INTERVIEW: CAILA LITMAN, SHOWRUNNER OF "MISSING PAGES" — Part 2
SS: What were some challenges you faced when producing this podcast?
CL: Spoiler alert: I'm not a formally trained journalist. The last 6-7 years of my career have been focused on doing business lady things in the sales, marketing, product, and revenue operations areas of audio.
Narrative podcasts, especially ones that go deep into the nitty-gritty of contemporary histories, have always been very much my sh*t. But turning my biz dev brain off was a challenge. I had to shift my perception of what a podcast sought to achieve from "is this sellable?" to "is this fundamentally true, and does it drive the narrative forward, and will it clear legal?"
I fell down lots of rabbit holes, and little non-sequitur elements of each episode were cut along the way. Thankfully, our team was learning together. If you listen to episode three (J.T. LeRoy), you'll even hear how one rabbit hole turned into a (slightly embarrassing) plot point.
SS: What kept you going through those challenges?
CL: The thing that propelled me forward is so earnest and altruistic but really did keep me going. There's a collective benefit to having difficult conversations. The reason why our cultural fascination with con artists and scammers persists is because these seemingly average people somehow spotted a hole to slink through in the system.
It's funny. In each episode of "Missing Pages," the motives vary from person to person, but what remains static is how the unwritten rules of publishing lend themselves to exploitation.
There's a reason why Podcast Industry GOAT Arielle Nissenblatt called 2022 "the year of scammer podcasts." And it's a good thing! The fact that we're even questioning these long-standing structures is a radical shift in the Zeitgeist, which – to actually answer your question – makes me optimistic. I have to believe there's a future where authors achieve a more equitable path to publication or professionally practicing their craft.
SS: Apart from jaw drops and oohs and ahs, what would you wish the audiences' biggest takeaway from this show to be?
CL: I hope listeners walk away from each episode considering that maybe these things can be true:
- Unsavory people can also be delightful dinner party guests.
- Someone can simultaneously lie about being captured by the Taliban AND help educate thousands of impoverished villagers.
- Landing a book deal can be your wildest dream come true and a curse.
- People are complex.
SS: Anything else you'd love to share with the readers of Inside Podcasting?
CL: We interviewed all sorts of people for this show, and the number of times that Oprah came up as the person who normalized trauma as entertainment was wild.
I've recently been loving "Oprahdemics from Radiotopia." It has a more optimistic take on Oprah's cultural impact than how she came up in the literary grifter context, but in the sincerest form of irony, even they have their issues.
I thank Caila and the team at Podglomerate for this interview. I am, for one, thoroughly loving the podcast so far!
Comments
Post a Comment