0:09

You are listening to the Katie Herzog

0:11

experience. I'm Katie Herzog, the only host

0:13

of this podcast, and today we have

0:15

a very special guest host sitting in

0:17

with me, Andy Mills. Now

0:20

even if you don't know the name Andy Mills,

0:22

you probably know his work. He

0:24

was a longtime producer on the public

0:26

radio show Radiolab, and he co-created the

0:28

New York Times podcast The Daily, Caliphate,

0:31

and Rabbit Hole. More recently

0:33

he created and produced The Witch

0:35

Trials of J.K. Rowling. And Andy is

0:37

an audio genius. He's really considered

0:39

one of the best radio producers in the

0:41

country, and he has the awards and accolades

0:43

to prove it, including multiple Pulitzer nominations. But

0:47

he also took a very public fall from grace in

0:49

2020. And for the

0:51

first time ever, Andy is going to speak

0:53

publicly about what actually happened behind the scenes at

0:55

the New York Times and elsewhere during that summer.

0:58

Now I'm not going to pretend to be unbiased here.

1:01

Andy's my friend. He slept on my couch.

1:03

We've eaten meals together. And he's

1:05

also someone who, as you will hear, takes

1:07

responsibility for his fuckups and who survived

1:10

a pretty brutal cancellation campaign and somehow

1:12

came out of it okay. And

1:14

I'm really glad to have him sitting in today for that other

1:16

guy whose name we shall not mention. Andy,

1:19

welcome to the show. Thank you, Katie. And

1:21

yes, it's true, I have enjoyed the

1:24

hospitality of you and your wife and

1:26

her fantastic cooking. And

1:28

I regularly enjoy the splendor of your

1:31

friendship. And I appreciate you having me on today. I

1:33

mean, I think what I

1:35

would love to do with you in our

1:37

time here today is kind of two things.

1:40

One of them is speak as

1:43

a reporter who

1:45

was inside of two very

1:47

important and very influential

1:50

media institutions during

1:52

these years of a

1:54

really profound and interesting

1:57

shift that's underway in

1:59

journalism right now. And the other thing

2:02

is more personal and obviously more

2:04

difficult, but I'd like to try and talk

2:06

about What it

2:08

was like to be involved in

2:10

a public shaming that changed my life,

2:13

but that I hope also

2:15

will Reflect some

2:17

of the larger issues that are at play

2:19

in our culture. Does that sound good? This

2:21

sounds fantastic I'm so glad to finally have

2:23

a pro in the room with me you

2:26

and Jesse are pros We

2:28

are amateurs You

2:30

don't have to lie you're a journalist no

2:33

one but you could have done that

2:35

Lolita's story And I've listened to that

2:37

like three times It's probably one

2:39

of my top recommendations I give people when they

2:41

ask me for podcast recommendations

2:44

I black that one out. Okay. So before

2:46

we get to the messy heart of it, let's

2:48

start with your background Okay, you

2:50

don't have the sort of typical upper-middle class white

2:52

collar background of most journalists working today Especially in

2:54

public radio You were not a backseat baby and

2:57

that does not mean a child who was conceived

2:59

in the backseat of a car I

3:01

mean someone who grew up listening to NPR So

3:04

how did you tell me about your background? How did you end

3:06

up in public radio? Where did you come from? Well,

3:08

I was raised largely in a

3:10

very small Midwestern town The

3:13

kind of place with you know cornfields

3:15

old red barns Only

3:18

a thousand people in our town, although

3:20

it's the county seed, which

3:22

is a big deal means we got the courthouse The

3:25

joke was always that there were more hogs than

3:27

people living in our town and that's

3:29

probably probably still true and

3:33

you know growing up I definitely never

3:35

dreamed of being a journalist I Didn't

3:39

exactly know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I

3:41

wanted to do something that was meaningful I

3:44

would love to see the world you know like a

3:46

lot of people who grow up in small towns and

3:48

Watch a lot of movies and read a lot of books you

3:50

kind of wonder what it would be like to travel out in

3:52

the world I think

3:55

briefly when I was in high school. I thought

3:57

about joining the military especially because was

4:00

an especially charismatic

4:02

Navy recruiter who came to our

4:04

school and showed us pictures of

4:06

aircraft carriers and the Indian Ocean

4:09

and talked about how one

4:11

night he saw these flying fish. And I remember

4:14

thinking, wow, that'd be amazing to

4:16

go to someplace like that. But

4:18

instead, I ended up

4:20

going to Christian College to

4:23

become some sort of minister. I

4:26

have always been involved in the church. I

4:28

think like a lot of small towns, the

4:30

church was the central focus point

4:32

of a lot of the social elements of

4:34

our town. And for me especially,

4:36

I thought that church was not just a

4:39

place that you went on Sundays, but it

4:41

was also a place where you could kind

4:43

of have deep conversations about good and evil

4:45

and what makes a meaningful life. But

4:47

in Christian College, I read

4:50

a lot of theology, studied a lot of

4:53

church history, and

4:55

pretty soon the sort of

4:57

Protestant fundamentalism that I had

4:59

grown up with started

5:02

to fray at the seams. You know, just

5:04

certain things that we were told every Christian

5:06

believed. I learned not every

5:09

Christian believed and especially not every Christian throughout

5:11

time is believed. And

5:13

the more I read the Bible, the more I

5:15

was surprised that there weren't passages in there that

5:17

I thought would be and that it was more

5:19

complicated. There wasn't a God hates facts passage. Where

5:22

is that at? What

5:25

started there I think, you know, to

5:27

make a very long story short, you

5:29

know, eventually I just started to lose

5:31

certain foundational beliefs, whether it

5:33

was that everyone went to hell except for

5:36

a small band of Christians who believed exactly

5:38

what I did or other

5:40

aspects. And I became less interested

5:44

in a vocation where I would

5:46

be telling other people what to

5:48

believe and why. And

5:51

I started to be more attracted

5:53

to storytelling and to journalism

5:57

and especially this idea At

5:59

the. Reasons. A lotta journalism

6:01

which is that you get to go

6:04

out and meet people who are different,

6:06

the new who have different life experiences

6:08

and new different assumptions than you. and

6:10

you get to be curious about them.

6:12

For. A Living. You get to tell

6:15

their stories. You get to examine

6:17

the way that their lives have

6:19

been impacted by some law or

6:21

the way that some war has

6:23

impacted their beliefs about reality. And

6:25

eventually that led me to wanting

6:27

to become a journalist. okay so

6:29

you got a christian school he lose

6:31

the face as i i think that

6:34

is probably not the the intelligence other

6:36

a state shockingly down and out guns

6:38

and you going to journalism and tell

6:40

me about your for sobs. Will.

6:42

Write Out A College I spent a summer

6:45

roofing houses, which I have done most summers

6:47

of my life, including just this past summer.

6:51

But after that I landed a job.

6:53

Kind of a dream job. As like

6:56

a young twenty three year old aspiring

6:58

journalist, It. Was a one year

7:00

contract as a research journalist in

7:02

South Sudan are this was print

7:05

journalism at the time and for

7:07

a year I had this incredible

7:09

experience of driving around South Sudan

7:11

with an interpreter on a motorcycle,

7:13

living in tents and meeting people

7:16

who were in the midst of

7:18

like really intense. Experiences.

7:21

At that time, a very long

7:23

civil war had just ended, and

7:25

Southern Sudan, as it was known

7:27

at the time. Was. Attempting to

7:29

form it's own country which is now

7:32

South Sudan and the stories I was

7:34

hearing were about. Sexual.

7:36

Abuse about. Murder

7:39

and infanticide and the burning

7:41

of people alive A mean

7:44

it was very intense. A

7:46

very meaningful. Work. It

7:49

definitely solidified that I wanted to

7:51

do this for a living. That

7:53

is quite a job. The first jobs

7:55

not even are selling them school that

7:58

out of christened dollars. Yeah. I

8:00

had to save that have a that.

8:02

There were definitely times where I would

8:04

be riding my motorcycle into a small

8:06

village alongside you know a river in

8:08

South Sudan and all these kids would

8:10

be coming up to me shouting Khawaja

8:12

Khawaja Khawaja which is like that's their

8:15

word for white man you know and

8:17

I would learn that I was the

8:19

first in a white skinned person to

8:21

ever come to their village and they

8:23

be like heading the hair on my

8:25

arms and you know and I def

8:27

we would have this feeling of like.

8:30

How the hell did I get this far by do

8:32

that for a year? And. And of

8:34

course had traveled around Europe a little

8:36

bit as your one to do at

8:39

that age. And then I got back

8:41

to the Us in the fall of

8:43

two thousand and eight. And it turns

8:46

out I had come back to the

8:48

United States, where there were very few

8:50

jobs for aspiring young print journalists, especially

8:52

those who only had a year of

8:55

work on their resume in obscure villages

8:57

in Sudan. So I got a job

8:59

as a house painter. And.

9:02

That. Surprisingly ended up changing the

9:05

trajectory of my career because ah, there

9:07

was this device you may recall called

9:09

the I Pod. Remember this? I do

9:12

and I had a friend of mine

9:14

who knew I was going to be

9:16

out painting houses all day and he

9:19

loaded up the I Pod with a

9:21

bunch of episodes of This American Life.

9:24

And remember like this is before. Those

9:26

people know the word podcast. This was

9:28

like a guy who pirated a bunch

9:30

of M P Threes of This American

9:32

Life from the internet and put them

9:34

on my ipod. And. Day

9:36

in and day out as I

9:38

would be painting these houses, I

9:41

was just obsessed with the storytelling

9:43

with this kind of like suman

9:45

since rick journalism that seem driven

9:48

by curiosity is interested in news

9:50

but also in the small delicate

9:52

moments that were revealing about some

9:54

greater humanity and I wanted in.

9:57

And. so i got a microphone I

10:00

had a friend who taught me how

10:02

to use some sound editing software and

10:05

I started interviewing everybody that I

10:08

could I started interviewing my family

10:10

members. I interviewed my neighbors I

10:12

interviewed my friends and then I

10:14

would go to my apartment and

10:16

I would edit these stories into

10:18

little audio postcards and eventually

10:21

after years of Doing

10:24

these little audio stories on my

10:26

own and working at coffee shops

10:28

and bars and factories eventually

10:30

one of my stories won me

10:32

an award and That

10:35

meant that I got to borrow a

10:37

suit and go to Chicago to this

10:39

big award ceremony Where

10:41

all the kind of big names

10:44

in this new rising industry called

10:46

podcasting? We're all there and

10:49

I used my opportunity To

10:51

receive this award while I was

10:53

up there in front of everybody to say

10:56

thank you very much But will someone

10:58

please hire me? Like

11:02

I would love Nothing

11:05

more than to have the lowest

11:07

level position working in this industry

11:09

If anyone has a job opening

11:11

and that led to me getting

11:13

my first full-time Not

11:15

just a contract staff job with

11:18

Radiolab. So you moved to New York

11:20

after that. Yes Getting

11:22

this job didn't just mean that I got

11:25

to do what I wanted to do for

11:27

living But it also meant that suddenly I

11:29

was living in New York and a part

11:31

of the New York media Universe

11:34

that I don't think I ever

11:36

really considered before like I don't

11:38

think that I realized that like

11:40

every one Of

11:42

the major big news studios like

11:45

even Fox News like they're all in

11:48

New York So did you experience some culture

11:50

shock here either, you know from moving from a

11:52

small town to a big city or Working

11:55

in the you know, kind of rarefied intellectual progressive

11:57

world of public radio. I mean even a house

12:00

and you'd worked in factories, you went to

12:02

Christian college, how did you fit

12:04

into this environment? Yeah, I mean, that's

12:06

a good question because on the one hand, it was

12:08

awesome, and on

12:10

the other hand, it was disorienting.

