Episode 515
with Kathryn Schulz, Keanon Lowe, and John Craigie
Luke and Elena discuss a baby giraffe with human leg braces and a dog that snuggled its way into a stranger's bed; Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz unpacks her memoir Lost & Found, which weaves together the loss of her father with finding true love; football coach and mentor Keanon Lowe recounts the day he intercepted a potential school shooter with a hug; and storyteller and singer-songwriter John Craigie explains having to sing around "naughty" words for public radio appearances, before performing "Laurie Rolled Me a J" from his newest album Mermaid Salt.
Kathryn Schulz
Writer & Author
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize for “The Really Big One,” her article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Her 2022 memoir, Lost & Found, which Andrew Solomon called “a masterpiece of metaphysical insight,” grew out of “Losing Streak,” a New Yorker story that was anthologized in The Best American Essays. Her work has also appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Food Writing. A native of Ohio, she lives with her family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Website • Works
Keanon Lowe
Author + Football Coach
Keanon Lowe was a wide receiver for the Oregon Ducks and an NFL offensive analyst before he returned home to coach the football and track teams at Parkrose High School in Portland. Within two years, he led a football team with a 23-game losing streak to their first conference title in 53 years. But that’s not his best-known legacy at the school. On May 17, 2019, while working as a security guard, Lowe disarmed a student who’d come to school with a shotgun and a suicide note. A movie version of his heroic story is now in pre-production and will stream on Disney Plus. Lowe is also now the author, with Justin Spizman, of Hometown Victory: A Coach’s Story of Football, Fate, and Coming Home, due out in May 2022. Instagram • Twitter
John Craigie
Singer-Songwriter
John Craigie has been called “the lovechild of John Prine and Mitch Hedberg” (The Stranger), and it’s true that he is as much a storyteller and a humorist as he is a singer-songwriter. Known for his easy Americana style and his clever, life-affirming wit, Craigie carries on the legacy of such clear-eyed troubadours as Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. A Portlander when he isn’t on the road, Craigie has toured with Jack Johnson and received fan mail from Chuck Norris. His most recent studio album, Mermaid Salt, is available now. Listen • Website
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Luke Burbank Hey there, Elena.
Elena Passarello Hey, Luke. How you doing?
Luke Burbank I'm doing all right. You know, I'm hiding in this room right now from this cat that I got because she is very adorable, but really likes to climb up the side of my legs and do all manner of scratching.
Elena Passarello Oh no.
Luke Burbank So, honestly, while you and I are here doing Live Wire, it's really the safest that I can be in my house. So I'm feeling good about that.
Elena Passarello She weighs like two pounds and she's controlling your life, is that correct?
Luke Burbank I mean, I am, I'm living in terror here in Portland
Elena Passarello [Laughs.] Cat dad.
Luke Burbank All right. Are you ready for a little "Station Location Identification Examination"?
Elena Passarello Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Luke Burbank All right. This is where I am going to describe a place in America where I was on the radio. You got to guess where I'm talking about. Okay. When gold was discovered in British Columbia in 1863, thousands of prospectors from all over the West surged northward over a route that became known as the Wild Horse Trail. This town is named for the merchant who established a method for crossing the Kootenai River. So this person was getting folks over this river, this Kootenai River.
Elena Passarello The Kootenai River, I know is in Idaho.
Luke Burbank Yes. Okay, good. You're in the right state. This was also the long time residence of the writer Denis Johnson.
Elena Passarello Oh, is it Coeur d'Alene?
Luke Burbank It's, no, it's Bonners Ferry.
Elena Passarello Bonners Ferry! No. Oh, no. I'm going to get my writer card revoked.
Luke Burbank You're supposed to know where every Iowa writing program graduate.
Elena Passarello Well, he's a big one. So, I mean.
Luke Burbank Bonners Ferry, Idaho, where we are on KIBX radio. So thanks everyone out there for tuning in. All right. Should we get to it?
Elena Passarello Let's do it. From PRX, it's...
Live Audience Live Wire! [Music plays.]
Elena Passarello This week, writer Kathryn Schulz.
Kathryn Schulz I think actually a lot of this book, although it is about losing, and about finding, and love and grief, is actually about how you kind of take the side of joy.
Elena Passarello And football coach and author Keanon Lowe.
Keanon Lowe In losing my best friend, I ended up saving a young man's life inside a school by following my heart.
Elena Passarello With music from John Craigie.
John Craigie Who as a kid, I was the funny guy. So people who knew me as a kid, they'll come to the show and they're like, hey, not bad on the music, you know?
Elena Passarello And our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello. And now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone for tuning in from all over the country, including in Bonners Ferry, Idaho.
Elena Passarello Woohoo!
Luke Burbank We have a great show in store for you this week, covering a whole wide range of stories and experiences. Of course, we asked the Live Wire audience a question going in. We asked, What's the coolest thing you've ever found? So we're talking about lost and found on the show this week. We're going to hear those responses coming up in just a few minutes. First, though, we've got to kick things off, as we always do with The Best News We Heard All Week. [Music plays.] This right here is our little reminder that there is still some good news happening out there in the world. Elena what's the best news that you heard all week?
Elena Passarello Ah, giraffe news.
Luke Burbank What's going on with giraffes?
Elena Passarello Do you know what I would name a giraffe if I had one as a pet?
Luke Burbank No.
Elena Passarello Neck Nolte. [Laughs.]
