Brandon Stanton, the creator of Humans in New York, came on the show to talk about how he wrote his way to five published books and 13 million Instagram followers.
And along the way, the man basically invented his own genre of biography.
There's short stories, there's long stories.
And what he would do every single day is he'd walk out onto the streets of New York and he would photograph people, he would interview them and he would say how do I tell this person's story?
But what he discovered is that these people stories were stories about the human condition itself.
And it went completely viral.
So if you're interested in thinking about how do I tell better stories about people?
How do I find my voice as a writer?
Well, then you're going to like this conversation.
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All right, let's get to the episode.
Well, the place I want to start is how you think about the writing for Humans in New York.
Because when I first saw Humans in New York, I was like, oh, there's a big Instagram page.
And then I associate Instagram with photos.
And actually in the prep for this I came to realize whoa writing is a big part of what it is that you're doing at least words you know.
Right.
Um, well again, you know, humans of New York started as, as photography.
I was going to photograph 10000 people and I was going to kind of recreate the city through that.
Uh, through the course of doing that, I kind of stopped and had short conversations with people about their lives.
Then it became kind of transcribing quotes, uh, Then the interviews grew much longer.
They became much more forensic, trying to learn deep themes and arcs about people's lives.
That's when more editorial and more writing came into it.
And I would say, as time went on and then the season that we're in now, you know writing, in addition to the interviewing and the photography, is a big part of it.
Well, what's funny is you could basically look at every piece of writing along some sort of sliding scale where it's like how much of this is about the writer themselves, right?
So if you have Hunter S. Thompson, right?
He writes Fear and Loathing.
This is like Hunter S. Thompson's take on what's going on.
And yours is all the way on the other end of the sliding scale.
Like I didn't even know your name for so many years.
I was just like, oh, this is Humans in New York.
Is this one person, many people?
So you kind of almost – remove yourself from the writing, and that was more of an artistic decision, you know, than anything you know.
Humans of new york started just before social media really took off, like i was trying to make a blog like that.
That was how, how far back it was, and so it was kind of a benefit for me in a way, because the metric i was keeping score by was never really followers and it wasn't money either.
I moved to New York.
I loved photography, wanted to make just enough money to photograph all day long.
And so I kind of always had it rooted, my personal path, my personal journey, rooted in how can the art be better?
Because I wanted to be an artist.
And early on I realized that my art was better.
The less of me that was in it, the more that I was a channel and less of a source.
And so you know so much of my disappearance.
I mean, there's a reason that you know.
People come up to me and say oh, you work for Humans of New York, or how do you get a job there?
Or you're Humans of New York.
It was very deliberate.
I very intentionally removed myself from the work because I thought it was better that way.
Yeah.
So how does the interview work? factor into this?
It's.
It's kind of hard to categorize.
You know what genre it is or what craft it is.
That I specifically do because the photography is a big part of it.
The writing is a big part of it, the editorializing.
Um, but I would say the the the part that I've done most, probably more so than a lot of people in the world, is the interview.
Um and a specific kind of interview, to an interview where you're starting from zero um, Or this person knows nothing about you and you know nothing about them, and you're in an inherently awkward situation, maybe on Fifth Avenue with people streaming by.
So it's a very unique and specific type of interview.
And it's you know, my craft is in a very short amount of time with a person who might be a little nervous about talking to a stranger.
They have to create an environment and a framework within which I can learn as much about their lived experience as possible.
So you just go up to someone, it's like Stacy on the street, Stacy standing there.
She doesn't look like she's doing much.
Stacy looks interesting, maybe because she's wearing funny clothes or, you know, whatever it is.
That's how it started in the beginning.
It was, if you look at, there's, you know, five different books.
If you look at the very first Humans of New York book, you will see a lot of very colorful characters.
You know I was new to New York and there's so many types of people in New York City, the freedom of expression, the creativity that I was kind of looking for, people that you would only kind of see in New York City.
As time went on, it became much less about the photography, much more about drawing out the story.
I started to kind of take pride in photographing inconspicuous looking people and drawing very deep stories out of them.
What is the photograph reveal about the human condition that writing can't capture?
And what is writing reveal about the human condition that the photograph can't capture?
Well, the photograph photographs can be deceptive.
You know, I think there's like the whole genre of street photography where it's all about these candid moments and beautiful work beautiful in ways that my work is not beautiful.
It has a beauty that is inherent to it that my work lacks.
It's this extreme candor.
But then I also think that there is a beauty in my work that is maybe not present in that type of genre.
So many times I'll see a candid photo of somebody, like across the street, and they look very angry or they'll look very, and it's like, Oh you know, hard edgy, New York.
And I think to myself Oh, if I could have only got that person, it would have been yes, They were in a moment of stress, but this is a father of two.
One of his sons has a drug addiction.
He's extremely stressed.
All he cares about his children and he's carrying that weight around and that's why you caught him in that moment of stress.
Do you know what I mean?
And so it's like Photos are gorgeous, especially photos taken across the street, because it can catch you in these kind of unguarded moments.
And there is a truth to that.
But it's not the truth.
It is a truth.
And then, with entering into somebody's life, intervening with them, suddenly you have a new type of photo.
And then you also have these words that come out of it.
As far as my photography process, I'll take one photo beforehand.
But what I'm looking for, it's like...
When I first approach somebody, it's going to be the least candid.
It's going to be because the person's very posed.
Then I'll start asking questions.
And with the words, I'm trying to get to a level of truth and a level of authenticity.
Then I'll have my camera with me and then I'll start snapping during the conversation, trying to get a photo that has this kind of recreated candor just as much candor as a photo you took from across the street, but in a more staged interaction where the conversation brought out that candor.
And then I will match that with the words and the quotes that I get from the story.
Can you read this quote for me?
Because I think one of the most interesting things that I picked up was how truth gets revealed.
And I mean, you just said it, right?
Like at the beginning, there isn't that same candor.
And then, over time, we begin to learn more and more about who somebody is, as they get comfortable with opening up with you.
And this really stuck out.
Truth is often spoken haltingly, with pauses, like it's being dug up, one spoonful at a time, from somewhere deep.
