 Thanks for coming. Congratulations. You left the house. You're here. This is great. Thank you for being here. Oh, sorry. Can everyone hear me? Yes! All the way on the other side there. Can you hear? We're good? All right. Thanks everyone for coming. We're so excited that you're here. We've not done an in-person event in quite a long time. The last time we did one of these, I was standing in front of a blank wall in my basement. I had my laptop propped up on a wobbly side table on a bed. And I was drinking tap water out of a mason jar. So this is an upgrade. We're really, really excited that you're all here. This is Local Lives. We are partnered with our friends at Back Pocket Media. And this is a storytelling event about journalism. My name is Mike Docherty. I'm the digital editor at VT Digger. Tonight you're going to hear from a couple VT Digger folks, a couple storytellers from the community. And for us, this is a lot about telling the story behind the story. You know, we, as journalists so often, are trying to remove ourselves from the story and be objective and unbiased. And those things are important, but we also think it's important to share a little bit about, you know, behind the scenes of what we do, why we do it and how we do it. And so that's a lot of what tonight is about. Our theme tonight is headfirst. And you'll understand why by the time we get to the end of the night. It's a very human thing to go into something without all of the information. Sometimes it works out really well. Sometimes it's a disaster. And so we've asked everyone to fill out a little card that tells us some stories of times that you jumped in headfirst. And so we're going to be reading some of those throughout the show. We have a couple here. And I will just start by reading one. Here's an example of a time that one of you jumped in headfirst. And these are all anonymous. We're not going to ask you to identify yourself unless it's really juicy. I'm kidding. We're not going to do that. I left a party in Ecuador with an armed shrimp farmer to get beer. All right. Okay. So to kick things off tonight, our first storyteller tonight is Marlon Fisher. We're really, really excited that Marlon's here. Let's give him a round of applause. Marlon is a combat veteran. He's a comedian. He's a storyteller. I just found out he's a cyclist. He, most importantly, is the father of two amazing boys. And so let's give a round of applause to Marlon Fisher. I'm not sure if riding an e-bike counts as cycling. We had crossed the herd path at least 20 times, missed it. See, on this particular day, I got to take the back seat to watch a group of 15-year-old boys navigate their way through the wilderness. And as we walked back and forth, I stood and I stopped so they could notice the herd path. And finally, we made it. They figured it out. We walked up. It was late in the day. We walked up the mountains through the trails, hit two peaks, and we finally got to our campsite. At our campsite, we set up real quick, a bunch of solo tents, one-man tents, and on the left side was a stream and on the right side was a stream. And we set up in the middle of those streams. They came together to make a fork. On the trip were six 15-year-old boys and two 18-year-olds named John. And John had just graduated from high school from New York City. He was super late back. And Sterling was a kid who was going to college to study quantum physics. And he was not prepared for the trip at all. He had no hiking boots. We had to borrow a sleeping bag for him. And he actually bought a quantum physics book on the trip. The kids loved him for it. I can remember, though, as we were finishing dinner and setting up our bear bag, it started to rain. I told everyone, everyone got into their tents because it had been a long day. And it rained, and I fell asleep to the pitter-patter of rain. Now, when you're inside of a tent, rain masks all the sounds around you. It had rained all night. When I woke up, I felt like I was in a puddle. My sleeping bag had gathered, the feathers had gathered like, you ever wash a comforter? You know, when you wash a comforter and you got to pull it out the wash? It was that thick and heavy. And when I got outside my tent, I had noticed puddles all over our campsite and those two streams that were just trickling, where the night before we had filled our water bottles barely, became raging rivers. Immediately, I thought to myself, oh man, what am I going to do? These boys have to cross this river. I have to cross this river with them. I was so afraid. I was so nervous. What was I going to do? So all the boys got up. They complained about how wet their sleeping bags were, how all the puddles in their tents, no food, no dry wood. I had the leaders of the day set up a tarp so that boys can stand under and I had them singing songs. And for hours, we just sang songs, all types of tunes and making up songs and people were freestyling and all this other stuff. And while they were doing that, I kept going back to check the path to see if it was safe enough for us to cross. And it wasn't safe at all. I remember pulling John and Sterling to the side. I said, John and Sterling, we have to move on. We can't go back. We only have to go forward. So I decided to go forward. The decision didn't come easy. It just brought me back to a time when I was in Afghanistan and I spent hours sitting in front of a computer screen. We would lose a soldier and we would