Luke Burbank Did that, was that part of your research for your fine book, Animals Strike Curious Poses?
Elena Passarello Yes.
Luke Burbank Where you talk about mythical and sort of famous animals throughout history?
Elena Passarello Yes, there were a lot of puns involved.
Luke Burbank I think Neck Nolte is pretty strong, though.
Elena Passarello Well, this giraffe is named Msituni and she was born in this year in February at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and she had hyperextended carpi, which means those, you know those big knobby giraffe joints that they have on their legs?
Luke Burbank Yes.
Elena Passarello It was hyperextended to the point where her leg was bending the other way. And, you know, when a giraffe is born, I actually saw giraffe born in the D.C. Zoo when I was a little kid once. It was amazing. But one of the things I witnessed, the giraffe has to stand up right away. So those joints, those taxed joints were, are immediately an issue. It's not like kind of an infancy in a cradle situation.
Luke Burbank Right.
Elena Passarello And so this is a giraffe who's like five foot ten and 100 pounds at birth and they had to figure out a solution. So the zoo called the Hanger orthotics clinic, which makes braces and other accoutrements for Paralympians...
Luke Burbank OK.
Elena Passarello ...and marathon runners. And they found a technician named Ara Mirzaian, who basically got the charge that he had to help this giraffe with this leg issue, and he...
Luke Burbank And I assume this is kind of a nonstandard for this particular prosthetics company. They're not dealing with a lot of giraffe knees.
Elena Passarello No. Other extensions of it had done some work with like 3-D printing the bill of a toucan. But no, no giraffes. And this is really like load bearing.
Luke Burbank Yeah.
Elena Passarello Long, a real challenge, much longer than any human leg. And so Ara Mirzaian went online and studied giraffes 24/7. They had this big trial-and-error process that began with like getting leg braces at Target and horse braces and finally they made cast moldings of this giraffe's legs and fashioned carbon graphite braces. And you are going to love this part. The braces, they painted little spots on them, giraffe spots on them.
Luke Burbank Nice. So it blends right in because we don't need this giraffe feeling out of place. Maybe with the rest of the herd.
Elena Passarello Yeah. I mean, it's not giraffe colored, but it's still giraffe...
Luke Burbank Stylish.
Elena Passarello ...printed. And a couple of weeks in this brace corrected the issue.
Luke Burbank Whoa.
Elena Passarello And I have to tell you, the pictures of this little kind of gawky, early stage giraffe in a little leg brace are the cutest thing you've ever seen. And those pictures are now up in the Hanger Clinic so that Mirzaian can show them to kids who are getting fitted for their own orthotics.
Luke Burbank Oh that's so great.
Elena Passarello I know it's so cute.
Luke Burbank Move over, Bambi on the ice.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank We've got a new adorable young animal trying to get their feet under them.
Elena Passarello Msituni.
Luke Burbank Now, speaking of adorable animal photos, Elena, the best news that I saw this week comes out of southeast Tennessee where Julie and Jimmy Johnson had gone to bed for the night and woke up to quite a surprise. A pretty large dog sleeping in their bed that was not their dog. In fact, they have three dogs. One is named Hollis, one is named Jupiter, and one is named Zeppelin. And this dog that was in their bed was not any of those dogs. And I don't know if you've had a chance to see the photo. This dog, it turns out its name is Nala. This dog, Nala, just sleeping in these complete strangers' bed, has the most beautific look on its face like it is totally and completely comfortable in this environment. In fact, Julie said, "my husband pulled the blankets up a little bit, almost like to protect him, and at that point the dog got even further up on our pillows and snuggled in and was just 100% content being there.
Elena Passarello Full on Goldilocks.
Luke Burbank It was just right, that bed. So, I mean, what do you do in 2022 when you wake up and there's a just random dog in your bed, you take pictures of it and you put it on Facebook, which is what Julie started doing early in the morning in southern Tennessee. She just took these pictures and then posted to Facebook. "This is the weirdest post that I've ever had to make, but does anyone recognize this dog?" And of course, it it spread pretty quickly. And it didn't take long before somebody reached out, somebody named Chris Hawkins, who said, yeah, that's my dog. Her name is Nala. We were walking Nala last night right before a thunderstorm happened.
Elena Passarello Oh.
Luke Burbank And Nala is very, very afraid of thunder. And so at some point, Nala slipped out of her collar, ran into the woods, and then in the middle of the night, they think during the thunderstorm, because she was freaked out, she snuck into this house and got into the bedroom and got into the bed.
Elena Passarello She is Goldilocks.
Luke Burbank What people are truly mystified about is how the other dogs, Zeppelin and Jupiter and Hollis, didn't notice this.
Elena Passarello Yeah, what?
Luke Burbank He had a brush up on your guard dogging. Like this big dog, Nala, comes in and gets in the bed. The cutest part of the story is that now these two families are actually friends and all four dogs have, like, had playdates at the dog park.
Elena Passarello Oh, sleepovers, too.
Luke Burbank Yeah. So, Nala getting out of that thunderstorm and making some new friends. That's the best news that I saw this week. [Music plays.] Hey, if you want to get even more good news in your week, please check out our podcast, The Live Wire Best News Podcasts. It's a whole show just dedicated to fun, feel-good stories. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Let's welcome our first guest over to the show. She's a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she won a Pulitzer Prize for her piece "The Really Big One" about the seismic risk here in the Pacific Northwest that really still lives rent free in most of our heads, if you read it. Her work has also appeared in the Best American Travel Writing and Best American Food Writing. Her latest book is Lost and Found: A Memoir. Take a listen to this. It's Kathryn Schulz, recorded in front of a live audience last month at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Kathryn, welcome to the show.