Truth feels heavy.
It has gravity.
It's usually not floating on the surface.
Interviews rarely begin with truth.
They begin with discomfort and uncertainty.
People protect themselves with cliches or generalities and punctuate their answers with nervous laughter.
But most interviews will eventually get to truth.
And I'm speaking of the interview on the street, you know, when you're kind of unprepared.
And the way I describe it is the difference between a persona and a person.
On the streets of New York, you're constantly interacting with people's personas.
I call it, you know, the business card version of themselves, the part that they put out on social media, the part that they want to be seen as somebody who has it all together, somebody who's moving through the world, somebody who's, you know, an operator.
Or, on the other end, it could be you know somebody that's the providing mother, somebody that you know.
Whatever it is, that is this story that we've crafted for ourselves in order to be the tip of the spear that moves us through the world.
That is normally what you're intersecting with when you first meet somebody.
And there is a negotiation process at the beginning of every interview with that person.
And it's harder.
The more that a person has a public profile, like they're a politician or a celebrity, the more of a negotiation this is and the harder it is to get beneath that.
But even with an everyday person, there's a negotiation at the beginning of the interview not always but most of the times where that person is presenting evidence, version of themselves that they would like to be seen as um.
Then, with an interview with sustained attention, with follow-up questions, with interest, then you unpack that, you get below that and when you get below that the answers start coming out more slowly, with pauses, because You're getting down to things that somebody has never been challenged to think about before.
And that's where the really beautiful stuff is which, when you're thinking through something with somebody for the first time in their presence or in your presence,
And that's where the writing comes in is that these interviews are pulling on a very, very long string, um one spoonful at a time where you're kind of coming at somebody's life from all different angles, the different characters, the different seasons, the different arcs, the different feelings.
Then you find a moment that you think is kind of illustrative of something deeper about them.
Then you kind of carve that out and you dig out into that moment and then you come out of it or I'll come out of it with like a 20 page transcript, but I'll know what it is at that point.
Like I can.
At the end of every interview I could tell the person exactly what their Humans of New York story is going to look like.
So is that the caption that you're going for?
Yeah, caption.
I mean, you know, caption is not a good word for it.
Well, I mean, look, it's unavoidable.
Caption content, you know, we're kind of trapped by the lexicon of the mediums that we use.
But yes, you know how I view this internally, from behind my own eyes is that these are these people's stories.
I am fitting these stories into a 2200 character limit so that they can reach people, because I do value impact and I do value transformation.
And the way I look at my process.
You know I try to avoid the words that are kind of the tools of the trade, of the social media trade, even though social media is, you know, what allows my work to distribute.
Yeah well, I think part of the reason that this quote really stuck with me is it mirrors so much of the writing process of as well.
Truth feels heavy.
It has gravity.
I'm going to replace some words here.
Good writing, it's not usually floating on the surface.
Good writing doesn't usually begin with the truth.
It begins with discomfort.
It begins with uncertainty.
I'm not sure I want to say this.
I'm not sure I want to go there.
What am I even trying to say?
And writers, they protect ourselves with cliches and generality.
And punctuate their answers with you know, whatever else, but eventually, good writing, good editing, through work, you finally get to the truth.
Well, and that's that's really.
I like that.
That was really well done.
Um yeah, you know what is it?
What is it that i'm looking for in an interview and what is it that you're looking for when you're trying to write something?
Good singularity, and it's like cliches, generalities.
They put you in a pool of other people.
This person would say that oh, this is how this person would have written this or this person would have, and you protect yourself from any sort of exposure or vulnerability by aligning yourself with people who've done things in like very, very similar ways.
But I think writing that is transcendent.
And when you discover something that really resonates is when you get down to a level where it's like oh, this is the only person who could have written this and that is why it is speaking to me so deeply deeply, and that's also where I'm trying to get to in these interviews.
Like I know the interviews going very well, when I've I've gotten to a place where I've interviewed 10000 people all over the world, but this person in front of me right now is telling me something I haven't heard before.
And when you've interviewed 10000 people, when you get to there, that's a very singular place and that is what I value.
Yeah, and having someone tell you something you've never heard before.
It happens at multiple levels.
Like there's the words, like what are they saying?
Like this is a crazy story, that's crazy thing, that happened.
I cannot believe that you grew up and this thing happened.
This was your family environment, but then also there's a voice, there's a way of speaking, and i want to hear about that level, like the unique voice, because in some of the stories that you tell i swear it's like 10 words, 15 words, and i'm like whoa, that voice voice is completely different.
Yeah, no, you've got it.
It's the holy grail of an interview.
And sometimes when I find these people, I will... stay with them for a long time.
I think Tengere is a great example of that.
You can actually pull it up.
It's right there.
There is a woman with an absolutely fantastic voice.
There are some people with great stories, meaning the events of their life are singular.
And then there are people with singular voices, meaning the way that they describe things, the way they turn a phrase is very singular.
When you have those two things married together, um and I've had it a few, several different times it is absolute magic.
Yeah.
You know it was like this.
Uh, I don't mean to interject, but a really good example is Forrest Gump.
Yes.
Like, weird things happen to Forrest Gump, but the way that he processes the world is actually more vivid than the things that happened to him.
And then like, The so this is one great example.
This was a woman that I met and she recently just passed away.
So she's actually very much on the top of my mind right now.
Her name was Stephanie.
I met her randomly.
I didn't even have my camera at the time.
And she I was coming back from the gym.
I was wearing shorts.
She was wearing a mink coat and she called me over and she said, why is can I ask you something?
She pulled me over to her.
It's looking back.
She pulled me into her web and she said, why is it? that only white boys wear shorts in the winter.
And that was like, that was her introduction to me.
And then she just like launched on this monologue.
We are in Chelsea about how this used to be where all the hookers were.
And, you know, James Brown was over there.
And then she started telling stories about James Brown and the temptations.
And she just started launching into this you know monologue about being a burlesque dancer in the 1970s.
And she was like painting this world and, And her voice was so distinctive.
Like, here's a quote.