go to the airfield and watch the body roll onto a helicopter, hold a salute for three minutes at least, and go right back to work. And this, and go right back to work, log back into my computer and forget that even happened. And that prepared me for this day because I knew that I had to drive on. I knew that I had to not show my fear, not show my anxiety around the potential of losing, of not moving forward. So I gathered little boys and I took the one rope that we had and I tied it around all of our waists. And I used my trekking poles and I went into the stream and one by one they passed. One by one. And as they passed, my heart grew more with fear. But as they touched the land, their confidence grew going from becoming young men. Every single time. And the last person to cross was Sterling. And when Sterling took a step, he was just about to arms reach. He fell. And I reached for him immediately and I grabbed Sterling and we made it and the boys were super excited. They were so excited they created a chair for Sterling and it went something like this. Sterling and quantum sitting in the tree. F-U-C-K-I-N-G. First comes force, then comes mass, then comes Sterling smacking that ass. They were happy. I almost just lost a kid. I would not be standing here in front of you if that happened. So with that confidence we moved on. We continued on. And we came to a second river, a little wider, not moving as fast. And they were like, let's do it mom, let's go for it. Let's go for it. So this time by myself I tied a rope, walked through the water, weight chest deep to the other side, tied a rope on it to a tree and had them cross one by one. One by one. And guess what? Somebody fell again. Owen's foot got stuck in a rock and he fell. He went under. I jumped in again and grabbed him. We made it across and again they filled with excitement. So filled and I was so afraid but I knew that I had to drive on, that they had to drive on. When we came to the third river, I was done. I couldn't do it emotionally. I could not take another chance. And I decided that we would camp where we were. And this kid came to me and said, Marlon, we got to do it. We did two, three. We got to do it. We got to do it. And I said no. And he was disappointed. And they were disappointed that they didn't do it. But we got to dry out. No food for an entire day. The next morning we woke up and what they didn't know, they were going to spend, part of the trip was they had to spend 24 hours alone, solo. And they thought that because they had crossed these rivers, that they didn't have to do the solo. But I said they had to do the solo. And so as we crossed the third river, which was lower, I set them on a trail about a mile and a half. And every few minutes I would send someone up to spend a little time by themselves. All by themselves, 24 hours. And when they were all set, I pulled Sterling and John aside. And I said, hopefully they'll spend this time reflecting on what just happened. The other day I called Owen. Owen had fallen. Owen was a kid who fell in the second river. I called him. I said, this is eight years ago. I said, Owen, what do you remember from that trip? He said, Marlon, that trip meant so much to me. First, I almost lost my life. Second, I remember that no matter how bad things get, we were wet and miserable. No matter how bad things get, we just have to drive on, embrace the suck. He said, did I teach you that? Because that's a military saying. He said, no. But I was like, I know I said that. But he said to drive on. That day, we went head first into two different rivers. Two kids literally went head first into the river. But no matter what, those kids will always remember to drive on, no matter how bad things get. Thank you. Let's give another round of applause for Marlon Fisher. I want to hear some more times that you all dove in head first. So I'm going to go back to the bucket here. Cleaning up a deceased person and rescued their cat before the coroner arrived. That one was all crossed out. I don't know how to interpret that. Let's see. Getting married after two months. This one just says birch. I think that means something to someone. Oh, this one says birth. Okay. Well, this one's blank. Let's do one more here. This one's folded up for privacy. When I decided to stay at the bar with those mutual acquaintances and suddenly was in the bar without my friends. All right. Our next storyteller tonight is Fred Tice. Fred is a colleague of mine. We've been working together since June. Fred and I did the math. He's been a journalist for about 38 years. Fred has worked all over the place. He's worked in New York, Atlanta, and Latin America. Most recently, before he came to VT Digger, Fred was at WBUR, the public radio station in Boston. Fred is in the process of moving to Vermont. If anybody knows a place where Fred can stay with his 57-pound black lab, holler at us after the show. But let's give a round of applause to Fred Tice. So, this is a story about how... I had a conflict about how I was going to tell a story about a young man. This was 2007. It was several years into the war in Iraq, I guess four years into the war in Iraq. And it was the day after Mother's Day. I was in the newsroom at WBUR in Boston. And we find out that the son of one of the most prominent critics of the war has been killed in the war in Iraq. This critic was a political science professor, Andrew Bacevich at Boston University. And he had himself