What if the secrets to crafting unforgettable stories lie in the hidden letters of a baseball legend? Join us on "Moral of the Story" as we sit down with bestselling author Jonathan Icke, who takes us on an enthralling journey from his early days as a newspaper writer to his celebrated career as a book author. Drawing inspiration from comics and sports, Jonathan shares how his love for storytelling was ignited and reveals the pivotal moment spurred by Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit" that set him on his path to authoring.
In an emotional recount, Jonathan delves into the arduous yet rewarding process of writing Lou Gehrig's biography. From the challenges of piecing together the life of a reclusive icon to the astonishing discovery of Gehrig's personal letters, listeners will gain insight into the meticulous research and emotional resilience required to humanize historical figures. Jonathan’s narrative transcends mere biography, offering a deeper understanding of Gehrig's battle with ALS and the universal themes of struggle and perseverance.
We also navigate the complexities inherent in long-term creative projects, tackling the emotional toll of unfinished works and the daunting mid-point of extensive research endeavors. Through personal anecdotes and practical strategies, Jonathan provides valuable advice on maintaining momentum and humanizing the subjects of our stories, whether they be sports legends or civil rights icons like Martin Luther King Jr. Join us for an insightful conversation that underscores the power of storytelling and the human connections that enrich our narratives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Max Chopovsky (00:02):
This is Moral of the Story interesting people
telling their favorite shortstories and then breaking them
down to understand what makesthem so good.
I'm your host, max Japofsky.
Today's guest is bestsellingauthor Jonathan Icke, whose
writing has given the worldinsights into some of the most
influential minds of our time.
Jonathan was born in Brooklynand grew up in New York.
(00:23):
Raised by an accountant and acommunity activist, he would be
imbued with an almostcontradictory set of skills that
would amalgamate to establishthe inquisitive yet
authoritative voice thathundreds of thousands of readers
have come to love.
As a young kid, jonathan spenthours reading the Rockland
County Journal.
News.
Comics were his gateway drug,followed by sports, and at age
(00:44):
16, jonathan started writing forthe paper.
His first story was about hisjunior high school ski trip to
Sterling Mountain, new York.
It may not have been the scoopof a lifetime, but Jonathan was
hooked.
After polishing his journalisticskills at Northwestern
University, where he also workedon the Daily Northwestern,
jonathan went to work as areporter for the New Orleans
(01:08):
Times-Picayune, the DallasMorning News, chicago Magazine
and the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, his writing careercontinued its unstoppable ascent
, although Jonathan's parentscontend that his claim to fame
is appearing in a Jeopardyquestion solved correctly for
$200,.
His list of achievements is theliterary equivalent of a career
criminal's rap sheet Long,diverse and impressive, with
(01:32):
multiple New York Timesbestsellers, awards from Esquire
, espn National Book Awards andat least one book hailed as a
must-read by Barack Obama.
There is no shortage ofrecommendations for the man's
work, although, again, hisparents would argue that
Jeopardy supersedes all of these.
Perhaps his greatestrecognition, however, is being
named a master storyteller byKen Burns, the legendary
(01:54):
filmmaker and documentarian, whois arguably one of the most
qualified people of our time tobestow that title.
Jonathan doesn't just explorethe past, though.
He's gotten into shaping thefuture.
In 2020, he kicked off hisforay into children's books,
publishing the first few entriesin the Lola Jones series
inspired by his daughter.
But my favorite part of theman's bio is the role of his
(02:17):
Jewish faith in informing hiswork, especially given recent
events.
We are often reminded that theJewish people share a history of
oppression with AfricanAmericans, which, incidentally,
is why so many Jewish peoplewere involved in the civil
rights movement.
For Jonathan, it's all aboutstorytelling, specifically how
slavery and its aftermath arecentral to our story as a nation
(02:37):
, from exploring the mavericksof generations past to shaping
the minds of the future.
It's all in a day's work forthe man who may or may not wear
a blazer to his home office towrite so, literary legend
Jonathan Eig, welcome to theshow.
Jonathan Eig (02:53):
Thank you, Max.
I'm wearing the blazer becauseI just came from speaking at a
school, so I don't usually getdressed up to work.
Normally you'd find me in mysweatpants and t-shirt.
Max Chopovsky (03:02):
I respect that.
Also, there is nothing wrongwith getting dressed up to go to
work, because if your commuteinvolves nothing but a short
trip down the stairs, you haveto have some sort of delineation
between home and work life.
Jonathan Eig (03:13):
Yeah, maybe I'll try it Might help.
I'll bet you.
Robert Caro wears a tie to workevery day.
Max Chopovsky (03:18):
For the record, you don't need help.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If sweatpants have gotten youall of these awards broke, don't
fix it.
If sweatpants have gotten youall of these awards, keep the
sweatpants, All right.
So you are here to tell us astory.
Do you want to set the stage?
Is there?
Jonathan Eig (03:33):
anything that we should know before you get into
it.
No, I'm going to tell you thestory of how I wrote my first
book and how I made thediscovery, really, that allowed
me to transition from being anewspaper writer to being a book
writer.
Max Chopovsky (03:45):
Love that.
All right, let's do it.
Tell me a story.
Jonathan Eig (03:52):
As a young reporter I always loved copying
other writers who I admired.
Sometimes I would actually typetheir sentences to see how it
felt to type a sentence thatHemingway typed.
But I often, more often, Istole ideas for stories.
You know, I would readsomething in Sports Illustrated
and I would think I want towrite that same story.
But I'm in New Orleans, so Iguess I'll have to write about
something in New Orleans thatmight allow me to copy that same
approach to a story.
And that was really how Ilearned to be a writer, and a
(04:14):
storyteller is by, you know,admiring other storytellers and
trying to do what I can toimitate them.
So around 2000, right after thebook Seabiscuit came out, I read
that book and just gobbled itup.
And one thing I've learned isthat when you gobble something
up you got to stop and pause andthink what made that so special
?
Why was that book so wonderful?
And for Seabiscuit I began toreally break it down and realize
(04:36):
that it was not like any othersports book I'd ever read, that
it was about something muchbigger than sports, that it was
about the Great Depression.
It was about something muchbigger than sports, that it was
about the Great Depression.
It was about underdogs, it wasabout overcoming adversity, and
that the sports just offered areally nice vehicle for telling
the story and packing it withaction, and that it had the
advantage of all of these sportswriters who were covering the
(04:56):
horse races.
So you had these eyewitnesseswho served as primary sources
for you, for Laura Hillenbrand,in writing about Seabiscuit.
You know, 50 years later, 60years later, whatever it was
more 70 years later, and I justover dinner with my wife talking
to her about Seabiscuit, I saidI wish I could write a book
like that.
What you need here are theelements you need.
You need a sports figure whowas really well covered, but
(05:18):
their story wasn't appreciatedat the time because it was
really about something muchbigger than sports, like Lou
Gehrig.
Lou Gehrig's story is reallyabout dying young.
It's a classic tragedy and thebaseball is really just the
action that gets you to hisillness.
And somebody ought to write abiography of Lou Gehrig that
really builds to the illness.
That that's the main goal ofthe book and my wife, to her
(05:41):
everlasting credit, said whydon't you do it?
So I thought, okay, I will.
I had never written a book, butI figured I could probably
figure it out as I go.
So the first thing I did,realizing that, understanding
that the key to it wasunderstanding his illness was, I
called the Mayo Clinic and Isaid would you please send me
Lou Gehrig's medical records?
And they just laughed at mebecause there's this thing
(06:04):
called HIPAA which I guess I wasvaguely aware of, and those are
private.
Good luck to you.
And I decided I was going towrite the biography anyway, that
I was going to try to tell LouGehrig's story and somehow I
would figure out what happenedto him when he got sick.
Now he doesn't have any kids.
He never had children.
He didn't have any nieces ornephews and he was incredibly
shy.
Didn't have any nieces ornephews and he was incredibly
shy.
(06:24):
He was very private.
He never gave interviews.
He hardly ever spoke abouthimself.
He never wrote an autobiography, no memoir.
You know Babe Ruth, histeammate, would write an
autobiography every off seasonjust to bring in a little extra
dough, but not Gehrig.
He wanted no part of beingfamous.
So I had no way of figuring outwhat he went through.
(06:45):
And he was diagnosed at age 37with ALS Lou Gehrig's disease we
call it now, but disease thatmelts your muscles away and he
was the strongest man inbaseball.
But we have no idea what hewent through.
So I began trying to figure out.
How am I going to tell thatside of the story?
How am I going to get to knowthis really shy man who left me
very little paper trail to workwith?
(07:06):
I spent about a year writingthe proposal.
I got a contract to write thebook, but I really struggled
with the idea that I was goingto fail because I was not going
to A crack the code of hispersonality and, b I was not
going to be able to describe hisillness and I thought I guess
I'm just going to have to writeabout what people with ALS
typically go through.
(07:26):
But I spent three or four yearson the book and I began doing
intensive research.
I called doctors at the MayoClinic, thinking that maybe some
of them had seen his medicalrecords and they might at least
be willing to describe them tome.
No dice.
There I did find a doctor whowas trained by the doctor who
treated Gehrig and he told methat the doctor had talked to
(07:48):
him about Gehrig's case and thathe would read my book and check
it for me if I got tell me if Igot things right or wrong, but
I really had not much to workwith, I just kept going.
I kept going like on faith thatI would find something, some way
to tell this story.
And then one day I went to thehome of an autograph collector
in Libertyville, illinois.
He had baseball auctioncatalogs going back for 20 years
(08:09):
and I just flipped throughevery page of every auction
catalog.
It took me days, becauseauction catalogs are not indexed
and they're not alphabetized.
You just have to flip everypage of every catalog and there
were hundreds of themno-transcript collection but it
(08:51):
didn't say how many more.
So, wow, this was big.
This was exactly what I didn'tknow.
I was looking for it, but thisis what I was looking for.
This could be the key tosolving the Lou Gehrig mystery.
And I should say that you know Iwas having dreams about Gehrig
because I felt like I wasn'tgetting anywhere, getting to
know him, and in my dreams Iwould see him across the room
(09:12):
and he would walk out before Icould get to him.
I would see him hitchhiking andI would stop the car and he
wouldn't get in.
So he was really elusive.
But here was a chance to seesome of his own letters and we
had never seen any of hispersonal letters.
So I began looking for thoseletters.
I wrote to Christie's, calledthem and wrote to them and said
can you tell me who purchasedthose letters at the auction?
(09:33):
And they said no, it's privateinformation.
I said would you forward aletter to the buyer for me and
then he can reply if he wants to?
So they agreed to forward aletter to him, but I got no
response.
I forwarded two more lettersthrough Christie's, got no
response.
So clearly it seemed to me theguy with the letters didn't want
to be contacted.
But I didn't give up.
I began calling every baseballmemorabilia collector in the
(09:58):
country whose name I could find.
I had a list of hundreds ofpeople who collected baseball
memorabilia and every time Italked to one of them I would
say tell me some more names ofcollectors.
It took me six months.
I called hundreds ofmemorabilia dealers and
collectors and buyers until oneguy said oh, I remember that
item from Lou Gehrig, I rememberthose letters, I bid on them
and I lost.
And the guy who won it wassomething like Ansel, jim, ansel
(10:21):
or Ansel, I don't know.
Ansel, jim, ansel or Ansel, Idon't know.
So now I started Googling thename Jim Ansel or Ansel,
spelling it every different wayI could and I found a guy in
Baltimore who was a baseballcollector whose hometown paper
had written a story about him,and I called him up and I said
Mr Ansel, my name is JonathanIgan.
I'm working on a biography ofLou Gehrig.
(10:41):
I've been at it for three yearsnow and I'm working on a
biography of Lou Gehrig.
I've been at it for three yearsnow and I'm not going to finish
the book.
I'm not going to turn it in,I'm not going to write this book
unless I can see those lettersthat you've got that Lou Gehrig
wrote to his doctor.
The whole world needs to seethose letters.
People with ALS, people who aredying of the same disease, need
to know what he went through,and Lou Gehrig's story will
never be complete.
(11:02):
We'll never know what he reallymeant until we see those
letters.
And, furthermore, you know,someday you may decide to sell
them, your children may sellthem and they'll be cut up into
little pieces and the text ofthose letters will be lost
forever.
So I beseech you, I beg you,please, you know, would you
share those letters with me andthere was this long pause on the
phone.
I was sweating bricks and hesaid, okay, yeah, what else do
(11:25):
you want?
And I was like that's it, Ijust want the letters.