My stripper name was Tangeray.
Back in the 70s, I was the only black girl making white girl money.
Like, I've never heard somebody say that.
Like, that is a completely... And that's my point.
It took 10 words.
Yes, there you go.
I danced at so many mob clubs that I learned Italian.
Black girls weren't even allowed in some of these places.
Nothing but guidos with their pinky rings and the one long fingernail they use for cocaine.
I started interviewing her with the intention of just telling a one-part story.
And her voice and her world was so singular that I spent months doing hours and hours and untold hours of interviews with her.
And then that got turned into a third, still what I think is the longest story.
Well, second longest, I told a longer one that's ever been told on social media.
It was told over 33 different Instagram posts over the course of a week and millions of people read it um from beginning to end.
Um, so that's.
That's me pushing up against the boundaries of what is possible on social media, like trying to tell a full story, like trying to be a writer within the confines of this medium.
That is what I use to reach people.
Well, you have a funny craft here where you're looking for people with distinctive voices and then you're talking to them And doing some kind of dance where you identify their distinctive voice but then also get them to a place where they're comfortable expressing their distinctive voice.
And then what happens is you are this steward, this custodian of taking their distinctive voice and then translating that into a story that you tell.
A lot of it's editorial.
And the editorial happens in the interview itself.
It started with me just asking people questions, going back, having this list of everything that they've said and then trying to put together whatever I could.
But then you start to notice patterns like, oh, I should have asked that.
Oh, I should have asked that.
Oh, I should have asked that.
To where now, I've done it so many times that almost...
I'm writing the story with the questions.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
It's like you realize, Oh, okay.
You've got some.
You've got some very.
You've got a very beautiful plot here, a very beautiful arc, but now you need descriptive.
So you want to know what exactly were they wearing?
What exactly did they look like at the time?
Do you feel like there's a hook moment, kind of like you know you're fishing and it's like i got the hook and now i'm trying to kind of reel it in, or i just call it following the heat and that's where it is?
And i think that's where it's like, because i don't have preparation, i don't have notes, the only thing i have is my own curiosity, and so, like i'm just listening very intently and when i have those lean in moments like it's kind of a proxy for the audience, you know what i mean.
It's like when i'm like wait, that happened, wait what.
You know what i mean.
It's like whenever I really get hooked in and roped in, then I know that this is where the interview is singular.
This is where it is something that I've never heard before.
And I will normally start asking along the lines of that.
I'll start putting my finger on that.
Normally, it's a struggle that the person's gone through.
I say, if you will find, first of all, if you can find somebody's struggle, you will find a plot.
Um, find what this person is pushed against, find what this person has overcome, and you will have a story with a plot.
Then you will also have transformation.
You can't push against something.
You can't battle against something, chew on something, think about something for an extended period of time without being changed by it.
So you have plot, you have transformation.
And then you also have wisdom.
I say that if you find somebody's struggle, you can find their genius.
This is the thing that they've thought about the most.
This is the thing that they've chewed on, the most, that they've read about, the most, that they've wondered about, the most.
And so when I'm looking for something singular that this person can tell me that I've not heard from anybody else, normally it comes as a result of something that they've gone through.
And so a lot of my questions are challenges somebody's gone through or struggles that they've overcome.
When you say questions, my idea of you being in an interview is they talk.
You respond with a question.
How much do you think following the heat comes from questions versus, oh, yeah, I've been through that where like you're engaging with them and basically trying to bring out the story?
Well, there's something beneath all of that, which is energy.
And it's probably the most important.
It's the very most difficult to put into words.
Yeah, but I've had journalists follow me around and they have interviewed the person that I just interviewed.
And the energy shift between the interview that I just had and then the interview with the journalist is remarkable.
One of them has a motive.
One of them.
The person has a list of questions that they're trying to get to fill in spots in an article that they are writing that they can kind of see in their head.
Whereas in Think, I like to think that you, when I'm having a conversation with somebody for humans of New York, I'm just extremely present, trying to understand what it is like to be this person, and that involves a zero preparation, extreme amount of active listening and just a level of presence that I think people aren't used to.
And when you have somebody being that present and that engaged with you and Trying to figure out your life, I don't know what it is that it unlocks.
But at the beginning of every interview I tell people anything you don't want to answer, you don't have to answer.
Anything you tell me that you don't want to share, you don't have to share.
You would be amazed at how little that option gets exercised.
I like to think it's because we're all trying to figure ourselves out.
When you have a partner there with you that is equally motivated to figure you out as you are, then there's such an internal internal force internal uh magnetism, i guess, to help that person understand you.
How do you think about presence and intensity?
Like there's a kind of presence that's like you know, like i'm completely locked in and stuff but, but.
But, but you know that i'd actually many years ago i was with a friend and he was like when we have a conversation, you're too, your gaze is too intense, and I can't think.
And then, you know, I think it was Bill Clinton.
Somebody once said about him and he had just mad riz, just really had a way with people.
And it was like, he's very presence, but he had the soft gaze that then allowed people to open up.
So how do you think about how to cultivate a presence that leads to connection and openness rather than defensiveness?
That's a great question.
Um, so I mean, if anything, I am too intense.
Uh, you know, I get, but it's just like, it's, it's cause I'm tough with people.
Like I will, I will call you out if you're contradicting yourself.
If you said that your mother treated you horribly and then 15 minutes later in the interview, you tell a story about your mother that demonstrates an, I will challenge you.
I will say, you said this earlier, like, how do you explain that?
Again, because I want to get to the truth and I really want to understand it.
And, you know, I have had people stop and be like, man, you are intense.
Like, I think I kind of just modulate it.
But I'm also kind of a, I don't know, my wife would say I'm a Pisces.
Like, I'm an emotional guy.
You know what I mean?
It's just like I, my audience feels emotion.
It's because I feel emotion.
I don't know what's, who said that quote, no tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.
Um, it's, you know, I am very much there, you know, feeling that person's story.
Um and so like.
When we get to those spots you know I do, I I am very much with them and their emotional world as well.
Um, you know, what, what they are feeling.
Um, Um, when it's funny, I will belly laugh.
