His new book, this is chance the shaking of an allamerican city am voice that held it together talking with jasmine hughes. Youre in for an excellent evening. Want to give a huge thanks to everybody who is happening, jon and jasmine and all of you showing up. Green lot storefronts are closed but the community is still here and that means so much to us so thank you. Just a couple of housekeeping orientation kind of things. Were in a webinar which means you can hear and see the speakers but they cannot see and hear you but they can see your name. If you have anything you want to share, use the chat icon and type your message nets chat windows. If you specifically have a question that youd like to have answered in the q a you canny the q a icon. Jasmine will be pulling questions from there start thinking about them now. We are recording tonights event so look for video or audio versions on website and social Media Channels and books. This is the porsche part. Our book stores are closed for shopping but jons books are available on our website at greenlight become store. Com. So you can paste the living in the chat and purchase is on the website and gets delivered to your home from our suppliers ware shouse. So thank you for your support of jon and the become store in buying the book. So, introduce our speakers tonight. Or interviewer is jasmine hughes. She is a story editor and writer for New York Times magazine and a 2020 recipient of the asme next awards for journalists under 30. She will be talking with her colleague, jon mooallem. A longtime writer at large for the New York Times magazine and a contributor do numerous radio shows and other magazines, including this American Life and wired. His first become, wild ones, store but looking at people looking at nails in america. A note baseball book of the year by New York Times book review, canadas national post, among others. His new book this is chance is an electrifying and lavishly empathetic and portrayal of one Community Rising above the randomness. A real life fable of Human Connection with standing chaos. So youre in for something special. Jon with heal a reading from the book and then talk with jasmine and take questions. So, jon, take it away. Thank you so much for having me here in my own home. I thanks, jasmine, for doing this with me. Okay. Guest its hard to figure out what to read from a book because the book just tells one long story so without having set anything up i thought i would read the first few pages. And its almost like a cold open. The booked case this is chance. Written by jon mooallem, pushed by random house, eddiedty anti warmed tell tuesday store other single catastrophic weekend in a farway town and of the people who lived through it. Ordinary women and men who, when the most powerful earthquake ever measured in north america struck, just before sundown on good friday night 1964, found themselves thrown into a jumbled and ruthlessly unpredictable world they did not recognize and spend the next few days figuring out how together to make a home in it again. The name of the town is anchorage, alaska. A blotch of western civilization in the middle of emptiness. In those days the state of alaska was still brand new and often disregarded as a kind of free floating addendum to the rest of america. But anchorage was alaskas biggest and crowded city, community whose essential spirit one visitor rote reached aggressively and greedily to grasp the future, impatient with any suggestion that such things take time. It was a modern day Frontier Town that imagined wait as metropolis, straining to make itself real. That determination made it difficult for those living in anchorage to recognize how indifferently the city they were building could be knock down. To imagine that early one friday evening, the very ground beneath them might rear up and shake their town, like a dog shaking an animal he has kill as one man later described it. Even while the earth was moving, the ferocious strangeness of what was hang in anchorage was hard for team to internalize or accept. Build little, peeled off foundations, fronting on themselves, split in half or sank. Fourfoot high ground waves rolled the the roads as if the the pavement were liquid. The city buckled and bent. It wasnt as though before the quake people in anchorage pictured these things happened and looked them as impossibly. Nuss pickunder teed and why would they . They looked around and registered they saw as stan and permanent. The world that just was. But there are moments when world we take for granted instantly changes. When reality is abruptly upended and the unimaginable overwhelms real life women dont walk around thinking about that wi but its there,ed a random and without warning, kind of terrible magic can switch on and scratch bell our lives. As life magazine would put is struggling to explain the hidden volume actuality that it caused the earthquake, similar the earth is quivererring all the time. Host you want to start . Guest yeah. Host okay. Thats all. Host its a nice to have a book in hand and follow along while somebody else reads it. Feels a little bit like being in church. The most interactive experience ive had with someone in a while so thank you. Guest thank you. We can do more of that at any time. Just give me a call. Host hi, arch, thank you for being here, this is really weird and im, i think more nervous than i would be if i was in person, mostly becauses cant stop stare might own face but a is a narcissist. But jon because were all indoors and will be for the foreseeable future, some of us have a little more time on ours ons. How do you write a book . Where do you begun . How does it begin to happen . Guest yeah. Thats a really good question. This was like very much a labor of love for many years before it was, like, work, or