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Curious Worldview
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Curious Worldview
139: David Grann | Killers Of The Flower Moon - Working With Scorsese & Leo DiCaprio & Being The GOAT Of Narrative Non-Fiction
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The following is with one of the great living narrative non fiction writers, David Grann.
David is a staff writer at the New Yorker and author of one of my favourite stories of all time… the incredible life and adventures of Percy Fawcett and the Lost City Of Z.
David has of course, many other credits to his name, not least of which is authoring Killers Of The Flower Moon, which is a violent and horrifically true story from Americas wild west that has actually been turned into a movie featuring Leonardo DiCaprio & Martin Scorcese to be released this summer.
David Grann has also authored the unbelievably rich and incredible story from the 1700s called The Wager, this story is confirmation of the project brazen tagline, that sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction.
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- 00:00 – Introduction
- 02:14 – David’s Mum’s Influence On Him Becoming A Writer
- 07:22 – Introducing David To Nassim Taleb’s Black Swan & Publishing + David’s Experiences In Mexico
- 14:30 – Narrative Building + Sheer Body Of Research
- 27:02 – The Wager
- 43:14 – Sheer Body Of Research
- 52:16 – Working With Leonardo DiCaprio & Martin Scorcese
- 56:31 – The Role Of Serendipity In David’s Life
- 1:02:19 – Conversation Between Any Two People Of History + Great Stories Not Being Told
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Curious Things Mentioned During The Episode
The following is with one of the great living narrative nonfiction writers, David Grant. David is a staff writer for The New Yorker and author of one of my favorite stories of all time, The Incredible Life and Adventures of Percy Fawcett and The Lost City of Z. But David has, of course, many other credits to his name as well, not least of which authoring Killers of the Flower Moon, which is a violent and horrifically true story from America's Old Wild West, and has actually been turned into a movie that is going to be released this summer. You might have heard of the lead actor, a fellow called Leonardo DiCaprio, and as well you might have heard of his old mate, uh his comrade Martin Scorsese, who is directing it. And both of which have actually also uh optioned uh the movie rights for the subject of today's interview, which is an unbelievably rich and incredible story from the 1700s high seeds called The Wager. This story is again confirmation of the Project Brazen tagline that sometimes the truth really is stranger than the fiction. David and I even joke in this chat that had this story been pitched as a fictional piece, you would have been laughed out of the room and told to turn it down because no one would ever believe in those series of events. I have such a deep, deep admiration uh of David Grant. I think he's I think he's doing exactly the type of work which I project onto the most in being uh obviously a staff writer for the New Yorker, but as well just telling absolutely incredible stories and having it all just confirmed by his incredible writing. But you all know the drill at this stage. Pump that good juice into the algorithm. This podcast took me five hours to put together, but will only take you five seconds to review, which means swipe up the phones and put in five stars. I want to have more reviews on Spotify's than episode published, so I need three or four in the next week. And again, I feel like I'm saying this every other week, but again, it is a high watermark for this podcast. David's a generational writer, no one really quite does it like him. And with absolutely no further ado, here is a great man, David Grant. Alright, so your mother sounds like an incredible woman, and perhaps you can explain why. But if the two of you were characters in one of your stories, a very neat line would be drawn between her career and then how you turned out. And I just wonder if there's any truth to that.
SPEAKER_01A neat line would be drawn between her and me as a character in a story, or just what would be the Yeah, like I said, maybe it's a dumb question to start out with.
SPEAKER_00Just I noticed that your mother, uh first uh female uh CEO of a large publishing house, and here is David Grant, probably the most celebrated nonfiction author of the moment. Um, you know, a a great a great publisher, produced a great author. Is there a neat link?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, which it's very funny. Uh um I did, you know, my mom was a great publisher and she was a pioneering uh woman in the field because she was the first um woman to, you know, uh to be first uh uh managing uh editor, uh a senior editor, I guess it was um editor-in-chief. First person to be editor-in-chief of a major publishing house, and then um in New York, and then uh later became a CEO of a publishing house. The funny thing is, so I grew up around authors, um, but the funniest thing was, and I always wanted to be a writer, but the only advice she ever gave me was whatever you do, don't become a writer. I think I think she thought it would be a hard life for me. And so um, like any good son, I ignored her advice and I decided to prove it wrong and became a writer. Nice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Nice. Well then you definitely got at the point of the question, which is you know, did she have play uh was your was your path into writing serendipitous or was it quite exact because your mum surrounding you with books, surrounding you with authors, um put this impression on you of what it might be like to live the life of an author, what it might be like to produce great writing?
SPEAKER_01I think there was no question an unconscious effect, or conscious or not, in the sense that you know I grew up around books and and reading was important, and you know, some of the early books I read were authors of hers, and they were she was kind of known for these um uh kind of a finger on the pulse for these very commercial books, like um, you know, these kind of thrillers that you know you would get at the airport and you know they would uh you know hold you in their grip wherever you were going. So, you know, people like Tom Clancy and Dick Francis, a lot of mystery writers. And so those were some of the early books I read, and they certainly had an effect on me. Um and uh but in terms of the path of becoming a writer, it was very long and winding and inexact. Um I don't know if there really is a linear path to becoming a writer. Uh and especially for me, I didn't know what kind of writer I wanted to be when I was young. I just want like to write. I like to tell stories that I told stories in basically every form you could you could try. So I try my hand at poetry, which was terrible, and fiction, which was equally terrible, and then and also journalism. And even then when I became a journalist, I initially got, you know, went to where I could get a job. So I got my first job covering uh Congress or Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. And so I was always kind of tagged as a political reporter and kind of a wonk. And those weren't really the stories I really longed to tell. So even then, you know, it took me about a decade uh uh in of trying to be a writer before I really had a career doing the kind of things I like to do. Where are the lost unpublished uh grand poems?
SPEAKER_00Oh gosh, hopefully in An Attic to King and they'll never be found. Until, I don't know, two, three hundred years from now, some very nitpicky narrative journalist comes along and wants to write about New York writers or something, and then in in in your own style, he finds those uh rusty documents up in an attic.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I'm gonna do what I wouldn't I would never advise anyone else to do because it would end my career as I'm going to burn my papers.
SPEAKER_00Nice. I mean, um uh with your assume you're not a famous writer who can, you know, almost guarantee X number of book sales. Would your mum publish uh one of your stories?
SPEAKER_01That's a good question. She did um, you know, she was more known for fiction, but she did publish um uh some very good uh nonfiction um over the years, especially later in her career. Uh Scott Berg, she published and um one of his books won a Pulitzer. Uh I'm pretty sure one of his books won a Pulitzer. Uh she um published Jeffrey Tubin, and uh so she was more known for fiction, but um you know, uh maybe grudgingly she might acknowledge that it was okay I became a writer and published something I did.
