Hey everyone, it's Omna here. Welcome to another episode of Settle In. Today we're talking to New Yorker

staff writer and award-winning author Patrick Radden Keefe. He's the man behind books like Empire of Pain

and Say Nothing, which also went on to be a great TV show. His latest book is called London Falling,

and it tells the story of the mysterious death of a British teenager a few years ago.

So we talked about the book, we talked about what it was like to find that story, how he finds

all of his stories and how he gets people to trust him and open up to tell him what happened.

We talked about the stories that he won't tell, like being approached to write the memoir of the Mexican

drug lord El Chapo. We talked about why families always play such a central role in all of his

storytelling and reporting, and we also talked about what it was like to play himself guest

starring on a hit TV show. So settle in and enjoy my conversation with Patrick Radden-Keefe.

Patrick Radden-Keefe, welcome to Settle in. Thanks for being here.

So good to be with you.

So before we jump into this book, which is fascinating and an incredible read, I want to ask you

about your journalism career. Just because you're someone who seems to be drawn to complicated people,

I think sometimes less than savory characters. It's fair to say.

Family dynamics, all that kind of interpersonal connection stuff that makes your storytelling so fascinating.

So what was it about journalism, about this line of work that drew you in?

I started reading The New Yorker magazine when I was in high school. I would wait for my mother to

pick me up from school, and there was a periodicals room in our high school library, and I took the

New Yorker off the shelf and started reading it. And I just loved these long, detailed articles that were true stories, but they felt as

though they had some of the qualities of a fictional short story, you know, where there's a sense

of drama and interesting characters and the plot keeps thickening.

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