Speaker 1: these things never get made into movies. And then one

1256
01:09:17,280 --> 01:09:20,240
Speaker 1: day I get an email from the magazine, years after

1257
01:09:20,360 --> 01:09:22,640
Speaker 1: I left the magazine saying good news, they're starting to

1258
01:09:22,640 --> 01:09:25,680
Speaker 1: shoot it with Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney. And I was,

1259
01:09:26,400 --> 01:09:28,080
Speaker 1: you know, I fell on the floor. It was wonderful,

1260
01:09:28,200 --> 01:09:30,280
Speaker 1: really wonderful, and I really I really liked the movie

1261
01:09:30,280 --> 01:09:33,320
Speaker 1: a lot. Okay, what is the deal with New York

1262
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:36,400
Speaker 1: If you write something and it's optioned? Uh, do you

1263
01:09:36,479 --> 01:09:38,680
Speaker 1: split it with New York Magazine or you get all

1264
01:09:38,720 --> 01:09:41,200
Speaker 1: of it? Or how's it work? Well, in the old days,

1265
01:09:41,320 --> 01:09:42,880
Speaker 1: you'd get all of it. And then that was just

1266
01:09:43,000 --> 01:09:45,360
Speaker 1: sort of a convention of the business that you um

1267
01:09:46,920 --> 01:09:49,960
Speaker 1: that that that even if technically it was a work

1268
01:09:50,080 --> 01:09:54,160
Speaker 1: for hire, um and uh, and it was technically the

1269
01:09:54,200 --> 01:09:57,759
Speaker 1: intellectual property of the publication, it was a professional courtesy

1270
01:09:57,840 --> 01:10:00,439
Speaker 1: that they would sign a one Sheeeter called a Bulsher's

1271
01:10:00,479 --> 01:10:02,600
Speaker 1: release and allow you to option the story and you

1272
01:10:02,640 --> 01:10:05,200
Speaker 1: would get the money for the store. The idea was

1273
01:10:05,360 --> 01:10:07,679
Speaker 1: that it doesn't happen that often, and that the magazine

1274
01:10:07,760 --> 01:10:11,080
Speaker 1: was too busy making money other ways to try to

1275
01:10:11,280 --> 01:10:14,120
Speaker 1: horn in on these deals. Because the amount of time

1276
01:10:14,160 --> 01:10:16,280
Speaker 1: and hours it takes to try to develop those deals,

1277
01:10:16,680 --> 01:10:18,439
Speaker 1: you end up spending all the money that you would

1278
01:10:18,479 --> 01:10:20,720
Speaker 1: make on those deals. But then the business changed and

1279
01:10:22,560 --> 01:10:25,519
Speaker 1: and uh, this is maybe longer answer than you're expecting,

1280
01:10:25,560 --> 01:10:28,400
Speaker 1: but the business really contracted and every and everybody needed

1281
01:10:28,439 --> 01:10:31,400
Speaker 1: money everywhere, and there were a couple of huge successes

1282
01:10:32,680 --> 01:10:35,720
Speaker 1: out there that the that the publication didn't get a

1283
01:10:35,800 --> 01:10:38,760
Speaker 1: dime from, and UM speaking specifically of Sex in the

1284
01:10:38,880 --> 01:10:41,760
Speaker 1: City and the New York Observer, Like the New York

1285
01:10:41,760 --> 01:10:44,559
Speaker 1: Observer was this tiny little paper that was losing money

1286
01:10:44,600 --> 01:10:49,280
Speaker 1: all the time. And Canadas, Bushnell sold the idea for

1287
01:10:49,360 --> 01:10:51,519
Speaker 1: Sex in the City, which was printed in the Observer,

1288
01:10:52,040 --> 01:10:53,960
Speaker 1: and the Observer didn't get a cent from it. And

1289
01:10:54,120 --> 01:10:57,400
Speaker 1: so I think magazines and publications started to wake up

1290
01:10:57,479 --> 01:11:00,840
Speaker 1: about ten or fifteen years ago and say, all, we

1291
01:11:00,960 --> 01:11:03,600
Speaker 1: can't let that happen, And so they started to negotiate

1292
01:11:03,760 --> 01:11:08,519
Speaker 1: with their writers and UM and they started to come

1293
01:11:08,560 --> 01:11:10,960
Speaker 1: up with revenue sharing arrangements. So now even the New

1294
01:11:11,040 --> 01:11:16,720
Speaker 1: York Times, which develops TV series and movies from and

1295
01:11:16,960 --> 01:11:20,320
Speaker 1: and reality shows and whatnot. From various things that they print.