SPEAKER_00Are you familiar with um what Nasim Taleb says about publishing in the Black Swan in the context of mediocrit and extremist stand? No, as he said. No, okay. It's just uh it's uh i i it would be far too much of a tangent to to fully explain. But in short, basically, um in many of the creative domains they're sort of of extremist stand, where say one, two percent of the um input is responsible for 99% or more of the output, you know. So of all the people who submit to be published each year, one, two percent of them might get published. Of all the books published, maybe one two percent of them make money. Of the one two percent make money, maybe one or two percent of them make shitloads of money. Just ridiculously absurdly drawn out, fat-tailed domains.
SPEAKER_01Um yes, I think any media endeavor and any media company, as we now have discovered, is a very fragile business, um uh as and the profit margins are small.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, but look, to to your your your career, it started off in Mexico, which I found to be a very interesting sort of anecdote. Um what was your experience like there? What what brought you there in the first place?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I um after I graduated from college, I had a fellowship um which let you design your own project overseas. It was a Thomas Watson fellowship, and um I designed a project to study uh a few families from different socioeconomic backgrounds and to document their lives almost as much like an anthropologist or sociologist, and to see what their lives were like and their intersections and their political attitudes were like at a time when Mexico was shifting away from a one-party state. And I lived in Puebla, which was my memory serves me, uh you know, it was a couple hours uh outside of Mexico City uh by car. And uh so that was kind of in a weird way, did introduce me to kind of immersive reporting and and almost being a documentarian. And it also got me my first uh journalist clips because there was a uh an English magazine that was actually uh put out by La Jornada, which was a large daily Mexican newspaper, but they had a little English magazine that came out periodically, and I would uh wanted to get newspaper clips, so I would uh you know occasionally find a story in my region, and then I would get on a bus. You know, there was no internet back back then, and there I don't there was no fax where I was. I didn't even know faxes existed yet. And you know, so I would ride I would type up my copy on a typewriter, and then I'd ride the bus, and then I would bring it into the office at La Jornada, and I would give it to the editor, and they would usually almost read it in front of me, which was a very uncomfortable experience. And if they liked it, they would say, Okay, we'll use it, and they would pay me about a dollar or a dollar fifty. I don't know what it was. It was enough, maybe it was a little more, maybe it was ten bucks. It was enough to basically you know get me my bus ride back, and and I was happy to be in Mexico City because I could go see a movie. Um, and uh and and sometimes they would say no, in which case I would leave empty-handed. So uh, but that got me my first clips and kind of my introduction into journalism, but even on a more profound level, it probably introduced me to a certain kind of immersive kind of reporting, which I would later be able to do and be drawn to.
SPEAKER_00That sounds like uh an intensely fascinating subject matter. Uh, what did you discover?
SPEAKER_01Um You know, it was interesting. At that point, it was amazing how much of the different families I studied had essentially almost removed themselves from the party state and the party apparatus at that time, uh, which was uh indicative of its kind of weakening hold. They basically continued on their existence that had become almost indifferent to the to the political apparatus around them.
SPEAKER_00Have you stayed in touch with Mexico since this was what the mid-90s?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this would have been 19 I probably was 1989, 1990. I graduated. Yeah, it was 19, yeah, uh 1989 into 1990. Um I've kept in touch with a with a few friends there. You know, it's the one virtue of social media, people I kind of lost touch with and reconnected with. Um I haven't been back to Mexico for a long time, and I really want to.
SPEAKER_00But do you keep tabs on the uh culture and economy?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. I mean, it's a region of interest to me that I follow probably more closely than a lot of other parts of the world is Latin America. That was one of the things I studied in college, and I spent a lot of time in different parts of Latin America. I haven't done a lot of reporting, although Lost City of Z was obviously in Brazil and in the Amazon there and in other parts of South America. And then I did do some reporting for the New Yorker magazine in Guatemala.
SPEAKER_00Okay, I just uh am lingering on Mexico so much because you happen to have stumbled across an interviewer who, well, has an Australian passport, is in fact a Mexican at heart. Um so I yeah, I'd love to hear you say maybe the short bearish case and the short bullish case on Mexico in the next, say, 50 years.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you know, I don't feel equipped to answer that question anymore. I am such, you know, I am such a reporter by nature, and so I am so conservative in my in my opinions. I go against the wind of uh of so of the basic trends today, because unless I've spent like a year or two years researching something, then I will form an opinion. Nice. Um, but if if if I feel like I'm just basically, you know, unless it's a sports opinion, which I in which case I can come just basically with no reason. Unqualified and unwavering bonds. Yeah, that then it's fine. But I am the I'm the one person like who uses social media and almost tries to avoid ever giving an opinion.
SPEAKER_00Nice. Okay.
SPEAKER_01So but what is your progno well, your prognosis would be very interesting to me.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I've would I would be it's far too self-indulgent to take up our precious time with that. Um but in short, I'm extremely bullish. Um good. If if if and I don't know, now you've now you've poked the bull, I I will say. Um if not for the scourge of um cocaine and the immense incredible demand for cocaine in North America and Europe and Australia and all the other, you know, um uh organized crime that comes off the back of those cocaine routes. Um Mexico would already be a top five, top ten GDP in the world. It would be um one of the most uh uh tantalizing tourist destinations, more c companies would be happy to build their factories there. It would already be the labor force of America, even more than even more so than it already is. So basically I couldn't be more bullish. There's just you know one massive thorn in its side, basically.
