Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Bob Kolker

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Bob Kolker · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to The Bob Left's podcast. My
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: guest today is Robert cole Curl, author of the best
• 0:16
  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
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the show. Now you're like me. We're talking before we
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: started that you're Bob. Were you ever? Robert? I was
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Bobby until I think the day I arrived for college
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: and um, someone asked me my name and I tried
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to say Bobby, but I, um, I got stuck on
• 0:39
  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.
• 0:50
  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
• 1:02
  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
• 10:42
  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
• 11:50
  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
• 12:19
  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
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: be enough to sustain me for a few years while
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: I worked on it. Luckily, I had written one book before,
• 12:29
  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
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: was all full time. And then if you say you
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: started four years ago and ultimately the deal was six
• 12:55
  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,
• 13:05
  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
• 13:43
  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
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: is a big book. It's a thick book. It has
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: lots of footnotes, you know, it's it's heavily researched. It
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: is not realistic to however, just saying people who have
• 14:03
  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
• 14:15
  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
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: book of the year, they don't want to just dump
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: it on people and say, Hi, review this for next
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: week please. They want to start building up interest and
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: sending it out early and getting it to critics and
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: getting it too bloggers and getting it to uh special
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: readers on good Reads, just to get people starting to
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: talk about it. Um. They put me in front of
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: the media in December with people like um People magazine
• 14:44
  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
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: function of the book promotion business. It's not about it's
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: not about the physical act of publishing, which of course
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: they could do with the push of a button and
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: get it people's kindles tomorrow. To what degreed is the
• 15:03
  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
• 15:12
  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
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: and respected, and everyone would say, oh, it's a very
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: noble book, when very well intentioned, and how interesting that
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: you did all this work. And the people in it,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: I'm sure they're very happy to tell their story told.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: But you know, big nonfiction books like this that are
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: narratives that are about a specific issue, they all are
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: like that. They're all big swings for the bleachers. And
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: they either either get published and people say, oh, nice,
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: good job, and then move on to the next thing,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: or they build up ahead of steam and momentum and
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: really connect with a lot more people. And so I'm
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: when I write a book. When when I write books
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: like this, and this is my second one, they are
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: bets at the big at the High State table for
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: sure in that sense. Okay, Uh, what day did the
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: book actually come out? April seven? Okay, so right in
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the heart of the COVID nineteen era. I've talked to
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: other people whose books were in the pipeline, and they say, traditionally,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: other than the big media you're talking about, the Wall
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Street Journal, at the Times, Washington Post, they go on
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: a tour, which, needless to say, you cannot do now.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: So was it a good or bad thing to put
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: out the book then? And how did you promote it
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: beyond the traditional outlet? Um? I had book dates set
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: up at bookstores around the country. It was going to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: be a solid week of running around basically every region
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: very quickly. UM. And of course all those dates got
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: scrubbed as soon as the shutdown started happening. UM. I
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: had one huge advantage and I and I don't want
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: anyone who's listening to think that I would complain about
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: publishing in the time of COVID at all, because I'm
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: in a very privileged position. Because the book got selected
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: for Oprah's Book Club, and uh that I knew about
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: that a few weeks before it actually was announced. So
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: I had a few weeks there where the pandemic was
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: was coming, and without Oprah, I would have been very,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: very despondent and sure that my book was going to
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: fall off the face of the earth. But because it
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: was part of Oprah's book Club, I knew it was
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: going to get a huge publicity push. No matter what
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that a lot of people would order it online. Even
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: if Amazon wasn't shipping packages on April seven because of
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: a world economic collapse, people could still read it on
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: April seven. It gave me a bit of calm, and
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: so I don't want to give anybody the impression that
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: that I was cool in the pool while other people
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: were sweating for for no good reason. There there was
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: a very nice turn of events for me that I
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: don't take for granted. Okay, in April um Amazon went
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: out of a lot of physical bestsellers. Did that happened
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to you. There was a little bit of a lag
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: at some point where, but but I think that was
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: mostly because they were prioritizing shipments for essential supplies. So
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: normally Prime members could get the book in a couple
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of days, but they were getting notices saying it's going
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: to be a week or so because we need to
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: send out hand sanitizer to people around the country. Um,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: And that that that subsided after a little while. But
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that was minor that issue, okay. And how did it
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: become one of Oprah's picks? Well, as far as I know, Um,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the books editor at Oprah Magazine heard about the book
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: early during that press period that I was telling you
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: about earlier, and she put it in front of Oprah
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: because Oprah was planning to do a TV special for
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: about mental health. She was going to work on it
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: with Prince Harry And I don't know if she's done
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: that yet or that's still in the works. Her deal
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: is with Apple Plus, the streaming service, and so she
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: was going to put together a special for Apple Plus.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: And so this is the way it works. Apparently people
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: put books in front of Oprah and she has a
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: bunch of them, and then one of them, you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: she just says, let's make this the book club book.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: And that's what she did this time. She went back
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: to Lee Haybor at Oprah Magazine and said let's make
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: this the book club book. And Lee said okay, And
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: she okay. In talking with me, she said, I mean,
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: mental health is a big issue for her. It's important.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: You spoke with Oprah? What what was that like? Well, I, Um,
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: I did not have one of those moments where she
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: called and I said, you're kidding, it's not you know,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: your your friend playing a joke on me, Like she
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: sounds exactly like Open Winfrey. So I immediately knew who
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: she was. And as I said, I was sitting there
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: at home sweating out pre publications. So the minute she called,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I started laughing. I burst out laughing because I knew
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: there could only be one reason why she was calling
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and um and uh, and that I was suddenly being saved.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I was being being really helped out tremendously by a
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: tremendous act of kindness by her. So I was I
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: was hyperventilating, and I was laughing, and then I was
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: thanking her a lot and telling her how much it
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: would mean to the family too, you know the family. Uh.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: The girls say that they would watch over show as kids,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: and they would say, the people on the on her
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: show have nothing on us, like we should really be
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: on her show. So I think that might be why
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Oprah was interested too, because it is that the family
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: at first glance would be a good subject for the
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: Oprah Winfrey Show. Okay, did you have a substantive conversation
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: with her, or was just basically I'm calling to congratulate you.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: She um, she was calling to congratulate I. Um. I
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: said to her that, you know, I love I said, I,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: but I was extremely grateful, and I said, it was
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: the challenge of a career to be able to weave
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: together so many different perspectives of so many different people,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: to to juggle so many characters, if you will, it's
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: not characters because it's nonfiction. A juggle twelve kids and
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: two parents in a book and have readers actually be
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: able to keep track of it all was a huge challenge,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: and that I wanted to try to make it like
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: something like East of Eden. And I mentioned East of
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: Eden to her because I know that that was an
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Oprah's Book Club pick a couple of years ago, and
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: that she liked it and that was an influence on
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: me as well. And she got it. She said, Oh, yes,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: of course, this is a lot like this makes me
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: think of used to be eating a lot. I see
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: what you're saying. So she definitely read it. Oh yeah,
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: she definitely read it. She's a reader. The other day
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: in the prior to her leaving television, the book would
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: also get a TV segment. So they say, it's great
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: having Oprah picket. But what does it that actually mean
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: today other than, you know, giving a higher level of
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: notice to the book. The new version of Oprah's Book
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: Club is a promotion deal with Apple, so she um.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Obviously the books available everywhere, including Amazon, but when she
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: promotes the book online, she said, has swipe up to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: buy it on Apple Books. And when she does a
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: TV show about the book, it's a special for Apple Plus.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: So I was interviewed. Unfortunately it was on Facetown because
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: of the pandemic, but family members and I and experts
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: were all interviewed on FaceTime for a show that will
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: be out on June four or June five, I think
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: on Apple Plus on Apple Plus. But the big thing,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: and the thing that I did not realize that she does,
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: is that she and the club actually read the book
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: together week after week after week. They've divided this book
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: into six weeks and they meet on Instagram on on
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: the Oprah's book Club account and each Monday morning at
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: ten am for the last five weeks. The last one
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: is next Monday. UM her account runs a short video
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: by Oprah who she's holding my book and she says, Okay,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: so we've read chapters whatever through whatever, and this happened,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: and that happened, and this happened. My question for you
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: is how what do you think Lindsay was feeling when
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: she made that decision? And then in the comments section
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: of Instagram, hundreds of people start to weigh in in
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: real time giving their perspectives on the book. So it
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: is a real live book club that is actually reading
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the book. And for an author, it's been mind blowing
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: week after week to watch hundreds of people reading your
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: book and talking together about it, and I get to
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: sit in and look at it. It's it's more than
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: I could ever have imagined. It's just stunning. If someone
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: is picked by Oprah generally speaking, how many additional sales
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: do you get? Well, I only know that they increased
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: my my initial print run dramatically by like tens of
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: thousands of copies. I don't know if it's different for
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: fiction or if it's you know, or different for from
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: book to book, but it it's a it's a huge
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: leg up. Okay, So how many did they ultimately print?