served in Vietnam. He had stayed in the Army. He had become a colonel. But he was very much opposed to the United States being involved in the war in Iraq. And I realized that the way I should be telling the story is calling the dad. And so I did. I got in touch with the father. And he was just way too upset to talk. And so he suggested that I talk to his three daughters, the three sisters of the young man, also named Andrew Bacevich. And the sisters tell me, you know, my parents are so upset. They're way too upset. We can't talk to you at the house. But we're going to meet you on Route 1 at a Starbucks. There's a little outdoor area there, a busy, busy highway. And we sit down and we have this interview. And they're wonderful. They're super generous. They talk to me about, you know, their brother from the time he was a little boy to the time that he got to college. And he decided he wanted to go into ROTC. And he had asthma. And so they wouldn't let him into ROTC. But then after college, he decided to join the army anyway as a private. And then he eventually went to Officer Candidate School and he went to Iraq. And they have something, they have a message, though, for me. And here it is. I think a lot of people think that this is a story just about a professor that was against the war that had a son. And it's not, you know, more than anything I think we, I think our brother was just a, he was a fantastic human being. And I really am just a little missing. So I do the story with the sisters. True to what they want. But also note that, I mean, this is obviously the son of a famous anti-war critic. And we include this cut in the story. And the father hears the story. And he gets in touch with me and says, I really liked what you did with my daughters. And I will talk to you. So I go over to the house and we sit there in the screen porch. And the father goes through the kinds of things that so many parents that I have interviewed because I did a lot of these stories. You know, he's trying to process the loss of his child. And he, so we talk about that. But then we get to a point where he says something that really takes me back in the way that he's trying to process the loss of his son. One of the things that I've been really struggling with over the last several days is to try to understand my own responsibility for my son's death. That really took me back to, you know, took me back. And he also said something to me that really stayed with me and that also talked about in the story that I would do. And that is that we all are responsible for his son's death because, you know, this is several years into the war. Basically the whole, the country's turned against the war. And he says, what kind of a democracy is this when the people have spoken but nothing changes? And so I do a story with the perspective of the father. Days pass. Andrew Basovic Jr.'s body is brought home to Dover, Delaware. Then up to Hanscomair Force Base outside Boston. Eventually to the suburbs where the family lives for the funeral. And in the meantime all week I've been trying to get in touch with the friends to try to get a different perspective on this young man. So these are the people who went to Boston University with him. They're now kind of all over the country. And they, you know, they do have a very different perspective. And I'm excited that, I mean excited, again perhaps the wrong word, but, you know, I'm really, I really want to bring this perspective into the next story. A story that's going to run the evening after the funeral and then the next morning. And, you know, the friends tell me all kinds of things, goofy things, serious things. But then we get to this particular thing that one of the friends, James Carney, tells me. Well, I know his father is a military man, a career military man. I actually tried to discourage him from joining the military because when he was not allowed to continue in ROTC, I was like, it was a sign. You know, I'm like, it's a sign you're not supposed to do it because although I know he could conform to the military and that lifestyle, I just didn't see him. It wasn't a fit for him. I don't think, I think he didn't think it was a fit for him either, but I think he thought it was, like his father, it was good to serve your country, and you know, I'll serve my country and then that chapter of my life will be over. And as far as the political round goes, which is what he was interested in, you know, I think that he felt that that would make him more appealing in the long run to people having served this country. You know, it was a good resume builder, I think. A good resume builder. Andrew had wanted to go into politics. I think this is a really interesting thing to put in the story. We get into the edit booth. Radio stories are edited in these tiny little edit booths and you're there doing what I'm doing with you right now. You know, talking, you play your cut, you talk, you play your cut. And I'm there with the editor and usually she's very good about telling me, okay, you need to do this, you need to do that. I'm telling her, you know, I'm really conflicted about whether I should use this in the story because on the one hand, I feel it gives the audience a fuller picture of this young man. On the other hand, you know, the audience doesn't have a big stake here, but that's who I serve, right? That's who I work for. That's my vocation. That's my avocation. It's everything. But at