SPEAKER_01Yes, well I will say this that you know it was it just as a cultural as a place of culture and history, um it was one of the richest and most rewarding places I've ever been to.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I completely echo that. But back to your career. So I got the timeline wrong. So you were in Mexico before this, but um in 1993, after your master's degree in international relations, it's written that your primary interest at this point was in fiction and you had an ambition to be a novelist. And I just wanted to ask you something um, you know, potentially inappropriate, but I'll let you be the judge of that. But something I noticed when reading the anecdote about this anecdote about your education, and relating it to the three books of yours for which I'm familiar, Flower Moon, Lost City, and The Wager. Um there's stories for which the source material you had to you had to by sheer force of will like dig that up from beneath the surface of forgotten history or whatever. Yet the characters are so rich and their stories so detailed. So I would never suggest something's made up, but how much of your sort of fictional uh narrative drive and urge is like filling in the gaps where the research cannot answer it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So um you know, it's interesting in that um the the s the story about me wanting to be a novelist is probably only it's not apocryphal, but it's only half true, which again was I wanted to be a writer and I was experimenting in every form and I certainly tried fiction. And I I quickly learned I wasn't very good at fiction. I lacked the imagination. Um and then I went off to do journalism and reporting and gradually was then drawn to these stories that you know are more narrative nonfiction that kind of put you in the grip and they're very much rooted in the characters of the subjects, these real people that you are covering who are on these odysseys. And I am uh f fairly f I wouldn't even say fairly I am fanatical about um uh the truth in the terms of d to the best of my abilities, knowing I'm fallible, but to try to render uh what is happening uh based on all the underlying facts and research, which is why the projects take so long. And so the elements of fiction uh or your education in fiction or from reading fiction, the uh which would has been done by a lot of narrative nonfiction writers going back, you know, in time, whether you know you go back to Gay Telees or Joan Diddy, um uh which is it's you you're rooting your stories in facticity, but you are using um uh applying um frameworks that you might see in all so that rather than just tell a story like a Wikipedia entry, you find a person as a subject who can carry the story who is deeply fascinating, and you kind of follow that person or you see the story as they are experiencing experiencing it, and you also try to build scenes. So you find the underlying materials that will let you render uh show scenes, whether it be court testimony, which will give you dialogue or journal entries or whatever it may be. Um and um so those are the kind of approaches you use, but you're still very much rooted to the facts, to the point that, for example, when I was working on Killers of the Flower Moon, I always think about this because it's it's a little bit absurd, but uh when I was working on Killers of the Flower Moon, I had uh uh an FBI document, and and for listeners who aren't familiar, that that's a book about the uh one of the really worst racial injustices in American history, uh which took place in the early 20th century when members of the Osage Nation, the Native American community in Oklahoma, were being systematically targeted and killed uh for the oil money under their land. And I had an FBI record describing how the detective had gone to somebody's house to interview them. And initially when I wrote the sentence, I said uh the detective had shown up on the person's stoop. Um, and I just kind of wrote it, and then you do that on your first job, but then you go back and you interrogate every sentence, and I started to say, wait a second, did the house have a stoop? How do I know if they had a porch or not? Was there a porch? And I said, Do I have a picture? And I actually almost stupidly spent three weeks trying to. I called the Historical Society and like, are there any photographs of this old house? Like, do we know exactly did it have a porch? And then I could never confirm it, so eventually you write around it. You you don't you just you don't write around it, you just you don't say they showed up on the stoop, you just say they knocked on, you know, they showed up at the door. And you so you find a way based on the facts to not make something up and that sticks to the facticity. Um but it's why it takes uh it does take a long uh time uh to get it right, because you want it to be as vivid as possible, but as rooted in fact. So I would say the the tools of fiction may help you, in other words, of kind of seeing the trying to kind of structure a story around human beings and their stories, but the process is actually very different than fiction, and there was a reason I was bad at fiction. Fiction requires a great imagination, um, and I lack that imagination, and I see my job much more as an excavator of trying to dig out the material that will lend me to render the story as vividly as possible. And I often like to say, and one of the reasons I was also drawn to nonfiction, is that I think often truth can be stranger than fiction, um, and as kind of as gripping and as surprising and as stunning uh as anything that the mind of man could invent, which is a line from Sherlock Holmes that I like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the tagline of the truth being stranger than fiction um is one that are you I'm sure you're familiar with Bradley Hope and um and um Tom Wright and Project Brazen. They're exclusively they're the two journalists that broke the one MDB story, Joe Lowe and um Um the Malaysian financial scandal, and they've sort of broken off and made this media company that publishes podcasts and books um on uh narrative journalism exclusively, narrative uh nonfiction, and uh uh it it's just true again and again and again that uh the truth is stranger and more interesting than fiction a lot of the time.
SPEAKER_01Like it often is, yes, and things happen, or you're just like, I can't believe that happened. And it's sometimes when you're telling true stories, um you know, if you were doing it as fiction, you'd be like, oh, that's not credible because it's so crazy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, if someone had uh presented the wager as a novel, they would be told to tone it down a little bit.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yeah, like could that many things go wrong?
unknownExactly.
SPEAKER_00Couldn't could the details be that horrific? Like some of the quotes are just unbelievable. People's hair falling out, teeth falling out, like uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. And I do think though, um, you know, part of the challenge and the difference and one of the reasons it does take these projects take a long time is not just to get the underlying materials to tell them, but also finding the right stories that have that underlying materials and that will let you tell them in such a vivid way. I often come across some great ideas for stories, but there's really no way to make them uh to tell them. Them in a in a vivid way because there just isn't the underlying material, or maybe it's a classified secret uh CIA operation, and you you ask the CIA, you know, you do a Freedom of Information Act request trying to get the underlying materials, and they say, Yeah, no, we're not releasing those. So you realize you have to wait at least another 50 years to tell that story.
SPEAKER_00Give us an example of a story that you want to tell, but there wasn't enough underlying information.
SPEAKER_01Oh, I can't tell. Oh, well, the there are several um uh uh CIA which I'm not gonna disclose because I'm st I still I don't give up. I'm like a dog with a way. So I I'm still trying to uh hunt and do requests and effect I'm in the midst of trying to do one now. Um but there have been like crazy stories, like you know, there was a story similar, and I don't remember the details now, but it was a similar story to The Wager. I'm trying to remember where exactly it was. It wasn't like a naval expedition, but it was like a crazy episode on an island, and I thought it was fascinating. But when I looked into it, it was another kind of Lord of the Flies like story. But when I looked into it, you know, there would have been enough for a news article, but that would be about it in terms of any way to narrate the story in terms of any kind of research materials to tell it. So you are, you know, the the richness is when you find the right story that has the underlying materials, you know, you can really excavate and tell a vivid, wondrous story, but you also can't tell every story because you are limited, where I suppose if you were doing fiction you would come up with a way to, you know, just imagine it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Have any um pitched stories ever come across your desk that involve Australia? Say, you know, the early colonialization of Australia or even before that, or something interesting to do with Indonesia or Papua New Guinea and New Zealand. I don't know, but just some fascinating rogue story from that part of the world.
