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Comedian, actor, musician, and software engineer Chris Grace interviews the most interesting people that he can find. In a world of narrowcasting, granular demographic analysis, and algorithmic content pre-determinism, why not treat yourself to a good old-fashioned conversation?
Chris: [00:00:00] My guest is a author and journalist and entrepreneur, and she's written a lot of different kinds of books. Uh, one specifically relevant to me because my cats just died last week, , or two weeks ago. Um, anyway, uh, please welcome to the show Stacy Horn. Stacy, it's so nice to have you on the Chris Grace Show. Welcome.
Stacy Horn: Thank you. Great to be here,
Chris: Uh, so Stacy and I have known each other digitally for a long time, but this is our first time actually having like a real conversation. Um, but Stacy's an author. Yeah. I mean, you've written.
Um, I wanna say it's like an eclectic slate of books,
Stacy Horn: It's
Chris: because looking at the books that you've written, it's not like I can predict what the next book is gonna be about.
Stacy Horn: You know that's true. But every book in one way or another has led to the next, even if the topics are entirely different and they are all, they are all morbid in one way or [00:01:00] another. Even if I tried to get away from that and they all led to the book that I'm writing now.
Chris: Um, I would connect them. There is certainly a morbidity that connects them . Um, but I would also connect to, you know, I was sort of going over, um, the ones that I've read, I've read Cville and I've read Imperfect Harmony, um, and. Even looking at the other ones I've also ordered recently, uh, I've ordered the book waiting for my cats to die because, uh, recently my, both of my cats died.
Um, one day, two days apart. One day, one day. And then the ne next day the other one died.
Stacy Horn: Wait, explain that. That's
Chris: Well, I've had them both for 19 years and my pet corny, who was sort of the like robust one, the one that we were always like, well, he'll live forever. And then our other Cat Peanut, she was, she has seemed like a geriatric cat for a while, whereas [00:02:00] corny, This, I honestly seemed like a kitten until him, like a month ago.
So he was very strong in jumping around like, and so, you know what I mean? Like you have one cat that's kinda like, this cat is , you know? Uh, but he shortly had these complications with his kidney and stuff very quickly and passed away. And then we were still like, okay, well now we have peanut. And literally the next day peanut had breathing issues and.
We were bringing her to the animal hospital and she died on the way in my arms.
Stacy Horn: Oh God.
Chris: so it's pretty awful. I mean, like, it was very, honestly, I feel grateful that I got to be there for both of them when they passed away. Like it was, there was something, in a way it's like you can't ask for much more from a pet relationship because they both live 19 years, the.
Stacy Horn: a really long time.
Chris: and the time from when they were a functioning cat to when they passed away was made, like for corny was maybe like [00:03:00] three weeks. And for peanut it was literally like 24 hours.
Stacy Horn: Oh God. Oh
Chris: So I mean, in a morbid way like that is about as good as you can ask for in terms of a life. You
Stacy Horn: Yeah.
Chris: You know, you don't want the like years of.
Stacy Horn: No.
Chris: get, I had to give peanut medication ever, except for like, she had a cold or something once, but like there was not a long extended period of like, caretaking with these cats.
Stacy Horn: No, you're really lucky to have missed that.
Chris: yeah, exactly. Um, but I, but the, I was gonna say the connecting thread that I've seen in the books that, uh, first of all have had a huge influence on me, but. The connecting thread for me has been empathy. Like I feel like there's a lot of empathy woven into your books. Um, and as, I don't know, like maybe that goes hand in hand with the morbidity,
Stacy Horn: Thank you for saying that. . You know, I, I, I think of myself as like, writing is always a challenge to [00:04:00] me. I mean, it, it's similar to Echo the whole time. I was like starting echo and making decisions about echo. The thing in the back of my mind at all time was what decision will cause the least amount of harm to the fewest number of people?
And when I'm writing a book, I'm always thinking, who might be hurt by something that I've written. And, and I, I, I work that into the book. I, I do think about it like I wrote a book called The Restless Sleep, which was about the N Y P D's Cold case squad, and they go back and try to solve old unsolved homicides.
And one of the homicides that I wrote about was about a young girl who was murdered, oh God, I forget how old she was, but like 12, 13 in that area. and I interviewed the father, you know, it was one of the hardest interviews I've ever done, and he, he was completely broken by it. [00:05:00] And as I was writing this section about her, I'm thinking, the family can't read this.
I don't want them to read this. And so I contacted the father and it said, don't read my book. And he said, well, my wife won't, but I'm going. . So I'm writing that chapter knowing this, and I am, I had luckily came across this study at the same time. Um, I can't remember who wrote it, but I, I, it was a, a group of medical examiners, um, people, people who do autopsies, and I, I no longer remember the specifics, but as a result of their work, They said that people who die violently and quickly, um, don't suffer.
It happens too quickly for them, for, for the body to feel pain [00:06:00] and for the brain to register fright. Um, and so I put that in the chapter about his daughter, um, to, to communicate to him that she did not.
Chris: Hmm. Uh, did you hear, ever hear from him?
Stacy Horn: I did, and, uh, it was positive. Um, and the, I heard from her younger sister, I, which was a surprise to me. I didn't speak to her. Um, and she wrote me a thank you letter, um, because I did my best to learn what I could, um, about, uh, the girl, Christine Diefenbach, um, to learn what she was. and to describe her so that , this may me sound cruel, but I wanted people to understand and feel her loss in a way that the family did, that this wonderful person was no longer with us.
