352 Dana Goodyear - Uncovering Malibu’s Dark Secrets: Inside Lost Hills

Harry Duran

0:00 - 0:06

So Dana Goodyear, staff writer at the New Yorker and host of Lost Hills, thank you so much for joining me on podcast Junkies.

Dana Goodyear

0:07 - 0:09

Thank you for inviting me on.

Harry Duran

0:09 - 0:11

So home for you is Los Angeles.

Dana Goodyear

0:12 - 0:17

Yes, I've been living in Los Angeles since the end of 2004, actually.

Harry Duran

0:17 - 0:21

Is that where you were? Where were you born and raised before?

Dana Goodyear

0:21 - 0:34

I was in New York City, but I was not born and raised there. I was born in the, actually, I was born in Princeton, New Jersey, but then moved around the Midwest and Northeast and overseas a little bit and ended up in New York. So.

Harry Duran

0:34 - 1:06

So there's some overlaps because I was raised in New York, in Yonkers, New York, and then lived in Manhattan. I've lived in Upper east side, East Village, and so that's, like, my heart home. And then moved to LA. So that's where I met Ben Adair, who's been a previous guest on the show, lived there for four years, and now I'm in Minnesota if the wood paneling doesn't give it away. So. So being on both coasts and then, like, having a taste of the midwest is really was a bit jarring. But we actually now have chickens, so we're just getting acclimated to the Midwest life. Where would you consider LA? Home now?

Dana Goodyear

1:07 - 1:12

Yeah, I mean, I've now been there way longer than I lived anywhere else, and so it is home.

Harry Duran

1:13 - 1:18

Talk about how you ended up in terms of, like, a career path and how you ended up with a New Yorker.

Dana Goodyear

1:19 - 2:37

Oh, well, I didn't end up at the New Yorker. I started off at the New Yorker. Basically. I was, you know, I was an english major in college, and I got to New York having very kind of minimal employment. I was working as an unpaid intern at the Paris Review, and I was writing book reviews for all kinds of publications. But I had a friend who was a little ahead of me in school who had landed a job at the New Yorker as an assistant. And she said, there's an opening for an assistant, and two nonfiction editors need an assistant. So I'm not even sure I could have really defined at that point. I guess I basically knew what nonfiction was, but I had no idea what a nonfiction assistant at the New Yorker would be doing. But it turned out that these editors were wonderful people, and one of them had been at the New Yorker for 30 years already at that point, and he thought it was ridiculous that he would have an assistant, and he didn't have any dry cleaning that needed to be picked up. But he did have great reading recommendations. His name was John Bennett. And he sent me into the New Yorker library to read everything that all the writers he admired, most of whom he had worked with and edited, had ever written. So I just got to extend my education there for the first couple years.

Harry Duran

2:37 - 2:42

And what are the different roles you've had in New York, and what's your current relationship with them now?

Dana Goodyear

2:44 - 4:29

So I, yes, I started off as the assistant to these two editors, and then after a year, David Remnick, who was newly the editor, I think he had become editor in chief about six months before I got to the New Yorker. He asked me if I would come. There was an opening working for him and be his assistant. So then I went and worked for David for three years. And that was amazing because I got to sort of see how the whole magazine worked, and then there was always stuff lying around that, you know, see if you can get an excerpt out of this book, see if you can, you know, polish this up and make it publishable. So there was just a lot that he threw my way that allowed me to test out my skills as an editor. Meanwhile, I was also starting to write talk of the town stories and figure out what it meant to be a reporter. So then I, after being with David for three years as his assistant, I moved to my own office and was editing nonfiction writers and starting to write longer pieces and profiles. And then by 2004, my boyfriend had moved to LA, and I was itching to go, you know, get out of New York and go explore what it was like to be artistic, a writer in Los Angeles. So I did that. And now my current relationship to the magazine is that I write for them whenever I can. And it's been a little bit hard in the last few years to write as much as I want to because the podcast has taken over my life. But I'm always excited to carve out the space and always grateful when the New Yorker will have me back. So.

Harry Duran

4:30 - 4:42

So when did, uh, podcasting, just the medium itself, having spent so much time as a writer or a New Yorker, when did podcasting come on your radar? When did you become aware of what was happening in the podcasting space?