I've got this large noxious hyena laugh that like, you know, people can see from across the street.
I know interviews great when that comes out.
Um, and so it's just like, I, but yes, it is intense.
Cause I take it very, very seriously.
I take every person in front of me deadly serious.
And that's part of the power, I think, because there's just so many people walking around out there and, that are living amazing lives and just quiet acts of heroism and self-sacrifice, single mothers in the Bronx and Brooklyn that are just, the weight of their world is on their shoulder and what they are accomplishing every single day is no less impressive or requires no less energy than people who create Fortune 500 companies.
It's just not written about as much, it's not.
And to have somebody in front of you taking your story and your struggle and your accomplishments that deadly seriously.
It can be intense, but I think the intensity is honoring in a way.
So yeah, I haven't fully unwound that.
The biggest lie that writers will tell themselves is, ah, I'll remember that later.
No, I mean, there's so many times when I'm listening to a podcast that want to save something and I just never end up saving it, because typing it into the phone is just too much work, you know.
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All right, let's get to the interview.
Yeah, I've spent so much time talking to people, talking to writers and basically trying to encourage them that they, deep down, have something to say that is worth reading.
And actually, I can't think of a better proof of that than Humans in New York.
Now, there's two major caveats here, okay?
The first is you need a good editor.
And I think you're the editor.
They're giving you tens of thousands of words.
And your task is to find the one thing.
And then the other thing is you got to stop lying to yourself.
You have to push past the cliche.
And this isn't like a lying to yourself, like I'm trying to lie to yourself.
This is just what you were saying.
This is how we operate.
We have a story.
We have mantras, things that we keep at the surface of our minds, that we use as armor to move through the world.
And what you're doing is getting deeper than that.
It's like to protect ourselves from the world and to protect ourselves from ourselves.
How about that?
You know, it's like it's we carry these stories around with us that serve ourselves, like in our own mental health and our own sense of place in the world, in addition to marketing ourselves and in addition to presenting ourselves in a certain way.
In order to explain some of your behavior when you were a teenager, in your early 20s, in order for you to be comfortable with the person that you are in your own view of yourself.
You might not need to believe that your father was a more un-nuanced person than he really was, was more of an asshole than he really was.
Because that is the only thing that would justify your behavior towards him.
Same thing with your mother.
Same thing with so many people around you, you know?
It's like we craft these and and you have to, i'm trying to, you know, be careful with myself, and you know i'm guilty of the same thing everybody is.
You know, we have these stories and we arrange these memories, this infinite selection of memories, into our head, in our head.
Which one?
Our brain?
I mean?
We're all editing our own stories.
You know our brains will grab onto this one and remember this one.
Why do you remember the 300 memories that you remember?
A lot of times?
It is to serve a story that you are telling yourself about yourself, that helps you move through the world with the perception that you are a good person, that you are living correctly and that you are doing the right thing.
It's not always truth.
It is a truth, but it's not always truth.
Right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
And so it's like so many of these interviews, like getting to the bottom of people, it's not just me getting to the bottom of them.
It's us getting to the bottom of what happened through very pointed follow-up questions, which ask the person to explain contradictions, explain where things don't really match up, maybe arriving at a new synthesis, a new interpretation of things that happened that hold a deeper resonance than the story that would have come out right off the tip of the tongue.
Yeah, because so much of what other people doing for us in conversation is, i think, of the mind as this.
This, basically it's this mansion but there's a lot of trap doors and little like pandora's box chambers that we actually lock and we keep those things locked for for for trauma or like whatever it is, and over time we begin to follow like a narrower and narrower and narrower path through our lives.
It's like we're almost dying and experiencing less and less, And a lot of what you're doing when you're editing, when you're pushing yourself deeper when you're in conversation is they're basically tools for getting us into the parts of our minds that normally we have locked.
And often it's very painful to go to those places.
But it's not always.
You know one thing that I love – and this happened over and over and over again –
There are so many people out there that are so self-denying and live so much for other people mainly mothers living for their children that they close the doors to their own heroism, to their own accomplishments, to what they've carried and come through.
And so it's not just people closing the doors to versions of themselves that make them seem less admirable.
It's also selfless people closing the doors to themselves that that make themselves seem more important or more admirable or more praiseworthy.
And there's so many times where there's just I've run to people who've just been living their lives in service of other people and or they're just too stressed because of finances, because of anything to think about themselves.
They have to be self-denying just to get through the world, and sitting with them unpacking their lives, rearranging it into a form of the story.
So this person can see their life in their hand and say, I started here and I came here.
And seeing the pride and what it gives that person to be able to get that distance.
And then it has a chapter two when it gets posted later on that night.
And my audience is very kind audience, self-selecting.
You know I always say if you don't like people, you get bored with humans of New York and you move on.
And so the people who stick around are people who are empathetic and they like people.
And so there's a chapter two where people get through that vulnerability, that discomfort of sharing, and then they share it, and then they just get affirmed in a very big way.
And it was really cool for me because uh, you know, I did an art installation at grand central uh, a couple of weeks ago and it was kind of like a Mecca for everybody that's been on humans of New York.
And there have been thousands and thousands and thousands in the city and you know having people come up and tell me what it was like because i just met them and i moved on, you know what i mean.
They moved on, and so having them come up to me, one at a time over a hundred people that i'd photographed and and hadn't seen sets and tell me the experience of what it meant to them afterwards was very meaningful.
Yeah, I got goosebumps for that one.
Um, tell me about these ones.
These like, this might not be the best example.
So if there's another one, let me know.
It is a great example.
I love that one.
We've got girls.
Well, we got one, but there's a story.
There's a story here and that's what I want to call out.
Well, what's the story there?
So we've got, we've got girls, you get one.
So they're taught, they're talking about, they are talking about.
I love how fast you could tell a story too.
But then also look at his shirt.
I've got mad love for my mama.
Yeah.
It's like there's there are these little coincidences and there's these little moments you know happening that don't need adornment and they don't need.
And, you know, I think that's, that's one beautiful thing about the book.
Um, the book freed me from the algorithm.