And so the sister thanked me because she said that her sister had [00:07:00] died while she was still very young, and she never really got to know her well, and she felt that she didn't know her better after reading.
Chris: Yeah. I mean, how much of your thought process when you're creating you, you're essentially kind of creating these worlds, um, that you kind of have to get the reader a little bit attached to before you can sort of talk about why the impact of those worlds. You know, like I feel like an imperfect harmony.
There's like, there's. A certain amount of work you have to do to bring someone into the feeling, the communal, the community part of the being in the choir. And is that something that you think about consciously in terms of, or I honestly, my reaction as a sometimes creator, sometimes writer, is also like, does it get exhausting or repetitive to feel like, okay, I have to like build this thing, get get them in, and then say what I want to.
Stacy Horn: Um, it's [00:08:00] stressful. You know, I, I'll, I have a crisis of confidence every time that I'm going to be able to pull it off, but I, I don't get tired of it. It's fun. Like once I'm beyond the blank page, like I've started, it's fun, but stressful, but fun. Um, the only thing I can think of is, is. With every book, I always feel inadequate.
Like I always feel like, oh God, I wish I had, like with imperfect harmony, I, I mean, I could talk about music from an amateur singer's point of view, but I really wish that I had degree in music when I wrote that. So I, I could just speak. eloquently about the entire history of music and theory. Um, and I, and I, I did research and put that in there.
Um, [00:09:00] well, a perfect example is I interviewed, um, Morton Lordon about, um, his piece of music, oh, Magnum Mysterium, which is one of my favorite pieces of music to sing. And I interviewed him. He just seemed annoyed, almost the entire time by my questions. And, and I was terrified, um, about his chapter because it was very important to me.
Um, uh, because of the way I structured that chapter, I, I tied it into, um, a fellow choir. Who lost a pet at the same time that we were singing this song, uh, this piece of music. And so talk about world creating and, and morbidity and, and pet loss
Chris: Yeah,
Stacy Horn: So I was wrapping this all together and [00:10:00] it meant a lot to me to get it right.
It just was so important to me to get it right for. For the, the, the piece of music which I valued for the grief that my fellow choir member was going through, which I respected. And after the book came out, I got, um, email from Lords and saying he loved it and he was showing, showing it to all his friends and making available
Chris: So maybe he's just a, has a resting, annoyed personality.
Stacy Horn: Before I was asking annoying questions and he couldn't, and he couldn't tell where I was going with it all, but it all worked out.
Chris: Yeah. Um, When you are a sort of mid process on these books, how much of your work is sort of generative and how much is research and how much is [00:11:00] interviews? Or is it all three or, I mean, I'm sure it's different from book to book, but,
Stacy Horn: It's different from book to book, but frequently, um, I'm writing about things where the people I really need to talk to are dead.
Chris: Hmm.
Stacy Horn: Uh,
Chris: So you're going out to Long Island to see mediums and psychics and
Stacy Horn: Uh, , you know, I wrote a book about that,
Chris: Wait, I,
Stacy Horn: I wrote a book about the former Duke Parapsychology laboratory. Do you know what that is?
Chris: no, I don't, I don't know. Wait, what is this book called? I must have missed this in my research.
Stacy Horn: It's called unbelievable. Um, but Duke University had a parapsychology laboratory. This was such a fun book to research, but, um, they had a lab, um, where the mission of the lab was to see if they could use the scientific method to find evidence for life after. [00:12:00] Um, I knew it sounds funny, but it was, it was a different time and it was weirdly, science had a much more open mind about this question than it does now.
Um, and so it was, it was, it was interesting and brave and exciting that they were actually doing this. I mean, this is a whole conversation in and of itself. I'm a skeptic. I mean, I. everything to do with the paranormal stories, ghost stories,
Chris: Right.
Stacy Horn: but I don't really believe any of it. Um, and so anyway, so they, they spend about 30 years doing this.
I went down to Duke University to, you know, research the lab and what they did, and I was expecting, you know, boxes and boxes of ghost stories. That's, that was my, VI vision, my idea of what parapsychology [00:13:00] meant. So I, I start opening boxes and it's just pages and pages of math and statistics, and like, I'm terrible in math.
Never took a class in statistics. I had no idea what I was looking at. And so I requested different boxes. I requested the boxes of correspondence and. in the process of reading letters from the Duke scientists and other scientists, I gained a picture of what actually happened. And I can just tell you briefly.
So they had this mission, um, to see, um, if there was life after death, and they just started with mediums, to see, you know, are they all. Con men and women, or is there something you did? They have a way of accessing information that we don't know about, and so they designed these experiments to [00:14:00] test these mediums.
Um, finally, they tried to make it, as rigid a and, error free. So what they did, They would have a subject that the medium was supposed to be reading, but that person was in another room, so they couldn't do that thing where they got cues from the subject, um, either by
Chris: Like, uh, cold, cold reading type stuff, or.
Stacy Horn: Exactly.
So the person was in the other room and they did this a bunch of times and they found, surprisingly that the mediums were still getting a lot of things right. Um, it was all very you. Raw. Like they hadn't developed, you know, ironclad experiments, but it led them to believe there is a possibility that there's a way of accessing information that we don't know about or understand, but that doesn't mean necessarily that they're getting the information from dead people.
They realized, you know, so yes, they know these things. We don't [00:15:00] know how they know them, but it doesn't mean they're, you know, just talking to ghost.