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Originally double day, Um, they print. Originally they printed close
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand copies and um hardcover, and now
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: they're up to like a hundred thirty three thousand hardcover. Okay,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: what's the arc of a book like this? So, I
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: mean every book is unique, but is it tend to
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: be front loaded forgetting the paperback sales? Somewhere down the
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: future a hardcover book? Will it sustained for months? Has
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: it already peaked? Is it yet to peek? I think that, Um,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: this book's a little bit of an outlier because it
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: has because it's been very successful, so it has remained
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: on the best seller list. Um, the sales are not
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: what they were in the first couple of weeks. They've
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: they've gone lower, but the sales are still high enough
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: to keep it on the best seller list. But sometime soon,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you know, the house always wins, you know, someday soon
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: one week coming up, maybe next week, maybe two, three, four,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: seven weeks from now, it will fall off the best
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: seller list and then hopefully it will it will develop
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: some sort of niche where it continues to sell let's
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: hope thousand cops a week or something like that, and
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: then it becomes a regular earner for the company, and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: then within a year the paperback comes and gives it
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: another jolt, and that that's at a different ice points.
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: So it really is, it's really appealing to an entirely
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: different book buying public. There there are people out there
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: who never in the world in their in their lives
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: have bought a big, heavy, first edition hardcover book because
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: it's so expensive. They wait for the paperback, and so
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: that whole market gets reached. Meanwhile, electronic books, especially in
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the time of COVID, are basically half the sales. Um,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: so wait, wait, wait, slow there half of Hidden Valley
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Road was essentially kindled. Yes, but um, I'll be why
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: don't I be a little clearer. Let's say this. It's like,
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: roughly is Kindle or Apple books or electronic, Roughly forty
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: or forty one is hardcover books, and then the rest
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: is audiobook. The audiobook sales are not trivial. They're they're
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: over some Sometimes it seems like it's closer to audio
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: books are a big deal. Okay, who reads the audiobook? Um, well,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: anyone who drives? Um no, no, no, no. Who literally
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: did the reading of the book for the recording? Oh?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Um he's wonderful. Sean Pratt, he's terrific. He actually read
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Lost Girls, which was my first book, and they asked
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: me if I was all right with using him again
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: and using him some bad term. He used me, I'm
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: really fortunate. He's a star. People love him and he did.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: My brother in law listen to it, actually said it
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: was great. Okay, you're obviously a student of the game. Uh.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: If you read the New York Times Walt Three Journal,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: kindle sales continued to decrease as the percentage of overall sales.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yet in your case, they're really notable. Is it a
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: COVID thing? What do you think's going on here? I
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: think it's a COVID thing. And also the the book.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: A lot of bookstores just aren't open, and which obviously
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: contributes more to the kindle thing. But it means fewer
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: people are browsing and seeing the Oprah's book club stand
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: and saying, oh, I'll buy this. So who knows, maybe
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: that will change. Maybe in the fall, um the hardcover
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: will be sitting at airport bookstores again and people will
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: be flying again. I'm being a little optimistic thinking that
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: people are gonna be flying in the fall. But you
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Okay, you got your advance. When
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: will you see another check? Well, typically it's for payments, UM,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: so I'm gonna use fake numbers. You know, if the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: advance is a million dollars, you get two dollars when
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: you sign, you get another two fifty when um, you
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: deliver the manuscript and the publisher decides it's good enough
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: to be edited and a play, see you on the schedule.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: So that might that's a little wiggly, that could be.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: That could take some time because they might want you
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: to do another draft or do another revision. But once
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: it's once it's put on the schedule, payment number two comes,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: and then payment number three comes on publication day, and
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: then payment number four comes a year after publication day,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: which more or less usually coincide it's with the paperback
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: coming out. Well, in this particular, Kay, you're obviously have
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: earned back the advance already. So in terms of royalties,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: those will come a year from publication. UM. I usually
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: get a royalty statement twice a year, in April and October,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: and it's pretty much right up to the date. So
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: if this book earns back by the end of the summer,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: which hopefully it would. I might actually see some royalties
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: in that October statement, Okay, with such a successful book,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: even though we're in the COVID nineteen era, did you
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: splurge it all in your personal life? No? It basically
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: gave me peace of mind in the COVID nineteen era.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: It meant that, UM. It meant that I didn't have
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: to worry about lining up a new project right away,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: that I could that I can sit and and take
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: care of my family and and take it slow during
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: this difficult time and not sit and worry about the
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: house being far closed on. The book is a huge success.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: S Has this even though we're in this crazy era?