so, yeah, just the book is history, right . And so what happened was i found out about the character, genie chance and realized she was radio broadcaster that had all these recordings of herself on the air after the earthquake. Her family roared them. And learned that nothing had ever been done with. The and i learned about that how to a roundabout way did started looking for them. And because if you tell true stories for your job, when you hear theres like this cache of untouched material sitting somewhere, its like a treasure hunt, and it was just a process of that walk back in 2014 so years of just looking for that, looking for any other documentation, and archives, call looking up for survivors. Get names of survivors of the quake who are involved in the stories and calling, 28 people in a phonebook and not finding who your looking for. That went out for years and sucked. So bad and then every once in a while there would be you rid hit pay dirt and then it was enough to like sign up for a few more years of that. That was just like how it started. Just like trying to get over the fear because im a magazine journalist and usually i can call whoever i want and find out whale want to no with enough persistence and i was worried can i tell a story lick this if i hit points where the people i need to talk to are dead, not going to remember it anyway, and nothing would have been written down about this particular question i have or this particular turn the story took, and what would happen if that happened, and i was just cowardly about it. I wouldnt write a book proposal for a long time because i kept wanting to find more and more stuff so i felt like i had i would have enough. Host actually going to be one of my questions. Theres so much stuff. One of the my very favorite part offed the book is i earmarked it is when youre describing the earthquake itself and the woman on page 35, the earth opened and fell apartment one woman in turnagain said, good, outload. Never licked that car. Just like never liked that car. Stuff like that. The sort of thing that as a big fan of your magazine writing, have come to notice in your actual reporting because its so much easier to recreate. Immersing yourself in the archives and listening to recordings and studying this, how do you decide what to keep out . Guest oh, yeah. That was really hard because like i definitely thats the pleasure of this job. You do the stuff you write you get to catch people kind of being themselves when theyre not paying attention to themselves. You get to notice things, and then you get to describe them and thats to me is the most pleasurable part, and that was weird because it was like trying to capture that from these static old pieces of paper. Like you you got that same eye for detail but its harder to fine them. And so what to leave out is like honestly the problem of what to leave out was i decided would tell a story of just throw days in anchorage and i thought that would be a way to simplify things. And of course they theres a whole universe in the three days. What was painful was finding these hit this pay dirt, find huge resources and find them for things some native alaskan communities wiped out by tsunamis and i had read a lot about them and i found a few people that werent who were tan tan general sally involved but that it was not in anchorage and they came to anchorage but not for the the days and felt like thats an amazing story, be wonderful to try to recreate that but i cant. Then one point i was in sitka, meeting with an older couple who lived in anchorage, and this woman nancy sort of like i was there two or three days and on my last afternoon there she was like i want to show you something, she handed me this four or 500 page report that she had been an an to the anthropology professor in anchorage and she had spent months recruiting experiences of people in the communes and hands me this document she never published. It had everything maps of where everyone in the village had been when the tsunami hit, what they were doing, he playing monopoly, she was making a doll and this crazy. I know i cant really use this and if i dont use this, no one will see this. So it was a really painful process. Try not to be hubristic about it like i had some outside role in preserving this but in a sense i did. Was looking at peoples garbage. If didnt make something of it, it was getting thrown out. Host a question already which im actually how much of your Research Time was spent on location in alaska . Guest yeah. I went there three or four different times, guess, in a couple years stretch, and it was weird because there wasnt their there was some libraries there i was using for sure, and there were some people i worked with that i had to track down but a lot of time its would track down people and have so much documentation, i knew more but what theyd been doing that weekend than they knew. So i be all nerdy with my shuffling my papers around. And you got the call at 8 30 p. M. And this is like some 86yearold man was like issue dont know. So i was really disappointing. Some of the conversations were good just to get the like the atmosphere, learn about what is was like to live in anchorage at this weird moment in its history. I would say, ive been reading all about this guy and he sound like kind of a dweeb, just like he just likes fixing radios. Hes lake, oh, yeah and tell you some story they walked in the Radio Station in the more than and he had been up all night. And check issue got it. So, no it was weird how little time i had to spend there relative to howard to recreate it. At one point i took a trip to essentially just walk around and just for my own confidence i think to feel like go to he place is was writing about even though they were totally different 50 some odd years