the same time, I'm really worried that I'm going to hurt the family if we run this in the story because it's not presenting their beloved brother and son, you know, in a purely positive light, right? It's presenting him as a normal guy who's thinking about things like, hey, maybe if I join the military, you know, that'll look good on my resume when I run for office. And I decide that we should run it and that the audience should hear this. And I have felt guilty about this ever since. I mean, it's been, you know, 13 years, not 13 years, but 2007 to now. And so, you know, and it's weird that I've never talked to the family about it. I've never, again, had an occasion to cross paths with them. I think I did the right thing, but I still feel super guilty about it. And I think this is the sort of thing that journalists go through all the time. I mean, we have these questions about how are we true to the audience? How do we serve the audience? How do we give them the fullest story? And at the same time, how are we true to the people who have led us into their lives to tell their stories? Fred Tice, everyone. All right, there's a couple longer entries in here that I wanted to wait until we were all friends, until a little bit further into the night to read these. So I'm going to dig into some of the longer ones here. We'll do a couple and then we're going to take a quick break. So when I was eight years old, I was helping my dad bring the cows in the barn. A heifer came charging down and my dad yelled, Stop her. I jumped out in front of the heifer with my hand in a stop signal and yelled, Stop. The heifer slid and ended two inches in front of my nose. And then this is in parentheses, I weighed about 50 pounds, the heifer of 1500. It worked. All right, let's do one more here. Okay. After many weeks of very negative behavior from my, quote, true love, I decided it was time to split. Hector, my dog, some food and clothes packed in my car, I sped off landing in a huge mud puddle. Oh, then part two. I had to go ask my, quote, true love to push me out. Goodbye, as I left him in a six foot sea of mud with no idea where to go. From Colorado, I headed east. Three places I tried and then, oh, here we go, here's part three. Glad that, I'm glad these haven't been shuffled. So where a no go and many days later, I landed here in Burlington, Vermont. Within months, I had an apartment and I started my, oh no, I'm having trouble reading this. Well, now I feel like I can't stick the landing here. I started my something, which 50 years later I still have, biz. I think I started my business. I hope I got that right. I'm sorry about the handwriting. So, my reading of it is what I meant there. That is what I meant. So I'm gonna get off the stage right now. So we are gonna take a quick break, but first we're gonna hear from Danny from Foam. We are so thankful to Foam for having us tonight and for giving us these delicious drinks. So we're just gonna have here a quick toast from Danny and then we're gonna take a quick break and come back and hear our last two storytellers. So come on up. Yeah, I just want to say thanks to everyone for coming out. Okay, he said get closer. Is this close enough? Yeah, we want to say thanks. I mean, it's been a long time since we've had events like this at Foam and we built Foam to bring in the community and have these types of community-based events. So it's just such a joy to kind of welcome you all back and be here just enjoying each other's stories and each other's company here with one another. So I just wanted to toast to everyone and thank you all for coming. So cheers to that. Okay, so we are gonna take 15 minutes and then we'll come back and we're gonna hear our last two storytellers. So we'll see you back here in 15. Storytellers in just a moment. I hope everybody had a chance to take a breather, get some refreshments. While we're kind of getting back into our seats, I'm gonna read a few more stories of your times jumping head first and let's see what we find here. Okay, here we go. This starts with a quote, Fly like a spider monkey Is something never to shout when rocking a boat, a nine ton boat, my wife dutifully obeyed, flew through the air to wrestle the beast to the dock and missed the dock, broke her arm and then in parentheses, she has not yet insisted I sell the boat. Open to interpretation. All right, it was March 2020. Off to a great start. I was living in NYC, my girlfriend in Dubai. She decided at the last minute to fly back to see her parents. She invited me for a weekend with them, the four of us. She, her parents, I have been living together in Burlington ever since. So I am going to bring up our next storyteller tonight. Our next storyteller is Suzanne Schmidt. Suzanne Schmidt is a... I want to make sure I get this right. First generation Italian Brooklynite living in Burlington. She is the drummer for the brevity thing and a producer for the Moth Radio Hour. Let's give a big hand to Suzanne Schmidt. So the first sentence I ever learned in Italian was si prega di portale liberta, which translated means please bring to me liberty. Or in the case of my great-grandmother, bail money. My great-grandmother was an Italian immigrant and she came to this country with nothing. Speaking no English, knowing no one. And she landed in Brooklyn and she immediately became a garment worker. And she had been arrested so many times as a suffragette fighting for women's rights to vote