The Press Box - How to Create a Longform Podcast With Joel Anderson

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Bryan is joined by Slate’s Joel Anderson to discuss his career, from starting at TCU to working at BuzzFeed News to covering college football at ESPN and eventually finding himself at Slate working on his podcast, ‘Slow Burn.’ They touch on the differences between print and podcasts, talk through reporting longform stories, and dive into the details of the newest season of his show, ‘Slow Burn: The L.A. Riots.’ Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Joel Anderson Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ringer's music critic Rob Harvilla curates and explores 60 iconic songs for the 90s that define the decade. Rob is joined by a variety of guests to break it all down as they turn back the clock. Check out 60 songs that explain the 90s exclusively on Spotify. Hello media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox Friday, Brian Curtis of The Ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. So this week I drove to Phoenix to pick up my mom and bring her back to L.A. for the holidays. And yes, I'm aware that sounds like a sentence out of 19. But the cool part about the trip was it gave me a chance to catch up on the new season of the Slate podcast, Slowbird.

The new Slowburn is about the 1992 LA riots and the very interesting events that preceded them. It's hosted by a writer I really admire, Joel D. Anderson. And it struck me as a great opportunity for us to figure out how to create a long-form podcast. Now, you've probably heard me on this show gently complaining about the whole long-form podcast genre. long-form pods are too long. They're overproduced. They're underthought. Too many of them feel like the 48 hours murder mystery for a new generation.

But when I hear one like the new Slow Burn or the Josh Levine Slow Burn series on David Duke from a while back, it's like reading a great magazine story. And I found myself on I-10 on the way to Phoenix thinking, ooh, that was really well done. How did Joel do that? So how did he do that? Here's how to create a long-form podcast. with Joel Anderson. All right, Joel, I first know you as a sports writer, or let's say a

sports writer plus other stuff. When did you first start thinking about being a sports writer? Well, probably when I was about five or six years old. I used to, my parents subscribe to the Houston Post, not the Houston Chronicle. And, you know, Kenny Hand, Dale Robertson, worked at the Houston Post at that time. And I just, that's just the way I digested sports. And I think it's important to remember that like ESPN wasn't quite a thing back then. I don't even think I had cable until I was a teenager at our house. So, you know, the way that I kept up with sports, for the most part, was through the pages of the Houston Post. And then as I grew older, the Houston Chronicle as well. And so, yeah, I mean, I've always known that I wanted to do some sort of sports

writing. I think the way that I always put it was like, if I couldn't play in a Super Bowl, I wanted to cover one. And this literally happened in your case, right? You're playing football at TCU. You stop playing football at TCU and you get a sign to cover the hornfrogs, is that right? Yeah, man, wow. Research, Brian? I didn't know. Where have you heard that? But no, yeah, that's exactly it.

I stopped, you know, sulked for about a week, week and a half, you know, because that's a huge change in identity. Like, I knew myself as an athlete. And then I said, you know, I just can't sit around in my room. Like, you know, I just was used to always being busy. And so I just said, well, you know what? Let's try to do something in my major. I went over to the campus newspaper, the Daily Skiff.

And I said, what do you have for me? And they're like, hey, can you cover the football team? Which is, I mean, crazy, because that's obviously the most desired beat on any campus newspaper, right? But obviously they thought I had some sources. I wouldn't say that I did. But that's how it worked. Yeah, I got on at the skiff and they had me cover the football team. But at the end of the day, it was really good for me to be in that.

to that awkward position. I think it helped me to deal with like, you know, awkwardness and discomfort and to be like, you know, deal with people that were slightly skeptical with me. What did it feel like to then be standing basically on the other side of the line of scrimmage that you'd been on before? A traitor. And I mean, I don't want to get to emo about it, but it was, you know, I felt like a loser. You know, I was like, oh, I was out here with these guys.

And obviously, for whatever reason, I couldn't hack it. And that took a long time to get over. Like, even just, I'll never forget this walking past Amon G. Carter Stadium and smelling the grass in college and being like, man, I made a mistake. Maybe I should have transferred somewhere and play a ball somewhere else. Maybe I should give it another shot. So, yeah, it felt really, really weird to be on that side of it. And I think there were a lot of people that were skeptical.

But then there were a lot of people that understood. I knew what it was like to go through that grind and to be in that situation. And gradually, people warmed to me and let me do the job. And yeah, that was kind of what catapulted my career, I guess, for lack of a better term. You go work at various newspapers. You're doing sports writing. You're also doing other stuff. Did you find sports writing super interesting or did you find it confining?

That's a great question. I didn't find it confining. The only reason I ended up doing new stuff is because it was particularly when I was at the AP. Everybody wanted to be a sports writer. It's a very difficult job to get. Even to get the title, like you can write sports for years at the AP and not get the AP sports writer tag. So it's really, you know, difficult. So you have to do news in the interim.