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Has this led to any new opportunities? Not yet. UM.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I have a couple of ideas that are hopping, but nothing,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: nothing that's really book length. Um. The biggest opportunities have
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: been uh meeting other people, UM who are in the
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: mental health community, people who have been touched by mental illness,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: either in their family or through their work. And those
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: people are emailing up a storm. And so I'm I'm
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: handling a lot of reader feedback at the moment from
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: people who have really emotionally connected with the book, And
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: have you personally been to therapy, Yes, but not for
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: anything but remotely like schizophrenia, and of course not, but
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: you had some experience in the field. We live in
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a world where many males or anti psychotherapy. That's why
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: I asked the question. Oh yeah, sure. Um, it's been
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: like regular meet and potatoes therapy for for for garden
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: variety anxiety and um and so I've done on and
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: off chid this and that with various people over the years.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Um and UM. I think it's terrific. And it's also
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I mean as a writer and someone who interviews people,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: I'm basically sitting and witnessing the therapists interviewing style and
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: getting pointers from them and tips from them on how
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: they how they listen and how they draw me out.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: So I have an appreciation for that as well. While
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: I'm in the middle of it, Okay, you have the deal,
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: it's a go. You start. How do you start? Tell
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: us some of the story? Um? Well, uh, the story
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: is is the American dream that that is suddenly shattered
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: when when everything goes wrong. It's about a couple that
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: falls in love during World War Two and raises their
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: family during the Cold War. And then by the late
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: sixties their model family that everyone else looks up to.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: They're smart, they're charismatic, they're cosmopolitan. In what is basically
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: a very small town out in Colorado Springs, they have
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: a high profile, and they are self consciously invested in
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: being a model family toward others. It makes them feel
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: good that other people think that they're perfect. And then
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: the worst happens. Then this illness hits them, and and
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: they have the bad luck of it happening at a
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: time where half of the experts want to blame them
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: for causing schizophrenia in their children, and the other half
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: want to put them in institutions and medicate them into
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: a stupor for the rest of their lives. Um there's
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: no middle ground, and there's no no way to really
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: do anything without becoming scandalized, and so they try to
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: cover it up for a few years, and then things
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: get worse and worse and worse. Another son gets sick
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and abuses his wife and starts surreptitiously abusing the two
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: younger sisters. And then a third boy decompensates you know, uh,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: in the middle of his classroom at a young age.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: He's only fourteen and then uh, in the worst possible moment,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the golden child Michael, sorry not Michael Brian, who has
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: gone off to California to be a rock star, he
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: kills his girlfriend and then shoots himself. Um, and everybody
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: wonders if it could have been prevented and what what
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: is going on? And finally that the by five or so,
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: the family can't hide it anymore. They they they have
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: at least three mentally ill sons living at home. They
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: have two more with the warning signs. They have one
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: who's dead. And um that the families in totally dire
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: straits and that that's when the father has a stroke.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: Um I I. As I tell the story, it sounds impossible.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: But then um, interesting things happen. Stuff that's out of
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Charles Dickens, like a wealthy family that's friendly with the
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: family with the Galvin family. They they pluck one of
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: the daughters up out of the family and they move
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: her in with them and they help her out. And
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: then Lindsay goes off to hotch Kiss and tries to
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: she changes her name. She actually was born with the
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: name Mary, and now she goes by Lindsay. She tries
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: to reinvent her life. There's a quickie marriage that one
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: of them has in order to try to run away
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: from her family. There's um years of therapy where they
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: try to find a way to confront their abusive brother,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: and then there's different levels of denial that their mother
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: continues to go through because they can't understand why their
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: mother shows the six sons over them. They feel forsaken,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: they feel abandoned, and then, out of nowhere, in the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: middle of the nineteen eighties, there's a knock at the door,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: and it's a medical researcher from the National Institute Mental Health.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: She's there to tell uh Mimi that her family has
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: a genetic disorder, that it's not bad parenting that caused it,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: that it's not something in the drinking water, that it's
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: not a contagious disease, that she's not to blame at all,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: And and they suddenly become studied by some of the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: pioneers in mental health medicine, and and the story takes
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: an entirely new and potentially quite hopeful turn as the
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: daughters start to rebuild their lives, as everybody starts to
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: see their parents with new eyes, and as further secrets
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: get revealed later on. It's the way I try to
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: describe it. It does sound enormously twisting and turning and
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: complicated with a lot of moving parts. There are interesting
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: subplots to where one son goes off to a commune
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: and lives there and it changes his life. Um. I
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: wanted it to have this kind of epic feel where
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: you can follow the family on different detours and digressions
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: and see how many different people experience their family in
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: different ways. I wanted it to have that kind of, um,
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: big Russian novel kind of feeling, so that you got
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: so swept up in the families ups and downs that
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: you forgot that you were being spoon fed a lot
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: of technical information about neurobiology. Okay, we covered your initial
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: conversations with Margaret and Lindsay, what were your conversations like
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: with the rest of the members. The father was already
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: dead when you started then, and there was one brother
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: who was dead, but you spoke with all these people.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: What was that like. Well, the one big challenge was
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: to talk to the mother of the family, Mimi, who
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: was nine. She was my first phone call after the sisters,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: and it was it was it was really really quite wonderful.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: This is a woman who, despite everything she's been through,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: is a tremendous good cheer and really um tries very
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: hard to look on the sunny side of things. That
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: that means that she was very willing to talk to
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: me because she knew that this book would be more
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: about the genetics and less about UH judging her, and
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: she was tired of being judged by the medical establishment.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: That was really a big problem for her. The problem
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: with Mimi is that she didn't want to really talk
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: about unpleasant subjects. She was had spent a lifetime sort
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: of deflecting unpleasantness, and so it took the personal visit
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: with her, with help from her daughters also to try
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: to nudge her into a place where she felt comfortable
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: talking about the years and years of shame she was
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: made to feel for having this problem in her house,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the way that she was told that she was a failure,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: the way that she sometimes felt unsafe around her own sons,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and how she had to keep that to herself. Um,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: these are things that weren't easy for her to talk about.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: But but but to her credit, she really did. But
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: mainly I found her inspiring. I mean one of her
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: big sayings was you can't be heartbroken every day, which
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, for someone who's been through everything
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: she's been through, is a pretty astonishing thing to say.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: And sometimes if I'm having a bad day, I think
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: about that still, I think, well, it can't be heartbroken
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: every day, and maybe maybe there's something to that. And
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: then I talked to medical before you leave, Mimi, since
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: you're with an observer and you wrote the book, how
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: do you believe she coped? Um? I think she developed
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: a certain set of blinders where she decided, um that
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: that certain things were important than other things she was
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: going to ignore. And I think that some of the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: things that she decided to ignore were the healthy children
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: and her family, which was a you know, of course,