SPEAKER_01Certainly. And you know, my uh the my my problem is is my memory, because when I work on a s project for so many years, my my head fills up with those facts, and I even forget what I wrote 15 years earlier. Um, but I um certainly, for example, when I was doing um The Lost City of Z and was doing research about the Royal Geographical Society, I read several accounts of expeditions and explorations uh in Australia that were really fascinating and gripping. Um, you know, I remember, and I I'm gonna forget their names now, but you know, people looking for, they believed there was that sea in the middle of uh you know, in the middle of Australia, and these people would set out to find it, and and so many of them perished. And I remember reading their the accounts of them. Some of them were sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society, which had sponsored Percy Harrison Fawcett, the explorer I was writing about for the Lost City Z. So that led me down uh very specifically um into uh Australia, and I remember reading those accounts.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there was a there was a book called, I think it's the Dig Tree. I I never finished it, but started it. But it um uh it attempts to document all those failed exhibitions and then one that eventually did, they crossed Australia and realized there was no lake in the middle of it. But civilized. Yeah, there was no lake. Yeah, the the the the the Great Oasis that was promised, they never stumbled across it, it was just uh a bunch of um uh bush. But you know, similar similar theme to America uh you know, America's conquest of North America, um, those same themes. I've always thought this from afar, being growing up in Australia, um and looking at all of the pop culture and media uh in America, that very, very similar themes happened in Australia, um, including the relationship with the white settlers and the indigenous people um who were there before them. And uh always thought that that comparison just was never made and um and I'm sure if you just if if someone peeled back the the the hood um would uncover it just amazing.
SPEAKER_01You know, I mean yeah, well there was a similar colonial history and and also there were indigenous populations. And it's true in you know i what's what always interests me is when I do these stories, I don't l necessarily look for this because you know it's not I'm not a a specialist, so I'm not always just researching the same subject or but I I I noticed that in so many stories I do that inevitably you come across this kind of colonial collision with indigenous cultures, and that was true in Killers of the Flower Moon. That took place later uh with with white settlers, but similar outcomes. And um even in The Wager there is this encounter, and certainly in the Lost City of Z, there are these encounters in the Amazon with these European expl explorers and conquistadors um encountering um uh the indigenous population. So it doesn't surprise me to hear you say that about Australia.
SPEAKER_00Alright, Mr. Grant, the wager. So um four quotes from the book. First, describing the men at war as buoyant wooden castles. Two the second quote, a long, dangerous journey would expose a sailor's hideous soul. Third quote, it was hard to believe that human nature could support the miseries we endured. Um and then the fourth quote as the scourge invaded the sailors' faces, some of them began to resemble the monsters of their imaginations. Their bloodshot eyes bulged, their teeth fell out, as did their hair, their breath stank, their bones rattled in a literal sense, the cartilage that glued together their bodies seemed to be loosening. So, with those snippets in mind, give us a bit of the context, the conditions, the type of people sailing in this period when the wager is set.
SPEAKER_01Yes, so the the wager which is um after uh an imperial war breaks out between Great Britain and Spain in 1739, the wager is receives uh secret orders to go on a mission with a squadron of ships to try to capture a Spanish galleon filled with so much treasure was known as the prize of all the oceans. And believe it or not, that was part of the mission. It had a real whiff of piracy about it. And um but they needed to find people to to man these ships and to operate these ships, and it would take nearly two thousand men and boys to um operate all the vessels uh in the expedition. And Great Britain at that time had exhausted its supply of volunteers, and it didn't have conscription, so what it did was it relied on press gangs, and these press gangs would roam into towns and ports and cities, eyeballing anyone for any telltale signs that they were a mariner. So they would look at you to see if you had a round hat or a checkered shirt or um, you know, even tar under your fingernails, because tar was used on ships to make things water resistant. And if they, you know, determined you were a mariner or thought you were a mariner, they would seize you and in effect kidnap you and drag you onto these expeditions which might last. Uh this one was going to last as long as two to three years, it was expected, unwillingly. And even after that point, the the British Abbot was short of men uh for the squadron. And so they took the extreme step of rounding up 500 soldiers and seamen from a retirement home. And many of them were in their 60s and 70s, some were missing an assortment of limbs, some were so ill they had to be hoisted on stretchers onto these ships. And one of the things that makes these life on these ships, they were like buoyant castles, and they were also like floating civilizations, very regimented civilizations, uh, was that uh people from all walks of life would be on these vessels. You would have boys as young as six, the cook on the wager was in his eighties. You had uh dandies and aristocrats and city paupers and free black seamen and middle-class professional craftsmen like carpenters and barrel makers, Coopers, and they would all be thrown together, and somehow they were supposed to be um you know turned and formed into what uh Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson later coined the phrase a band of brothers. But the challenge on the wager in this expedition was enormous because so many of the men were pressed and recalcitrant and sick.
SPEAKER_00I mean, give a little more uh maybe context for why it would be the case that you would be pulling people out of um out of retirement homes. Um, you know. Yes. Isn't there a romantic call to adventure of these ships? Because from this description it sounds like it's just you're you're you're scraping up the bottom of society out of the barrel rather than there being some um you know almost career sailors and stuff who are going for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so there was two there was it was twofold. Um I mean it was it was a little complicated. So um for some there was a romantic call, um, and one of the people I write about on the ship is a young 16-year-old midshipman named John Byron, who would later become the grandfather of the poet Lord Byron, whose poetry is greatly influenced by what he referred to as my granddad's narrative. And he was somebody who read a lot of sea tales and narratives and does feel that romantic call. And unlike many on the ship, he volunteers uh as a midshipman to train to be an officer. But this expedition in particular was uh seen as being very perilous. The war was already sucking up many people. Seamen could often make more money doing and trading vessels, commercial vessels. Um, and so the draw was limited uh for the number of men that they needed. And in many ways, this war was typical of many wars that would follow in many countries and empires over time, in which it was a war in which the public clamored for it uh but was unwilling to spend the money to uh pay for it. And so many of these people were being rounded up and in effect sent to their death. Everyone knew that those soldiers were unlikely to ever survive. But these ships were very complex um engineering um uh uh organisms or organizations, and they required uh a number of seamen with uh knowledge, and so there was a desperation to find enough men to man them. You you they would take a few hundred um and some of the larger warships, you know, as much as six hundred uh to man.