You have to, you know, go cover. a fire or a car accident or a shooting or whatever. And so it wasn't that I found sports confining. I didn't realize that I might enjoy covering news. Because essentially, it's still just getting people to tell you their stories. Like, no matter where you go, no matter when you go out, there's a story happening. And I found out through that process that it didn't matter if I was at a stadium, a press box, a press box. you know, outside a crime scene or whatever, I was like, oh, I'm just interested in the stories

people tell and I don't really care about where it is. So it expands the idea of what you might do with your life at that point. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, right. I mean, again, I was a jock. Like, I knew sports. Like, that was easy to me. I, you know, just, you know, have my nose all in it the whole time.

Like, just following the NBA, NFL, college football. I didn't know a lot about the world. And it's like once I finally got a chance to cover news and do some other things, and I was like, oh, you know what? I actually have interests that are much broader than I would have ever suspected. But I mean, I guess that's a process of growth, right? Like, that's what college is all about. I was just 2021. And I was just learning things about myself.

Now, as an ex-joc, when you read the sports pages, are you like, these people don't know what they're talking about or they have a very surface-level understanding of football? Well, that's another good question. So I think that a lot of sports writers know sports really well. I don't think that the gap in knowledge is that vast. Now, maybe in football it's a little different because that's the strategic things. And even when I'm looking at the game now, I'm like, I don't even, I don't know what that is. Like, people talk about mesh points and all that stuff. And I get the general understanding of it.

But, you know, a lot of the nomenclature and all that other stuff and the terms that people use now that doesn't quite resonate with me. But I do think that sports writers get the general part of it, like the games, the analytics, storylines, all that stuff. I do think, though, what's missing is, like, a fundamental understanding of, like, the humanity of the players. Because there's just not a lot of overlap. I mean, in this country, you know, people are segregated for any other reason. And so, you know, just getting to know people and knowing what they've overcome or knowing what they're doing

or relating to them in some sort of way other than as like a kid or a football player, it's difficult. But I don't put that all on the media, you know, especially since we've been sports writers, access has been limited so much, right? It's so difficult to get to know people and to spend time with them. Your access is, it's restricted all the time. So I think that's a two-way problem, but I think that's the biggest piece of it, like remembering that these guys are humans or even kids a lot of the times.

and that makes the coverage a little less than ideal, I would say. After working in a bunch of newspapers, you go work for BuzzFeed News, which we now hear a lot about because Ben Smith is this country's media columnist in chief, and also they just did an IPO. What kind of opportunities did BuzzFeed News offer to a young journalist? Man, well, see, it's funny you say that. I was an old journalist, man. I was old when I went in there.

I went in for my job interview in a suit. And I remember walking in there, and I was like, oh, I'm, I'm out of step with this newsroom. My eventual editor, sports editor, and I'm sure he'll mind if I tell this story. He's a mutual friend of Josh Levine, our boy. So Ben Mathis-Lilley was a sports editor at BuzzFeed News, and he comes to interview me for the job. And he's wearing swim trunks in a Michigan shirt, a Michigan T-shirt.

And I interviewed him. And I came in for a second interview, and he was wearing the same outfit. And I was like, what? Are you not going to dress up? But anyway, in terms of opportunities, it was great. I mean, because it was the first time that I could just dream up a profile or a feature, and there were unlimited resources to go pursue it. You know, this is when BuzzFeed was just swimming in money, right?

Which was still, I was very skeptical of this because I'd just come out of newspapers where, you know, they were taking away coffee machines and toilet paper, right? And so to go to BuzzFeed where they have all this money and you can go wherever you want, you can travel anything that you can think of, they're willing to indulge it. That part of it was great. So it was just really the first time that I could just throw an idea to somebody and go pursue it. And that's just not how I've been. You know, in newspapers, you've got beats. There's a limit on how much travel you can do.

So that part of it really opened up the world for me. I mean, I pitched a story about Michelle Obama's brother, who was the head basketball coached at Oregon State. At the time, men's basketball coached at Oregon State. You know why I did that, Brian? I had never been to Oregon. I just wanted to go to Oregon, right? And I was like, well, it'd be kind of cool to go to Oregon and do that. And I thought the story came out okay, but that's just, that's this kind of stuff you could do at BuzzFeed back then in 2013, 2014.

Yeah, and I assume with BuzzFeed Sports, it's not like they had to cover all that much. It's not like, okay, we need the gamer on this. this tonight. So a lot of it was driven by you and your ideas. Yeah, yeah. And we had another senior sports reporter, Eric Malinowski, and a couple of the guys on the desk. And there was like a lot of tension and a lot of confusion about what should BuzzFeed sports be doing. Like what should the ultimate mission be? Should we be trying to keep up with the dead spins? Should we be trying to keep up with the Yahoo Sports? And that was sort of confusing. But, but for me, me personally, that was a little less confusion because I was there to do big takeouts and

profiles and features and stuff. You go to ESPN where you write about college football, your former profession, your passion, what do you miss about ESPN and what do you not miss about ESPN? Wow. Well, man, I mean, the one thing about ESPN is everybody answers your phone calls. I mean, you know, it doesn't make a difference. Like, I mean, not even to say that you abuse this privilege, but if you would email somebody from your ESPN email account, even if it was stuff I needed for my parents, right?