There are very certain things that work in the algorithm.
You know, it's like, I'm sure you know them.
I know them.
Yeah.
Um, they're always changing and, These days, you can't do really short texts.
It's all about the amount of time somebody spends looking at a post.
That decides how many people are going to see it.
So you can't really do these very short, kind of poetic quotes and have it get distributed.
Beautiful thing about that book is 75% of those stories were not posted online.
So I really disappeared for about two or three years.
Like if you look at my rate of posting over 15 years, it stays very high.
And then there's a massive dip when Dear New York was written because I wanted to write a book.
I wanted to write something outside of the sculpting, the subconscious sculpting mechanism of the algorithms.
And that allowed me to do things like that, which are kind of shorter things, less direct quotes, more nuanced, that have a little poeticism to it.
And that's something that doesn't work on social media.
Well, these short ones, they kind of remind me of music.
I was talking to Roseanne Cash.
She was sitting in that chair.
Oh, yes, a friend of mine.
And we were talking about one of her lines a feather's not a bird, a rain is not the sea, a stone is not a mountain, but a river runs through me.
And I was like, I don't know why that really resonates with me.
And I go, what does it mean?
And she goes, you really want me to tell you what it means?
Yeah.
And I was like, well, I'm not sure.
She goes, well, you have in your mind what it means.
But I would kind of rather you have that than me tell you what it means.
And so there's something two way about a short quote where now I get to think about okay, what does this mean?
What are all of my interpretations?
And it actually might be less accurate, but more meaningful right right, and it's.
It's that that two-wayness also carries forth into the interview.
Um, like i'm ran into a woman uh, in that.
Let me see if i can find her here.
Yeah, so this is one of the women, This is one of the people that I ran into in Grand Central Station.
She came up to me because we had like an hour long conversation.
And she came up to me and she said, it was interesting to see the parts of me that reflected you.
Whoa.
Yeah.
And there's the truth to that.
It's like there are certain things that I latch on to and certain things that I dig into in a person's story.
So in a way, all of these have...
Just a touch of autobiography in them.
More than just a touch, for sure.
Some of them.
I mean, think of my relationship with my sister.
I bet everyone's like this.
There are aspects of David Perel that only come out with Sabrina.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
And they're nowhere else.
They lie dormant.
That is true.
And even in talking with a young male on 182nd Street and an 80-year-old woman in Jackson Heights— completely different me.
So you know what I mean and it's just like the moving.
You asked about energy.
You know moving between masculine and feminine energy is very important on the streets.
It's like you have got to have a different tone, you have got to have a different conversation.
When you were talking to a group of young males in certain areas, mm-hmm.
Then when you're talking with an 80 year old woman, you know what I mean and it's just like to be able to switch between those two energies is a big part of why this work works, And I think one of the things that I take pride in is the ability to get into very what some people would describe as dangerous places.
I've done this work in war zones around the world.
I've done this work in every single neighborhood in New York City.
And you get into those places with this energy.
But then what you do is you get into those places with this energy.
But then you'll find so much life being lived in this energy.
You know what I mean?
And so it's like being able to go back and forth between those two.
That's what's allowed me to reflect so many different types of lived experiences.
Because yes, there is this Brandon.
And this is the Brandon that built Humans of New York.
But You know, this is the Brandon that learned the stories and told the stories.
And it's, you know, being able to go between those two is a huge part of it.
And so here she said that you know this is.
I was interested in finding the part of you that was reflected in me.
And her quote is, creation is different than production.
And we're talking about these two energies right now.
Creation happens on the mountaintop, where the world doesn't matter, where you reach into the depths of your solitude for a gift.
Then you come down here to the marketplace.
You come back to the mortal world and let them know that there are mountains to climb if they choose.
That's a normal person saying that.
Well, she's no, none of these people are normal.
You know, Helen's a genius.
Here's her backstory.
What I mean is just the number of geniuses is just – it's so high.
It comes back to that point about the editing and diving past the cliché.
I've just spoken to so many people who feel like they have nothing to say.
Over the years and I never used Humans of New York as an example of look, all these people have something to say.
Well, and it's actually – I prefer the people who say that they have nothing to say, because they are the people that you get to those true moments with.
It's like everyone has something to say if they'll tell the truth.
It's like the bad interviews aren't the people who have nothing to say.
It's the people who have so much to say, but none of it is very deeply earned.
Do you know what I mean?
And so it's like I would much – give me a choice between two different people, somebody who's extremely confident that they're going to tell me something interesting –.
And somebody who's extremely insecure that they have nothing interesting to say.
I will take the insecure person over every single time.
Because that is the person who is not so puffed up that they've created a false version of themselves.
I was reading... I'm entirely self-taught.
I flunked out of school.
I was reading Nietzsche since I was 14.
It was an intellectual ascent, but a spiritual descent.
Nihilism comes from the same root as annihilate.
And when you begin to question the conscience, you start to believe that morality is a false construct.
You break whatever laws you need to break to subsidize your addictions.
I bottomed out in this park when I was 24.
I was emaciated.
My skin was gray.
I was missing a few teeth.
My hair was falling out.
I was gone.
I came to this park to die, and even death didn't want me.
And when you wake up in a pool of your own vomit and there's a rat chewing on something you regurgitated, you don't cry out to Nisha.
You don't cry out to Kant.
Van Gogh can't save you.
The poets can't save you.
A real reckoning goes on.
I knew my soul was no longer my own.
And even if I didn't believe in God quite yet, I began to believe in the devil.
I knew there was evil and I knew I had to fight it.
I mean, yes, it's like these deep, deep human dramas going on everywhere around us.
Yeah, I like that point that you were saying about the earned truths.
And it is a good prompt.
What are the things that I've earned?
And honestly, sometimes you're kind of blind to those things.
And then there are these other truths that are very packaged and regurgitated, that you're just picking up from the culture, from books you're reading, whatever else.
But you can hear it when somebody is saying an earned truth, because there's a necessary originality freshness, singularity to what they're saying boom, you just hear it.
How do you think about inspiration and how that functions into your work?