1296
01:11:20,400 --> 01:11:23,240
Speaker 1: They have a revenue sharing arrangement where the paper gets

1297
01:11:23,320 --> 01:11:26,040
Speaker 1: some and the writer gets some, and I think New

1298
01:11:26,120 --> 01:11:28,960
Speaker 1: York Magazine does too. What happened on your deal on

1299
01:11:29,040 --> 01:11:31,840
Speaker 1: that movie? I think I was grandfathered in so, like

1300
01:11:32,320 --> 01:11:36,000
Speaker 1: everything up to this exceanely high amount, I was going

1301
01:11:36,080 --> 01:11:38,519
Speaker 1: to get a percent of and then if it if

1302
01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:43,080
Speaker 1: it became a superhero franchise or or Sex in the

1303
01:11:43,160 --> 01:11:45,360
Speaker 1: City or something like that, then then I would start

1304
01:11:45,400 --> 01:11:47,919
Speaker 1: having to split fifty cents on the dollar with the magazine.

1305
01:11:48,120 --> 01:11:50,720
Speaker 1: But when the picture actually went to HBO when it

1306
01:11:50,800 --> 01:11:53,960
Speaker 1: was developed, you got another payment. Yeah, exactly when they

1307
01:11:54,040 --> 01:11:57,519
Speaker 1: when they started the day they started shooting, with the

1308
01:11:57,640 --> 01:12:00,960
Speaker 1: first day of principal photography, I got another check. Okay,

1309
01:12:01,479 --> 01:12:05,320
Speaker 1: did you have any other stories option that didn't ultimately

1310
01:12:05,400 --> 01:12:08,840
Speaker 1: go to screen? Oh? Yes, Um, those were all for

1311
01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:12,080
Speaker 1: TV movies because you know, there was even before the

1312
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:15,680
Speaker 1: true crime boom of the streaming era with Making a

1313
01:12:15,760 --> 01:12:20,519
Speaker 1: Murderer and whatnot. Um, there was always a demand at

1314
01:12:20,680 --> 01:12:23,840
Speaker 1: like the forrom the A and E Channel or from

1315
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:27,559
Speaker 1: from from Lifetime you know, for for a quick grip

1316
01:12:27,680 --> 01:12:30,519
Speaker 1: from the headlines movies, and so quite often the reported

1317
01:12:30,560 --> 01:12:32,519
Speaker 1: stories like the ones I did for New York Magazine

1318
01:12:32,560 --> 01:12:37,400
Speaker 1: got option. There was one about John O'Neill, the FBI's

1319
01:12:37,479 --> 01:12:40,679
Speaker 1: terror asm expert who who died in the World Trade

1320
01:12:40,720 --> 01:12:43,559
Speaker 1: Center attacks. That was optioned. It never got made into anything.

1321
01:12:44,200 --> 01:12:46,920
Speaker 1: And then the murder of Ted Ammen out in the

1322
01:12:46,960 --> 01:12:49,920
Speaker 1: Hampton's he was a huge multi millionaire whose wife hadn't

1323
01:12:50,040 --> 01:12:53,200
Speaker 1: killed That that got made into a movie, but not

1324
01:12:53,400 --> 01:12:56,559
Speaker 1: my story. Someone else's the Vanity Fair story got option.

1325
01:12:57,120 --> 01:13:02,760
Speaker 1: And then the story of Carlina White who solved her

1326
01:13:02,800 --> 01:13:06,840
Speaker 1: own kidnapping one day she she uh one day she

1327
01:13:07,200 --> 01:13:08,960
Speaker 1: did a little legwork and saw that the woman she

1328
01:13:09,040 --> 01:13:11,000
Speaker 1: thought was her mother had actually kidnapped her as a

1329
01:13:11,080 --> 01:13:14,560
Speaker 1: baby from the hospital. That was an amazing story that

1330
01:13:14,720 --> 01:13:17,000
Speaker 1: got made into a Time a Lifetime movie, but again

1331
01:13:17,120 --> 01:13:19,800
Speaker 1: not my story. It was somebody else's story. So but

1332
01:13:19,920 --> 01:13:22,960
Speaker 1: they all everybody's sort of putting little bets on the table.

1333
01:13:23,040 --> 01:13:24,840
Speaker 1: So they pick up these stories every now and then.

1334
01:13:25,320 --> 01:13:27,360
Speaker 1: And how do you end up leaving New York Magazine?

1335
01:13:27,880 --> 01:13:30,400
Speaker 1: UM I had written Lost Girls, which was a success.