I'm just like, okay, I need somebody to do something about checking my mom in the hospital. You get a lot more response. So that thing, that I miss a lot because I could just get anybody on the phone at any time. Or even if they didn't want to talk to me, they would at least respond, right? Because everybody knows what ESPN, you don't have to explain what it is. And ESPN, even though they were curtailing travel and coverage and writing while I was there, I got to go cover games at awesome places. I'd never covered a game at Michigan Stadium before.

That was awesome. I got to go see a game at Altson Stadium. I got to go to Florida, Georgia, the world's largest cocktail party. That's a game that I got to cover. That's the stuff that I've been watching on TV my entire life. and dreamed about going to and actually got to do it. Oh, man, the Rose Bowl that Baker Mayfield played against Georgia, right? That's just a beautiful great game.

I was at the game that Bama won on the walk-off TD against Georgia. Like, that's the stuff that is exciting to me, and I love that. I love that I got to be in the house for that. What I didn't like, I mean, I think there's no secret that, you know, ESPN was going through a time of transition, that they were a little bit more uptight about people who had opinions about the world around them. And so I felt very stifled in that way.

But I loved everybody I worked with. It's surprisingly egoless, at least at that level of ESPN, where you're working on the college football team. Everybody was so helpful, so thoughtful. My editors were really nice. I'm still friends with them. But I just felt restricted a little bit. And I'll never forget when I came over to Slay,

like a month later, my editor was like, man, your Twitter feed has gotten a lot more fun since you left. I'm like, well, yeah, of course. Because you got, you know, he called me on, one time I was on vacation in Mexico with my wife, and I get a call from my boss, and I'm like, man, what is going on? You guys know I'm on vacation? And he's like, hey, man, you know, Roseanne, you know, they canceled the Roseanne show or, you know, Roseanne's got kicked off the show and like, don't tweet about that, don't say anything about that.

I'm like, what? I'm in Cancun. I'm not even thinking about that. But, you know, it's just that kind of stuff that went on, you know? That's amazing. A warning. Just whatever you do, do not tweet about Roseanne. I got a lot of those, Brian.

I got a lot of warnings. And that was, when you say stifled, the primary outlet of that was social media, like stuff I think that's not about sports that I might just put out on Twitter or something. Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, right around the time that Jamel Hill got in trouble, right? So there's that John Skipper left And so there was a little bit of a different Sensibility taking over

While I was there In fact, I was at the meeting John Skipper's last big meeting with the team And then it was like a couple days later He's not there and we're like, hmm, what was that about? So yeah, like it was a lot of that But also like even into print work Like the stuff that you had to write about

Sometimes I just didn't agree With the angle they wanted me to take or a story that I really wanted to pursue, but there might not be an agreement on what the appropriate angle was. And that's going to happen anywhere you work. Like, you don't get carte blanche anywhere you work. So I understand I work at their discretion, but that part of it sometimes was really frustrating.

From ESPN to Slate, where you did a season of slow burn on Biggie and Tupac, why were the L.A. riots an interesting topic for you. Man, you know what? The L.A. riots came up while I was working on that season of Biggie and Tupac. In the second episode of that season, season three about Biggie and Tupac, a lot of it is about sort of the birth of gangster rap,

so-called gangster rap, is a response to over-policing and black and brown communities in L.A. And it was just fascinating to me, Brian. Like, I was just, oh, man, this is awesome. I would love to get back and do something on this. And this is, you know, as I'm working on another podcast, right?

But it's always stayed with me. I would really like to investigate that time and think, you know, dig a little deeper on that time, you know, where the Daryl Gates's LAPD is abusing people, black people in Los Angeles, black and brown people in Los Angeles in South Central and Pico Union and all those other neighborhoods are sort of, you know, they're upset. They're gradually, you can feel this tension gradually building in the city. And so that's kind of how it came about. So, you know, when there was an opportunity to do another one, that was that was far in way like my top idea. I knew that I didn't want to do anything else other than that one.

You mentioned being old. You and I are both old. Old enough to remember 1992. Right. So what aspect? Are you older than me? Who's older here? We're going to sell that offline. Okay. No need to tell the people with the age. Fair point. Fair point. But let's say old enough to remember 1992. So what were the aspects of the stories you start researching this thing that made you think, wow, I didn't know about that at all? I mean, there's just a lot of things. I mean, there's just a lot of things. I did not know anything about Rodney King as a human, for one. That was one of the things is going into it that I knew that I wanted to attack from the outset. You know, Rodney King, in a lot of ways, it just become an object, object of derision, an object of scorn, an object of pity,

you know, but he was not that human to me. I only engaged with him through that video, George Holliday's videotape that everybody at that time saw through rap lyrics that made fun of him for getting his ass kicked so to learn about him as a human being was a revelation to me and to talk to his family and to know what he was going through

I just, it had never it's not that I didn't think about it but it just never occurred to me like how traumatic that experience might be and to walk with the people that were with him while that was going on, that was like a revelation to me. Like, I felt like privilege that I got to talk with people about that. And yeah, I mean, you know, and L.A. is just sort of a fascinating city to me.