And he said come on anytime.
I said how many letters arethere, by the way?
He said there's about 200.
I was like what?
(11:46):
Yeah, he said, plus, I've gotthe letters that the doctor
wrote to Lou as well, becausethe doctor made carbon copies.
So this was a goldmine.
And now I had the heart andsoul of my book.
One of the challenges in writinga biography is that you can't
just repeat the details, thenames and the dates.
You have to understand theperson's soul.
You have to know what motivatesthe action in a person.
And Gehrig had eluded me untilthat time.
(12:08):
But now I got those letters andthey were 200 pages of letters
that he never imagined anyonewas going to see.
Right, he's writing to hisdoctor.
These are private and you knowthey could have revealed that he
was a coward.
It could have revealed that hewas scared, that he was
depressed, could have revealedthat he was, you know, a racist
or an anti-Semite.
Right, anything could have beenin those letters.
(12:28):
But what they revealed wasunbelievable courage and
humility and that he was willingto subject himself to all kinds
of experiments.
And once he realized that therewas no chance for him, he said
let's just do this so that maybewe can learn something about
this disease for the next guywho gets it.
And he began to talk to thedoctor about his wife and what
she was going through and howhard this was on her.
(12:50):
And what I realized was that hewas shy because he was so
confident of himself and didn'tfeel the need to brag and didn't
feel the need to tell the worldwhat he was going through.
But he was more heroic than Iever imagined and I think
without those letters I wouldnot have had a book.
I certainly would not have hadthe book that I had and that I
(13:11):
would not have understood whyLou Gehrig, in his famous final
speech, called himself theluckiest man.
He was lucky because he knewhow good his life was.
Max Chopovsky (13:18):
Yeah, and that book was.
I think that was your first bigsort of book that got you
noticed in a way.
Right, that was my first book.
Jonathan Eig (13:28):
Yeah, and there's no question that if I hadn't
found those letters, I wouldhave had a pretty mediocre book,
and that I might not have hadthe chance to write another one.
Max Chopovsky (13:37):
Well, those letters were a serious, serious
barrier to entry and withoutthem, right, the book would have
been kind of a regurgitation ofwhat was already available.
But with those letters, now youhad the content to be able to
paint possibly the most accurateportrait of the man possible,
(13:59):
at least with respect to thisdisease and how he approached it
.
It's like Walter Isaacsoncollecting Da Vinci's notebooks
and at least getting access tothem in order to write that book
.
That information was socritical.
Jonathan Eig (14:13):
No question about it, because you've really got to
know your subject.
You know it's an audacious actto take on someone else's life
story.
You can never be perfect aboutit.
You're never gonna really knowwhat's inside someone's heart
and soul.
So just the act of trying.
You have to go into it knowingyou're going to fail to some
extent.
And you're just trying to failto the smallest extent possible.
(14:34):
And there's always a dangerthat you're going to end up just
regurgitating what other peoplehave written and that you're
not going to really becontributing to the story, to
the legacy.
But you never know, going in,just how much you're going to
find.
That's part of the problem isthat you agree to take on a book
(14:55):
and then three or four yearslater, when you've done the work
, you feel more confident.
But you have to go in withoutthat confidence, knowing that
and that fear is part of why Iwork so hard, I guess.
Max Chopovsky (15:06):
And the person might turn out to be somebody
entirely different than what youthought.
Jonathan Eig (15:10):
Yeah, Like I said, what if those letters revealed
that Gehrig was just a schmuck,that he didn't care about
anybody but himself?
Right Like that would have beena very different end of my
story.
Max Chopovsky (15:19):
How fortunate for you that he turned out to be
such a resilient and humblehuman.
Jonathan Eig (15:25):
Yeah, and I think I sensed that from the evidence
that I had gathered.
I think I sensed that he was adecent man.
But he could have been decentand dumb.
He could have been decent andjust kind of like clueless, but
he was decent and warm andloving and thoughtful too.
Max Chopovsky (15:41):
Now let me ask you this, because writing a book
is an endeavor, writing abiography is an even more
involved endeavor.
Writing a biography of somebodywho's passed away is the next
level of involvement and effort,and writing the biography of
somebody who's passed away anddidn't leave a lot behind in the
(16:03):
public sphere is sort of nextlevel effort involved.
What was so important to youabout writing this book that
made you take all of these extrasteps when Christie's wouldn't
put you in touch with him andwhen the doctors at the Mayo
Clinic wouldn't give you hisrecords?
And then, when you sort of hitthese dead ends and started
(16:26):
trying to track down thesecollectors one by one, what was
it that kept driving you?
Jonathan Eig (16:31):
Well, for one thing, it's just the fear of
failure, the fear that the NewYork Times is going to review
this book and say he blew it.
But beyond that, it's a feelingof responsibility that I have.
Gehrig isn't asking me to behis biographer, muhammad Ali
didn't ask me to be hisbiographer, but I feel like
they're going to judge me, maybelooking down from heaven, or at
(16:52):
least karmically, somewhere inthe universe.
I'm being judged for whether Igave this life the respect that
it deserved and that I dideverything humanly possible to
tell it as completely and asfairly and as honestly as I
could.
And if I just phoned it inbecause I was lazy or because I
wasn't getting paid enough and Iwas bitter, that would be just
a failure, not just to me, butto my readers or to the people
(17:16):
who are the non-readers, becausethey're not going to pick up
the book, but ultimately to thisman, to this person's life.
If you're going to dare to tellsomeone else's story, you damn
well better put everythingyou've got into it.
Max Chopovsky (17:28):
Agreed, Agreed.
I was thinking more in terms ofwell, why not just abandon the
project once you get to a pointwhere most rational people would
say, maybe the universe istrying to tell me that this
isn't meant to be?
Jonathan Eig (17:42):
I did abandon one.
I set out to write a book aboutAlan Pinkerton, the first
private eye, the first head ofthe secret service, and first of
all, his papers burned in theChicago fires.
There wasn't that much to workwith, but second of all, the
more I researched him, the lessI liked him, and I finally just
decided that I didn't want tospend any more time on this
(18:03):
project, in part because itwasn't enough material to work
with, but also because, like Ididn't see the upside, like I
wasn't going to I wasn't goingto like this guy anymore, though
, if I spent more time on it.
Max Chopovsky (18:12):
The accounting concept of sunk costs, which
many people don't grasp, but younailed it with that one.
Jonathan Eig (18:17):
Yeah, I definitely felt like, and it's tough,
because I spent more than a yearon that and didn't get paid and
had nothing to show for it.
Max Chopovsky (18:29):
Yeah, you got to listen to your gut on that kind
of stuff.
When you sit down to write abook and you're six months into
it, whatever your schedule was,you have to sit down in front of
(18:56):
a computer and create newcontent and you know that in the
grand scheme of this book it'sprobably going to be a very
minor dent in the manuscript.
And yet it has to happenbecause it's a building block
for the next day.
How do you manage that?
I can't imagine doing that.
Jonathan Eig (19:13):
Yeah, max, you've kind of identified the worst
part, that six to nine monthmark, because you feel like it's
daunting, you're never going toreally understand it.
There's too much work to beahead.
You've got years and years togo and you don't really
understand your subject thatwell yet and it's just
impossible for one person tocomprehend and coalesce all of
this material.
(19:34):
And you just got to tellyourself it's like running the
marathon when you're at milenine or 10, and it just feels
like you're never going to getto the end.
You have to tell yourself thatfocus on one step at a time.
I'll tell myself I don't need tothink about that much.
I just need to think about thefact that I have to write about
his childhood.
Let's just focus on that.
(19:54):
Let's just think about, like,understanding this man's roots
or this person's roots and howthey, what shaped them.
And I can do that.
I'm not going to think aboutall the other stuff I'm going to
have to learn later, trying notto think about the big themes
that I haven't even discoveredyet, that I don't really
understand really about yet.
Trust the process that you'llget there.
But it's hard because it'syears and years where you have
(20:15):
to keep motivating yourself andyou don't have an editor
cracking the whip, you don'thave anybody looking over your
shoulder at all and if you wastethose first couple of years,
nobody's even going to know,nobody's going to say what have
you been doing all this time?
Max Chopovsky (20:27):
Right, I'm a fan of the marathon analogy, but I
think in this case it's notapplicable.
It's actually so much harderthan a marathon because with a
marathon, you train for 26.2miles and you know what to
prepare yourself forpsychologically in mile two and
mile 10 and mile 20.
(20:48):
With a book, the marathon is avariable length marathon and you
don't know at which point inthe marathon you might learn
that you're running twomarathons back to back and you
can't prepare yourself for that.
And so it's like you might behalfway through the manuscript,
what you think is sort of yourhalfway point, and then you
(21:08):
realize this is not the way Iwant to structure this book.
This is not the way I want tostructure this book.
This is not going in the rightdirection.
I have to pivot, and all theway up to scrapping the entire
thing and starting over Likethat to me is devastating.
That would be devastatingbecause you are in effect
writing off X number of monthsor years that you spent going in
(21:31):
a direction that turns out tonot be the right direction.
I mean, that's the worst casescenario.
But even in the best casescenario, what if you had 400
letters or 500 letters?
It would have taken you thatmuch longer to go through all
those letters, sort of catalogthem, and understand how those
letters impact the story arc ofLou Gehrig and how that all fits
(21:52):
into your narrative.
Jonathan Eig (21:53):
I just can't even imagine that and you know
there's going to be surprisesalong the way and, as you said,
you don't know how long thejourney is going to take.
And that's all part of going in.
You have sort of a best casescenario in mind, but you know,
for example, you know, with King, I knew that it was going to be
the hardest book that I had towrite.
I knew that it was going to beincredibly challenging and I
(22:14):
also knew that it was going tobe incredibly exciting because I
was going to be talking topeople who knew Martin Luther
King and what a gift, what ablessing it would be to have
time with those folks.
But then COVID hit.
You know, like a year and ahalf, two years into my process.
So I was just getting startedwith my interviews.
You know I had interviewedmaybe 50 people, 75 people, and
(22:36):
most of them in person and thenCOVID hit and not only did I
lose access to those people, butarchives closed.
So now I can't just stopworking and wait for COVID to
end.
I've got to.
Covid may never end.
I've got to keep working on thebook.
But how?
How do I do it?
How do I get access to thematerials I need?
How do I do interviews?
How do I deal with the factthat I work from home and now
(22:58):
there's four people in the houseand, like, my kids, need me all
day long and I'm beingconstantly interrupted?
And my little one thinks it'sfunny because I'm just sitting
there at my desk, I don't appearto be working.
Writing doesn't actually looklike work.
So I'm the one she comes in andshoots with the water gun.
Just, you know, just becauseit's funny.
All of this stuff like changesthe whole process of writing a
(23:19):
book and there's no, you can'tplan for that.
Max Chopovsky (23:24):
You're not the first person to write a
biography of Martin Luther King.
When you started the process,how did you convince people that
you needed to talk to them for,in their eyes, yet another bio
on the man about whom arguablykind of everything has been
written?
You know that was surprisinglyeasy.
Jonathan Eig (23:45):
Because when I called people like Jesse Jackson
and Andrew Young and HarryBelafonte the people who I
thought would be the hardest Isaid to them we've turned King
into a mythological figure, youknow, we've turned him into a
monument and nobody knows whathe was like except for you, and
we need another book thatreminds people that he was human
.
And they all said, thank God,yes, we do.
Please, let's talk.
(24:06):
And then when you talk topeople who aren't famous, you
know that was the one I was mostnervous about the famous folks,
because it's hard to get timewith them.
But for other folks, like hisbarber or his childhood friend
from Auburn Avenue or hisroommate from seminary, they
were just like, bring it on,like I want to tell you what ML
was really like, because I'mtired of all this.
I have a dream garbage.
(24:27):
You know.
That's not who he was.
So I had a really like itwasn't hard getting people to
talk to me.
So I had a really like itwasn't hard getting people to
talk to me.
Max Chopovsky (24:34):
Now with King, because you talk about, you sort
of uncover who the person is asyou write about them and as you
do your research.
In the case of King, it's beenwell known that he had a bit of
a darker side to him as well.
Did that make it morechallenging for you to try to
arrive at a character thatpeople could empathize with?
Jonathan Eig (25:01):
Yeah, I was nervous about how people would
receive that.
I knew it was important to behonest and to trust readers to
handle the ambiguity, knowingthat they weren't going to
believe all the good things Ihad to say about him if I didn't
include the bad things, andalso knowing that the FBI
weaponized his flaws in anattempt to destroy him.