And the reason I ask is you were pretty persistent about doing this every day.
What like four posts a day for years, no matter what.
So talk to me about that and, and, and, and just the role of discipline.
Yeah.
Well, and with writing too.
You know, it's everything i flunked out of school when i was um in college, i was somebody who never really did my homework.
In high school um, i was.
I tested very well.
I had a lot of innate abilities um, which allowed me to kind of, you know, read the back of a book right before the test and maybe flip through to and get like a b or an a minus, not like i was getting a pluses, phoning it in Um.
But I got to you know a point after I graduated where, high school where, even though I had a high school degree and you know, a couple of years of college, um I I flunked out of school.
I realized I wasn't really educated because I just kind of floated through.
Um, at that time I told myself I was going to read a hundred pages a day.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And I did that for several, several years.
It started out with nonfiction.
Um, then it moved to a lot of fiction.
There's a lot of biographies, right?
A lot of biographies at first, cause I was history major, a lot of biographies and a lot of history.
Um, my most recent season, um, I, you know, read about 150 to 200 works of fiction.
That was over the past few years cause I was trying to become a better writer.
But I mean, what's more important than the types of books that I was reading was that yes, I finally, after 20 years of not being disciplined, established discipline in my life.
And it was – I stopped judging myself based on my abilities like oh, I'm a good writer or I'm smart.
I have good thoughts to I'm somebody who can do work and show up every single day.
And taking my – I always say like the one thing that you can –
Proud of without ego is the amount of work that you do, because that is something that is freely available to everybody, Has nothing to do with genetics.
It has nothing to do with privilege.
It's just like if you, the amount of work that you do every single day is something completely democratized.
And so I decided I was going to root my identity and and how much I worked and the amount of work I did every single day.
And it started with a hundred pages a day and And then when I got the camera, it just came to I was going to photograph every single day.
And it was 30, 40 people a day.
I was trying to get up to 10,000.
Then when I started interviewing people, it became four interviews a day.
And I did that for years, not missing a day, just every single day.
And so yes, so much of Humans of New York, but not only the output, all of the inspiration, all of the iteration came out of being there and doing it every single day.
And it's just like whether it's this latest art installation I did at grand central, I mean dear New York.
The prologue was run through 180 drafts.
Like I'm not.
I'm not somebody who just has a bolt of inspiration and just boom, you know, writes it out.
I'm just somebody who shows up every single day and iterates and iterates and iterates and iterates.
That was all of Humans of New York.
That was everything that I've ever written.
That was the Grand Central installation that I just did.
It was taking this big dream, this big goal that I had and breaking it down into a set of behaviors that I could repeat every single day and just holding myself to that.
Um, when you said that you wanted to become a better writer, and you did it, reading nonfiction and fiction.
What are the things that you identified that then you brought into your own work?
Well, I used to be a massive reader.
Um, but then again, it got pushed out of my life by photography.
Um, you know, I read a hundred pages every single day until I began humans of New York.
Then humans in New York just took off so fast that I kind of got away from writing.
Um, And so yes, I just – I went into this period in the last three or four years where I just read tons and tons and tons of fiction.
You know, what I was probably taught more than anything is that anything is allowed if you do it well.
And that's where it's like if I look at the season – yeah, it's like when I look at the season of reading that I did.
I mean, I'm sure there's titles of books that I don't even remember.
I was just –
I was going wide, wide, wide, wide, wide, wide, wide.
The main thing – you can write in second person.
You can write – Probably with punctuation.
Yes.
It's just like anything is allowed if you do it well.
And that's when it's like – when you start to view the tools of writing as – these weapons that you have to create a singular expression that's very freeing, as opposed to rules and constraints and yes, and paths and lanes and ways and genres, and like all of these, all of these things like this equals quality, like that, and that's where art school and and mfas can be so dangerous is you.
You come out of there with a very rigidly defined idea of what is quality and what is not.
And not only does that lead away from singularity, it leads away from experimentation.
It leads away from innovation.
And that's where it's so helpful to ground your creative process in the act of creating every single day, and not some act of what is good and what is correct.
Because it is through showing up every single day and writing for an hour that you innovate, that you discover, that you run across things.
And it might take longer, you know, it might take you longer to get there.
It's kind of a scenic pathway.
But if you commit yourself to discovering your own path, and discovering your own route through the process of showing up and doing the work every single day, as opposed to studying what is correct and studying what is right, when you do finally get there, hopefully it will look unlike anything else that anybody else has done, because you've earned it.
Yeah.
One of the things I noticed is the rhythm. in your writing, and then lists.
Maybe it's just because of the stuff that I was reading, but rhythm and lists.
And I think it shows up in this quote, if you want to read it.
New York is humanity itself.
Every type of person is here.
Every culture, every religion, every viewpoint.
And all of us crowded onto the same narrow sidewalks, the same one-way streets, the same subway cars.
With all of these differences packed into so small a place, it's a miracle that this city works.
Yet somehow, despite the honking, the screaming, the shuffling, the cursing, we make it work.
Yeah.
Well, it's like I think so much of what has become my writing.
And again, it's like you look at the path of Humans of New York.
It went from single quotes to paragraphs, to 33-part stories.
To you know, this prologue is the first thing I've written in first person and that's 12000 words.
It's...
It's gradually, you know, moving towards longer and longer and longer and longer, longer and longer formats and the kind of like pushing up against the thing.
But I think one thing that I cannot escape from is the oral tradition.
It's that all the stories that I have shared were told to me by voice.
You know, Hemingway said that you can write spoken or you can write written.
And it's, you know, I'd like to do both. both well.
But I think in my head I'm always coming back to the rhythm and cadence of spoken word, because that's one, how stories were shared for millions of years and two, how they've been shared with me for the last 15 years of my life.
Well, you have a fun tool that you can use, in that, if you're writing about New York, anyone who writes about a city can basically use all of these examples boom boom, boom.
That really brings something to life.
You know, all of us crowded on the same narrow streets boom, the same one-way streets boom.
The same subway cars boom.
Like you could just think of all crowded restaurants, boom, crowded concerts, boom.