later, their intersection, this part of town so i had some confidence i new how the city fit together and wasnt a clean carpet bagger about it a complete carpet bagger. Host how did that trip make you feel. It made host how you get back intosorry, didnt mean to cut you off. Guest yeah. No. Did make me feel more look i have the authority to tell the story. I never thats always the struggle. I never feel like entitled to tell the story but did help in that way and also just really fun. A strange reporting trip because it was like there wasnt a todo list really. I dont know. Just like looking at i had a genies account of where she had again in the first hour after the quake and i walked the route. If she turn to her right would have soon the mountain and to get it in my head and that was fun. Very indulgent process to spend money to do that but i tried make productive, so it was really fun. Host so i asked around and someone told me that you had a pretty insane spreadsheet where you kept track of your research. Guest yeah. Id love to talk about my spreadsheet, jasmine, bless you. I remember saying to my wife when i was writing the book, when she was like i think i like this book sounds like it could be commercial. You could do well. I didnt want to do well enough to like other journalists will ask me how i did it so thank you. Doesnt matter if anyone is watching. So, yeah, basically i was just picking up odds and ends of letters and photographs and everything and just photographing them with my phone, and i just numbered them all and just have this spreadsheet of more than a thousand individual things, some of which were like a 50page interview transcript, and so i had that and i would read through them all and i had a text document. I tried to find some fancy software that would let me do it and i just asked all my very techy friends and i just got confuse sod i had this rinky dunky text document that was a time line and was i read through the thing is would transfer information to the timeline. 8 00 p. M. On friday the fire chief is having this conversation and heres what re he rounds and type it into the timeline. Then i had this monsterrous timeline document that went for hundreds of pages basically. Sometimes like even within the the records were so amazing that sometimes even within a tenminute stretch id have thousands and thousands of words just like here is what is happening in the Police Station and this neighborhood. And i was super fun. That was a very challenging. Im not a very organized person normally. But i was very proud of myself. Managing all this information. It was just overwhelming otherwise. Host did you feel like whats my question i can imagine that being able basically to capture a moment and be able to see it in every single vantage point, how kind of makes you feel like god. Thats how i would feel but im a nerd. What is it like to have a huge trove of information and be the huge seeing eye of everyones experiencing and able to collate everybody tell the. Guest thats a really good question. I mean issue think in truth it didnt definitely felt that way. I think it feels that way more now that ive written the book because you dont know what i didnt know. I was able to write around things didnt know but that was real phenomenon, and i write about it in book. Also just you could see everything. You could see risks that people were taking they didnt understand they were take, theres dramatic irony. Or see the future. See this guy is super in charge and everyone likes him and he is doing great work but in a month he while die in a many crash. So i talk about that in the wood bus the third of the book is the fact this Community Theater was doing our town and was have these weird feelings, and meet 90yearold alaskan guy who i had spent months reading about at a 40yearold alaskan guy and then to meet him and be like youre an old man. Thats like see where the stories end was also really erie. And so i finally read our town theres the statement manager character in the play who is in that same position. Somehow never really explains but he notes what is going to happen to up a character is standing on stage and theres escapes happening around him and hell see that paper boy will go to war in a couple years and die and that kind of started dictating how i wrote the book, the beginning of the book the reason why i say this booked call the the chance. Thats hour ourston starts so i did nat the become. Basically nash ahead and show you just really quickly where these people wound up, not everyone dish mean, its auld but it felt like thats the right way to do that story. The anytime nims book review did not care for that element of the host we dont read the New York Times in this family. Guest it felt strange to do it because it felt strange to have that knowledge but i just felt lick theres something to painful about seeing the seeing life on that scale. That its lick this super intimate three days, but you have all this knowledge of the magnitude of what is going to happen to these people and where do they come from and where are they going . And theyre all going to the same place, all going to die. And most of them are dead and i knew hough it happened, and thats like just a bizarre way to experience it. We dont have that in regular life. Host right. Do you kind of talk about you as the stage manager of the book . Lets talk but our town. Guest started to sound like were on acid or something but lets do it. Host how do you know im not on acid. Special occasion. Guest i dont know. Host lets we can just start with the opening quarter of the book. I thought it was really interesting. I didnt realize for a while that youre fed up of thing of the book is the setup of our town. Let talk about our town for. Guest did you know what was your knowledge of the