And I don't know what that's about. You know, maybe that's just the Texan in me, but you, you know, you get so many images of L.A. on television. And so to learn about the neighborhoods and how the LAPD came to be this internationally recognized law enforcement agency and how they explicitly like tried to do that they you know that was a campaign on the part of their old long-time police chief bill parker so how that stuff sort of came up like dragnet and what we now call copaganda on tv like l-a pd is responsible for a lot of that and makes sense they're right there near hollywood and all that stuff so that um all of that stuff was

just like wildly fascinating to me it was stuff that i it's not that i need i would have even known to think about it. The reason I didn't think about it because I didn't even know to think about it. And so learning about that stuff was just every day I'm learning stuff and it's a lot of fun. You mentioned getting to know Rodney King as a person. How do you go about doing that? You cite his autobiography in the pod. You talked to one of his best friends and fishing buddies, as you said, his younger brother. What else do you do to sort of paint that picture? Yeah. So, I mean, his best friend, Johnny Kelly was huge in that regard because he spent the most time with Rodney King of anyone post-beating.

And he grew up with, he's no Rodney King. He's like eight or nine years old there in the Pasadena area. So that was a tremendous insight. But then, you know, so we had set up an interview with his cousin who wrote a sort of memoir about her relationship with Rodney King. And so we're setting up this interview and, you know, just getting ready, normal stuff. And she's like, as we get started, she says, oh, yeah, by the way, we have a special guest here. I hope you don't mind.

And, you know, that's, you all know what it's like to set up audio. That's confi, you know, oh, God, what are you doing? You're going to confuse things. And it was his younger brother, won. And that's somebody that we've been trying to get a hold of and not successfully, not successfully been able to do. And so he's just there. He just shows up. And so they shared a mic.

And so that part of it was hugely helpful as well because that piece is together their childhood. and how Rodney became who he was. And he ended up not finishing high school and getting married and stuff. So that was just another big moment for us that we got another look into the life of Rodney King that not a lot of other people had. I'm not going to say that nobody else has done it, but I can't – I can't recall or have seen another story about Rodney King that interviewed one of his brothers. ever right um so you know i thought that that was like really good i mean and and a brother knows

you differently than your mom does you know i mean like your mom knows you at a certain level but your brother is right there while you in the middle of you know doing some shit and so that that part of it was really really really was really helpful there give us a little how to here so you've decided to do the l a rites as your topic how do you start reporting a long form podcast oh god uh reading first a lot of of reading. I wish I could show you my pile of books, but they're all over the place. But, you know, I probably have, you know, used close to 30 books, thousands of articles. And then you just start picking out names and storylines and things like, okay, let me see if I can

piece that together. And so you just start looking up names, you know, and reaching out to them and seeing who's willing to talk. So that was the big thing, you know, because this is 30 years ago, for one. So not a lot of these people are still alive. right um you know more people than you think um you know 30 years doesn't seem that long to me i remember being you know 12 years old but a lot of time passes and so a lot of people died so you know i had to find these names me and my team production team and just start tracking down people that were willing to talk uh you do pre interviews to see if they're going to you know what they actually know uh and then you'd record those interviews and so you're doing that

you're doing the reading um and you're asking the people that you're the interviewings, anybody else that you can think of that could put this together? And so that all of a sudden, you know, you've got a huge bank of interviews and, you know, information that you can refer to. And actually, one of the, another big thing is that we, there was a book called official negligence written by former Washington Post reporter named Luke Cannon. And that's sort of like the spine of the season. He, right, a couple years after the trial, he wrote a big book in, basically interviewed everybody, like in the 90s.

You know, and here's this treasure trove of audio. He recorded these interviews that we're able to use and sprinkle throughout the season. And so, like, that was another thing that was really useful to us, too. It gave us kind of a really good starting point on where to go. If this were a written project, I think you'd want to just call everybody in the world and talk to as many people as you humanly possible, even if you didn't wind up quoting them or using the material. Is it the same with an audio podcast? Just given the constraints?

No, and that's frustrating to me. And that's a tension I have with my editors. Because I want to talk to everybody. My thought is, why don't we just call this person? I don't understand. Like, why are we, you know? But then that requires setting, and especially in the pandemic, right? It requires setting it up.

Like, who's comfortable having an audio person in their house? Who's comfortable going to a studio? And then you got to pay somebody to go over there and do all that stuff. And so there's a lot more limits on it than me just call them. people. Because then again, also, you call somebody, you know this, you call somebody for a story, and they might not, they could say something interesting and still, it's still not be usable. Or you call them, and they don't know as much as you know. And so time is a lot more limited, and you've got to be a little bit more, you got to exert a lot more discretion in getting

people to talk to. So yeah, like that, that's a tension that I'm still dealing with. I know that I don't deal with it well. I'm sure it's frustrating to my producers, because I want to talk to everybody. But yeah, no, it's not the same in print. Like you're, you're right. You have to make a lot of decisions on the front end about that part of it. You mentioned some of these are older people. How do they respond when asked to talk for a podcast rather than a print piece? It's tough. One example is the prosecutor in the king beating trial, Terry White.