So it's important to includethat in the story.
But I was still nervous abouthow people would feel about
seeing their hero reduced toflesh and blood and the fact
(25:25):
that he cheated on his wife,that he plagiarized, that he
attempted suicide twice as ateenager, that he was
hospitalized for depressionnumerous times.
Like I was nervous about it, butI just felt like, as long as I
handled it sensitively and keptit in proportion to his
achievements, that it would workout and it was worth the risk.
Like what was the worst thatwould happen is people.
(25:46):
There might be some pushbackand people might say they don't
want to read that kind of bookand it won't sell or I'll be
criticized for sensationalizinghis sex life.
But I felt like it was worththat risk and hoping that I
could trust readers to embrace amore flawed and complicated
human portrait of King, becausewe're all flawed, and it's been
(26:07):
the case, I think, for the mostpart.
The reception for the book hasbeen what I hoped.
Max Chopovsky (26:11):
It's a great takeaway honestly, because
you're right, People do putthese sort of larger than life
figures on a pedestal and youalmost wonder if a book that
exposes or at least talkshonestly about some of their
flaws would shatter thatillusion that most people have
of this person.
And it's refreshing, it'salmost like it almost helps you
(26:33):
believe in humanity a little bitmore when you realize that
people are willing to say, okay,well, that person was really,
really prominent, did somewonderful things for humanity
and was honestly one of the mostimportant figures of the
century.
But he wasn't perfect, becausenobody is, and it's good to be
reminded of that, and the factthat people are willing to do
(26:55):
that is not a bad thing.
Jonathan Eig (26:57):
Yeah, I don't want to sound too optimistic because
everybody's we're living in theage of cynicism, but I've been
really thrilled by the fact thatpeople can handle a nuanced
portrait.
And you know, there was a fearthat the book would be canceled
before it came out that peoplewould just say nope, don't want
to read that, go away.
But it's been the opposite.
I have people coming up to mein tears saying I had no idea
(27:19):
how much he suffered.
I've got mental health issuesin my family too, and just
knowing that King went throughsome of that just makes me love
him more and admire him morebecause he kept fighting for us
at a time when he was struggling.
And that's beautiful.
It's really, really inspiringto me and it's nice to know that
(27:41):
our society is still capable ofthat kind of empathy, yeah,
especially in this day and age.
Max Chopovsky (27:45):
So I'm curious about something.
So my grandfather was also ajournalist, well-known
journalist in Ukraine.
When Chernobyl exploded, I wasfour and they evacuated us from
Kiev.
We were living in Kiev at thetime, but he was sent to
Chernobyl in a helicopter todocument some of what was
(28:05):
happening, and then he witnessedthese boys effectively being
offered the cancellation of therest of their military service
in exchange for just throwingthis piece of metal off the roof
, not knowing that it was highlyradioactive.
He was the first guy tointerview Yuri Gagarin, who was
the first man in space, becausehe was also same as you, very
(28:25):
relentless and inquisitive andindustrious and willing to stop
at almost nothing to get thestory.
And at the same time he had areally successful career as a
fiction writer, poetry, someprose, and so he developed on
these parallel paths, these twocareers that are sort of
(28:49):
offshoots of the act of writingbut completely different
otherwise.
One of them is a veryinquisitive, skeptical search
for answers from people who,generally speaking, are
reluctant to give you thoseanswers, because he was in the
sort of economic department athis newspaper.
(29:09):
So he would talk to thesefactory owners or factory
managers which during Soviettimes literally had no
incentives to run an efficientfactory and so they wanted to
cover everything up.
And on the other hand, he wasreally good at seeing the most
beautiful parts of humanity,whether it's an embrace between
(29:32):
a mother and a son or the beautyof nature.
And it's always been sofascinating to me that one
person could embody these twoalmost contradictory
perspectives on the world.
One is nonfiction in thestrongest sense of the word and
the other is fiction in thestrongest sense of the word.
You follow these paths eventhough you know your books may
(29:55):
be a little bit more on thenonfiction side because they're
biographies.
But let's be honest, everybiography has to have I'm not
going to call it embellishment,but a story.
And the way you structure thefacts and the way you structure
the information that you findhelps to create a narrative that
really draws readers in.
So in that sense I'm going tosay you have a little bit of
(30:19):
creative liberty with that, notthat you're changing the facts
at all.
But then, on the other hand,you have a much more black and
white sort of nonfictionreporting for the newspaper.
What was the relationshipbetween those two sort of paths
in your mind?
Jonathan Eig (30:34):
Wow, that's a great question.
You know, I always felt likewhen I was a newspaper reporter,
I was first of all alwayswanted to be a newspaper
reporter, as you said in theintroduction, starting at 16.
And I was exploring to see whatkind of newspaper reporter I
wanted to be.
Did I want to be Woodward andBernstein investigative reporter
?
Did I want to be a foreigncorrespondent?
I found, after tryingeverything, even like music
criticism that I want to be aforeign correspondent.
I found, after trying everything, even like music criticism,
(30:56):
that I really wanted to be afeature writer, that I liked
spending time with people, Iliked getting to know them and
trying to figure out what madethem tick.
And the feature writing isreally where I felt my heart was
and I think that's a part of itthat I'm interested in human
connections.
I love doing interviews, I loveexploring what we all have in
common.
And these books sometimesthey're big, heavy history books
(31:20):
, but I think I'm trying towrite with soul and I think
that's really.
I want people to feel like theycan connect with people from
history and people fromdifferent cultures.
Muhammad Ali was my biggestidol as a kid, the thought that
I could write his biography.
That's cool.
But what's really cool is thatI'm trying to find connections
to him and to understand him andto help readers understand him
(31:42):
and like what a thrill that is.
To me that's just like thehighest calling.
I could imagine it really is itreally is incredible?
Max Chopovsky (31:50):
Did you ever get to meet him?
Jonathan Eig (31:53):
I met him once.
I thought about using that formy introductory story, because I
spent five years trying to getto him and traveling several
times to where I thought he wasgoing to be and getting close.
I actually got into his houseonce and spent three hours in
his house with his wife and Aliwas in the next room and never
came out.
And then, because he wasn'tfeeling well, and then finally,
(32:15):
just a few months before he died, his wife called me and said
you gotta come and I flew downto.
I drove down to Louisville andmet him at a ceremony and I
whispered in his ear and toldhim I was writing this book
about him and is there anythinghe wanted to say?
And he didn't answer.
He couldn't speak anymore atthat point, but his wife, lonnie
, told me that he heard me andthat he was glad that I was
(32:35):
writing the book and that hewanted me to come and read it to
him when I finished.
And I never got to read it tohim because he passed away.
Max Chopovsky (32:41):
Where in Louisville was he at the time?
Jonathan Eig (32:44):
It was at the Ali Center.
There was an event honoring him.
Then I got there before theevent started and Lonnie
introduced me to him.
I have one picture of memeeting Ali and I've never
showed it to anybody because Ilook so stupid.
It's like I look exactly likethe 10 year old John I would
look if he were meeting Ali.
I just had this like incrediblygeeky look on my face.
(33:04):
I've never showed it to anybodyexcept my family.
Max Chopovsky (33:08):
That's the only acceptable way to look when
you're meeting somebody like Ali.
If you have no motion on yourface, you're a robot.
Jonathan Eig (33:16):
Yeah, I don't like it.
Max Chopovsky (33:21):
Wow, yeah, I think that's the only way that
you're supposed to look whenyou're doing that, when you're
meeting an idol.
So let's go back to the storyyou told for a minute.
What is the moral?
Jonathan Eig (33:30):
of that story.
I think the moral of the storyis that obviously persistence
pays, but also that making ahuman connection, understanding
another person, takes work.
Max Chopovsky (33:41):
Yeah, that is very true, because you have to
ask more than you say, you haveto listen, you have to be open
to their perspective andunderstanding that they're a
function of their time and sortof everything that made them
into who they are time and sortof everything that made them
into who they are.
I share your love forinterviewing people and I think
(34:02):
I got that from my grandfather,and this show originally was
just supposed to be a reallyquick sort of tell me the story,
I'll ask you the follow-upquestions and we'll call it a
day 20 minute episode tops.
But it's hard for me to resistwhen I'm talking to such
interesting people, not askingother questions and in some
(34:23):
cases the conversation justhappens to veer off in a
completely unpredictabledirection and to me sometimes
that's the best part of theepisode.
I mean, the stories are goodbut sometimes the best part is
the unexpected, and that was mystruggle with the show when I
was thinking about how tostructure.
It is that the cool part issort of at face value, that
(34:43):
people are telling these stories.
But I also just don't want towaste the opportunity of getting
to know somebody, even if thatmay not be sort of what's on the
bill.
You know what I mean.
Jonathan Eig (34:53):
Yeah, I love that and you're good at it.
I can tell already and I thinkthat's part of being a good
interviewer is being open-minded.
Like you know, we all do this,especially young journalists you
go into your interview with alist of questions and you roll
down the list of questions andthen you stand up and say thank
you, we're done here, and youdidn't listen to anything they
said and you didn't react toanything they said.
(35:14):
And the other person could havesaid I've killed a hundred
people and I have them allburied in the backyard.
And your next question would behow long?
have you lived here?
Max Chopovsky (35:23):
You know what?
It's so funny that youmentioned the list of questions.
So my grandfather told me thestory once.
He said because I was alwayscurious how he would get these
incredible, deep insights fromthese people who at times were
impossible to even reach.
It was like you needed to getMuhammad Ali's take on the
(35:43):
greatest heavyweights of histime and you needed him to do a
full analysis for you that onlyhe could do right, Like, how do
you do that?
How do you even get ahold ofhim?
You have to wait five years.
You have to sit in the nextroom with his wife while he's
not feeling like.
You have to get creative and ithas to be compelling to the
person that you're talking to,because you might only have a
(36:04):
few minutes with him.
There was somebody that mygrandfather wanted to interview
and, as with most people that hewanted to connect with, they
were hard to reach and therewere multiple gatekeepers.
I mean multiple gatekeepers andhe was in this man's waiting
room and I believe he was areally well-known doctor, like
(36:25):
one of the most well-knowndoctors in Ukraine, which was at
the time part of the SovietUnion, and his secretary finally
said fine, you have fiveminutes with him, that's all.
And he literally had dozens ofquestions written down for this
guy and he ended up being inthere for four hours.
The guy canceled all the restof his meetings and then they
(36:46):
ended up going to dinnertogether and they became friends
after this and I said how doyou manage the fact that it's
really unknown?
You literally might have fiveminutes with somebody or you
might have an hour.
Even if they tell you you havean hour, they might cut it short
after 20 minutes.
You never know he goes.
I have three lists of questions.
(37:06):
I have one list that assumesthat I only have five minutes
with the person.
I have another list that assumesI have 20 minutes with them and
another list that assumes Ihave an hour, and there are some
questions that those lists havein common, but for the most
part, the ones that are for theshortest allotted time period
(37:27):
are the ones that will tell thisperson that I've really done my
homework on them and that I'mreally really curious about them
as a human, not just in thesubject matter for the article
he goes, and when I ask thosequestions it opens the door to
the next list.
And then it opens the door tothe next list and, as you said,
critically, it's not justrobotically reading off the
questions.
It's about having aconversation that's prompted by
(37:48):
the questions and then theyalmost become follow-up
questions, that each one leadsto its own sort of mini dialogue
, which is fascinating becausethat makes journalism and
frankly, partially, you know, Ithink, writing fiction,
especially biographies, more ofa social science than even the
art of writing.
Right, Because you have tounderstand people to be able to
(38:09):
get them to reveal some of thesethings to you.
Jonathan Eig (38:11):
Yeah, there's no question about it, and that's
what makes it so lovely.
It's about making connectionsand about trying to understand
people, and I think I would havereally liked your grandfather
because I could totally relateto that.
You know, I remember when Iinterviewed Rachel Robinson my
whole book really depended onher.
Like I wasn't gonna be able todo this book if she didn't
cooperate.
And she finally, after a longtime, agreed to meet with me and
(38:32):
when I got to her office shewouldn't let me interview her at
the house.
She insisted on the office,which is a bad sign.
And then when I got to heroffice it was in the conference
room instead of her office,which is strike two.
And then when we sat down, mywhole book is depending on her.
She says I only have 20 minutesStrike three, man.
But you know, I did what yourgrandfather did.
I said I'm here, I'm not, mylist of questions goes out the
(38:53):
window.
I just want to make herunderstand that I'm interested
in her.
