Steve Hendershot: Why We Believe What We Believe | Investigative Journalism & Hidden Assumptions

[00:00:00] What Happens When We Challenge The Assumptions We've Accepted As Truth? And How Can Investigative Journalism Help Us Uncover Overlooked Stories, Question Conventional Wisdom, And Develop A Deeper Understanding Of The World Around Us? According To The Pew Research Center 59% Of Americans Believe Journalists Are Extremely Or Very Important To Society's Well-Being, Highlighting The Essential Role Journalism Plays In Informing The Public, Encouraging Accountability, And

[00:00:29] Fostering Meaningful Conversations. But In An Increasingly Complex Media Landscape, Journalism Must Do More Than Simply Report The Facts. It Must Challenge Established Narratives, Uncover Hidden Perspectives, And Encourage Audiences To Reconsider What They Think They Know. This Week On Let's Have This Conversation, Host Kevin McShan Welcomes Steve Hendershot, An Award-Winning Investigative Journalist, Best-Selling Author, And Creator And Host Of Unengrained, A Documentary

[00:00:59] Style Podcast Dedicated To Investigative Journalist, A Documentary Style Podcast Dedicated To Investigating Blind Spots, Invisible Ideas, And Deeply Rooted Assumptions. With More Than Two Decades Of Experience In Journalism And Storytelling, Steve Has Built A Career Exploring Fascinating Subjects And Translating Complex Ideas Into Compelling Narratives. His Work Includes Author, A His Work Includes Authoring A Best-Selling Book About The Iconic Street Fighter Video Game Franchise And Hosting The Project Management Institute's Podcast For Many Years.

[00:01:27] Now, Through Unengrained, Steve Is Pursuing A Journalistic Vision 20 Years In The Making, Examining The Ideas Society Takes For Granted And Asking Whether Those Assumptions Withstand Closer Scrutiny. The Podcast's Inaugural Season Explores A Deceptively Simple Question. Why Is Softball Considered Baseball For Girls?

[00:01:49] Through Investigative Reporting And Documentary Storytelling, Steve Examines The Cultural Assumptions, Historical Influences, And Societal Expectations Surrounding Two Closely Related Sports. Throughout This Engaging Conversation, Kevin And Steve Explore The Importance Of Independent Journalism, Intellectual Curiosity, Challenging Conventional Wisdom, And Creating Compelling Stories That Inspire Audiences To Think Critically.

[00:02:15] They Also Discussed The Evolution Of Podcasting, The Responsibilities Of Modern Journalists, And Why Asking Better Questions Can Sometimes Be More Powerful Than Having All The Answers. Because Meaningful Journalism Isn't Simply About Telling People What To Think. It's About Giving Them The Information, Context, And Curiosity To Think For Themselves.

[00:02:41] Join Us For A Thought-Provoking Conversation About Investigative Journalism, Storytelling, Media Accountability, And The Courage To Question What We've Always Believed. I'm Kevin McShan. Let's Have This Conversation.

[00:03:28] Steve, If You're Ready, I'll Take A Moment To Welcome You To The Program. And I'm Super Excited To Learn About Unengrained In Your Career In Investigative Journalism. It's Great To See You. And Happy Wednesday, Gene, My Friend. Yeah, Likewise To You. Okay, Great. Yeah, Let's Kick It Off. Absolutely. Steve, I wanted to Start Our Conversation By Asking You To Assess The State Of Investigative Journalism Today.

[00:03:56] And Today's American Culture. How Would You Assess The State Of The Industry? And What Do You Think It's Doing, My Friend? I'm Curious To Get Your Answer There. Yeah, It's An Interesting Question. It's Difficult In Some Ways To Tease Out Investigative Journalism From Journalism Period. I Kind Of Came Up At The Very End Of The Era When Journalism Was A Big Enough Industry That

[00:04:21] You Know My First Few Like I Wrote Magazine Cover Stories Where Not Only Did They Pay Pretty Well But They Would Fly Me Across The Country To Interview People And Things Like That. And It's Just Like You Know That That Was Normal In Bygone Decades. And Now As You Know That Like The Newsrooms Not Only Have Those Kinds Of Budgets Shrunk. But I Mean The Big Newsrooms In Chicago. I've Been A Freelancer For My Entire Life Which Means I Have Seldom Worked In A Newsroom.