He doesn't know a lot about podcasts. His daughter helped us to facilitate that interview. So that happens more than you think. Like somebody's wife, tell you. sex savvy son, daughter. Oh, this is what it's like. And when I'm explaining what a podcast says to people, because my parents are of that age,

I say it's like an audio documentary. You know, like that helps bring it together for a lot of people for the don't listen to podcasts. So selling it in that way helps a lot. But then there's still people that are like, all right, well, you know, send me my interview or when is this story coming out? And, you know, you'll spend two hours talking to this person.

They still kind of don't get it. But I understand that. I mean, one day that'll probably be me, I'm sure. And you're not just doing Zoom calls. You're doing like a professional setup where somebody goes to their house or they go to a studio to do all these interviews? Sometimes, sometimes. We also are using an app, and I wish I knew a little bit more about it, like a Talk Sync app. You can download this little app and you can record your audio on your phone and you can sit in it.

And it's simple. Like, it's very simple. And we've used it with a lot of people, a lot of septuagenarians and octogenarians. and it's been successful. But sometimes it is complicated for people, but that's the way we've, you know, it's about half and half. We've only sent like maybe two or three people to a studio. And I've only made one reporting trip for this,

which is just disappointing because I really wanted to spend a lot of time in L.A. for this. But, you know, one of the interviews, you know, when I was down there for three or four interviews in June, we did the interviews in the K-U-C-R studio, which is University California Riverside Studio. So we had like Latasha Harlins's cousin, Shanice Come, Johnny Kelly, who I mentioned,

he met me there in that little studio. And I went to somebody else's house in like the Baldwin Hills when I was in L.A. for that. But it was kind of a mix. But for the most part, this is all done at home. How do you ask questions for a podcast versus asking them for a print story? That's a good question.

I do a lot more prep work for this. because I know that actually, okay, this is the difference. In a print story, I don't know what the hell. You know what I mean? Like, I'll ask anything because I don't know where to lead, right? For a podcast, though, you've got to have a little bit better idea of what you're going to ask and what whole this person is going to fill within your story.

So you're writing a little bit more of the story. You're deciding the story a little bit more before you do the interviews than you would in print. In print, I'm totally open to whatever this person's, says, you take me wherever you want to go and we'll figure it out together. With a podcast, that's a little bit more one-sided that I got to make sure that when I talk to this person, that it's going to be worth our while and that they're going to fill the hole in the story we need them to feel. I don't like that. That's a little less journalism-y than I would like, right?

But I understand how it works, and that's the way we have to do it. And it's worked out. And I mean, you can still have an interesting revelatory conversation with those boundaries. But it's just not you're not as surprised as you are when you're doing those interviews for print. So there's room for improvisation. But at the end of the day, I need you to talk about this because that's going to get me from point A to point B in telling the story. Absolutely, yeah. I'm talking to you for this specific reason. And sometimes in print, you're just, who cares?

I don't even know if you have anything to do with this, but maybe you'll help me. Maybe you'll help me move the story along. So yeah. The off-script moment or maybe off-script moment, I, I think I enjoyed the most was his Michael Wu, the former L.A. City Council member, who he was talking about, he called on L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates to resign, this big moment after the video comes out, the Rodney King beating video comes out. And he says, not only did I want to call on him to resign, I wanted to be the first because it would help my political career. Yeah, and that crazy?

I was kind of surprised that he admitted that too. I had read something along those lines that he was he was thinking about running for mayor. And so we sort of led him up to that line, but I didn't think that he would actually... What politician admits that they're doing a politiciany thing, right? That's what it was so striking. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I think that just says something...

I guess that says something better about him in retrospect than it did in the moment. And it's not like he was on the wrong side of history here. He was just being very upfront about, like, you know, what the political consequences could be. And, yeah, I'm really grateful that he was willing to admit that he was thinking like a politician. Back up to the stage where you're reading all these articles in preparation for the podcast,

can you give us a flavor of what the writing about the L.A. riots was like in 1992 rather than writing that happened later on? Oh, man. I mean, I think there wasn't a 30,000-foot view because so much chaos was happening. Not a lot of people had seen this before, so there was a lot more focus, and understandably so, on the chaos and blood and destruction that was happening right in front of them. And there was a lot more fixation on the black and brown looters, as a term to use, at that moment. And like, oh, these people are causing havoc in the city. And, you know, they're out of control, you know, that was a lot of that tenor to the coverage, rather than stepping back and thinking about the bigger piece of it. And there were reasons for that. I mean,

one, it wasn't all about Rodney King, as you come to find out, there are people that were, I mean, first of all, there were people that were opportunists, and there were people that were upset about their living conditions. I mean, you know, L.A. was going through a recession at the time. There were a lot of poor people there. A lot of people that were angry at the system, and that was a chance for them to act up. And then there was just a lot of intra-ethnic conflict that a lot, you know, people reported on it at the time, and they were shocked about it, but, like, investigating, the roots of it and how it happened and how it got to a point where black angelinos might turn on Koreans or Latino motorists or whatever. Why are people doing that? What's the, you know, what's animating that anger? There wasn't a lot of that in the moment, and understandably so.