Chris: Right?
Stacy Horn: So they came, that's when they came up with the experiment, um, that most people are, um, at least somewhat familiar with those E s P cards. They were in the movie Ghostbusters.
Chris: Yes. Uh, they, this originated from the Duke lab.
Stacy Horn: Yeah. They started, they started with regular playing cards and they and Duke students, duke University students to see if, you know, they could tell them, you know, what card they were holding up without. But they found that people were too familiar with these decks, and they would just pick cards that were their favorite cards.
Like they'd kept start with like the ACEs spades or the kink cards. So they designed their own deck. So it was another guy, um, Zenner, um, a psychologist in the psychology department who designed that deck. And they, and so they designed experiments and they eventually got. [00:16:00] The, they used tighter and tighter controls, so the subject was in another building entirely.
Um, and the, the scientists conducting the experiment, um, was, it was double blind. So even he did not know what cards were being turned over and they found that, um, a number of students were able to tell them, um, what, um, designs were on those cards to a statistically significant. Degree
Chris: Right, right,
Stacy Horn: and that's what launched, that's, that's, they took it from there.
Chris: Well, that's fascinating because, uh, I a, as a hobbyist magician, I'm very familiar with those e s P cards because they come up in lots and lots of magic. There's, I, I have like three sets of those cards that are like gaffed or marked in a certain way, . Um,
Stacy Horn: Well their experiments. Accounted for that. But, uh, there was one really terrible, like in the beginning, they were, partnered with, um, a [00:17:00] radio station to promote, um, this show that they were doing on the lab produced, or wasn't it, game company. Now I forget, but a cert somebody produced a bunch of cards for. and they didn't use these cards for the experiment. They gave them away. And it was discovered that the cards were semi-transparent. So, so a subject could read what card you had in your hand. Um, and so this, um, BF Skinner, who's a famous psychologist, he was at Harvard. , he, he discovered that these cards are transparent.
And so he used this to absolutely humiliate the lab, you know, showing how his students could all read all the cards. And he wrote, Ryan this, and Ryan said, yeah, we know we don't use those cards for our experiments. But Skinner never like, took it back. Like he wrote a paper about it, told all students about it, and, and neglected to [00:18:00] say, but the, the lab were not using these.
Chris: Well, I mean that's, uh, the whole thing of like corrections and people following up, you know, where people will say, it seems like a very common phenomenon these days of I say something outlandish to get attention and then when I'm corrected I will. Maybe put up one tweet about it, but I will not, I will not as prominently correct myself as I,
Stacy Horn: But it changed my whole. Very naive point of view about people of science. Like I always think of, think of them as more rational, um, than me
Chris: Yeah.
Stacy Horn: when I read the letters going back and forth between them and the lab, it's like they were hysterical and emotional and nasty and insulting and not at all rational. And I thought, okay, they're human, but it. It's heartbreaking,
Chris: right. Um, yeah, I mean that's another thing too is that I've found over the last couple [00:19:00] years is that people have a certain, you know, somebody like Richard Dawkins who I will see a clip of speaking about something very eloquently, and I find him very persuasive in certain ways, will then be just like so petty and.
Just like very, um, reactive in very non-rational ways on certain topics when he's challenged in a certain way. You know, a lot of people that, and, and I guess lately I just feel like, you know what, let me just take the value I can take out of Richard Dawkins and also accept that he was just, you know, just like everybody else, an emotional, sometimes angry person,
Stacy Horn: You have to, you, you have.
Chris: I wanna highlight something, um, from imperfect Harmony, which I just thought was so, um, uh, resonated with me very much per, pardon me if I'm about to read back your writing to you just briefly, but I just love this little [00:20:00] quote that, um, so imperfect Harmony is about you, uh, decided to sing with an amateur choir at a church in New York.
And, um, I think at first you didn't realize that you had to audition for it.
Stacy Horn: I didn't
Chris: right. So, and you had had a previous, uh, bad experience auditioning, I think for Bye by Birdie, where you had had sung off. Pitch and it didn't go well. So then you found out you had to audition for this amateur choir, which, I mean, I, which actually makes sense.
Like sometimes there's a lot of amateur efforts where you don't have to audition. Like it's just like, Hey, we're putting on a play. Whoever wants to help with this community play, sign up for it. Um, so then you found out you had to audition. You thought about not doing it at all. then you went to the audition and this is what you said, and I'm quoting from the book now.
It says, uh, I can't sing very well. I blurted out, sang what I had wanted to say all those years ago at my high school audition. I mean, I'm not awful or anything, but I know I'm not great either. Okay, not great at all. But I sing in tune and I don't sing very loud. So even [00:21:00] if I make a mistake, I won't mess up anyone around me.
But apparently in auditions I go flat. So if that happens, could you please take my word for it? That I can actually sing in tune. I'm not lying, I promise. I love this quote so much cuz. Tend to go flat when I sing. Um, and so, so sometimes when I sing I will go flat and I can't hear it. Um, so, which obviously is not great for harmonies, um, but I had an experience in college cuz I was in a college drama program where I was in a musical.
And it wasn't until we graduated college and me and my friends were driving from North Carolina. To New York City, to move to New York City, be to be actors. We popped in a cassette tape of, of a, you know, like a field record, not, you know, like not an official recording of the show, listening to my song.