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: something the healthy children grew up feeling horrible about and
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: really judged her for. But this was her this was
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: her survival strategy. She was going to focus on making
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: sure that the sick boys like Donald and Peter and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Matthew and Joe and Jim, not Brian because he had died,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: We're getting all the help they they could have and
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: had a place to come home to if they needed to,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: if they weren't in the hospital or in a group home.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: And and that meant seeing a million doctors and going
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: all over the place and becoming an advocate basically for
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: her children. But it didn't It meant that if little
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Lindsay or Margaret went to their mother and said I
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: have a problem, the response for Mimi would be, you
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: don't have any problems. You know, these boys have problems.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: You You're fine. And so they they basically lost their mother,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: and and so that that that this was her strategy.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: And in a way, um you see as the book
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: goes on that that the children, as they grow up,
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: they start to understand her strategy better. They may not
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: forgive her everything that she's done, but they get her
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: in a way that they didn't get her when they
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: were children. And this is something I think that we
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: as readers can really um identify with. We all judge
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: our parents in a certain way when we're younger, and
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: then we all see them with slightly different eyes when
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: we get older. Sometimes it's because we have children of
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: our own, or sometimes because you learned things that you
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: weren't told when you were a child, or sometimes you're
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: just older and you get what it's like to be
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: fifty and have responsibilities or whatever. So um to me
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that that it was. It was exciting to be able
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: to try to tell that version of the story in
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: the book. But what it means is that in this book,
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: the first part of the book, Mimi comes off pretty terribly,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: but in the second part she comes off in a
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: slightly more nuanced way. And I'm very very glad about
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: that actually, because I think there are too many stories
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: out there, both fiction and nonfiction, that really where the
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: mother really takes it on the chin, where it's the
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: mother's fault, you know that the mother has caused all
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the problems, and I didn't want this book to be
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: unnecessarily about that. Let's switch back to the father, because
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: on one hand, he's a real achiever. He enters the military,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: ends up the Air Force, he develops the Falcon logo
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: insignia for the Air Force. But there's some subtleties. Actually
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: he's kinda pushed off the fast track. He's now in
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: PR and then they you know, you say that he
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: ran this big Western States UH Arts and Development unit
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: and then he but in the in the interim, he
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: had been into what will just labeled generally a mental hospital,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: but bab on all your research, was this a stable
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: guy or was this guy? The other thing you did
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: say was despite there being twelve kids, he was not
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: that engaged and he had a fears himself. Well, what
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: was your insight there? Um, he was most certainly a
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: man of his time, and that he didn't he might
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: have taken intense pride at having such a large family
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: and really loved being the captain of the ship or
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the leader of the football team or whatever of of
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: of his little troop of kids, but that he wasn't
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: gonna really just you know, concern himself with the minute
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: to minute domestic issues in the house. And that meant
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: that at all, that that was the wife's job. And
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: also he had a globe trotting job. He in the
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: beginning he was um with the military, Harry Flatt, going
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: around everywhere, and then as the years went on he
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: was working nights to get his master's and PhD. And
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: became an instructor at the Air Force Academy. And then
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: he didn't stop there. He became the head of the
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: falconry program and traveled all over the country flying falcons
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: at football games wherever the Air Force played, and tid
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: doing speaking engagements about falconry. And then he didn't stop there.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: Then he went and worked for NORAD and he traveled
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: all over the country to give information sessions during the
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: Cold War about everything that Nora could do. And then
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: he didn't stop there. He went to work for the International,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: you know, for International for the Western States lobbying organization,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: and he went to Washington to lobby for more resources,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: and he gave out grants to dance companies and arts organizations.
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: And he had Mimi on his arm a lot of
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: the time, but a lot of the time he was
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: off alone. So he was he was a mythic, iconic,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: highly idolized figure in the house. But when he came home,
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: he was about being everybody's buddy and not really necessarily
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: about being too too deep into what was going on.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: And so the parents, the kids tended to just judge
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: their mother harshly because she was the disciplinarian. As the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: years went on and as they got older, they started
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: to ask themselves more realistic questions, like, wait a minute,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: where was Dad when all of this was going on?
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: He could have gotten out, She couldn't she stayed, you know,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: she could have she could have blown out of town too,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: and we all would have been on the street. Um,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: but she didn't. She stayed. Okay, let's talk about the
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: oldest brother who first shows signs of schizophrenia. Don He
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: goes to Colorado State. He has an early marriage. One
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: thing that is consistent through the book. Even though his
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: wife at some point ex wife moves to the Northwest
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: to pursue further education, he is constantly trying to win
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: her back in his mind. How long does that actually
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: go on for and what's the status? And did you
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: ever speak with her and get her perspective? Um? I
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: never spoke with her, Um I I did, was never
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: able to track her down. UM. But I know from
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: the medical records and from you know, from written records
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: of the time that when he would break away from
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: the house or break away from a medical setting, it
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: often was to go to Oregon to try to find her.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: And then there'd be one line in the medical records
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: saying he was not able to see her, or he
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: made it to her house and they did not let
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: him in, or they talked for five minutes and she
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: told him to leave. UM. So it was it was
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: never very productive. His psychotic break was was contemporaneous with
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the end of his marriage, and the marriage seemed to
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: be extremely important to Donald because it was the signal
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: that he was a grown up, independent man who could
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: make his own decisions. Um, he really needed that in
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: his life, perhaps even independent of his mental illness. He
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: needed to be the the to to inherit the mantle
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: of his father, to be the big shot of the family,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: to be everybody's role model. And for a time in
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: high school he was. He was an all state athlete
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: and the wrestling champion, a star football player. He climbed
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: and repelled and jumped out of airplanes. He dated the
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: general's daughter. He was really big deal in high school.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: But um, he was masking a lot of real difficulties.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: He was having trouble connecting with people. He was really
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: happier outside repelling off of cliffs than he was hanging
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: out with friends. And once he was at college he
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: started to really become very strange and insecure. He would
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: do impulsive things that he didn't understand why he was
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: doing them. This is a hallmark of schizophrenia. He would
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: he jumped into a bonfire and burned himself. He he
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: tortured and killed a cat. He wandered into health services
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: one day convinced that um he had his roommate had
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: syphilis and that he was going to give it to him. Yeah,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: he's just started to lift off away from reality for
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a little bit, and and he was troubled by it too.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: He was very anxious and upset, and so the marriage
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: or dating and girlfriends was one way to tell himself
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: that everything was all right. You know, that if he
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: could just get married, then he could become a man
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: just like his father. He could he could have a
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: family just like mom and dad. Everything would be fine.