It needed some time to pass on people that will be willing to talk about it. But that was sort of reflected in the covers. There's just a lot more on the, you know, the shocking nature of the violence. at the moment and less about the underlying causes of it. I want to ask you about your own writing when you sit down to write a script for one of these things. You once said to the Shreveport Times, it's the hardest thing I've ever done. What's hard about writing a long-form podcast? Oh, man.

I mean, it's like writing a book is what people have told me. I'd never wanted to write a book, don't want to write a book. You know, unless like there's something that really strikes me. But I'm just, I don't, I'm, maybe this makes me a bad journalist or writer. I've never dreamed of writing a book. That just is something that does not excite me. Maybe it will someday. And so, yeah, it's just you and all this information,

and you've got to put it together, and you've got a deadline, which I've got a lot of friends that have written books, and it just, you know, it kind of, I mean, sometimes they're on deadlines, sometimes they're not, but, you know, I'm going on a retreat to Oregon and, you know, whatever, and I'll take my time.

Going to Yato, yeah. Yeah, right, yeah. And I don't, you know, right now I'm in a cycle where I get up and I start working and I don't stop until, you know, 12, 1 o'clock in the morning. That's partly because of our production deadlines or whatever. But it's just, it's a marathon, man. Like it's a beating. And as you do this, so not only are you reporting and reading and writing, but then you have to perform, right? I have to come into this little closet that I'm in right here right now and read my words enthusiastically.

I have to perform. And that's just another element of it that makes it really tiring. And again, I'm not done with interviews. We still have a couple more interviews to go. We're almost at the end here. But that's another piece of it. So all these things are going on at once. I think when you write a book, for the most part, you've got all your information and then you start writing.

Well, we're still like doing all these things all together at once, which makes it really. really, at least makes it really difficult for me. I'm very tired. I can't wait to, I hate to say it. I love this. This is the most rewarding thing I've ever done, but I'm so tired. I can't wait till it's over. Is there a trick to the actual writing when you get the scripts, things you've learned doing this twice now? Absolutely. I prioritize the audio. With the things that people have said, the things that I think will hit listeners' ears, that takes priority for me when I'm building out of script. So I'm looking at, okay, I have an outline. I always outline. I cannot write anything without an outline. So I've set it up and I'm like, okay, who said what that fits in

this slot? It's like putting together a puzzle. And so that's the thing that works for me. You know, what did people say, how do they move the storyline along? And then I write to that. And if I did that in print, I'd feel like that was kind of taking the easy way out. But it's not like that in audio because that's the thing that matters, what people are saying, what people are hearing. And so I had to kind of learn to do that. But that actually hasn't been quite as hard for me, because I always, people will probably disagree with this. I'm loath to compliment myself, but one thing that I think I've always had in my career is a knack for getting good quotes or knowing when somebody said something interesting. And that has served me really well in this

process. Yeah. And I notice your own writing between those quotes is very compact. very spare. It's often a sentence, two sentences, and then we're going on. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I just don't want my words to get in the way of the things that people say. It should complement with these things that people said. Like, what's on display is not my writing ability. And, you know, it's in the ability to tell a story.

And telling a story takes on many forms. It's not just me being a writer, you know, using my writerly ass to move you. I'm getting you to listen to the things that people are saying. The other thing I noticed, and I noticed this about Josh Levine's podcast about David Duke a couple of seasons ago on Slow Burn is that there are some obvious resonances to right now. You know, with David Duke, it's like, by the way, this is Trump. And with yours, it's like, by the way, this is 2020, you know, and these are, they are very similar storylines, but you don't draw three underlines under these things. You mostly let them speak for themselves. Is this strategy of yours?

Yeah, I mean, I think we, I mean, I don't want to tell you all our secrets. But yeah, I think we are coy that there are some parallels to the present moment. And I will say at the outset here that we didn't do that intentionally. Like as I mentioned, when I came up with this idea, this is 2019 when I'm working on another thing. This is before the George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery racial reckoning of America. I want to tell the story even before then. It just so happened that this is something that is still going on in America. and you can't run away from it.

And in telling this story, you see, oh, we've been dealing with this as a country since it was found it, essentially, right? I mean, because the things that led to the 1965 watch rides are present in the 92 L.A. rides that are present in everything that happened last summer. So we do, you know, we try to be a little coy about it. We don't draw the, you know, we don't want to tell you, hey, by the way, this is, you know, exactly what. happened in Minneapolis, you know, Minneapolis PD when they, you know, did that to George Floyd, you should be able to draw those things to yourself. And it's not important. Like, what's important is that the themes, the themes and the stories that were relevant at the time, they should, they'll have some resonance to you and will let you figure that out for yourself.

Episode one, which is called the tape is about the taping of the beating of Rodney King. It was fascinating to be because the tape in question, as you lay it out, goes through these various media organizations on its way to the public. It's almost like the chain of custody of evidence in the case. You know, we can follow it from one to one. You mentioned George Holliday. He's the man standing there with his camcorder recording this video. You talked to him before he passed away. What did he make of what he was seeing in the moment? So as he mentions in the podcast, he's an Argentine immigrant. He came to the state's late in his teenage years, I think he was 17, 18 years old. So through that lens, this happens according to him, at least.