And I sang flat at the end of the song, and I was so mortified, like the entire run of the show had [00:22:00] happened and I was flat on this room. Anyway, I just wanna, I love this highlight, but like, I love. The vulnerability of you saying that right before your audition
Stacy Horn: He was a sweet man.
Chris: Yes. And then you did get in and then he said, it's true. You don't have a pretty voice, but your pitch is solid Um,
Stacy Horn: that was a miracle.
Chris: yeah. Uh, what, uh, when, when I was reading this book, I was thinking that, um, I think it seems like there's an element of singing that you, you have to be in Concord with another person to sing with them.
So like, just physically you have to be doing something that is, you know, not in the musical sense, but like har in harmony with what they're doing. So it's almost like a way of like, you can't really be arguing about politics or anything when you're singing with something and, and. What has that changed about your [00:23:00] sense of like empathy and connection with people?
Stacy Horn: You know, you bring up such an important point. I don't know if I brought this up in this, the book, because maybe I read it after the book came out, but a woman, and I wish I could remember her name, wrote a paper if Congress were a choir,
Chris: Hm.
Stacy Horn: and she was talking about the fact that, you know, when you are singing with other people, , you know, , I mean, if you ne if you've never sung in harmony, I, it's very hard to communicate this, but it's just really the, the best feeling in the world.
There's like maybe one thing in the world that's equal to it, and you are not thinking about anything, like in terms of what are the politics of the person next to you or. or, or anything about race, religion, any, anything that might [00:24:00] get in the way, um, of, of being completely connected to another human being.
Any biases or prejudice you might have. You just wanna make that feeling continue you'll do whatever it takes. it's, it's not the only thing in the world like this, but it does remind you that, you know, speaking about like what we were talking about where, what your story with Richard Dawkins before, like even good people have a terrible side and even terrible people have a good side. So it, I would like to think. opens up empathy in all of us, at least just a little bit. And it, that was the point that this woman was making, um, in the book, uh, in her paper. [00:25:00] Um, if Congress were a choir. Cuz once you've had that connection to another human being, it makes it harder to hate them.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Stacy Horn: So she was saying it, it's possible that Congress sang together, like.
They might be able to talk to each other. It might improve their discourse. It might make it more possible for them to to compromise and reach a middle ground.
Chris: Yeah. I had an experience in the fall of 2021, sort of like that, where I was in a Zoom class. Uh, for like comedy writing with people and it was people from all across the country and we're working on very, like, vulnerable topics. Like you had to be very, uh, willing to write about anything in the class, and then people give feedback and stuff and then, you know, that's not necessarily what you end up putting on stage, but, um, [00:26:00] There was a lot of collaboration and there was a lot of, like, in between the classes, you would get on a Zoom with a couple people and work closely with them for the class.
And then about two thirds of the way through I realized like, oh, like one of the guys on the Zoom just had a mug. And then the mug just said like, Stephen Crowder on it.
Stacy Horn: Wait, who?
Chris: Steven Crowder, who I don't even really know, but he's sort of a right wing,
Stacy Horn: don't know who.
Chris: troll. I, I think it's probably better that you don't know who he is.
But, and it was interesting because like I had, I mean I still consider these guys my friends, but I think about three of them were Trump voters, . Um, they lived in different parts of the country. They just had different opinions on that stuff. And it was because I got to know them, not through any political lens.
It was basically like, they like tricked me into liking them Um, so I mentioned before that your books have influenced me a lot. Uh, but one of your books [00:27:00] specifically like physically changed my life a lot, which is, well, which is the book Cyber Bill. Because after reading the book, like right after reading the book, Cville, um, I joined.
What you had mentioned before you started a company called Echo. Um, and it's interesting cuz around that time, I think I joined the, well around the same time. So I was in New York City. The, well is a online, uh, originally like a bulletin board type? I would describe them both as sort of like forum style bulletin boards.
Um, they're social media communities, but not in the current sense. Like, they're not as, uh, honestly they're not as like, Viscerally like moment to moment hostile as a lot of current social media is, um,
Stacy Horn: They are, they're social media. It's
Chris: yeah.
Stacy Horn: the communication online has changed.
Chris: Yeah. So when, so I was I think on the well and Echo around the same time and [00:28:00] I believe I ended up staying on Echo cause I was living in New York City. The well is a very West Coast focused. Experience. And so there's a, there's a lot of people like at that time talking about like, things more important about like San Francisco and that that sort of the well feels more connected to like the tech industry.
Um, but uh, I would say they both sort of felt like they grew out of a sense of social media connecting people through conversations. in a way that, I mean, certainly they both have their share of drama or arguments or whatever, but they don't seem, uh, they weren't like incentivized by like, let's piss our users off so that they have to engage with it.
Um, and that almost feels like an, that feels like an old fashioned way of looking at social media. Um, but so I've been a member of Echo ever since then, so I, I didn't even remember what year that book came out, but like, I've been on Echo for like a long time. Um,
Stacy Horn: [00:29:00] 1998,
Chris: Yeah, and I was certainly on it a lot more when I had a day job where Echo was a perfect way to kill time, at a day job that had internet access.
Um, but I've always been curious about what it's been like for you to see other social media things pop up. And certainly a lot of current social media is incentivized by like anger and engagement and. . How does it feel like, I mean, do you have thoughts about the way it's gone? Because it didn't really go the way the well and echo were going.