1336
01:13:31,080 --> 01:13:34,240
Speaker 1: Um it was a you know, briefly a bestseller, it

1337
01:13:34,360 --> 01:13:36,719
Speaker 1: got option for the movies and eventually became a movie

1338
01:13:36,760 --> 01:13:39,240
Speaker 1: this past spring on Netflix with Amy Ryan that I'm

1339
01:13:39,240 --> 01:13:43,360
Speaker 1: really proud of. UM. But UM, the magazine at that

1340
01:13:43,520 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 1: time went bi weekly. Instead of being coming out every week,

1341
01:13:47,120 --> 01:13:49,400
Speaker 1: it was coming out every other week, which meant that

1342
01:13:49,479 --> 01:13:52,559
Speaker 1: they need fewer people like me to write the big,

1343
01:13:52,720 --> 01:13:56,000
Speaker 1: longer stories and cover stories. And so they started talking

1344
01:13:56,080 --> 01:13:58,280
Speaker 1: with each of us about how our roles might change.

1345
01:13:58,600 --> 01:14:00,120
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, this is the right time for

1346
01:14:00,240 --> 01:14:02,720
Speaker 1: me to you know, write elsewhere, and to to write

1347
01:14:02,760 --> 01:14:04,600
Speaker 1: continue writing for New York but also right for the

1348
01:14:04,600 --> 01:14:09,240
Speaker 1: New York Times magazine, to write for Wired. UM. And

1349
01:14:09,400 --> 01:14:12,400
Speaker 1: so I did I UM, I moved on and then

1350
01:14:12,439 --> 01:14:15,960
Speaker 1: I quit very quickly got recruited by Bloomberg Business Week

1351
01:14:16,040 --> 01:14:19,519
Speaker 1: to be an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Projects reporter for them.

1352
01:14:20,040 --> 01:14:23,120
Speaker 1: And that was an amazing job, a wonderful job because

1353
01:14:23,160 --> 01:14:28,479
Speaker 1: I could write really exciting, entertaining, propulsive narrative feature stories

1354
01:14:28,640 --> 01:14:32,840
Speaker 1: for for Business Week magazine, but the subject matter could

1355
01:14:32,840 --> 01:14:35,360
Speaker 1: be new and fresh to me, and I would learn

1356
01:14:35,479 --> 01:14:38,760
Speaker 1: something new every time. And because it was Bloomberg, it

1357
01:14:38,840 --> 01:14:41,040
Speaker 1: was worldwide. I was no longer just writing about the

1358
01:14:41,080 --> 01:14:43,479
Speaker 1: New York metro area. I was flying all around the

1359
01:14:43,520 --> 01:14:46,360
Speaker 1: world writing about stories. And it was shortly after I

1360
01:14:46,479 --> 01:14:49,599
Speaker 1: started my job there that I first had that first

1361
01:14:49,680 --> 01:14:53,080
Speaker 1: phone call with Lindsay and Margaret, with the Galvin family. Yeah.

1362
01:14:53,120 --> 01:14:55,840
Speaker 1: One of the things I said to them was, I

1363
01:14:56,000 --> 01:14:59,880
Speaker 1: just started a new job. I can't exactly walk a

1364
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:02,839
Speaker 1: way from it, but anyway, it all goes slowly anyway.

1365
01:15:02,880 --> 01:15:05,760
Speaker 1: Books take forever anyway, so let's keep talking. And that's

1366
01:15:05,880 --> 01:15:09,479
Speaker 1: how it happened. So you ultimately did quit Bloomberg. I did.

1367
01:15:09,600 --> 01:15:12,000
Speaker 1: They're very good with book leave at Bloomberg, but they're

1368
01:15:12,000 --> 01:15:15,000
Speaker 1: at a totally different model. They the people who go

1369
01:15:15,120 --> 01:15:17,880
Speaker 1: and write books for them. They are beat writers who

1370
01:15:17,920 --> 01:15:20,839
Speaker 1: have a certain expertise, Like they read about Jeff Bezos,

1371
01:15:21,040 --> 01:15:23,840
Speaker 1: or they write about Instagram and they break away for

1372
01:15:23,960 --> 01:15:26,240
Speaker 1: six weeks and write their book about Instagram and then

1373
01:15:26,280 --> 01:15:28,559
Speaker 1: they come back. Whereas I was having to learn about

1374
01:15:28,600 --> 01:15:32,640
Speaker 1: schizophrenia from the from scratch and so I had to

1375
01:15:32,680 --> 01:15:35,400
Speaker 1: go away for too long. But I love those guys.

