The Press Box - One Perfect Story: Chris Jones on "The Things That Carried Him"

Episode Date: July 3, 2023

Bryan is joined by journalist Chris Jones to remember his 2010 piece in Esquire, "The Things That Carried Him," a true story about Sgt. Joe Montgomery’s last trip home. They discuss how Jones knew he was ready to write this particular story, the process of covering the death of a loved one, and how this story resonated with readers. Then, they touch on Jones's experience writing for Esquire Magazine in the early aughts and working for David Granger. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Chris Jones Producer: Erika Cervantes Additional Production Assistance: Eduardo O'Campo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, the host of the podcast, Plain English. We tackle technology, politics, culture, history, everything that's happening in the world and why it matters. New episodes of Plain English drop every Tuesday and Friday on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to part two of the Press Boxes Summer Vacation podcast series. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producers Erica Cervantes and Eduardo Ocampo. It's been a few months since the last installment of our one perfect story series. You know what we do.

We pick a great piece of journalism. We bring the writer on the pod. And we talk both about how the story was written. And just as interestingly, to me, how it reflects a moment in that writer's life and a moment in journalistic time. Today's guest is Chris Jones. Jones wrote a story called The Things That Carried Him, the true story of a soldier's last trip home, which ran in Esquire magazine 15 years ago. Now, if you haven't read the things that carried him,

or even if you have, the wise thing to do here is hit pause, read the piece on Esquire.com, and then meet me back here. If you're like me, you'll read a mini section of the story, and then you'll find yourself getting up from your desk, and maybe walking around outside

to let the story settle a bit before pushing on to the next section. The things that carried him is about Sergeant Joe Montgomery, the 3,431st member of the U.S. military who was killed during the Iraq War, a war that started 20 years ago this spring. The story traces the journey of Montgomery's body from a street in Baghdad to a cemetery in Scottsburgh, Indiana. Jones's story is not just sad. There are a lot of sad stories in the world. It's a story about process and about duty.

It's a story that helps us begin to understand what a war does to a country and how grief spread. beyond a soldier's family and friends and platoon mates. It's a wonderful piece of writing that appeared in an issue of Esquare that had Jessica Simpson on the cover. One of the best parts of my job is getting to hear how a story like this came together. Here's Chris Jones on the things that carried him. All right, Chris, where'd you get the idea to write the things that carried him? Well, at the time, I was a staff writer at Esquire, and I felt like one of my job,

was one of my jobs was to constantly look for ideas. So I was just a, I don't even know how to describe it. I would just constantly be on the lookout for something. And in this case, and I wish I could find the original story. I had read a story that I'm 99% sure was on CNN.com about life at a forward operating base in Iraq. And as part of the story, a soldier was killed and he was returned to the base on the hood of a Humvee. And I knew about, you know, how those soldiers came home and were buried at home. And I just asked myself, how does that soldier get from the hood of that Humvee in Baghdad to his burial site in the U.S.

And it was just a question. It was just a, I didn't know how it worked. It was just a process question. And I really like a process story, how things happen. And that was the original kernel of it. It was just me reading that story and thinking, oh, what happens next? And the things that carried them is what happens next. How do you take that story to your editors?

Well, Esquire was actually a really hard place to pitch. It was, even though I was a staffer, you know, I probably got rejected 20 times out of 21, something like that. I think my batting average on ideas was 0.05 or something. I was constantly just flooding the zone with ideas and would often be rejected with significant authority. But in this case, it was, I was in the office. I happened to be in the office with my big boss, who was David Granger, who was our editor-in-chief, and then my direct editor, Peter Griffin, who was also the deputy editor at the magazine. And I didn't go to the office very often, but I happened to be in the office,

and we were talking about something else that I can't remember. and David said, oh, do you have any ideas kicking around? And that one just sort of was near the surface for some reason. And I said, well, I was thinking about how a soldier gets back from Iraq, like after he or she is killed, like how they bring them home. And Granger and Peter had worked together forever, I think all the way back to inside sports or somewhere like that.

And they just kind of looked at each other, and Granger said, okay. And at Esquire, that's not how pitching worked. Like, it was usually a really elaborate process. And so, it was so, I don't know what the word is, so like ephemeral feeling that the next day when I got home, I emailed Peter and I said, are we doing this? Like I, I, I'm sort of unclear if I've been given to go ahead for this, because I think this is a big story. And he sent one of the great emails writer I can get from an editor, which was just, yeah, go, make it great. See when you get back. And that's all. It was. It was the easiest picture of my career, probably. It was just a very quick, just the door just opened.

And when you say you would get rejected, is that because there were only so many slots in a monthly magazine or your ideas would be stuff they just didn't want? I mean, it's probably a combination. I mean, I definitely had some esoteric ideas. And occasionally they would say yes. I mean, I got big features on spending a week with carrot top in the magazine. And Tom Juneau thinks I have like naked pictures of Granger somewhere because of it's, I mean, I've got big features. I mean, I got big features of Granger somewhere because of, I did a story about the $100 bill, like how, like why the $100 bill looks the way it looks, which is very much a story I would like and very much a story that Tom thought was ridiculous. So I can't complain about my approval rating. It was just it was just a constant. I just felt like it was part of my gig was just to deliver ideas. It's the hardest part, Brian.