Stacy Horn: No, no. I mean, we were trying to achieve the opposite. Um, we were trying to. mediate, dispute. Um, we were trying to be the choir of social media and find a place where even if people disagreed, they could communicate civilly.
Chris: yeah.
Stacy Horn: Um, so [00:30:00] I, I, I find it so depressing when I see what is going on. Like for here, like with Echo, one of the things I did very early on was I wouldn't allow people to be anonymous
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Stacy Horn: because I thought if they knew their name was going to be a appear with whatever they said, and people knew who was saying what, they would be more careful and more civil, and they were, because it was a different world now. People are, again, they've learned that it's perfectly okay to say horrible things and to express these horrible views. It's okay to be racist. It's okay to be this, that, and the other thing. And there's, there's no push, there's not enough pushback against that. Um, [00:31:00] I forget where I was going with this. I find it depressing.
Chris: Yeah. I,
Stacy Horn: go ahead.
Chris: well, I. I've found such a, like, um, my relationship to the conversations on Echo has been so interesting to me because I was very, I was on it a lot for a little while, and then I sort of fell off of it. I've been checking in recently and it's, it's been actually very fun for me to like, go back and look at old messages that I had with people.
All conversations. I, I don't know why I was wrapped up in this, but I was like a mediator for, uh, a dispute between, uh, one user and Mike Godwin , who was like famous for like Godwin's law, which is like any conversation on any argument on the internet. Uh, as a con, as an argument progresses on the internet, the, the odds that it mentions.
Nazis and Hitler approaches [00:32:00] 100% or something like that. Um, like that, that Mike Godwin, I was in these like semantic debates online and I think I was in my twenties or something. Like, I don't know, I was not equipped to like me having this argument. I don't know why I was arguing, but it's, it's just funny to be like looking back at messages about, um, like me having an argument with him about like, you know, his, how much hostility he was directly expressing in the medium, you know,
Stacy Horn: He, but he was and continues to be
Chris: Yeah.
Stacy Horn: prickly and he's a friend. That's just his style.
Chris: Well I think that now I might relate to it differently because I think back then I was like, I think now, you know, sort of talking about what we were talking about with Richard Dawkins is like, now I might separate some sort of his, his, uh, conversational style as just like, that's just him as opposed, because he also is a very sharp thinker about so many things.
Stacy Horn: I agree.
Chris: And sometimes I wonder [00:33:00] if the, if it's difficult to separate the style from the substance, uh, and, you know,
Stacy Horn: Especially in those days.
Chris: right. Um,
Stacy Horn: had was text. There was nothing to soften those words.
Chris: Yeah. Another fascinating thing that happened to me recently coming back to Echo was, uh, and this, it mirrored something for me that I felt like happened with my father, which is my father. And I had a big issue that he didn't like the fact that I was gay and I didn't talk to him for a long time. And then I came back to the conversation to engage with him.
a long time later, and he had not evolved his thoughts about it at all. And interestingly, I came back to Echo like a month or so ago and had, I forget what it was about, but some discussion about racism and I was a little bit shocked. I was like, oh, some people here are still sort of like in like Clinton era, um, like a sort of like a very idealistic view of [00:34:00] like racism,
Stacy Horn: it's.
Chris: Then I was like, oh, I thought that we had, um, like after George Floyd and all that, like, I thought we had kind of eval, evolved our thinking on these things. Um,
Stacy Horn: Like without naming names, I, I, I am disappointed sometimes by what I read.
Chris: yeah, I mean, it, it's been fascinating. I, I actually love it. I love a lot of the time capsule nature of it. Um, I also wonder what, what, how have you felt.
it's just to be speaking about morbidity. Like it's very poignant to me to be on echo. and seeing messages from people that are like, oh. So like for example, I got a bread machine from Susan Brown Miller through Echo. Like she was giving away a bread machine and like I went to her West Village apartment and got a free bread machine.
Like, it was such a weird, I [00:35:00] was like corrected on my grammar by Jesse Scheid Lauer. You know, like such distinct, unique experiences. And then to be on Echo and see people saying like, you know, so-and-so has passed away. , it is a, as a community, it's an aging community. Um, I have been struck by the poignancy of that and like the, the still wanting to engage with it as opposed to like a lot of current social media is about like the vibrancy of youth, you know? I don't know. How does that feel to you to be sort of part.
Stacy Horn: Well, it it, what you describe, it's similar for me. I, it, it's poignant. I mean, and I'm. Very much of that aging group. I'm 66 and I feel like from time to time one of us gets sick and, and we talk about how to [00:36:00] respond. We send them gifts, you know, we, we help take care of them and then we say goodbye and the rest of Echo's days are going to be filled with that cuz we are all getting older. So I'm glad that we're there for that. And yeah, I'm glad that we're there for that. And unfortunately, at a certain point I, um, got more involved with writing books than Running Echo, and I stopped trying to market it. I mean, I did, I haven't done anything for decades to get new people. . And even if I did, like, there was a book that was written about, um, women, um, and the internet called broadband.
And there's a chapter on me. So I've gotten a lot of people trying to open accounts to get on Echo, but I don't even bother sending them what they need because we still use the same exec [00:37:00] software that I picked out for Echo in the 1980s. it's all tech space. You have to learn commands and no one is willing to do that anymore, and I don't blame them.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Stacy Horn: So we will forever be an aging community because there are not young people coming in to take our place.
