You dont walk around with that instability it is always there at random without warning. Kind of terrible magic can switch on and scramble our lives. As life magazine would put it afterwards struggling to explain the hidden volatility that caused earthquake somewhere to earth is quivering all of the time. All right you want to start . Yeah. Okay. Thats what thats all about . Nice to have a book in hand and following along while it feels like being in church right now it is most like interactive experience ive had in a while so thank you past ton john. Thank you we can do anymore on that give me a call. Hi everyone thanks for being here. This is really weird and im i think more nervous than i would be if i was in person. Not that im staring at any own space. But were here to talk about john. You will be for the fore foreseeable future to have a little motel on our handle. How do you write a book . Where do you begin and how does it begin to happen . Yeah. Thats really good question. I mean, this was look very much a labor of love for many years before it was leak work or, you know, so yeah it just, you know, the book is history, right . And so what happened was i found out about this character geneny im sure well talk about and realize she was a radio broadcaster who had all of these recordings of herself on the air after the earthquake or family recorded them. And learned that nothing ever have been done with them and i learn about it that. Through a kind of round about way and i started looking for them and you know, you know if you tell true stories for your job, when you hear that theres like this cash of untouched material sitting somewhere, you know it is look a treasure hunt. And it was just a purpose of you know that was back in 2014 i guess so it was like years of just looking for that. Any other documentation and archives calling you know looking up for survivors and we get names of survivors into the quake and who were involved in the stories and like calling you know 28, in a phonebook and not finding one youre looking for and that went on for years you know, and it sucked leak it was it was so bad but every once in a while you hit somewhere, and then be like sign up for a few more years of that. That was like how it started like trying to gets over the fear because usually i can call whoever i want, and with enough persistence find out what i want to know and worried can i tell a stoi like this if im going to hit points where people i need to talk to are dead and they dont remember it anyway. And nothing would have been written down about this particular question i have or this particular, you know, turn in the story took, and what was going to happen if that happened and i was just cowardly about it and i wouldnt write a book proposal because i wanted to find more an more stuff so that i felt leak i had enough. Wow. Actually that was one of my questions too. Theres so much stuff, like one of my very favorite parts of the book is hold on earmarked it is when youre describing the earthquake itself and theres the woman, one woman watching her son good outloud stuff look that is sort of thing that you know, as a big fan of your writing i happen to notice in your reporting so much easier to recreates. So immersing yourself and looking at it and for so many years how do you decide what to keep out . Yeah. That was really hard. Because yeah. Like i definitely love thats the pleasure of this job like you know what you can do because you do it in 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 that is most pleasurable art and that was weird because it was like trying to capture that from these static old pieces of paper. You know, like you have that same eye for detail but it is heart diseaser to find them and so what to leave out is like the problem of what to leave out was more leak i decided to tell a story of just about three days and anchorage and i thought that would be a way to simplify things and i wanted because it was look a whole universes in three days but what was painful was finding these, you know, i have to say you hit this pager like find huge resources for like there was some native communities that were wiped out by tsunamis, and i had read a lot about them and i had found people that werent involved and had passed away but this was not in anchorage or eventually came to anchorage and i felt like that was such an amazing story if you want to recreate that but i guess i cant and it was a story and one point i was in with an older couple lived in anchorage and this woman nancy, sort of like it was like i was there for two or three days and last afternoon there she was like i want to show you she happened me this four or 500 page report that she had been anthropology professor in anchorage at the time and done this study of the community where she was recreating experience and people in the communities and she handed me this document like everything with mas of where everyone in the village has been and he was flying and she was making a doll. You know, and i was like this is crazy. Like i know i cant use this and if i dont use it theres no one to see this. So you know, it was a really painful process. Like i try not to be that i had an outside role in preserving these things but in a sense i did because i was looking at peels garbage and it was literally some kids were getting thrown out. The question already which im actually into, but asked how much of your Research Time was spent on location in alaska . Yeah. I went there three or four different times i guess in a couple of years stretch, and you know, it was weird because there wasnt, there was some libraries there that i was using for sure. And there was some people that i work hard to track down and a lot of times i track down people and i would have so many documentation that i was like knew more about that they were dong that weekend than they knew so i would like and all nerdy with my shuffling my papers around and you got l call at 8 30 p. M. You know and this like some 86yearold man was like i dont know. That was disappointing and good to get the atmosphere learn about what it was like to live in anchorage at a weird moment in history, and all of that stuff where i would say you know ive been reading all of about this guy and he sounds like kind of a dweeb like you like fixing radio is that, yeah, and they would tell you a story about, you know, that