Like it's the hardest, especially for magazines, this is going to sound really ancient. But, you know, the hard thing about picturing for magazines is you need stories that sort of fall through the cracks because it takes a long time to get it done. It took a long time for a story to come out. And so if you, you couldn't say like, oh, I'm going to cover the world series. Like that's not something that we would do. You're always looking for ideas that will stand up over time that seem essential that will stand up for 6,000 words and that no one else is going to do in the meantime more quickly. It was really hard to find that good idea. and that so that sort of attrition process of ideas was just part of the deal we can look back now and say this is the top of the ninth inning for the age of magazines a hundred percent how do you describe what it was like to write for s square during that period i knew it was glorious like i knew how lucky i was i never i started in newspapers um and magazines were always where i wanted to go because i always felt like i was writing imperfect stories and magazines were always

at the paper, just too quick, you know, hasty. Everything was hasty. And even something like that original story that I read that was the kernel, the forward operating base story on CNN, CNN was the kind of story I would have written. It was like just the tip of the iceberg. And magazines gave you the chance to really dig into something. And Esquire in particular, I think, was one of a handful of magazines where they would really invest in a story. And if the machine of Esquire was behind you, which honestly was principally Granger and Peter, you were golden.

You could just go to work. And you know, before you and I spoke today, I was thinking about this story and the process of it. And so it would be a really hard story to do today. It just, the economics of it don't really make sense. I don't know that they made sense when we did it. Like, you know, I was trying to break it down. this story costs, if you count, you know, my salary,

so I worked on this and only this for eight months, if you count my salary, the other people who worked on this story, the photos, the travel, I mean, it's probably between $100,000 and $200,000 to have written this story, I think. And wow, it just doesn't, I mean, just my salary, you know, I was thinking, not this will sound, whatever, the house probably making $150 around that time. And I know there's some kid in journalism school

who's just falling on the floor, you can make 150 grand writing six magazine stories a year. Like it's just, it sounded ridiculous as it comes out of my mouth. But, but so there's eight months, a hundred grand for me,

probably. And then everything else that went into it. And just, who's doing that now? It's just not many places would invest in that kind of story. Never mind the space. Like that story is almost 17,000 words. Like it's just,

it's almost a product of a different time. The top of the ninth inning for sure. It was the best. That's a really long answer. your question. I loved every minute of working at Esquire. It was great. I saw you say in an interview, you were 35 years old when you were working on this story and felt that you were ready to write something like it. In what sense were you ready? I can't believe that was 35. That's causing me, it's causing me a bit of a moment. Well, a little mortality moment here. It doesn't seem like very

long ago, it's what's funny about it. It seems like yesterday I remember everything about working on that story. Um, 35 for me, I had this theory that writers peaked at 36, because you were deep enough into your career, and I mean journalism. You're deep enough into your career that you knew what you were doing. You had confidence, which is so important to a story like this one, you can feel when a writer has it in his or her hands. You're seasoned, but you're still hungry. you're still fresh enough that you're willing to throw yourself into a story. I had young kids.

I was married with young kids at the time. And I was just entering that life. But I still had those vestiges of like a young man who would give everything for his work. So it's sort of a sweet spot, I think, for me, where I knew what I was doing. I was confident in my abilities. I still would spend eight months getting after a story like this one. And I was sitting here now. I don't know that I would throw myself into a story the way I did back then.

I have teenagers. I've teenagers now, Brian. Like my life is over. So it's like, you know. So you found this clipping about Sergeant Joe Montgomery. Then what do you do? Well, Joe, so Joey was the soldier in the story. I didn't, I don't think I knew that.

I think I've been trying to come up with, I remember going through a process of looking at various soldiers. And I don't want to sound ghoulish about it, but just looking for the person that fit. And, you know, there's even in the story, there's a brief mention of a soldier who was one of the other possibilities, tuba, who was on the plane with Joey. His nickname was tuba. He lived in Minnesota, I want to say. But I kept coming back to Joey. And I don't have a good explanation for that. I remember probably liking that he was from a small town in Middle America.

But there was something about him that just drew me to him. And it's like a fairly inexplicable instinct that just I was like, Joey is the person. And so, you know, an underrated part of the process for a story. like this is is those first days where you're trying to make it happen where you're trying to make a story go and I decided and Esquire agreed that we wouldn't do the story unless the family involved was fully behind it and so the very first call I made was to Gail was to Joey's mom and there is nothing that can prepare you, you know, for a conversation like that. It's just, it's just,

and actually I remember very specifically having that talk with Gail. I was walking around in my house. I thought I had been given her home number and my plan was to call her while she was at work, leave a message, and then she could call me back if she wanted. I thought that was the most delicate way to do it, but I've been given her work number and she answered. You just start, Hi, I'm Chris. I'm from Esquire magazine. We'd like to do a story about how a soldier's body has returned from Iraq, and we'd like that soldier to be jolly.

And she just immediately started sobbing, and, you know, the hard truth of that call is I blew up her day, blew up her life in some ways. And an hour and a half later, I want to say, she agreed that it could be Joey. And her only proviso was that I had to talk to everybody else first, and then she would be last. She did not want to talk to me and then have the story fall apart.

She didn't want to talk to me for no reason. And at that stage, I had no idea what the process was. I had no idea who would be involved. I didn't know the scope of things. So I agreed to that. I said, okay, I'll talk to everybody else in the chain, and you will be the last link. And that's how it worked out.