Chris: I kind of wonder though if that's a more organic way of having a community in the sense that like, , this is what this spec, this um, like specific number of people related to each other through this one community. And then, like, this community doesn't have to be infinite. It's like a thing that served this group of people.
And then it will stop in a sense that like, maybe this is more like real life, you know,
Stacy Horn: No, absolutely. I've thought that too. Yeah.
Chris: like everything goes away. Yeah. Um, and then, Uh, [00:38:00] somebody who's 20 or 30 now maybe will have their version. You know, I, do hope for them that they have a version that allows them to make connections that I, I think were made through Echo in the well. Um, because I think there are more, like, there's people in the Echo that have been, I mean, some of these friendships are like 30 years, 30, 40.
Like, it's, it's.
Stacy Horn: Oh yeah. If you go on Facebook, all the former Echo people are still friends on with each other on Facebook. They've just moved the place where they're hanging out.
Chris: I also, uh, I, I, I am slightly, I guess bemused and I, I find it sort of charming, the fact that like, I can go into Echo and there are people still having feuds that are like,
Stacy Horn: I know
Chris: they seem, they seem like they're in their teens, honestly. Um, I just think that's like kind of charming in the sense that like, wow, people are really invested in each other.[00:39:00]
Stacy Horn: I know, I know. It never ends
Chris: I'm sure that's a headache for you, but.
Stacy Horn: it is a headache. I, oh God. It, there's an ongoing thing and I, I just, you know what, at one point I started a topic in Central, which is the main conference on Echo where people gather, and I said, that's it. I'm throwing in the towel. You know, I'm not gonna shut it down.
I'm just, I'll figure out something, you know, give it to some, somebody else to
Chris: Right, right, right, right. It's also funny because the, uh, like the, the, you know, I would say like the young guns of echo are the people li like me that are like almost 50 years old. And,
Stacy Horn: It's true
Chris: and, uh, first of all, there's no, you know, it on echo you sort of practice grief in a way because you go through these, uh, decade bound age conferences that are like, Under 20 under, or not under 20, but under 30, under 40.
You know, like there's, and then once you turn 30, you like have to [00:40:00] leave the twenties
Stacy Horn: Yeah.
Chris: And so you kind of have this progression of like, okay, I guess I'm not participating in this anymore. I'm, I'm sort of dying from this little u p F forum. Right. Um, and I was really, I essentially like missed the entire forties.
Forum I have like about six months to participate in the forties forum and, and there's only like two people in it anyway,
Stacy Horn: I, I'm surprised that there's anyone
Chris: I'm not even sure if there's anyone in it. Um, but it's funny because some of the other young people that are like, oh, you know, one of the people that helped architect the tech of Echo is like, oh, he's the young kid of Echo.
And he's like, you know, he's not a kid.
Stacy Horn: Yeah. Yeah. He has kids.
Chris: yeah, exactly. But yeah, like I found the, the experience of it. I, and I guess this is what I would connect to your, your books is, uh, the, I think the most, the feeling I get the most from your work is like, just a [00:41:00] feeling of like, it's such a like vaguely articulated thing, but what you were saying about bef Skinner, it's just like he is a human being and that is kind of what I get from Echo and I get from the work as well, is just like, I feel like you.
and I don't know this conscious, I feel like you're trying to sort of continually reassert like we're human beings and we should be, we should connect to each other as human beings.
Stacy Horn: Yeah.
Chris: Um, a also, you wrote a very, um, pretty harrowing book, uh, about Blackwell Island, um, in New York City, uh, called Damn Nation Island.
That was in, uh, 2018, I think. And also again there like, I felt a sense. , um, morbidity for sure, . Um, but also there is something in I think your author voice that I find to be sort of explorative as opposed [00:42:00] to judgmental. Um,
Stacy Horn: maybe that's the upside to not knowing anything. What you're writing about
Chris: Sure. Yeah. You don't feel like you have the authority to be judgmental about things.
Stacy Horn: Well, no, because I'm literally writing about something. I'm just learning about, so it would be from the point of view of exploring.
Chris: Yeah. Do you, uh, you talked before about feeling. Like insecure about some of these topics, I guess is part, do you ever feel like, okay, I'm researching Black Wall Island, I'm talking about music. Do you ever feel like, oh, I might run into someone who like is an expert in these things and will say like, I'm all wrong
Stacy Horn: Oh yeah, that's , that's my big beer every single time. Yeah, that some. So I, I write that, that's, maybe that's why I, I research. So thoroughly to, to circumvent that possibility. But when I wrote, um, damn Nation Island, I was like, oh God, I wish I had a PhD in public health [00:43:00] and a PhD in criminal justice. And, and so many, because the book I didn't know, like I originally, um, had planned to write, I had hoped to write a book about the municipal. That's where a lot of the city's historical New York City's historical records are kept. Um, I, a lot of my books had taken me there for one reason or another, and it's a wonderful place. It's like, it's, it's like the end of Raiders of a lost arc. There's just all these collections and you go there to look.
one thing end up like getting sidetracked by a million interesting stories that you come across in the process of researching that one thing. So I wanted to write a book that communicated that, like what a fun place it is, and just to, for no reason to just go there and start looking around. You have a great time.
You'll get lost. It's like going down the rabbit hole on the internet, [00:44:00] but this is with paper. And, uh, so I wrote a proposal, you know, and I took samples from the collections and showed how that happened. And my publisher was most intrigued by a small section about Blackwell's Island. And they said, well, why don't you just write about Blackwell's Island?