12:14

On the awesome end, I mean, these were

12:16

my people, especially at Radiolab. I mean, I

12:18

don't know if people out there listening remember

12:20

those early years and the

12:23

kinds of stories and the ambition that

12:25

we were going for in those big

12:27

episodes, but the people who

12:29

I was working with largely were as

12:31

obsessive about stories as I was. They

12:34

were hungry to tell stories that moved

12:37

people that challenged their beliefs. But

12:39

yes, I also noticed rather

12:42

quickly that I was a

12:44

bit of an oddball in some ways

12:46

that maybe I didn't expect. And

12:48

then some of it became kind of fun. I

12:51

mean, there would be people who, when

12:53

they found out my background, would

12:55

say, so did you

12:58

used to believe in creationism or

13:00

something? And I'm like, yeah, yeah,

13:02

I did. Like many Americans, maybe

13:04

not Americans. And they'd be like, but

13:07

what do you believe now? And I'm

13:09

like, well, I

13:11

find the evolutionary theory very

13:13

persuasive, very interesting.

13:16

I'm an enthusiastic student

13:19

of this Darwin guy, but

13:21

that came later. That came when I was in my 20s. And

13:24

they'd be like, hold on a second. And

13:27

they'd bring a friend and be like, can you tell

13:29

him what you just told me about creationism? So

13:33

it was kind of, I feel like a little bit of a party

13:35

trick, maybe. I could see how

13:37

other people would go through the experience and

13:39

feel a lot of imposter syndrome, to use

13:41

a favorite term on Twitter. Did

13:43

you feel that way? Did you feel

13:45

like out of place in a bad way? I wouldn't

13:47

say imposter syndrome, but I would say that

13:50

it led to some moments maybe

13:54

felt normal while

13:56

I was in them, but then quickly

13:58

would feel embarrassing afterwards. Maybe

14:01

a good example of this from early on when

14:03

I was there. One of the

14:06

early debates that I got into with some of

14:08

the younger staffers revolved around the

14:11

phrase, people of color. I believe

14:13

somebody had recommended that

14:16

we started to use the phrase

14:18

people of color more uniformly at

14:21

Radiolab. And someone eventually

14:23

even proposed that we would come up with

14:25

a list of our guests and

14:28

classify them between white and people

14:30

of color so that we could

14:32

better understand how often we

14:35

were talking to more white people than

14:37

people of color. That was their argument.

14:39

And this has become pretty standard in

14:41

public radio in terms of cataloging.

14:44

Like I know some shows in some stations,

14:46

they really track demographics, which

14:48

I think can lead to some pretty inadvertently

14:51

hilarious and also very embarrassing situations

14:53

from reporters who have to, during

14:56

the course of interviewing, for instance, someone

14:58

in a militia, the interview

15:01

says, what's your gender identity

15:03

and what's your race? This was

15:05

before that time began. Or I

15:07

guess maybe this was the beginning

15:09

of that cultural movement happening.

15:12

And I was a part

15:14

of these conversations at WNYC, the parent

15:16

company of Radiolab. And

15:18

I remember one day pushing

15:20

back on this idea, especially the

15:23

use of people of color. My

15:25

first argument was that I don't know if a

15:27

lot of people across America use the phrase people

15:29

of color. It seems

15:32

like something I hadn't really heard on a

15:34

regular basis until I moved to New York.

15:37

So that might be kind of alienating. And

15:40

on top of that, it does feel

15:43

funny to categorize people in

15:45

this way. And I told them that

15:47

– Yeah. Like

15:50

maybe a little bit racist. I

15:52

mean, the example that I used is I said how I

15:54

was raised. And I'm not saying how I was raised was

15:56

right, but I was saying how I was raised, we

15:59

were encouraged. not to use language like that.

16:01

It was a little bit different. I

16:03

had the uncle who called people colored

16:05

people. He thought it was colored

16:07

people and white people. My family taught me

16:11

that you don't say that. The

16:14

world is not divided up

16:16

that way and that colored people were people.

16:18

We were all just people and that

16:20

it was inappropriate to use. I said, isn't there

16:23

a little bit of some

16:25

kind of similar happening here? I know that

16:27

it's people of color instead of colored people.

16:31

Andy, it's totally different. If

16:33

you put the people

16:35

first, it's not racist.

16:37

At the time, it was just

16:40

awkward and I didn't understand why

16:42

people were getting quiet. Then afterwards,

16:44

at the bar, my buddies who I work with pulled

16:46

me aside and were like, Andy,

16:48

don't ever say stuff like that at

16:51

work. It would be like, why? What's going

16:53

on? They're just like, trust us. Just

16:55

don't talk about that stuff, especially with the younger

16:58

staffers. I was like, okay, and I'd be a

17:00

little embarrassed. But then I don't know, I would

17:02

go back to work. I would do my job

17:04

well. We would win awards. That seemed

17:07

like a small fringe

17:09

aspect of it all. At times,

17:12

I think because I had

17:14

been a Christian at a

17:16

Christian college who then started to

17:18

question the basic orthodoxy of

17:21

my fellow Christians, I was

17:23

comfortable at the time pushing back on my

17:25

professors. I worked at the

17:28

college newspaper at my Christian

17:31

college and I was the editor of the

17:33

op-ed section. I liked

17:35

to publish op-eds that questioned things

17:37

that were considered orthodoxy. I'm glad

17:40

that there's no digital

17:43

archive of my own writings from

17:45

the time. I did a big

17:47

piece, a big reported piece where

17:50

I interviewed the professors of religion

17:52

and psychology. I asked

17:54

the question, should Christians

17:56

committed to celibacy before marriage?

18:00

have masturbation as a

18:02

part of their kind of

18:04

healthy sex lives. Like, can

18:06

you or can you not masturbate? What's

18:09

the answer? I caused quite

18:11

a bit of a stir. I mean,

18:13

interestingly, the theologians were split at my school.

18:15

But, yeah, so I think that there was a

18:17

level of kind of comfort and I kind of

18:20

thought, well, this is what we do, isn't it?

18:22

We disagree and we try and find a

18:24

better idea. I mean, we definitely did it

18:26

when it came to stories and we all

18:29

pushed each other to go deeper and find

18:31

something more interesting or more true at the

18:33

base of the stories we're working on. And

18:35

I don't think I thought of this necessarily

18:37

as that different at the time. That

18:39

makes sense. Yeah. OK,

18:42

so despite this tendency to say things

18:44

you're not supposed to say, ask

18:46

questions you're not supposed to ask necessarily, although

18:48

as a journalist, this can really come in

18:50

handy as a coworker, maybe not,

18:53

maybe not as much. But you you were really

18:55

good at your jobs. And it seemed

18:57

like you were doing really well. But there

18:59

were some problems at work, problems that almost

19:01

killed your career and in fact would later

19:03

come back and haunt you. So tell

19:05

me what happened. OK, so in 2013 and

19:07

in the winter of 2014, two things happened that,

19:15

yes, years later would change

19:17

my life profoundly. One

19:20

of them was a debate about

19:22

hiring. Radiolab was growing at

19:24

the time. Like I said, our numbers were growing

19:26

every month. We were really excited, but we were

19:28

also really ambitious and we were working ourselves quite

19:31

hard. And we were thrilled when

19:34

the opportunity came up to hire a new producer.

19:37

And our hiring process eventually led

19:39

to two qualified candidates, a man

19:42

and a woman. And

19:44

I strongly believed that the man who was

19:46

up for the job, who was someone who

19:49

had tempted for us for over a year

19:51

and who had honestly taught me a lot.

19:54

I thought he was just clearly the more qualified

19:56

candidate. And There was some agreement about

19:58

that on the team. In

20:00

a conversation emerged

20:03

about diversity. In. This

20:05

case, it was gender diversity. I believe at

20:07

the time there were five or six men

20:09

on the team and three or four women

20:11

on the team. I can't remember the exact

20:14

number so many deaths I'd ever. I don't

20:16

believe they said devotee dogs and you know,

20:18

the the woman candidate was also qualified. I

20:20

just did not think she was nearly as

20:22

qualified, and I don't think I didn't think

20:25

that she would be as good of a

20:27

higher death. Where things get tricky was when

20:29

I pushed back on the very notion that

20:31

we should consider their genders at all in

20:33

the hiring. and I'm sure. I did

20:35

not status as eloquently as I'm

20:38

trying to now, but I did,

20:40

I said some version of like,

20:42

"If we can't look her in

20:44

the eye and" You. Know you

20:46

were hired because you were the best person for

20:48

the job. If.

20:50

We have to say well you are the best. Person.

20:53

Who wasn't a man for the job? like?

20:55

I just feels disrespectful and I think it's

20:57

against my principles. So that was the first

20:59

thing that habit. The second thing

21:01

that happened is far more. Embarrassing.

21:04

And shameful. And that is sad that

21:06

in the winter of Twenty Thirteen or

21:08

fourteen a com and prefers December or

21:10

January a group of. Radio.

21:13

Lab colleagues and I were out in

21:15

Brooklyn at a bar. And

21:17

we got properly drunk. And.

21:20

Eventually a little argument broke

21:22

out and in the midst

21:24

of this argument, one of

21:26

my colleagues a female colleague.

21:29

Called. Me a fucking sister. And.

21:32

I kind of acting like I

21:34

was just joking around. took my

21:36

drink. And. I dumped it on her

21:38

head. And. Ah what wasn't

21:40

rank and how much of it because when when

21:42

I think it like when i when you say

21:44

took my drug and up tomorrow had what I'm

21:46

picturing is a playing classical. A. Beer. Well.

21:50

Sadly, I've had to think a lot

21:52

about certain that glass because it has

21:54

been litigated. I mean, the truth is,

21:56

I just don't exactly remember. Up to

21:58

my memory the a was a half

22:00

glass of water. I reached out to

22:02

people who were there that night and

22:04

they said yes, they remember being at

22:06

glass of water as she remembers it

22:08

as a half glass of beer. I

22:11

don't think that it's worth our time

22:13

to litigate that. It was a stupid

22:15

fucking thing to do Normally so, and

22:18

as soon as I. Did. It

22:20

I knew that. And everyone was

22:22

super appalled and was like dude what the

22:24

fuck did you just do and I was

22:26

like oh my god I I I'm just

22:28

kidding no I'm not. I'd say that was

22:30

stupid I'm sorry M C I don't like

22:32

it is immediately was me I'm clear that

22:34

it was crossing some line is it wasn't

22:36

a joke and it was super rude and

22:39

stupid I you know the oh I got

22:41

a towel and every all of us rush

22:43

as you would to to clean up the

22:45

mess and I just please I'm sorry I'm

22:47

sorry I'm sorry I think she was very

22:49

embarrassed by it and even though she said

22:51

no it's fine whatever we were you know

22:53

we were were drunk, we've been stupid It

22:55

was like no Clearly that was. Crossing.

22:58

A line and that was dumb. I apologize

23:00

again to her later that night and. Yet.

23:02

Damn. It was this like

23:05

absolutely stupid embarrassing thing that I

23:07

did. Yeah, Fast. Forward a

23:09

few weeks and one day when I'm

23:11

at work. I. Am called

23:14

in to a jars office

23:16

and they sit me down.

23:18

And. They tell me

23:21

that. Because of an

23:23

incident that occurred. They.

23:25

Have done an investigation. Into

23:28

my behavior at work: they've

23:30

spoken to my colleagues and

23:32

to my managers and they've

23:34

come up with a list

23:36

of behaviors. That. Are

23:39

unprofessional, And that

23:41

I will immediately desist with.

23:43

Or. Else I'm gonna lose my job and

23:45

on the list of course. As

23:48

a top is the dumping of the

23:50

drink. There was also people who said

23:52

that they had been a send did

23:54

about my comments about one of our

23:56

colleagues being hired because of her gender

23:58

and not just her. So. Is There

24:00

was also smaller things on.

24:03

My use of the word gals. I

24:05

used to say guys and gals a lot

24:07

and some people felt I was gals bad.

24:09

I didn't know, I asked them and and

24:12

I ever. I remember the Hr manager

24:14

saying eddie, it's twenty fourteen, You work in

24:16

an office in New York. There's.

24:18

No place here for a word like gals.