Dana Goodyear

4:43 - 10:46

Well, I am a runner and a hiker and a walker, so I was looking for content. And I remember right around the time I got my first iPhone, there was this weird icon. I didn't know what it was. And then I just found Rachel Maddow and started listening to a ton of Rachel Maddow. That's what I remember for years. That was the only podcast I knew about, really. And then, obviously, you know, things developed in that space, and I have always been really interested in crime stories and love reading them, started listening to them, started listening to them, probably, really, you know, my big awakening was the same as a lot of people's who are not audio files already was serial. And just seeing how you could tell a story so richly and with so much, so much productive uncertainty, and I really admired that. My experience at the New Yorker is you have to work through all of your uncertainty and put it aside. And I liked being able. I liked the way Sarah Koenig was just dwelling in it. And then also all the insights that she gave into the reporting process, I found really, I don't know, they just echoed my experiences and were interesting. So I got really into those kind of stories. And S Town was another one that, again, like, for a gateway for a lot of people, but also just showing what the possibilities were and that you could start in one place and end up in such a completely different place. And I people would be happy that you had. They wouldn't be mad at you for doing that, the way they can be in print sometimes. And I always had the experience, I still have the experience when I'm reporting for print, of feeling like I really just want my readers to be able to be there with me, and if only they could feel what it was like or taste that or see that person or like the moments were. It's always my goal to translate as much of that as possible to the page. But when I started making lost tales, which is, you know, now in its fourth season, but it's the only podcast I've ever worked on. Just being able to bring people's voices to the listeners is so cool to me, and it just, I feel like I can. I'm, like, hosting a party of these sources and the listeners. But the way that I started to make the podcast was having been committed listener to podcasts, and, you know, I broadened. I wasn't only listening to super highbrow serial and s town and just kind of, like, got deeper into the true crime, but any kind of, any well told story, I love. And then I heard about this horrible thing that had happened right in kind of my backyard. And I don't live in Malibu, but I live in Los Angeles. And Malibu Creek State park is a beautiful resource that, you know, that people, residents of the county have. I've been there with my kids a lot. I had been thinking, yeah, thinking about going camping there with my kids. And then this father who was camping there with his two year old and four year old was shot in the head. And it turned out there had been all these other shootings that had been hidden from the public. And they. At the point that I started investigating the story, there was no one in custody. They didn't even have a suspect. And so I called my editor at the New Yorker and said, there's this crazy thing happening in Malibu, I think, you know, and every buddy that I knew out there was hearing gunshots in the night and freaking out. And I sort of pitched it as, you know, almost like a Malibu freaking out story. And we talked about how it really wouldn't work for the magazine because there was no clear ending, just what I was talking about before, where, you know, like, the uncertainty wasn't a strength for the print version that I was talking about. So then I said, well, what if we did it as a. Like. Or maybe he said, what if we did it as a web series where, you know, you're just following you following the story? Like, interesting. And then I was gonna do that, and we agreed on that. And then I called him back, like, ten minutes later and said, I really wanna make this a podcast. That's what it seems like to me. And he was like, with my blessing, but I don't know anything about podcasts. And the New Yorker had started to do the New Yorker radio hour, but they hadn't done anything. Now they've got this great collaboration within the dark, and they're doing serialized storytelling. But they were. The radio hour is a talk show, essentially, and a great one, but there wasn't. It was so new then, too. Cause this is 2018. They didn't really know what to do with my idea, but they said, you know, we'll send a producer for a week from New York. And I was like, that's not gonna work. Cause they're doing manhunts at random in the park, and I need to be there with the producer. And they said, oh, well, we know this guy, Ben Adair, and why don't you meet with Ben? And so Ben and I met and hit it off, and it was just very like minded vision of kind of how this could go. So we made season one. But in that very first meeting with Ben, I was telling him, you know, there's this horrible, at this point, unsolved crime, and there's so many other stories in Malibu, including. And probably the biggest and most troubling of these stories is the my Teresa Richardson story, which ended up being season four. It took another five years before I would be ready to tell that story.