I mean, if you're from Argentina, let me know if he's wrong and if I'm wrong. But he says that happens all the time, that the police will just pull up, beat somebody up, and they'll disappear them, right? And so that's what he's thinking. He's like, what is happening here? This is America. I didn't know that they did that to people here, right? So he's sort of trying to work his way through that revelation. He's like, oh, man, this reminds me at home.

But understanding that that is totally. out of character of what he thinks he knows about America. So he, yeah, I mean, so that's what drove his curiosity. He's like, what could have happened so bad that they would beat somebody up like that? You're not supposed to do that here. That sort of undergirded his curiosity in which is what kept him, you know, trying to figure out what happened at every step the next day after he takes this video and he's still trying to figure out, oh, man, they beat that guy pretty bad.

What is going on here? He calls the police department and says, hey, what happened? out near my apartment the other night. We're not talking about that. Oh, okay. It could have ended there, right? It could have either could have ended him being like, well, all right, well, they're not going to tell me.

There's no way for me to know. Or he could have given it to the LAPD, and everybody I've spoken to about the LAPD at that time says, if he had given that tape to LAPD, we would have never heard about this case, right? It could have ended there. But it didn't happen, and he and his wife were still curious and wanted to know what went on,

so then they went to KTLA, the local TV station there, and the rest was history. So, yeah, man's curiosity really is what drove a lot of this. Without George, without George Holliday's curiosity and being, I mean, just the consequence of somebody having a video camera in 1991, which is not something that was widely available. I mean, that's just an incredible coincidence.

We're not here. I'm not telling this story. So he takes it to KTLA, which is Channel 5, here in Los Angeles. And how do they present the video to the public for the first time? Yeah. So they're trying to make, you know,

KTLA, the people I talked to that were working there at that time, they say, you know, people, you know, freelancers give us video all the time. And, you know, not a lot of it is usable if they do, you know, something cute. And it's nothing very newsy, right?

And so they get this video and they're looking at it in their newsroom and they're like, holy shit. Like, this is crazy. We've never seen anything like this. And so their newsmaking machine gets into action immediately. I mean, that was really the impressive thing about KTLA. You can understand why they were a newsleader.

Because once they had that tape, they knew exactly that it was a big deal and that they had to do something with it. So once they get that tape, they dispatch one of their top reporters, a guy named Stan Chambers, a guy who covered the RFK assassination, all of these other, like, major stories in LA at the time. They sent him over to the holiday house to talk to them about what he had seen. And then they knew enough that, okay, we've got this tape. What's the appropriate thing to do? We don't know the name. We don't know why he's going to stop. They didn't sensationalize it when they broadcast it, but they say, hey, look, this is what we've got. This is what we know. We're trying to find out more. They didn't just splash it and throw it at people

and were sensational about it and lead off their newscast with it. In fact, they let off the second block of news that night with it. Because they were trying to be cautious. Because they knew that it was explosive. And they're like, well, let's just see. We don't have enough information. But putting it in a second block didn't make it any less sensational. I mean, it still took off after that night.

We should note there's no TMZ in 1991. There's no Twitter. There's no way for a video like this to get to the public. It's local news is how it's going to get out there. Am I getting his name right, Harvey Levin? Is that I the high side of his name? That's right. Yeah.

Harvey Levin. Yeah, he's just a local TV reporter in L.A. at that time, by the way. That's kind of one of the other fascinating things. It's just all these characters. But you're absolutely right. There's no Harvey Levine. There's no TMZ. There's barely CNN. Like, CNN was like a new concept of then, too. No court TV at this time. So all of the media ecosystem that we're familiar with now, it's just in its infancy in that moment. And to underline something you just said, when KTLA puts us on the air, they don't know who Rodney King is, They don't know his name.

They don't know anything that happened before the video. They just have this image, this horrifying image. And that's what the public sees without any more context than that, essentially. Yeah, absolutely. And they're just saying a black motorist, these officers are beating him up. We're going to get more information. And then that's when all the stuff starts to come out, right? The police, there are incident reports of what happened.

And then they're able to sort of piece it together. because also by that time, Rodney King the next day, he's got an attorney, right? An attorney that is desirous of getting attention on his case, understandably so. So all that information came out. But yeah, they definitely slow played that tape when they first had it. But it was understandable. They didn't have any information. His attorney, by the way, for people who haven't listened to this is not one of the other really fascinating interviews on this podcast.

I'll leave you to discover that on your own. I was also fascinated. So tape goes from KTLA to CNN when then it's broadcast. all over the world. And then the next day, the Los Angeles Times, Metro desk, and this is still the fat, prosperous period of the Los Angeles Times is sitting there going, oh my gosh, there's this huge story. We've got to own this.

What happens there? Yeah. So one of the reporters we spoke to, Hector Tobar, he wrote that first story. And, you know, they're looking at the tape. And then, so, you know, oh, this is horrific. This is terrible. So he goes out to where the site of the beating. Lakeview Terrace, which I think is in San Fernando Valley,

and talks to people around there. They start piecing it together. And by that point, they've got the basic details of the beating, what the police say happened, the name of Rodney King. And they're sort of starting to put it together. And all the information is not out at that point, right? We know that Rodney King has been speeding, that he was a motorist that didn't stop, and the police beat him.