they walked in the Radio Station in the morning and youve been up all night like check. I got it. But no, it was weird how little tile to spend there relative i think to like how hard i was working to recreate it and at one point i took a trip to essentially walk around, and just for my own confidence i think to go to the places i was writing about even though they were totally different 50 some odd years later this intersection, this apartment of town, just so i had some confidence that i knew how the city put together and i wasnt a complete carpet bagger about it. How did that trip make you feel . It made me get back into your next i didnt mean to cut you off. Go ahead. Did make me feel more like i had the authority to tell this story. I never, you know, thats the struggle you know. I never feel like, you know, entitled to tell the story but it did help in that way, and also just really fun it was a strange reporting trip because it wasnt, it was look, there wasnt a to do list really. You know, i dont know. It was literally just like looking at, you know, i had a genie account of like where she had gone in first hour after the quake and i locked that root and like when she was here earn turn to right she would have seen mountains and get to get it in my head and it was a process to spend money to go do that and make productive but yeah it was really fun. So i asked around, and someone told me that you had a pretty insane spread sheet where you were keeping track of all of your research. Yeah. How was that . So i love to talk about that spread sheet jazmine, thank you. Yeah. I remember my wife at one point when i was writing the book when she was like i think line this stuff sounds like it could be commercial. It could do well. You know like i wanted to do well enough in other journalist will ask me how i did it. Like how [laughter] so yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Doesnt matter if anyone is watching. Yeah. So yeah baskly i was just taking up odds and ends this, you know, letters and photographs everything and just photographing them with misphone. You know, and spread sheet of more than a thousand individual things of which were like it would be look a 50page interview fript so i had that and what i would do is read through them all, and i had a text document and try to find fancy software and i asked all of my techy friends and i got confuse sod i had this like text document that was a timeline, and as i read through these things i would just transferrings in to this like master time lien so you know like 8 p. M. On friday leak the fire chief over here having this conversation, and heres where he recounts it all and i was typing it into timeline so i had this like monstrous time line document that just, you know, went for hundreds of pages basically sometimes like within the records were so amazing that sometimes within leak a ten minute stretch, i would have thousands and thousands of words or just leak heres whats happening in the Police Station heres whats happening in this neighborhood. And that was superfun. I mean it was like very challenging im not a very organized person normally. But i was very proud of myself. About manage all of this, all of this information because it was just overwhelming otherwise. Would you feel like whats my question . I can imagine that being able basically to capture a moment and be able to get in every single Vantage Point how it makings you feel leak god thats how i would feel but again, whats it like to have this huge information about and basically be like a huge seeing eye of experience and culminate everyone together. Yeah thats a really good question. I mean, i think in truth it didnt it definitely felt that way. I think it feels that way more now that ive write about the book because you dont know what i didnt know. Like i was able to do things that yngt know but that was a real phenomenon, and i write about it in the book a little bit like because it was also just you could see everything like you could see like risks that people were taking and there was dramatic irony or you can see the future. You can see this guy is superin charge and everyone leak him and hes doing great work but in a month die in a plane crash, and you know, so yeah i talk about that in the book because onethird of the book is fact that this Movie Theater was in our town in anchorage at the time and i was having these weird feelings of also meeting, you know, the 90yearold alaskan guy who ive spent months reading about as a 30, 40yearold alaska guy and to meet him like youre an old man see where those stories end was eerie and i read our town, there was a stage manager character in the play who is basically in that same position somehow that he knows whats going happen to all of the characters as shes standing on staimg stage hes saying see that paper boy hes going to go to war in a couple of years and die and that kind of started dictating, you know, how i wrote the book like beginning of the book like chances and i was able to do that in the book too basically flash ahead and show you just really we cannily where these people wound out not everyone i mean it is odd. But it felt like that was right way to do that story. I know New York Times you did not care for that element of the we dont read New York Times in this family. I precincted it out there. But yeah. I mean it felt strange to do it because it felt strange to have that knowledge. You know . But i felt like there was something so painful about seeing the you know seeing life on that scale. Right that on the one hand look this superintimate three dhais youre lookings at minute by minute, but you have all of this knowledge of the magnitude of whats gong happen to these people and where are they coming from and going and, of course, all going to the same Police Station and going die. You know, and most of them are dead and i knew how it happened so it was a bizarre way to experience it an we dont have that in regular life. Right. I mean shall we talk about you of the stage manager in the system lets talk about our time . We could. I think it starts to sounds like were everything but yeah lets do it lets do. How do you im not. Special occasion. Yeah. Lets i mean we can just start with the opening quote of the book but i thought it was really interesting i didnt realize for a while that you were fed up of the opening of the book itself as