He’s Written 1600 Obituaries. What Has He Learned About Life?

26:22Some obviously stand out, like the scientist, like the kid who played Anthony in the Prince Spaghetti commercial running through the streets of Boston, which you might say, why is the Times writing an obituary of that? But it was one of those cultural icons. And I think collectively, as I say in the book, obituaries say what our society values or doesn't. If you say which of the ones I wrote in the past week or whatever, I frankly would be hard-pressed. Or if I asked you the name of the veterinary star. I would not know. Or the moil to the stars. And to that, I got a number of angry letters from people opposed to circumcision.

27:06So you're really in the front of the culture wars. You might as well be writing for the free press. It's true. And again, lots of feedback from people on obituaries. And, you know, the problem with email is that it's so anonymous often that the responses are pretty snarky. I know, but I love to respond to people because when you respond to people, it really humanizes. When they discover there is a human responding, they're certainly, if not contrite, a lot more polite than they were initially. I never expected to get a reply. Yeah. I mean, you're a real person, my goodness. And for anyone who's not familiar with Moyles, well, congratulations on not being circumcised, I guess.

27:44Moyle is a person who performs the brisks in the Jewish tradition. Correct. Circumcises the child. So on this question of who gets an obet, which is a really powerful position that the New York Times is certainly in, in the United States, who decides that? It's decided ultimately by the obituary editor. It's a collaborative process, though. They start off, including the reporters, with about maybe as many as 50 names on any given day. 50 potential obits on any given day. Yeah, and you'd be hard-pressed to figure out which ones will actually get published because 150 ,000 people die on average every day.

28:23And we have room for three or four obits. So it is not only a highly selective process, it's a highly subjective one. And the hardest thing is to say to some person who calls you the next day, your father, who was a country doctor who saved dozens of lives, didn't get an obit in the New York Times, but this mass murderer did. There's no explanation for that. Except what you said earlier, which is what we as a society value. What we value, what is interesting, what is someone who's important or we deem to be important, and a good yarn, a good story. Do you think we're in a position as journalists who write in publications like the New York Times, et cetera, to change what people think because of what we cover?

29:13Yeah, sure. Write more about country doctors saving lives and that would make the world better? We are now about women and people of color that we did before. But now, thanks to Amy Padnani at the Times, an editor in the obit section, we've got this overlooked no more feature, which is spectacular. because Sylvia Plath, Alan Turing, Scott Joplin, all these people who never got obituaries in the New York Times, and a lot of people much less prominent than that, are now getting their due. And we now make a greater effort to expand the pool of people who we're doing obituaries of. Now, some people complain about that.

29:57Hey, you know, that senior partner at a law firm didn't get an obituary or that investor who's been on Wall Street for 50 years didn't get an obituary. But we try to, you know, be more selective and be more inclusive. Is there a higher standard? I mean, earlier I asked you if you've ever written an obituary for someone you love and you said no, but you've written them for colleagues. Maybe it has a different sentiment. Some of them whom I loved. Some of whom I'm sure you loved. Is there a higher standard to get no bit if you worked at The Times? Like I could imagine, just having been at The Times, an editorial meeting where it's like Nick Kristoff dies, Nick Kristoff never died.

30:34We love Nick Kristoff. He's one of my favorite people at the building. And a lovely person. A lovely person. And his son is a dear friend. And we don't want anything bad to happen to him. But I could imagine like a standards meeting where they're like, you know, who rises? We have to hold an even higher standard for the people inside of The Times to get no bit, right? Because we don't want to show favoritism. There are a lot of people who I expected would get obits in The Times. They were editors or reporters, and they did not. It is a higher standard. We are reflective, and we don't want to be more self-important than we already are by giving the benefit of the doubt to Times people.

31:12My book did not get a review in the New York Times book review. Is that because I'm a Times reporter or whatever other subjective reason there is? You know, I wouldn't attempt to second guess that. I liked your article in Times Insider, though. Oh, thank you. On the last word. So I did like that. But that is a funny thing. Do you think, I mean, you're a spring chicken at 79. I mean, you're 13 years away from 92. I think I am now the oldest correspondent at the New York Times. Really? In terms of service, but in terms of someone who was still working at the paper. Age-wise. Age-wise. But you're a spring chicken.