My visit to Scottsburgh was the end of the reporting trip. As a reporter, how do you ask people about the death of a loved one? I mean, you try to be as careful and delicate as you can. At the same time, you need information. A story like this only works if you get the details that really give it some heft, give it some weight. And that requires asking hard questions sometimes. And it's just part of the deal. And it's an uncomfortable part of the deal.

Like when I was a younger reporter, that's another reason 35, 36 was probably a good time for me to do this. I basically quit my newspaper job because I was asked to hold call victims families from September 11th. I was at the paper in September 11th. And I just didn't want to do it. I was like, I'm not doing that. No part of me wants to do that. And an editor at the time who said, what you don't understand is that people want to talk to you. They want someone who will listen and they want to tell you about the person they loved and how great they were.

They want that outlet. And I was in my, I was thinking about it from my perspective. And I was like, the last thing I would want to do is talk to somebody like me. I don't want that. But in the case of Gail, in the case of Joey's friends and family, in the case of everyone who helped bring him home, you know, those editors' words held true. They did want to talk.

They wanted to share the story. And I, after that initial phone call with Gail, I never felt particularly uncomfortable with the, process. I always felt like I was doing the right thing. I was the right person to do the story. I was going to do the story as well as I could. And luckily, you just sort of throw yourself at the feet of people, many of whom are in mourning, and say, I want to do this right. Will you talk me about your son, your brother, your husband, your friend? And most of them said yes. and then you just do the work.

Even if you feel like you're the right person to do it, do you find yourself consumed by sadness when you're writing a story like this? I do. I do. And this is a debate in journalism where, especially at that time, there was sort of a big sort of argument

about objectivity and subjectivity in journalism and what it takes to be a good reporter. And I never had the ability to put up walls between me and subjects. I just, I just, I'm just not built that way. I thought it was an unreasonable thing to ask of people. Like, you're being asked to be a sociopath in some weird way. You know, this is where Janet Malcolm enters the conversation and the journalist and the murderer. And I always, frankly, I loathe that essay. I feel like you can be a good caring person and also be a journalist and I just I got involved. I felt you know I I talked to 101 people for

that story I would guess some large percentage 75 of them cried during our interviews which meant I also cried during many of them I remember talking to Aunt Vicky in a cracker barrel and just both of us weeping at the table and people asking if we're all right and it's just you just I just wasn't the kind of person to just say oh I'm not going to feel this I felt it and and that has a cost to it you know it's um that story you know I'm I'm very proud of that story it's the most important thing I've done is the best thing I've done it was also really difficult it was just a it was there was a there was a trade I made um and I would make it again but but it was

It was tough. And I got to say, Brian, like 0.001% as tough as anyone else's experience of that story, like the people who are directly involved. But you definitely get, you're almost like a sin eater, I think, where you just sort of take it in each time. And by the time I got to the end of that story, I was pretty worn out. That emotion you're describing, would you call it sharing their grief in some small way? Yeah, I mean, I would just call it being human. I cry when I see people cry. It's like a, it's just a, it's not a conscious decision.

It's just, you know, I feel sad when people around me feel sad. It just, it just happens. It's just osmosis. And I, I, you know, people have made fun of me. I'm definitely a man of deep feeling and like too deep sometimes. Like I take things to, I'm definitely an emo person in a doy, milled-legged man's body, but I it's just who I am.

Like I just, it's like there's no fight in it. And so, yeah, I wouldn't say it was sharing their grief. It was just being affected by their grief. I was, you know, with Gail, I sat at her kitchen table and she made me pot roasts and cherry pie and we talked about her son. And, um, of course I was crying. Like, she was crying. Like, of course.

It's like if you and I, if you were coming to me with a, deep, deep sadness. And I was asking you about it, you feel it. I don't know. It just, for me, it wasn't like a conscious part of the process. It's just how I work and it's how that situation. So as you're tracing Montgomery's journey from Iraq to southern Indiana, where he was buried. How many places did you go to report this? I went to 13 states. I was going to Iraq. I was doing the training you do as a journalist to go. And then Joey's, and I'm going to get the term wrong, but his platoon or his troop, was recalled just before I was to go. And they were based in Alaska. So sort of very weirdly, instead of Iraq, I went to Alaska. But so I went to,

all the interviews were in person. I was going to Baghdad to do all those interviews and all people came back. So all over America, basically, 13 different states. And I don't like to fly, so I drove to most of them except for Alaska and just did this like pilgrimage of sadness across middle America. It was, it was an experience. Did you regret not going to Baghdad? Sometimes. Sometimes I think about it. Again, I had young kids. My wife at the time was really concerned about it. It was one of those very difficult, thorny conversations. I committed to going. I was going to go. And I think standing on the ground might have given me something that the story is missing, but I would have been going there literally to stand on the ground. There was no one there

who I, there was no one I didn't talk to who I missed because they were in Iraq. Like everyone was back home. And so, but I do think being there matters. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's the one sort of thing that still occasionally drifts in the back of my head is I should have stood on the ground. How long did your reporting last all told? I worked on a story for eight months. Um, and I, I would say the reporting was probably six months. Um, it was sort of an interesting combination of reporting and, and detective work, because putting the chain together was tricky. Again, I went into this story knowing the ending.