I just want to show her that Icare about her.
And my only question really wasyou know, what was that like
for you?
What was 1947 like for you andfor Jack as a couple?
And then I had to go to workand show her how much I cared
about the story and convince herto give me another interview
down the road.
But yeah, you have to justthink about.
I'm not interested in gatheringinformation anymore, I'm just
(39:16):
interested in getting back inthe door for a second interview
and for gaining her trust andher respect.
Max Chopovsky (39:20):
Yes, it's like to use a sports analogy.
It's like being at fourth and20 and just going for the pass
instead of trying to kick it.
That's right, because you mightnot complete the pass, but you
have to go for it.
Jonathan Eig (39:33):
Yeah, or you could punt and wait for the next set
of downs hope for better fieldposition next time you could.
I guess I was thinking more ofthe Super Bowl, the position
that-.
Oh, if it's the fourth quarter,yeah, they definitely should
have gone for it on that one.
Max Chopovsky (39:46):
So you obviously tell stories for a living and
you have to think about not justhow to tell a good story, but
how to condense reams and reamsof data into a narrative that
gives people enough detailwithout being overbearing and
(40:06):
yet doesn't leave out criticaldetails.
So it's really just.
It's such an art and it's suchan ability to throw away facts
that otherwise would be amazing,but just don't rise to the
level of necessity for the story.
And so, if we look atstorytelling overall, what do
(40:27):
good stories have in common inyour mind?
Jonathan Eig (40:30):
Wow.
They have characters that youcare about and who grow more
complicated as you go along.
They have characters that youcare about and who grow more
complicated as you go along.
They have something at stake.
They have bigger ideas.
It would be easier to write a3,000-page book about Martin
Luther King than it is to writea 600-page book about Martin
Luther King.
Now, writing a 300-page bookwould have been harder because
that's too short, but you haveto give it enough time to
(40:52):
develop and to understand and togrow and let the character grow
.
But when I think about thegreat novels, the ones that I
get most excited about are theones where the characters are
evolving as they go along andI'm not as much interested in
the plot, like who did it?
Who's going to die at the end?
Which of these are they goingto get away with the money?
I'm interested in seeing thegrowth in the character.
(41:13):
Those are the books I like thebest.
I love that.
Max Chopovsky (41:17):
It's funny you mentioned.
You know it's easy to write amassively long story.
I can't remember if the quotecame from, if it was Teddy
Roosevelt or somebody else.
That was like if you want me tospeak for hours, then I need a
week of time to prepare.
Or if you want me to speak forhours, I can start now.
If you want me to give you a 10minute speech, give me a week
(41:37):
of time to prepare, because it'sso easy to just throw it all in
.
Jonathan Eig (41:40):
Right, absolutely.
And I joke about it becausepeople make fun of my book,
saying it's too big.
How are they ever going to readit?
And I say you know, you have noidea how much longer that could
have been.
It took me a lot of work to getthat down to 600 or so pages.
It could have been an anthology.
Yeah, I thought about itactually.
At one point I actuallyapproached my editor about doing
(42:01):
it in three volumes because Ihad so much material on
Montgomery that was justunbelievable and most of it had
never been seen before and Ijust hated to leave it on the
cutting room floor.
But my editor was rightNobody's going to read volumes
two and three and if you wantpeople to really appreciate it,
you want to give it to them in aform that they can digest and
you want people to.
(42:21):
My goal was to make people cryat the end of my King book, and
they weren't going to cry at theend of three volumes, unless
they dropped it on their toe.
Max Chopovsky (42:31):
I'm putting the finishing touches on a
screenplay that I wrote aboutthat's based on my family, and
we're actually shooting theshort film in a few months, and
the screenplay originallystarted at just shy of 40 pages.
I've never written a screenplaybefore.
I had no idea what I was doing.
It just started with snippetsof conversations that I would
(42:52):
have with my parents that wereso ridiculous that literally you
couldn't make it up Right, andso I thought, you know this
would be an interesting basisfor a screenplay that explores
how parents want their childrento be successful, but they also
have to manage expectations that, hey, you're probably not going
to be the next Taylor Swift.
So where, in betweenencouragement and reality, do
parents fall right with theirkids?
(43:14):
It's kids.
It's a very nuanced approachthat I think most of us will
probably say we don't get itright.
I sure as hell don't get itright most of the time, and I
realized pretty shortly afterfinishing the first version of
this that there's no way thisthing is going to get into any
festivals as a short, becauseit's about three times the
length that it should be, and soI started cutting it, and
(43:35):
cutting it, and cutting it, andat some point I got to the point
where I'm like I cannot cutthis anymore without taking out
characters or taking out scenes.
And so I started taking outcharacters and I started taking
out scenes, and every singletime I would finish a new
version.
I would ask the people thatprobably deserve a whole lot
more than what I can offer inexchange for all the time
(43:56):
they've spent critiquing thisthing.
Is anything missing?
Do you feel like the narrativehas suffered?
Do you feel like the characterarcs have suffered?
And almost every time they'vesaid no, I actually don't miss
anything that you've taken outwhich tells me that I can keep
going.
And I keep going until theysaid okay, well, now maybe this
character is a little bitincomplete, but it's hard to cut
(44:18):
things that you feel are justnuggets of gold, whether it's a
really funny line or a reallyinteresting fact, and but then
you have to sort of choose is itmore funny or more interesting
than something else?
Because it's.
It is kind of a zero sum gameat some point.
Jonathan Eig (44:33):
Oh, no question about it.
The line I often heard innewspaper newspaper world was
kill your babies.
You got to kill your babies andit hurts, but oftentimes it
does the reader a favor thatyour job is to tell the story
and it's not to.
And the other thing that for meis like I want to show off.
Oh, I need to let you know thatI had this amazing interview
with this historic figure, soI've got to put some quotes from
(44:57):
them in there.
But that's not serving yourreader well, because you're just
doing it for your own ego oryour sense of vanity 100%, 100%.
Max Chopovsky (45:06):
Now, as a father, you, I would assume, tell
stories, use storytelling inyour personal life.
However, as you and I know,children do not have the
equivalent attention span of theattention span that's
equivalent to listening to orreading a 600 page book.
So, with that in mind, how doyou use storytelling in your
(45:30):
personal life with your kids?
Jonathan Eig (45:32):
Well, all the time , I mean when they're little,
especially now my daughters are20 and 14.
We also have a 33-year-old kid,who's another story for another
day.
But when they were little theywould just love to hear stories
Like tell me a story, tell meanother story, tell me another
story, like we were in the car.
Sometimes they would say, okay,now tell me another story, and
I would just make stuff up offthe top of my head and I was
(45:54):
good at it.
I've lost some of those musclesnow, but I felt like that was
part of my job was to entertain,and that was before they had
their cell phones, so that theyactually cared, they actually
listened to me.
Max Chopovsky (46:07):
Yeah, I do that Not as much now as I used to,
which I do want to do it moreoften, but I would love, at
bedtime, to lay down with themand then just start a story that
I would make up as it wentalong.
And my wife and my kids keeptelling me that I need to start,
that I need to write a, atleast write the stories down, so
eventually, I can write a bookabout them.
(46:27):
I'm like, I know people thathave written books and it is.
It takes over your life, and soI think I need to have a year
when there are no other you knowno short films.
Maybe the podcast takes a breakwhere I can focus on the book,
because it's really hard, likeit's.
Writing a book is incrediblydifficult.
Jonathan Eig (46:42):
It's rewarding but I guess, just like it's
rewarding, it's difficult.
Yeah, there's nothing wrongwith just telling babbling to
your kids too.
I had one story about how Ibroke my arm when I was like 10,
that my daughter used to wantme to tell it, like over and
over again.
I would tell it and then she'dsay tell that story again about
how you broke your arm.
Okay, here it goes.
I would tell it like threetimes in a row.
(47:04):
So you know, you just got tokeep the kids happy At any cost.
Max Chopovsky (47:09):
So if we think about morals in a story, does
every story have to have a moral?
And if it doesn't, is it stilla good story.
Jonathan Eig (47:20):
I don't know.
I've never thought about itthat way.
I think sometimes the readerhas to find their own moral in
the story and you don'tnecessarily have to know what it
is, or you might know what itis for you.
I always tell people like youshould know what the story's
about with one word.
It may not be a moral, butwhat's the story about?
Is it about religion?
Is it about race, is it aboutmoney?
And you should know that withevery paragraph you're writing
and make sure you're notstraying too far from what that
(47:42):
book is really about or thatstory is really about.
But it might be somethingentirely different to someone
else reading it.
And that's okay, because ifyou're telling the life story
with enough complexity andenough nuance, then some readers
should find different meaningsin it.
So I don't know that everystory has to have a moral.
I think it has to have an idea.
Max Chopovsky (48:00):
I love that.
I love that you are an avidreader.
So what are a few of yourfavorite books?
Fiction, nonfiction, genreagnostic, that nail the art of
storytelling.
Jonathan Eig (48:20):
Well, I mentioned Seabiscuit, which played an
important role in my career.
But I'm mostly a fiction reader.
Like, I read nonfiction almost,like you know manuals, you know
looking for how it's done.
But fiction I can really losemyself in because I don't really
aspire to ever write.
I've written some kids' novelsbut I don't think I'm ever going
to.
I've tried writing grown-upnovels and they're not good, but
(48:42):
I think I lose myself more infiction and I take much more
pleasure in reading fiction.
You talk about emotionaldevelopment of characters.
You know Anna Karenina doesn'tget much better than that.
So I tend to, you know, mostlyread the classics, although I
love like a James Lee Burkenovel when I'm in the mood for
(49:04):
something fun.
He's a fantastic writer.
Max Chopovsky (49:12):
So you know, every once in a while something
with just lots of plot andaction is a nice distraction for
me, Do you ever find yourselftrying to analyze it at all when
it comes to fiction?
Because you maybe snap out ofthe sort of story for a second
and think, huh, that's reallyinteresting structure there.
Or can you truly lose yourselfin it?
Jonathan Eig (49:27):
No, I still find myself analyzing it a lot and I
just don't feel like I can everreally emulate it as well as I
can for nonfiction.
But yeah, certainly sentencestructures, organization, even
character development, I findmyself analyzing it too, but I
get lost a little bit better infiction than I do in nonfiction.
Oh, Willa Cather I shouldmention.
That's another one I can't getenough of Willa Cather.
(49:49):
I think I've read almosteverything, all the fiction
she's written.
Max Chopovsky (49:54):
Wow, so classics.
I do want to go back to thatfor a sec.
There's so many books out thereand if you just go by Amazon
reviews, in a lot of casesyou'll end up reading the wrong
stuff.
So if you just think aboutclassics, what are like a
handful of classic books,classic works of fiction or
nonfiction that you could thinkof if you were to recommend a
(50:17):
handful?
Jonathan Eig (50:18):
Like I mentioned, I'm a huge Tolstoy fan, a huge
Cather fan.
I love Henry James, even though, like a lot of my friends, I
can't understand it at all why Ilike Henry James.
But yeah, I tend to go oldschool on that.
It's harder for me to.
I still read a lot ofcontemporary fiction, but it's
the classics that really get me,and COVID was good for that.
It's harder for me to.
I still read a lot ofcontemporary fiction, but it's
the classics that really get me,and COVID was good for that.
(50:39):
I read a lot of the big books.
I'd never read War and Peaceuntil COVID, so I felt like that
was a good time to finally divein.
And then same thing with AnnaKarenina.
I just read it recently and Iwas like what was I waiting for?
Max Chopovsky (50:57):
But I'm not sure I would have been ready for it
in my thirties even, I think.
Yeah, I'm not sure I could haveappreciated it Interesting.
Okay, that's good to know.
So last question for you,jonathan, if you could say one
thing to your 20 year old self.
Jonathan Eig (51:12):
What would it be?
Loosen up man, have some morefun.
I took myself too seriouslysometimes I think, but yeah,
that'd probably be it.
Buy a nice, have more fun car.
I always bought practical cars.
Max Chopovsky (51:25):
I should have bought something more fun.
That's good, that's good.
Well, they do say that youth iswasted on the young.
Yeah especially wasted on meyoung.
Yeah, especially wasted on me.
Listen, I've talked to plentyof people who overcorrected for
acting young when they wereyoung, and so I think it's a
balance.
(51:45):
I used to work at GE and myboss at GE used to say
everything is good in moderation, including moderation.
Everything is good inmoderation, including moderation
.
Wise words yeah, wise words.