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't fine. He and his wife, the marriage
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: was extraordinarily difficult. At some point she decided she was
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: going to leave, and that brought him back into therapy again.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: And just when the therapist was convinced that he was
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: starting to mellow out a little bit, he had an
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: enormous psychotic break and almost did real serious harm to
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: his wife and to himself. That was the end of
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: the marriage, and that was Donald's first trip to a
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: real heavy duty mental hospital in Pueblo, Colorado. Okay, you
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: actually spoke to the schizophrenic brothers who were still alive
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: I did, and that was another huge issue going forward
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: that I really overlooked earlier in our in our talk
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: that early on, I really I said to myself, I
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: can't write a book about six people with schizophrenia where
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: they just go crazy and that's the end of it.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say. And then Joe went insane too,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: and then we walk away from that. I needed to
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: be able to write about these people as people, not
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: just as a cookie cutter sufferers of the same illness.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: And so when I met the three surviving mentally ill brothers,
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: I was pleased. And perhaps I shouldn't have worried at
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: all about this, but I was pleased to see that
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: they were different people, where where their illness manifested in
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: different ways, and they had different personalities and and so
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: it was not difficult at all to write about them
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: as individuals. Peter is a peripatetic and high energy and affectionate,
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: a gregarious guy. He loves to play the recorder and
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: and loves his family and knows and loves to recite
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: everybody's name and um. Matthew is cantankerous and grumpy and
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: self pitying, and often goes on long jags about how
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: the Stato's in money and how um he if he
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: doesn't get what he wants, that big hurricanes are going
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to happen um. But he is gentle as as can
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: be and and nothing never ever acts on any of
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: his anger. And Donald, who we still spoke about a
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: moment ago. Donald has been through decades of difficulties but
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: now is quite quite serene and quite calm. He still
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: has this intense hyper religiosity that he developed in the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: seventies and never let go of, but he's quiet about
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: it and and very very peaceable around everyone. Doesn't say much,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: but knows exactly what's happening. You can ask him about
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: his family, and he knows who everybody is and who's
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: related to everyone else. But then he will spin off
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: into his delusions. He'll say that he is h descended
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: from an octopus, or that um he actually his parents
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: aren't actually Don and Mevie Mimi Galvin. He was born
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: a few years before in Ireland to another family named Galvin,
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: and they sent him here and then he designed ten
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: thousand buildings because he's an architect, And then he has
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: eight thousand other careers and his favorite one is a
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: falconer um. You see, it's become sort of a word
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: salad after a while. So he's not able to sustain it.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: But but he's I guess the point I'm trying to
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: get at is that these aren't these aren't straight jacket
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: maximum security hospital situations for these guys. They all are
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: under some level of care and and getting lots of prescriptions.
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: But you know, Matthew has been able to live independently
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: most of his adult life in federally subsidized Section eight housing.
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: He can drive a car. Um the other guys, you know,
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: they can be with their family on holidays and on
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: weekends of they their guests and and so it's it's
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: been interesting to see um how they have come along
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: over the years. Of course, their their family only sees
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: the loss like they see what the people they used
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: to be. And Okay, so talking about the other two
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: brothers who are still with us, you could have a
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: conversation with them just like you're having one with me
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: right now. Not just like it. No, they all have
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: cognitive issues. It's it's you're definitely talking with somebody who
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: is disabled in some way, and they all have convert
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: they all have subjects that they like to go back
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: to and become broken records about um. So you they
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: basically control the conversation and it's about one or two
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: or three limited subjects. Um uh. But in the in
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: the fringes, you sort of get little senses of their memories,
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: their childhood memories. You see the tenderness they feel towards
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: their their family members who come to visit them quite often.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: You see the gratitude that they have towards the family
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: members who come to visit them, which is really quite
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: nice to see as well. So it's a at this level,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: at this age, with this this many years of medication
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: behind them, it's become more a little bit more analogous
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: to visiting a relative with Down syndrome, let's say, or
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: what comes syndrome with Down syndrome or something like that. Somebody,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: they're just cognitive issues, right, But uh you did you
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: feel any danger being around them? Oh? Absolutely not. No, No,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: They're all everybody's And then that's I think the trajectory
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: of this illness is that the volatility and unpredictability and
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: anxiety it one people tend to mellow out a little
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: bit by the time they're in middle age, and then
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: sometimes the drugs they've been taking for decades of muffled
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: the symptoms as well. Okay, so um, one thing even
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: I know from writing about it. Uh, it's almost like
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: the Democratic left in that some of the terms are
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: very touchy. You know. You say that now schizophrenia is
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: a spectrum, mentally ill is an issue. So what is
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: the proper terminology today? Well? I think, um, the safest
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: thing would be to say that someone has been diagnosed
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: in schizophrenia. Um. I think these thing schizophrenic as a noun,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: like like, you know, three schizophrenics walking to a bar.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: That's not cool. Um. It that the word schizophrenic, even
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: as an adjective, tends to be sound a little pejorative.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: And so I actually did a little house cleaning with
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: the book late in the game, and I went and
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: vacuumed out all the times that I use the word
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: schizophrenic as an adjective and or as a noun, and
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: instead I would say people with schizophrenic neo or patients
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: diagnosed the schizophrenia or schizophrenia patients. Just to make sure
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: that I wasn't seeming too cavalier. Um, I don't think
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: that that's a I don't think that these are these
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: are huge abusive terms necessarily the way that some other
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: terms might be. But they but but it's that's the
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: recent thinking on that stuff. Okay, John ends up moving
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: to Idaho and pretty much distances himselves from the family.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: You believe that self preservation. He's working as a music teacher,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: not making a huge income. What's your perspective on the well,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: his He's the third child, and the two older brothers,
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Jim and Donald, they they feuded amongst one another, and
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: they bullied one another, but they also bullied everybody younger
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: than them. So John was directly in the line of
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: fire of that. Growing up, the parents were so invested
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: in being a model family that they kind of turned
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: a blind eye to any rough housing and kind of
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: orowed it off. But John was legitimately afraid. He was
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: getting beat up a lot. And then, of course you
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: can't discount the fact that there probably were early signs
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: of extreme mental illness in both Jim and Donald, and
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: so they didn't probably didn't know limits, and they probably
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: you know, things probably got pretty ugly. So I think
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: John was very happy to leave for college and then
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: very happy to meet and marry someone almost immediately, and
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: and and really not come back. Um. He came back
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: to visit obviously, and he has good relationships with a
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: lot of his siblings, but he really did not, um,
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: you know, he really was glad to get out at
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: that time. Okay, the father at first, he's in the
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: year force. The mother doesn't work outside the home. How
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: does this work monetarily with twelve children? Is it just
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: a different era or were There's there a lot of sacrifice,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: so there was enough money. Well, she made all their clothes,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: she worked the sewing machine. Um. The Air Force gave
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: them health benefits obviously, so there wasn't that kind of issue. Um.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: But no, money was very very tight all the time.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: And and that was the one good thing about writing
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: about this particular family is that they really weren't They
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: didn't send anybody to the Meninger clinic. There was nobody
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: who who went to I don't know, to Sweden or
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: something to to deal with their psychiatric issues. There was
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: these were these were middle class people with with real
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: money issues, and they often ended up in the state
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: mental hospital. But yeah, there was it was clear they
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: would have to go to state colleges and and they
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: when they bought their dream house in nineteen in the
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: suburbs on Hidden Valley Road. It was a ranch house
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: that it was extremely ordinary looking and that barely held
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: them all. You know. It wasn't like they suddenly everybody
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: suddenly had a room of their own with twelve children.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: They had like three different rooms with two bunk beds
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: in them. Let's talk about the survivors. Who can we
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: say mentally ill? Because I got to blow back on that. Sure, Okay,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: the survivors were not mentally Lindsay does a lot of psychotherapy,
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: gets her older sister Margaret, a little bit into psychotherapy,
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: but Lindsay ends up being hands on and Margaret is
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: definitely hands off. So of the remaining people with there's John,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: There is it Michael who was in the uh, the
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: farm or whatever it was, So there's there there for
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: any other ones who were not diagnosed. There's Mark Mark Mark,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: who who has led a quiet life. He worked at
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: the University of Colorado bookstore for a while and Boulder
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: and now is uh he's retired. That he married and
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: had a few kids, but he kind of kept to himself.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: Mark was a sad case because in any very large
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: family that the siblings closest to you become your sort
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: of family unit within the family. And so he was
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: one of a foursome with with Peter and Matthew and Joe.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: The four of them played hockey to that they were
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: on the same teams. They often were in the paper
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: together about scoring goals together. They really were, we're tighter
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: than than the rest of the family was to them.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: But all three of those brothers all became mentally ill.