that this was the sentence that my grandmother, her daughter remembers most from her childhood. I didn't know my great-grandmother. She died the year after I was born. But the stories that my family would tell about her were incredible. One of my favorite stories, which went along with a picture that was sitting on my grandparents' mantelpiece, was a story of her standing in the waters in the beach off of Coney Island. And she had a long black dress on that she had pulled up between her legs and tied off at the waist. And as the story goes, she was arrested for indecent exposure a couple of minutes later because she had dared to show her legs on a beach where only men were allowed to swim. And so when my great-grandmother died, she passed this fierceness onto my grandmother and my mother and my aunt who raised me. And so from a very early age, I was clear that the power in my family lied with this mighty matriarch. And so the thing you need to know about Italian families, and I don't need to offend any of the men in the room, but the power lies with the people that can win the most arguments. And if arguing were an Olympic sport, the women in my family would be gold medalists. And the reason for that is because men argue as if it's an individual sprint. They come out with a lot of facts, but they don't have the stamina. Women know that arguing is a long-distance relay. There are arguments that started in the 1800s in fishing villages in Sicily that are happening right now tonight at my family's home in Brooklyn. And so the year that I turned eight, I decided that I wanted to play the drums. I had seen Karen Carpenter on television, and I thought, that's what I want to do. And so I knew in order to make that happen that I would have to convince the matriarchy that this was okay. And so I strategically waited until our Sunday family dinner when everyone was gathered around the table at my grandparents' house. And I announced I'm going to play the drums in the elementary school band. My brother was the first one to say, girls, don't play the drums, you can't play the drums. And I was about to say, wait a minute, I just saw, and I didn't even have to say anything because my mother immediately jumped in and said, what do you mean she can't play the drums? And then my aunt said, she can play whatever she wants, and so I just sat back and thought, let the games begin. And so then my grandmother jumped in and she said, you know what? Of course girls can play the drums. We saw Karen Carpenter on stage the other night and she was playing all kinds of drums. And my grandfather said, well, I don't think she's a very good role model. She was wearing pants on stage. And there was this long pause and then my grandmother looked at him and said, you wear pants, you're not a good role model, and yet you're still here. And I thought to myself, and the gold medal goes to the women's team. And so next week I joined the drum line and it was me and eight boy drummers and they were not happy to have me there. They were actually kind of horrible. They would rip up my sheet music. They would break my drumsticks. They had horrible things that they would say to me. And I thought about quitting a couple of times. But there was something that happened when I played the drums. I felt powerful in a way that I had never felt before as a girl. And so I stuck with it. And so a few months went by and the band director announced that I was going to play the drum set solo in the winter concert. And so I came home and I announced this to my family. And the first thing my grandfather said is, you're going to wear a dress on stage. And I was like, no problem. And so my grandmother made me this beautiful, long velvet gown. And even as a girl that did not wear a lot of dresses, this thing was beautiful. And so the night of the concert comes and I put this dress on and I get to the stage and I'm standing in the back with all the other drummers. And I'm looking at this red sparkle drum set sitting at the corner of the stage waiting for the drum set solo. And things were going really well. And then somewhere in the middle of the Hanukkah medley, I realized that a long dress is not the best outfit to play the drum set. Right? And so I think to myself, oh my god, what am I going to do? I could go side-saddle, but I wasn't really prepared to give up my kick drum or my hi-hat. And then I thought, what would Karen Carton do? Shit, she would wear pants. Of course, that's why she's wearing pants on stage. And Raymond Klugelein looks over at me and he whispers nice dress, because of course he knows that I can't play the drum set in this dress. And he says, I'll take your solo. And I think about it for a second and I look out into the crowd at my family, my whole family aunts, uncles, cousins are taking up like three rows. And my grandmother is so proud that she's crying. And in that moment, I know what I need to do. And I stroll up to the corner of the stage and I reach down and I grab that long dress and there in front of 500 people at the RJO elementary school, I pull that dress up, I tie it off at the waist, I sit down at that drum set and I rock that frickin' thing. I was like Karen Carpenter and John Bonham's love child. And the concert finishes and I come off stage and I meet my family out in the hallway and my grandmother was like, your great-grandmother is here with you tonight. And my grandfather says, I knew you could play the drums. And