Well, that does it, JonathanIge, best-selling author and
(52:07):
wonderful human being to have aconversation with.
Thank you for being on the show.
Jonathan Eig (52:10):
This is really fun , Max.
You're doing a great job withthese.
Now that I've listened to a few, I feel honored to be in the
company of your guests.
This is a great conversationsyou're having.
Max Chopovsky (52:23):
Thank you.
I'm just fortunate enough tohave some wonderful people be
very generous with their time,so I thank you for that as well.
For show notes and more, headover to mosspodorg Find us on
Apple Podcasts, spotify,wherever you get your podcast on
.
This was Moral of the Story.
I'm Max Trapofsky.
Thank you for listening.
Talk to you next time.
This is Moral of the Story interesting people
telling their favorite shortstories and then breaking them
down to understand what makesthem so good.
I'm your host, max Japofsky.
Today's guest is bestsellingauthor Jonathan Icke, whose
writing has given the worldinsights into some of the most
influential minds of our time.
Jonathan was born in Brooklynand grew up in New York.
(00:23):
Raised by an accountant and acommunity activist, he would be
imbued with an almostcontradictory set of skills that
would amalgamate to establishthe inquisitive yet
authoritative voice thathundreds of thousands of readers
have come to love.
As a young kid, jonathan spenthours reading the Rockland
County Journal.
News.
Comics were his gateway drug,followed by sports, and at age
(00:44):
16, jonathan started writing forthe paper.
His first story was about hisjunior high school ski trip to
Sterling Mountain, new York.
It may not have been the scoopof a lifetime, but Jonathan was
hooked.
After polishing his journalisticskills at Northwestern
University, where he also workedon the Daily Northwestern,
jonathan went to work as areporter for the New Orleans
(01:08):
Times-Picayune, the DallasMorning News, chicago Magazine
and the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, his writing careercontinued its unstoppable ascent
, although Jonathan's parentscontend that his claim to fame
is appearing in a Jeopardyquestion solved correctly for
$200,.
His list of achievements is theliterary equivalent of a career
criminal's rap sheet Long,diverse and impressive, with
(01:32):
multiple New York Timesbestsellers, awards from Esquire
, espn National Book Awards andat least one book hailed as a
must-read by Barack Obama.
There is no shortage ofrecommendations for the man's
work, although, again, hisparents would argue that
Jeopardy supersedes all of these.
Perhaps his greatestrecognition, however, is being
named a master storyteller byKen Burns, the legendary
(01:54):
filmmaker and documentarian, whois arguably one of the most
qualified people of our time tobestow that title.
Jonathan doesn't just explorethe past, though.
He's gotten into shaping thefuture.
In 2020, he kicked off hisforay into children's books,
publishing the first few entriesin the Lola Jones series
inspired by his daughter.
But my favorite part of theman's bio is the role of his
(02:17):
Jewish faith in informing hiswork, especially given recent
events.
We are often reminded that theJewish people share a history of
oppression with AfricanAmericans, which, incidentally,
is why so many Jewish peoplewere involved in the civil
rights movement.
For Jonathan, it's all aboutstorytelling, specifically how
slavery and its aftermath arecentral to our story as a nation
(02:37):
, from exploring the mavericksof generations past to shaping
the minds of the future.
It's all in a day's work forthe man who may or may not wear
a blazer to his home office towrite so, literary legend
Jonathan Eig, welcome to theshow.
Jonathan Eig (02:53):
Thank you, Max.
I'm wearing the blazer becauseI just came from speaking at a
school, so I don't usually getdressed up to work.
Normally you'd find me in mysweatpants and t-shirt.
Max Chopovsky (03:02):
I respect that.
Also, there is nothing wrongwith getting dressed up to go to
work, because if your commuteinvolves nothing but a short
trip down the stairs, you haveto have some sort of delineation
between home and work life.
Jonathan Eig (03:13):
Yeah, maybe I'll try it Might help.
I'll bet you.
Robert Caro wears a tie to workevery day.
Max Chopovsky (03:18):
For the record, you don't need help.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
If sweatpants have gotten youall of these awards broke, don't
fix it.
If sweatpants have gotten youall of these awards, keep the
sweatpants, All right.
So you are here to tell us astory.
Do you want to set the stage?
Is there?
Jonathan Eig (03:33):
anything that we should know before you get into
it.
No, I'm going to tell you thestory of how I wrote my first
book and how I made thediscovery, really, that allowed
me to transition from being anewspaper writer to being a book
writer.
Max Chopovsky (03:45):
Love that.
All right, let's do it.
Tell me a story.
Jonathan Eig (03:52):
As a young reporter I always loved copying
other writers who I admired.
Sometimes I would actually typetheir sentences to see how it
felt to type a sentence thatHemingway typed.
But I often, more often, Istole ideas for stories.
You know, I would readsomething in Sports Illustrated
and I would think I want towrite that same story.
But I'm in New Orleans, so Iguess I'll have to write about
something in New Orleans thatmight allow me to copy that same
approach to a story.
And that was really how Ilearned to be a writer, and a
(04:14):
storyteller is by, you know,admiring other storytellers and
trying to do what I can toimitate them.
So around 2000, right after thebook Seabiscuit came out, I read
that book and just gobbled itup.
And one thing I've learned isthat when you gobble something
up you got to stop and pause andthink what made that so special
?
Why was that book so wonderful?
And for Seabiscuit I began toreally break it down and realize
(04:36):
that it was not like any othersports book I'd ever read, that
it was about something muchbigger than sports, that it was
about the Great Depression.
It was about something muchbigger than sports, that it was
about the Great Depression.
It was about underdogs, it wasabout overcoming adversity, and
that the sports just offered areally nice vehicle for telling
the story and packing it withaction, and that it had the
advantage of all of these sportswriters who were covering the
(04:56):
horse races.
So you had these eyewitnesseswho served as primary sources
for you, for Laura Hillenbrand,in writing about Seabiscuit.
You know, 50 years later, 60years later, whatever it was
more 70 years later, and I justover dinner with my wife talking
to her about Seabiscuit, I saidI wish I could write a book
like that.
What you need here are theelements you need.
You need a sports figure whowas really well covered, but
(05:18):
their story wasn't appreciatedat the time because it was
really about something muchbigger than sports, like Lou
Gehrig.
Lou Gehrig's story is reallyabout dying young.
It's a classic tragedy and thebaseball is really just the
action that gets you to hisillness.
And somebody ought to write abiography of Lou Gehrig that
really builds to the illness.
That that's the main goal ofthe book and my wife, to her
(05:41):
everlasting credit, said whydon't you do it?
So I thought, okay, I will.
I had never written a book, butI figured I could probably
figure it out as I go.
So the first thing I did,realizing that, understanding
that the key to it wasunderstanding his illness was, I
called the Mayo Clinic and Isaid would you please send me
Lou Gehrig's medical records?
And they just laughed at mebecause there's this thing
(06:04):
called HIPAA which I guess I wasvaguely aware of, and those are
private.
Good luck to you.
And I decided I was going towrite the biography anyway, that
I was going to try to tell LouGehrig's story and somehow I
would figure out what happenedto him when he got sick.
Now he doesn't have any kids.
He never had children.
He didn't have any nieces ornephews and he was incredibly
shy.
Didn't have any nieces ornephews and he was incredibly
shy.
(06:24):
He was very private.
He never gave interviews.
He hardly ever spoke abouthimself.
He never wrote an autobiography, no memoir.
You know Babe Ruth, histeammate, would write an
autobiography every off seasonjust to bring in a little extra
dough, but not Gehrig.
He wanted no part of beingfamous.
So I had no way of figuring outwhat he went through.
(06:45):
And he was diagnosed at age 37with ALS Lou Gehrig's disease we
call it now, but disease thatmelts your muscles away and he
was the strongest man inbaseball.
But we have no idea what hewent through.
So I began trying to figure out.
How am I going to tell thatside of the story?
How am I going to get to knowthis really shy man who left me
very little paper trail to workwith?
(07:06):
I spent about a year writingthe proposal.
I got a contract to write thebook, but I really struggled
with the idea that I was goingto fail because I was not going
to A crack the code of hispersonality and, b I was not
going to be able to describe hisillness and I thought I guess
I'm just going to have to writeabout what people with ALS
typically go through.
(07:26):
But I spent three or four yearson the book and I began doing
intensive research.
I called doctors at the MayoClinic, thinking that maybe some
of them had seen his medicalrecords and they might at least
be willing to describe them tome.
No dice.
There I did find a doctor whowas trained by the doctor who
treated Gehrig and he told methat the doctor had talked to
(07:48):
him about Gehrig's case and thathe would read my book and check
it for me if I got tell me if Igot things right or wrong, but
I really had not much to workwith, I just kept going.
I kept going like on faith thatI would find something, some way
to tell this story.
And then one day I went to thehome of an autograph collector
in Libertyville, illinois.
He had baseball auctioncatalogs going back for 20 years
(08:09):
and I just flipped throughevery page of every auction
catalog.
It took me days, becauseauction catalogs are not indexed
and they're not alphabetized.
You just have to flip everypage of every catalog and there
were hundreds of themno-transcript collection but it
(08:51):
didn't say how many more.
So, wow, this was big.
This was exactly what I didn'tknow.
I was looking for it, but thisis what I was looking for.
This could be the key tosolving the Lou Gehrig mystery.
And I should say that you know Iwas having dreams about Gehrig
because I felt like I wasn'tgetting anywhere, getting to
know him, and in my dreams Iwould see him across the room
(09:12):
and he would walk out before Icould get to him.
I would see him hitchhiking andI would stop the car and he
wouldn't get in.
So he was really elusive.
But here was a chance to seesome of his own letters and we
had never seen any of hispersonal letters.
So I began looking for thoseletters.
I wrote to Christie's, calledthem and wrote to them and said
can you tell me who purchasedthose letters at the auction?
(09:33):
And they said no, it's privateinformation.
I said would you forward aletter to the buyer for me and
then he can reply if he wants to?
So they agreed to forward aletter to him, but I got no
response.
I forwarded two more lettersthrough Christie's, got no
response.
So clearly it seemed to me theguy with the letters didn't want
to be contacted.
But I didn't give up.
I began calling every baseballmemorabilia collector in the
(09:58):
country whose name I could find.
I had a list of hundreds ofpeople who collected baseball
memorabilia and every time Italked to one of them I would
say tell me some more names ofcollectors.
It took me six months.
I called hundreds ofmemorabilia dealers and
collectors and buyers until oneguy said oh, I remember that
item from Lou Gehrig, I rememberthose letters, I bid on them
and I lost.
And the guy who won it wassomething like Ansel, jim, ansel
(10:21):
or Ansel, I don't know.
Ansel, jim, ansel or Ansel, Idon't know.
So now I started Googling thename Jim Ansel or Ansel,
spelling it every different wayI could and I found a guy in
Baltimore who was a baseballcollector whose hometown paper
had written a story about him,and I called him up and I said
Mr Ansel, my name is JonathanIgan.
I'm working on a biography ofLou Gehrig.
(10:41):
I've been at it for three yearsnow and I'm working on a
biography of Lou Gehrig.
I've been at it for three yearsnow and I'm not going to finish
the book.
I'm not going to turn it in,I'm not going to write this book
unless I can see those lettersthat you've got that Lou Gehrig
wrote to his doctor.
The whole world needs to seethose letters.
People with ALS, people who aredying of the same disease, need
to know what he went through,and Lou Gehrig's story will
never be complete.
(11:02):
We'll never know what he reallymeant until we see those
letters.
And, furthermore, you know,someday you may decide to sell
them, your children may sellthem and they'll be cut up into
little pieces and the text ofthose letters will be lost
forever.
So I beseech you, I beg you,please, you know, would you
share those letters with me andthere was this long pause on the
phone.
I was sweating bricks and hesaid, okay, yeah, what else do
(11:25):
you want?
And I was like that's it, Ijust want the letters.
And he said come on anytime.
I said how many letters arethere, by the way?
He said there's about 200.
I was like what?
(11:46):
Yeah, he said, plus, I've gotthe letters that the doctor
wrote to Lou as well, becausethe doctor made carbon copies.
So this was a goldmine.
And now I had the heart andsoul of my book.
One of the challenges in writinga biography is that you can't
just repeat the details, thenames and the dates.
You have to understand theperson's soul.
You have to know what motivatesthe action in a person.
And Gehrig had eluded me untilthat time.
(12:08):
But now I got those letters andthey were 200 pages of letters
that he never imagined anyonewas going to see.
Right, he's writing to hisdoctor.