[00:04:50] But I Work For All The Chicago Places So I Kind Of Know The Inside Of Most Of The Chicago Institutions, Chicago Magazine, The Tribune, And All Those Places. Like They're Just So Much Smaller Than They Used To Be That The Notion Of Reporting With The Same Breadth And Depth Is Just Not There. So Whatever Else We Can Talk About About Cultural Values And Polarization And Echo Chambers And All This Stuff,

[00:05:15] It's Just Like The Reach Of Reporters To Be At Every County Board Meeting And School Board, You Know All Of That Stuff Where It Used To Be Like Yeah, We're Going To Get, Somebody's Going To Be In The Rule And We're Going To In The Room And We're Going To Find Out What's Going On. There's Just A Lot Less Of That. So You Can Still Investigate And I Think, Hey, There's More Data Than There Ever Has Been. And You Know, Like We're Doing Right Now, There Are More Conversations Available Online And In Some

[00:05:41] Ways Like The, You Know, The Podcast Citizenry Can Take Up Some Of That, You Know, Investigative Mantle. So There's Different Things Out There And I Think, I Mean, I Have Found Like The Last Few Years Fertile Ground To Do Investigations. But Like, You Know, But Is Journalism As Strong As It Was? No, It's Not And That Has More To Do With Bodies Or The Lack Thereof Than Like The People Are Worse At Their Jobs Or Something Like That. Yeah, Absolutely.

[00:06:11] And Steve, As a Journalist Yourself, I Know That You've Developed A Fascination For Passive Projects, Passive Projects, And Ideas, And Ideas People Pursue. Not Necessarily Because They're A Massive Market Opportunity, But Because They Generately Care About Making Something Happen. So What Draws You To This Type Of Storytelling?

[00:06:38] And What Have You Discovered About The Extraordinary Power Of Telling Someone's Story And Really Getting Beneath The Arm Of A Story? What Are Your Thoughts There, My Friend? Yeah, That's A Good Question There Are Two Answers. One Of Which Is I Just Have Always Been Drawn To Do That. I Mean That's What Inspired Me To Pursue A Career In An Industry That's Been Basically Shrinking The Entire Time Because I Think This Is Important. So Part Of That, You Know, I Was A Musician Or I Still Am A Musician.

[00:07:08] I Was A Semi-Pro Musician For A Long Time. That's Another Like, I Think This Is Important. I Think The World Needs This. So Part Of This Is I Have Always Kind Of Operated According To A Should Or A Mission Driven. I Mean That Started Early On In College With, You Know, What Internships I Was Pursuing And All Kins Of Stuff. But Also, When I Started My Career, I Just Realized When I Started Interviewing People, At First I Did A Lot Of Sports Stuff, Which In Some Ways I've Just Returned To This Year. We'll Get Into That Later On. A Lot Of Music And Entertainment Stuff.

[00:07:38] And I Just, Then When I Started Interviewing Entrepreneurs And Specifically Entrepreneurs That Had Pursued, You Know, That Weren't Leading Fortune 500 Companies But That Were Out There Like Pushing A Passion Project. I Just, I, The Fire And Inspiration And Sense Of Meaning That Animated Them. It Just Really Resonated With Me. And It Was Like, Yeah, This, You Know, A, A Little Bit Maybe These Are My People, But Also, I Love The Thoughtfulness And Motivation And Zeal That They Go To Work With.

[00:08:06] I Love It And I, So I Found Them To Be Really Interesting And Inspiring Conversations Too. Yeah, Absolutely. And Throughout The Course Of Your Career, You Really, I Hope To Redefine The, You Know, The Concept Of Telling Stories That Make A Meaningful Difference. So I'm Curious, When You Look At The Scope Of Your Career And What It Really Means To Make A Meaningful Difference

[00:08:33] Through Journalistic Storytelling And The Industries And The Communities You've Had A Part In During The Course Of Your Career. What Has It Taught You About The Power Of Individuals To Create Change Within Their Own Agency, My Friend? And What Are Your Thoughts That... Yeah, That's A Good Question And I Do Feel Like That's A Strong...

[00:09:00] You Know, I Can Pull In A Story From This Most Recent Ungrained Investigation There, But I Think The Thing To Highlight Is Like The... You Lose... The Notion That There's A Capital T They Out There Making Everything Happen. And You Start To Realize How Little That's The Case And How Much Of The World Actually Stemmed From Someone With A Dream Or A Vision Who Brought That To Reality. I Mean That That Is How Our World Is Shapes. The Story I Was Going To Mention, I Just...

[00:09:29] The Latest Episode Of Unengrained... The Investigation Is Into The Question Whether It Makes Sense To Consider Softball As Baseball For Girls. But I Just Took A Detour Into The Sport Of Basketball. So James Nathsmith Invents Basketball In 1891 And Right Away Two Different Women From The Physical Education Movement Take Those Rules For Basketball And They Modify Them In Different Ways.

[00:09:52] And So There's One Game In America, Iowa Six On Six That Gets Played Through The Mid-Century But Then Eventually It Dies Out In Favor Of Five On Five. But The Other Version Goes To England And Spreads Throughout The British Commonwealth. And Even Though Eventually The Five On Five Game Rises, That Sport Called Netball Is Still A Huge Deal. It Might Be An Olympic Sport In 2032 And More Than 10 Million People Play, Etc.