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: He lost Matthew, Joe and and and and it was
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: really hard for him. It was like he lost his
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: whole family. So, of the five remaining I'll say lucid members,
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: to what degree are they affected permanently by this upbringing?
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I would say that the one thing they all share
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: as a certain hyper vigilance that that even if they
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: Michael may not acknowledge it because he's a, you know,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: sort of a child of the sixties and a hippie
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: and feels as if he's laid back, but it's clear
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: from my observation that he's And and Margaret and Lindsay
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: and Mark that they all are are. They remember what
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: it was like to grow up in a house where
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: either you were going to go insane yourself, or you
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: were going to watch somebody else in your family go insane.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: And so you would go to bed every night wondering
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: would you wake up the same in the morning, And
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: then once you were up, you were wondering, I sure
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: hope that I don't step out of line, or else
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: my parents will think that something is wrong with me.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: And so that sort of hyper vigilance doesn't really ever
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: go away. And they all they all lead functional lives
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and are I you know, have had happy marriages and
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: many of them have kids. And but but I think
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: if you talk to them at length, you'll get the
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: sense that they have a certain watchfulness and weariness about them. Okay,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: if you go into the science, which was threaded throughout,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: even when we get to the end, and I don't
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: really think I'm giving anything away here, there is not
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: a definitive solution in terms of what exactly is going
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: on and how to treat it. Can you amplify that
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: a little bit? That's true? And I didn't want to
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: oversell the book that way. I didn't want to say
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: that there was a smoking gun or a Rosetta stone
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: that the family supplied. But um, I do think that
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: they had something of value to offer that they were um,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: they existed at a time when we were just discovering, uh,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: how to understand the genetic code and how to analyze
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: the human genome, and at the time there was a
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: lot of excitement that if you just had a general
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: understanding of what a normal so called normal human genome
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: should be, all you'd have to do is look on
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the computer and compare that with somebody who had schizophrenia
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: or cancer or any other you know, disease, and just
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: see what was different, and you would solve the problem
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: by dinner time. Like you you you would be able
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: to find the smoking gun genes that would cause the
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: cause those diseases. But what we learned once the human
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: genome got sequenced is that for complicated diseases like cancer
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: and Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's and schizophrenia, it's not one gene,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and it's not three genes, and it's not four teen genes.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: It's more than a hundred genes so far that they
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: have found that have genetic irregularities that might play some
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: tiny little role in schizophrenia. And that is that's been
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: very dispiriting, but What that's meant is that the people
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: like the researchers in Hidden Valley Road who have been
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: studying families like the Galvin's, it means that they would
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: have been on the right track all along, because it's
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: those families who actually might be able to demonstrate exactly
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: how the disease plays out in uh, not just in genetics,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: but in the brain because they all, if they all
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: share a certain mutation, they can see how that mutation
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: might affect brain function. And so there's promise from them
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: in that regard. That's kind of a long answer that
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: the shorter answer to your question is um to me
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: that the science and this story serves the family story,
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: that the that the march of progress in science is
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: not like not everything is polio and not everything is
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: a horrible illness that one day we just solved and
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: then we we we all can go to bed um.
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: Most sciences wiggily and wobbly and two steps forward and
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: one step back. And that's been the story of schizophrenia
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: so far. And this family is our window into that story.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: What amazing thing is because you know, you start early
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: in the last century and then the kids are born
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: in the baby boom era is. You know, you're talking
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: about the research and then it's ten years later that
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: these people come back in that you say, this was
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: not a wealthy family. They could necessarily seek out the
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: best and the brightest. They're living. You know, people come in,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: we got the cure, and then they disappear for ten years.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: That must have been very depressing. I don't know how
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: they kept it together, absolutely, and and I think one
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: reason why they they finally decided to move forward with
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: the book is that they had some inkling from one
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: research team that there was some work being done that
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: they had a and in helping out with, but they
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: really didn't know what was going on with the other team,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: and so they were hoping a reporter could help with
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: that too. So I almost one of the very first
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: things I did was I called up Dr Lynde de
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: Lacy in New England and I said, you know that
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: the family says that you studied them long ago, And
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: she said, oh, yes, I remember them. I've been meaning
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: to call them because we just found out something about
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: their jeans. And I said, you've got to be kidding me.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: And so they connected them together in and a lot
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: of the revelations from that are sort of at the
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: end of the book. So let's talk about you for
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: a second. You're from where originally? Um, My whole family's
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: from Baltimore, and I um as a kid, I moved
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: out to the bourb So I'm from Columbia, Maryland, between
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: Baltimore and Washington. And your parents did what for a living?
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: My my dad was a real estate developer who's retired now,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and my mother for twenty five years was what worked
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: in the in the psychiatric part of our little local hospital.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: She was she was not a psychiatrist. She was a
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: She had a master's in counseling psychology, so she was
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: a psychosistant. And this was a local hospital where you know,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: people would cycle through who maybe maybe there'd be some
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: people with schizophrenia who would go into their health benefits
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: ran out for the month and then they so they'd
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: come for a few days at a time, but mostly
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: it was trauma from people who were in car crashes
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: or teenagers with suicide attempts, you know, the sort of
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: thing a local hospital would deal with. So she was
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: and she was not a theoretician. She she didn't come
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: home and talk about Freud and young with us. She
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: was very practical and very pragmatic and really was really
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: just there to help out. So it's I don't want
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: to go to suggest that I got this fascination with
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: psychiatry from my mother, but I did get her listening skills,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: for sure. She was a really, really good, active listener,
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: and so I credit her with that. How many kids
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: in the family, I'm the youngest of three, and so
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: you go to college where um I went to Columbia
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: University undergrad and I got here in New York. I
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: arrived in the fall of n when nobody wanted to
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: move to New York, and so it was very easy
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: to get into Columbia. And my friends and I from
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: that time we all say how we never could have
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: gotten in now, because that's what they say. But leaving
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: that aside, at what at what point do you decide
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: you want to become a writer? UM? I loved writing
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: from from fifth grade onward. I didn't know what I
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: was going to do with it, but I just thought
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: I would keep going with it, and I really was not.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: Didn't discover reporting until I was twenty three and out
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: of college for a year or two and working at
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: a little local neighborhood newspaper doing neighborhood news um when
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: I was a kid in the eighties. But the people
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: who wanted to become reporters wanted to be Woodward and
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Bernstein or a foreign correspondent or Sam Donaldson. They were
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: you know, in the white House pool and these were
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: things that I just never really connected with emotionally. I
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: wanted to be, you know, maybe a movie critic or
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: an essay writer or something. But then, um, I majored
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: in history in college, and I love the narrative aspect
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: of history, the the idea of different concepts coming up
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: over and over again and following them through over time.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: And then as a reporter, I found that I was
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: talking to people who where everyday people people who never
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: thought they'd ever be in the papers, and they were
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: dealing with situations on their block, like I don't know,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: fighting the local market because they were littering, or worried
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: about a drug war happening on their block, or um
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: fighting the skyscraper that was planned to go up two
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: blocks away. And I would come back to them week
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: after week after week, and it became a serial. It
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: became like a like a soap opera, and I also
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: developed nice relationships with those sources and got to know
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: them as people. And so I was writing about everyday
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: human dramas and UM. When my career really took off
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: several years later and I got worked at New York Magazine,
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: I was able to spin out reporting like that into longer,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: bigger feature stories with that that were about higher stakes
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: issues and higher profile things. But I never really stepped
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: away from that approach, which is to tell narrative stories
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: about people going through difficult situations. Now, you did or
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: did not go to graduate school. It's unclear here. I
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: did not, um the way you were talking about that,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: I went to undergraduate school, not that you had to,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: but I was wondering whether it was a shoot a
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: drop there. No, I'm smiling because I worked at the
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: school paper, in the arts section of the school paper,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: and and there was a reverse snobbery at Columbia's UH
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: school newspaper where where everybody said, we don't have to
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: go to J school because we're putting out the school
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: paper at Columbia and you know, we're better than the
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: J school and who needs J School? And of course
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: half the people who who said that ended up going
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: to J School, and and J School is great, but
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: most of the many of the people I love in
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: my career went to J School, but I just never
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: ended up there for one reason or another. Okay, so
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: how did you end up working at New York Magazine? Well?