These are private and you knowthey could have revealed that he
was a coward.
It could have revealed that hewas scared, that he was
depressed, could have revealedthat he was, you know, a racist
or an anti-Semite.
Right, anything could have beenin those letters.
(12:28):
But what they revealed wasunbelievable courage and
humility and that he was willingto subject himself to all kinds
of experiments.
And once he realized that therewas no chance for him, he said
let's just do this so that maybewe can learn something about
this disease for the next guywho gets it.
And he began to talk to thedoctor about his wife and what
she was going through and howhard this was on her.
(12:50):
And what I realized was that hewas shy because he was so
confident of himself and didn'tfeel the need to brag and didn't
feel the need to tell the worldwhat he was going through.
But he was more heroic than Iever imagined and I think
without those letters I wouldnot have had a book.
I certainly would not have hadthe book that I had and that I
(13:11):
would not have understood whyLou Gehrig, in his famous final
speech, called himself theluckiest man.
He was lucky because he knewhow good his life was.
Max Chopovsky (13:18):
Yeah, and that book was.
I think that was your first bigsort of book that got you
noticed in a way.
Right, that was my first book.
Jonathan Eig (13:28):
Yeah, and there's no question that if I hadn't
found those letters, I wouldhave had a pretty mediocre book,
and that I might not have hadthe chance to write another one.
Max Chopovsky (13:37):
Well, those letters were a serious, serious
barrier to entry and withoutthem, right, the book would have
been kind of a regurgitation ofwhat was already available.
But with those letters, now youhad the content to be able to
paint possibly the most accurateportrait of the man possible,
(13:59):
at least with respect to thisdisease and how he approached it
.
It's like Walter Isaacsoncollecting Da Vinci's notebooks
and at least getting access tothem in order to write that book
.
That information was socritical.
Jonathan Eig (14:13):
No question about it, because you've really got to
know your subject.
You know it's an audacious actto take on someone else's life
story.
You can never be perfect aboutit.
You're never gonna really knowwhat's inside someone's heart
and soul.
So just the act of trying.
You have to go into it knowingyou're going to fail to some
extent.
And you're just trying to failto the smallest extent possible.
(14:34):
And there's always a dangerthat you're going to end up just
regurgitating what other peoplehave written and that you're
not going to really becontributing to the story, to
the legacy.
But you never know, going in,just how much you're going to
find.
That's part of the problem isthat you agree to take on a book
(14:55):
and then three or four yearslater, when you've done the work
, you feel more confident.
But you have to go in withoutthat confidence, knowing that
and that fear is part of why Iwork so hard, I guess.
Max Chopovsky (15:06):
And the person might turn out to be somebody
entirely different than what youthought.
Jonathan Eig (15:10):
Yeah, Like I said, what if those letters revealed
that Gehrig was just a schmuck,that he didn't care about
anybody but himself?
Right Like that would have beena very different end of my
story.
Max Chopovsky (15:19):
How fortunate for you that he turned out to be
such a resilient and humblehuman.
Jonathan Eig (15:25):
Yeah, and I think I sensed that from the evidence
that I had gathered.
I think I sensed that he was adecent man.
But he could have been decentand dumb.
He could have been decent andjust kind of like clueless, but
he was decent and warm andloving and thoughtful too.
Max Chopovsky (15:41):
Now let me ask you this, because writing a book
is an endeavor, writing abiography is an even more
involved endeavor.
Writing a biography of somebodywho's passed away is the next
level of involvement and effort,and writing the biography of
somebody who's passed away anddidn't leave a lot behind in the
(16:03):
public sphere is sort of nextlevel effort involved.
What was so important to youabout writing this book that
made you take all of these extrasteps when Christie's wouldn't
put you in touch with him andwhen the doctors at the Mayo
Clinic wouldn't give you hisrecords?
And then, when you sort of hitthese dead ends and started
(16:26):
trying to track down thesecollectors one by one, what was
it that kept driving you?
Jonathan Eig (16:31):
Well, for one thing, it's just the fear of
failure, the fear that the NewYork Times is going to review
this book and say he blew it.
But beyond that, it's a feelingof responsibility that I have.
Gehrig isn't asking me to behis biographer, muhammad Ali
didn't ask me to be hisbiographer, but I feel like
they're going to judge me, maybelooking down from heaven, or at
(16:52):
least karmically, somewhere inthe universe.
I'm being judged for whether Igave this life the respect that
it deserved and that I dideverything humanly possible to
tell it as completely and asfairly and as honestly as I
could.
And if I just phoned it inbecause I was lazy or because I
wasn't getting paid enough and Iwas bitter, that would be just
a failure, not just to me, butto my readers or to the people
(17:16):
who are the non-readers, becausethey're not going to pick up
the book, but ultimately to thisman, to this person's life.
If you're going to dare to tellsomeone else's story, you damn
well better put everythingyou've got into it.
Max Chopovsky (17:28):
Agreed, Agreed.
I was thinking more in terms ofwell, why not just abandon the
project once you get to a pointwhere most rational people would
say, maybe the universe istrying to tell me that this
isn't meant to be?
Jonathan Eig (17:42):
I did abandon one.
I set out to write a book aboutAlan Pinkerton, the first
private eye, the first head ofthe secret service, and first of
all, his papers burned in theChicago fires.
There wasn't that much to workwith, but second of all, the
more I researched him, the lessI liked him, and I finally just
decided that I didn't want tospend any more time on this
(18:03):
project, in part because itwasn't enough material to work
with, but also because, like Ididn't see the upside, like I
wasn't going to I wasn't goingto like this guy anymore, though
, if I spent more time on it.
Max Chopovsky (18:12):
The accounting concept of sunk costs, which
many people don't grasp, but younailed it with that one.
Jonathan Eig (18:17):
Yeah, I definitely felt like, and it's tough,
because I spent more than a yearon that and didn't get paid and
had nothing to show for it.
Max Chopovsky (18:29):
Yeah, you got to listen to your gut on that kind
of stuff.
When you sit down to write abook and you're six months into
it, whatever your schedule was,you have to sit down in front of
(18:56):
a computer and create newcontent and you know that in the
grand scheme of this book it'sprobably going to be a very
minor dent in the manuscript.
And yet it has to happenbecause it's a building block
for the next day.
How do you manage that?
I can't imagine doing that.
Jonathan Eig (19:13):
Yeah, max, you've kind of identified the worst
part, that six to nine monthmark, because you feel like it's
daunting, you're never going toreally understand it.
There's too much work to beahead.
You've got years and years togo and you don't really
understand your subject thatwell yet and it's just
impossible for one person tocomprehend and coalesce all of
this material.
(19:34):
And you just got to tellyourself it's like running the
marathon when you're at milenine or 10, and it just feels
like you're never going to getto the end.
You have to tell yourself thatfocus on one step at a time.
I'll tell myself I don't need tothink about that much.
I just need to think about thefact that I have to write about
his childhood.
Let's just focus on that.
(19:54):
Let's just think about, like,understanding this man's roots
or this person's roots and howthey, what shaped them.
And I can do that.
I'm not going to think aboutall the other stuff I'm going to
have to learn later, trying notto think about the big themes
that I haven't even discoveredyet, that I don't really
understand really about yet.
Trust the process that you'llget there.
But it's hard because it'syears and years where you have
(20:15):
to keep motivating yourself andyou don't have an editor
cracking the whip, you don'thave anybody looking over your
shoulder at all and if you wastethose first couple of years,
nobody's even going to know,nobody's going to say what have
you been doing all this time?
Max Chopovsky (20:27):
Right, I'm a fan of the marathon analogy, but I
think in this case it's notapplicable.
It's actually so much harderthan a marathon because with a
marathon, you train for 26.2miles and you know what to
prepare yourself forpsychologically in mile two and
mile 10 and mile 20.
(20:48):
With a book, the marathon is avariable length marathon and you
don't know at which point inthe marathon you might learn
that you're running twomarathons back to back and you
can't prepare yourself for that.
And so it's like you might behalfway through the manuscript,
what you think is sort of yourhalfway point, and then you
(21:08):
realize this is not the way Iwant to structure this book.
This is not the way I want tostructure this book.
This is not going in the rightdirection.
I have to pivot, and all theway up to scrapping the entire
thing and starting over Likethat to me is devastating.
That would be devastatingbecause you are in effect
writing off X number of monthsor years that you spent going in
(21:31):
a direction that turns out tonot be the right direction.
I mean, that's the worst casescenario.
But even in the best casescenario, what if you had 400
letters or 500 letters?
It would have taken you thatmuch longer to go through all
those letters, sort of catalogthem, and understand how those
letters impact the story arc ofLou Gehrig and how that all fits
(21:52):
into your narrative.
Jonathan Eig (21:53):
I just can't even imagine that and you know
there's going to be surprisesalong the way and, as you said,
you don't know how long thejourney is going to take.
And that's all part of going in.
You have sort of a best casescenario in mind, but you know,
for example, you know, with King, I knew that it was going to be
the hardest book that I had towrite.
I knew that it was going to beincredibly challenging and I
(22:14):
also knew that it was going tobe incredibly exciting because I
was going to be talking topeople who knew Martin Luther
King and what a gift, what ablessing it would be to have
time with those folks.
But then COVID hit.
You know, like a year and ahalf, two years into my process.
So I was just getting startedwith my interviews.
You know I had interviewedmaybe 50 people, 75 people, and
(22:36):
most of them in person and thenCOVID hit and not only did I
lose access to those people, butarchives closed.
So now I can't just stopworking and wait for COVID to
end.
I've got to.
Covid may never end.
I've got to keep working on thebook.
But how?
How do I do it?
How do I get access to thematerials I need?
How do I do interviews?
How do I deal with the factthat I work from home and now
(22:58):
there's four people in the houseand, like, my kids, need me all
day long and I'm beingconstantly interrupted?
And my little one thinks it'sfunny because I'm just sitting
there at my desk, I don't appearto be working.
Writing doesn't actually looklike work.
So I'm the one she comes in andshoots with the water gun.
Just, you know, just becauseit's funny.
All of this stuff like changesthe whole process of writing a
(23:19):
book and there's no, you can'tplan for that.
Max Chopovsky (23:24):
You're not the first person to write a
biography of Martin Luther King.
When you started the process,how did you convince people that
you needed to talk to them for,in their eyes, yet another bio
on the man about whom arguablykind of everything has been
written?
You know that was surprisinglyeasy.
Jonathan Eig (23:45):
Because when I called people like Jesse Jackson
and Andrew Young and HarryBelafonte the people who I
thought would be the hardest Isaid to them we've turned King
into a mythological figure, youknow, we've turned him into a
monument and nobody knows whathe was like except for you, and
we need another book thatreminds people that he was human
.
And they all said, thank God,yes, we do.
Please, let's talk.
(24:06):
And then when you talk topeople who aren't famous, you
know that was the one I was mostnervous about the famous folks,
because it's hard to get timewith them.
But for other folks, like hisbarber or his childhood friend
from Auburn Avenue or hisroommate from seminary, they
were just like, bring it on,like I want to tell you what ML
was really like, because I'mtired of all this.
I have a dream garbage.
(24:27):
You know.
That's not who he was.
So I had a really like itwasn't hard getting people to
talk to me.
So I had a really like itwasn't hard getting people to
talk to me.
Max Chopovsky (24:34):
Now with King, because you talk about, you sort
of uncover who the person is asyou write about them and as you
do your research.
In the case of King, it's beenwell known that he had a bit of
a darker side to him as well.
Did that make it morechallenging for you to try to
arrive at a character thatpeople could empathize with?
Jonathan Eig (25:01):
Yeah, I was nervous about how people would
receive that.
I knew it was important to behonest and to trust readers to
handle the ambiguity, knowingthat they weren't going to
believe all the good things Ihad to say about him if I didn't
include the bad things, andalso knowing that the FBI
weaponized his flaws in anattempt to destroy him.
So it's important to includethat in the story.
But I was still nervous abouthow people would feel about
seeing their hero reduced toflesh and blood and the fact
(25:25):
that he cheated on his wife,that he plagiarized, that he
attempted suicide twice as ateenager, that he was
hospitalized for depressionnumerous times.
Like I was nervous about it, butI just felt like, as long as I
handled it sensitively and keptit in proportion to his
achievements, that it would workout and it was worth the risk.
Like what was the worst thatwould happen is people.
(25:46):
There might be some pushbackand people might say they don't
want to read that kind of bookand it won't sell or I'll be
criticized for sensationalizinghis sex life.