Harry Duran

10:46 - 11:50

So just. It's so interesting because when I was introduced to the show and the seasons and I realized that everything was happening about, was telling stories about what's happening in Malibu. Now that you've had four seasons of the show and living in LA and I've been in Malibu myself, and what is it that you think is happening there that's, you know, that's causing these crimes or these unsolved cases to happen? Is it just the nature of the community? Because it's like, it's a wealthy community and people are really private about what happens there. And maybe they don't want stories like this out in the public. And probably in 10, 20, 30 years, there would be no tool or no medium to tell stories like this. But now that we have podcasts and now that people are interested in so many true crime stories, that this is something that really piques people's interest. I'm just curious, from your perspective, what you think it is about that community specifically that is allowing this to happen or being sort of like the ground zero for these types of cases.

Dana Goodyear

11:50 - 15:00

Well, Ben and I have sort of a running joke because in almost every season, somebody along the way explains it all by saying it's the energy, and, like, Malibu's got this crazy energy and it's a dark energy. I personally have always felt that there, just when I would go out there to visit, I would feel like it's supposed to be one thing and everything. There's so much momentum behind a certain vision of what Malibu is, and I can see that on the surface, but it's not what it feels like to me there. So I was always interested in that tension. But I think in a more practical, less kind of intuitive way, it's that it is. It's an extraordinary community. It is 13,000 people. It is incredibly overexposed in terms of its fame and identity and brand, really. And it's filled with, you know, some of the richest and most famous people and then all the people who prey on or are the victims of people like that. And it's also rural. It's extremely rural. I mean, the beach is kind of a wild place. Then the Santa Monica mountains, where season four takes place, is incredibly rural. Wild, inaccessible, dangerous. And it's remote. It's so far away from the sheriff's department headquarters. It's so far away from. They don't have homicide detectives at Lost Hill station, you know, so when there's a homicide, the station detectives help, but the detectives have to come from 45 minutes away and there's a kind of. Its reputation as a place of glittery, fancy people and things means that, I think also on some unconscious level, law enforcement may not. I don't know, maybe they see a lot of stuff and these crimes might not seem so bad or that would never be a conscious decision to deprioritize. But I think it's, you know, it seems like a soft place. It seems like a slow station. They don't necessarily believe what the station detectives are saying about what's happening out there. I think you also have some weird stuff going on wherever. A lot of this population, the rich and famous population, they don't really want to be policed. They want the police to protect them, but not to police them. So there's that element and then there's just a lot of vested interest in keeping things quiet, like you referred to. So I think cover ups are quite common there, I think. But it's also, I mean, the geography explains a lot too. I mean, there are these canyons and people just disappear in the mountains and, you know, it's pretty bizarre. It's like a Bermuda triangle.

Harry Duran

15:00 - 16:28

That's a great analogy. Yeah. So interesting because having lived there and spent some time in there, it's really just pockets of just like, where it's barren and it's really, like, remote. And to your point, like, if I can imagine how much what challenges a police department would have, like, keeping tabs of what's happening in that area and people's expect or, like, vision of Malibu. I mean, there's probably, like, growing up Malibu, you hear Malibu Barbie or something like that. You think about like, oh, it's like this, the, you know, the glitter capital and where it's. Everyone has their, like, famous homes. And if you've ever gone on any of the hikes, you know, and you see some of these homes from afar, you're just like. You just, you know, can't believe that people actually live in houses like that. But to your point, I think I would imagine it's an insular community and they there probably because they enjoy their privacy. But, you know, to an extent that there's stuff happening. I imagine there's an energy around there of, like, brushing stuff under the rugged or let's not talk about this or having a chummy relationship with law enforcement in a way that, like, you know, to your point, like, hey, keep, keep, you know, the quote unquote riff raff out. And when stuff gets in there and people are dying or going missing, you know, I think previously there was no way to dig deeper. And so I'm wondering, has there been any sort of blowback from community or any of the people who. I don't know if the council, you know, the community board members or people that speak for Malibu, who are also concerned about what this show like this does to the reputation of Malibu?