I knew that the soldier would be buried in his or her hometown, and there would be the 21 gun salute, and someone would play taps. And I knew that. And obviously the beginning is Baghdad. But everything in between was a mystery to me. And the story started, the first place I figured out was Dover, was the mortuary in Dover, Delaware,

which for people who haven't read the story or don't know, every single soldier killed overseas goes to the same mortuary in Dover. It's like a factory. And I knew that was sort of the middle. And then from there, I sort of slowly started working my way out to either end. So I had the beginning. I had the ending.

I had Dover as that sort of hinge point, and then just putting the links to the chain together, which literally was often, saying how did Joey come into your who brought you Joey like how did Joey enter your world and then and then tracing it that way so it was finding the people and then it was the actual reporting of talking to me and over this period of months you're working five days a week on this seven days a week on this detective work oh seven I was consumed by this story I was probably putting in 80 hour weeks or something it was it was pretty non-stop what do you remember about writing the

story? Well, I don't write in order. Um, my big fear with the, so the story is sort of spiraled out of control. Like when it, when I first pitched it, I was imagining one of our usual features, which is 6,000 words. And because I didn't know anything about the process, I, I was sort of flying a little blind. And then as I started the reporting, I started realizing, well, there's a lot of steps to this journey. Um, And I tend to write as I have material. I like writing fresh. Like I'll often go back to my Hampton Inn at the end of a day and start writing.

And so I wrote this out of order. The first piece I, the first section of the story I wrote was the Jones and Linton were the two pilots who flew from Dover to Seymour. I wrote that section first. And I came out at 2,000 words or whatever it was. And that was my first thinking, oh no. like I'm this is going to be problematic and it I remember feeling good about the writing but I also remember being terrified about the length and that was a big sort of I don't know overarching worry in the back of my head I would call Peter I called Peter after that first section I said

I don't know if six is going to do this he said how about 10 and I was like okay let's do 10 and then I blew past 10 and I was like I don't know about 10 and he was going well what are we going talking about here. I was like, I don't really know. And he said, well, just write it and we'll figure it out. And so I wrote, I think, 22,000. And God bless Peter, when that landed on his desk, he didn't immediately throw a massive fit and ultimately ran it, but we ran it at 17, 16. And as you structured it, the story starts with Bighamore's burial in Indiana and then proceeds backwards in time to his death in Iraq. Why did you choose to write it that way? That initial pitch meeting. So Peter is like, Peter's a sense. Peter's one of the great editors in America.

And when I picture the story and Granger looks at Peter and says yes, so quickly that I don't know that I'm still doing the story. Peter then says, maybe you should write it backwards. And at the time in the meeting, I was like, I'm a very sort of meat and potatoes writer. I'm not a stylist. I consider myself a good reporter, but normally when I'm writing, I just tell a story. And I thought, awkward, that seems like pretty elaborate. And then as I was working on the story, it made sense for me for two reasons. One, from a purely practical sense where you want people to finish the story,

it made the ending a mystery. If you tell it chronologically, you know that the way I know, the way I knew the ending was the funeral you know the ending but if you flip it you don't know what's coming next and then from sort of a I don't know how you wanted to call it like a spiritual emotional level the more invested I got in the story the more it made me feel like in a weird way I hope this doesn't sound vanglorious or anything but for a minute Joey comes back to life you see Joey only as a body until the very end of the story when he is leaving his men through the grass. And that became important to me just for emotional reasons, I guess is the word.

Yeah, so writing it backwards was not my idea. But I think it made sense afterwards. The Washington Post wrote a review of that story and said it was a very strange choice. And it is, I think, but I think it's a choice. I would stand by it, actually, so I wouldn't attempt it again. It does. It sounds gimmicky. Yeah.

In theory. Yeah. But then you read it, and as you say, because we see little hints about the condition of his body. So it also creates this sense of, I know suspense is the right word, but this, as a reader, you want to know. So what happened to him? Bring us back to the beginning. That's the, and again, I hope that doesn't sound ghoulish. It's just, you know, the fear of any sense.

story is that people will put it down, right? And this, it's not an easy story. This story is not a fun, it's a tough lift for a reader, especially because of its length. And, you know, we did a certain thing, like each section starts with a different person and it's broken up into, I want to say maybe 13 sections. And there's little threads, there's things that appear and reappear that hopefully help pull people along. But just from a purely practical outlook, we wanted people to read it. And so that sort of turn, I think, maybe helped. I hope. What did you want your writing to sound like in this story? Peter and I, we agreed very early that it had to be, the piece could have no opinion. It could have nothing like a slant. I still remember Peter said I want it to be

a novel of facts. And so, you know, when we, when we added it. it because we were going from 22,000 to 17,000. And 17,000 is still a massive story, but we're cutting a feature out of it. We're cutting 5,000 words about it. The standard for a sentence was that it had to have a fact in it. And if it didn't have a fact in it, it was going. And so that story is really just a straight ahead account of what happened. And that's how I wanted it to read.

Now, interestingly, we got every possible response to it, that it was pro-war, that it was anti-war, that it was made people proud to be American, it made people ashamed to be American. How you read it, the lens through which you read it changed its tone. But it is an objective, this is an objective piece of writing as I think you can do. You know, there's a scene where I described the burial lid, the lid on the casket that Joey was buried in had like scenes from Iraq, including like Saddam's statue falling and painted on the lid. There were enough bodies coming home that companies made coffins specifically for these soldiers. Like, and I just described the lid. But that made people nuts. And I'm like, that's just a fact.