31:47Thank you. You're so sweet. Do people in the obituaries ask at them when they've written some? Sometimes. I mean, people say, well, I've written my own obituary or I expect one. I think it would be presumptuous, first of all, for me to write one. Will I get one? I have no idea. and, you know, it sounds kind of silly to say, but I'll be dead. So I won't know and probably won't care. Although, you know, one of the things my wife has said, why don't you ask people when you're interviewing them for advance obituary what they think is going to happen next? You know, what happens after death? And I guess that's an interesting question.

32:26My favorite line is Woody Allen, who I quote in the book, is saying, I don't believe in an afterlife, but I'm bringing a change of underwear just in case. You can't beat that. I really want to get this doctor at NYU named Sam Pernia onto the show because he is the one that studies all these people's near-death experiences. But I haven't had success in, I've got to go over to like NYU Langone and knock some doors, some old school reporting. And you know, when you talk about near-death experiences, I was at the Daily News, every gangster who was shot was quoted as saying, I saw my whole life flash before me.

33:02Now, I don't believe that most of them said that or that it actually happened. But that's why, as I point out in the book, I don't ask people what last words were. Because I think most last words are water or help or I'm dying. There are still last words that are worth remembering, although I would tend to think they're penultimate words rather than last words. What was Lindsey Graham's last words? Don't we know them? There was something about he still had work to do on legislation. It's hard for me to believe that. I mean, I'd like to think he was conscientious to the end, but it sounds like one of his publicists or staff members quoting him is what he would have liked to say.

33:48Well, he had a lot of time to get stuff done, and yet. My favorite was Oscar Wilde, who was on his deathbed in a seedy hotel in Paris, and he said, I'm going to fight to the death. Either that wallpaper goes or I go. And it's the kind of thing Oscar Wilde would have said if he were thinking of last words. It's so funny that you said. When my father was passing, he was trying to say something to me, like maybe 10 minutes before he passed. But it was at the point that he had lost his voice already and everything. And so I was holding his hand and he was saying something and I couldn't understand what he was saying.

34:24And then 10 minutes later, my cousin was telling a joke and we were all laughing and I laughed and I felt my dad squeeze my hand. I turned around and he was gone. It's a good way to go, laughing. It's a good way to go. Talk about die laughing. I mean, everybody was laughing. I don't know if he was laughing. I don't know what he could hear. I mean, you don't know at that point, but it was a nice way to see. It's certainly a nice final scene for him to have beheld if he could. But afterwards, I've spent so much time thinking, and I think he was saying hudafis, which means goodbye in Urdu. I think that's what he was saying.

34:53I'm not a lip reader, but that's what I think. And that was his native language? That was our native language. So hudafis, I think, is what he was saying. More after the break. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's new series, East of Eden. A bold reimagining of John Steinbeck's masterpiece following generations of the Trask family through love, betrayal, and the choices that shape humanity. Starring Mike Feist and Christopher Abbott as the Trask brothers and Florence Pugh as Kathy Ames. The complex anti-heroine determined to build the life she wants, no matter the cost. Watch East of Eden, October 1st, only on Netflix.

35:34There's a really good quote I like in your book that you quote Edward S. Martin, a columnist at Harper's Magazine in the early 20th century. And he says something to the effect of, if one takes the larger view of obituaries, the whole of history is little else than a succession of obituary notices. Well, in a way, that's true. Thomas Carlyle, the British historian, he said, how do you define a great man? Was it Hannibal who marched his elephants and troops over the Alps? Or was it the anonymous character who invented the spade? I'd go with the spade man. So, you know, people, again, taking for granted that more people, more things have been accomplished with the spade than we remember Hannibal for.

36:21That's an important thing to remember. So to quote Oscar Wilde's importance of being earnest, Gwendolyn Fairfax says, I've never seen a spade. All right. You've got to see a spade and Citizen Kane both. I did an obituary just as an intellectual exercise. I mentioned this in the Book of Jesus. Oh, I know. I love that. Well, it was fascinating to me. I said, how would the New York Times have covered Jesus's death? Not now, obviously, but when he died in roughly 33 AD. Was he some mystic? Was he a faker? Was he a budding prophet? And I just found the exercise really educational and illuminating. And I talked to a lot of scholars.

37:05And frankly, the thing that amazed me most is when it ran, and it ran in Vanity Fair, the Times was a little skittish about doing it. On Easter Sunday, Graydon Carter jumped at the opportunity. There was no negative feedback. I thought people would say that's sacrilegious or, you know, how could you say that? None at all. People were fascinated by it. Now that might have had a different reaction. Perhaps. Although Mark would maybe run it too at the Vanity Fair. I love that. And I actually pulled it. The lead is Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean carpenter turned ignorant minister whose appeals to piety and reputacy a healer had galvanized a growing contingent of believers, died on Friday after being crucified that morning just outside Jerusalem.