Dana Goodyear

16:29 - 18:13

Honestly, I'm sure that there are individuals, I'm sure you can find them in the comments on Apple podcasts who don't agree with my take, who don't think I know what I'm talking about, who don't feel like someone who's not from Malibu has any business talking about Malibu. But mostly what I hear is people saying, thank you for shedding light on this thing that has been so mysterious and open wound in the community. So I think that the other element, sort of like the energy, but a little bit more specific that goes on out there, is this real exclusivity, this real negotiation of who's an insider, who's an outsider, who belongs, who doesn't. And I think that influences how crimes are reported, investigated, and resolved, as well as anything else. There's a real sense of, like, it hasn't gone through some of the reformations that other parts of society, and especially in urban area like Los Angeles. You know, it doesn't feel. It may be like the health food capital, Malibu, but it doesn't feel progressive at all. And I'm not even talking about in terms of, like, politics and left and right. It's just. It feels very attached to its past. And with that comes a lot of, you know, some very patriarchal values and very, you know, other things that are complicated and you just don't really expect in California in 2024.

Harry Duran

18:13 - 18:27

So for the listener viewer who may not be familiar with the series, can you talk about, like, you know, you touched upon it briefly, if you can take people through, like, the arc of the four seasons and sort of what you cover in each and how we get to present day.

Dana Goodyear

18:28 - 23:45

So each season of the show explores a different crime in Malibu. And the first season was about the murder of Tristan Beaudet in Malibu Creek State park. And that really, it followed the confusion and chaos in Malibu that gave way to suspicion when a suspect was arrested. And some people in Malibu felt that this was too convenient, that this crime was being pinned on someone who hadn't actually done it. And through the trial of that person. And then what turned out to be the true subject of that story? Washington, a law enforcement cover up of previous shootings that had happened. And then the attempts to silence the station detectives who had figured that out, that there was a connection among all these shootings and their attempts to prevent what they felt was the almost inevitable escalation to murder, which, when it happened, they were horrified. And then when it happened, these detectives were horrified, and they ended up actually being the ones to help solve the crime, and then they were punished for it. So it was a. The bad guy was the bureaucracy in the end, although there was actually a perpetrator, too. And season two takes us back to the seventies and eighties in Malibu, now on the coast, and a family there with a very interesting pattern of the wives in the family dying. And I had asked the editor and publisher of the husband and wife team, who own the Malibu Times, which is this old newspaper in Malibu, small town paper, one of the few like it around. And I asked them during my reporting for season one, if anything else had ever been torn the community apart, like this murder in Malibu Creek State park. And they said, oh, well, have you ever heard about the railers? And that took me into season two. And so that was a case that still is quite unresolved in the minds, not in the criminal justice system. There was a resolution, but in the minds and hearts of many people in Malibu who remained there from that time, or people who still think of themselves as of Malibu but have moved away since. It was very divisive. And this man went to prison for two murders. And some people think that's an abomination, and he should never have been tried or convicted. And some people think that there are more murders that he should have been held accountable for. Season three is a little bit of a reprieve from the there's no body in season three, the hardcore murder podcast. It is not. It is about a figure named Mickey Dora, who was sort of the most glamorous surfer, defined the Malibu surf scene, and therefore the world surf scene, and is still a hero to most surfers. And it's really about the dark side of Mickey Dora, which was not hard to find. It's right on the surface with Mickey Dora. But he was a kind of catch me if you can style con artist. And he led the feds on and international manhunt that lasted seven years. But more than that, he kind of brought into surfing some of the most toxic elements of that culture, including racism, anti semitism, exclusivity, localism. So it's really an exploration of that. But just imagine a lot of time hanging out with the real gidget as well. And then that brings us to season four. Which, you know, the mytrice Richardson case, it is, I think, the most important unsolved case in Malibu. It's just an incredible tragedy. And I was inadvertently doing interviews about the. My Teresa Richardson case when I was back trying to report on Tristan Beaudet because a lot of people at the time were saying, maybe there's a connection. You know, they've never figured out why Maitrice died. It seems pretty obvious that what the cops are saying about her death can't be true. You know, a 24 year old woman doesn't wander into an almost inaccessible canyon, take off all her clothes, lie down, and will herself to death. But that was their work in theory. And so there were a lot of people talking about Maitrice back then, and there was a lot of stuff that was compelling and seemed like it might lead somewhere. And then I would start to dig into it, and it just didn't turn out to be real. There were so many conspiracy theories about her disappearance and death. And I kept pushing off doing that season because I did not think that we could. I didn't want to do this season just to do it. I didn't want to just rehash what others had already reported. And I didn't believe any of the conspiracy theories.

Harry Duran

23:45 - 23:48

What were some of the more outlandish ones?