Kathryn Schulz Thank you.
Luke Burbank This book is, first of all, it is absolutely incredible. I can't say enough about it. And it has so many different elements to it. It's, in a way, sort of a two-parter. It talks about the loss of your father. It also talks about you finding the love of your life sort of woven together at the end. I'm curious when you thought that this life experience is something that could make a good book.
Kathryn Schulz It was the love, as it so often is. I had written a little bit about my father's death not long after I lost him, and I wrote about it in the context of losing all these other things: keys, cell phones, elections. It was a bad year. [Laughter.] But yeah, I didn't really want to spend two, three, four years of my life just thinking about grief. But there was this moment when I realized, ah, well, there's this mirror image story I could tell that would kind of explore the category of discovery, but but that would have the emotional heart of, of a love story at the core of it. And that, to me, started seeming awfully interesting.
Luke Burbank You also really go into a bit of a deep dive on just the science of losing things, starting with the fact that a lot of us don't really fully understand the origin of the word "lost."
Kathryn Schulz Yeah, I was quite surprised by that. You know, when we say something like, I lost my father, I had just always assumed that that was frankly a euphemism, like saying, Oh, my father passed or whatever, but it felt really right to me and I don't normally like euphemisms, so I got kind of interested in the word and it turned out I was completely wrong. Actually, originally, the very earliest use of loss when it showed up in the English language, it had that sense of being separated from someone you love or being bereft in a sense, in fact, that, that word lost is related to the "lorn" in forlorn. So it's it's always had this note of real grief and sorrow inside it.
Luke Burbank Is it true that the average person loses nine items a day?
Kathryn Schulz I mean.
Luke Burbank That's in this book. And I was shocked by that.
Kathryn Schulz It's quite shocking. Yes. According to, like, insurance companies and places that bother to gather information like this, I like to think that at least two members of my family have skewed the average so drastically in the direction of loss that the rest of us only lose like two or three things a day. But apparently it's true.
Luke Burbank You write in this book about the sort of two theories as to why we lose things, and one is kind of scientific and the other is, I guess you would say, Freudian in some way. What are the what are the theories on that?
Kathryn Schulz Yeah, I mean, the short version is I think they're both kind of unsatisfying. But the, the scientific one is, you know, our, our minds are fallible, as you might imagine. And we fail to either encode a memory of where we left something or we encode it just fine and we fail to retrieve the memory. And so, lo and behold, like, who knows where my cell phone is? The psychological one is actually, frankly, much more interesting. But I'm personally inclined to think it's bunk. That's the theory that, you know, you only lose something that you just want out of your life.
Luke Burbank That's the Freudian idea.
Kathryn Schulz That's the Freudian idea. Like I lost my cell phone because I'm tormented by modern technology and I, or I had, there's some text message in it I can't bear to read. And so, you know, it goes missing. And the minute I resolve my deep emotional issues about cell phones, it will rematerialize in my life. That's happened for me never.
Luke Burbank We're talking to Kathryn Schulz about her book Lost and Found. This is Live Wire Radio coming to you this week from the Hult Center right here in Eugene, Oregon. We'll be back in just a moment with more. [Applause and music.] Welcome back to Live Wire, coming to you this week from the Hult Center here in Eugene, Oregon. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. We are talking with New Yorker writer Kathryn Schulz about her latest book, Lost and Found. This book focuses the first part of the book on your father, who was just an absolutely brilliant man, but also hopeless with losing things, with just whatever it would be, keys, passports, you name it. Is there anything to that idea of the kind of absentminded genius or that our brains are only capable of of being good at, like, knowing about the law or baseball in his case, but not remembering where our stuff is?
Kathryn Schulz Yeah. I mean, you know, I'm always reluctant to give too much credence to stereotypes, but it is incredible the degree to which my father, despite not actually being a professor, was truly an absent-minded professor. And I did sometimes feel like, well, you know, what's rattling around in your brain, you know, seven languages that you're fluent in all of—you know, he spoke English more beautifully than I ever could hope to. And that was his last language, you know, right, all of his kind of legal studies. He was a, he was a lawyer, the entire works of, you know, the Western canon, basically. And I thought, oh, maybe there's just not room to remember where your other shoe is. It could happen.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Your dad's story is really incredible. He was born in Tel Aviv. Then, you write in the book, and I had to reread this a couple of times because I wanted to make sure I was getting it right. You write, in one of the more unlikely trajectories in the history of modern Judaism, they left what was about to be the state of Israel and moved to—wait for it, Hult Center—Germany.
Kathryn Schulz I mean, for history buffs out there, in February of 1948.
Luke Burbank What I, I was, I had no idea that that was, however microscopic, that that was a migration that was happening.
Kathryn Schulz It's quite unusual. I mean, there were certainly still Jews in Germany, you know, some who had survived. And then, as it turns out, there were quite a lot of refugee camps in Germany. So some people went just to try to reunite with families there. But no, no, not my family. They weren't trying to reunite. My grandfather was frankly trying to make a buck, which in fairness, they were desperately poor and he had three children by then and wanted to feed them. And he had heard, as it turns out correctly, that it was possible to make a pretty decent living on the black market in postwar Germany. So some of my father's earliest memories are, you know, like of being in his dad's sidecar on his motorcycle, basically like being a decoy. He was sitting there, this very cute little round cheeked, adorable boy on top of a stack of, like, American cigarettes and, like, a camera. That's, that's what brought them to Germany.