I go home that night and I'm lying in bed and the cymbals are still ringing in my ears. And I think to myself, I think my family was wrong. I don't think my great-grandmother meant bail money at all. I think she meant liberty. I think she meant the right for women to vote. I think she meant the freedom to show off your legs on a hot day on the beach at Coney Island. And I think she meant the hope that comes when you really work hard for something, knowing that you may not ever achieve that. But someday, your daughter or your granddaughter or your great-granddaughter just might. And when they do, you will forever be a part of their story. Thanks. Let's get another round of applause for Suzanne Schmidt. All right. We're getting closer to the end of the night and there's a lot more index cards in here. So I want to hear a lot more of these stories. So I'm just going to run through a few more while we still have time. The time was pre-Katelyn Jenner. The sibling I then thought was my brother called me and said they were in fact my sister. And she would start, quote, presenting as a woman. I had no idea what it meant, but I answered reflexively, I love you and I support you no matter what. And I will never regret that moment when I dove in head first. My stomach wasn't feeling right. And I decided to fart. It was a terrible decision and it wasn't a fart. The real range of interpretations of the theme here will give us one more. Moved from NYC at 26 an orchestra program in rural central Vermont from the ground up. All right. Let's do one more. I bought a Jeep for $1,400 and it was a piece of shit. Okay. Our last storyteller tonight is Audie Guha. Audie is one of my colleagues. She's a senior editor at VT Digger. When Audie was a teenager she started a special page in a local newspaper in Calcutta called The Statesman that was run entirely by high school students. That now is a weekly supplement that involves thousands of young writers from across the city. Audie has been a journalist ever since. She's reported from Bombay to Boston and now she's here in Burlington. So let's give a big round of applause for Audie. Of course I'm the last speaker. I want to shoot you for that. That's okay. So it was August 2017 and it was the first year of the Trump presidency. I was a reporter for a D.C. nonprofit called Rewire and I was covering race in America. I was in Charlottesville and I was in a huge crowd so packed that I had nowhere to move and then word reached us that a car had plowed into the crowd not too far away from us and snippets of information kept dribbling down to where I was and it said that it was intentional and that people of color were being targeted. I had been a reporter in America for 15 years and like a slap on my face I suddenly became the other and I looked around I was surrounded mostly by white people and I wondered for the first time in my entire reporting life if I was safe and I flashed back to a different time in a very different place where I should have been scared for my life but I wasn't because I was in my 20s and I didn't think death was real I was in Mumbai one of India's largest cities in my first real reporting job as a cub reporter for the Indian Express a very large national newspaper in India and I wasn't even part of the main newsroom I was like a side beginning reporter at a big startup that covered the internet because that was a new thing in the 90s I was in Churchgate Station which was a local train station in Bombay where I went to many times but this particular time I was there for a different reason I was going to interview a very notorious man who rarely granted interviews to the media I was standing at a particular gate at this station and I had no idea what would happen when two men came up to me dressed in white wearing Gandhi caps which was the name given to these white triangular caps that Gandhi used to wear and they kind of ushered me they kind of hit me on my elbows they pulled me down the street to a generic white ambassador which is the equivalent of a Toyota Camry in India and I got into it and they barely spoke any words to me but they took out a black cloth and they said that no harm would come to me if I complied and they blindfolded me and there I was in my 20s not an investigative journalist barely a journalist at all blindfolded in a car with two strange men and I thought it was the most exciting thing I'll ever do I'm like I'm an investigative journalist I'm going to win the Pulitzer this is awesome and so we went on this crazy ride and all this time I was wondering how I ended up in this situation the Indian Express was an entire high rise building and I worked in this obscure business publication department fresh out of college but I was always barging into the main newsroom to see what was going on a very male newsroom most of the women who worked at Indian Express worked in preachers or in entertainment there were very few women in the political newsroom at that time in Bombay there was a huge scandal going on about buildings that were falling down very similar to what happened in Miami only it was multiple buildings they were less than 5 years old and they were built with substandard materials that was suspected to be supplied by the underground mafia controlling building materials in Bombay at that time Indian Express had broken multiple news stories about the people connected to this but as underworld everywhere we did not have any