But I felt like it was worththat risk and hoping that I
could trust readers to embrace amore flawed and complicated
human portrait of King, becausewe're all flawed, and it's been
(26:07):
the case, I think, for the mostpart.
The reception for the book hasbeen what I hoped.
Max Chopovsky (26:11):
It's a great takeaway honestly, because
you're right, People do putthese sort of larger than life
figures on a pedestal and youalmost wonder if a book that
exposes or at least talkshonestly about some of their
flaws would shatter thatillusion that most people have
of this person.
And it's refreshing, it'salmost like it almost helps you
(26:33):
believe in humanity a little bitmore when you realize that
people are willing to say, okay,well, that person was really,
really prominent, did somewonderful things for humanity
and was honestly one of the mostimportant figures of the
century.
But he wasn't perfect, becausenobody is, and it's good to be
reminded of that, and the factthat people are willing to do
(26:55):
that is not a bad thing.
Jonathan Eig (26:57):
Yeah, I don't want to sound too optimistic because
everybody's we're living in theage of cynicism, but I've been
really thrilled by the fact thatpeople can handle a nuanced
portrait.
And you know, there was a fearthat the book would be canceled
before it came out that peoplewould just say nope, don't want
to read that, go away.
But it's been the opposite.
I have people coming up to mein tears saying I had no idea
(27:19):
how much he suffered.
I've got mental health issuesin my family too, and just
knowing that King went throughsome of that just makes me love
him more and admire him morebecause he kept fighting for us
at a time when he was struggling.
And that's beautiful.
It's really, really inspiringto me and it's nice to know that
(27:41):
our society is still capable ofthat kind of empathy, yeah,
especially in this day and age.
Max Chopovsky (27:45):
So I'm curious about something.
So my grandfather was also ajournalist, well-known
journalist in Ukraine.
When Chernobyl exploded, I wasfour and they evacuated us from
Kiev.
We were living in Kiev at thetime, but he was sent to
Chernobyl in a helicopter todocument some of what was
(28:05):
happening, and then he witnessedthese boys effectively being
offered the cancellation of therest of their military service
in exchange for just throwingthis piece of metal off the roof
, not knowing that it was highlyradioactive.
He was the first guy tointerview Yuri Gagarin, who was
the first man in space, becausehe was also same as you, very
(28:25):
relentless and inquisitive andindustrious and willing to stop
at almost nothing to get thestory.
And at the same time he had areally successful career as a
fiction writer, poetry, someprose, and so he developed on
these parallel paths, these twocareers that are sort of
(28:49):
offshoots of the act of writingbut completely different
otherwise.
One of them is a veryinquisitive, skeptical search
for answers from people who,generally speaking, are
reluctant to give you thoseanswers, because he was in the
sort of economic department athis newspaper.
(29:09):
So he would talk to thesefactory owners or factory
managers which during Soviettimes literally had no
incentives to run an efficientfactory and so they wanted to
cover everything up.
And on the other hand, he wasreally good at seeing the most
beautiful parts of humanity,whether it's an embrace between
(29:32):
a mother and a son or the beautyof nature.
And it's always been sofascinating to me that one
person could embody these twoalmost contradictory
perspectives on the world.
One is nonfiction in thestrongest sense of the word and
the other is fiction in thestrongest sense of the word.
You follow these paths eventhough you know your books may
(29:55):
be a little bit more on thenonfiction side because they're
biographies.
But let's be honest, everybiography has to have I'm not
going to call it embellishment,but a story.
And the way you structure thefacts and the way you structure
the information that you findhelps to create a narrative that
really draws readers in.
So in that sense I'm going tosay you have a little bit of
(30:19):
creative liberty with that, notthat you're changing the facts
at all.
But then, on the other hand,you have a much more black and
white sort of nonfictionreporting for the newspaper.
What was the relationshipbetween those two sort of paths
in your mind?
Jonathan Eig (30:34):
Wow, that's a great question.
You know, I always felt likewhen I was a newspaper reporter,
I was first of all alwayswanted to be a newspaper
reporter, as you said in theintroduction, starting at 16.
And I was exploring to see whatkind of newspaper reporter I
wanted to be.
Did I want to be Woodward andBernstein investigative reporter
?
Did I want to be a foreigncorrespondent?
I found, after tryingeverything, even like music
criticism that I want to be aforeign correspondent.
I found, after trying everything, even like music criticism,
(30:56):
that I really wanted to be afeature writer, that I liked
spending time with people, Iliked getting to know them and
trying to figure out what madethem tick.
And the feature writing isreally where I felt my heart was
and I think that's a part of itthat I'm interested in human
connections.
I love doing interviews, I loveexploring what we all have in
common.
And these books sometimesthey're big, heavy history books
(31:20):
, but I think I'm trying towrite with soul and I think
that's really.
I want people to feel like theycan connect with people from
history and people fromdifferent cultures.
Muhammad Ali was my biggestidol as a kid, the thought that
I could write his biography.
That's cool.
But what's really cool is thatI'm trying to find connections
to him and to understand him andto help readers understand him
(31:42):
and like what a thrill that is.
To me that's just like thehighest calling.
I could imagine it really is itreally is incredible?
Max Chopovsky (31:50):
Did you ever get to meet him?
Jonathan Eig (31:53):
I met him once.
I thought about using that formy introductory story, because I
spent five years trying to getto him and traveling several
times to where I thought he wasgoing to be and getting close.
I actually got into his houseonce and spent three hours in
his house with his wife and Aliwas in the next room and never
came out.
And then, because he wasn'tfeeling well, and then finally,
(32:15):
just a few months before he died, his wife called me and said
you gotta come and I flew downto.
I drove down to Louisville andmet him at a ceremony and I
whispered in his ear and toldhim I was writing this book
about him and is there anythinghe wanted to say?
And he didn't answer.
He couldn't speak anymore atthat point, but his wife, lonnie
, told me that he heard me andthat he was glad that I was
(32:35):
writing the book and that hewanted me to come and read it to
him when I finished.
And I never got to read it tohim because he passed away.
Max Chopovsky (32:41):
Where in Louisville was he at the time?
Jonathan Eig (32:44):
It was at the Ali Center.
There was an event honoring him.
Then I got there before theevent started and Lonnie
introduced me to him.
I have one picture of memeeting Ali and I've never
showed it to anybody because Ilook so stupid.
It's like I look exactly likethe 10 year old John I would
look if he were meeting Ali.
I just had this like incrediblygeeky look on my face.
(33:04):
I've never showed it to anybodyexcept my family.
Max Chopovsky (33:08):
That's the only acceptable way to look when
you're meeting somebody like Ali.
If you have no motion on yourface, you're a robot.
Jonathan Eig (33:16):
Yeah, I don't like it.
Max Chopovsky (33:21):
Wow, yeah, I think that's the only way that
you're supposed to look whenyou're doing that, when you're
meeting an idol.
So let's go back to the storyyou told for a minute.
What is the moral?
Jonathan Eig (33:30):
of that story.
I think the moral of the storyis that obviously persistence
pays, but also that making ahuman connection, understanding
another person, takes work.
Max Chopovsky (33:41):
Yeah, that is very true, because you have to
ask more than you say, you haveto listen, you have to be open
to their perspective andunderstanding that they're a
function of their time and sortof everything that made them
into who they are time and sortof everything that made them
into who they are.
I share your love forinterviewing people and I think
(34:02):
I got that from my grandfather,and this show originally was
just supposed to be a reallyquick sort of tell me the story,
I'll ask you the follow-upquestions and we'll call it a
day 20 minute episode tops.
But it's hard for me to resistwhen I'm talking to such
interesting people, not askingother questions and in some
(34:23):
cases the conversation justhappens to veer off in a
completely unpredictabledirection and to me sometimes
that's the best part of theepisode.
I mean, the stories are goodbut sometimes the best part is
the unexpected, and that was mystruggle with the show when I
was thinking about how tostructure.
It is that the cool part issort of at face value, that
(34:43):
people are telling these stories.
But I also just don't want towaste the opportunity of getting
to know somebody, even if thatmay not be sort of what's on the
bill.
You know what I mean.
Jonathan Eig (34:53):
Yeah, I love that and you're good at it.
I can tell already and I thinkthat's part of being a good
interviewer is being open-minded.
Like you know, we all do this,especially young journalists you
go into your interview with alist of questions and you roll
down the list of questions andthen you stand up and say thank
you, we're done here, and youdidn't listen to anything they
said and you didn't react toanything they said.
(35:14):
And the other person could havesaid I've killed a hundred
people and I have them allburied in the backyard.
And your next question would behow long?
have you lived here?
Max Chopovsky (35:23):
You know what?
It's so funny that youmentioned the list of questions.
So my grandfather told me thestory once.
He said because I was alwayscurious how he would get these
incredible, deep insights fromthese people who at times were
impossible to even reach.
It was like you needed to getMuhammad Ali's take on the
(35:43):
greatest heavyweights of histime and you needed him to do a
full analysis for you that onlyhe could do right, Like, how do
you do that?
How do you even get ahold ofhim?
You have to wait five years.
You have to sit in the nextroom with his wife while he's
not feeling like.
You have to get creative and ithas to be compelling to the
person that you're talking to,because you might only have a
(36:04):
few minutes with him.
There was somebody that mygrandfather wanted to interview
and, as with most people that hewanted to connect with, they
were hard to reach and therewere multiple gatekeepers.
I mean multiple gatekeepers andhe was in this man's waiting
room and I believe he was areally well-known doctor, like
(36:25):
one of the most well-knowndoctors in Ukraine, which was at
the time part of the SovietUnion, and his secretary finally
said fine, you have fiveminutes with him, that's all.
And he literally had dozens ofquestions written down for this
guy and he ended up being inthere for four hours.
The guy canceled all the restof his meetings and then they
(36:46):
ended up going to dinnertogether and they became friends
after this and I said how doyou manage the fact that it's
really unknown?
You literally might have fiveminutes with somebody or you
might have an hour.
Even if they tell you you havean hour, they might cut it short
after 20 minutes.
You never know he goes.
I have three lists of questions.
(37:06):
I have one list that assumesthat I only have five minutes
with the person.
I have another list that assumesI have 20 minutes with them and
another list that assumes Ihave an hour, and there are some
questions that those lists havein common, but for the most
part, the ones that are for theshortest allotted time period
(37:27):
are the ones that will tell thisperson that I've really done my
homework on them and that I'mreally really curious about them
as a human, not just in thesubject matter for the article
he goes, and when I ask thosequestions it opens the door to
the next list.
And then it opens the door tothe next list and, as you said,
critically, it's not justrobotically reading off the
questions.
It's about having aconversation that's prompted by
(37:48):
the questions and then theyalmost become follow-up
questions, that each one leadsto its own sort of mini dialogue
, which is fascinating becausethat makes journalism and
frankly, partially, you know, Ithink, writing fiction,
especially biographies, more ofa social science than even the
art of writing.
Right, Because you have tounderstand people to be able to
(38:09):
get them to reveal some of thesethings to you.
Jonathan Eig (38:11):
Yeah, there's no question about it, and that's
what makes it so lovely.
It's about making connectionsand about trying to understand
people, and I think I would havereally liked your grandfather
because I could totally relateto that.
You know, I remember when Iinterviewed Rachel Robinson my
whole book really depended onher.
Like I wasn't gonna be able todo this book if she didn't
cooperate.
And she finally, after a longtime, agreed to meet with me and
(38:32):
when I got to her office shewouldn't let me interview her at
the house.
She insisted on the office,which is a bad sign.
And then when I got to heroffice it was in the conference
room instead of her office,which is strike two.
And then when we sat down, mywhole book is depending on her.
She says I only have 20 minutesStrike three, man.
But you know, I did what yourgrandfather did.
I said I'm here, I'm not, mylist of questions goes out the
(38:53):
window.
I just want to make herunderstand that I'm interested
in her.
I just want to show her that Icare about her.
And my only question really wasyou know, what was that like
for you?
What was 1947 like for you andfor Jack as a couple?
And then I had to go to workand show her how much I cared
about the story and convince herto give me another interview
down the road.
But yeah, you have to justthink about.
I'm not interested in gatheringinformation anymore, I'm just
(39:16):
interested in getting back inthe door for a second interview
and for gaining her trust andher respect.
Max Chopovsky (39:20):
Yes, it's like to use a sports analogy.
It's like being at fourth and20 and just going for the pass
instead of trying to kick it.
That's right, because you mightnot complete the pass, but you
have to go for it.