Luke Burbank One of the things that comes through in this book is your dad's incredibly kind of ebullient personality and how he just kind of lit up every room he was in, and considering the trauma of his childhood, have you sort of tried to figure out how it is that he as a person was able to, you know, push past that or push it far enough into the rearview mirror that he could live, you know, the life that you saw him living?
Kathryn Schulz I certainly have thought about it a lot. And in some ways, I think it's actually kind of the, it's very close to the heart of this book, in the sense that I think actually a lot of this book, although it is about losing and about finding and love and grief, is actually about how you kind of take the side of joy, even in the face of pain and suffering. And the thing I admired about my dad, it's not like he just was sort of glib and a Pollyanna optimist. He just, he, he somehow managed to have this, as you say, ebullient, joyful spirit while still looking squarely in the face at the various woes of the world. How he was like that is a real mystery. I mean, that, that's kind of the mystery, right? Like how, why are we the way we are? Why are some people able to find joy in those moments? And I, I wrote toward that, but I, if I had an answer, they'd be paying me more money to be in a much larger auditorium. [Laughter.]
Luke Burbank Listen. Next year we're getting over to the, the real, the biggie. I promise. That's our, that's our goal. We're talking to Kathryn Schulz about her book Lost and Found. The "found" part of this book is you finding your now wife. A couple things about that. One, you describe your first date with her, that some mutual friends had set you up and she was passing through where you were living in, I think, the Hudson Valley, and you go out and you have this spectacular afternoon together and you're completely bewitched. And then at the end, you say that you were surprised that she wanted to go on another date because you didn't realize or know if she was gay. What did you think was going on on this date? [Laughter.]
Kathryn Schulz I'm really impressed you're the first person to ask me that question. I know, what was I thinking? Right? Like weird, rare, crucial failure of my gaydar. What did I think was going on? I think maybe there was not sufficient introspection on my part in that moment. I mean, I knew what was happening in my head, which was like, this woman is unbelievably brilliant and incredibly interesting and also strikingly beautiful. And gosh, that shirt looks nice on her and what pretty long fingers. So. It's not that I wasn't having a series of thoughts, but I don't know, I mean, it's so funny, since you've already blown my cover as the author of the earthquake piece, the truth is, I was on deadline for that piece during that lunch.
Luke Burbank No!
Luke Burbank Oh. The, the...
Kathryn Schulz True fact, revealed live for the first time.
Luke Burbank Wow, the now famous-in-the-Northwest earthquake piece.
Luke Burbank You were on deadline for that piece when you met the love of your life?
Kathryn Schulz I was actually like two weeks behind deadline. So in my mind when I went off to that lunch, you know, I didn't know her from Adam. And it wasn't meant to be a set-up, actually. It was just, here's this friend of a friend driving through town. I'll be nice. I'll go have lunch. But when I set off for that lunch, I was like, 45 minutes tops, you know? Yes, I got to eat something, but so fine, I'll meet the stranger. And then, of course, 4 hours later, there we still are. But it's safe to say I was not, you know, was not on my game that day.
Luke Burbank There were two seismic stories unfolding in your life at that time, Kathryn Schulz.
Luke Burbank [Groans.]
Kathryn Schulz Exactly.
Luke Burbank Can I get a rim shot? No. Okay. I don't deserve one for that. The way that you write about your, your wife, is, like it gives, like, Neruda a run for his money. Like, it is really just one of the most beautiful descriptions of two people falling in love and how much a person can love another person and the reasons why they can love that person. I mean, it's just really gorgeous. I'm curious, though, what it was like for you to write that about the person you are currently in a relationship with and for her to read it later because this is a, you know, a hit book and it's very personal, the stuff you're talking about. And like, had you told her all of that stuff before you wrote it? Like, I like this about you. And that one time I saw you in the sunlight, doing this, like was, what was her, what was the impact on her of reading this?
Kathryn Schulz Well, you know, I must say, she is a very patient person. You know, the truth is, there was no indication when we met, or frankly, when we married, that I was going to go off and write a memoir. It's not really my thing. I give you, you know, seismology. That's kind of my thing. But, but then I went and wrote it. And for me, it was completely delightful, to tell you the truth. Nothing turns out to be more fun to write than a love story. And, you know, I would, every day I would sit and kind of work on whatever section I was working on of that love part of the book. And then at night, I would take it up to to bed and kind of read it to her like a bedtime story. And,.
Luke Burbank Aww.
Kathryn Schulz It was delightful, honestly. And, you know, to her great credit, she edited me the way she always edits me, which is to say, like, that's going on too long. But she never once said, could you please just not, you know.
Luke Burbank Would you ever have like a not great day, maybe, you know, a disagreement about something and you'd be thinking, I got to rewrite some of this stuff?
Kathryn Schulz I have to say, I haven't had any second thoughts about the love section, and I hope never to do so.
Luke Burbank One thing that I am a bit curious about is that you only used your wife's first initial for the book, C. I'm curious why you made that decision.
Kathryn Schulz Well, certainly not to keep a secret. My wife is the amazing Casey Cep, who was on this very show some years ago, on her book...