major connections to them I had covered a mill a protest of mill workers at a mill in Bombay where I heard about a notorious thug called Arun Gowli who started at these mills and was expected to be behind the supply of building materials for these buildings that were falling down and I had kind of ingratiated myself into the newsroom and managed to write a story about this guy's particular connection now he was a guy people hardly saw or heard from no one knew where he lived I would describe him as the Al Capone of Chicago everyone knew he existed he had a great following he was a huge thug but also a hero among certain people and he had a lot of power and was not answerable to anybody he was the man I was going to interview because he had asked for me and in my naivete because I'm a fabulous investigative journalist he asked for me because I was new, clueless and the youngest reporter in the Indian Express family so there I was in this car, blindfolded thinking I'm like in a James Bond movie and amazing things are going to happen to me and I finally ended up at like no one knows where I ended up but we went down steps and they kind of guided me into a room and when they unfolded me I was in front of a very little man with a big turban and a giant moustache and the weird thing in reporting about in India is that because of the cultural because of the culture there whenever you went into a person's house they expected you to eat and drink with them so there was a gigantic Gujarati platter in front of me which involved maybe 20 bowls and rice and rotis and he basically the first thing he said to me was cow which is eat in Hindi and so I'm like this is not a good time to argue with anybody so I just sat down 85 pounds really small I look like a not even high school maybe like a middle school student I wouldn't have taken myself seriously so I'm like okay I have to sit down and eat this giant meal that weighs more than me and clearly he's not going to talk to me until I do this so somehow I think I sat down I'm a very slow eater it did not help so I think an hour passed in small talk and both of us eating this gigantic meal at the end of it I asked him all the questions I had and he completely played me because this is a guy whom the internet described as hoodlum jailed thug corrupt politician and these eventually daddy which if you go to Netflix is a new movie that Bollywood has made about his life in the last two years this is like a new discovery I made when I googled him so there I was and I asked him all my questions about substandard building materials and how he's behind it and he denied everything and he said it's all lies he believes in the people and he like straightened his Gandhi cap which is very funny because all these underworld thugs and criminals in India always compare themselves to Gandhi while not having any of the Gandhian ideals and he was like I'm for the people I want everybody to have a good life and the government is corrupt and just completely played me never answered any of my questions and you know was really condescending the whole time and so we went back the two men blindfolded me again dropped me back at church gate station and I remember standing there in the afternoon light and wondering if this whole thing happened at all or if I imagined it and I remember having to call my aunt in Bombay back who was far more afraid than I was about what would happen to me that day and made me swear that I would call her back if I came back alive so I went back to the office and the editors were amazing they knew that I was completely inexperienced not equipped to write a political story about an underworld thug like Arun Gowli but also made me sign several non-disclosures about how they would not be responsible if anything happened to me but also told me that I'm under no obligation to go for this interview but I thought I was going to win a book Pulitzer so what the hell I was like I'm going to do it no matter what so my story was a complete fluff piece that I would never want anyone to see today but the one good thing that came out of it is that in a very rare move the editors of the Indian Express wrote a front page editorial about how the press in India is treated and how they are completely unable to do real journalism when people like this control the narrative and do not respond to our calls and completely manipulate how the story is framed so there I am in Charlottesville thinking about a time when my life was probably really a threat and I didn't care to 20 years ahead when I was suddenly worried about how I would get out of there and whether I would get out of there alive and I've spent my whole life in journalism and there's nothing I can't imagine anything else that I would ever do and I've been in a lot of strange situations either unexpected or surprising or not planned for but no matter what the situations is and I'm sure this is true of journalists all over the world we go into it and we write the story thank you Adi Guha everyone thank you so much for coming thank you so much to Back Pocket Media for putting on local lives thanks to all my colleagues at BT Digger who are here who helped make this happen thank you to Foam Brewers and Deep City we are so so happy to be here and thank you DJ Local Dork also for keeping things moving tonight so and thank you all so much for coming we're so happy to be here we're so happy you're all here have a great night thank you