Dana Goodyear

23:48 - 25:15

It's a very widely held conspiracy theory that lost Hill's deputy killed Matrice Richardson. And, yeah, wouldn't that be tempting to believe it when you learn about how she was arrested, how she was released, and how the investigation went and how the station higher ups, how they treated her family and how they withheld information and seemed to be only interested in covering their own vulnerabilities and making sure they didn't have legal exposure. And there's so many things that they did. Pretty much everything they did made people think, well, why would you be lying if you weren't hiding something? And what you're hiding is probably that you killed her. But I took that very seriously and I could not find any evidence at all that was true. Obviously, if somebody knows something and they wanna reach out to the Lost Hills tip line, they can, then I'd be thrilled to hear anything. But I reported season four with Hayley Fox, who also was the senior producer on the season. And she had worked with me on all the other seasons as well and is very steeped in the Lost Hills world. She's an amazing investigative reporter, and together we were able to take the story in a totally new direction and toward resolution. I mean, I think that we have resolved it, but it will take law enforcement taking our findings seriously to actually close the case.

Harry Duran

25:15 - 26:13

Well, we've seen before how podcasts have had an effect on, like, actual cases and then people going back and reopening them and then, you know, in lieu of the evidence, it's kind of sad, you know, and that had, like, you're doing the work of detectives, you know, of anyone who had had any passion for really solving the case would probably be doing a lot of the work, you know, I'm sure that you did throughout the course of these four seasons and trying to get to the heart of this. And do you ever ask yourself, like, what that says about, like, their reasons or their intentions for maybe not wanting to pursue this more? Because obviously, I keep thinking about, I keep listening to you and I hear everything that you're doing, and you're doing almost like you're doing detective work because you're trying to figure out what really happened here. You're speaking to the people and looking at this from a wide variety of different angles. And I'm just curious what you think that says about the people who are actually supposed to be doing this as their job.

Dana Goodyear

26:14 - 30:40

I think that one of the biggest problems with the maitrice case is that law enforcement had so much to answer for before her remains were even found. And they in general, there was such a defensive stance, and the sheriff's department really, for a while, made of, you know, really dug into this idea that, you know, she was completely fine when they arrested her, and she was completely fine when they released her after midnight with no cell phone and no rod and in a remote station where she didn't know anyone after telling her mother that they were going to keep her overnight. So they really insisted that there was no hint of mental illness. But of course, that didn't turn out to be true. And when interviews were conducted with people at the restaurant where she was arrested and when emails that passed among deputies and superiors about why they were hard booking her at the station, it was all about her mental health. There wasn't really a compelling law enforcement reason to arrest her. People at the restaurant were worried that she wasn't okay, and the deputies who arrested her and gave her a field sobriety test, which she passed, she was not intoxicated. They were worried about her and therefore arrested her and took her to the station. But then their worries seemed to evaporate, and they let her go. And I think there was just a very. The public was so outraged, her family was so distraught and outraged. And I think that they really tried to just insist that she was fine and then. But she obviously wasn't. So there's the complexity of their own role in it. And while I don't think a deputy killed her, I do think that the sheriff's department played a role because of these choices that we're talking about. The other more technical issue that I think is hugely influential on how the case is viewed within the sheriff's department is that when her remains were eventually found, eleven months after her disappearance, very close to where she had last been seen, in this inaccessible canyon called Dark Canyon, right above the neighborhood where she was seen, there was no sign of trauma. So the, while there were very suspicious circumstances, her skeletonized remains were naked, her clothing was separate from her body, the jeans were off the belt, her, a full set of clothing was never recovered, only a few items. It didn't really. None of that was consistent with someone dying of natural causes. And plus, how did she get there? But when you don't have a determination of homicide by the coroner, when you have an undetermined cause of death, it puts a case in a kind of limbo. And so somebody would have had to really insist they did have homicide detectives investigating it. But this sort of urgency around solving a cold case homicide wasn't there, or solving a homicide wasn't there, and then eventually a cold case homicide. So it seems to me that they. I mean, three days after her remains were discovered, a sheriff's department spokesperson said, well, we'll probably never find out what happened to her. Why was that? Their attitude back then, there were tons of people in this community of Montenegro who were saying to each other and some of them to law enforcement, we think we know who did this. There's someone you should talk to. So the only thing you can conclude is that the critical people who could have influenced whether the case went forward or didn't care enough. And that's a horrible thing to have to conclude, and that's certainly not true for everybody who worked the case. You know, Sergeant Toohey Wright, the search and rescue coordinator, now retired, who helped Hailey and me figure out a pretty plausible explanation for what happened. He still cares, but it wasn't his case.