Like you can keep adding these things.
And when you write about a city you can just have these vivid examples, like these flashpoints of that all of a sudden we can get a sense for the feel of the city.
Well, because what's the... Again, singularity.
What's the one thing that I've done that nobody else has done?
That might allow me to say something that nobody else has said.
I've stopped 10000 random people on the streets over the past 15 years and I've learned their stories.
And so if you look at the prologue of Humans of New York, there's an entire section where we're on a 7 train and I'm bouncing off and forth between about 30 different people and their lives and their lived experiences and kind of creating this summation of the city through its individual parts.
New York is the most diverse city in the world.
Other cities have tried to claim this crown with cherry-picked statistics, with every gauge of measurement except for the eyes and the ears.
Fine cities, all of them.
But whatever diversity they might claim, they have not the density to exhibit it fully.
Nowhere are there more types of people packed into a smaller place than New York City, and whatever thin walls separate New Yorkers above ground, dissolve underneath.
In the subway, every type of person is pressed together in every arrangement like jigsaw pieces back to back, chest to chest and sometimes yes, sometimes not by choice by the demand, the decree of this city.
Ass. to face.
No, that's what I mean.
Like you totally have the uh, you know you can hear that oral spoken word tradition in there and you kind of have the buildup and it's boom boom, boom boom.
Like it's, there's kind of a clinkety clang to that, you know, to that rhythm.
And I definitely noticed just what you're doing with rhythm throughout the writing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, uh, what's crazy is I felt it immediately.
Like cause, that line about New York's humanity that was right at the front of the Dear New York exhibition at Grand Central.
And I walked up to it and I was sucked into the exhibition because of the vibe of that first paragraph.
I appreciate that.
You know, and New York even itself has that rhythm.
What is it that spoken word has that written word doesn't?
Lack of ornamentation.
You know what I mean?
Like lack of a very very, you know, carefully distilled, organized thoughts into a you know something that just kind of flows perfectly uninterrupted.
Uh, it's more stilted, it's more jumping around, it's more repetitive.
A lot of repetition occurs in spoken word that does not occur in a, a standard piece of writing.
Um, So these are the elements that I think make a story feel so real when it is told on Humans of New York that this is something being spoken to you for the very first time, as opposed to something that somebody went into a room and wrote to be the most distilled and polished version of their thoughts possible.
Man, that's a good point.
I feel like I hear a story.
I don't read a story.
Yeah.
I mean that's how I've heard all of my stories.
And so –
Trying to maintain that I think, and again as a prologue for Dear New York.
You know this essay, I wanted it to be, of a piece, you know, with the other 500 stories that were in there.
So, even though it is first person in my voice, I wanted it to have the same kind of texture and fabric as the other stories in there.
Are you deliberate about theme?
Like you know, we've talked about you found the right story, but how do you think about the theme of this?
Like the theme kind of goes between the photo and the story that you're writing.
Is that something that you're thinking about or no?
I mean, more so now than before.
Well, one, I just have more canvas because it started out with very, very short quotes.
Then they went and COVID's where I really started pushing the writing because COVID, I was actually of a golden era on humans of new york, because i opened it up to people.
I had like 22 000 submissions.
I opened it up to people around the world to tell their stories.
I would interview them remotely and so for the first time i had unlimited amounts of time with people and i wasn't trying to get whatever i could in a short amount of time.
That's when i really really started working on my writing And I would interview people for a long period of time and then try to present their story in a way that it was more thematic and had much more of an arc and much more control.
Um, and then that went into multi-part stories five part stories on Instagram, then culminating in Tangeray and actually culminating even further with a 54 part story I did last year which are very controlled.
You know they are very architected.
And um Yes then, this Dear New York prologue, it is very architected.
Whether or not it is anybody's taste or whatnot, it was very difficult for me to write.
And that's because it has many different threads that kind of span out.
It starts with the baby and then it has many kind of threads that kind of go out and then they all kind of come back together and they weave back together into the final scene.
Um, that was very hard for me to control and very hard for me to um keep of one piece, which is why I had to go through so many drafts.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
Your craft.
You're a biographer, but most biographers it's like Robert Caro is going to spend 45, 50 years on Lyndon B Johnson.
And he's, he's a big, big person in my mind.
I've read all his books twice.
Um, he's yeah.
So he's, He was very inspiring to me at a young age.
Somebody who was able to take a real person's story and imbue it with such literary form that it almost felt like fiction.
So he's always inspired me, even though he is much longer form than I am.
Well, it's crazy that he's all the way over there.
5000-page biography of LBJ.
Once it's done and then— you can capture the essence of like those two boys, you know we get girls.
Well, we got one.
And that you can be a biographer with one sentence and one photo.
Well, and I think that also when I started to branch out and go longer, I was always it's great training.
You know.
It's fantastic training to have to tell things in short form.
You know, because you learn what's essential.
It's a whole process of learning what the story cannot do without, as opposed to because i think that is that there's anywhere where i help people tell their stories, it's when you live your own life.
Everything seems important and everything seems essential.
It's the editor and yeah, and it's, and then, and then, and then, and then, and you know it's identifying what pieces of a story are absolutely essential or will not hold together.
Um, kind of gives you an education in the bones of storytelling and kind of the structure.
And then you can take those bones and you can build a much bigger body of flesh around it, having learned what it is that a story cannot do without,
And, you know, I think that's where I am right now.
If I continue down writing, I Tell me more about Get Concrete with the stories and what you're learning about how to tell a good one.
I mean, the...
Look, we talked earlier about one thing about good writing is you learn that you don't need anything.
You don't need to even be linear.
There's a way that you can do anything in an interesting way.
So with that caveat put forward, there's got to be stakes.
And there's got to be plot.
Aaron Sorkin taught me that.
I learned a lot from Aaron Sorkin.
He describes the plot of a story as the – the clothesline that you can hang, and the clothespins being all the things that you love about writing, the exposition, the character building.
If you don't have that through line, if you don't have that plot, if you don't have those stakes that have the audience leaning forward, the reader leaning forward to learn what happens, then there's not going to be a mechanism to carry somebody's interest through the story to where you can wow and you can dazzle them with so many other things.