[00:10:16] Which Is To Say You Have Virtually Identical Stories That Incubated In Different Cultures With Different People Driving Them And The Story Turned Out Completely Differently. In One Case It Lives On Alongside This Other Thing And In The Other Version Of That Story It Had A Heyday But Then Eventually Died Out. And It's One Of Those Like This Really Does There Was No Predestined Way For This To Turn Out.

[00:10:41] It Came Down To Not Just One Person's Actions Or Agency Or What Have You But Like The Conditions That It Lands In And Who Did What When. Like Those Individual Actions Really Do Matter. So I Think That That Was A Recent Example Of This But I Think I Mean I Love That About Entrepreneurship.

[00:11:00] The World Didn't Have To Have This Service In It Or That Product Or That Idea Or That Work Of Art If We're Going To Like Leave Entrepreneurship And Go Into Broader Creativity Or Public Service Or I Think Of The You Know Some Of The Civic Issues Reporting That I've Done In Recent Years On You Know Some Of The Violence Intervention Things That You Know Just Nobody Thought Of For A Long Time And All All Of A Sudden Somebody Starts Trying Something New And It Makes A Difference In A Community

[00:11:26] I Just I Guess The Takeaway Here Is I Am Really Impressed That Actually Ideas And Effort Can Make A Difference As Opposed To Just Like Hey We Were Always Going To Get From A To B And It Doesn't Matter How We Got There You Know B Is Not Predetermined Nor Is Whether It's You Know Be Over Here Be Over There And So It's Fun For Me To Watch And Try To Be One Of The People Nudging Something From You Know In That Direction. Yeah Absolutely And You Know Steve I Want To Ask You About An In

[00:11:56] I Want To Ask It From A Portional Motivation Stand Point You've Been In The Field Of Journalism Now For Over 20 Years And Like You You Have A Background In Sports Journalism So Tell Me Why Did You Take Girls Baseball And The Sort Of The Evolution Of The Evolution Of The Sort Of The Evolution Of The Sport And Focusing On

[00:12:24] And Focusing It On Unengrained As A First Season And The First Episode My Friend Tell Me About Unengrained And The Mission Behind The Effort My Friend Yeah For Sure This Is A Fun One So Unengrained Generally In Some Ways I'll Even Back Up Based On Where We've Already Taken This Conversation I Wanted To Start My Own Platform And Because I'm A Generalist For All The Reasons We Talked About I Love You Know Reporting On Homelessness One Minute And The Structure Of The City Council One Minute And Then Some

[00:12:53] Entertainment Or Sports Story The Next Because I Think That Gives Me You Know A I Enjoy The Variety And B I Feel Like That Kind Of Generalist Take Helps You Make Connections That Are Surprising And Just Come Up With Different Perspectives And A Unique Take But What It Doesn't Do Is Set Me Up To Create A Brand That Makes Sense

[00:13:13] It Makes Sense When Your Favorite Reporter Who's Been You Know Reviewing Movies For 30 Years Decides To Break Off And Do Their Own Site You Sort Of Know What To Expect But Because My Topic Is Different So There's Not That Obvious Connection So In Some Ways Unengrained Was The Result Of Thinking Through Just Like We've Been Talking About With The Passion Projects Like What Kinds What What's A Common Thread In My Favorite Kind Of Reporting That Will Enable

[00:13:37] Me To Still Do This Generalist East To West Thing But Have An Identity So That There's A Through Line And People Kind Of Get Used To Coming With Me On A Similar Kind Of Journey

[00:13:47] So I Think We've Already Talked About Some Of The Things That Have Gotten Me Excited About Reporting And The Surprising Entrepreneurial Innovative Insights So That Was That Idea Unengrained Takes Ingrained Ideas Ingrained Cultural Ideas First Spots Them Which Is Tricky And I Do Not Have That Down To Science But Let's Assume That We Can You Know Find Enough One Per Season To Get Going On And Yeah Those Hidden Ideas Those Hidden Assumptions Hold Them Up To The Light See Whether They Make Sense

[00:14:17] And Then Ask And Then Asked And Then Asked Because I Also Think Just Because An Idea Is Ingrained Doesn't Mean That It Has To Or That It Doesn't Make Sense You Pull Something Out Why Do We Have Stoplights Instead Of Roundabouts And Maybe It's Six Of One Half A Duzon Of The Other And It Doesn't Bear A Change So I'm Kind Of Looking For Stories Both Through The Angle Of Like You Might Be Surprised To Think Through How We Got To Where We Are And It's Less Logical Than You Thought But Also Then Should We Try To Do Something Different Culturally So That's Like An Unengrained You Know

