Each chapter of God Don't Make No Trash is built from small stories that are 300 words or less. See Newsworthy below as a complete chapter. Also check out GDMNT's introduction or visit the stories page.

Dogs and pies 🍒

"For you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  

—Genesis 3:19

> newsworthy | crazy horse

Born and raised in Tulsa, I was a journalist and lived around the nation until drinking eventually took over my life. 

Tulsa is a town where people can go their whole lives without uttering the word "cerebral."

My comfort food is still hand-sized cherry pies in wax-paper wrapping from Coney I-Lander hot dogs where I used to go with my dad and brothers.

As soon as my two brothers and I learned that a person could be an intellectual, we set out to become intellectuals and save the world.

We talked about the people halfway around the globe who made our shoes.

We talked about the movement to save old-growth redwood trees from deforestation. 

We talked about the Chinese government's persecution of Tibetan Buddhists. 

We passed around books like Peter Matthiessen’s "In the Spirit of Crazy Horse" about the American Indian Movement and the FBI’s war on protest groups. 

We converted to vegetarianism and veganism when Whole Foods was still in its Austin infancy. 

Looking back, my dad was a hero made of boundless patience. 

He once drove us to a hopelessly small protest against McDonald’s in Tulsa over the mistreatment of animals at factory farms. 

Our protest signs bounced in the trunk.

My dad was also there years later when my drinking grew out of control.

• next time "The only thing bigger than football in Oklahoma is Jesus."
• listening Woody Guthrie "Tear the Fascists Down"

Books and cocaine 📕☃️

"Stay curious."  

—PBS

> newsworthy | cocaine

Growing up in Tulsa, it wasn’t long before I wanted to escape the seemingly endless obedience and sameness and conformity of my hometown. 

Still today, the only thing bigger than football in Oklahoma is Jesus. 

I dropped out of high school. There were signs of alcoholism well before I turned 21. I couldn’t believe how sublime a cigarette tasted with cheap wine. 

But along the way, I developed a love affair with NPR and PBS and newspapers thanks to my dad. 

I noticed the attention he paid to the earnest, soothing voices of the NPR newscasters and correspondents and analysts. I noticed that he contributed to our local NPR affiliate in Tulsa. 

I noticed the attention he paid to the Tulsa World newspaper every day. A man, I saw, stays informed and stays curious.

But Tulsa is still a law-and-order town that almost giddily follows the rules.

For my brothers and me, our heroes were all rulebreakers.

I left Tulsa at 16 for Houston with weed and pills stashed in my backpack.

The thought of dying in Tulsa with its bible schools and sad-looking Subways filled me with dread.

I heard Austin was the place to be. 

So I went there to find the world through punk rock and art and skateboarding and books and cocaine and whiskey and beer.

• next time "Relief from the anxieties and insecurities never lasted."
• listening Fugazi "Blueprint"

Outlaw 𖤓 

"The world is still a weird place, despite my efforts to make clear and perfect sense of it."  

—Hunter S. Thompson

> newsworthy | firestorm

It came as a surprise that just after dropping out of high school, I fell in love with books. 

A friend handed me a book by the late renegade journalist Hunter S. Thompson. It was edgy and rebellious and idealistic. 

I thought journalism was all stuffy, white newscasters who looked and sounded like they were from everywhere and nowhere America.

 I learned about a movement of narrative and longform journalists who were disrupting establishment journalism for good: Alex Kotlowitz, Lawrence Wright, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, David Simon, Jill Leovy, Michael Lewis, Anne Hull, Joan Didion, and others.

Eventually, I set out to become a journalist, too, and made it to the University of Kansas and its student newspaper. I learned how to report and tell stories.

I went to post-hardcore shoes and post-metal shoes and post-indie shows. 

I went to late-night parties at the home of beat writer William S. Burroughs.

Around this time, I began to experience miserable social anxieties. They blended not-so nicely with a growing lack of confidence.

Together, they began to haunt me night and day.

The fastest and most thorough way to relieve them was a soothing whiskey and beer back – and then another, and then another – at the Replay Lounge or The Bottleneck or the Eighth St. Taproom in Lawrence, Kansas.  