That's just what that was. You know, I didn't say it was a good idea. I didn't say it was a bad idea. I'm just telling you what it is. And I was shocked by like the, how visceral people responded to facts like that, which were just facts. That's just a detail. And that's all that story is.

It's a collection of details. For younger people listening to this, May 2008, the end of the Bush administration. And presidential election in the United States is being run on the Iraq war, more or less, especially from one side. So the idea of trying to write a story that is, as you say, objective that doesn't have opinion in that moment in time is itself a big, big choice, because everybody in that moment has an opinion on the Iraq War pro or con. 100%. Did you or Griffin give the story its title?

I can tell you, Brian, I did not give it its title. I do title every story I write just as a, a wayfinder or like a reminder of what I want the story to be. And so if you start, when you're writing that length, you can kind of drift. And for me it was always, so my title, and I'm going to get the number wrong, but Joy was, I think the three, something like the 3,741st American soldier to die in Iraq. And the way regiments and everything are 101st. And so I just called the story the 3,741st. For me, that was because Joey is one of these stories.

Numbers are so abstract. 4,000 people, 10,000, you know, it becomes, but as soon as you put a name and a face and a story to one of them, and then you multiply that, you know, the goal here is that Joey is the proxy for all of these people who went away and didn't come home. At the time, Esquire, it was a 70th or 75th anniversary year of Esquire. And they were doing lots of sort of callbacks.

And the things they carried, which is the great Tim O'Brien piece, ran in Esquire. And so they called it the things that carried him as an echo. I was mortified when I saw the title because that Tim O'Brien piece for me is like one of my, you know, it's one of my monuments that I go to. And I was terrified that people would think I was comparing myself to Tim, in no way. and Peter had to talk me off a serious meltdown. So no, Peter made the headline, the title. Usually against any references to other pieces of writing in the title of the magazine story.

Because one, it feels like editors winking at each other and sharing a joke that no one in the reading public is likely to get. And two, because it makes the new piece of writing necessarily, as you say, seem like an echo of an existing piece of writing. But in this case, it kind of works, doesn't it? You'll take it. I still get sort of uncomfortable about it all these years later. The Tim O'Brien piece really is, and for your listeners who haven't read, it's one of the great pieces. You know, you got in touch with me through Kevin Van Balkenberg. Kevin Van Balkenberg and I are friends because on the internet, old forum for sports journalists, he sent me a DM recommending the Tim O'Brien book. And I was like, anyone who loves this book has to be my friend. And now Kevin is one of my

best friends in the world. Like, that's how important this piece of writing is to me. So the idea that it was this callback. I mean, even the cover is, the cover was also a, um, it caused me a lot of stress because it's Jessica Simpson shaving. She's like, topless, you can't see anything, but then she's shaving, which is an echo of a 1960s cover. Yeah. People think it's Marilyn Monroe, but it's not. It's like an Italian actress. And I was like, this cannot be the cover. Like, Gail cannot get this in her mailbox. But they put this big sort of banner headline around it saying we put this,

we put Jessica Simpson on the cover so that you turn to page 137 and read the story. Like it was the most blatant bait and switch in the history of magazine journalism possibly. But isn't it the bait and switch of men's magazines and Esquire in the aughts specifically, except how we're just spelling it out. You're going to buy this magazine because there's a beautiful celebrity on the cover. You're going to open it up. You're going to find this piece that you didn't expect. And it's going to move you in perhaps a way you didn't expect.

Here, we're just stating that for readers. Yeah. Donuts and broccoli. We call it donuts and broccoli. Every issue had to have something sweet and then inside you get your vegetables on that. You know, Esquire, I don't know, occasionally would get dismissed. It's like one of the, this is another callback to that Arab magazines. You know, like the Latinags, Maxim and,

FHM and all those things. And Escobar would sort of be lumped into it. At Esquire, we were always like, I mean, this is where Norman Mailer wrote. This is where Hemingway wrote. You know, we're not FHM. We're doing some other stuff here. No, but those magazines were certainly putting pressure on Esquire

in the newsstand back when we had a newsstand. So you could- enormous pressure. You could do a whole story about magazine covers at the time because Granger almost got fired like four issues into his tenureship because he put Mr. Rogers on the cover. Tom Juneau wrote this amazing Mr. Rogers story that is now iconic. And that was the worst selling issue of the magazine

possibly ever. Because I had Mr. Rogers on the cover. And David was called to the carpet. What are you doing? What are you doing? And so, yeah. So Jessica Simpson on the cover was, it's Mr. Rogers's fault, really.

Yeah, he's like, I'm never making that mistake again. Never making that mistake again, exactly. You mentioned Gail Bond. What did she make of this story? Um, you know, there's the story. I wish I could put it in the words what the story means. You write a story like this and you have hopes for it. You don't embark on a journey like this if you don't have sort of a hope for the end of it.