display i didnt know anything about it really. Host i didnt know anything about and i went to performing Arts High School so i felt very ashamed. Guest yeah. Host i put in the end notes all i knew was from like an episode of growing pains putt. I always thought was this play that my impression was its this very hokey kind of simple minded play about americana and American Life in a small town. And then i started reading and i was like this is bizarre. So experimental and strange. You have this character on stage, the story is but just like the book is about throw days in a small town. So the action is all very much dane and mundane and nothing dramatic happens but you heard weird touches the stage manager walking on and off statement talking to the audience, tellogy you the future. So that i think that in the play, the themes of the play are very much like the themes of the story of the earthquake. Theres we all going on bowed the plot of the play. Basically about peoples inability to appreciate daily life, and that we go through these times and dont realize how beautiful they and are how fragile they are until we can step outside them somehow and play ends with this young woman who died and her soul is looking back at ordinary life and just its so painful for her to realize she wasted her time. She didnt look her mother in the eye, didnt value what was there. That is what happened with the earthquake. It sort over threw people in anchorage into this other realm, its sored like the realm were living in now, were all inside or at least adjacent to a disaster, and you just have this different lens on things, and some sense being simplified. What you value, and that whats spirit in anchorage. Spirit of, we have this special place and we cant take it for granted and now we have a chance to go back into it and try it again. So i just our town took over parts of the book to some degree, i think. It sort of hard to explain with a you should all read the book and then maybe this will make sense. [laughter] guest its hard to talk but. Still dont really understand why i did it. Cant analyze it but it was just felt so like such a true way to tell the story. And i was really lucky that was the play. It could have been some stupid musical or something. I dont know. Host was hard to do . Its incredibly clever and fit monday so perfectly but i wonder in actually writing the book did you feel like you were shoehorning it or didded come together. No felt like there was the only possible way to do it. And so therefore like i had to figure out doesnt it always feel like that when youre writing . [inaudible] guest it just like the you just thats what it is. Thats the story. It wasnt any real decision. I think i mean must have hit me at some point it was an option, but its weird. Im doing i guess im not supposed to say by writing a profile about a sort of genius writer issue guess, and host talking about me . Guest yes. Host come on. Guest i know you havent again in the my host what its about. Guest i dont think im supposed to say this. I dont know. I dont want to get in trouble. Host all right. Guest but thats one thing that he and i have been talking a lot about, just sometimes you have you dont have a choice of how you do it because if you do it badly it comes out badly, but its a bad version of the right thing, and you got to kind of keep pushing in that direction and that describes how this felt. I said this to someone the eday. When i was send the become no my editor, first draft, i sent him a document that said, like, my worries by jon mooallem. In lieu of a cover. And that whats first one. Just like, did i do it . Did i did i pull the our town thing off . It seemed weird to me. Thats what happened. Host i want to talk but genie. Who is amazing in every sort of way but as a reporter, were used to spending a lot of time with someone in our headed or real life and just like constantly consumed with them. Nite anytime a write oprofile about something i dream but them for months. You worked on this book for six years and i wander what your relationship with genie was at the beginning and how it changed if it ever did . Guest yeah. Totally did. Because im at holm i can show you. This is genies press badge. Host cool. Guest this is genies campaign poster. Show and tell. I have a top of her stuff. Goes your paint. Necessarily became kind of obsessed with her so i could feel like i knew her. And anytime i have two little kids and theyre like if you could have dinner with anyone genie chance. I went in she was this kind of proto feminist figure in anchorage of awful places who all places and you were a woman in broadcast, did a show but home mac organize recipe swaps on the air and i have her recipe swap cookbook when he sits a to the like that and the became a News Reporter instead. Went for it and just like the driven working mother who was banging into all these expectations that told her she shouldnt be doing those things. When i started out i think i saw her in resident the retrospect one dimensionally. Saw her as through a mew to lens exclusively and flattened her humanity because she seemed like the type, and it was very good type and a very admirable type but i think sort of a familiar i guess it says something how far we have comp of thats familiar type now. The woman who succeeds against society telling her she shouldnt, and so i think the process was actually i was completely ennationallorred enamored by her, and i loved who she was bus is a learned more and saw other sides of her and saw her more of her interior monologue and the whole picture became much more rich and deeper and more complicated and i saw thing is didnt like. I saw that, like, yes, all the men she worked with who called her difficult and dramatic were absolutely sexist and i sought she was a very