Transcript
Finding Common Ground
Ravi
In the preface to "The Cost of These Dreams," I would summarize the preface as something effectively like, "All the people I profile have demons and are messed up, and I'm messed up too, and therefore, I am uniquely privileged and uniquely suited to write about them."
I feel like that's an insight that affects all of our lives in a big way. I'm curious as to when you realized that you had some things in your own life that would make you uniquely suited to write about these folks.
Wright
The most awkward thing in the entire world is walking into a room with someone you're going to write about, and you don't know them and they don't know you. It's inherently awkward and fraught and almost never results in any sort of real human experience.
I just started a long time ago feeling like I need to find at least one thing I have in common with whoever I'm going to sit down with. When we can stand on this tiny postage stamp of ground together, then we can try to figure something out.