And rightly or wrongly, sort of what makes this story special to me is the response of the people who were in it. And you're supposed to do journalism without consideration for the subject. You're supposed to write a true account, which I did. It's a true account. I stand by every single fact on that story. But I'd be lying if I said I didn't care what Gail thought. I didn't care what Aunt Vicky thought, if I didn't care what the soldiers thought. And as I was working on this story, I mean, I had people, you know, Joey's friends in the army were like, if you, if you fuck this up,

we're going to come after you. Like, they were like, you can't smirch this memory. And at Dover, you know, one of the heads of Dover, Karen Giles gave me this coin. Like different branches in the military have these coins. And she gave me this coin and it was like a folded American flag with gloves, you know, two hands holding it. She was like, I want this to be on your laptop when you're writing the story. Like, I want you to remember what you saw here. I don't want you to forget what this is.

And so I did. I wrote it with that coin on my computer. And I got invested in the idea of what people would think about it. And I was so nervous when it came out. And I told Gail, I was like, Gail, I love you. There are things in this story that are going to hurt you. You don't have to read it. You know, Gail didn't know that Joey's,

one of the brutal details of the story that I really hesitated, whether to put it in or not was Joey lost his legs. Joey stepped on an IED and his legs were blown off. Well, Gail didn't know that because in the casket, they put pants that are stuffed with, you know, they make a facsimile. And so she had no idea. And I was going, Gail, I don't want you to find this out in this story.

But she read it and she just gave me her sort of immediate and complete blessing about it. She just was so gracious about it. And everyone was. The soldiers, you know, I still hear from people who are in that story. I still keep in touch with Gail. I still keep in touch with some of the soldiers. And it's just, it's gratifying. It matters to me.

It shouldn't matter, Brian. Like, we're taught that that shouldn't matter, but it did matter to me. And so that's a very long answer to your question. But the way that story came out was exactly. the way I might have hoped it would come out. It was just it, it, um, it was a very special experience from start to finish. Tom's you know was once quoted saying that David Granger, Esquire's editor was sparing in his praise. What did Granger say after you wrote this story? Granger was very sparing with his praise. I was always terrified of Granger. I still kind of

am in a weird way. He, I have the email somewhere. I kept it. He sent an email that was two lines long. And he was very proud to have that story in his magazine. And thank you for writing it. And it was just one of those,

in a way, the original email from Peter when he said, go make it great. They were like bookends. Like a story like this requires so much, The story is obviously heartbreaking, but there's something about it that shows how good people can be. Everyone in the story is doing good. I think that's one of the reasons it resonated. And they're doing it often with nobody watching.

And at the root of this story is this faith in each other. It's this idea that you're going to do your job. and you're going to do it as well as you possibly can. And I, great sort of magazine writing for me was always a faith-based exercise. It was your editor trusting you. It was you trusting your editor. It was your subjects trusting you. It was you trusting your subjects.

It's just you're all making an agreement that together you're going to make something good. And I think this story for me was as hard as it was. And as I think back on it, you know, I, you know, I'll be sad today thinking about it. But as I think back on it too, I think how every door opened, how everyone was so kind and generous with their time, how everyone loved Joey, even those who didn't know him, they just, they wanted to do right by him. I wanted to do right by him. Esquire wanted to do it right. Everyone just there's like this tacit

silent agreement just to do good work. And and I feel like completely honored to have been part of the process. It was just not that I was part of the process of bringing Joey home,

but in my head I became part of the process. And everyone was so everyone I met was so good. And it was in a weird way, the most fulfilling story because I just constantly met people who just did beautiful things

because it was the right thing to do. You told Neiman's storyboard back in 2015, it's a little bit hard when you know something is the best thing you'll ever do. And I feel that way about this story. You still feel this story is the best thing you ever did? Yeah, it's not. I mean, what makes it especially hard is it's not super close. Like this is the, you know, I don't like to think I was a one hit wonder, but it, it is the story.

It's the story that gets brought up the most to me. You know, you reached out after 15 years and that's, and that's, every writer has this like, I shouldn't say every writer. A lot of writers have this idea that writing is this permanent thing and you're making something like, you're making your little monuments and a hundred years from now someone might pull them off the shelf and read them, which is a weird thing I care about because you will be gone and it doesn't really matter. But I'm not going to lie and say that when your email dropped into my inbox, I wasn't a little bit flattered and a little bit pleased that people are still talking about the story, even if it's like just this tiny subset of magazine nerds. Like it's, it's, um, yeah, it's the best thing I ever do. And the problem is, I don't see the opportunity where that kind of thing happens

again for me. It was just this moment. Can I tell you a little story? So this story seemed impossible at the time because there was a ban on photography at Dover. Very publicly, there was a ban of the, you couldn't photograph the transfer cases, the flagged transfer cases they arrived in Dover. So people didn't even attempt this story because, but there wasn't a ban on writing about it. And so when I called Dover to ask to do the story, they said, well, you need Pentagon approval. I got that immediately. I called the Pentagon. I called the tenant Colonel Melnick.