1376
01:15:35,479 --> 01:15:38,559
Speaker 1: I'd write for them again. They're okay. So you referenced

1377
01:15:38,600 --> 01:15:41,839
Speaker 1: the family. What is your family look like? Your personal

1378
01:15:41,960 --> 01:15:45,920
Speaker 1: family Um, I'm I'm married. My wife is Kirsten Danis.

1379
01:15:46,000 --> 01:15:49,200
Speaker 1: She's a superstar editor at the New York Times. She

1380
01:15:49,760 --> 01:15:54,760
Speaker 1: she um, she and it's investigative reporting stories for the

1381
01:15:54,840 --> 01:15:57,160
Speaker 1: Metro section for the New York City section, and her

1382
01:15:57,200 --> 01:15:59,799
Speaker 1: reporter just want to Pulitzer. So it's been an exciting

1383
01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:04,160
Speaker 1: for her, very proud of her. And our kids are

1384
01:16:04,240 --> 01:16:07,680
Speaker 1: seventeen and fourteen. Um, the fourteen year old is going

1385
01:16:07,720 --> 01:16:09,479
Speaker 1: to go into high school next year, so they're really

1386
01:16:10,000 --> 01:16:12,760
Speaker 1: turning the corner. And we're lucky that way into in

1387
01:16:12,840 --> 01:16:18,240
Speaker 1: a sense because um, during this quarantine period, it means, um,

1388
01:16:19,320 --> 01:16:21,679
Speaker 1: they aren't three and four years old and running around

1389
01:16:21,720 --> 01:16:24,599
Speaker 1: like they have their things to do, and they're they're

1390
01:16:24,680 --> 01:16:26,920
Speaker 1: they're cool to hang out with. I actually was listening

1391
01:16:26,960 --> 01:16:29,880
Speaker 1: to you talk to Titus Boliver and he said his

1392
01:16:30,000 --> 01:16:31,880
Speaker 1: kids were similar ages, and I thought, oh, I know

1393
01:16:31,960 --> 01:16:35,519
Speaker 1: what he's I can picture of what he's experiencing. So

1394
01:16:35,880 --> 01:16:38,920
Speaker 1: how did you meet your wife? We were in college together,

1395
01:16:39,160 --> 01:16:41,000
Speaker 1: but she was always more of a news e than me,

1396
01:16:41,200 --> 01:16:43,960
Speaker 1: Like I was like an arts writer writing movie reviews

1397
01:16:44,000 --> 01:16:47,479
Speaker 1: and editing the arts publication of the school paper, and

1398
01:16:47,600 --> 01:16:51,000
Speaker 1: she was a year younger, and uh, news reporter and

1399
01:16:51,040 --> 01:16:54,000
Speaker 1: then eventually became the editor in chief of the Columbia newspaper.

1400
01:16:54,439 --> 01:16:56,840
Speaker 1: And then she stayed in We stayed in New York

1401
01:16:56,920 --> 01:17:00,080
Speaker 1: and stayed together, and we married many years later. But

1402
01:17:00,200 --> 01:17:03,240
Speaker 1: we circled with each other like sharks for many many years,

1403
01:17:03,280 --> 01:17:06,519
Speaker 1: and then we married in our late twenties, but it

1404
01:17:06,600 --> 01:17:09,439
Speaker 1: was always a relationship then or oh yeah, yeah, we're

1405
01:17:09,439 --> 01:17:13,800
Speaker 1: always together since my senior year, since and her junior year. Okay,

1406
01:17:13,880 --> 01:17:16,800
Speaker 1: So needless to say, Hidden Valley Road is a is

1407
01:17:16,880 --> 01:17:21,479
Speaker 1: both a financial and a critical success. And as we've

1408
01:17:21,560 --> 01:17:24,719
Speaker 1: established earlier, as much as you loved it even beyond

1409
01:17:24,880 --> 01:17:29,439
Speaker 1: your dreams. So what's the dream? Now? That's a really

1410
01:17:29,479 --> 01:17:37,000
Speaker 1: good question. Um I am. I'm delighted to be in

1411
01:17:37,160 --> 01:17:41,360
Speaker 1: a position where, um, when I have an idea for

1412
01:17:41,479 --> 01:17:44,360
Speaker 1: another book, that the doors might open more quickly than

1413
01:17:44,439 --> 01:17:47,519
Speaker 1: they might otherwise, that I it won't just be somebody

1414
01:17:47,560 --> 01:17:49,760
Speaker 1: calling up somebody saying, hey, I'd like to talk to you.