37:45My favorite line is in the middle where you said, he grew up in turbulent times. Quite the understatement. And then it goes on to describe King Herod and the Samaritarians and everyone. But the kicker was my favorite. Do you remember your kicker? I do, but you read it because I may have forgotten the exact words. After he was declared dead on Friday night, he was buried nearby in a cave. On Sunday, his disciples reported that the body was missing. It seemed like a good way to end it, and a little air of mystery. And frankly, we probably would have written something like that at the time. It's a good read, much shorter than Reza Aslan's Zealot, and very informative.

38:23I do recommend it. We'll have a link to that as well as the book. One of the things I'm not sure you want to get into, but the advance obituaries are fascinating because, you know, as you say, you often interview people for them. Two of the ones I wrote, one, fortunately, is still not run on John Sexton, the former president of NYU. And then Pat Koch-Thaler, who was the sister of former Mayor Ed Koch, contacted me and said she wanted me to write her advance obituary. And I said, well, what's the timing? And she said, I'm going to die on Saturday. You know, I was stunned, but it was a case of assisted suicide.

39:03And she wanted to explain why she had chosen this method of dying after being treated for cancer, not having any hope of any better treatment and suffering, and not wanting to continue that suffering for herself or her family. It was just fascinating because it wound up running on the front page of the Times. You talk about when two people die on the same day. The example I think you give in the book is Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died on the same day. Or Aldous Huxley and John F. Kennedy. And so who gets A1? Both get obits in those cases. They would both get obits eventually, although in the case of Aldous Huxley, he had to wait a couple of days because the paper was so filled with stories about John F.

39:46Kennedy. I am from a daily news school of news being new and immediate, and it hurts me when we run an obit even three or four days later after someone dies. But naturally, given space and time and staff, that's going to happen. And now, unfortunately, there is so little competition. I think that is one of the crimes that has occurred in part because of Craigslist, in part because we don't cover local news anymore. Yeah, we don't have local. Including obituaries. And that is a big flaw in promoting civic engagement and holding public officials accountable. We just don't cover local news the way we used to.

40:32And there are these certain outside stories that just captivate our culture. And we're all just like looking rubber-knocking at that one story. I mean, growing up, I remember I grew up in Indonesia. And when I was a kid, Saharto fell from power. There were days of riots. Entire swads of the city were like kind of burned down. Lots of people died. and Frank Sinatra died that same day. So the cover of Time magazine, the cover of all the newspapers, was about Frank Sinatra. And growing up in Indonesia, where I'm not from, I just thought, but there's this huge news, and you didn't see it. Well, look at today.

40:59You know, we're writing about Iran. We're writing about other things, the Fed. A lot of people seem to have forgotten about Gaza, for instance. These things, you know, people have limited attention spans. They certainly do. And I think because of the Internet, they're even shorter than they used to be. Yeah. You talk about the word disgraced. used that. And there's a really good chapter in your book called You Can't Defame the Dead, except you can still be sued by their estates, presumably. Only in Rhode Island, I think. Only in Rhode Island. Yes, and for a limited period of time. The notion is that a dead person no longer has a reputation that needs to be protected by the law.

41:34Although, you know, that doesn't stop people from complaining. Right. And they could sue, but the suit under current law is not going to go anywhere. You quote the kind of New York Times style book on this in the chapter, and you say, the New York Times style book or the evolutionary Bible of emendation. Emendation? Emendation. Never knew that word. I had to look it up. Okay. I don't know what it means. Offers what seems like sensible guidance in assessing sin. If a crime or indiscretion was the subject's main claim to fame, it should be, of course, figure in the lead, the start of a story. But an early indiscretion should be kept in proportion, subordinated or omitted, depending on its ultimate significance in a life.

42:12The discovery of a lone article in the newspaper file should not skew the summation of a lifetime. And then you write, but no algorithm precisely defines early indiscretion or nor in proportion or ultimate significance. What I read in that Times Stylebook piece, which I don't know what the word emendation means, but it's basically like some kind of opportunity for redemption in the course of how your New York Times obit will be written if you are, in fact, are worthy of one, or deemed by the editorial staff. Well, like Alan Hevesy, the former state controller, the headline described him as fallen from grace, which he was by any reasonable measure.