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: I got there when I was twenty nine. Before that,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: I really jumped around a lot. I Um, I wanted
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: to work in magazines and wasn't sure how. I didn't
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: know how to make that jump from little weekly papers
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: to magazines, and so I worked at Backstage the Theater newspaper,
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: and I edited articles for them, and I wrote articles
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: for them, and then um, one day, Time Out magazine
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: announced that it was going to launch its New York
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: City version of the magazine, you know, the London Time
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Out magazine. So Time Out New York launched in and
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: that was suddenly, in a very difficult time financially in
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: New York. That was thirty new journalism jobs suddenly, and
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: I was one of the people hired there, and I
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: was part of a launch, which was great, and it
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: was like being in college all over again. We worked
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day to get this thing off
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: the ground, and I was writing City stories that were
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: really that would have been at home at New York Magazine.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: And so it kind of makes sense. And in site
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: that three years later, I got hired at New York
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: Magazine to do a lot of the same sort of
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: stuff that I was doing at Time Out Magazine, and
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: you ultimately wrote a story about a superintendent of schools
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: on Long Island that was just recently a very highly
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: reviewed HBO series. Yes, I can take no credit for
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: the movie, but it's the sort of thing that magazine
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: writer's dream of happening, that one day somebody's making a
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: movie and options your story and and uh and uses
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: it and it makes it into a movie. And the
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: New York Magazine has a nice track record with that.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: Hustlers came from a New York Magazine story, and American
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Gangster came from a New York Magazine story, and Saturday
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: Night Fever obviously came from a New York Magazine story.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: But the in this case, I've been writing a lot
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: of stories set out on Long Island. Um. I think
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: it's because I live in Brooklyn, which is not so
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: far from Long Island, and that I had a car,
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: so they thought, well, you can go out there, it's
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: easy for you, and they were all these kind of
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: gritty narratives. This was This was a few years after
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: Amy Fisher enjoy Bafuco. But there were plenty of other
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: stories like that happening out there. And this was an
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: amazing story about UM the biggest public school system embezzlement
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: scandal in America, all happening in a very high profile,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: very swanky part of Long Island where the kids all
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: went to Harvard Um called Rosalind and Um the superintendent
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: was a was a was a god um there. He
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: was really held up in high esteem because he was
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: delivering for everyone. And he probably would have done that
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: for years and years more if if his if it
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: hadn't been found out that he was, you know, stealing
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: from the register. And so the question I asked in
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: that article was did he swindle the town or did
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: the town allow him themselves to be swindled by him? Because,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: you know, because they needed his success, they needed him
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: to be delivering for them. And I never dreamed it
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: would be a story. And then there was a young
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: man named Mike mccowski who was a junior high school
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: student at the time of the scandal. Years go by,
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: he grows up, he becomes a screenwriter, and he decides
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: to write about it, and he options my story. And
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: I know, I don't blink an eye, like I think, well,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: these things never get made into movies. And then one
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: day I get an email from the magazine, years after
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: I left the magazine saying good news, they're starting to
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: shoot it with Hugh Jackman and Alison Janney. And I was,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: you know, I fell on the floor. It was wonderful,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: really wonderful, and I really I really liked the movie
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: a lot. Okay, what is the deal with New York
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: If you write something and it's optioned? Uh, do you
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: split it with New York Magazine or you get all
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: of it? Or how's it work? Well, in the old days,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: you'd get all of it. And then that was just
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: sort of a convention of the business that you um
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: that that that even if technically it was a work
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: for hire, um and uh, and it was technically the
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: intellectual property of the publication, it was a professional courtesy
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: that they would sign a one Sheeeter called a Bulsher's
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: release and allow you to option the story and you
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: would get the money for the store. The idea was
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't happen that often, and that the magazine
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: was too busy making money other ways to try to
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: horn in on these deals. Because the amount of time
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: and hours it takes to try to develop those deals,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: you end up spending all the money that you would
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: make on those deals. But then the business changed and
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: and uh, this is maybe longer answer than you're expecting,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: but the business really contracted and every and everybody needed
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: money everywhere, and there were a couple of huge successes
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: out there that the that the publication didn't get a
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: dime from, and UM speaking specifically of Sex in the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: City and the New York Observer, Like the New York
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Observer was this tiny little paper that was losing money
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: all the time. And Canadas, Bushnell sold the idea for
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: Sex in the City, which was printed in the Observer,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: and the Observer didn't get a cent from it. And
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: so I think magazines and publications started to wake up
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: about ten or fifteen years ago and say, all, we
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: can't let that happen, And so they started to negotiate
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: with their writers and UM and they started to come
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: up with revenue sharing arrangements. So now even the New
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: York Times, which develops TV series and movies from and
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: and reality shows and whatnot. From various things that they print.