24:21

Weight. But so when he supposed to say

24:23

guys like you just say guy is than your

24:25

a leading out the gals he could? You want

24:27

to say girls girls? I can see how that

24:29

would be Patronizing the gals. Once again and

24:31

it's I just met his knees in

24:34

the sort of conversation with the Hr

24:36

person. I was incredibly embarrassed as as

24:38

or and I was of scared and

24:41

especially because you know another thing on

24:43

this list was something that really sucked

24:45

me which is that some of my

24:47

colleagues had said that I was. Just

24:51

too touchy. Both men and women felt

24:53

that I was to hug each too

24:55

quick for my arm around them says

24:57

too familiar in that way and that

25:00

some of them had felt like it

25:02

wasn't professional and one person in particular

25:04

has pointed out that in a staff

25:06

meeting where there weren't enough chairs and

25:08

the room for everyone, she sat on

25:11

the floor in front of me. And.

25:13

That they are in front of everybody.

25:15

I rubbed her shoulders and that it

25:17

made her feel really uncomfortable and. I.

25:21

Immediately remembered doing that and.

25:24

Absolutely. Was embarrassed because

25:26

in my head. I. Thought

25:28

that I was like this like search

25:31

can't be lovable mid western guy who's

25:33

like full of compliments and always given

25:35

hugs and I'll see you guys next

25:37

week. Rates and at least some of

25:40

my colleagues. That's not how I'm coming

25:42

off at all. I'm employ

25:44

it was. It was a devastating and

25:46

embarrassing wake up call. That. i

25:48

needed to change my behavior at work

25:51

how did you respond to this will

25:53

there's definitely a part of me that

25:55

really wanted to fight back in and

25:57

say like guys there's nothing wrong with

25:59

using gals That's just a regional word

26:01

and you're overreacting and it's like

26:04

saying Paul. Exactly.

26:06

And like, and especially about the shoulder

26:08

rub, I was like, well, she's

26:11

my friend and she had been dating

26:13

my roommate and we had a

26:15

relationship, you know, that was very friendly

26:17

outside of the office. She, she knows I

26:19

didn't mean anything by it. Um, but

26:23

instead I chose to just

26:25

see this as like a real wakeup call. Like

26:28

I said, to, to say, okay, people

26:31

at work don't always see you the way you see yourself

26:34

and better now than later,

26:37

you have been informed about this

26:39

because I want to have a nice long career

26:43

in this world, better, you know, my first couple of years in an

26:45

office then later on having this kind of discovery.

26:49

And so I just told them, like,

26:51

I confess it's all true. I'm

26:54

incredibly sorry. I will

26:56

never do it again. And I will, you know, take

27:00

any punishment that you guys deem necessary.

27:02

And, uh, that

27:04

punishment took the form of a one,

27:06

I was passed over for a promotion

27:08

that I'd been working towards and two,

27:11

I had to go to a

27:13

professional workplace trainer offsite on

27:15

my own time, unpaid. I was contrite to say the

27:18

least. I apologize to

27:20

the members of my team. I apologize to

27:22

my bosses. I tried very hard to

27:25

make sure that I never

27:27

behaved again in any way that could

27:30

ever end up on a list like this. I

27:32

think this is a good time for a break. This is a

27:34

podcast. You can reach out to us at

27:36

blocks and reported podcasts at female.com. Also

27:39

check us out on Reddit. Our subreddit

27:41

is God. I have to do

27:44

this without Jesse blocks and reported. reddit.com. I

27:46

can guarantee that's accurate, but go ahead and try it.

27:49

And if you want to support the show, the

27:51

best way to do that is by coming a premium subscriber, a Primo,

27:53

as we like to call them, or a preemie. You can do that

27:55

at blocked and reported.org where for just five dollars a month. get

28:00

early access to our episodes. They're also ad

28:02

free and you get three extra

28:04

episodes of this podcast every month. Jesse is going

28:06

to be back to join us for all of

28:08

the premium episodes. So if you miss him and

28:11

I don't know why you would, but someone, one

28:13

person out there probably does check

28:15

us out. That is blocked

28:17

and reported.org. And I think

28:20

that's it. I'm probably forgetting something, but Jesse isn't

28:22

here to berate me. So let's move on. Andy,

28:24

you back? I'm back. I'm

28:27

here. And I just so you guys

28:29

know, I am a subscriber

28:32

to blocked and reported and

28:34

I have no regrets. We get the Andy Mills

28:36

endorsement. I will have all of our premiums on the

28:38

show at one time or another. Andy's just the first

28:40

one. Okay,

28:43

so let's get into it. So in 2016, so

28:47

that's two years after you're meeting with

28:49

HR at Radiolab, you leave

28:51

WNYC and Radiolab and you joined the

28:53

New York Times. And while you're

28:55

there, you create a new show, the daily huge

28:58

hit number one podcast in America,

29:00

millions of downloads. And

29:02

your career is going amazing. You were the envy

29:04

of the podcast world, but then

29:07

two years later in 2018, so this is right at

29:10

the height of the Me Too movement. You

29:12

get a call from New York magazine. Tell

29:15

us about that. Okay, so yeah,

29:17

I mean, first, it started off when

29:19

actually I got a call from an old

29:21

boss at WNYC

29:24

who was calling to say, hey,

29:27

there's a freelance reporter for New

29:29

York magazine who's asking questions about

29:31

you. And I think he's trying

29:33

to drum up some

29:35

kind of Me Too story. I told him that,

29:37

you know, there's nothing here, but

29:39

he seemed very motivated. So just watch

29:41

out. That was followed

29:44

by more calls from former

29:46

colleagues, from former interns, who

29:48

said that this guy was asking about whether or not

29:51

I ever had inappropriate sexual relationships

29:53

with them. And then

29:55

eventually I got a call from

29:58

the reporter himself And. Several

30:00

emails and he was investigating

30:02

not only the claims that

30:05

had been on that list,

30:07

but far more absurd claims

30:10

that were completely and. Founded.

30:13

And die at this time. Of course I went

30:15

to the New York Times. I I told them

30:18

about this article that was gonna come out and

30:20

I gotta tell you. They. Were

30:22

amazing. I. Think that it was.

30:24

One thing that really helped set go

30:26

smoothly was that I had pretty soon

30:29

after I took the job as a

30:31

New York Times, I bonded very quickly

30:33

with my colleagues, are making a daily

30:36

show with a very small team deep

30:38

into the night. Every night will do

30:40

that and I was very open with

30:43

them about having had this profound experience

30:45

with his Hr investigation and essentially this

30:47

like get professional in the workplace or

30:50

you're outta here. Kind. Of punishment

30:52

that I got and so whenever this journalists

30:54

came looking for statements from me and from

30:56

the times it wasn't like it was news

30:58

to them. And. They absolutely went

31:01

to bat for me. Your the

31:03

stood up for me. Saying.

31:05

That I had been a great

31:07

colleague that I had shown you

31:09

know remorse and embarrassment about the

31:11

experiences that had happened when as

31:13

a Double N Y C years

31:16

ago and you know the guy

31:18

eventually publishes the article and. Really?

31:21

Nothing happens. When. He

31:23

initially published his article in New York magazine,

31:25

"There were a few claims that were in

31:27

there that were just unscrew and I. Give.

31:30

Told him they run through the times. It

31:33

essentially asked if he had proof of these

31:35

claims, and he never provided the proofs. But

31:37

he insinuated these things were true in the

31:39

article. So we did get him within twenty

31:42

four, forty eight hours of the article been

31:44

published. I think we got him to make

31:46

like six different corrections to this article, but

31:48

even with all that, I mean it is.

31:51

It's absolutely made No splash. Who I mean

31:53

it that moment. You know I was working at The Stranger

31:55

at the time and I had colleagues to the same

31:57

thing was happening. people who'd been at the paper for a

31:59

long time. Who reporter if we're calling

32:01

you know, trying to get dirt on

32:03

Nothing came out about anybody. but there

32:05

was just this. It was like it's

32:07

it. Tell you something about group. Think

32:09

that all the sudden. There's this absolute.

32:12

Fever. Pitch: We gotta get these guys are

32:14

we gotta get him right now. even if there's

32:16

really no. They're they're young and I

32:18

just want to highlight here just how

32:21

wonderful my colleagues as a New York

32:23

Times worse during this entire experience. To

32:25

says like a small anecdote after the

32:27

article was published. Several.

32:29

Editors and reporters who I really admired. They

32:31

went out of their way to rape me,

32:33

emails, or to come over to my desk

32:35

and tell me essentially like, if somebody investigated

32:37

with a fine tooth comb all the stupid

32:39

shit I did when I was in my

32:41

twenties, they would have found a lot worse

32:43

than what they found on you. Man, like,

32:45

don't sweat it, you're going to get through

32:47

this. It's fine. To someone

32:49

stand behind you, rub shoulders, Hopes

32:52

know they did not. Oh

32:54

my guys. And them,

32:57

you know he. Then they went even further than that. I'm in my.

32:59

My bosses gave me the opportunity to

33:01

apologize to the team as a daily

33:03

for bringing me in a bad press

33:05

and to essentially give them my side

33:07

of the story where I confess that

33:09

yes, I had done this stupid shit

33:11

and I'm really sorry about it and

33:13

it's in the past and the team

33:15

treated me with graciousness, my bosses treated

33:17

me with respect, and we kind of

33:19

just got back to work and in.

33:22

A. Year later. When. I

33:24

received a promotion. In

33:27

my Performance Review. My. Managers

33:29

actually wrote in a whole section

33:31

about how they felt that I

33:33

had dealt with that situation with

33:35

professionalism, candor and grace, and it

33:38

just meant a lot to me.

33:40

You have a handy. To. Have with

33:42

my performance Review. Yeah, he don't. You

33:44

don't keep an eye on hundred us. Ah,

33:47

I do have. Of

33:50

Aids. I guess I

33:53

get a I could go get it. I printed

33:55

I did printed out because in the midst of

33:57

what is to com. There. Were

33:59

times when. Wondered like. A. Am

34:01

I a city person? Like? Am I remembering

34:03

this thing differently and of sometimes I'd pull

34:05

it out and read it when when I

34:07

need to assist. Assist give us a

34:10

dramatic reading. In the midst

34:12

of production, you had to deal with

34:14

a difficult situation in which a magazine

34:16

was publishing unflattering accounts of your time

34:18

as a producer. A W N Y

34:20

C. You. Handle the situation

34:22

with candor and grace. Telling.

34:24

Your managers and colleagues. Long before it became

34:27

the subject of a story. And. Working

34:29

with us to understand what had happened. And.

34:31

What you have learned from it. In. The End:

34:34

our confidence and you in our

34:36

admiration for you. Grew. From

34:38

the situation. I mean,

34:40

considering what is the com that is

34:42

darkly darkly ironic? Okay, it's let's simply

34:44

callous. A. So a lot of our

34:46

listeners probably remember this show and what

34:48

happened afterwards. But for those who don't,

34:50

just tell us about the show up

34:52

at. Okay so after the

34:54

Dailies success ah the next of

34:56

project i worked on was Palisade.

34:59

This was a lake seven eight

35:01

part. Series. Podcast

35:03

Super ambitious. Ah, not only the

35:05

most ambitious by guess I've ever

35:08

made, but I think one of

35:10

the more ambitious protests that ever

35:12

tempted to be may have. Hey,

35:14

I'm not. listen to our seven

35:16

Castles I I actually didn't make

35:19

it to the South Africa consists

35:21

of but you know this was

35:23

me and star Terrorism reporter for

35:25

the new your time for many

35:27

column maki you know, on the

35:30

ground war reporting in Mosul during

35:32

the fight. to regain control

35:34

from isis oh just wild

35:36

experiences with survivors of bombings

35:38

our former as sex slaves

35:40

that had been held by

35:42

isis you know when on

35:44

the battlefields to pick up

35:47

documents as seeing all these

35:49

dead bodies and and it

35:51

was just that intense experience

35:53

mixed with this very strange

35:55

confessional interview that we had

35:57

with a former isis fighter

36:00

who was at the time living back in

36:02

Canada. And this podcast

36:04

was absolutely my baby.