[00:14:47] I Am Idea And Then Each Season And Then Each Season We Go Into One Idea And Like Book Length Detail So This Idea Of Softball And Baseball I've Interviewed 50 People Six Episodes Are Out I Am About To Finish That Story And I'm Debating Whether It's Going To Be Seven Or Eight To Get It Done But But I But It Like We're You Know I'm Taking A General Interest Audience That Probably Didn't Previously Care And Trying To Convince Them To Go On A Four Hour Ish Journey With Me And I Think It's Working But

[00:15:17] So Now To Your Question Why Did I Pick Baseball And Softball Because My Friend Rachel We Coached Little League Together And She Said To Me A Couple Of Years Ago As We Finished Coaching A Spring Baseball Game Both Of Our Daughters Were On The Team It Was A Baseball Team Mostly Boys Including My Son But My Daughter Was There Too And Rachel Said This Fall I Would Like To Start An All Girls Baseball League Will You Help Me Coach It And I Corrected Her Even Though There's No Reason For Rachel To Have Misspoken In That

[00:15:47] That Moment I Said You Mean Softball And She Did Not So A That Introduced Me To The World Of Girls Baseball Which I Didn't Even Really Know About But Secondly I Was Really Interested In That Idea As I Was Kind Of Settling On The Idea For Uningrained Hey Wait I Just Did It I Took For Granted What She Was Saying So Much So That I Assumed That She Said The Wrong Thing And Suggested The Thing That She Might Have Said Instead So There's The Uningrained Idea And There's The Personal Connection

[00:16:17] I Launched That League I Launched That League I Watched Girls Play With Each Other And Get Better And Get Better And Get Coached Differently And Take Strides That I Didn't See Happening When They Were The One Girl On A Boys Team I Saw Girls Come Out To Play They Had No Interest In Playing In The Spring Alongside The Guys It Was It Was It Was A Different Situation And It Was A Special One And It Kind Of Begged The Question Why Isn't There More Of This And Then The Last Thing Is That Baseball Is Special In America We Just Treat That Game Differently All The Like Baseball Hot Dog

[00:16:47] Dogs And Apple Pie And Apple Pie Americano I Mean Maybe At This Point You Know Obviously There Are A Few Sports That We Love In America And Football Is Pretty Special To Is Basketball But Baseball Is Still The National Pastime And So If We're Gonna Take This Sport That Doesn't Have Any Obvious Reasons To Me Why Women Shouldn't Be Able To Play And It Just Doesn't Exist I Thought I Wanted To Dig In And Then As I Did Dig In It Got More And More And More And More Interesting Like You Know Like What Is There

[00:17:17] There's Something Important Being Lost Here What Has Happened

[00:17:47] The Journalism And They're 50 2 And I'm That's A Really Good Question I'Ve I'd Be That's A Very Good Question I'd Be Curious To Hear Your Take On It Since You've Had Some Experiences On Both Sides Of That Right But I'll Say I Think In Terms I Think It's Very Possible To Build and Throw

[00:18:17] to build a business in independent media and thrive there. I'm currently trying to do it, so we're going to check back on whether that was able to come to pass. But I also, and I think some of the struggles with traditional media, I don't see reversing. It's not going to vanish either. The catch is, because you phrased that specifically, I'm talking to college graduates. I don't think I would be the journalist that I am

[00:18:42] if I hadn't have had the privilege to get yelled at, corrected, guided, cajoled, whatever, by many, many, many different editors over the last several decades. And so if as a 22-year-old, maybe with some feedback from your college professors, you immediately break off and go independent, you're going to miss that editing. And I think that kind of apprenticeship is really important.

[00:19:10] So I love the idea of building a business and finding an audience in the world of independent media. I also value having kind of come up and had to learn, I don't know if I'd call it the school of hard knocks exactly, but had to deal with that oversight enough to have improved through it. And so if you're going to come up indie, make sure that you have some mechanism to get that feedback and opportunity to improve.

[00:19:38] Yeah, absolutely. And just to answer your question, Steve, I graduated journalism school back in 2010. So at the time, I went on 10 consecutive job interviews to be a sports reporter. And news directors would tell me that I'm qualified, but because of my disability, they viewed me as a liability in the newsroom

[00:20:05] because they didn't think at the time that they had the inventory to support my disability. So I kind of fell into both public speaking and independent journalism by accident because I still wanted to tell a story, but I also had to make money. So ironically, I now talk to organizations about the importance of hiring people with disabilities,

[00:20:35] both in newsrooms and across the corporate sector. So I think it depends on really the climate of journalism today has shifted so much, as you know. So I think for journalists, it's important to know what your strengths are as a journalist, how much you value objectivity and then find a recipe of success that makes you money

[00:21:02] and that also makes you happy, if that makes sense. I think that's great. So how did you then, like you obviously didn't, you know, you attempted to pursue that path, but then you had to break off earlier. So how did you hone your craft since you were on your own pretty early? Yeah, so I, right after college, I hosted a sports podcast for about five years with a group of friends from college.