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: They have a revenue sharing arrangement where the paper gets
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: some and the writer gets some, and I think New
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: York Magazine does too. What happened on your deal on
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: that movie? I think I was grandfathered in so, like
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: everything up to this exceanely high amount, I was going
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: to get a percent of and then if it if
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: it became a superhero franchise or or Sex in the
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: City or something like that, then then I would start
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: having to split fifty cents on the dollar with the magazine.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: But when the picture actually went to HBO when it
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: was developed, you got another payment. Yeah, exactly when they
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: when they started the day they started shooting, with the
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: first day of principal photography, I got another check. Okay,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: did you have any other stories option that didn't ultimately
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: go to screen? Oh? Yes, Um, those were all for
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: TV movies because you know, there was even before the
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: true crime boom of the streaming era with Making a
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Murderer and whatnot. Um, there was always a demand at
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: like the forrom the A and E Channel or from
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: from from Lifetime you know, for for a quick grip
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: from the headlines movies, and so quite often the reported
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: stories like the ones I did for New York Magazine
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: got option. There was one about John O'Neill, the FBI's
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: terror asm expert who who died in the World Trade
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Center attacks. That was optioned. It never got made into anything.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: And then the murder of Ted Ammen out in the
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: Hampton's he was a huge multi millionaire whose wife hadn't
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: killed That that got made into a movie, but not
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: my story. Someone else's the Vanity Fair story got option.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: And then the story of Carlina White who solved her
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: own kidnapping one day she she uh one day she
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: did a little legwork and saw that the woman she
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: thought was her mother had actually kidnapped her as a
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: baby from the hospital. That was an amazing story that
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: got made into a Time a Lifetime movie, but again
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: not my story. It was somebody else's story. So but
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: they all everybody's sort of putting little bets on the table.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: So they pick up these stories every now and then.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: And how do you end up leaving New York Magazine?
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: UM I had written Lost Girls, which was a success.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Um it was a you know, briefly a bestseller, it
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: got option for the movies and eventually became a movie
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: this past spring on Netflix with Amy Ryan that I'm
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: really proud of. UM. But UM, the magazine at that
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: time went bi weekly. Instead of being coming out every week,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: it was coming out every other week, which meant that
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: they need fewer people like me to write the big,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: longer stories and cover stories. And so they started talking
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: with each of us about how our roles might change.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: And I thought, well, this is the right time for
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: me to you know, write elsewhere, and to to write
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: continue writing for New York but also right for the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: New York Times magazine, to write for Wired. UM. And
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: so I did I UM, I moved on and then
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: I quit very quickly got recruited by Bloomberg Business Week
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: to be an investigative reporter for Bloomberg Projects reporter for them.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: And that was an amazing job, a wonderful job because
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: I could write really exciting, entertaining, propulsive narrative feature stories
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: for for Business Week magazine, but the subject matter could
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: be new and fresh to me, and I would learn
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: something new every time. And because it was Bloomberg, it
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: was worldwide. I was no longer just writing about the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: New York metro area. I was flying all around the
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: world writing about stories. And it was shortly after I
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: started my job there that I first had that first
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: phone call with Lindsay and Margaret, with the Galvin family. Yeah.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: One of the things I said to them was, I
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: just started a new job. I can't exactly walk a
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: way from it, but anyway, it all goes slowly anyway.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: Books take forever anyway, so let's keep talking. And that's
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: how it happened. So you ultimately did quit Bloomberg. I did.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: They're very good with book leave at Bloomberg, but they're
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: at a totally different model. They the people who go
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: and write books for them. They are beat writers who
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: have a certain expertise, Like they read about Jeff Bezos,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: or they write about Instagram and they break away for
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: six weeks and write their book about Instagram and then
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: they come back. Whereas I was having to learn about
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: schizophrenia from the from scratch and so I had to
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: go away for too long. But I love those guys.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: I'd write for them again. They're okay. So you referenced
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: the family. What is your family look like? Your personal
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: family Um, I'm I'm married. My wife is Kirsten Danis.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: She's a superstar editor at the New York Times. She
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: she um, she and it's investigative reporting stories for the
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: Metro section for the New York City section, and her
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: reporter just want to Pulitzer. So it's been an exciting
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: for her, very proud of her. And our kids are
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: seventeen and fourteen. Um, the fourteen year old is going
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: to go into high school next year, so they're really
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: turning the corner. And we're lucky that way into in
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: a sense because um, during this quarantine period, it means, um,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: they aren't three and four years old and running around
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: like they have their things to do, and they're they're
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: they're cool to hang out with. I actually was listening
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: to you talk to Titus Boliver and he said his
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: kids were similar ages, and I thought, oh, I know
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: what he's I can picture of what he's experiencing. So
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: how did you meet your wife? We were in college together,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: but she was always more of a news e than me,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Like I was like an arts writer writing movie reviews
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: and editing the arts publication of the school paper, and
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: she was a year younger, and uh, news reporter and
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: then eventually became the editor in chief of the Columbia newspaper.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: And then she stayed in We stayed in New York
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: and stayed together, and we married many years later. But
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: we circled with each other like sharks for many many years,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: and then we married in our late twenties, but it
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: was always a relationship then or oh yeah, yeah, we're
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: always together since my senior year, since and her junior year. Okay,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: So needless to say, Hidden Valley Road is a is
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: both a financial and a critical success. And as we've
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: established earlier, as much as you loved it even beyond
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: your dreams. So what's the dream? Now? That's a really
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: good question. Um I am. I'm delighted to be in
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: a position where, um, when I have an idea for
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: another book, that the doors might open more quickly than
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: they might otherwise, that I it won't just be somebody
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: calling up somebody saying, hey, I'd like to talk to you.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: It's the guy who wrote that book calling to saying
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: I want to talk to you. So I'd like to
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: take that that new situation for a spin and see
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: where it takes me. I'm starting, it's starting to dawn
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: on me now that um, I could just cold call
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of very smart people out there to find
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: out information about new subjects and I and I might
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: get the calls returned more often now because I'm the
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: guy who wrote that book. So I'd like to see
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: where that takes me. And um, I do love drama, dramatic,
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: vivid stories about people, and it always starts with the people.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: If it's about a family, so much the better. If
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: it takes me into a subject area like schizophrenia or
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: or any other subject area where I'm learning something new,
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: so much the better. I love books that do that
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: every everything from Moneyball to Behind the Beautiful Forevers by
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: Catherine Boo. Anything that takes me somewhere else and helps
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 1: me relate to the people who are experiencing those things
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: is good in my book. Well, you're very articulate, and
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: some writers they can put their fingers on the keyboard,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: but they can't really talk. That certainly isn't you. And
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: by my standards, you earned your acceptance at Columbia and
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: any event. In any event, Bob, thanks so much for
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: doing this. Thanks Bob, I really appreciate it, and I
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: highly recommend this book. I wrote about it, and then
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: Bob reached out on Twitter. This is not something put
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: together by a publicist. This book is truly great. And
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying that because I'm talking to you. I'm
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: blowing smoke up your rear end. What you had to
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: write about it on your newsletter was so kind and
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: so flattering. I was just had to reach out to
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: you and thank you well as I say the good
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: That's one thing I have you. One thing I know
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: is if I write something, the person reads it sequentely,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: they get back to me. If I say something not
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: so positive, you never know if you're bumped into him
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: and said, oh, they read it and any event, thanks
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: so much for doing this. Thank you, Bob. Until next time,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: It's Bob left Sense s