36:06

I had pitched it, produced it,

36:08

obsessed over it, 70,

36:11

80 hours a week for months and months. I wrote

36:13

a lot of the music for it. I mean, I

36:16

gave it everything that I had. And

36:18

it was just a very small team of us that was

36:20

making the show, one other producer

36:23

and two editors. And this

36:25

was what we thought after the Daily

36:27

going to be like the next big

36:29

thing from our audio team. And

36:31

it was, right? So Califate's a huge

36:33

success, both commercially and critically. You won

36:35

a bunch of awards, including a Peabody.

36:38

But there was also some controversy, right? There

36:40

was. In the

36:43

media aftermath, some people thought that because

36:45

we, in describing the motivations

36:48

for people joining ISIS, especially a lot

36:50

of the middle class Western

36:52

ISIS members who fled their

36:54

suburban homes to go and join, we

36:57

talked a lot about the role that religion

36:59

played. And some people accused

37:01

us of being Islamophobic. Other people

37:04

thought that maybe we're too intrusive

37:06

in being present for these

37:08

very intimate moments that happened with these Yazidi

37:10

sex slaves as they were reunited for the

37:13

first time with their families. But

37:16

the other controversial thing was really

37:18

that we broke the fourth wall

37:20

a lot in the series. And

37:23

especially, I think, episode four or five

37:25

is a whole episode dedicated to the

37:28

fact that the former ISIS fighter that

37:30

we interviewed, he clearly was

37:32

lying about aspects of his story. And

37:35

we had to show our work and how hard

37:37

it was to fact check any of the claims

37:39

that he made. And we had to

37:41

cast a lot of doubt, saying that we don't know

37:44

to the extent to which any of this guy's story

37:46

is true. And so some people, when they got to

37:48

that episode, felt like they had maybe been a little

37:50

duped. Some People liked that we

37:52

were showing how hard this kind of reporting is

37:55

and bringing in this ambiguity. And Then some people

37:57

were like, well, if you don't know for a.

38:00

That if anything this guy saying is

38:02

true, why are you airing it And

38:04

I think I understand that criticism. Of

38:06

that's so another couple years go by,

38:08

your career continues to go really well.

38:11

He, when moral words produce more says

38:13

with a New York Times. But at

38:15

the same time things and media are

38:17

getting increasingly weird. especially by the time

38:20

he gets a twenty twenty. Of course

38:22

there's covered, and the racial reckoning the

38:24

great awoke in A is becoming more

38:26

and more apparent. It's a huge media

38:29

story. the term cancel culture emerges. Allison

38:31

Roman loses her column. That and York

38:33

Times over some bullshit. Very Why? Sweet

38:35

said there's. A Civil War was in the

38:37

New York Times and and very publicly resigns. James

38:40

been a gets fired after printing the Tom Cotton

38:42

call him. All of these things that we've been

38:44

covering on the show for the past four years.

38:46

What was it like to be inside of that.

38:49

I mean it was exciting time to work at

38:51

the New York Times. And

38:53

Twenty sixteen until Twenty Twenty One.

38:55

As you could imagine, you know

38:57

from the moment I was sitting

38:59

there in the newsroom and we

39:01

started to realize that Donald Trump

39:04

was likely to be the winner.

39:06

You're all the way through causes

39:08

and the summer of Twenty Twenty

39:10

and into the next Presidential election

39:12

immediate was an incredibly exciting time

39:14

to be in the world's most.

39:17

Powerful, Newspaper but.

39:19

It was also a

39:22

strange time. Socially.

39:24

To have kind of a front row

39:26

seat to these changes? you know? I

39:28

was at some of those meetings where

39:30

people were chastising. James.

39:32

been it for publicity op eds they

39:34

disagreed with and cause i was present

39:36

in the speed remote meeting that we

39:38

had the day that james been it

39:40

was kind of chastised by many members

39:42

of the staff and forced to resign

39:45

or mean it was have enough for

39:47

our purposes you know i i i've

39:49

followed you and jesse's reporting on the

39:51

so around all this and maybe the

39:53

insight that i would give is there

39:55

that you're you're right when you suspect

39:57

the role of things like slack even

39:59

though too 2020 was an

40:01

incredible year for reporting so

40:03

many important stories. There

40:05

was this weird change

40:07

that happened largely because we

40:09

were all working remotely where

40:12

Slack, this internal messaging

40:15

system that we had set up, which could be so

40:17

helpful at times was increasingly

40:19

kind of becoming like Twitter

40:21

itself, where you had to

40:23

be very careful what views that you shared

40:25

on Slack, even jokes

40:27

that you might make on Slack. You

40:30

had to be more and more vigilant, I

40:33

guess, vigilant depending on what views

40:35

you might be sharing. For example, when James

40:37

Bennett was under fire for

40:39

publishing the Tom Cotton bed,

40:42

me and some of my colleagues,

40:45

we very much wanted to defend James

40:47

Bennett, but we were

40:49

encouraged kind of quickly by our managers and

40:51

people around us, like, Hey, you know, just

40:54

don't write anything on Slack. You know, don't don't say anything on

40:56

Slack. There was just this sense that

40:58

had been growing that a handful

41:00

of people who were

41:03

really motivated could mess with your career

41:05

or it could change your public

41:08

reputation if they thought that

41:11

you disagreed with them on some of these

41:13

hot button issues. Okay. So the

41:15

summer goes by, the racial

41:17

reckoning continues, more scalps are claimed all

41:19

over the media for various offenses, some

41:22

real, some imagined. And then

41:24

it comes for you, starting with Caliphate,

41:26

this popular award winning show, Your Baby.

41:29

What happened? Uh, in the fall of 2020, the

41:33

Canadian authorities arrested the

41:35

former ISIS fighter, quote

41:37

unquote now that we

41:39

had featured in our podcast and they

41:41

had charged him with committing a terrorism

41:43

hoax. This is a charge

41:45

that's usually used when somebody fakes

41:47

a bomb threat at like a

41:50

sports arena and they're just trying

41:52

to incite a riot or incite

41:54

fear. It had never been

41:56

charged towards somebody in a situation like this.

42:00

And here whether we are with we were. he

42:02

was charged for coming on the podcast as much

42:05

as he was charged for like scaring can a

42:07

dying out. Upon that is actually a canadian

42:09

of said innocently. I don't think he was

42:11

arrested in connection to the podcast, but I

42:13

don't think that the podcast helped him at

42:16

all in that regard. But I'm. As

42:18

you can imagine, The callous

42:21

A team and the New

42:23

York Times leadership quickly. Started.

42:25

Meeting regularly to determine what

42:28

we should do. In. Response

42:30

to this allegation and my instinct

42:32

of the instinctive some of the

42:34

people my team was hey, We

42:36

had said in the podcast that

42:38

we weren't sure which aspects of

42:40

this guy's story weren't weren't true

42:42

if there's more information coming out

42:44

now that claimed that he made

42:46

were untrue. Let's. Start recording

42:48

this report. What we do

42:51

next And. Put. It out as

42:53

you know, cows a season two or

42:55

something. I don't know. It's this. Let's

42:57

keep showing our work and I remember

42:59

in that first meeting that we have

43:01

I said like guys we should be

43:03

recording this call right now. Is it

43:05

okay if I record this call right

43:07

now and the overwhelming response from the

43:09

leadership was no absolutely not and I

43:11

kept saying what don't you think that

43:13

the listeners would find it interesting to

43:15

have a front row seat and how

43:17

we respond to this and how we

43:19

try and find the truth as a

43:21

that were made. And ah

43:23

I'll never forget I was told andy.

43:26

Our. Job right now is not

43:28

to do anything interesting you

43:30

really terrible a p r

43:32

and is maybe maybe so

43:34

I'm so quickly to things

43:36

happened. First the

43:39

New York Times. Dot

43:41

a couple their investigative reporters

43:43

to do an investigation into.

43:45

Did this guy. Join.

43:48

Isis or not, right? Had we

43:50

been duped? And then another investigation

43:52

and as some was in even

43:54

more serious investigation was done by

43:56

an outside group into Rukmini in

43:59

Eyes For. reporting in

44:01

Caliphate, essentially to say, had

44:04

there been any misbehavior, had we

44:06

crossed any ethical lines, did we

44:08

ever knowingly publish something that was

44:10

untrue? And I think the idea

44:13

there was to ensure that this

44:15

was not some kind of Jason Blair

44:17

situation. And explain who Jason Blair is. In

44:20

short, Jason Blair was a fake journalist.

44:23

This was a guy who whole

44:25

cloth created fake characters, fake quotes,

44:27

fake stories. At the

44:29

New York Times, and he rose pretty quickly

44:32

within the ranks of the Times before he

44:34

was caught. And when he

44:36

was caught and exposed, it was

44:38

a huge blow to the Times. And in some

44:40

ways, I don't think they've ever quite gotten over

44:42

it, understandably. Okay, so there's two investigations.

44:44

What did they find? So the first

44:46

investigation into the claims that this guy made essentially

44:49

revealed that there were more things

44:51

he said to us that were

44:53

probably untrue. And that

44:56

we now have much more doubt around

44:58

whether this guy ever joined ISIS

45:01

or whether he was just a

45:03

guy catfishing from his basement. And

45:06

then the second investigation, which involved

45:08

many conversations with

45:10

Rukmini and I, with lawyers,

45:13

with investigators, us turning over

45:15

emails, WhatsApps, texts, audio

45:17

files. That investigation ultimately

45:20

revealed that we had not behaved

45:22

nefariously, that we had broken no

45:24

ethical rules. And in fact,

45:27

in the case of the audio team, Dean

45:29

Baquet, who was the editor in chief of

45:31

the New York Times, he had a special

45:33

meeting with us to say that he thought

45:35

that we had engaged in the very kind

45:37

of journalism that the Times admires. And

45:40

he said to me personally, you

45:42

know, I won't let you blame yourself for this,

45:44

which meant a lot. I mean, I

45:47

agree with you, this would have made a fantastic

45:49

second season of Calisade. But you

45:51

did not get that opportunity. What

45:53

happened instead? Yeah. So

45:55

instead of us doing several

45:57

episodes about how the Times tries to.

46:00

make decisions like this. Instead,

46:02

what they decided to do was

46:04

to put out a statement on,

46:06

I think it was the last Friday of the year 2020,

46:09

could have been the second to last Friday of the year,

46:11

saying that we were retracting aspects of

46:13

the story and that we could no

46:16

longer stand by some of

46:18

the claims that our

46:20

source had made and that

46:22

Brooke Meany Kalamaki was going to be

46:24

reassigned to a different beat. And

46:27

when we put the statement out on a

46:29

Friday, journalism Twitter

46:32

just really blew up. There

46:35

was a lot of like, ha ha, you

46:37

know, the New Yorker made them the number

46:40

one podcast of the year, but I knew

46:42

that it was BS the whole time. Brooke

46:44

Meany spends more time on TV

46:46

talking about her stories and she does reporting

46:48

them, like, just kind of stuff like that.

46:51

But then the kind of Twitter dog

46:53

pile got especially big because

46:56

right wing outlets and accounts

46:59

like Ben Shapiro's jumped

47:01

on this too, right? Because this was 2020. This was at

47:03

a time when there

47:05

were worrying stories about the

47:07

misinformation of right wing podcasters

47:09

like Joe Rogan, right? Which

47:12

I've always been confused about the idea of Joe

47:14

Rogan being a right wing podcaster. But a lot

47:16

of people were saying, ha ha, the real misinformation

47:18

was coming from the New York Times the whole

47:21

time. So in the midst of all

47:23

of this drama, all of this shit happening on

47:25

Twitter, you guys decided to

47:27

give back your Peabody Award. Who whose

47:29

decision was that? That was an internal

47:31

decision that we made. The thinking

47:34

was, let's be classy here

47:36

and hand the Peabody back before anybody says that

47:38

we should hand it back. But it was just

47:40

a part of the strategy that you know, Dean

47:42

Bekay, I think summed up well when he had

47:44

this meeting with the whole audio team right before

47:46

we made this announcement that Friday, where essentially he

47:49

said, Look, this is going to be a tough

47:51

weekend. We've all got to do

47:53

our best to be there for the caliphate team, they're going to

47:55

get a lot of criticism. But everything

47:58

that we're doing is to minimize

48:00

how long the stories and the headlines we're going to

48:02

keep this to be a one-day story maybe a two-day

48:04

story and then we can all get back to work.