Harry Duran

30:40 - 31:41

I'm wondering how these stories affect you personally. I mean, some of these are like, they sound really heavy on the surface. And obviously, to the extent that you start researching them and you find out more about these people's lies and their effect and what these cases had on the effect on their family, and some of these go unsolved. So obviously, it's a lot of trauma for families. And I'm wondering for you as an investigative reporter, how you handle or what you do to separate that energy that's happening and all the information you're gathering and hearing about the way these people passed or the fact that there's still this energy around things not being solved. I'm just curious, and I always wondered about this. For people that work in this genre, what does this do for you personally to just hold onto these stories and or do you have a mechanism for, are you able to let these go when you've done your reporting?

Dana Goodyear

31:42 - 34:50

I'm not able to let them go, but, yeah, I mean, I was a generalist, writing for the New Yorker, writing profiles, doing really deep research and writing science stories, and sometimes getting into more investigative mode. But I was not dealing generally with this type of violence and mental illness, which has been a really big theme and serious trauma to victims and families. I feel like it is probably a better match for my internal weather and my intensity as a person to be working on stories where the stakes are like this, where they're so high, where there are, where they are life and death. I probably was a little too intense to be doing, you know, some of the type of work that I was doing when I was younger. So I personally really enjoy the challenge also of trying to produce new knowledge. I find that, like, really, really daunting and really compelling and worthwhile, and doing it alongside Hailey has been amazing because, you know, there's not, when your investigative reporters aren't really supposed to talk to their spouses and friends and family about what they're learning, and you really need someone else to break it down with. And it's also just a safety thing. Like, we did so much door knocking in this season. That's not something you should do alone. So we went everywhere together, and I do think it makes it a little bit hard to go back to other kinds of work, that would be a kind of relief. You know, sometimes it's nice. I keep thinking I want to do something where the stakes are not quite so dire, and then I find that I am not drawn to those stories anymore. But we'll see. Life is long. I've changed many times as a writer, and just like, what I get curious about is not, it probably will be different in five years. I don't know. But I think that another thing that's kind of interesting about this type of work is that it's partially the difference between writing for the page and writing for the ear. But it's also subject matter. Some of my interest in building a case through language, it's just not as relevant. It's not. The observational powers need to be as strong. But I'm not building the case through language. I'm building the case through something else. And it kind of makes sense for the sentences to be sturdier and more solid and less ornate for all kinds of reasons. But I feel that it's working in this medium and this subject matter has represented a kind of evolution of my style as a storyteller, too.

Harry Duran

34:51 - 35:00

Did you ever feel like you were, like your life was in danger or you were in a dangerous situation where you were worried about your safety?

Dana Goodyear

35:00 - 37:09

Yeah. On this season, I definitely did feel that on the first season, I was pretty worried that the suspect in custody would not be convicted because I was fairly certain I believed that he. I learned enough to think that he had committed this crime. I had been corresponding with him. I. Yeah, I mean, I think he was hostile toward me by the end, so that was worrisome. But he is serving a long sentence, although he is appealing his conviction. Season two, I was not worried in any direct way. I just felt a very heavy responsibility to the victims. And in that story, the victims were also people who felt that there had been an unjust conviction. So it was complex because. And then season three was definitely the lightest stakes. And I. No, I was not worried for my safety. But season four, yes. And there was actually something that happened in this season that has not happened before, which is that some vaguely threatening material was sent to my house. And so that was a clear sign that, you know, someone knew where I lived and they were sending a message, but they were doing it in a smart way because it was not a super direct threat, but it was very easily interpreted as a threat. So I did not like that. I didn't like that feeling. You know, I have always lived very openly, and I feel that that is my protection, in a way, is, you know, but it also was interesting to me because the person that Hailey and I became convinced had been involved with my Teresa's death is not alive anymore. But somebody else who is alive was threatened by the direction of the reporting. So that's very interesting to me and really weird.