set up of our town. Lets talk about our town in general for people who dont know. Did you know what was your knowledge of the play im curious i didnt know anything about it, really . I went to performing Arts High School and i didnt know about it so i felt very ashamed thank you for introducing it to me. Basically all i knew was episode of growing pains. I remember like kirk cameron in our time. But i felt it was this play that like my impression was a hokey simple minded play you know about like america and reading and this was bizarre so experimental and strange like that see how this character on stage and i mean the story about just like the book about three days in a small town. So that action is all very mundane and nothing that dramatic really happens. But you have all of these weird touches leak this stage manager who is just walking on and off stage. Talking to the audience, telling you the future. So yeah. So i think that in the play, thoom of the play is luke on the earthquake going on like the plot of the play it is about people inability to appreciate daily life that we go through lives and dont realize how beautiful they are and fragile they are. Until we can step outside of them somehow, and ends with a young woman died and looking back at ordinary life so painful for her to realize she wasted her time that she didnt look her mother in the eye or value what was there. That happened in anchorage into another realm sort of like realm were living in right now where were all inside or adjacent to a disaster, and you have this different look on things in some sense things simplify what you value. And now it is a spirit in anchorage theres a spirit of like oh, my god we have this special place. And we cant take it for granted now we have a chance, you know, to go back into it and try it again. So yeah our town took a part to sol degree it is hard to explain with we should all read the book and maybe this would make sense, and but yeah hard to talk about when we dont understand exactly why i did it i cant analyze it. But it was just felt so like such a true way to tell the story you know, and i was really lucky that was the play that weekend it could have been i dont know some stupid musical or i dont know. I dont know. Hard to do like incredibly clever and it sits in so perfectly but i wonder in actually writing the book did you feel like did it come together . It felt like the only possible way to do it, and so therefore, like i had to figure out because i had always feel like that what youre writing. Never written in my life. I have no idea. Thats good. [laughter] i dont know. It just like the thats what it is. Thats the story. You know, like it wasnt any real decision, i think, i mean, must have hit me at some point that was an option. But yeah. Weird im doing i guess im to say writing a profile right now about a, you know, sort of genius writer i guess. You know, and profile about me. John. How nice. Creative or i dont think im supposed to say this but i dont know i dont to get in trouble. But yeah, anyway thats one thing that he and i have been talking a lot about is sometimes you have like you dont have a choice of how youre going to do it you know. Because to you do it badly, then it comes out badly. But its a bad version of the right thing, and youve got to kind of keep pushing it in that direction and that was described how this felt. You know, and it was like i remember when i said, i said this to someone else other day when i sent in the booing to my editor at the house the first draft. I sent had sent him a document with my worries by john. You know, and it was like in lieu of a cover i was like all of the things that i was feeling. About the manuscript and that was first one. It was just like did i do it . Did i pull the time thing off. So yeah. It seems weird even to me but seemings like thats what happened. Im going to talk about jeanie. Who is amazing in every sort of way. But as a magazine reporter like were you spending a lot of time with someone either in our heads or in real loof where we were like consumed with them any time i wrote a profile about somebody i dream about them for month use worked on this book for six years and i wonder what your relationship with jeanie was at the beginning and how it changed if it ever did. Yeah it totally did because im at home i can show you this is jeanies press badge. Cool. This is jeanies campaign poster. Oh, anything god. Show an tell. I have a ton of her stuff here that is crazy and goes to your point yeah she yeah. I necessarily became kind of obsessed with her so i felt like i knew her and any time like i have two little kids and theyre look if you could have dinner with anyone jeanie, but yeah i went in so she was like this protofeminist figure, in anchorage of all places who you know if you were yo a woman in broadcast at that time you were supposed to do a show about home making. Or you do recipe swaps on the air so actually i have her recipe swap cookbook when she did a show like that and she became this news reportser instead. She went for it and she was like just like, you know, the win sensual of driven working mother who was, you know, with all of these expectations. That told her she shouldnt be doing those they thinks so when i started out, i think i saw her in retrospect one dimensionally i saw her with like a me too, you know, lens exclusively, and i sort of flattened her humanity in that way. Because she seemed look a type, you know. And i mean it was a very good type leak an admirable type but it was familiar. I guess how far it comes but thats a familiar type now. You know that woman who succeeds against, you know, society that shouldnt. And so yeah. I think that process was actually and i was completely e enamored by her i love who she was and she was that. But i learn more about her and i saw other sides of her and i saw, you know, her more of her interior monologue and the whole picture became much more rich and deeper and more complicated i saw things i didnt like about her like i saw that like you know, yes all of the men that she worked with who were difficult and dramatic like were absolutely sexist but i also saw leak other situation she was very difficult for someone to work with sometimes not work jobs but family and there were jobs that defied blowing portrait that i went in with and that was great because that makes you real like it makes