48:07

Yeah for I mean for people who haven't listened to

48:09

the series the veracity of this guy's story is a

48:11

big part of the theme of the theme throughout the

48:13

throughout the series but you were still

48:16

duped I mean I can imagine as you know

48:18

I've been duped as a reporter on a much

48:20

much smaller scale and it

48:22

is a it's a humiliating experience

48:24

it's also a like

48:26

a real kick in the ass in terms of

48:29

making sure this never ever fucking happens again. So

48:31

I'm wondering do you think you should have been

48:34

more skeptical has this informed your reporting

48:36

going forward like how was that that

48:38

aspect of it for you? I mean

48:44

it's definitely something I've thought about a

48:46

lot. Just

48:49

imagining the hours in the hours that

48:51

I spent you know

48:53

researching and editing and producing this

48:55

story with this guy's voice the

48:58

amount of empathy I had for

49:00

him as he described himself being

49:02

in pain and his you

49:05

know struggle to know what's right and

49:07

what's wrong the amount of investment of

49:09

time even just me that I gave

49:11

to this guy in his story to

49:13

think that all of that was

49:16

to a fabulous is

49:18

very very upsetting just on just on

49:20

like an emotional level like I wrote

49:22

music scoring this thing he

49:24

said and now I'm like was that a

49:27

lie you know like that's that's that's just

49:29

that's and then I think

49:31

yeah the soul searching on the other end which is not

49:33

just like okay how did I get duped maybe but

49:38

God the New York Times firing

49:40

on all cylinders like the star

49:42

reporter on this beat the firepower

49:45

of the times and just like

49:48

the idea that that we and of course like

49:50

members of the American military as well right it

49:52

wasn't just us like that's so many people

49:54

who are so invested in this beat that we

49:57

might have been duped is I

50:00

think that that's definitely something that begins to

50:02

shape you. And as much as I've always

50:04

been skeptical, my skepticism has

50:06

definitely been raised 100

50:08

fold. And I'll just say,

50:10

you know, to pull it from the personal, just

50:12

into a broader perspective, like there are so many

50:14

stories to tell about ISIS. And

50:17

it was a really impactful thing

50:19

that happened, not just

50:21

to the Middle East in the places

50:23

where the Islamic State was, but to

50:25

all of the countries with all of

50:27

these attacks, I think we forget now

50:29

just how incredibly

50:32

invasive the violence was and the fear that

50:34

was generated out of it, right? And to

50:36

think that like, of all the stories we

50:38

could have told, we might have devoted all

50:41

this time to telling one that wasn't true.

50:43

That's devastating. On the other

50:45

hand, you know, I still don't know,

50:47

like to this day, like there, I don't, I don't know, maybe

50:50

he did. It's

50:52

weird. It's a weird, it's a

50:55

weird place to be uncertain.

50:57

But that uncertainty is, I

50:59

think, where, where

51:01

I have to live. Okay, so you're ready to

51:03

go forward. But things change really

51:06

quickly. Walk me through what happened next. So

51:09

the Monday morning, following this, you

51:11

know, rough Friday, where we released

51:13

this statement about caliphate, the

51:15

following Monday morning, bright and early, we

51:18

released a special episode of the

51:20

daily that my colleague Bianca gave

51:22

her and I had been working

51:24

on for weeks. This was

51:27

a profile of the FM radio DJ

51:29

Delilah. And it was the beginning of

51:31

a week of special episodes leading up

51:33

to Christmas. This is essentially like how

51:36

we in the daily news business sometimes

51:39

make a Christmas break for ourselves, right? We make a

51:41

bunch of special episodes so that we're not doing our

51:43

usual thing. And this episode comes

51:45

out and it is so well

51:48

received. I'm

51:51

telling you to this day, I don't

51:53

know if there's a single story that

51:55

I've done that's gotten more positive feedback,

51:57

gotten more emails in my inbox from

51:59

old people. friends who say, Oh, I love

52:01

this or from strangers just reaching out to

52:03

say how much it moved them. And

52:06

it was especially loved on

52:08

Twitter. And tweets

52:10

started to come out where people not

52:12

just said complimentary things about it. But

52:15

they said things like, Wow, best story

52:17

of the year, best podcast episode of

52:19

the year, you know, this should win

52:21

all the awards. You can get the

52:23

Peabody that you just gave back, they're gonna give it back to you.

52:25

Well, I don't think that

52:27

the journalism Twitter world liked

52:30

seeing that this guy and

52:32

I should note that I'm

52:35

usually behind the scenes. I'm rarely on

52:38

the microphone myself these days. And

52:40

I definitely was rarely on the microphone at

52:42

the Daily, maybe one or two stories a

52:45

year. But this was a story where me

52:47

and Bianca together narrated the story, right? My

52:49

voice was actually present in my work in

52:51

a way that it usually isn't. And

52:54

it didn't take long for people on Twitter

52:56

to start asking why

52:59

this was allowed to happen. I think

53:01

when things really started to change in their

53:04

mood was on Monday night when the

53:06

very ex coworker

53:09

who eight nine years

53:11

before I had dumped

53:13

a drink on her head at this bar,

53:15

remember that from the unfortunate story I told.

53:18

So that ex coworker went

53:20

on Twitter and wrote this, she

53:23

said, harass coworkers for years,

53:26

no problem. The New York

53:28

Times will give you a job and defend you when

53:30

New York magazine writes about it forced

53:32

to return your Peabody for bad reporting.

53:35

No sweat, you get to host The

53:37

New York Times the Daily the very

53:39

next Monday. Kudos, Andy

53:41

Mills, hashtag Caliphate.

53:45

And really, you can draw a

53:48

direct line from that tweet to

53:50

a pretty massive storm inside of

53:52

kind of podcast journalism, Twitter, People

53:55

saying things like, Wait, do I have the straight,

53:57

you know, Rook Meany has to take the fall

53:59

for Caliphate. The But meanwhile her producer

54:01

who also was a prominent voice on

54:04

this podcast see gets to host

54:06

the next episode of the Daily

54:08

Like what is this about? Things

54:10

just started to escalate from there

54:12

right? There were accusations that this

54:14

was about male privilege and the

54:16

difference in how many are treated

54:18

from women in journalism. Race came

54:20

in pretty quickly saying that you

54:22

know this is how it is

54:24

to be a privileged white male

54:26

the always get special treatment. People

54:28

started to make other accusations against.

54:30

Me of they went through my old

54:32

tweets, saw that I had said a

54:34

nice thing about Ion Hirsi Ali at

54:36

one point and they use that as

54:38

grounds to say that I was in

54:40

Islamic food. They found that I had

54:43

like to tweet from reporter Katie Herzog.

54:45

They use that as a as earnest

54:47

that I was a transfer vs as

54:49

as a business. Thanks a lot for

54:51

that Katie A While damn it was

54:53

a funny tweets. Ever

54:56

was or that it was. It was just a

54:58

tweet about Public Radio is what success. With

55:00

transition is it was just because of

55:02

years reputation. ah any a pretty quickly

55:05

people started going after my friends. There

55:07

was a hashtag that was started called

55:09

hashtag speak Up White Guys or speak

55:12

up White Guys and podcasting or something

55:14

like that where they're saying like disguise

55:16

been popular for years or but there's

55:18

a bunch of guys on here who

55:21

aren't saying anything and. By

55:24

the next day I woke up to a

55:26

public relations call from the New York Times

55:28

and honestly she was great! I see,

55:31

You know, Tommy right away

55:33

does not look at this stuff ah that

55:35

it wasn't good for my mental health and

55:37

said they were on top of that. they

55:39

were monitoring the situation, but she also told

55:42

me right away though if they didn't exactly

55:44

have a playbook. For. how best

55:46

to respond in situations like this you

55:48

know she said the whether it was

55:50

some of donald trump's more ardent supporters

55:53

going after maggie haberman on the politics

55:55

desk for coverage that they felt was

55:57

unfair or in cases like this one

56:00

that this was uncharted territory for

56:02

them and that they didn't exactly

56:04

know step by step what to

56:06

do, but that they were on

56:08

it, right? And so considering this was

56:10

Christmas break, I was off anyway, the

56:12

decision had just been made like, we're

56:14

going to monitor this stuff on Twitter,

56:16

you stay off of it, we'll check

56:18

in every day, we'll let some time

56:20

pass, and it's likely that

56:23

this will just go away in a

56:25

few days. So

56:27

oftentimes in situations like this, there's

56:29

a seed of truth in

56:32

the initial allegations, perhaps, but then

56:34

things pretty quickly start to mutate

56:36

in the game of telephone.

56:38

Right. Did that happen with you? Yes.

56:41

You know, there were tweets

56:43

about me dumping the drink, there were tweets

56:45

about me being accused

56:48

of rubbing shoulders at

56:50

work. And then quickly, it

56:53

was elevated to tweets about me being

56:55

a criminal, both that I

56:57

was abusive to women, and that

57:00

I was a sexual predator. I do

57:02

want to say, you know, no one ever

57:04

came forward and claimed that they were a

57:06

victim of my abuse or sexual predation. It

57:08

was just a kind of

57:10

strange game of Twitter telephone, where

57:12

accusations just seem to get bigger

57:14

and bigger and more and more

57:16

dramatic. So that was one thing

57:18

that happened. And the other thing

57:21

that happened is that a lot of these people

57:23

on Twitter started to go after the host of

57:25

the daily, Michael Barbaro. They were

57:27

tweeting things like, here's an example of one, can

57:30

someone please explain to me what's going

57:32

on at the New York Times with

57:35

the sexual assault allegations against Andy Mills,

57:37

and why Michael Barbaro is being completely

57:39

silent about this. Then

57:43

my friend Barbaro, he started to

57:45

block people on Twitter, who were

57:47

making these kinds of accusations against

57:50

me. And you can probably guess how that went.

57:53

Yeah, not well. Not well.

57:55

Here's an example of a tweet

57:59

as they started to flood. more and more in. If

58:01

Michael Barbarro continues to block everyone who

58:04

mentions Andy Mills, the next thing to

58:06

do is to continue

58:08

to associate the New York Times

58:10

brand with sexual assault

58:12

until somebody in charge of the

58:15

money is forced to give a shit

58:17

about this. And again, you had never been

58:19

actually accused of sexual assault. God,

58:22

no. No. And this was, by

58:24

the way, this tweet was written by a journalist.

58:27

Yes, I think especially discouraging

58:30

aspect of this, especially as I'm

58:32

being accused of having not

58:36

had enough credulity in

58:38

believing the ISIS fighter

58:41

was that the various people who were

58:43

criticizing me as some kind of gullible

58:46

journalist were, you

58:48

know, unironically just absolutely believing

58:50

things that they were reading on Twitter. And

58:54

this kind of became the day

58:56

in, day out norm for the

58:58

next several days, every

59:01

time that the Daily or the New

59:03

York Times or Barbarro tweeted something underneath

59:06

it, there would be response tweets that say,

59:08

I'm not listening to you guys until you

59:10

stop working with Andy Mills. We have to

59:13

stop enabling predators. Predators.