1415
01:17:49,960 --> 01:17:52,280
Speaker 1: It's the guy who wrote that book calling to saying

1416
01:17:52,320 --> 01:17:54,720
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you. So I'd like to

1417
01:17:54,800 --> 01:17:58,760
Speaker 1: take that that new situation for a spin and see

1418
01:17:58,760 --> 01:18:02,000
Speaker 1: where it takes me. I'm starting, it's starting to dawn

1419
01:18:02,040 --> 01:18:05,280
Speaker 1: on me now that um, I could just cold call

1420
01:18:05,400 --> 01:18:07,840
Speaker 1: a lot of very smart people out there to find

1421
01:18:07,880 --> 01:18:11,320
Speaker 1: out information about new subjects and I and I might

1422
01:18:11,400 --> 01:18:14,080
Speaker 1: get the calls returned more often now because I'm the

1423
01:18:14,120 --> 01:18:16,599
Speaker 1: guy who wrote that book. So I'd like to see

1424
01:18:16,800 --> 01:18:21,120
Speaker 1: where that takes me. And um, I do love drama, dramatic,

1425
01:18:21,280 --> 01:18:24,759
Speaker 1: vivid stories about people, and it always starts with the people.

1426
01:18:25,400 --> 01:18:27,840
Speaker 1: If it's about a family, so much the better. If

1427
01:18:27,920 --> 01:18:31,000
Speaker 1: it takes me into a subject area like schizophrenia or

1428
01:18:31,720 --> 01:18:34,519
Speaker 1: or any other subject area where I'm learning something new,

1429
01:18:34,680 --> 01:18:37,439
Speaker 1: so much the better. I love books that do that

1430
01:18:38,160 --> 01:18:43,559
Speaker 1: every everything from Moneyball to Behind the Beautiful Forevers by

1431
01:18:43,640 --> 01:18:47,200
Speaker 1: Catherine Boo. Anything that takes me somewhere else and helps

1432
01:18:47,280 --> 01:18:49,880
Speaker 1: me relate to the people who are experiencing those things

1433
01:18:50,600 --> 01:18:55,680
Speaker 1: is good in my book. Well, you're very articulate, and

1434
01:18:56,320 --> 01:18:59,400
Speaker 1: some writers they can put their fingers on the keyboard,

1435
01:18:59,520 --> 01:19:02,720
Speaker 1: but they can't really talk. That certainly isn't you. And

1436
01:19:02,880 --> 01:19:06,360
Speaker 1: by my standards, you earned your acceptance at Columbia and

1437
01:19:06,439 --> 01:19:10,720
Speaker 1: any event. In any event, Bob, thanks so much for

1438
01:19:10,840 --> 01:19:14,120
Speaker 1: doing this. Thanks Bob, I really appreciate it, and I

1439
01:19:14,479 --> 01:19:17,880
Speaker 1: highly recommend this book. I wrote about it, and then

1440
01:19:18,120 --> 01:19:20,760
Speaker 1: Bob reached out on Twitter. This is not something put

1441
01:19:20,800 --> 01:19:24,360
Speaker 1: together by a publicist. This book is truly great. And

1442
01:19:24,439 --> 01:19:26,280
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that because I'm talking to you. I'm

1443
01:19:26,640 --> 01:19:29,240
Speaker 1: blowing smoke up your rear end. What you had to

1444
01:19:29,280 --> 01:19:32,200
Speaker 1: write about it on your newsletter was so kind and

1445
01:19:32,520 --> 01:19:34,640
Speaker 1: so flattering. I was just had to reach out to

1446
01:19:34,720 --> 01:19:36,599
Speaker 1: you and thank you well as I say the good

1447
01:19:36,640 --> 01:19:38,240
Speaker 1: That's one thing I have you. One thing I know

1448
01:19:38,479 --> 01:19:41,759
Speaker 1: is if I write something, the person reads it sequentely,

1449
01:19:41,840 --> 01:19:43,400
Speaker 1: they get back to me. If I say something not

1450
01:19:43,560 --> 01:19:45,599
Speaker 1: so positive, you never know if you're bumped into him

1451
01:19:45,600 --> 01:19:47,800
Speaker 1: and said, oh, they read it and any event, thanks

1452
01:19:47,840 --> 01:19:51,040
Speaker 1: so much for doing this. Thank you, Bob. Until next time,

1453
01:19:51,200 --> 01:20:00,200
Speaker 1: It's Bob left Sense s