And I thought, oh my God, that actually, actually does sound fun., Blackwell Island is what Roosevelt's Island in New York was called in the 19th century. I had no idea what went on there. I, I just had a vague sense that it was not good.
So when I started writing the book, um, that's when I learned that the city had bought it to build replacement institutions for, um, institutions that were in New York. were overcrowded and inhumane. So they built what they called at the time a lunatic asylum hospitals for the poor. Um, an s house, like a, an a, a [00:45:00] resting, uh, uh, I don't know what you would call it, an, a resting home for, um, elderly poor.
It was all for poor people. All the poor people they didn't wanna deal with, even the, the, the two prisons, which should have been for everyone, not just poor people, ended up just being for poor people. And I got a whole education about the evolution of the injustices of our criminal justice system. Um, and it was all bad.
It was just all bad people suffered. They suffered needlessly. Even the, the, the prison wardens, you know, would write these annual reports trying to get the city to do something about it. They never did. And. The whole time I was researching it and writing it, I thought that it's, there's nothing changed.
We're doing the same, we're making the same mistakes, doing all the same things today, and I don't even feel like I can judge any of these people because what am [00:46:00] I doing? I read terrible things every day, and what am I doing about it? Nothing Or.
Chris: Well, I mean, you also brought a lot of that to light, which a lot of people, you know, learned about that island in ways that I don't think they had before. Um, and also the fact that it was so, it felt, it seemed like it was so brutal for. Uh, you know, as an expression of, um, treatment of the poor, but also the, uh, the treatment of poor women and children, um, specifically I think that was, uh, and also illuminating in a way because there's a lot of New Yorkers who just kind of see that island a lot.
Like, you know, that there's a, I think there's, um, something fascinating about something you see a lot in your everyday day life and you're like, I, I don't know what the history of that place is. and, and to feel like, oh, I've had the physical structure of this place where like a lot of terrible things happened just in my day to day.
And I'm just kind of like, [00:47:00] well, this is my commute , you know, like,
Stacy Horn: Yeah.
Chris: um, so you're working on a new project, which I'm not gonna ask you about, um, cuz Uh, cuz you can't say anything about it. But, um, I.
Stacy Horn: say one thing, like there was an announcement in Publisher's Lunch about it, and they described it as, , the color of law meets the wire.
Chris: Okay. Very interesting. Um, what is your, like, do you have a sort of codified way of working through these books? Do you feel like, do you get a sense of like, okay, I'm a couple months into this process. This is where I should be at this stage kind of thing. Like what's your day-to-day kind of look like?
Stacy Horn: I'm very stressed all the time.
Chris: Okay.
Stacy Horn: Um, my publisher wants this book to come out, um, by the summer of 2024, [00:48:00] and which means I have to hand it in next September. And the way I always work is I do the research upfront as much as I possibly can. And this book that I'm working on now involves more research than any other.
and eventually I have to start writing it, which I have. But as you, I'm sure know when you start writing something, um, you see, oh, well I should have looked into that. I should have asked this person that. I mean, it isn't until you actually write the thing that you realize all the things you need to know.
I mean, the research that you've done before is a good start, but it's never all that you need to do. It's just the good start. So, That's where I am now writing, um, and researching. But normally when I discover some new avenue of research that I should have done that [00:49:00] I have to do, I'd be thrilled. It's like, oh, good.
More research. I love it. . I, I love nothing better than going to an archive and opening up some old boxes that nobody else has for decades. It's my favorite thing in. , but now I, I feel stressed about it because I have a very limited amount of time to write this book.
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Stacy Horn: I'm, I can do it like I've plotted the whole thing out.
I can do it. It's just going to be tight.
Chris: Uh, just from a, like a pragmatic point of view, when you, if you go to like municipal archives and you're looking through an old book and you, and you find stuff you want to use, is this a. , you've got a paper notebook and you're taking notes. You've got a laptop or is there a world now where like you can take a cell phone image of a page or something, or,
Stacy Horn: Yeah. Yeah. That, that's the, it's so much easier with, um, smartphones. Like now I've got a scanner on my phone. Um, [00:50:00] and, and, and even better, not only recently discovered this like a year ago, it used to be, you know, I would just scan and it, it's very quick. It's like, unlike taking a photograph, these scanners just convert everything. black and white document. Yeah. And now they convert 'em into readable and searchable PDFs, which is the greatest thing in the world. Um, cuz you might have scanned like a hundred page document and you need to find one section and instead of having to go through all of it, you can search, which is so great. So that's what I do. It's just, and they allow this no problem, and which means reduced income for them because they used to charge you for the physical paper copies of everything that you took, and now you can scan it all for free.
Chris: I mean, when I was a kid, uh, I would go to the library and I'd have to look up in a, there was a series of hardcover books that were indexing every magazine article that year. and then, [00:51:00] then you'd have to find the microfiche of the magazine and then pay the library 10 cents per page for them to copy it for you.
Um, yeah, I can't imagine the, it must be exponentially easier to just churn through material now.
Stacy Horn: Oh God. Insane. It's like life is so much easier for research.
Chris: and then, uh, at home. Do they, like live in a big folder on your computer or do you have like a decent way of, do you have an, do you, do you sort of structure your organization of this material as it comes in, or are you like searching for it as needed?