difficult person to work with sometimes. Not job jobs with but their family. Sad to her that defied the kind of glowing pore trait i went in with, and portrait i went in with and thats great. It makes you real. And i also learned she was being abused by her husband which i learned not very early on. It took awhile to get there. And that changed everything, too. That just thats like this whole darker part of her life that is in the background this whole time. So, yeah, it wasnt that my vision of her necessarily changed but i would say just kept being more and more around that initial portrait that i had at the beginning, and you could see it from all these different angles. Host this is sort of my acid trip question. Ive read now six page odd the journalist in the murderer and i noticed that. Did your writing about genie and subsequently the writing about yourself as a character, change the way that you approached writing about people . Since you have to sort of like go through your own rigmarole, backing a character, translated to an audience. Guest yeah. I dont know. Maybe too soon to say that. In fairness im not a very big character. Im like a in the book im certain of just like the writer who shows up and starts asking people questions. So im not writing about anything that is too intimate about myself or that caused me to have to look really deeply or harshly at myself. I fells i make fun of my appears, maybe that counts. I dont know how to answer that. Definitely writing about i did feel a responsibility about writing about these people almost more than i do with people i meet because i feel like when i spend a lot of time with people in person i can trust my impressions of them more, whereas when youre just working with a bunch of documents and seeing people through other peoples eyes and then through their own eyes, you have to make judgments about who to believe or how to take a certain thing. Was this sarcastic phone know sarcastic . I dont know. That makes the think what i messed. Maybe i shouldnt be trusting those judgments as much. But the truth is, i havent written much since i finished the book so still in the process. Dont know. Host but you learn a lot when youre can working on the book. So stuck ton the fact you worked on it for so long and its so good and everybody should buy it. But i was thinking about the registry you did for the times magazine and how alaska is like a place of theme in your work. Do you want to tell everybody what the voyages trip was about. Guest that was story i wrote in was that last year . I dont know. [inaudible] like it was yesterday. Guest a century and a half ago and i wrote this piece that was he dont really write by myself almost ever. Overtly but the was a story that when i was in i early 20s and i was went to alaska with some two friends, one who had beening there and we went kayaking about we were walking one day and a tree, a giant tree fell on him, on me friend. And so the story was kind of reconstructing the accident and getting hmm out. He was met evoked out. He survived and everything. Finally he now works at the New York Times matter of fact. Host really . Guest yes. When life continues. Host thats a good paper. Guest im glad. So, yes, that was a story just in some sense an adventure story, i guess. I dont know. But it was like an adventure story that somebody like me who thinks too much about things would write. Its similar to book in that it was about random ms. And a tree following on someone and the rescue unfolded just as much with just as much randomness and could very well not have happened weapon got very lucky in a lot of ways. I think about the story so obvious i was finishing the book at that time because i was i mean i was just seeing it through as one part of the same idea. I dont know if you asked me a question about it. Man i didnt answer your question. Host i think so. Its hard to tell. But to go through what you were just saying, this book is about disruption and theres an entry you did about it in which you mention you started working on it, you were working on it right after the election, and now its coming out in the midst of a lot of disruption and considering the alaska trip, this is sort of like a hokey question but i feel like if anyone can with if guff us strong weirded perseverance and human grit and the ability to get through things it would be yeah. Im putting a lot of i think you ive seen you in popup magazine. Anything that surprises you when it came to just how resilient people can be . Guest yeah. 100 . So much of the book is about so many of the stories in the book so much of what people did in anchorage was helping. Like in very simple and straightforward ways. Like as soon as the earth stopped moving, people started helping. And digging people out of rubble or doing crazy things like theres this neighborhood that slid off the cliff and dozens of houses were just smeared across the shore and people were slowing themselves down on ropes to go find people who had been in the houses. So theres that kind of heroism and then theres things like lets get 100 people together and make sandwiches. And so that to me was what the book is about. Just about this sort of that theres chaos that we live with and we dont its kind of just vibrating there and sometimes it just throws us and were in these situations now, and then in those moments, almost like similarly as a force of nature, like our own nature, theres something in us that propels to us meet that and start fixing all the stuff that just got broke. And its really weird now to try to apply that, to see this through that lens because everything just refracted so strangely. Youre helping and im helping now because were in our homes doing nothing. And theres obviously people doing a lot more direct beneficial to society than