[00:21:31] And then I also started motivational speaking to make money. And then more people saw the sports podcast. And then about six years ago, I told myself that there was only so much Netflix I could watch during COVID. So I started this podcast and it was recently recognized

[00:21:58] as one of the top 200 in Apple podcast, top news category. So I must be doing something right, right? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Cool. So did you, I mean, how did you improve? I mean, obviously it doesn't, getting yelled at by an editor is not the only way to get better, right? So how have you, like, do you listen back to your own stuff? That's something that I really hate to do, but I know it's important. So I do it sometimes. But like, you know, how have you gone about that process

[00:22:28] of making sure that you're always pushing yourself? Well, Steve, I'll tell you, I hate the sound of my voice recorded, but to ask your question, you know, I listen to my own stuff. I also listen to other podcasters just to see their level of interviewing and try to meld what people are interested in versus what I'm interested in covering

[00:22:54] and then trying to find the sweet spot between the news of the day, my own journalistic style, and still trying to weave the objectivity that journalists are expected to have. So to add to your question, you know, one of my philosophies as a journalist is that when you turn off your mind to learning

[00:23:22] is the day that you die as a journalist. So I'm a constantly curious person. I'm always open to learning because learning is how you improve, if that makes sense. Yeah, love it. And then obviously interviewing people naturally puts you in a place if you go into those conversations with curiosity and just doing the research to prepare for them, as I can tell that you do, like that kind of puts you in a mode of some continuous exposure to new ideas as well, right? So that's part of the improvement loop

[00:23:51] is just doing the gig. Yeah, absolutely. And I always say to myself, if I'm going to ask people to spend 45 to 60 minutes with me, it's important to, you know, have the knowledge base to have an interest in what I'm reporting on or covering because, you know, it's a mutual sign of respect, but it's also a mutual sign of that

[00:24:19] you care about the quality of the journalism you're putting out because just because you have a webcam or a cell phone doesn't automatically make you a journalist, right? Yeah. I mean, that's true. And so there's always that, like, danger of being independent. But on the other hand, I feel like being in the pages of, you know, being a great newspaper with a famous masthead doesn't necessarily make you a great journalist either. What makes you a great journalist is going out there and doing the work so that, you know, like regardless of the circumstance, go do it.

[00:24:48] And I feel like that will ultimately shine through. Yeah, absolutely. And Steve, I'd love to get your opinion on the relationship between journalism and public trust because this year our friends over at the Pew Research Center indicated that only 45% of Americans have a great deal or a fair amount of trust or the confidence in journalism today. And, you know,

[00:25:15] they cite things like journalism becoming political or one-sided depending on what side of the aisle you are on politically or your religious beliefs. So I'm curious to ask you about where do you think traditional journalism, today's climate and objectivity of public trust is still lying, my friend? What are your thoughts, then? Yeah.

[00:25:46] A couple different ideas, the first of which goes back to something we were talking about earlier, which is just that the field is smaller. So I think, A, more journalists leave the field early before they get older and better. And second of all, when they are young, there are just fewer editors, so you're more likely to fall victim to your own biases. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're... Look, I mean, there's like an intellectual ideological debate right now

[00:26:14] about whether, you know, you should be an activist journalist or strive for objectivity and, you know, more in that mode. So there's some people talking about, you know, which of those is kind of the correct frame from which to approach the job. I'm going to leave that aside for a second. Even if you are trying to perform in that objective mode, you might not just even notice, and this is very common for younger reporters, you're just blind to all the situations where like, I didn't even know I should have called that person

[00:26:44] or I forgot to even consider this other opinion or I just am not experienced enough to think through how different people might perceive the... You know, these are just kind of like immature, professionally immature mistakes that too many people don't have the chance to climb out of, but it undermines this notion of public trust. And so I guess I'm contending that maybe you don't have as many editors there to step in and say, oh yeah, no, I don't think that we're ready to press publish

[00:27:14] on this just yet or send it to the printing press depending on your era, whatever. So I think that's part of it. I think when we don't learn to see all those perspectives, you know, the more you do that, the more you learn to anticipate and you just get better at it. So that can be a little bit of a lost art. And then the second thing, whether this is traditional big news media or independent media, this is like the digital age, gone is the newspaper

[00:27:42] that is trying to convey the news to all of Windsor or all of Chicago or, you know, listeners all of wherever you are, including your, you know, larger nation country world. It's like a world of smaller echo chambers where audiences are like, you know, kind of built around all people who tend to kind of believe the same stuff. So even if you are not explicitly kind of an echo chamber focused publication, I think your audience develops a personality and then there's just a little bit

[00:28:12] of an inclination to build that into a loop. And I think that's kind of what's selling and I don't think that's going to go away. I mean, that's certainly not the business that I'm trying to build, right? Or you, but these are, but in a world of smaller publications and smaller audiences, those things just naturally develop little niches and echo chambers are natural, et cetera, et cetera. So, um, there again, I think you just naturally