SPEAKER_00I I was um totally gripped by the um by the details of the ship and say the hygiene conditions and the different roles on the ship and the day-to-day, just like these sort of nitty-gritty details to almost transport you onto the vessel, what would it be like? So it's impossible for us to give the full uh context. Obviously, people need to read the book or watch the movie eventually when it comes out, uh to know. But um maybe you could give more context to the quote um describing a man at war as a buoyant wooden castle, as maybe a gateway into giving these details about the ship and the people.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, those these sh these ships were were really um the engineering marvels of the time, and they were designed to be both murderous instruments, these buoyant floating castles, because they were uh designed to be used in sea battles. So, you know, they all have cannons poking out of uh gun ports on each side. Uh the wager had 28 cannons on board, and they were also designed, though, to be the homes of hundreds of sailors uh who would live in close quarters side by side. And life on board a ship was very um hierarchical and very regimented. At the very peak was the captain, who had a great deal of authority. Um ruled by the lash, but they were the least successful. The most effective captains, commanders were those who kind of nudged and inspired and conjoled the kind of instinctive, mysterious qualities of leadership. Beneath him would be the lieutenant. Um then you would have, for example, the top men, um, who were often actually young boys or teenagers who would climb the mast to work the sails. Um they would have to climb up a mast that could be as high as a hundred feet, and a plunge from from one of those masts would undoubtedly kill him. Um and then you had you know ordinary seamen and more able seamen, and you had carpenters working who in a sea battle would have to make sure the floating castle was in breach by cannon balls that might sink it, so they would be plugging holes. Um so everybody on a ship had a station, and they tended to serve on watch every four hours, so these whistles would blow, and then they would the boatswain would blow his whistle, and after four hours they would be done with a watch, and they have a period of rest, and then they would return for another watch. So it was a very arduous, uh challenging life, um, you know, on board these ships.
SPEAKER_00So, yes, and the um details of the ship and the crew is really only a a gateway into what ends up just being this uh unbelievable story. Um but there is a Lord of the Flies comparison that's made quite a lot um to a particular sort of uh I don't know, you know, what would you call it, um part of the book. Do you do you like that comparison? Um or do you want to separate yourself from it?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think there is an element of Lord of the Flies of what happened. So the ship sets off, um and it you know, its mission is to try to intercept the galleon, and as they cross the Atlantic and then they have to come around Cape Horn, they begin to encounter uh just about every um obstacle and disaster possible. Um, you know, first they have to navigate these seas around Cape Horn, which are among the most violent seas in the world where a wave could dwarf a 90-foot mast, you have the strongest currents on Earth, and this is at the very tip of South America between uh the tip of South America and Antarctica. And uh you also have the winds there, which can accelerate to hurricane force. Herman Melville, who later made that journey, compared it to a descent into Helindante's Inferno. So as the squadron is coming around the horn, they are just battered day and night by storms, or the boats are just being shaken and flooded and like they're as if they were just rowboats. And at that very moment when they need everybody, they um begin to suffer from a mysterious illness which you describe, which is their eyes began to bulge and their hair fell out and their teeth fell out, and the cartilage seemed to be coming undone, loosening their bones, and they were suffering from that great enigma of the age of sale, which was scurvy. And hundreds and hundreds of the men perished, their bodies thrown overboard. Back then, people did not know that scurvy was caused by mere simply a vitamin C deficiency. They didn't have fruit and vegetables on the ship. Um and so countless of them died, and then uh eventually all the ships separate around the tip of South America in the storm, and the wager uh finds itself alone under the command of a new captain, David Sheep. And eventually they wreck on this island, this desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. And initially, you know, he tries to you know set up an imperial outpost governed by the same rules that had existed on the ship, and with that same hierarchy in which I had described, the captain kind of in charge with a good deal of authority and with the same rules and regulations that had existed on the ship. But gradually, as they begin to starve, and this is the Lord of the Flies comparison, they begin to descend into warring parties in a certain murderous anarchy, and the lie and that island becomes in many ways a kind of laboratory to test the human condition under extreme circumstances, and inevitably, like in Lord of the Flies, it begins to reveal each person's hidden nature, both the good and the bad in this case.
SPEAKER_00I think um that's a really nice sort of cliffhanger to leave it on. People can uh read or listen to the book. I listened to the audiobook, you got some very, very uh suitable voice to read it. Doesn't he sound like a ship captain himself almost?
SPEAKER_01Uh yes, he's terrific. Yes, yes. I haven't listened to the whole book on audio, but yes, he has this very commanding, authoritative voice, which is wonderful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So um I I think just as a way to sort of um pin the narrative, the pin the the actual story of the wager there, but maybe get you to comment on this uh really interesting quote taken from a review of your book, which um I didn't fully understand, but I've heard you in other interviews sort of refer to this same theme as uh something that is important to you and you want people to notice within the book. So the quote is is that it's a story about the stories we tell ourselves that empires and nations tell themselves and how they shape us. He's literally lit his literary references suddenly come into focus and lift the book to become something greater than an adventure tale.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so for me the the one of the main draws to this story was um was uh illuminating the way we tell stories and about the nature of truth. So when some of the castaways from some of the warring factions make it back to England, they are summoned to face a court martial and for their alleged crimes on the island. And you know, Joan Didian famously said that we all tell ourselves stories in order to to live, but in their case it's quite literally true because if they feel to tell a convincing tale, they're gonna get hanged. So many of them offer and release and publish their accounts and their testimony hoping to save their lives and sway public opinion. F after fighting that fierce war against the elements, they begin to wage a furious war over the truth, and there's misinformation and disinformation, even allegations of fake journals. And you can see as each person I tell the story from the point of view of the warring perspectives of three different figures on the wager the captain, David Cheap, the gunner, John Bulkley, and the midshipman John Byron. And by looking at each one, you can see how they are shading and shaping their stories, and you can also see how stories influence them along the way and shape them. So they are both shaped by the stories they've heard. For example, John Byron had read all these sea tales, so he thought he was going to live a romantic life at sea. He had read Robinson Caruso. Um so these sea tales are shaping them, um, and they are actually drawing on other narratives in the decisions they make and the stories they tell themselves and the way they want to picture themselves. And at the same time, they're also shaping and telling their stories to influence others. And you can see how each one is shading the truth and burnishing certain facts and leaving out other facts. And then ultimately you get to see in this case a perfect illustration of how nations and empires also shape their narratives. And so the British Empire is watching all these warring stories and listening to them. At a certain point, they begin to think they don't really like any of these stories because they make the British Empire look more like brutes than like gentlemen. And so they suddenly have an interest in trying to manufacture their own version, their own alternative history, their own mythic tale to see. So this is in many ways, it's this kind of crazy gripping saga of human survival and resilience and uh kind of meditation on human nature. But it also, I think, gets at some of these larger themes about the way we tell history and the way we tell stories.
SPEAKER_00In that description there, I just can't help but notice you uncovering all these alternative histories and then being able to figure out what the actual single line of truth is, as much as we can know it, that runs through between them. Uh you've mentioned in many uh interviews before just how much work you even said earlier in this interview, how much work and time goes into researching one of these stories. If you could ascribe X amount of hours of research to each page of the book, how much are we talking per page?