that but we have a place in that. So i think its we have to kind of see ourselves as participating in something, like we have to see this as active and not passive and we have to see ourselves that were part of a solution rather than staying out of the way. Againie showed up at the Police Station because she had a little raid you broadcasting in her car and was going to bee like police chief, fire chief, take my thing and broadcast and theyre like you do it and he didnt shock she was supposed to be doing an important job like that and 24 hours later she is at the center of this whole recovery operation and no one can even she cant take a break. Its complicate. With need to just see ourselves in that light, see ourselves as i was getting depressed watching the protestes. Get back to do we need to be doing more stuff and better and have someone leading us, doing it, and harnessing that spirit. But yeah we need i dont know just feel like we kind of feel like cant field like were hiding weapon have to feel leak were working because we are loosely put. Im not really working too much but you know what i mean. Host youre promoting your great book. I just learn that perseverance and that energy is there. We miss it a lot of times but its there. Host i knew youd give a good answer to that. I needed to hear that and im sure a lot of of people dud. Guest i should have a canned answer to the question but i dont because life changes every day. Host youre the first person im spoken to in 36 days. Keeping it fresh. Guest low be a. Host one thing i have low bar. Host one thing ive been thinking about in selfquarantine and isolation. I was think you and your walk are you still walking. Guest yes. Ill explain for the viewer at home. I made a podcast called the walking podcast. I live in the woods in washington state, outside seattle and i take a lot of walks because i work at holm by myself and never see anyone and i can really its hard to find anything to do so i good to a lot of walks and started the podcast and just record myself walking without talking really and its called the i read an ad in the middle if stopped doing the podcast because podcasts listening is down right now and the ad revenue wasnt coming in and i was being hurt by the recession. I just then ill come back and die but im still walking all the time, and i did feel like maybe the walking podcast had found its moment it and would be useful would be useful to people who were standded at home and some people are but theres 20 something episodes out there i so d i like to just take walk for me sometimed without the burden of carrying something. Host of performing for the audience. So, we were talk about this started about how we met, which is through popup magazine, and now we write for the same magazine, and ive always known you to be an incredibly created mind and always have a lot of tough cooking, and again, just considering the period of time in which you were working on the book and chip working on other projects, like do you think all of your work comes from the same creative place . How do you put things in back burner how much do you multi task . Guest i dont know. Thats a im not sure i recognize myself in that question. Dont think i have a very good gauge of what i do really. I dont host youre extremely talented and we all love you. Guest i wasnt i didnt say the quality of what i do. Im okay. I just meant to me ive been writing for the magazine for 15 years or something, since i was 25, and that is like amazing. I feel so fortunate. I i also kind of feel like my fatherinlaw worked for the phone company for 50 years, and i kind of feel like that. I know how to write a story for the New York Times magazine and do some other things but thats like the main thing i know how to do and feels like i you know, i get ideas and they seem like theres going to be that would be a magazine story and i do it. And then some i dont feel like i have a very varied i do popup stuff and projects with this band sometimes but i guess none of that feels that stuff mostly feels just fun. Doesnt feel like work. Feels like playing more. I i think i have a weird time knowing do you think that writing magazine story is art . Never thought of it as like this is an artistic pursuit. Its suppresssive but if youre doing it well, then you kind of have to have your self be a lot smaller than the settled youre writing about. Dont know how you think about. I. That it different approaches. Thats what trip met up about your question. It doesnt i dont feel like im like jackson pollack, going into a studio and this fit of madness and couple out with a magazine draft. Host i always envision you doing that. Not lay it on thick by but the First Magazine story that made we weep was one of yours. I emailed you and thats how we became friends, too. Guest become friended with people when the tell you nice thing about yourself. Host they have the ability to make cry before i meet them. I wouldnt call what i write for the magazine art because its really hard and i maybe if im better at it can start to think of myself more highmooneddedly. Understand white you might be reluck cant to tall your work art but as a fan who hes has enjoyed it and grown from it as a writer who looks up to you and feels gratified by it, i think your work has tremendous artistic value. Guest thank you. Im not trying be selfefacing. Just trying to figure out characterize is. Do worry just be totally real. I do worry about sometimes that theres like a push in a lot of magazine writing, because of like we all have to be sort of a brand in some sense. We have to have a sensibility and an approach to things and some kind of you need to a good magazine writer, you know who youre reading. Voice issue guess and i think thats great. Dont have any problem with that but the danger is