Stacy Horn: Um, I have a, if, if this is at all interesting,
Chris: Oh, it's interesting to me,
Stacy Horn: okay. When I wrote the rest of sleep, I picked four unsolved murders to write about. And so I had four different timelines of events and what people did and did not do, and [00:52:00] I, I had a very hard time organizing that and writing it. So I just developed this thing where I would, right from the beginning, establish a timeline for every thread that I knew I was gonna write about.
And as I found material. . I would add to my timeline just a reference. Like, if you need this, it's here. If you need this, it's here. Or, or if I know that I'm going to use a quote, I'd cut and paste and put it in my timeline. And now I always do things that way. Like I establish what threads I'm gonna have. I start a timeline, and as I research, I'm building and building and building these timelines.
So now for this current, I have two timelines and they're like a hundred pages each
Chris: Hmm.
Stacy Horn: of references.
Chris: Well, you're not, I mean, but you're helping yourself in the future by not just sort of dumping them all into a war document, un unreferenced and [00:53:00] just like,
Stacy Horn: The best thing is, is at the end when I have to fact check, it's makes my life a lot easier. I can go check wherever I got things, make sure I got it right,
Chris: Mm-hmm.
Stacy Horn: sort of thing, and I can prove where I got things.
Chris: Cool. Uh, and does the, does the new project have a name or it's just,
Stacy Horn: well, the, it does like, but it's just a placeholder. I, I hope it's not the name, but it's called The Killing Fields of East New York.
Chris: Okay. And this
Stacy Horn: I can say, because it's in that announcement that I'm writing about a white collar crime, and I'm tying it to the very large number of unsolved murders in East New.
Chris: Okay, that, so, uh, we should look out for that in 2024. Um, uh, you know, this is just irrelevant to the Author of Life. Something I learned recently was, uh, I don't, I would curious what your experience with this is, is I didn't realize that, uh, writers had to [00:54:00] do so much. Promotional work on their own. Um, in terms of like book tours and that kind of stuff, I, I honestly, if you had asked me what it, how it worked, I would think, like you get a publisher and then you go, what cities do you want to go to?
And they like, send an email to all the bookstores you want to do readings at, and you show up and do that. , I mean, I, I think that's probably what a lot of people think.
Stacy Horn: Oh, that's what I thought.
Chris: Yeah. Um,
Stacy Horn: The self-promotion is, uh, is painful. How? What do you find?
Chris: well, I mean, I haven't, I've had to do stuff in the theater world, so like that's mostly about, like, you write it, you produce it, and then you've gotta try to hustle people to get into the get, you know, fill up the seats, right. But, It's very
Stacy Horn: the same, isn't.
Chris: Yeah. But it's closely tied to when you're actually performing the material as opposed to, you're writing now all 2023, you're gonna be writing it comes out in summer of 2024.[00:55:00]
And then I maybe you're working on a different project at that point, but you're also, I assume then turning a flipping a switch where now you are a book promoter. and you're emailing a bookstore to see if you can get a reading and then you're maybe like booking your own flight in hotel to like go somewhere to read like,
Stacy Horn: Yeah,
Chris: um,
Stacy Horn: I just, I hate this part of it more than anything cuz I do not like, no, I don't. Very many people that enjoy self-promotion. It's, I, I find it painful. Like, pay attention to me, read my books, . I wish I didn't have to do it.
Chris: Well, sometimes I wonder that this element, cuz this is true of like standup comedians, is true of almost every artistic field, is that there is a. There's an element where you are a small business owner and you have to be also good at promotion and marketing. And sometimes I wonder, does this mean we're sort of selecting for, like we're not truly getting all of the [00:56:00] best comedians or all of the best musicians or songwriters, right?
Like not all of the best songwriters bubble up to the top because it's controlled by this filter. That's like, it's the best songwriters who also are good at navigating Spotify to get their songs on.
Stacy Horn: Yeah.
Chris: And that's not necessarily the best songwriters.
Stacy Horn: No, I, I, I agree completely.
Chris: Um, well, I don't have
Stacy Horn: it's so, and it's, and even if you're decent at promotion, it's still so largely a matter of luck. You know, someone saw something, oh yeah, that looks cool. Let's do that and let's do a feature on that.
Chris: Yeah. Well, you have to come back to us when you, when this book is coming out, we'll try to do some promotion for you,
Stacy Horn: Thank you.
Chris: Uh, but Stacy, thank you so much for being on the show. It's really like being on Echo has been a, like a significant factor in my, like, in my life. Like ho honestly, I think part of it [00:57:00] was in my twenties.
Being in regular conversations with people that were older than me, I think changed the way I related to people. Um, and uh, although now it seems like I'm more mature than some of the people still in Echo But, uh, but I mean, but it really was like a, it was, it was, uh, I mean, it felt a little bit like getting to be at a party with the adults, you know?
Um, and so it's been a major factor in life. And so, and obviously that was all because of you and your book Seville, which is still a great read.
Stacy Horn: you for saying so.
Chris: Uh, and I really, I, I love. Well, I haven't read Waiting for My Cats to Die. That's on it's way. Uh, but I definitely recommend people read imperfect harmony, imper.
It's such a, I, I mean, probably be as relevant now in terms of people feeling a need for connection. And also, uh, it, uh, it does make you wanna join a choir,
Stacy Horn: Yeah. Yeah.
Chris: [00:58:00] uh, and Dan man as well. But then in 2024, we're gonna buy this new book as well. Uh, thank you so much for being on the show.
Stacy Horn: Great. Thank you so much. . I had a great time.