SPEAKER_01Oh gosh, days and days. So like I mean hundreds of hours per page. Oh yeah, sometimes months. I mean, you do so much research, preliminary research before you even get to the page. You know, I spent a year just learning to kind of read the These documents and develop a facility for them and the language. And let me say this: you do a ton of research, but the secret or the trick or the goal or the ambition is to never let the reader feel that. So you want to try to write a very propulsive story. But to do that, to get to that point where you can do that, the the level of underlying research of kind of combing through these log books, which are, you know, written in this old archaic English and slanting and sometimes water stained in these crumbling books. You know, it can take a great deal of time to do. And then you also want to try to settle on a structure that hopefully is organic to the material you're working on. I structure my books differently for each one. I want to try to find a structure and a kind of a voice that suits the material. And in this case, I settled on the decision of trying to tell the story from these three competing perspectives, primarily, of three people on the wager, so that you can get a sense of how each person is shading the truth, but also through a compilation of their counts, getting you closer and closer to what the truth actually is. And just to give one vivid example, in one account, an officer said uh on the island, he was forced to proceed to extremities. And then in another account by John Byron, the midshipman, he said, Oh yeah, he shot him right in the head. And so you can see right there, just in the contrast, um, how each person is telling the story, justifying themselves and rendering it distinctly. And only by the comparison of them do we get closer to what really happened.
SPEAKER_00And that's incredible as well. By the comparison, you with more context, more of the individual's personality starts to shine, I suppose. Yes. I mean ki keeping all that together, I mean, it must just be a testament. Like, what is the Google Doc or notebook that you have for, say, the wager? This must be an incredible document.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they they go on and on and on. I mean, because what I do is I try to turn my office into an archive, um, getting digital images of documents, because especially with these documents that were in England, actually had someone uh helped take photographs of them uh so I could have di digital images of the records, because you know, some of them take me months to kind of read through and to code. So um to turn my library into an archive of Siemens journals and Siemens language and muster books and journals and whatnot and correspondence, um, and then what I try to do is I read through everything, highlighting the most relevant information, and I type them into a large document, you know, saying where the information came from so I can know where it is if I need to go back and to source it and check it. And this becomes this kind of central, almost digital library filled with so much material. Sometimes the computer can't handle it, so I have to break it into two files. Um, and then I will be able to then use those files to break out information for smaller um you know sections of the book when I'm writing them, um, you know, based on what I need. So these these these libraries, these digital libraries, you know, become this kind of ultimate resource where I can find the information and also um you know extract the information.
SPEAKER_00Um something just a thought just came to me. Um so this these uh documents that you um are doing all the research for in in Lost City and The Wager, um and and presumably many other projects you've worked on as well, they exist in uh archives very in various places around the world. I wonder if a project has been undergone to have these archives scanned, um, because we 100% have technology good enough now that can scan a document and have as the meta description all of the individual words on that document, and therefore you have one big, you know, uh indexed database that you can actually search for keywords through. Are we at that level now with you know these great archives of the world?
SPEAKER_01You know, there there are some materials that are scanned um uh when you're doing research. For most of the stories I have done, most of the materials had not yet been scanned. I think some of them were scanned subsequently. Um I think the documents from Killers of the Flower Moon were subsequently um scanned by the archives so they'd be more accessible to researchers. But a lot of the documents have yet to, you know, be scanned, the ones I was working on. But I do think more and more is are being digitally scanned in archives. The challenge is there's just so many materials to do. And I don't know how long, I've never asked anyone how long that process takes of actually converting and scanning. But especially with some of these older disintegrating documents, I would imagine would be very time consuming and challenging. So, you know, that that should be where we're heading. And I think for you know, I was always so happy because there were libraries, for example, where you could, you know, find a journal that would be scanned and you know make your life so easy and you won't have to cross cross an ocean to get it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, um if we just assume a a a it's it's it's probably naive or dangerous to assume, but if we assume a steady rate of progress going forward, I mean, you know, in twenty, thirty years maybe the great archives will be scanned. Imagine that the just the stories of history which are going to be turned over and um because right now hundred percent Yeah, I mean because the the huge bottleneck um to to find the narrative is in the research. Obviously the way that you make it compelling is totally on you know your your ability as a writer. I mean, that's what I would say at least. I don't know if if you would agree with that. But um Oh, sorry, gone. No, I was just gonna say, yeah, hopefully AI hasn't replaced us yet. No, don't worry, they couldn't do what you did, mate. Um But where does your patience come from? So hundreds and hundreds of hours on one page. I mean, how often are you turning to your wife at the end of the day and saying, I fucking hate this story? I'm giving it away.
SPEAKER_01Oh, my poor wife puts up with me. Yeah, you know, it's a it's a psychological roller coaster because you know, these they take so long, you don't know if you're ever gonna get to the end, and you do, you doubt yourself along the way. You know, does anyone even care about the story from the 18th century? Like, why am I doing this? Um, and then you know, but then you have these kind of gems or you come across some document that's just revelatory or some surprise in the narrative um that keeps you going. And I would say, you know, for me, the the compulsion comes from the story. That I, you know, if I am fascinated enough or interested enough with the story and wanting to know every dimension of it, it just kind of keeps you going. I mean, you get out of the day and you, you know, you by you know 8:30, you've had your coffee and you're you know, you're ready to go again. You just you just keep going and you keep chipping away. And some days are very positive and some days are negative. And so that's you do have to kind of modulate yourself because the projects are so long. I mean, you also, you know, at some point you wonder about your mortality in the middle of the project. Are you even gonna live to see the end? So it is a it is a challenge and you gotta get there. But um, you know, I do think there is there are and there are sometimes human connections that come about in researching a story, um, and you find these kind of new relationships or these new experiences or these new adventures that you end up going on that you would never do otherwise. And so even though it does demand a great deal of pay patience and there are elements of psychic doubt, um, there are also just kind of a great rewards and kind of privilege being able to do it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But it's all paying off, isn't it? I mean, I um I've seen quite a lot of promotion in the wager surrounding your uh affiliation with Martin Scorsese and Leon DiCaprio. So um I I just wanted to ask you directly, how does it feel, you know, starting off your career as a as a Journo in Mexico and you know, writing for the New Yorker, and you know, you have all these incredible highs, but then Martin Scorsese and Leno DiCaprio come along and say, we want to make movies based off a story you told.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you know, it's funny. I I it's not something, you know, when you start out as a writer, you know, you have certain kind of you know bucket list things you're trying to do. You know, the first thing you you know, for me getting to the New Yorker magazine was something I always wanted to do because they did this narrative, very meticulous, um, these kind of very vivid fact-based narrative stories. And um and it took me a long time to get there. Um I I will I can say um wholeheartedly that the one thing I never even contemplated or considered was that, oh yes, I hope that one day um Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio want to develop one of my projects into a movie and it would come to fruition with a kind of amazing cast and screenwriter and all this stuff. So it's kind of bewildering. Um I to be honest, I try not to think about it too much because I want to focus on the the books and the research. Um and you know, I try not to get too caught up in all of that world. Um, but it's I mean, you know, sometimes you do have to pinch yourself. You're like, I can't believe this is happening. And um, but and I will say, you know, they developed Killers of the Flower Moon, and now they have also Option the Wager, uh Scorsese and um and and uh Leonardo DiCaprio. And um and you know the the thing that has been most gratifying to me though is just like working with them has been amazing because they are just they have just such a fierce commitment to the story, and you do you f you fear that when you write a story and other people are going to adapt it, what's gonna happen, and you lose control and you have to accept that. So when it ends up with people who just care about the history and are obsessive in their own ways of getting it right, and um, and there's just so many people on that project. And for example, Killers of the Flower Moon, they work just so closely with members of the Osage Nation. Um, and uh, you know, at every level of the production, they shot on location, which isn't done, you know. I don't think it's done much anymore, where they actually shot on Osage territory, there are Osage actors with speaking roles, Osage language is used in the film. I mean, it's just so that part is just kind of remarkable. And you know, I visited the set at one point and you know, just to see how they had reconstructed a world to me that had existed only in documents and photographs.