And there's just not a lot of other information. information, but we do see on tape four white police officers beating up one black man. That is, you know, it can be a storyline if you want to make it one, right? The LA Times sort of struggled with that. They didn't know what to do with that. The reporter, who I mentioned, Hector Tobar, thought that was the most viscerally interesting thing about that tape and led with it, but his editors did not agree with that and sort of dropped that lower. But it's just, you know, there's this pushing poll of what do we prioritize in news? And I mean, I guess I can understand both sides of it. But obviously, you know, they made a mistake in that regard. But in terms of throwing their

resources and attention at the LA Times, like you said, I mean, it's so funny to look at the stories from that time. They have like two reporters on every story. At least. Yeah, at least, right. And it's just like, oh, that's when newspapers used to have money, making it hand over fist. That must have been a lot of fun. So Tobar puts it in his draft in the lead. It is, it is, him, this is the essence of the story, and then it goes into the editorial machine there, and the editor drops it down. I think you said the 12th paragraph. The 12th graph. Right. Yeah. And I get their reticence, their institutional resonance. They didn't, you know, one thing that's interesting is like how worried everybody was about what the response was going to be,

which sort of tells you about like the tension at the time, that everybody knew that this tape was so bad that it was potentially explosive, and they kept trying to tamp it down by by downplaying the race aspect of it, which to me makes the case that that's one of the most salient factors here. We should lead with that. But they went in another direction, yeah, and dropped it down to the 12th graph. And, you know, Hector Tobar, I mean, today 30 years later, he's like, man, I should have put up more of a fight about that.

I should have stood by ground. Such an interesting moment because now whenever there's a big New York Times or Washington Post story, especially about politics, everybody on Twitter's like, look at the framing of the story and mis-framed it. I disagree with your framing. This is framing in real time, you know, with enormous consequences or at least, you know,

fairly big consequences to come on this story. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I still don't think breeders have that much insight into the framing process or how stories are done at media outlets, but they definitely had far less information about it in 1991.

And that these fights are happening all the time. I mean, you could talk to any two or three reporters in a newsroom, and they can look at a story and think something else should be the lead. And those are the fights or the internal battles you have in newsrooms every day. You know, we're always making choices. And it just so happened that Hector came at it from a different place, and his editors came from a different one, and he lost.

But, yeah, you know, readers, man, they don't, I mean to be disrespect. Because, I mean, that's what we do. That's who we're doing this all. for, but I think it's a lot less, it's a lot more difficult for them to know why reporters choose the angles they do or the angles of the, the angles of a story that are published, are published for the reasons they are, because it changes from situation to situation. You mentioned the editing process going on until midnight. What exactly are you doing?

Is this like a Google Doc where you're moving around soundbites and you're retracking things? What is actually happening at this point? Oh, yeah. I mean, I write the script. It's probably, you know, each script comes in around 9, 10,000 words. And then, yeah, and then framing, right? We're having discussions about, well, I think you should prioritize that. Or this isn't interesting.

Or that won't sound good. And so we're sort of having those little battles over and over again. For me, the most important thing is to just give you all the information we've got, right? And I'm telling you, this is what I think is the best clips. This is what I think is the best angle. And I'm also trying to anticipate what I think that, you know, will mean the fewest amount of edits. So that's that sort of push or pull. And sometimes, you know, the producers will say, hey, we've got a better clip.

You know, we've got something better than that. Because I can't remember everything everybody has said. So I'm depending on them a lot to pluck through that stuff. And so, yeah. And so it's a real collaboration. Like, you know, it's almost uncomfortable for me to be doing all the interviews. use because, I mean, there's a lot of other work that goes on behind the scenes that have nothing to do with. I don't know how to use pro tools, you know what I mean? But I'm the one that does all

the talking. I'll end here, Joel. You said you are against writing books or at least skeptical about writing books, but you've done all this research. You've got all the principles to come to the table. You've laid all this out. You don't really want to write a book about the L.A. rights? I mean, this is the book. This is the book about the L.A. rights. It's already done. I don't have anything else to say about it. I think. It's the same thing after the Biggie and Tupac season. People were like, oh, you want to write a book about this?

People, you know, pitch me out. I was like, I said everything I have to say. I don't have anything else to say about it. I want to move on to something else. I'm not saying that I'll never write a book, and if a book agent is hearing, you know, I've been through this process before, and I say, I don't know.

So maybe somebody can convince me to write something one day, but it just hasn't happened yet. Joel Anderson, thanks for coming on the press box. Brian, thank you so much, man. A lot of fun. Huge thanks again to Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Servantes.

I've got an upcoming press box schedule for you as we stumble into the holidays. Next week, David and I are going to be back early in the week to do our annual year-in-media episode. Then we're off Friday and Monday for the holidays. But I'm back Tuesday, December 28th, with another edition of our Pressbox Great Books podcast,

J.R. Moringer is going to to join us to talk about his 2005 memoir, The Tinder Bar, which is now a movie directed by George Clooney and starring Ben Affleck. I cannot wait to talk to him. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a great weekend.