[00:28:41] run into an inclination to not take into account somebody else's perspective, bias, what have you. So those, I think those two things, I mean, there's a little bit of like, this is media wants us or the media landscape wants us to preach to the choir and then be, not enough journalists are getting training in understanding the ways that they are unconsciously preaching to the choir. Yeah. And then I guess, yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say,

[00:29:10] uh, since, you know, there's a more entrepreneurial spirit out there in America today. And I know that you've interviewed thousands or hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs. And I'm curious about the lessons that you've learned when it comes to entrepreneurship in terms of, I know that you've interviewed a lot of entrepreneurs

[00:29:37] with a mission-based business, but what are your, what are your thoughts on turning a mission-based business into an actual profitable business? Because there's a distinction between the two. You could believe in a cause, but if you don't have the structure to make money, I don't know how long it'll be a sustainable business. So what are your thoughts there, my friend?

[00:30:07] Yeah, that's right. That's right. Well, one thing, and this, you know, as a journalist starting a business now, this especially is, you know, it hits me. It's like, I have noticed that the best founders are master storytellers, not just about telling you about what they built and why it's cool, but about the problem that they're solving, why the problem is important, why the problem is worthy of a big-time solution, then explaining how they fit into it, you know,

[00:30:37] sort of why they've solved that problem, how they solve that problem, how their solution is the best. There is an element of storytelling that runs through all of the great entrepreneurs that I have interviewed that, you know, inspires me to want to be able to do the same. It's, again, not only explaining why they think they've built a winner, but, you know, why it's important to win in this particular domain, and I'm inspired by that. I think something to tie with,

[00:31:07] you know, so we've got kind of two themes going based on your question, one of which is just what does it take, you know, what's a hallmark of a great entrepreneur, and then, you know, the passion project piece is part of it. I think a danger to passion project businesses is that they can get a little too precious. So, you know, I'm trying to save investigative journalism, which is long-form journalism. I mean, this is not soundbite stuff, so, you know, you've got an even longer 45- to 6-minute podcast, but I'm doing these, you know, half-hour long episodes,

[00:31:36] but with, you know, deeply reported. They take like a month to put together. That's precious enough to try to get people to show up to that half an hour as opposed to a YouTube short or something like that. And so, I think then if your core product is based on a should, the world should have this sort of thing, and I think I can do it in an entertaining way, but I realize that that is like counter to the prevailing winds of a culture that's, you know, driven by TikTok. So, if that's going to be my starting point,

[00:32:06] then a lot of the other decisions can't be as precious. You know, when it comes to like how to brand and market this product, now you've got to start thinking about pragmatically what's going to be effective. I don't mean that you're compromising that I'm not talking about any like sort of compromises on a values end, but I just mean in terms of strategy and tactics and stuff like that and I think sometimes passion project businesses can just treat every decision as a should instead of the

[00:32:36] like the MBAs cold and calculated what's going to work. But now to tie that back to the hallmarks of great entrepreneurs, I also think they're great at pivoting and I also hosted a show about project management for years and years and that's something that I think the world of projects has gotten better at over time is like instead of just saying at the beginning we'd like you team to build an X you know a project that delivers this thing now we're going to get through stage one and then let's figure out if that thing still makes sense

[00:33:06] or if we need to pivot. When I was covering tech startups and they were always like swarmed by this menagerie of venture capitalists and you know angel investors and potential big clients and they all were this happened over and over again especially in tech these opportunities to like hey we thought we were building X but now you know investor this investor this potential customer is saying we would actually like it if we take your skills and your technology and completely repurpose it and point it in a different direction

[00:33:35] and those are questions that those teams have to answer are we going to do the thing we wanted to do or are we going to do this other thing that is now an opportunity and there's no obviously that's case by case what the right decision is and what it looks like but I think that exercise of being able to pivot to ask yourself do we just continue to execute on the original plan that we had forever and ever or do we stop right now and change direction because what we originally had was good enough to get us in the game for this new opportunity

[00:34:05] but now we recognize that we're excited about this so I you know I won't go into a forever list but those are a few things that stand out to me yeah absolutely and Steve as you mentioned for years you hosted the Project Management Institute podcast which generated millions of views my friend and I'm curious how did that experience prepare you for launching your own mentor with Unbrained my friend what do your

[00:34:35] thoughts think yeah that team that I got to work with to create projectified was really cool and ages so the Project Management Institute was their podcast they hired an agency now called the MX group in Chicago and that's the team that I worked with so there was a fabulous producer Hannah LaBelle a couple of audio engineers through the years some project leaders and then we obviously had the client that we were dealing with but that team I learned so much that I'm bringing to Unbrained