Harry Duran

37:09 - 37:55

Fascinating. I definitely don't want you to go too far into the details of this season. Cause I just wanna encourage people to, like, listen. To go listen to it and then find out what happened. I listened to the first episode, and I'm already, like, hooked. So I'm excited to kind of follow the thread and see what happens. Talk a little bit about the process for how you create these, because, you know, for people that, you know, there's so many different types of podcasts, and obviously, this one is a lot of. Is very production heavy as you're going through this, is there, like, you know, are you sitting down with Ben and the rest of the production team, and are you trying to figure out, like, exactly what you need to put the story together and what pieces of tape you need to record? And do you kind of have the arc of the eight already planned out, typically, and then so you know what you're going for, or are you sort of, like, building a this as you're going along?

Dana Goodyear

37:55 - 39:34

This season is going to be, it's twelve episodes and two bonus episodes, so 14 episodes. It's the very big season. It's a lot to take on. So when we actually started whiteboarding it, we knew some of the elements, but we had a lot of question marks, like, is this person who talked to us on the phone going to ever let us record an interview? Is this, you know? And those questions persisted. We would tick them off one by one. But the ticking off was very slow, and there was stuff that was happening. The season started coming out in June. There was stuff happening in late May, interviews we were finally getting, and it just took a lot of repeated pressure on the same people, the same points, the same. But, yeah, so we did have to, like, we knew the shape of the airplane, but we were building it while flying also. And I think, you know, our engineer and composer was incredibly patient and all the production team was very understanding that with an investigative project like this, you don't really know, actually, when you can't schedule the interview. We're driving to people's houses and knocking on the door and seeing if they will spontaneously talk to a reporter when they've avoided conversation about this subject for 15 years. So it was a little hard for them, for the production team to pin us down. We were trying. We're like, well, we will if we can, but, you know, having a deadline is very important, and it does get all the energy moving in the same direction.

Harry Duran

39:34 - 39:48

Is there a guidance, or how have you learned the art of asking a tough question or getting information from someone who's probably reluctant to share information with you?

Dana Goodyear

39:48 - 40:36

I mean, that's not. That's something that I have been doing for my whole life as a journalist, so I don't ask super direct questions, usually in my regular life, but I definitely found, especially when I was starting out, like, oh, wait a minute. If I'm holding a notebook, I can just ask people whatever I want. I think that, yeah, it's sort of a, you know, just. It's the art of listening really hard. And people, sometimes they tell you things without telling you things, and you have to be able to be, you know, available to that kind of information, and, you know, but there are people who know things that they'll never tell, so. But I think you can feel that in an interview.

Harry Duran

40:37 - 41:22

Yeah, I mean, I feel like it's an incredible skill because, you know, there's people you could put the same, you know, person and two different people asking them questions. And one, people can get them to, like, completely open up and share, like, their deepest, darkest secrets. And it's just, like, to your point, just a function of, like, I guess, how comfortable you're making them feel or how much they can trust you or. And you leaving space, you know? Because, you know, I talk about it sometimes on the show about asking open end questions and letting it sit, because sometimes you're worried about the dead space, and you're just worried if you're gonna get an answer or not. And sometimes it's in that dead space where people are thinking, like, how safe is this? You know, can I say this? You know? And it's really an art to just be able to sit in that and realize, like, there's something coming here. And, like, you can feel that something's coming if you just let it breathe.

Dana Goodyear

41:23 - 41:48

I think that's true. And I think listening back to some of the interviews for season one, I was. I'm aware that I was, like, over eager, like, forgetting that this was all going to be what the audience listened to. I'm, like, interrupting and telling my own theory, and then I don't even get to hear what their theory was. I'm like, oh, my God, I need to be a little quieter and let them reveal themselves.

Harry Duran

41:49 - 42:06

Out of all the work you've done, Dana, I'm sure there's tons of stuff that you're really proud of and stuff that is memorable moments. In terms of your career trajectory, where does this rank these four seasons in terms of how do you feel about this canon of work that you reproduced with the podcast?