always, how its calibrated. Just that balance im talking about. Like, not some stories absolutely. Just big, long burts of burts burst of energy. What i notice or just what im capturing but in summon somebody else so for me feels dangerous to think boat as like my own creativity because thats at odds with being observer or a presenter of this story. And its like an expression of how i see things and how i think about things. Just makes me a little weary to indulge the thoughts too much. I feel like im trying to host no. I think youre being thoughtful and this is the rigorous thought that arching see in the book. This is the reason why i like your work so much. You can see the wheels turning in this interesting and creative unexpected way and thats what i like so much. Im going to ask one last question ask then open it up no everybody else. Theres a couple of question inside the q a. I dont know hough this works. I have a favorite part of the book but people arent here to see me. What your favorite part of the book and maybe its the same. Guest i mean, i dont i mean, i feel weird anything with genie i love but my favorite part is the story of the theater, honestly. Its not as big of a focus of the book, but i love i just fell in love with the guy who frank brink who just makes the produces the play and just completely larger than life. Its like waiting for but he is good and he is value to the community. Its like you can kind of make fun of him a little bit but also just admire him so much, and so i just like anytime that he talks interest the story because he is always he talks in these gigantic sentences with 58 adverbs and he just so dramatic for lack of a better word. Fell in love with him. That its the person whipped look at my research and scooping it up and putting into the the book there was nothing left in the frank brink bucket. Just scraped every built of him that i could find and put it in there. Guest im going to ting over to everybodies q a. A question from chloe in anchorage. I wonder if you had a previous connection to alaska and if not what is difficult to connect with folks in the community. Guest no. I mean, i had been to alaska before but i didnt have any connection to i guess i was sort of interested in it like id read some booked about alaska but didnt have a strong connection to it and really wasnt difficult at all. Really i was very intimidated by trying to show up in alaska and Start Talking to people, especially like old men for some reason. Seemed like especially intimidating. These guys know how to fix things and dress a moose. So, everybody was like, super generous and kind and its been cool to hear i was supposed to do a bun of events this weekend in alaska for the book and i was look forward to it. Theres no shortage of people with earthquake stories and never got tired of hearing them. It was great despite my own reservations. Host the next question from dana, how many hours of geneie rateow tapes did you listen to. Guest this is one back of genies stuff, all reel reels and a lot more in the library in clog. I had close to 20 hours total of tape from that easter weekend, but not the vast majority most of it didnt have genie on it. Genie was they depth, genie chance, what would you know and she would have an update and then a second radiostation that was on and there what. I had ton of stuff to listen to and i was disappointed there wasnt more of the genie stuff. Would have loved to have more but still a lot. Host the question from debra. I love the section of the book about the anthropologist. Why did you decide to have so much information but the book. Guest these were people that came to anchorage the day of the quake to start looking at how society was, like, supposedly falling apart what they thought, and then actually they were like, everyone is pretty chill and working together. Thats nice. So, yeah, that was actually one of the biggest find. The researchers interviewed 400 some people inning a starting the next da all the transcripts at the university of dell there. I think i delaware. I sent as much time in delaware as i did in action, reading the interviews. Its when you do a magazine story its like theres this rough formula that works and i you see stuff happen and describe it and then you call like an expert and to they tell you that through noticed, it has name, its this concept and they givous the framework to think about it. In this case its like i had that but the experts walked right. The story and started naming everything. And i was like not their first work and they start to talk how society responds to disasters. I thought that was an interesting wrinkle of the story and would put all the other stuff you read wrap it in a wrapper. Host what did you think of our town when you read it and what do you think of it now during covid . I really guest parts of it boring. Cant say i loved it but i liked it and admiring how it was made. A work of art. Really interesting. And i think part of that too is just the surprise of realizing how cool and weird it was going just sort of drivel. Host would you ever write a play snow i used to i wrote a play in college when i was funding myself. Host what was it about. Guest are you ready for this . About an animal Testing Department where they were just people were just at these tables all by themselves can testing like sewing animals eyes shut and test cosmetics and stuff, and all just ashamed of them. S and shy and you realize theyre nail Witness Protection Program and the evil corporation and the government have been just shunting them in here and they all have to decide whether to rise up or not, and i was just a young overconfident guy in a liberal arts school and this is this is what i wrote down. Why was i talking about that . Just to make sure something wasnt embarrassing