[00:35:05] right now regarding the nuts and bolts of audio how to produce it at the end how to walk through a tech check before an interview starts and I don't do it the same way as those guys because sometimes we would take half an hour making sure somebody's microphone is dialed in and I'm like we're losing them so there's different ways to do it but I did learn the effort that is sometimes worthwhile to get somebody looking and sounding great and that that often

[00:35:35] pays dividends and you can in fact keep the people around and deliver a great conversation on top of that the effort that goes into researching topics finding guests doing the interview prep Hannah would do the pre-interview then I would jump in and prepare we do the actual call it was such a thorough process so even though that was an interview based show and mine is documentary style I'm so I am inspired by so many aspects of the season planning that would happen up front the episode process

[00:36:04] the editing the production so that's a lot of what I have learned and I think without the opportunity to be on a team and get more than the reporter's perspective right like you know now I'm the producer now I'm the engineer and the reporter and so the chance to watch all that stuff was pretty great even there's even a pandemic angle there because the pandemic is the reason that I didn't get I had just started that job in 2020 and the idea was that to record all of my stuff

[00:36:34] I would go into the studio in Chicago's West Loop and then all of a sudden no one was going anywhere and so that's when I learned to engineer my own side of the interview which is now a core part of what I do so you know had there not been a pandemic probably only a pro would have been doing all this stuff and I wouldn't be able to do that so that's cool on the other hand now I'm trying to build an audience with unigrained and with PMI certainly they marketed the show but it helps when you are an enormous international membership

[00:37:04] organization with millions of members and so that we had or downloads or whatever you want to say over the course of that came certainly because we had loyal listeners that appreciated the show but it certainly helps when PMI was able to tell millions of people to go check the show out and so that is something that

[00:37:33] marketing playbook did not come from that experience so now I'm figuring that out which is why I've come to you Kevin to tell me how to make that point when you have a mission driven business as an entrepreneur I'm curious to talk about the intersection of integrity but also keeping the mission driven

[00:38:03] or the purpose at the center of your mission so how do you think we can successfully correlate the two so that are at the heart of what we're trying to put out there what are your thoughts there my friend yeah I mean to go back to the way that legacy media has traditionally approached this the wall between the editorial side of the shop and the sales side of the shop existed so that buying an ad

[00:38:32] would never influence your coverage for example so I think I'm a person of high integrity and telling every story with accuracy and objectivity and fairness and all that stuff is a big deal to me but right now it is just my company currently there's no conflict in this way because we're still working our way

[00:39:23] to sports and sports and sports and it's everywhere and to me that undermines a lot of integrity too so it's not like you're doomed as independent compared to these larger companies that are able to preserve a different vibe but I do think it's a challenge I think you have to go earn that every time by being thorough by demonstrating in your storytelling that you have considered all the sides

[00:39:55] but 100% it's a challenge yeah absolutely and Sue I want to pull on your sports coaching threads for just a second and ask you about the future of women's baseball as you know women's basketball has surged in popularity but women's baseball also provides a great opportunity for mainstream sports

[00:40:24] fans to embrace the cultural differences and the connectivity that women's baseball can bring to an audience so I'm curious to ask you about the future of women's baseball how you see it and how we can continue to support this growing massive sort of community my friend what are your thoughts then yeah I did not choose

[00:40:54] this story expecting or knowing that the women's pro baseball league would play its first season this summer alongside on a grain that was a happy discovery and then a kind of equal part of my story is also fast pitch softball because I am arriving at a place that really argues for women's baseball but not at the expense of fast pitch softball which is a different sport with an incredible legacy and an incredible future so in the

[00:41:24] AUSL the athletes unlimited softball league you have a pro fast pitch softball league that has had two great years the athletes unlimited the organization there's been a few more years of morphing towards the league more conventional play that they've done the last two years but the TV ratings are great they're doing well at stands and that league looks like it might be taking root which obviously women's sports generally are having a moment to and so that action is happening alongside women's pro hockey

[00:41:54] women's pro soccer women's pro basketball but softball hockey soccer you have huge youth infrastructures it's no mystery where these pro caliber players are coming from women's baseball because there's not the same youth development infrastructure it was more surprising I think to people to have this pro league show up on TV and have

[00:42:30] proof that women can play and do play compelling pro baseball that that product is there and so that one is interesting to me because now this world started with the pro league not entirely at all I have an entire podcast about what youth baseball has looked like beyond that pro league but in the popular imagination and certainly there is no widespread little league type opportunity in high school girls baseball etc why women playing the national pastime won't

[00:43:00] continue to be more and more compelling and reach a wider and wider audience just like all those other sports do you mention yeah absolutely I'm curious to ask you about you know the future of you know the way we you know in the states the midterms are coming up and I know you're not a political journalist but also you're a student of the history of