I still remember that guy's name. Explain what I was doing. He's like, great. I went, okay, so how do I go about getting Pentagon approval? He's like, you have it. I'll call Dover now. like that door opened but then there was something almost and i'm not religious but there was something like vaguely mystical the whole way the story sort of unfolded like and the thing i always go back

to is chaplain sparks who's the chaplain who um says a prayer over the transfer cases in the plane he boards the plane when it lands at dover he's the first person on the plane there's one transfer case there's 40 transfer cases he says a new prayer every plane loan and when i was talking to him if I'm remembering right, he does something like 700. And I said, you know, you ask questions knowing people aren't going to have the answer, but I said, do you happen to know the prayer that you said over Joey's plane load? And he said, no, of course not. I mean, I wrote different ones for every, two hours later, I'm talking to someone else at the morseyshire. Chaplin Sparks walks into the room. He is white as a ghost. And he's holding a piece of paper and his hands are sort of trembling.

and he says he had gone back to his office, which was like piles of piles, you know, it was the office from the usual suspects, you know, just chaos. He knocked over some pile of paper, and this one piece of paper sort of flutters to the floor. And it's the passenger manifest with Joey's name on it. And on the back is the prayer that he said over that plane loan. And for him, that was God, reaching out.

For me, I don't know what it was. But it was like permission. It was those early days in the story and it was it was like something or someone saying, you are supposed, this is okay. You're supposed to do this story. And it's supposed to be Joey and it's this is how this is, it's going to work out. And it was my first reporting trip for the story. And it was just this moment of.

And there were so many things that happened over the course of that story that were just doors opened or people just happen to find the thing or someone said, oh, you should talk to so-and-so and that person was standing there. Sergeant Slat, who was on the helicopter that took Joey from the forward operating base to the Baghdad airport.

I was in Alaska in this massive military base going, I need to find the guy. I'm telling another person in the cafeteria, I need to find the guy who was on the chopper. And he's standing right next to me. He goes, I was the guy in the chopper. Like, that stuff happened over and over again. And again, I'm not making myself part of this process,

but it felt like it was okay to do this story and I was supposed to do the story and we were supposed to do this story and everything was going to work and it did everything worked. It was one of those stories that I feel so grateful for because everything just kind of happened.

It's like I wasn't even really part of it. It was like I'm just the person who got lucky enough to be the guy. Funny as writers, we're always looking for as you say signs that we're we have the permission to do this that we're supposed to be doing this. There's so many signs that you're not, you know, an unreturned phone call,

and then unreturned email, an editor who looks like, you're like, eh, I don't know, maybe. And then you just start poking around, even if you're doing your job, making calls, doing research, doing all those kinds of things, just look for that one or two moments, whether we ascribe them to religion or not to just go, I'm supposed to be doing this. You have, I'm glad. So you have this, too? Sure. Sometimes I think I'm a maniac. Well, I am a maniac, but like I'm,

this story should have been the hardest. In terms of getting it done, this story should have been brutal. And it was one of the easiest, everything just unfolding from the pitch to the response. It was just, and it made it feel okay. Because you definitely,

like you asked earlier about the weight of asking people these questions and stuff, it exists. I think journalists are often sort of portrayed like Rita Skeeter and Harry Potter, we're all just elbowing our way into scrums of being vicious and most writers are careful caring people like that's why they write and they're often introverts um that's also why they write and love books and they it's just

i'm i'm often at odds with my personality trying to do this stuff and and and just it's relieving to hear that you are you also look for the because sometimes i think it sounds ridiculous of course there's no divine intervention in this stuff but sometimes you take um coincidences for signs and it gets you through to the other end of it. You also told Damon that immediately after this, meaning this piece, I was in a very deep depression, which you later wrote about in Esquire. Was that period of depression connected at all

to the writing and reporting of this story? I've asked myself this question a lot. I think so, but I'm not positive. I, you know, I can talk for a long time about this. and shouldn't, but it's, that was my first, I'd been a very even-keeled person to the point where my friends made fun of me for how, I was always like a seven, just everything's fine, never got up, never got down, and then immediately after this story, and there were other things going, you know, I was a father of young children, and there were sort of fractures in my marriage, and there was,

you know, there was other stuff going on in my life, but it was, And I think my depression was also chemical or electrical or whatever depression is. Like I think it just happened. But and it was less being surrounded by the sadness of it and more once it was finished, I was a little lost. And that idea that I'd done this thing

that I would never be able to replicate. I mean, I knew it in the moment. Like it's, it's, you know, it's weird, like a basketball player, walking off the court after a hundred point game or whatever and you go, well, that can't happen. Like, what do you do? I always think that the people who went to the moon. Like, well, what now was? Like, what's that conversation with yourself? Like, it's like a, so, so for me, it was, it was this

combination of things and it was also this sort of aimlessness afterwards. You know, magazine writing, and one of the things I loved about the job was the uncertainty of it. I was on one-year contracts. I would get a call out of the blues and now you're going to go right about Colin Farrell or whatever and I would be on a plane and I love that but for eight months I was certain

for eight months I knew exactly what I was doing and it was like a mission I was fully committed and then it was done and then I didn't know what I was supposed to do next so the depression I think was it was not caused by the story

and I I say this every time I talk about this stuff. I don't want young writers thinking as part of the deal. You don't have to wear black and be sad to be a good writer. You may really joyous and be a good writer. But in that instance, the confluence of factors, I think, and one of the factors was less the sadness of the story and more having finished the story

and not knowing what came next. A couple quick ones before you go. What do you still want to write? There's no quick one. to me, right? The questions will be short in any case. I hope you're just like,

snip, snip, snip. What do I still want to write? I'm about to write a book that I'm excited to write about that I wish I had a better elevator pitch for, but I'm writing a story about heartbreak and it's remedies through the lens of soccer. And my soccer is one of my great obsessions. I play.