42:48On the other hand, Charlie Rangel, who was censured by the House, we described as, you know, prominent, powerful former congressman. But these are human decisions and often made on deadline. And sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we reflect and said we should have done something else. But they're very tough, and we do look at them with a degree of responsibility that I think doesn't necessarily apply to a lot of other things that appear in the paper. Because we know this is going to affect the family. This is going to affect people who mourn the person. And it is, again, sort of a final judgment.

43:27Biographers, others, scholars are going to look back at how the Times characterized this person. Yeah, I often say one of the key audiences for The Times I felt when you worked there is like posterity of what the next editorial board is going to think of what you're writing. It's constantly writing that. And one thing that distinguishes us from other creatures is we care about posterity. And that's why people care about their advanced obits, too. They do. How do you deal with something like a mistress? Have you ever had that where someone had a whole secret family or a secret baby? Well, yes. Someone who had a baby, not supposedly, it was apparently a fang, by Fidel Castro.

44:03But a woman who I'm not sure whether she was a spy or, you know, someone of kind of crazy background. But she did. And it was never disproved. So we stated it as a child by Fidel Castro. So, you know, what do you do with that? That's, I think, really salacious. It is salacious but worth mentioning. Totally worth it. Yeah. This is the meanest obituary I've ever seen. I think it's Jerry Falwell Obit written by Christopher Hitchens in Slate Magazine in 2007. Have you read it? Yes, I do remember that. Christopher Hitchens is capable of writing mean obituary. It was. Very much, it was. Faith-based fraud was the headline.

44:43And the first sentence is all I'll read. But the discovery of the carcass of Jerry Falwell on the floor of an obscure office in Virginia has almost zero significance, except perhaps for two categories of the species labeled credulous idiot. And just using the word carcass is the signal already. Hunter Thompson's Obituary of Nixon, which I think I quote in the book, was another one like that. I mean, there was no room, no benefit of the doubt whatsoever. Thank God this guy is dead, and he was a quirk and an evil influence. And you saw some of that in obituaries of Henry Kissinger. You have written 1 ,500 of these things.

45:24Their average age, let's say, is 80. Let's say it's 120 ,000 years of human life that you've looked at, documented, distilled, found what was the rosebud moment. What have you learned about living life? And really, what have you changed in your own life as you look at this death, which is so far away because you're a young man? It's a very good question. Thank you. You learn to live life to the fullest and live life without thinking that every day may be your last, but not to think of yourself on your deathbed whenever that comes and say, I wish I had done so-and-so, or I wish I had apologized to so-and-so, or I wish I had been nicer to so-and-so.

46:09You have to put your life in perspective. You have to go by the serenity prayer, which I think is very important. You change the things you can change, and you try and overlook or discount the ones you can't. And you realize, you know, in this existential sense that, you know, you're living a life, you're living it hopefully the best you can. Then you're going to move on and just hope that the people you care about carry you in their hearts. I don't, again, believe necessarily in an afterlife, but I think my parents, my grandparents, my siblings, other people I'm close to, I feel in my heart, and I think that legacy is worth preserving.

46:57More important maybe than an obit in the New York Times? It would be more important to me, yes. There's always things like people say, oh, at the end of your life, you'll never look back and think, oh, I should have worked harder, I should have done more. I don't think that's true. Do you believe that? No, I don't. But if you have the opportunity to reflect because you're not comatose or anything, I think you would say, you know, what would I have done differently? And I try to ask people that when I interview them for an advance obituary, as I point out in the book. I don't think it's an unfair question.

47:28You know, you're reflecting near or toward the end of your life. What are you happy about? What do you think was successful? What motivated you? And was that the right motivation? And how close did you come to achieving the goals that you set for yourself? What is the answer to that question for you? What would you want to change about your life? I still think there are more things I want to do. And I think kindness is the most important attribute of people. It's not whether you're smart or I think being kind to other people, giving them the benefit of the doubt. I know it sounds hokey, but I think that is so important and something that we tend to overlook in the rush of our everyday lives.

48:12Just being nice. When you write people's obits, do you know if they're nice? Can you tell? You can tell by talking to the people who knew them. What percentage of obits you've written do you think people are nice or kind? That's a very good question. I wouldn't attempt to put a metric on it. I say most of them in one way or another were kind or did something that benefited their neighbors, their friends, their families, or society at large. Yeah. Which is why they're getting an obit. You dedicate your book to someone named John. You say, to John the ineffable, who even in the dying period taught us how to live.