59:15

You're like, you're it made it sound like you're a T-Rex. I

59:18

almost wish that they thought of me

59:20

like a T-Rex. But I think I

59:22

think they were thinking of something even

59:24

far less flattering. But this was just

59:27

the state of Twitter for several days

59:29

as, you know, Christmas break ended and

59:31

New Year's break ended. It

59:33

just kept growing and growing and growing. But

59:36

it was just on Twitter. And

59:39

I'm not sure how granular you want to

59:41

get with the inside. Look at how something

59:43

like this is responded to at a place

59:45

like the Times. But one

59:47

thing that might be worth noting

59:49

is that the PR person who

59:51

called me every day to check in on me,

59:54

she told me that the members

59:57

from some of the data analysis team at

59:59

the Times had been looking and

1:00:01

monitoring all this Twitter activity very closely and

1:00:03

that even though it looked like a

1:00:05

lot of people and some of These tweets

1:00:08

were getting you know five six hundred

1:00:10

likes that According to

1:00:12

their analysis. It appeared that it was

1:00:14

only 19 accounts That

1:00:17

were actually tweeting about it and trying to

1:00:19

kind of stir up a larger movement and

1:00:21

that at least Some of

1:00:23

those accounts seem to be multiple accounts by

1:00:26

by the same person And so

1:00:28

they really had what they thought was firm

1:00:30

evidence that this thing would

1:00:32

pass soon But in the

1:00:35

meantime, you know, we've talked about like what kind of

1:00:37

statement to make You know

1:00:39

what? It's so hard

1:00:41

to know like how do you say like

1:00:43

hey some of that stuff is true about

1:00:45

me doing stupid things But not this other

1:00:47

stuff, you know, like it was like a very

1:00:51

Confusing place to be in okay.

1:00:53

So at this point the Times has your back

1:00:56

But as the weeks go by the story

1:00:58

does jump from Twitter to the

1:01:01

rest of the world. So how did that happen? Yeah,

1:01:03

and this is honestly one of the

1:01:05

saddest parts of the story a

1:01:08

lot of people on Twitter had gone after My

1:01:11

friends are after different colleagues of mine at the

1:01:13

Times, but then they also started to go

1:01:17

after radio lab as a show

1:01:19

and individuals who worked there and

1:01:23

Saying that they had enabled my predation that

1:01:25

they had, you know given me

1:01:27

a platform that led to my success and

1:01:30

Eventually radio lab decided

1:01:32

that they needed to release a public statement

1:01:35

And so they put out this this note

1:01:38

and in it They you know, we're very

1:01:41

sure to not accuse me of anything. I

1:01:43

didn't do it's not it's nothing like that

1:01:46

But they essentially said, you know, we should have

1:01:48

done more to punish Andy Thank

1:01:51

you for holding us accountable We

1:01:55

hear you and

1:01:57

pretty soon after that letter hit the internet. I almost

1:02:01

immediately got a call from the Washington

1:02:03

Post and then from NPR and then

1:02:05

from CNN and more and more outlets

1:02:08

in the mainstream started covering

1:02:10

it and you know the the PR person who

1:02:12

I spoke to every day I mean I also

1:02:14

was speaking to like my managers and editors and

1:02:16

friends at the Times as well but the PR

1:02:18

persons really who had taken control

1:02:20

in this situation you know

1:02:23

she cautioned me that you know the best statement

1:02:25

is no statement at this time the thinking is

1:02:27

just that if the New York

1:02:29

Times says something like we have the biggest

1:02:31

audience right and if we say something the

1:02:34

story just gets bigger and bigger and bigger

1:02:36

and the best thing to do is just

1:02:38

to let it naturally go kind of the

1:02:40

way that the you know New York magazine

1:02:43

eventually went away right I

1:02:45

hate to bring you back here but but I

1:02:47

want to pause on that letter for a moment

1:02:49

so was the letter

1:02:51

signed by individuals yes

1:02:55

it was many of them

1:02:58

very dear friends many of them colleagues

1:03:00

that I worked tireless hours deep into

1:03:02

the night with throughout

1:03:04

my 20s and

1:03:06

it was a very sad and

1:03:10

and strange thing to see them do that but I also

1:03:12

think I understood it to a certain

1:03:14

degree I mean the senior

1:03:16

editor who I think really spearheaded

1:03:20

the the letter project he

1:03:23

actually called me that night to tell me like

1:03:25

we don't dislike you I don't dislike you I

1:03:27

know a lot of the stuff that people are

1:03:29

saying on the internet about you isn't true but

1:03:32

we just have to do what we

1:03:34

think is right to protect the jobs that we have

1:03:36

here you know he said like 19 people

1:03:39

work here now like that's 19 salaries that's

1:03:42

that's 19 people's livelihoods and

1:03:44

you know and they and he really thought

1:03:46

that this was gonna somehow be the end of

1:03:49

the fucking of radio lab if they didn't say

1:03:51

anything about yeah I mean I

1:03:53

can understand I understand like it feels huge

1:03:55

in the moment especially when you're in the

1:03:57

media in all of these people

1:04:00

on Twitter won't shut the fuck up about it. Right, and

1:04:02

I also think that I'm sure there were

1:04:04

internal pressures, I'm sure people at Radiolab

1:04:07

or at WNYC, maybe who came in

1:04:09

after I was there, who didn't know

1:04:11

me, wanted them to do

1:04:14

something. But I also think you've

1:04:16

got to remember that before

1:04:19

Elon Musk broke Twitter,

1:04:21

I just cannot

1:04:23

explain it to people who weren't there,

1:04:25

how much Twitter

1:04:29

really controlled

1:04:32

different aspects of

1:04:34

the media in New York City. There

1:04:37

are things you won't do because you get punished

1:04:39

by Twitter, and there are things you will only

1:04:41

do because you're rewarded by Twitter. It's

1:04:44

hard to overstate the

1:04:46

role between 2014 and

1:04:49

whenever Elon Musk broke it. The

1:04:52

role that Twitter played in the

1:04:54

world of journalism is a book

1:04:56

I would love to read. It's

1:05:00

just impossible to overstate. Part

1:05:03

of that is because human beings

1:05:06

are so social and we

1:05:08

hate to be rejected. Yes,

1:05:11

part of it is your job is on the line,

1:05:13

but another part of it is your reputation, your integrity.

1:05:15

Yeah, and this was happening across the

1:05:17

media at various different outlets. There had

1:05:19

been a number of high profile cancellations

1:05:21

in the podcast world. From

1:05:25

even a couple years out, it's easy to look

1:05:27

at what your former colleagues and friends did and

1:05:30

say, what the fuck were you thinking? This was

1:05:32

totally unnecessary. But I'm sure at

1:05:34

the time it felt necessary. I

1:05:37

have empathy for

1:05:39

the pain

1:05:41

and the confusion that they were in,

1:05:43

even as I will always disagree

1:05:47

with the wisdom of them putting out that letter.

1:05:50

And it wasn't the last letter. After

1:05:52

the Radiolab letter came out, then there were

1:05:54

the calls from the Washington Post and other

1:05:56

news outlets. And then a

1:05:58

few days later, there was an old and letter

1:06:00

from public radio station

1:06:03

producers around the country who

1:06:06

were saying that they wanted

1:06:09

to boycott or drop

1:06:11

the daily from public radio stations

1:06:13

that aired it if

1:06:15

Barbaro and I were not punished

1:06:18

in some way. And

1:06:20

at that point, we realized

1:06:22

we really had to do something. We couldn't ignore this

1:06:24

any longer. But it was

1:06:27

hard to know what to say, trying to

1:06:29

craft a statement where we

1:06:31

are being honest about my shortcomings,

1:06:33

where I can have the opportunity

1:06:35

to show public remorse,

1:06:38

but also to say, hey, I'm actually

1:06:40

not a criminal. I'm not actually this

1:06:42

person that's being painted on Twitter. Trying

1:06:45

to write that up is incredibly difficult.

1:06:48

And the words are definitely

1:06:50

failing you as you're in this very

1:06:52

emotionally fraught situation of having

1:06:54

your entire reputation changed, somewhat

1:06:58

overnight. And

1:07:00

as all that's kind of happening in my world and the

1:07:02

PR world, this is around

1:07:04

the time that there starts to be some

1:07:07

complaints about both me and Barbaro to a

1:07:09

certain extent coming from some people at the

1:07:11

New York Times. They

1:07:14

range from some people who just said,

1:07:16

hey, look, this is incredibly bad PR.

1:07:18

The daily has become this hugely important

1:07:20

and very profitable part of our newsroom.

1:07:23

We've got to clean this up. And

1:07:25

then other people saying, I don't

1:07:27

think that I could work with a guy like Andy as

1:07:29

a leader in the newsroom if

1:07:32

there's all this smoke around him. And

1:07:35

it was in the midst of trying to come

1:07:37

up with this statement and trying to understand how

1:07:40

to handle these complaints internally

1:07:42

that the Daily

1:07:44

Beast published a

1:07:47

story about Donald

1:07:49

McNeil. Do you remember the

1:07:51

story of Donald McNeil? Oh, yeah, we've talked about

1:07:53

this one quite a bit on the

1:07:55

show. So for people who don't remember, he

1:07:58

was a veteran, MIT reporter, COVID reporter. And

1:08:00

he was pushed out after

1:08:02

an allegedly racist incident. Yes,

1:08:05

just as a little more information

1:08:07

for people who don't know, the

1:08:10

accusation about him was that he had

1:08:12

said the N-word on a trip

1:08:14

with some high school students. But

1:08:17

after an investigation was done, they

1:08:19

realized that he, the 67-year-old reporter, was

1:08:24

using the N-word in reference to a question that

1:08:26

he'd been asked. He wasn't using it.

1:08:28

He didn't call somebody the N-word. Exactly. And so

1:08:30

after an investigation was done, the Times,

1:08:33

I think they gave him some kind of punishment, told

1:08:35

him never to use the word

1:08:37

again, even if he's making a reference. And

1:08:40

then he was fine. He continued to stay

1:08:42

at his job. But after

1:08:44

this Daily Beast article comes out, it

1:08:46

just starts this media storm. Donald McNeil

1:08:49

is very famous, much more famous than

1:08:51

I am. And a lot of conservatives

1:08:53

don't like him because of what he'd been saying about

1:08:55

COVID. And so they were kind of having a heyday,

1:08:57

calling him a racist, CNN, and some

1:09:00

other outlets that really

1:09:02

love media drama. They were having

1:09:04

a heyday about it. And a

1:09:07

part of the story that was coming out, as far

1:09:09

as I'm concerned, was like, look,

1:09:11

another white male who wins all these

1:09:13

awards and has this prominent position is

1:09:15

allowed to do whatever he wants at

1:09:17

the Times, and they'll just stand by

1:09:19

him. And so the story, as far

1:09:22

as it intersects with my own, that emerged was like,

1:09:24

look at how The New York Times treats these

1:09:26

two white guys. They

1:09:30

win all the awards. They get all

1:09:32

the glory. And no matter

1:09:35

how much they misbehave, The Times

1:09:37

just keeps standing by them. And

1:09:41

ultimately, this led

1:09:44

to some people in the

1:09:46

newsroom, Nicole Hannah Jones famously

1:09:49

leading a group of people saying

1:09:52

that Donald McNeil needed to apologize

1:09:54

and be further punished, that there

1:09:57

should be more scrutiny on all of us. And

1:09:59

I'll find out. save you guys some of the

1:10:01

gory details with the lawyers and the back

1:10:03

and forth. But eventually what happened is that

1:10:06

Donald and I each received a phone call

1:10:08

from the editor in chief, Dean Bekay. And

1:10:12

he said essentially that we had lost

1:10:14

the newsroom, that we had, uh, lost

1:10:17

his confidence in our abilities

1:10:19

to be leaders at

1:10:21

the New York times. And

1:10:24

I know in my situation, when he called

1:10:26

to tell me this, he said

1:10:28

that he could understand why I might want to make

1:10:30

a career change and that if I

1:10:32

chose to leave the times, they

1:10:35

were prepared to make that transition as

1:10:37

comfortable as possible for me. So they're

1:10:39

buying you off. Yes. Which essentially means

1:10:41

they would pay me money. Uh,

1:10:44

if I would step down, um, you

1:10:47

would go away quietly because remember like they,

1:10:49

they, they cannot fire me and there was

1:10:51

never any mention of firing me. I, I,

1:10:53

you know, I was a union employee as

1:10:55

was Donald. I had never, you

1:10:57

know, done anything, uh, fireable.