Dana Goodyear

42:06 - 43:37

I mean, I'm so grateful and excited that I have found a new medium to work in and an expansion of my range, and I just. I feel really satisfied by that. I feel also the. There's always a collaborative element to every kind of writing, because at some point, you know, if I'm writing for the New Yorker. I'm talking to my editor a lot at the beginning, not much in the middle, and then a ton at the end, and then talking to a fact checker. And, you know, there's a lot of intense interaction. Collaborating on a podcast is different. And being in Los Angeles and so far away from my New Yorker colleagues, I feel really happy about finding colleagues in LA to work with. And it's really just a very satisfying development in my professional life, which I didn't really expect. And it's exciting to realize that you can. I mean, I described exactly how spontaneous the decision to get into making podcasts was. And, you know, it's. You don't get those moments of innocence over and over and over again, you know, so it's like, I had no idea how hard it was going to be. I had no idea how much time it was going to. I had no idea how rewarding it was going to be. And I'm glad I didn't know any of that because it's just that innocence of, like, this would be perfect for a podcast. How do you make a podcast?

Harry Duran

43:38 - 43:55

That's awesome. So, as we wrap up, I'm curious, your peers and or your folks from the, your coworkers from the New Yorker, is it weird for them to kind of see you in this new medium? Cause they've always known you in that genre as a writer, and I wonder what that feedback has been like.

Dana Goodyear

43:55 - 44:55

I don't know if it's weird for them. I think that maybe it's not what anybody expected, but it's also not what I expected. And it's drawn me towards stories that I probably wasn't the most obvious writer for before. And I'm really. That's great for me, too, because I've been at the New Yorker such a long time that it's sort of like reinventing myself within that same system. And, you know, but also, the New Yorker is now getting into making narrative podcasts, so I'm super excited about that, and I'm hoping to collaborate with them. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that the storytelling potential of the medium is so immense, and I think all kinds of writers are starting to realize, like, oh, you can, there's so many ways that you can tackle a story in this. In this format.

Harry Duran

44:55 - 45:36

Yeah. When it's done well and you're just eyes closed listening to these episodes. I mean, it's pure theater of the mind because you're looking at, you know, when it's with the music and the, and the effects and that sound, and you're just like, you're being pulled into that environment. And so that's when you do it well and you're doing, and you've done, the team has done such a great job with the production on this show that you, you're being pulled along, come along for the ride. And I think it's something we talked about as we were starting this conversation. That was the objective, to just pull people and have them experience what you can't do with the writing, but you can do it here with all the aspects of production. So kudos to you and the team for producing such a wonderful show. What's next in terms of the future for Lost Hills?

Dana Goodyear

45:37 - 46:08

I don't know. Right now we're going to, we're waiting for some more information to come in. We're hoping to have some compelling bonus episodes that come out of people listening to the whole show and take it from there. There's no end to the Malibu stories that, I have a long list of them already. So I think it's a really interesting place to focus on, like we were talking about. And I'm sure that there'll be many more Malibu stories soon.

Harry Duran

46:08 - 46:55

Well, I appreciate the team reaching out, and it was nice to kind of hear the backstory and hear your journey, how you went from, like, you know, being an investor, reporter and writer for the New Yorker and how you've discovered podcasting and now you've sort of taken to this genre in a way that maybe you didn't expect, and it's opened up all these new worlds for you. You're being interviewed on podcasts about a podcast, which I'm sure it's really strange for you, but it's really fascinating. And I appreciate you kind of giving us a little peek into kind of how you work and how this was produced and how you tell these amazing stories because we just hear the final result right, and we hear all the finished product. But it's so, so interesting, you know, kind of how the sausage is made vibe, but just to hear and how it affects you. And so I appreciate you for being open about that and sharing your story and sharing your a little peek into your process.

Dana Goodyear

46:56 - 46:59

Thank you so much. It was really fun talking about it.

Harry Duran

46:59 - 47:04

So, lost Hills, anywhere you listen to podcasts, anywhere else you want to send folks to learn more about the show.

Dana Goodyear

47:04 - 47:27

You can follow us at Lost Hillspod. We have a robust social media presence, putting out, you know, pictures and maps and things connecting to the season. But yeah, the Lost Hills show page on Apple Podcast has all the episodes that have been released so far, and for those who want to listen to the whole thing without ads, they can subscribe to Pushkin plus and binge.

Harry Duran

47:27 - 47:34

Thanks. It was really fun because I was just like, I'm always fascinated by these shows and just understanding how you put these together is really, really cool.

Dana Goodyear

47:34 - 47:36

Thank you so much. Really, really enjoyed talking to.