48:53And that was John Sexton, who thankfully is still alive, but I wrote his advance obituary when he was facing terminal cancer. He found a miracle treatment, which, of course, is not necessarily permanent by any means. But the way he embraced death and said he had lived his life to the fullest, that when he got to heaven, which he think he would do, he would hope that he could say, I did the best that I could in life. And that taught me a lot about a much more positive approach to death than one that I might have started with. And one that you grew up with. Certainly one that I grew up with. I, in every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions, asking my guests who are so smart and notable in their category of work, what is a dumb question you've recently had, something you wouldn't know the answer to?

49:48I've asked a lot of dumb questions. I asked one of our science writers why electricity doesn't leak out of an outlet, and he looked at me like I was an absolute idiot. I still don't understand why. Did he give you the answer? But when I've gotten older, I've started to think of questions like that. Like, how can you see through glass when it's a solid? I mean, explain that to me. And, you know, we deal with so many sophisticated notions now, and particularly with artificial intelligence, which terrifies me because of what it might do on its own. That, again, we take things for granted. You know, I walk down the street and I see things every day that fascinate me.

50:33I once wrote a story that wound up on the front page of the New York Times saying the Empire State Building had gotten shorter. And it had it. It had. They put a new antenna on it and it was shorter than the original one. And when I came to the office and said, you know, we ought to write a story about this, people said, oh, you've got to be kidding. You know, you need glasses. But then I had to prove to myself that it was true, and indeed it was. And, you know, it just became a kind of metaphor for everything in our society shrinking, even the Empire State Book. There's a trend now of keeping your loved ones alive forever through AI reincarnation, effectively.

51:15Downloading memories, et cetera, and then being able to talk to them. If that makes people feel good, great. You know, it's like cryogenics, you know. People who think they're going to eventually come back. I'm not sure I'd want to come back or when, but, you know, I think any way that people preserve memories that they think are worth preserving is a good thing. And one of the ways people do it is published obituaries. People who, families who take the obituary, cut it out, and put it in the family Bible or frame it or whatever. And that's why, you know, this may sound a little too highfalutin, but I think that's why obituary writers do have a special responsibility that doesn't necessarily apply to writers of other articles in The Times.

52:03Thank you so much, Sam Roberts, for being with me. It was so wonderful to spend time with you. Thank you so much for inviting me. I love the book. It's called Are They Dead Yet? You have to check it out. I had to write an obit in a class at Stanford called Lives of Consequences by Rod Kramer. and they make you write an obit when you're like 25 years old. And I think it's healthy for people to write their own obituaries because it gives them a chance to assess what they've accomplished in life and what they still are left to do. And redeem yourselves per the style book. Yes, exactly. You still have a chance at redemption.

52:35You do. It's a good book. It'll make you laugh. And if you have lost people in your life, which many of us sadly have, it's also a bomb, I think. Thank you very much. Thank you.

52:48I had such fun with Sam Roberts. I really, really encourage you to get this book, but also just to spend more time reading his obituaries at the Times and the one that he wrote of Jesus Christ in particular for Vanity Fair is fantastic. We'll link to all of that. I love learning that there's like a 92 club, which is very distinctive from like the 27 club of musicians that left us too early. There's a lot of life left and I really enjoyed that exercise when I was a student at Stanford writing my obituary for the Lives of Consequences class. I have to go back and read that and see if I'm anywhere on track to achieving any of the things that I believed I would.

53:22And a lot of them, by the way, were like personal attributes in the obituary that I wrote is what I remember. But I should write one again. You should write one, too. Smart girl, dumb question. We should all have obituaries that we write. I'm also going to link to one that I wrote for a former colleague called Blakeney Schick, who used to produce a number of shows that I've worked on, including Sway at The New York Times. And Blakeney was like my ride or die, I guess, literally. but we worked together for years. She's fantastic. And she's a name that you hear in the credits. And we often don't think about the people whose names we hear in the credit or the people who gave us LASIK or the people who fix our Apple computer devices.

53:58And what I love about Sam Roberts' work is that he's not just covering the great Congress people, sometimes not so great Congress people of our time, but also these individuals that really shape the world we live This episode was produced with Senta Nenigam and Melissa Lee Gibson. It was engineered by Colin Lee, edited by Davy Chin, and shot in the amazing Wonder Studios in Manhattan with Desta Wanderad, who has helped produce Smart Girl Dumb Questions from the jump. I'll see you next week for an all-new Smart Girl Dumb Questions, unless I'm dead, in which case I guess you'll maybe be reading my obit, though I probably won't get one.

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