Luke Burbank Well right. Who wrote Furious Hours, the incredible book about Harper Lee. Yes, that's right.
Luke Burbank Yes, that's right.
Kathryn Schulz Yeah!
Luke Burbank That's C, in this book, is Casey Cep. But, but I'm curious why you chose to be a little bit, you know, nonspecific.
Kathryn Schulz You know, the truth is, part of why I shouted out my wife's patience is she actually is a more private person than I am. And I think it was, she did sort of raise her eyebrows when I embarked on this project, but raised them quite privately. And I felt when I sat down, the truth is, when I very first tried to do it, I actually, the first scene I wrote, there was no name at all. There was just pronouns. And then it turns out to be grammatically completely unsustainable to do that for more than like six paragraphs. So I gave up on that, but I somehow felt like, well, you know, it felt, it felt right in the way some choices sometimes do in writing, like, okay, you can have this much of her and it's true and it's, it's honest and she would sign off on it as well. But, but there's all the rest too. And she gets to keep that and I get to keep that, and her family gets to keep that. So it was a little tiny nod to, you know, memoirs to some extent are always acts of withholding as much as they're acts of divulging. And I, on her behalf and mine, withheld a little bit.
Luke Burbank It seems like a big theme of this book is that the loss that we feel, like, particularly when we lose people, is because we found them, you know, and that that's the kind of essential tension of, of life, is that, that feeling like you can really only feel the loss of somebody who you found and who made the impact that, you know, your father made in your life. Where do you sort of land on that towards the end of the book, or what are you hoping to kind of say about that?
Kathryn Schulz I suppose that it's worth it. You know, I think that we cannot ward off all loss. Some of them are just baked into the terms of our existence. And frankly, the hardest ones are baked into the terms of our existence. [00:24:27]I hate to break it to you here on this lovely and actually mostly comic and lighthearted night. But you guys are, you're going to lose it all. You know, you're going to lose your loved ones, you're, you know, you yourselves are going to die. And I guess for me, I do feel that there's something useful about that knowledge, which is that, the fact that we're going to lose everything does, I think, remind us of how precious it is and remind us to cherish it while we have it and to tend to it and, and, and pay attention to it. You know, these are all actually very clichéd lessons, but somehow they're impossible to retain. So I became the 450 billionth writer to try to write about them. [38.2s]
Luke Burbank But, but in a really incredible way in this book, I can't recommend it highly enough. It's Lost and Found. Kathryn Schulz, everyone. [Applause.] That was Kathryn Schulz right here on Live Wire, recorded live at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts in Eugene, Oregon. Her latest book, Lost and Found, is amazing and is available now. [Music plays.] This is Live Wire. As we like to do each week, we ask the Live Wire listeners a question because we're talking about losing and finding things on the show this week. We asked, What's the coolest thing you ever found? Elena has been collecting up those responses. What are people saying?
Elena Passarello Okay, how about this one from Jess: When I was a teenager, I found a steamy love letter written to my mom before she met my dad. She was so mortified. It really cut down on the lectures she gave about me and my boyfriend.
Luke Burbank I don't know who should be more scandalized by that. Like the, the mom or maybe the, the dad realizing that the mom had not given away her collection of steamy letters from previous relationships.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Like, you know, I don't know how old Jess was at this point, but it's like, let's just assume, you know, there's a good 15 years into this marriage and then we're still finding letters from before the marriage. What is this, like, plan B?
Elena Passarello Yeah. I think I heard when somebody saw some, like, super steamy letters, like they're like, oh, here's the letter that Grandpa wrote to Grandma when he was away in the war. And then they opened it up and it was like NSFW.
Luke Burbank I think we assume that only in the modern era did we start having amorous thoughts, but I think we're just transmitting them maybe through different devices.
Elena Passarello Mm hmm.
Luke Burbank You know, in all those Civil War docs, it's always, "My dearest Elizabeth. I hope this morning finds you well," as, like, Ashokan Farewell plays behind. [Elena hums.] But I'm sure a lot of those letters were pretty, pretty racy.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank What's something else cool that somebody found?
Elena Passarello This is a really interesting one from John. John says a monkey wrench that was used to repair steam locomotives. So it's this deep, heavy wrench from, I guess, the previous century, early to mid 20th century, 1900 to 1955.
Luke Burbank I need—this person just found this very specific and giant monkey wrench, just like, lying on...
Elena Passarello I think he found it in the library next to Colonel Mustard.
Luke Burbank That's a Clue reference, right? You know, I don't know how, I've never seen the movie Titanic, and I don't know how to play the game Clue. These are my probably two biggest cultural blind spots.
Elena Passarello You probably do both at the same time. It's a long movie.
Luke Burbank Right. And also, they kind of seem like they almost exist a little bit in the same, you know, time period.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank What's, what's something else cool that one of our listeners found?
Elena Passarello How about this one from Mark? I thought I'd found the fountain of youth, but it turned out to be really good root beer.
Luke Burbank What?
Elena Passarello I want whatever Mark's having. Is it that root beer?
Luke Burbank I know, right? I mean, is the, has the root beer fermented? Was that...
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank Was that part of what made it so magical? Who knows?
Elena Passarello Is there an infusion happening?