i dont reallyi dont think im a good reader of plays. Dont get what youre supposed to get out of them when i read them necessarily so i watched a couple versions of our town and that was cool. Think it speaks to right now, too. Its hard because its this tiny town in new england, 100 something years ago so its very particular in that way, but i think the message is its sort of like a zen thing. Its a kind of thinking that a lot of us are scrambling for now, is just like the yearning to get wring more meaning out of life and the inability to ever do it completely. That part of being alive means missing your life, letting get by and thats inevitable but you have to try to latch on it to more. Host my favorite part of your book, to come back to me, was when genie family found out she was okay and that cascade of action actually really did feel like play to me and thats when i got clued into what you were doing. People falling at the nor and coming to the house and all of the stuff. You should look into playwrighting. Guest i dont know. Well see. Host i think someone is raising their hands for a question. Zachary, just going to give you a couple of seconds and then call on you. Lets see. If this works. Oh, okay. Is it working . Oh, yeah. Im loving being inside this, going so well and i know how to use computerred. Im just jumping inch zachary should see an invitation to talk, accept it. And then we should be able to hear him. Host sack heres another question in the q a. Who are your favorite nonfiction writers . Jon . Who is your favorite nonfiction writer . Guest i dont know how to answer that. Host you dont have to say me so that knocks off one. Guest i do love your work. I love your work a lot and its like just like representative of something that ill never be able to do. I just feel like its i dont know. Theres just a spirit to it i think is really singular. Ill fill you in there. Host thank you. Guest i just feel like nonfiction its such a brad thing. Ive been think canned rebeccas book because she wrote about temperatures a and rebecca is a friend, too and i learn a lot of tremendous. Her Favorite Book is a book but the photographer and i think thats a very particular kind of writing, and so then you think but that. But then you can think but some of our colleagues at the magazine, sam anderson, other kind of non its like so, i dont know how to answer that. One person i always like to mention because i feel like i dont understand why he is not so much more wellknown writer than he is this guy, report sullivan, who i just like reading some of his books when i was starting out really made my love nonfiction and made my want to write it. Wrote a book about rats in new york, and then he has written some books where he just sort of tromps around longing at history. Almost like john mcfee if john mcphee were fun to hang out with and like the spirit of it is like i dont know. Im sure john mcphee is fun to hang out with but not in the same way. Host i hope its in the chat. Guest sorry, john mcphee. Love his work, too, but its like this is more fun. I dont know reed john mcphee because as a roll lick rollicking good time. Imjust reading novels now so i cant tell you what im reading. Host anything in . Guest john mcphee host did you just get a text saying, post up . Guest yeah. Thats it so next time we do this we can just argue. Host did you rad any books in particular to put this together . Your sources of inspiration . Guest yes. What i did was did the same thing i when i was wry mug first become. Just started rereading book its lot. Just to kind of see how they were made. I read reread rebeccas book and h is for hawk. I remember rereading that early on. I read dish like some of those of like historical narrative the david graham book about the flowers things like that. I was reading those kinds of books to see the how other people did it. That answered your question. Who your favorite nonfiction writers . Host um, i mean to be perfectly honest if a been not able to read a lot of books right now. I reread Dave Chapelle right or wrong. I read John Jeremiah feldman going to disneyland with his kids it really holds up. Does it . I need to start getting that for myself. Can they dispense the weed . Thats my question. [laughter] i dont know if it goes in your time or not where they sent gary steiger to watch tv at a luxury hotel, watched russian tv for a week i was like a i dont remember that. Honestly, a i cant complain, thats pretty good. I think we have to wrap up. I cant tell what time it is. This is the most delightful offer conversation ive had and the only conversation in a long time. Thank you for asking me to do this. Thank you for coming and i will take it back to you. Thank you jasmine, thanks john, you guys are awesome. Laughing out loud im really glad nobody can hear me except here in my own room. Thanks for giving us all a good time. Thank you john, so much for your wonderful book. Were excited to read it. A piece of the info in the chapter about how to buy that getting the book from supporting local independent store as well as brilliant authors. Its a great option to have. You can see more evidence we have coming up greenlightbooks. Com and find all the authors weve been talking about and have lots more readings for your quarantine. Thank you guys so much, best of luck to the both and we will see you soon. Thanks for doing this. Booktv continues now on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the National Constitution center and to another convening of our virtual americas town hall. Im jeffrey rosen, the president of this wonderful institution. Which is come as those of you who have joined us before come online and know the only institution in america chartered by congress to increase awareness and understanding of the constitution amohe