1:10:59

Uh, so it was, it was

1:11:01

a tough situation, but essentially what

1:11:04

kind of math they did and you could

1:11:06

see them doing it in real time was

1:11:08

like, however much value I brought to the

1:11:11

times, which, you know, they were always very

1:11:13

good to me, very clear to me that

1:11:16

I had a lot of value, right? That they, they

1:11:18

felt that it wasn't just the awards or it wasn't

1:11:20

just the success of the daily, but it was my

1:11:22

training of staff and my new ideas each season and

1:11:24

all this kind of stuff, right? They always made me

1:11:27

feel very valuable, but I think that they

1:11:29

did see a limit to that value and

1:11:32

they made the shrewd decision that

1:11:35

if I were to resign,

1:11:37

this would go away for

1:11:39

them. And the truth is they told

1:11:41

me, you know, we think that if you resign, it'll

1:11:43

also go away for you. This whole public shaming will

1:11:46

be over if you do this. And

1:11:48

so that's what I did. Um, February the

1:11:50

third, I believe, uh,

1:11:52

I put out my resignation letter

1:11:54

as did Donald, uh, there was

1:11:57

a round of news stories,

1:11:59

you know, the usual suspects, CNN,

1:12:01

Washington Post, all that. But

1:12:03

then, they were proved

1:12:05

right. Within 24, 48 hours, it

1:12:08

was over. There were

1:12:10

no more tweets, there were no more stories.

1:12:13

And really, up until this moment that I'm talking to you,

1:12:16

this has been somewhat dead and

1:12:18

dormant. So did you and Donald

1:12:21

go get drunk that night together? I

1:12:24

wish, I wish. We

1:12:26

definitely had some phone calls together. He was in a

1:12:29

very different stage

1:12:32

of life. We have a lot in common. He and

1:12:34

I both have the kind of what they

1:12:36

call working class background. He worked his way up from

1:12:38

the mail room. He had been there for 40 years

1:12:40

or more. And I have

1:12:43

my own background. So we bonded

1:12:45

on those things and commiserated that

1:12:48

this was a tough situation. But

1:12:51

I think we also chose just different paths in

1:12:53

how to go forward. He, I think, wrote the

1:12:56

longest medium article in

1:12:58

the history of the website, kind

1:13:00

of going through all of his

1:13:02

stuff. And I chose instead of

1:13:04

diving big into my own

1:13:07

story, I kind of chose to channel a lot

1:13:10

of my curiosity about this experience

1:13:12

and why human beings engage

1:13:15

in this and what it's like emotionally.

1:13:17

I kind of chose to

1:13:19

channel all that into working

1:13:21

on a series that I made called The

1:13:23

Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, which is not

1:13:26

at all on the surface about any of

1:13:28

this stuff, but it was in

1:13:30

some ways me using my

1:13:33

curiosity and need

1:13:35

for some kind of artistic therapy

1:13:39

to, you know, lead with

1:13:41

curiosity instead of with outrage in

1:13:44

a very upsetting situation. Yeah, I

1:13:46

mean, I've seen a lot of people

1:13:48

who've been through similar public shaming campaigns

1:13:50

essentially turn into the worst,

1:13:52

most curdled versions of themselves afterwards.

1:13:54

They basically become the people their

1:13:56

critics claim they were all

1:13:58

along. How did you

1:14:00

avoid that going to hang out with rolling

1:14:03

in a castle in Scotland? Well, that doesn't

1:14:05

it doesn't hurt But

1:14:08

that was you know over a year later So

1:14:11

if I were to kind of like go through with now

1:14:14

having hindsight, you know what kept me

1:14:16

from succumbing to

1:14:18

that temptation because it was a very

1:14:20

real temptation to to sink

1:14:23

into self-pity and outrage and

1:14:26

Indignation I had the

1:14:28

first thing that was helpful is that

1:14:30

I had reported about quote-unquote cancel culture

1:14:33

For years at this point I actually

1:14:35

produced a couple episodes of the daily

1:14:37

about like the history and the motivations

1:14:39

behind something like cancel culture I've known

1:14:41

people who've been in situations like this

1:14:43

before I was curious already about this

1:14:45

behavior So I had a kind of

1:14:47

the ability to intellectualize it and go, huh? Yes,

1:14:51

it's painful, but this is also very interesting. I

1:14:53

could do that a little bit Which

1:14:56

is also like maybe a protective layer that

1:14:58

me and many journalists have like oh I'm

1:15:01

feeling sad because someone I love has died.

1:15:03

I'm gonna do a story about grief and

1:15:06

mourning Turn this into

1:15:08

context. Yeah, exactly I

1:15:11

think the other thing is that I

1:15:13

am no longer religious I

1:15:15

left the kind of supernatural Aspects

1:15:18

of the faith, but I very much stayed

1:15:20

in touch with parts of being religious that

1:15:22

I think are good And

1:15:24

mainly that is being in touch

1:15:27

with your values. What

1:15:29

are the values? What are the names of

1:15:31

the values that are guiding your life, right?

1:15:33

My friends and I talk a lot about

1:15:35

it You know, we talk

1:15:37

about grace courage Honesty

1:15:39

gratitude having a sense of humor right

1:15:41

and we talk so much about it

1:15:45

that whenever you go through a really Unstabilizing

1:15:50

painful Confusing time

1:15:52

you don't have to in the midst of all

1:15:55

those worlds of emotions go. How do I make

1:15:57

decisions and what? What do I

1:15:59

do? You can say, okay,

1:16:01

what is the gracious response? What

1:16:03

is the honest response? What does courage look

1:16:05

like in a situation like this? How

1:16:08

do I stay grateful? Cause like none

1:16:10

of those things will lead you to go, I'm

1:16:12

going to go on a crazy tweet screen about

1:16:14

how I was, you know, like, not

1:16:17

that I lived up to all those values perfectly, but

1:16:19

at least I had them as my ideals as something

1:16:21

to strive for. And I think that was huge. Andy,

1:16:23

I can see that you would make a really good youth

1:16:25

pastor. There was a

1:16:27

time where such a calling was right there

1:16:30

in front of me. Oh

1:16:32

gosh, yeah, overly earnest. Sorry, I

1:16:34

really got on my pulpit

1:16:36

there. But I mean, this is the

1:16:38

truth is that like, I got these

1:16:40

values, these names like tattooed on my

1:16:42

body after I had this experience because

1:16:44

of just how grateful I was to

1:16:46

have had something steady to hold

1:16:49

onto like this when the

1:16:51

storm came and as cheesy as it sounds, and I

1:16:53

know it does, it really,

1:16:56

really helped. And I think the other

1:16:58

thing that helped of course, is

1:17:00

that I, and I know that I'm

1:17:02

very lucky for this, but I have

1:17:04

a community. I have friends, close

1:17:06

friends, intimate friends, friends who are

1:17:09

there in the good times to toast

1:17:11

your beer and celebrate that award, but

1:17:13

also there in the worst times to

1:17:15

mourn with you. And those

1:17:18

friendships throughout those years,

1:17:20

that like having people who I've been

1:17:22

vulnerable around and have

1:17:24

been vulnerable around me, having them to

1:17:27

help me not kill

1:17:29

myself, not completely

1:17:31

give up in the face of people calling

1:17:33

me awful in

1:17:35

the face of these death threats that I

1:17:37

started to get in the face of a

1:17:39

real death. Social death, yeah. Like it was

1:17:41

the death of my career. It

1:17:44

was the death of my reputation. It

1:17:46

was the death of my hopes at the

1:17:48

New York Times. And it was

1:17:50

also a version of an

1:17:52

extreme version of what I had gone through in 2014

1:17:55

with that HR situation where

1:17:58

I told you that it was just so. embarrassing to

1:18:00

go, wow, you don't see yourself the way other

1:18:02

people see you. And at that time, it felt

1:18:05

almost like, well, what a wake up call, you

1:18:07

know, like, this is painful, but like,

1:18:09

this is good, because now that you

1:18:11

see how you're coming off, you can change. But what was

1:18:13

different about this one was like, wait,

1:18:17

am I a criminal? Like, do I actually deserve

1:18:21

to die, right? Like, and

1:18:24

I can't imagine what it would be like to

1:18:27

try and navigate that alone without your friends there.

1:18:29

Yeah, I can tell you about that if you

1:18:32

want. Yeah, I

1:18:34

mean, I think that I'd love to talk to you,

1:18:36

you know, about your own experience with this. I mean,

1:18:38

we'll do that in another show. Yeah, but also, like,

1:18:40

when you asked me to come on and

1:18:43

tell this story, right, I was reluctant. I

1:18:46

didn't want to, for a

1:18:48

number of reasons. But

1:18:50

when I decided, okay, I'm going to do it, you

1:18:52

know, one of the ideas behind

1:18:55

that was like, let's talk

1:18:57

about the bigger implications. Let's try

1:18:59

and like analyze this in like a much bigger

1:19:01

way. And I'd like to share my thoughts, but

1:19:04

I'd also like to hear your thoughts on it,

1:19:06

you know, like, what is at

1:19:08

the heart of these social dynamics and

1:19:10

how they end up playing out in

1:19:12

situations like this? Well, I

1:19:14

think it's what it comes down to is that,

1:19:17

as you said earlier, we're social animals,

1:19:19

and we're a mimetic species. And I

1:19:21

think after almost four years of doing

1:19:24

the show, this is sort of the through

1:19:26

line is this deep recognition,

1:19:29

both from the stories that we've done

1:19:31

and from my own experience, that

1:19:34

most people are fundamentally, you know, if I

1:19:36

wanted to be cynical about it, I would

1:19:38

say followers, but I don't really want to

1:19:40

be cynical about it. Most people

1:19:43

just want to be liked. I

1:19:45

think that's what it what it really comes down to.

1:19:47

And there's this immense fear of being cast out of

1:19:50

society. I mean, maybe there's cast out of the garden,

1:19:52

maybe maybe there's something biblical about it. Thanks

1:19:55

for weaving that in for me. Yeah, that's been

1:19:57

sort of my experience. Going

1:20:00

Through this on a much much smaller scale, the new.

1:20:03

I. Just think like I would I would add to that.

1:20:05

Maybe. These two. At times opposing

1:20:08

dynamics that I've tried always wrestle with

1:20:10

the com the one hand. Some.

1:20:12

Of the people who engaged in the public shaming

1:20:15

that I was the target of right. They

1:20:17

were clearly having fun, so he

1:20:20

added this, Oh, for sure they

1:20:22

knew that they were exaggerating. Cringe.

1:20:25

These stupid things I had done

1:20:27

or said. And. Wielding

1:20:30

them into something far more nefarious

1:20:32

rights. but they would take things

1:20:34

even further. Me, they made means

1:20:36

with like me and Michael Barbara's

1:20:39

face on them. You know, saying

1:20:41

things like find someone who loves

1:20:43

you as much as Michael Barbaro

1:20:45

loves Sexual Predator producer Andy. You

1:20:47

know it's they made fake accounts

1:20:49

with my name to post done

1:20:51

things they you know we're clearly

1:20:54

getting some sort of so so.

1:20:56

Enjoyment. Out of it. And and when

1:20:58

I see that I'm just like add that.

1:21:01

So perplexing. But on the other

1:21:03

hand, I. Do think that and

1:21:05

maybe this is my Christianity coming back. Like

1:21:07

I do think that there's a lot of

1:21:09

people who see that the world is full

1:21:12

of injustice, who see that there's so much

1:21:14

unfairness out there who maybe they themselves had

1:21:16

been victimized by some do see dude one

1:21:18

too many times rates and they wish that

1:21:21

there was something that they could do to

1:21:23

make it better to. They want to be

1:21:25

empowered to change the world even a little

1:21:27

bit and they don't have an outlet to

1:21:30

do it. And so what do they do?