So, as far as having a character that knows what they want, having a character with a goal, having a character with needs that then can be either fulfilled or not in a good story disappointed many times before it is eventually fulfilled then that will give you the forward momentum, that which you can then drape upon all the writerly things, which is the poeticisms, the views into life, the wisdom that you love.
But without a character who has a need, a desire, something that they want, there is no forward track to move along.
Um, that was a a very important critical lesson again, and you can go on Vanguard and you can say that Oh, linear storytelling is for you know whatever, that's the old way or whatever.
I like, I like, I like my story to move forward.
Um, so you know, I think that that was the the, the big realization that you know, underlying everything.
There's gotta be a plot and the plot has got to be a character, that whose desires can serve as a proxy for desires in the reader, for yearnings in the reader, that will attach the reader to that story and then carry them towards the end.
Yeah.
And how do you think about that desire?
Is it care?
Because it can be simple things.
I think sometimes we think of desires, these grand whatever, but sometimes it's man.
It's been a long week and my relationship and mother, my relationship with my son, hasn't been great.
And I really, really want him to enjoy this pasta tonight, you know, like the simplest thing.
Well, there you go.
And so, like in humans of New York, even though I talk about writing cause, like again, this is when you're pushing into long form.
Um, this is when, and humans of New York is a mix of one paragraph quotes.
And I've done about 12 or 14 longer form stories.
And that's when plot comes in.
You know with, with humans of New York and proper, which is in this story, with all these hundreds of very short interviews on the street, then you don't, you don't need a plot.
You can have a thought, you can have a belief.
You can have.
You know, the plot is what carries a reader through pages and pages and pages and pages.
So that is a mix.
And, as you know, like yes, on humans of New York, things can be very simple, but even for the longer ones that do arc within humans of New York um yes, it's the it can be something like getting your first girlfriend.
It can be.
Lot of times it's getting sober.
A lot of times it is getting sober I would say probably that's the most common story is getting sober just because addiction is probably the one thing that people struggle for in front of the most and different forms.
So it's like yeah, it's not like always these loud accomplishments or like these mountain peaks that people are going through, but there's gotta be something that somebody wants and that somebody needs, because that's the basis of the story.
Otherwise, you have no reason to care about what happens to a person unless you know what it is that they need, or they want to get some sort of resolution.
Yeah.
I the word empathy is so overused that sometimes it feels trite.
But that is a lot of what a good story is.
It's, Humans in New York is here's a person.
I met them, had a conversation with them.
And at some level, I found it worthy enough to share it with you.
And so your job, I think, is to say, hey, what can I write to bring you in here?
And what it seems like pain and struggle are a lot of the things that that like a lot of the tools that you can
That's not right.
Like the tools are.
After living a few years in the city.
You will have had so many stereotypes overturned.
The moment you think someone is this, they will surprise you.
This too.
You will have encountered so many assholes and so many saints of every color, class, and creed.
Not only this but, depending on the weather, the lunar cycle, the train schedule, your blood sugar levels and the hours of sleep you got last night, you will have been that saint and you will have been that asshole in the lives of so many other people that when you meet someone new, no matter how different they are from you, you might have at least a sneaking suspicion that had you been born in their shoes and walked their path, you might be a lot like them.
That if you had been born on the small island of LaGuan, in the middle of the Essequibo River, near the northern coast of Guyana, to a mother who told you on the day you left for America to hold on to God with all your body, all your soul, then you too might be shouting the gospel, as the woman is currently doing in car number two, three inches away from a man in a Spider-Man suit.
Wow.
It's like empathy is not being like, I am like this person.
It's, oh, if I had lived a life like this person did, which was so remarkably different than all of the inputs that I went through in the process of putting together this personality, then I might be a lot more like them than I currently am.
It's like it's.
You need to understand one, what it's like to be the person's eyes, and also behind their eyes and also where they came from.
You know, it's just like.
Yes, it's like maybe that person's a little harder around the edges.
But that's what happens when you grow up in a trailer with two heroin addicted parents that are fighting nonstop.
You know.
So it's not that, oh, I'm the same as this person.
It's oh.
If I had gone through all of these same things that this person went through, I would be a lot like them.
That's so funny.
I was trying to express something like that.
And you're just like, here we go.
This is the thing that I had written.
Man, what a cool conversation.
Thank you.
I enjoyed it.
I appreciate you asking these questions.
Yeah.
What a just – what an insane – it really hit me as we were talking of you move here from Philly.
You don't have money.
You just go out and you're just going to take four – you're just going to publish four posts a day or do all these interviews.
There's just such an insane persistence that's part of the story.
Well, yeah.
I mean it's – and that's where it gets to the creation of any sort of art.
It's – you have to believe that it's beautiful or that it will become beautiful for so long before anyone else agrees with you.
And if you worry about the amount of, I'm not talking about content, I'm not talking about, you know, things that fit into the algorithm.
Like you know, you're never going to believe what he just said, or you know, this person, homeless person, has their life changed by me giving them a hundred thousand dollars.
But like art,
Yeah.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's.
It's such a long and personal journey that if you root it in any sort of thing outside of your control, like people's reception, you will just run out of gas before you get there.
You have to root it in the doing of it.
If you want to be a musician, you have to root it in playing an hour a day or four hours a day.
Or if you want to be a writer, it's writing a certain amount of hours every single day.
That's the only way I know how to do it because it's too...
Torturous it's too involves too much doubt too much insecurity if you're judging yourself on anything else You got to judge yourself by showing up if you wrote for an hour a day, you're a writer Congratulations, and if you've won Pulitzer Prizes, but you haven't written in a year There's a 16 year old girl writing in her journal.
That is more of a writer than you are It's the process of doing it.
It's the only thing I've ever been able to judge myself on and because that's the only thing that I know, 100 positive I can control.
And that creed and that viewpoint has carried me to the top of some very tall mountains.
But the entire way up, I'm looking down at my feet.
I can take one more step today.
I can take one more step today.
Good to meet you.
Thank you, David.