[00:43:30] journalism and I'm curious to get your thoughts on how do you think our political culture in I am sometimes a very occasionally sort of a political journalist so usually in a you know more like what's I did a piece a few years ago for crane Chicago business on for example the structure

[00:43:59] of Chicago city council so less about who's arguing with who over what piece of legislation this week and more about what are the rules and how do the laws that undergird what our city is about inform the way that we operate so dorky stuff as I generally prefer to be involved in and then last week I also wrote about Chicago's mayoral election but similarly from kind of an abstracted perspective so I do do this sometimes I so

[00:44:29] we talked about sports and I just want to draw this parallel because I think the polarization of the shouting talking head you know kind of like riling up my team against the other team you know you can take this back to like the talk radio of the 90s or the 2000s politically but to me that really also came from sports this notion of like I'm just going to rile up an audience and kind of not in good faith yeah

[00:44:59] I don't think that's a surprise or a stretch to say not always in good faith you know straw man the other team's arguments or kind of use this you know in a not amazing rhetorical caliber sort of way to sort of it like it's it's a type of discourse that has not striven for the highest level of you know respect objectivity common ground convening collaborating whatever

[00:45:29] it's more and more flamethrowing right so I think that bleeds through it bleeds to categorize like to depictions of journalism I don't think it's been good I think I'll just end that answer there and say I think it's been not helpful yeah and my second last question for you this afternoon has to do with this you know as a journalist I always have the fundamental belief that we

[00:46:03] we also have to help drive the narrative towards the solution to the problem so I would be curious how do you think as journalists we can have the responsibility or the duty rather to really report the problem but also help to find a solution through the reporting that we do what are your thoughts there well I love that question thank you

[00:46:32] and I mean I think part of that is the depth of the investigation so if I have convinced anyone to go on this three or four hour dive into baseball I think I can convince you more so than I have in this half an hour not only of the worthiness of the issue but you're going to understand the underlying factors to such an extent that I think different solutions start to seem possible because you understand all of the forces at play better so I think that's part of it that is like a

[00:47:02] you know you're talking about the service journalism idea and the first service is just equipping people with the knowledge to be smart stakeholders but then yeah like I said my investigation doesn't end with an answer to the question does the status quo make sense the next question is it worth changing what should that look like so I mean this is interesting because I can spoiler my own show and it's no kind of spoiler at all

[00:47:31] but it doesn't end up being baseball versus softball it ends up being both and you start examining what might a world look like where you want fast pitch softball to continue to grow and thrive but also to make space for baseball and I think one thing we're going to do as this investigation widens down is start to talk specifically about how communities might do that we talked at the beginning about my friend Rachel starting this league in

[00:48:01] Chicago and I think that's a model that other communities can replicate across the country so we here's how you might act and not in a prescriptive way either like here's how you must act but here's some resources feel free to reinvent this for your own community but if I convinced you here's the toolkit and I do think that's in play

[00:48:31] into our earlier conversation about integrity and so on that doesn't feel like putting a thumb on the scale that's people or the outlet that brought you the story to also bring you some of those resources yeah absolutely and you know my final question has to do with your own individual and professional unprofessional legacy my

[00:49:01] friend and how you want that to be the fun answer taking stories that I was interested in but

[00:49:31] they generally were pitched by other editors and I am blessed to have had a lot of those stories be on impactful topics right so I do feel like my work has been meaningful but this is different to be able to kind of invent a forum for a different kind of storytelling, a storytelling that I think will train listeners to sort of come along and investigate with me.

[00:49:58] I think it's the sort of discourse that culture needs besides the attention that it throws on particular topics. So I don't know if I need a legacy, but I would love to have helped that bit of sort of truth and light break into the world for sure. Yeah, absolutely. And I still find out how to tell me if people want to get connected with you personally or unengrained. What's the best way they can do that, my friend? Mostly if they can remember how to spell unengrained, which is ingrained with an un at the beginning.

[00:50:29] If you listen to podcasts, which you probably do if you're hanging out with Kevin and me right now, just enter unengrained into your podcast player, but also unengrained.com. We have, like I mentioned earlier, these episodes take forever to report. So in between, Substack is where that lives. So there's unengrained.substack.com, various socials, but I think all of those happen at unengrained.com. So either subscribe directly in your player, unengrained.substack, or just go to unengrained.com

[00:50:57] and you'll find all of the possible places to connect. Absolutely. Well, Steve, as someone that has an obvious passion for journalism and its integrity, I really enjoyed this conversation with you. And I want to thank you for your commitment to champion journalism and investigative side of it. I have a little bit of a sports too. Once a sports reporter, always a sports reporter, right?

[00:51:23] So I want to thank you for engaging in conversation with me this afternoon. And for being here on this Wednesday, it's most appreciated. Thank you so much, Kevin. It's been great. I appreciate your thoughtful interview prep and the fact that you're doing this work too.