Luke Burbank Yeah. I need some of that root beer right now, actually. Thank you to everyone who sent in responses to our audience question this week. Live Wire is brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines. Alaska Airlines offers the most nonstops from the West Coast, including destinations like Hawaii, Costa Rica and Belize. And, as a member of the OneWorld alliance, Alaska Airlines can connect you to more than 1000 destinations worldwide with their global partners. Learn more at Alaska Air dot com. This is Live Wire Radio. Thank you so much for tuning in. We know it's been a tough week for everyone. We've got a really interesting interview that we wanted to play next. It's with Keanon Lowe, who was a college football star who ended up coaching at Parkrose High in Portland when something happened on May 17th, 2019. It's an incident that he writes about in his new book, Hometown Victory: A Coach's Story of Football, Fate, and Coming Home. And before we get started, we wanted to let you know that this conversation does mention suicidal ideation and gun violence at school. So please do listen with care. This is our conversation with Keanon Lowe, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon.
Luke Burbank Hello, Keenan!
Keanon Lowe Hello!
Luke Burbank Welcome to the show! Now, you were a star athlete, so you probably did a lot of interviews. But what is it like doing like book interviews versus "I caught of touched down in the Orange Bowl" interviews?
Keanon Lowe Yeah. Usually when you do an athletic interview, it's it's about the game that just got played and no game is the same. But at this point, I've done the same interview about 18 times in the last two days.
Luke Burbank Do you want to put some pads and like eye black on just so it gets you back in that comfortable space?
Keanon Lowe Those days are gone, man. Those days are gone for me. So I'm excited to be an author now.
Luke Burbank Yeah. Well, congratulations. The book is a really good read. And the book is a great read. And of course, the crux of it is this incident happened at Parkrose, which we'll talk about. But really, the book also goes through your life and experiences and. Well, for instance, the thing that brought you from working for the San Francisco 49ers, you're like on, you know, a track to maybe someday be an NFL head coach or something. And then something happened that ultimately led you to come back to the Portland area. What happened?
Keanon Lowe Yeah, I was on a good path. Fresh out of college, I got a job in the NFL, work for the Philadelphia Eagles, and then worked for the San Francisco 49ers. I was fresh out of college on a nice career path and then I get a call from home and it's one of my friends and and he tells me our our best friend, Taylor Martinek, passed away of an opioid overdose and fentanyl ended up taking his life. So in that process, I, you know, life happened fast, you know, and I came home to mourn and and be with my friends and family. And then when I was home, everything started to make a little bit more sense being around the people I loved, the career and the money and and that path that I was on didn't really matter so much because I just lost my best friend. So I came home and I decided I was going to move home to to continue to search for whatever I was missing for. And in that process, I found a school that was on a 0-23 game losing streak that hadn't won a game in three years at Parkrose High School, a bunch of tough kids in a tough part of town. And, you know, they were a school, a team without a coach, and I was a coach without a team. So it kind of kind of worked out that way. And I was blessed to find them and, you know, make an impact there.
Luke Burbank How do you how do you turn a team around that has lost that many games in a row where a lot of the kids hadn't played football before? And then you ultimately like in two seasons, right? Got them to their first ever playoff win at the state level. How do you actually get these kids to perform? And don't say give it 110% because that would save that for the sports interview.
Keanon Lowe That is a good recipe, though, for success.
Luke Burbank No, but I mean, I just don't understand how you teach kids, how you coach kids up and get them like running, catching and throwing that much better in two seasons. How did you do that?
Keanon Lowe I think it comes down to trust and just me being the adult in the situation, the coach and the mentor to those young men in that program. And, you know, I showed them that I was willing to commit to them and fight their fights with them, that I was willing to show up day in and day out with them before I ever asked anything of them. And then once I started to show them that I was there for them and willing to fight with them, they decided to trust me. And once they started trusting me and I started sharing some of my story of why I came back home, stories about my friends and stories about me playing football and those things, you know, that trust continued to build. And and once you have trust with with especially with a young person, once you have trust with them, then they'll do anything for you. You know, they'll run through a wall for you. And, you know, as a coach, I tried to commit as much as I could to them and they return that favor.
Luke Burbank Now, you were the football coach. You were also the track coach, and then you were one of the security guards at Park Rose, which you write in the book, was, to some degree, just because you liked being kind of at ground level with a lot of those students, seeing him in the halls, both your players and just other students at the school. I'm curious, what is a regular day like as a security guard at a public high school? And like, what are the calls you get called out on typically?
Keanon Lowe Every day was different. I'll say that. Some of the calls were calls to break up fights and escort kids to A and B places. It was a job that was a very thankless job. But once I started to really do it and once I started to live it and be with those kids day in and day out from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., you know, I really started to see what they go through on a daily basis, and I really started to see the struggles some of those kids were really fighting every single day.
Luke Burbank Well, and that obviously became extremely relevant on this day in May, back in 2019, they asked that you would go to a classroom and escort a kid out of the classroom. Did you know why you were going to be taking this kid somewhere else?
Keanon Lowe No, unfortunately, I didn't know. But like I said, that was just kind of the job. It was security. Can you please go do this job for us real quick and bring the student here? And that was pretty much all I knew. So it was a it was pretty surreal when I got there.
Luke Burbank Because you get to the class and he's actually not in the classroom, this particular student. And you're asking around, is this guy here? And they say, no. And then you turn around and he comes into the classroom and basically pulls a shotgun out. What goes through your mind?