1:21:32

Will the they joined the dog pile. On

1:21:34

Twitter because to them. they

1:21:36

see me as the embodiment of a real

1:21:39

social problem that has been persistent for years

1:21:41

and they think maybe we can be a

1:21:43

part of the movement that stops this and

1:21:45

if it in if if it takes getting

1:21:48

rid of this guy in shipping was job

1:21:50

the night that's what we're going to do

1:21:52

right like in it and know and what's

1:21:54

ironic about it is that like i actually

1:21:57

admire that quality in them i think that

1:21:59

that's the best of us as people that

1:22:01

we want to leave the world better than

1:22:03

we found it, that we want to have

1:22:06

a just legacy that we leave,

1:22:09

and then it just gets caught

1:22:11

up in these other social dynamics

1:22:13

and the need for social

1:22:15

media to keep us coming back day in

1:22:17

and day out for more drama or more

1:22:20

content. I think your analysis is exactly correct.

1:22:22

I also think you're more generous than

1:22:24

I am. These people are fucking assholes. Have

1:22:26

you ever tried to cancel somebody? That's

1:22:34

a complicated question to answer because I've

1:22:36

never done a call out post or

1:22:38

anything like that, I don't think. I

1:22:41

have certainly criticized people in

1:22:43

ways that have inadvertently

1:22:46

started pile-ons. The

1:22:48

one that grew the biggest was after this

1:22:50

story I wrote for Barry Weiss and the

1:22:53

Free Press. I wrote a story about

1:22:55

a therapist who was racist.

1:22:57

She was extremely anti-white. I remember this.

1:22:59

It was a crazy story. She

1:23:02

basically was using her practice to what

1:23:04

she thought was healing people, but she had just a

1:23:07

pretty crazy message. She told me on the phone at

1:23:09

one point that white people don't eat bread because they

1:23:11

have some sort of latent guilt over slavery. She

1:23:16

had done a talk

1:23:18

for Yale Grand Rounds, and this became a

1:23:20

huge story because she repeated some of this

1:23:23

absolute nonsense in this talk

1:23:25

at Yale, and we got the audio of her talk. What

1:23:28

she said was very inflammatory. Of course, the story

1:23:30

became huge. It was picked up by Fox News

1:23:32

and The Daily Mail. It was all over Twitter.

1:23:37

I almost immediately regretted writing the piece

1:23:39

because I saw this

1:23:41

woman who was in the wrong. I still believe she

1:23:43

was in the wrong. She was

1:23:45

being absolutely destroyed by people who

1:23:48

weren't just having fun. They

1:23:50

felt so righteous about it. As

1:23:53

much as we've been critical of cancel

1:23:56

culture on this show, and It

1:23:58

is a recurring theme. I have.

1:24:01

I have been a part of it for. Sure,

1:24:03

yeah and didn't mean to. And.

1:24:05

Even though you didn't mean to you

1:24:07

inadvertently lead to it's I think that

1:24:10

that says a lot about how it

1:24:12

is bigger than any one individual or

1:24:14

one individual story has a little cancellation

1:24:16

was my own. And I

1:24:18

got to see a little bit

1:24:20

of it through both sides because

1:24:22

not only was I on the

1:24:24

receiving end of the public shaming,

1:24:26

but I'm and I don't think

1:24:28

I've ever told anyone else this

1:24:30

so Ah is just as natural.

1:24:32

Nicer to the wisest thing for

1:24:34

me to put on your podcasts,

1:24:36

but on you know, I was

1:24:38

living with. Two

1:24:40

other guys who were still on staff

1:24:43

at Radio Lab when they made the

1:24:45

decision to put their name. On.

1:24:47

That letter. That. When out. Which.

1:24:50

Again, I want to emphasize like that

1:24:52

letter wasn't claiming I was some criminal.

1:24:54

It wasn't. You know a thing The

1:24:56

worst things being said about me on

1:24:58

twitter. But. It was essentially

1:25:00

saying thank you. For

1:25:03

twitter. For calling them out, You know

1:25:05

he wins. A disavowal. It was

1:25:07

a disavow on the public, distancing. Of.

1:25:10

themselves from me. Even

1:25:12

as we were. Sharing. Our meals,

1:25:14

living together, having a honestly having

1:25:16

a fantastic time up to that

1:25:19

point. but. How did you continue

1:25:21

to live with them? After.

1:25:23

They signed an open letter condemning Ill. Well.

1:25:26

It was a rough

1:25:28

day was a Spurs

1:25:30

fans. Who chased

1:25:32

lock See where that? Is exactly

1:25:35

Ah. It required.

1:25:38

Us to have real serious conversations and

1:25:40

to and. Embrace. Real

1:25:43

serious attempts at empathy

1:25:45

and I. Understood.

1:25:47

Even as I disagreed with

1:25:50

it, I understood they were

1:25:52

nervous about. Maybe. things

1:25:54

that they had done of their pasts coming out there

1:25:56

were nervous but maybe losing their jobs they were knows

1:25:58

what losing their standings I mean, one of them said,

1:26:01

you know, what good would it do for me to

1:26:03

have not signed it? They were going

1:26:05

to do it, you know, like I think about the implications

1:26:08

for the rest of my career by me not

1:26:10

signing it. And I just

1:26:12

thought that it's going to happen anyway. What you know,

1:26:14

I'm nobody like me signing it publicly

1:26:17

while privately standing up for you like

1:26:20

I could see that they were in pain all their own.

1:26:22

I could see that they didn't know what to do. And

1:26:25

I know that hearing this as an outsider, you're

1:26:28

like, God, well, what kind of lives are these

1:26:30

people living? We're like, this is a hard call.

1:26:32

I would make the easy call. It's

1:26:34

not easy. Yeah. All

1:26:37

right, Andy, one more question for you. Do

1:26:40

you think if this happens now in 2024, do

1:26:42

you think this would play out the same way?

1:26:45

100% though. I think

1:26:47

that so much has changed in the past few years.

1:26:51

Number one is the one I referenced a

1:26:53

little bit earlier, but like Twitter is no

1:26:55

longer the powerful vehicle

1:26:58

for closely policing speech

1:27:00

and for ginning up

1:27:02

a very quick and emotional call out into

1:27:04

a cancel. Like it's just, it's

1:27:07

completely changed. I don't

1:27:09

know if it's a good website. I

1:27:11

left Twitter the day I resigned and I've not

1:27:13

looked at it once since and my

1:27:15

life has only gotten better. There's

1:27:18

nothing I feel I'm missing out on. That's

1:27:21

definitely been a dynamic. I think you've

1:27:23

seen that the Times has tried to

1:27:25

course correct in the

1:27:27

way that they've stood up for their

1:27:30

reporters who've covered stories about

1:27:32

medical transition for minors. Right.

1:27:35

The GLAAD led this big protest.

1:27:37

There were open letters

1:27:40

against some of the Times journalists and Joe

1:27:42

Kahn and the Times

1:27:44

leadership. They stood up for the reporters

1:27:46

and they in fact actually did more than that. They

1:27:48

said like, if you write one of these

1:27:50

open letters, calling out our reporters again, they'll never work

1:27:53

here. Right. Like they

1:27:55

took it very firmly. Anecdotally I hear

1:27:57

from colleagues at the Times who tell

1:27:59

me. that, you know, gosh, Andy, you

1:28:01

know, if this thing had happened now,

1:28:03

that wouldn't happen. I mean, some of

1:28:05

them are delusional enough to think that

1:28:07

I could get my job back, which

1:28:09

is sweet to them, because

1:28:11

I still like to do this. And let me just

1:28:13

say this, you know, I

1:28:15

get asked a lot, because now that

1:28:17

I've, you know, been cancelled,

1:28:19

I hate that word, but I guess

1:28:22

that's it. I do

1:28:24

now run in a crew that

1:28:26

includes the cancelled, right? We all start

1:28:29

to eventually know each other. And it can be

1:28:31

really, yeah, it can be really good. There's like a

1:28:34

sad club that none of us are meant to

1:28:36

join. And it

1:28:38

can be nice to be there for

1:28:40

each other, you know, and share these

1:28:43

experiences. And, you know, maybe

1:28:45

this goes without saying, but like many people

1:28:47

who go through this attempt to kill themselves.

1:28:49

I have a very, very close friend who

1:28:51

ended up in a psychiatric ward. And

1:28:56

so it's good to be able to meet with

1:28:58

other people to make jokes about it and to

1:29:00

kind of gain some perspective about it, right. But

1:29:03

I do think that being a part of this

1:29:05

crew, there are there is a little bit of

1:29:07

like, Oh, the New York Times has lost its

1:29:09

way, you know, oh, you know, what

1:29:11

kind of media can we trust. And I do

1:29:13

want to remind people that some of

1:29:15

the reporters at the New York

1:29:18

Times are absolutely the best reporters

1:29:20

in the business, hands down, like

1:29:22

the New York Times has so

1:29:24

many brilliant editors, dogged reporters, and

1:29:27

also just great fucking people. Like, I

1:29:29

love so many of those people. And

1:29:31

I cherish my relationships with so many

1:29:33

of them still to this day, right.

1:29:37

But they are dealing with this.

1:29:39

And it's still alive and well, like it is,

1:29:41

it is still an aspect that it's

1:29:44

it's it's the Times is

1:29:47

still and will continue to be dealing

1:29:49

with some of these dynamics that were

1:29:52

front and center in 2020.

1:29:55

They're not completely gone. And they're going

1:29:57

to be dealing with them for years to come. And I just think

1:29:59

that that I'm on the team that

1:30:01

is rooting for them to win

1:30:04

in the end for the times and

1:30:07

the reporters and the values that they're trying

1:30:09

to live out in their work, right? I

1:30:12

have faith that they're going to be the stronger

1:30:14

force in the end and they're going to win

1:30:16

out. And I might be wrong, but I'm

1:30:18

gonna keep believing it all the way up until I'm wrong. All

1:30:21

right, Andy, well, thank you so much for coming here

1:30:24

and being willing to tell your story. I know

1:30:26

it wasn't easy. What are you working on

1:30:28

now? Katie, even

1:30:31

just like, I'm never gonna talk about this again,

1:30:33

just so you know, like just the

1:30:35

amount of sleep I've lost and thinking, oh,

1:30:37

what am I doing? The amount of like

1:30:40

shirts I've sweat through and

1:30:43

temptations to get blackout

1:30:45

drunk. I owe you one. Yeah, you owe me

1:30:47

one. You can come on my

1:30:49

new podcast. Yeah. I

1:30:51

will say I'm currently piloting a brand

1:30:54

new show. It's not out yet, so you

1:30:56

can't subscribe to it, but it's

1:30:59

a storytelling show. It's called

1:31:01

Reflector. It's gonna do

1:31:03

some of the things that

1:31:05

I liked about this American life and Radiolab back

1:31:07

in the day, right? It's a storytelling podcast

1:31:09

where each episode is gonna be a new story.

1:31:13

But really like what unites it

1:31:15

is that no matter if the

1:31:17

story is about, you know, young

1:31:20

thug and the way that rap

1:31:22

lyrics are being used in trials

1:31:24

in criminal cases or whether it's

1:31:27

a political story about how some

1:31:29

congressional rule changes in the 1970s

1:31:32

kind of started to chain reaction that have helped

1:31:34

lead to all the struggles that we're having in

1:31:37

Congress right now, right? Like the thing that unites

1:31:39

all these stories is

1:31:41

that we, my partner

1:31:43

Matt Bull and I who are making

1:31:45

the show, like we are just very

1:31:48

curious about human nature and we're not

1:31:50

interested in telling you what you should

1:31:52

and shouldn't believe, but we're interested

1:31:54

in looking at these stories deeply

1:31:58

and seeing in them that As

1:32:00

cheesy as it sounds, like when you look hard

1:32:02

at other human beings and the struggles that they're

1:32:04

in, you often see a reflection

1:32:07

of yourself there. And it's

1:32:10

a very fun and daunting project, and it should

1:32:12

be out in the next few months. Well,

1:32:15

I'm sure it will be awesome. I'm very

1:32:17

much looking forward to hearing your work again.

1:32:20

Andy Mills, thank you so much for coming on

1:32:22

the show. Thank you, Katie. And

1:32:24

thank you, as always, to our producers Tracie Woodgrains

1:32:26

and Jessica the 80s Baby. This

1:32:28

has been Black and Reported. I'm Katie Herzog,

1:32:30

and we will be back next week with

1:32:32

a new guest host. Thank

1:32:58

you.