SPEAKER_00And and I heard you say that um a lot of the cast from uh Kills of the Flower Moon would sort of call you and want to uh get confirmation from you. What was this character like, what did they sound like, what would their opinion be about something like this? I mean, what's it like to you know hear your phone vibrate and you walk over to the table and and you and you turn it over and it says Leonardo DiCaprio?
SPEAKER_01You know what's amazing is that's you know so many of them uh you know, at first you're kind of, you know, you're you're you're like, you know, you you you f you feel a little odd because it's these aren't your normal encounters with uh famous actors and actresses, and um um so you're a little bit like this is outside your world. But I will say that the calls with all the various people when they would come in, you know, they were just they were always so um about the project that they were really kind of these normal conversations. They were really just about, you know, learning more, or do you have a document or history, or you know, did they you know have a limp or did they ha how did they talk, or do you have any photographs you can share? And so in some ways it it became very almost normal. It was almost like talking to an editor when I'm working on a book. It was really just about kind of wanting to know more and wanting to get the project right. And so at some level it becomes almost comforting.
SPEAKER_00Look, um David, I'm uh just want to time check you. You gotta run now, right?
SPEAKER_01Uh we could do you want to do 10 more minutes? 10 more?
SPEAKER_00That that sounds amazing. That sounds amazing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, perfect.
SPEAKER_00Um, I'm not sure what my transition was, but nonetheless. So um there are two or three questions I try to ask every single guest, um, one of them being about serendipity. But to introduce it, I just wanted to um comment that uh in one of your interviews uh I heard you say that you were inspired to write Flower Moon after you saw a torn photograph in a museum. And you've commented before how often your stories are born from a small footnote, an outtake, a brief correspondence. And from my eyes, there is just a tremendous amount of serendipity at play here. Um and so I wanted to ask you just directly what the role uh of what has the role of serendipity been in your life?
SPEAKER_01Oh, there you know, there really is when you're doing any kind of research, when you come across something, you know, you have to learn to train yourself to recognize what you're seeing and to respond to it, but the the serendipity of coming across it um is you know it's like a it's like a strange blessing because often that serendipity, you know, you can be struggling and kind of at sea, so to speak, or at a loss, not being able to find what's going to be the next story or the next book. And then there is that kind of serendipity of a moment where you're like, whoa, wait a second, and I'll just give you a couple of examples. So one example was uh The Wager. When I was doing some research on mutinies, I stumbled upon an 18th century account uh from the midshipman John Byron, the who had been the 16-year-old uh when the voyage set out. And I started reading his account, and it was kind of you know written in this old English. The uh S's were printed as Fs and it was kind of tangled prose. But I kept pausing over these kind of descriptions of of you know shipwreck and mutiny and cannibalism and and whatnot, and and and I began to realize that you know this strange little old account uh you know had just you know provided me the first clue to one of the more extraordinary sagas of human survival uh survival I'd ever come across. So there is just that serendipity. Now, I do think you need to I think if you're a writer or a reporter or a journalist or historian, you have trained yourself to always be on the lookout. It's like you're kind of like a predator for stories. So you are always looking at hunting, but and so you want to make sure you don't miss them, but there are these moments of serendipity. Um I had written a story for uh um the New Yorker magazine about the world's greatest Sherlock Holmes expert and Conan Doyle expert, who had been found mysteriously garreted in his apartment in England. So talk about a story that is truth is stranger than fiction. And um and so I was researching that story, and in the process I was reading everything about Conan Doyle, uh the creator of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and I came across a footnote that mentioned that um The Lost World, his novel had been partly based on an explorer, Percy Harrison Fawcett. And so I looked up Percy Harrison Fawcett, and that led me to the story that became the book, The The Lost City of Z. So it is just kind of amazing when these moments happen, completely unexpected. And it is also true of research, it's not just the story ideas. Um, you know, you will stumble upon Killers of the Flower Moon. I was in an archive in Fort Worth, Texas, which is about the size of an airport hangar. It's like something like where they would store the Last Covenant in the Raiders of the Lost Ark. And you know, I was pulling records there and some tossed in a in a in a in a folder unmarked was the grand secret jury testimony that had never been made public before, and somebody had obviously was cleaning out their office at one point and must have just chucked it in the file. And I didn't even know if I was supposed to be looking at it, but it was in a public file, and sure enough, it you know, it was a gateway into so much of that research. So there is always serendipity. You have to have patience because there's a lot of tedium, but then there is the the wonder of serendipity.
SPEAKER_00Those are incredible examples, David. Thank you. Um but I wonder if uh there is anything you can say about maximizing those serendipitous moments. Now you've mentioned specifically regarding research and stumbling across stories, but maybe in your day-to-day life, I mean, after all, you're an extremely high-profile writer, you surely you must be exposed to more options for serendipity than um a regular Joe, but maybe more broadly, philosophically uh separated from work, what one can do to maximize serendipity?
SPEAKER_01You know, I think the I think the greatest thing is just to be open and curious. You know, I think, you know, it is curiosity that leads you to all these events and even into life, to these wonders. So, you know, the curiosity can lead you down research paths that then lead you to sudden discoveries, um, and and the pursuit of them and the kind of dog pursuit of them. Um but also I think that's true of life, like even just when you are on a walk, uh, you know, that you are curious enough about the world that your eyes and ears are open to something you don't expect, you know, even a bird just darting about, a startling, you know, creature you don't expect to find, or a strange kind of illumination of the light in the sky, or an unexpected plant. I mean, I think it it really the underlying ingredient is always curiosity and openness.