Jonathan Eig (39:33):
Yeah, or you could punt and wait for the next set
of downs hope for better fieldposition next time you could.
I guess I was thinking more ofthe Super Bowl, the position
that-.
Oh, if it's the fourth quarter,yeah, they definitely should
have gone for it on that one.
Max Chopovsky (39:46):
So you obviously tell stories for a living and
you have to think about not justhow to tell a good story, but
how to condense reams and reamsof data into a narrative that
gives people enough detailwithout being overbearing and
(40:06):
yet doesn't leave out criticaldetails.
So it's really just.
It's such an art and it's suchan ability to throw away facts
that otherwise would be amazing,but just don't rise to the
level of necessity for the story.
And so, if we look atstorytelling overall, what do
(40:27):
good stories have in common inyour mind?
Jonathan Eig (40:30):
Wow.
They have characters that youcare about and who grow more
complicated as you go along.
They have characters that youcare about and who grow more
complicated as you go along.
They have something at stake.
They have bigger ideas.
It would be easier to write a3,000-page book about Martin
Luther King than it is to writea 600-page book about Martin
Luther King.
Now, writing a 300-page bookwould have been harder because
that's too short, but you haveto give it enough time to
(40:52):
develop and to understand and togrow and let the character grow
.
But when I think about thegreat novels, the ones that I
get most excited about are theones where the characters are
evolving as they go along andI'm not as much interested in
the plot, like who did it?
Who's going to die at the end?
Which of these are they goingto get away with the money?
I'm interested in seeing thegrowth in the character.
(41:13):
Those are the books I like thebest.
I love that.
Max Chopovsky (41:17):
It's funny you mentioned.
You know it's easy to write amassively long story.
I can't remember if the quotecame from, if it was Teddy
Roosevelt or somebody else.
That was like if you want me tospeak for hours, then I need a
week of time to prepare.
Or if you want me to speak forhours, I can start now.
If you want me to give you a 10minute speech, give me a week
(41:37):
of time to prepare, because it'sso easy to just throw it all in
.
Jonathan Eig (41:40):
Right, absolutely.
And I joke about it becausepeople make fun of my book,
saying it's too big.
How are they ever going to readit?
And I say you know, you have noidea how much longer that could
have been.
It took me a lot of work to getthat down to 600 or so pages.
It could have been an anthology.
Yeah, I thought about itactually.
At one point I actuallyapproached my editor about doing
(42:01):
it in three volumes because Ihad so much material on
Montgomery that was justunbelievable and most of it had
never been seen before and Ijust hated to leave it on the
cutting room floor.
But my editor was rightNobody's going to read volumes
two and three and if you wantpeople to really appreciate it,
you want to give it to them in aform that they can digest and
you want people to.
(42:21):
My goal was to make people cryat the end of my King book, and
they weren't going to cry at theend of three volumes, unless
they dropped it on their toe.
Max Chopovsky (42:31):
I'm putting the finishing touches on a
screenplay that I wrote aboutthat's based on my family, and
we're actually shooting theshort film in a few months, and
the screenplay originallystarted at just shy of 40 pages.
I've never written a screenplaybefore.
I had no idea what I was doing.
It just started with snippetsof conversations that I would
(42:52):
have with my parents that wereso ridiculous that literally you
couldn't make it up Right, andso I thought, you know this
would be an interesting basisfor a screenplay that explores
how parents want their childrento be successful, but they also
have to manage expectations that, hey, you're probably not going
to be the next Taylor Swift.
So where, in betweenencouragement and reality, do
parents fall right with theirkids?
(43:14):
It's kids.
It's a very nuanced approachthat I think most of us will
probably say we don't get itright.
I sure as hell don't get itright most of the time, and I
realized pretty shortly afterfinishing the first version of
this that there's no way thisthing is going to get into any
festivals as a short, becauseit's about three times the
length that it should be, and soI started cutting it, and
(43:35):
cutting it, and cutting it, andat some point I got to the point
where I'm like I cannot cutthis anymore without taking out
characters or taking out scenes.
And so I started taking outcharacters and I started taking
out scenes, and every singletime I would finish a new
version.
I would ask the people thatprobably deserve a whole lot
more than what I can offer inexchange for all the time
(43:56):
they've spent critiquing thisthing.
Is anything missing?
Do you feel like the narrativehas suffered?
Do you feel like the characterarcs have suffered?
And almost every time they'vesaid no, I actually don't miss
anything that you've taken outwhich tells me that I can keep
going.
And I keep going until theysaid okay, well, now maybe this
character is a little bitincomplete, but it's hard to cut
(44:18):
things that you feel are justnuggets of gold, whether it's a
really funny line or a reallyinteresting fact, and but then
you have to sort of choose is itmore funny or more interesting
than something else?
Because it's.
It is kind of a zero sum gameat some point.
Jonathan Eig (44:33):
Oh, no question about it.
The line I often heard innewspaper newspaper world was
kill your babies.
You got to kill your babies andit hurts, but oftentimes it
does the reader a favor thatyour job is to tell the story
and it's not to.
And the other thing that for meis like I want to show off.
Oh, I need to let you know thatI had this amazing interview
with this historic figure, soI've got to put some quotes from
(44:57):
them in there.
But that's not serving yourreader well, because you're just
doing it for your own ego oryour sense of vanity 100%, 100%.
Max Chopovsky (45:06):
Now, as a father, you, I would assume, tell
stories, use storytelling inyour personal life.
However, as you and I know,children do not have the
equivalent attention span of theattention span that's
equivalent to listening to orreading a 600 page book.
So, with that in mind, how doyou use storytelling in your
(45:30):
personal life with your kids?
Jonathan Eig (45:32):
Well, all the time , I mean when they're little,
especially now my daughters are20 and 14.
We also have a 33-year-old kid,who's another story for another
day.
But when they were little theywould just love to hear stories
Like tell me a story, tell meanother story, tell me another
story, like we were in the car.
Sometimes they would say, okay,now tell me another story, and
I would just make stuff up offthe top of my head and I was
(45:54):
good at it.
I've lost some of those musclesnow, but I felt like that was
part of my job was to entertain,and that was before they had
their cell phones, so that theyactually cared, they actually
listened to me.
Max Chopovsky (46:07):
Yeah, I do that Not as much now as I used to,
which I do want to do it moreoften, but I would love, at
bedtime, to lay down with themand then just start a story that
I would make up as it wentalong.
And my wife and my kids keeptelling me that I need to start,
that I need to write a, atleast write the stories down, so
eventually, I can write a bookabout them.
(46:27):
I'm like, I know people thathave written books and it is.
It takes over your life, and soI think I need to have a year
when there are no other you knowno short films.
Maybe the podcast takes a breakwhere I can focus on the book,
because it's really hard, likeit's.
Writing a book is incrediblydifficult.
Jonathan Eig (46:42):
It's rewarding but I guess, just like it's
rewarding, it's difficult.
Yeah, there's nothing wrongwith just telling babbling to
your kids too.
I had one story about how Ibroke my arm when I was like 10,
that my daughter used to wantme to tell it, like over and
over again.
I would tell it and then she'dsay tell that story again about
how you broke your arm.
Okay, here it goes.
I would tell it like threetimes in a row.
(47:04):
So you know, you just got tokeep the kids happy At any cost.
Max Chopovsky (47:09):
So if we think about morals in a story, does
every story have to have a moral?
And if it doesn't, is it stilla good story.
Jonathan Eig (47:20):
I don't know.
I've never thought about itthat way.
I think sometimes the readerhas to find their own moral in
the story and you don'tnecessarily have to know what it
is, or you might know what itis for you.
I always tell people like youshould know what the story's
about with one word.
It may not be a moral, butwhat's the story about?
Is it about religion?
Is it about race, is it aboutmoney?
And you should know that withevery paragraph you're writing
and make sure you're notstraying too far from what that
(47:42):
book is really about or thatstory is really about.
But it might be somethingentirely different to someone
else reading it.
And that's okay, because ifyou're telling the life story
with enough complexity andenough nuance, then some readers
should find different meaningsin it.
So I don't know that everystory has to have a moral.
I think it has to have an idea.
Max Chopovsky (48:00):
I love that.
I love that you are an avidreader.
So what are a few of yourfavorite books?
Fiction, nonfiction, genreagnostic, that nail the art of
storytelling.
Jonathan Eig (48:20):
Well, I mentioned Seabiscuit, which played an
important role in my career.
But I'm mostly a fiction reader.
Like, I read nonfiction almost,like you know manuals, you know
looking for how it's done.
But fiction I can really losemyself in because I don't really
aspire to ever write.
I've written some kids' novelsbut I don't think I'm ever going
to.
I've tried writing grown-upnovels and they're not good, but
(48:42):
I think I lose myself more infiction and I take much more
pleasure in reading fiction.
You talk about emotionaldevelopment of characters.
You know Anna Karenina doesn'tget much better than that.
So I tend to, you know, mostlyread the classics, although I
love like a James Lee Burkenovel when I'm in the mood for
(49:04):
something fun.
He's a fantastic writer.
Max Chopovsky (49:12):
So you know, every once in a while something
with just lots of plot andaction is a nice distraction for
me, Do you ever find yourselftrying to analyze it at all when
it comes to fiction?
Because you maybe snap out ofthe sort of story for a second
and think, huh, that's reallyinteresting structure there.
Or can you truly lose yourselfin it?
Jonathan Eig (49:27):
No, I still find myself analyzing it a lot and I
just don't feel like I can everreally emulate it as well as I
can for nonfiction.
But yeah, certainly sentencestructures, organization, even
character development, I findmyself analyzing it too, but I
get lost a little bit better infiction than I do in nonfiction.
Oh, Willa Cather I shouldmention.
That's another one I can't getenough of Willa Cather.
(49:49):
I think I've read almosteverything, all the fiction
she's written.
Max Chopovsky (49:54):
Wow, so classics.
I do want to go back to thatfor a sec.
There's so many books out thereand if you just go by Amazon
reviews, in a lot of casesyou'll end up reading the wrong
stuff.
So if you just think aboutclassics, what are like a
handful of classic books,classic works of fiction or
nonfiction that you could thinkof if you were to recommend a
(50:17):
handful?
Jonathan Eig (50:18):
Like I mentioned, I'm a huge Tolstoy fan, a huge
Cather fan.
I love Henry James, even though, like a lot of my friends, I
can't understand it at all why Ilike Henry James.
But yeah, I tend to go oldschool on that.
It's harder for me to.
I still read a lot ofcontemporary fiction, but it's
the classics that really get me,and COVID was good for that.
It's harder for me to.
I still read a lot ofcontemporary fiction, but it's
the classics that really get me,and COVID was good for that.
(50:39):
I read a lot of the big books.
I'd never read War and Peaceuntil COVID, so I felt like that
was a good time to finally divein.
And then same thing with AnnaKarenina.
I just read it recently and Iwas like what was I waiting for?
Max Chopovsky (50:57):
But I'm not sure I would have been ready for it
in my thirties even, I think.
Yeah, I'm not sure I could haveappreciated it Interesting.
Okay, that's good to know.
So last question for you,jonathan, if you could say one
thing to your 20 year old self.
Jonathan Eig (51:12):
What would it be?
Loosen up man, have some morefun.
I took myself too seriouslysometimes I think, but yeah,
that'd probably be it.
Buy a nice, have more fun car.
I always bought practical cars.
Max Chopovsky (51:25):
I should have bought something more fun.
That's good, that's good.
Well, they do say that youth iswasted on the young.
Yeah especially wasted on meyoung.
Yeah, especially wasted on me.
Listen, I've talked to plentyof people who overcorrected for
acting young when they wereyoung, and so I think it's a
balance.
(51:45):
I used to work at GE and myboss at GE used to say
everything is good in moderation, including moderation.
Everything is good inmoderation, including moderation
.
Wise words yeah, wise words.
Well, that does it, JonathanIge, best-selling author and
(52:07):
wonderful human being to have aconversation with.
Thank you for being on the show.
Jonathan Eig (52:10):
This is really fun , Max.
You're doing a great job withthese.
Now that I've listened to a few, I feel honored to be in the
company of your guests.
This is a great conversationsyou're having.
Max Chopovsky (52:23):
Thank you.
I'm just fortunate enough tohave some wonderful people be
very generous with their time,so I thank you for that as well.
For show notes and more, headover to mosspodorg Find us on
Apple Podcasts, spotify,wherever you get your podcast on
.
This was Moral of the Story.
I'm Max Trapofsky.
Thank you for listening.
Talk to you next time.
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