I poke-shay ref. I'm a fanatical follower of Burr. who just got promoted to the Premier League. And this story is about my boy, and it's about mental health, and it's about my younger son is also, he's inherited fully the soccer gene. And I'm excited about that book. I think it's my best chance to write something good.

Books now seem like the best chance to do that for me. And I'm working. I still do. I'm working on a story for the Atlantic that I'm excited about. And I'd like to write a really good movie. I'm doing screenwriting now. I was lucky enough that one of my last Esquare stories became a TV show that I got to work on. And so I got my screenwriting card.

And I'd be lying if I said I didn't care about one day looking at a movie screen and seeing something I wrote on it. But unfortunately, I'm like, you know, when when. the roadrunner or Wiley Coyote are running and the cliff was sort of collapsing. I ran from newspapers to magazines. I ran to TV. You know, we're on strike right now and Netflix. Who knows what's out in that industry? It's like, I don't know.

I need like 20 more years of work. I just going to keep running until I look down, I guess. It brings me to an next question, which is if someone wanted to write a story like the things that carried him now. Where would they write it? I mean, there's a handful of magazines. magazines that might do it. The Atlantic, the New Yorker,

maybe the New York Times Magazine. It's just whether they would, you know, you could do a whole, I know you are big on a, by the way, I'm super flattered that you, like I read all your stuff and listen to all your, you're like the beacon of the industry. And so when I, I'm like, I feel like I finally made it.

You know, you could do a whole thing about the economics of stories like this, I don't know how you do it. It doesn't make sense because the staff writer, like the death of the staff writer, like this only works for staff writers. Like if you're a freelancer, you know, you're getting $2 a word and no one's running 17,000 words. I don't know. Say they're running 15,000 words, 30,000 bucks. You can't work for eight months on that. It doesn't make economics on. And so when you say, who writes this? or where this gets published, that's one question, but the other question is the economics of it.

And I don't know how you make it make sense, if it ever made sense. Maybe it didn't make sense. But I know when S-Quaer, I was selling an ad page for $75,000, you could justify spending quite a lot of money on the page next to it. It's just that, yeah, the model doesn't exist now to do this story. I hope it emerges again, but it's hard for me to see what that is. Like you said earlier, it barely made sense in 2007.

I don't think it did make sense. No, which is one of the reasons I feel so lucky to have written it. It's just nuts. If you really break it down, and thankfully, I think Granger and Peter made the decision so quickly, they didn't stop to think about it. And I also don't think they knew when Peter was like, go. I don't think they knew that eight months later I was going to return with 22,000 words. Like, it was sort of, it just got out of hand.

But yeah, I don't know if it ever made sense. I don't think they really thought about it beyond that's something we want to see in our magazine. last one the esquire we're talking about ends in 2016 when david granger gets fired and you and most of the other writers leave with him how does a magazine that doesn't exist in anything like its previous form sit in your mind now bitter sweet i would say it's when i think about esquire it's like you know i feel very lucky you have been part of it when i was there are people who only got a couple years you know There are people who graduate. I talked to classes of magazine students who graduated in 2012.

And I remember one of them showing up at Bestquire. And he got a couple of years in. I got 14. I have colleagues who got 40 who retired in 2016. He got right to the end and finished. Scott Rabb, I think about it. He's like, well, I'm out now. I'm done.

So I'm grateful for what I got. Occasionally, I think, oh, man, I wish that still existed. not just for me, but for other people who want to do that kind of work. I still love a great magazine story. I think it's a very particular kind of journalism and storytelling that when done well can be perfect. It can be like this really beautiful thing. I'm sad that that Esquire doesn't exist anymore.

It was this fantastic, hopeful, place to work. It felt like a family. It felt would go out, you know, the writers would go out for steak dinner and it would just be this magical just a bunch of geeks talking about writing and

eating meat. It was just, it was such a happy special time. It was just, I love it. I love it. Like when I think about Esquire, I think about some of those dinners and I go, man, how lucky I was to sit there a little bit. I just wish other people had the opportunity. There are, there are

25-year-olds out there who are incredible magazine writers. They would be like George Cleptons and the Susan Orleans of now if they had the shot. And it's, I'm just sad that those stories, at least for the time being, seem like a tough sell. I hope someone figures out a way to make them make sense again. Perfect eulogy for the men's magazine at the early odds.

Talking writing and eating meat. Elastic. It was very bro-y. That was the other, the sort of like the, the asterisk to all of this is, you know, it was of a time. And you look back at some of it and you go, you know, sexiest woman alive. That's something that probably shouldn't exist anymore. I'm pretty glad that's not part of the lexicon. Yeah, there was definitely a broie element to it that was regrettable.

But mostly it was people who just wanted to write good stuff. And occasionally we got to write good stuff. You can read Chris Jones's story, the things that carried. him on Esquire.com, which still exists. Chris, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you. That's the press box.

I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantes and Eduardo Ocampo. Okay. Two down, one to go in our summer vacation series. Next Monday, in this space you will find an interview with a well-known

cable news anchor. Cable news anchor, whose name has been mentioned many, many, many times on this podcast. Enjoy it. I hope. If you hear this, I'm running around the UK

having the time of my life. I hope. And we'll see you back Monday for more Lukeworm takes about the media.