SPEAKER_00All right, mate. Um final question. If you could witness a conversation between any two people of history, dead or alive, no language barrier, who do you want to listen to? Say a podcast, for instance. Any two people.
SPEAKER_01Any two people in history, wow. That is interesting. Well I would probably pick, you know, see my problem is I would like I would always want like strange, like uh Ambrose Beer. Is that a same Ambrose who's you know, because I would like want some strange I would like some strange where it would allow me to solve a mystery, like what happened to him? You know, he disappeared. So I would have the my stories would have, you know, they would always have something. I'd want the conversation that would like basically help me to solve some case. Um you know, even, you know, uh, you know, people who were assassinated so that you could have, you know, I could have interviewed them, you know, from Oswald to Jack Ruby. So a conversation between those two nuts. Um uh so mine would be a little bit off the beaten path, I think. Obviously, there'd be the great people you'd love to witness a conversation of, you know, or some writer to learn about, or you know, somebody like Abraham Lincoln. But I think mine, if I really was picking, would be a little bit off the beaten path. They would be people within stories that I've been fascinated about, which I don't feel like I have the full story on.
SPEAKER_00Um I wonder uh I this is an impromptu question, wasn't prepared, but I think you'd be very particularly suited to answer it. Um what is a great story that is not being told? One that people are commonly aware of, um, or at least you're aware of, and uh within it is this incredible narrative, an incredible lesson that it's not being told.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'll tell you the truth to that. If I had an answer, because I'm looking for a new book, I wouldn't share it yet, because I have to find it. Okay. If you can find the great story. I so I don't have a pristine case yet, although I am in the process of looking. So if actually anyone has suggestions, send them my way. What I would say is I think there are many stories that are right in front of us. And what often happens is we have very short attention spans. And so something that can even captivate us or draw our attention intensely for 24 hours, the media then kind of, you know, may get mauled the story for 24 hours or 48 hours or even a week. But then it kind of just fades, and there are so many of those. And I think, you know, within that instant uh clamoring around the story, um, you know, we forget about all the other dimensions, and we don't have hindsight and we don't have deeper reporting. So I think so many, when I pick up the newspaper, um, there are so many stories um yet to be, you know, to come out. And and then of course there are stories still unfolding where you don't yet know what's gonna happen that I think are such important and powerful stories that are the central stories you know uh defining our times, whether it be you know climate change in this country, the weakening of democratic institutions and what's gonna happen. Um and these are stories that are still unfolding, and we don't yet fully know you know where it's gonna go, um the war in Ukraine. So these are stories that deeply fascinate me that we're still in the process of figuring out, and we may not be able to fully write about them with the depth and perspective, you know, without more time. Um, but I do. Think there are a lot of great stories that we kind of look at, we glance at, and then we move on. And I think there are opportunities to come back at those stories to really research them and tell them in great more detail and as narratives.
SPEAKER_00Because of those exact reasons, are you more drawn to these stories of history rather than something that's contemporary happening now?
SPEAKER_01You know, I go back and forth. I began obviously telling contemporaneous stories. Um I was a journalist, so there's a real kind of um uh you know uh value placed on the newness. You know, something's gotta be new. It's gotta be breaking, and so you're chasing these stories as they are unfolding. And then over time, I I did always love history when I was younger. I just as I became more fascinated by stories, I kind of became unbound by time. I really no longer cared whether a story was new or of the past, uh, as long as it was a great story. And so I still feel that way. Um, you know, I would tell a story if it was a contemporaneous, a great story, and in some ways it would be nice to be able to interview people who are living, and and um um, but uh I'll kind of go wherever the story takes me. So I'm kind of equally open to the stories in the present and stories in the past. But I do think sometimes there are stories in the present that you can't quite yet tell because you don't quite know where they're going. Right. Um, or you can't quite find the way in yet. And I also think sometimes there are certain stories that are being overcovered, so you don't think you can make such a contribution, and so sometimes there are these stories in the past that are lost to history. I try to find stories in the past though that resonate and deeply resonate uh with the present. So if it's a you know, I think sometimes we forget that a story has power beyond its date. And there are stories in the past that can be as illuminating about human nature, as illuminating about you know the forces of history as anything that's happening in the moment.
SPEAKER_00Are you intrigued at all by um financial crime?
SPEAKER_01Um I am, and I I've sometimes thought about it, I would be interested in doing such a story. I will say that it it would be intimidating to me because I haven't written about it's kind of a world I haven't written about, but then again, I never wrote about the British Navy in the 18th century. So you know you just you you have to overcome your yeah, you have to overcome your trepidation and and and take the plunge. But uh, you know, it would be something, you know, I am I I like to write about something that I haven't written about before, you know, because then my curiosity eats at me. So that is a subject and a field and a material um that I would love to find my way into if I could find the right story and the right way in.
SPEAKER_00I just say because um narrative journalists who have covered all types of financial crime um and kleptocracy um have probably been the most common guest on this podcast. And um something a lot of them say is that more than ever, year on year on year, there is more uh f the the amount of financial fraud, financial crime is increasing, and also the size of it. You know, like these these um um these great cases of people being fleeced are just adding zeros to them every single year. And so I just sit as a you know as a very, very keen observer, and admittedly I have a giant proximity bias, um so it could just be my own yeah, it could just be that. Um but it feels like there is uh there is room for a great David Grant, or you know, for some very very huge um Okay, now I'm just getting over. I'm I'm getting ahead over my skis now, but basically just yeah. Um something that they all said is that there's a lot of stories to be told in financial crime.
SPEAKER_01I I do think if you know, again you're kind of guessing, and because it's sometimes what you think is the age you're living in, and then you look back and you completely missed it. I mean, I I sometimes think about, you know, the things that have consumed us that maybe missing it more fundamental existential crises that are gonna invade us. And so we're sometimes these kind of trivial scandals that um we're ignoring. But I do think when you read the newspapers and you, you know, just follow the business world and even the political world that we are living in the great age of grift.
SPEAKER_00It certainly feels that way. Nice, nice place to end it on, David. Um thank you for being uh generous by going over on your time. And um, you know, I said it to your fair before, but uh there are just there's something about Percy Force and the Lost City of Z. Um it's one of the most yeah compelling stories I've ever heard. Um and uh the wager is absolutely incredible as well. Kills of Flower Moon. I mean, yeah. Congratulations, mate. It's just it's incredible and uh yeah, good on you. It's my pleasure. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01It was great, thank you.