Keanon Lowe Yeah, I'm in the classroom for about probably 30 seconds asking where the kid is, and 30 seconds later, I'm probably four feet from the door. I'm just on the inside of it. And that door opens up and there's a young man with a big coat and he pulls out a shotgun right in the doorway, probably about four, four or five feet away from me. So it was a it was like a movie. Everything seemed to go slow motion. And I was able to think very clearly for whatever reason, and I was able to analyze it really quick and see the look in his eyes, first and foremost. And I could tell it was a young man that needed help, a young man going through a mental health crisis. And, you know, kids are obviously screaming. And and it was a really scary situation. But for for whatever reason, my instincts told me to stay calm. My instincts told me to go lunge for the gun. And once I grabbed the gun, we kind of wrestled around the classroom and spilled into the hallway. And that's kind of where that viral video starts there, where I'm able to take the gun from him and hand it off to a teacher. And then ultimately I decide to give him a hug.
Luke Burbank When you were when you were grappling with that gun. I mean, I think it's important to clarify that this student was attempting to harm themselves and they pointed the gun at themselves. And something I didn't realize until I read this book, that was remarkable was they pulled the trigger and it clicked.
Keanon Lowe Yeah. It was a scary situation.
Luke Burbank Like, what are the chances of that shotgun jamming in that particular way?
Keanon Lowe Yeah, one in a million. You know, there was some divine intervention, I would like to think. Yeah. And when you look at just the whole story in itself and even just my whole journey, I, you know, what are the chances I'm in that exact spot at that exact moment for that kid going through a mental health crisis that decided to do that on that exact day? And then the only reason I ultimately how I ended up at that school is because I lost my best friend, you know, so I lost and losing my best friend, in him losing his life, I ended up saving a young man's life inside of school by following my heart. So it was really special and and it was really exciting to put that into words. Yeah.
Elena Passarello I heard this story, you know, three years ago. And I was so excited when I learned that you had written a book. And it just makes me so curious, having told the story on TV and for people and for reporters for so many years. How did you feel about the opportunity to put it into words and how did you approach it? Because it must be so codified by the time you get this book opportunity.
Keanon Lowe Yeah, it was really cool to figure out that structure and be creative in that way. And you know, that moment, a lot of people have seen that and I've gotten thousands of messages to the last few years saying thank you and whatnot because they've seen that video. But, you know, I like to think that there's a whole bunch more that led up to that video, you know, and that was exciting to be able to put that in the words, you know, whether it was stuff I've learned when I was a kid growing up with an awesome single mother who's here tonight.
Luke Burbank Hey shout out!
Keanon Lowe And learning from awesome coaches that I played for and got to coach under in the NFL and then the experience that I had with my best friend and and, you know, I've just been through so much in life. You know, I had kids that were that were homeless, that I coached at Parkrose. I had kids that had anger issues that went to went to bed hungry at that school. And so my story and the story of what happened in that hallway is just it's so much more that led up to that moment where all that led up to my instincts telling me to just take care of this young man, hug this young man, and tell him that you care about him. And you know what? When you tell someone you care about them, you don't know how far that can go for that person, whether you know them or not. Yeah.
Luke Burbank What is it like for you to have this probably be maybe the defining kind of moment of your life because you've been talking about how this was a journey for you of becoming Keanon Lowe, who could be in that moment present enough to do this thing? But that isn't your whole life that this is this was 2 minutes of your life. That is now the thing that a lot of people know you for. What's that like for you to have a quick moment, be what you are known for?
Keanon Lowe Yeah, it's pretty cool. But before that, I was known for being a good football player at Jesuit High School, and then I was known for being a good football player at the University of Oregon. Then I was known for being a young coach then, you know, so, so it so it just changes, you know, this journey of life is, you know, you only got one of them, you know, and for my life, I've decided to do good things for for people that whether I know them or not, I'm going to continue to to treat people kindly. And I figured out in my life, the nicer I am the people and the the more kind I am to people, all of a sudden, people are really nice to me too, and it feels good. So it's a pretty simple recipe that, you know, I think everyone can can solve that, you know?
Luke Burbank Yeah. Well. It's it's been a real honor getting to talk to you. Thanks again for all you've done! Keanon Lowe, everyone! Right here on Live Wire!
Luke Burbank That was Keenan Lowe recorded in front of a live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon, earlier this month. Keenan's book, Hometown Victory A Coach, A Story of Football Fate and Coming Home, is available now, and his story is being developed by Disney plus for a new streaming series that they are working on. So keep an eye out for that. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. We will be right back.
Luke Burbank Our musical guest this week has been called the lovechild of John Prine and Mitch Hedberg. He's played with Jack Johnson and has gotten fan mail somehow from Chuck Norris. He describes his style as "humorous stories mixed with serious folk". His latest studio album, Mermaid Salt, is out now. Take a listen to this. Our conversation with John Craigie recorded a few weeks ago in front of a raucous live audience at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon.
Luke Burbank Hi, John. Welcome back to Live Wire.
John Craigie Thank you. It's good to be here.
Luke Burbank I love this new album is just a really great listen and it struck me that you really are a really talented musician and I think there could be a potential for a little bit of that to be lost because you're also a really funny storyteller, very folksy, but it's not like you're a guy telling a story and you just kind of like dinking around on the guitar. Like there's a real musicality to what you do. Do you feel like every once in a while you want to reaffirm that with folks?
John Craigie I think that just is coming slower. You know, I think, uh, as a kid I was a funny guy, so people who knew me as a kid, they'll come to the show and they're like, "Hey, not bad on the music", you know?
Luke Burbank You don't even have to look at the guitar when you were playing. You just know all those chords.
John Craigie It's been a slower grow for me, you know? I think with I'm still learning a lot with music, so I like those kind of compliments because I feel that. I feel that way with each album. I feel like I learn a new chord or something.
John Craigie And so you're going back out on tour and you're going to play the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville with Mary Chapin Carpenter.
John Craigie Yeah. I'm excited.
Luke Burbank Holy, that's pretty cool, right? What is that like on your list of places that you know you might dream to play someday?
John Craigie Yeah, I think it's the only thing on - that's not a list I keep. You know, uh, my goals are usually more, like, more obscure, but I think if I had a venue dream list, it would just be that one. So excited to. I got to pick a new one. Now, you know, after that.
Luke Burbank After that, what song are we going to hear?
Luke Burbank I want to do this song. It's called"Laurie Rolled Me a J". Thank you. I got an email this morning from my manager Phil, and he said, uh "Live Wire had some thoughts on the song you were going to play". And I said, "Oh, cool". And he said, "they're worried about the lyrics". Then he sent me the quote, and the quote was, "Hey, Phil, the drug stuff is great"-.
Live Audience [Laugh and Applause]
John Craigie Which that made me happy. "But he says a few bad words in the song, so could he not?" And I said, "no problem". I know how radio is. Uh, I've done this before. Not just this, but other things. Sometimes they catch me off guard, which is hard. One time I was at this show, I was about to get on stage, and the guy was like, "John, listen, uh, this is going to be broadcast on the radio, so could you not say any bad words?" And I was like, "Aw, man. I wanted to". And he said, "Which ones?" And I said, "Most of them". So he thought for a second and he was like, "You know what? I'll give you ass". And I was like, "Excuse me?" He said "the word, I'll give it to you because Ass is in the Bible". I said, "I don't think I use it in the biblical way".
Live Audience [Laughs]
John Craigie He said, "but you want more than ass, right?" And I said, "Yeah". And so he said, "Well, here's what we could do. He's like, Do you have like a song where all your bad words are in one song? Because you can play that first and then we'll just start recording afterwards." And I was like, "No. I feel like that would be way more disturbing." Right? Like, if you came into my show, my first song was just blankety blank, blank, blank, blank. And then I never cussed again? Okay. Well, let's do this song now. This is because I love, I respect radio. I love Live Wire. We're doing the Live Wire version.
Luke Burbank John Craigie. Here on Live Wire.
John Craigie I got my wings clipped/I got my Trump chair supposed to last me through the apocalypse/ I spent it all on some left/ As a ___ you to him and Mike Pence/ I don't give a about the burning bush/ Noah's Ark or two of every animal/ Is this the new flood? Is this the new plague?/ Is this the rapture or just the first wave/ My lungs are clean, at least today/ I fill 'em up Laurie rolled me a J/ I can't sleep with Emma anymore/ She got too many chickens in her backyard/ Took the urban farming thing a little too far/ They wake me up each and every hour/ She'll kiss her housemate, it's more convenient/ What with the locked down, with the Covid/ it's too much drama for me to play/ I stay at home Laurie rolled me a J/ Went to the protest, it got crazy/ You lost your mask running away/ your friends got paranoid come join my scene/ make love for two weeks we'll say its quarantine/ don't call me sugar if you want to taste it/ this summer heat has got us sweating opiates/ We watch the sunset from a cage/ Front row seats Laurie rolled us a J/ This girl named Cedar I had to get away/ she was fine as hell, but she was too New Age/ she'd do that Wim Hof, don't take no hot showers/ but I'm a bad boy I need them harsh showers/ She got a crystal for every disease/ Said "cure the Covid" she said "it's 5G"/ won't get the vaccine cause of the tracking chip/ Hell they can track me I ain't doin/ Track me on the couch, track me in my bed/ track me texting you, track me left on read/ Track me in the yard puffing my life away/Gone like smoke Laurie rolled me a J/ I got my wings clipped/ I got my Trump check/ Supposed to last me, through the apocolypse/
Luke Burbank That was John Craigie right here on Live Wire. His latest album, Mermaid Salt, is available now. All right, before we get out of here, a little preview of next week's show. We are going to be celebrating Pride. First up, James Kim shares how the language barrier between him and his mother complicated his coming out process and ultimately inspired his hit podcast, Moon Face. Then queer writer and breadstick enthusiast Kristin Arnett will make the case as to why she thinks the Olive Garden is the perfect date spot. Then Lavender Country singer's Patrick Hagerty explains how it took his openly gay country band about 46 years to release their first album. All right. That's going to do it for this episode of the show. A huge thanks to our guests, Kathryn Schulz, Keenan Lowe and John Craigie. Live wires brought to you in part by Alaska Airlines.
Elena Passarello Laura Hadden is our executive producer, Heather De Michelle is our executive director. Tim Harkins is our development and marketing director. Our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko and our assistant editor is Trey Hester. Our house band is Ethan Fox Tucker, Sam Tucker, Al Alves and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer and Viviana Castillo Serrano is our intern.
Luke Burbank Additional funding provided by the James F and Marian L Miller Foundation, Live Wire was created by Robin Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank members Amy Vander Zand and Paul Beck of Portland, Oregon for more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast head on over to Live Wire Radio.org. I'm Luke Burbank, for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thanks for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