Relief from the anxieties and insecurities never lasted. 

Even two years after I'd become a paid newspaper reporter in San Francisco, I still didn't think I'd earned the right to call myself a "journalist" to other people.

A fellow reporter was the daughter of one of the most influential journalists in America. 

How could I share the same title with her?

George, that’s irrational, you say. 

Exactly. You’re getting it now.

• next time "I proved myself by working late."
• listening Neurosis, Jarboe "Taker"

Crunching bones 🦴

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose."  

—Dr. Seuss

> newsworthy | crunching bones

My work as a journalist eventually began publishing and airing in mainstream news outlets like Wired.com and the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune. 

I reported major projects for NPR’s "All Things Considered" and "Morning Edition" and beamed with pride as the stories aired in my hometown of Tulsa.

But I endured bone-crunching insecurities and anxieties throughout my career while living twice each in San Francisco, Austin, and Kansas City. 

I often wondered if people could see my racing thoughts. I wondered if people could see me shaking.

You'd observe a tall, confident-seeming hipster journalist.

But inside me was a firestorm of generalized fear. 

I'd wonder if you could see how hot my face felt. 

I'd wonder if you could see my pounding heart trying to escape through the bars of my chest.

I took various medications and saw experts for anxiety and depression. The symptoms seemed to get better at times. Then I would plunge again into panic and despair. 

My drinking steadily worsened after my brother died of leukemia in 2005 following a long battle. 

Throughout that ordeal, I was obsessed with work, journalism, and the news.

At a newspaper in San Francisco, I proved myself by "working late" whether work needed to be done at those hours or not. 

My mentor and best friend warned me that overwork was fully possible even if you loved what you were doing. He said I seemed depressed. I ignored him. 

After working for a time at the Center for Investigative Reporting, I convinced my editors there to let me work from home in Austin where I’d lived once before. 

There, I avoided people who might say I seemed depressed.

Relationships came and went. I worked and I read books and I drank and I went to punk and metal shows. Lonesomeness was always only mildly bothersome.

• next time "Audiences decry bad news as cognitive junk."
• listening Leon Bridges "Shy"

We love bad news 🔪🩸

"The brains of humans contain a mechanism that is designed to give priority to bad news."  

—Psychologist Daniel Kahneman

> newsworthy | negativity

Graduate school eventually led me to the conclusion that during my time in the news industry, I'd acquired only a superficial understanding of what really propelled audiences. 

Science and the internet shattered long-held assumptions about readers, listeners, and viewers.

Did they make rational (reasoned) choices about content? Or did they make irrational (intuitive) choices?

The answer is in decades of extraordinary discoveries about the human mind made by psychologists, behavioral scientists, neuroscientists, and others. 

We know more now about the science of what media content captures-and-holds our attention, not always with our full conscious awareness. 

Published year after year in research journals, the findings include what we now know to be profound media effects on audiences.

As audience members, we don't fully grasp why we choose one piece of content over another.

Why does some content make us feel lazy and other content doesn't? We're viewing it from the same couch.

We don't know when our media choices are rational or irrational.

And we don't fully understand how we're affected by the content itself, from police-reality shows to street fights on YouTube.  

News consumers often insist that they want more "good" news. But studies find them drifting toward stories with a "negative" tone and without the participants consciously knowing it.

Some researchers say news organizations are trained by audiences – not the other way around – to focus on "bad news." Yet audiences decry bad news as cognitive junk. 

Scientists say the truth is that we're wired with a "negativity bias." We appear programmed to favor "bad" news over "good," but that doesn't make us evil. Mind experts say the reason is survival.

A feel-good story might make us feel good. But a negative story could alert us to danger.

We can't feel good unless we survive first. 

• next time "I've seen the room where Tupac was autopsied."
• listening FKA twigs "Two Weeks"

Muckrakers ☕ 🪶

"I went out to Hollywood chasing my dreams. Dusty Oklahoma was all I'd ever seen."  

—Leon Russell, "Home Sweet Oklahoma"

> newsworthy | your body has a story to tell

Before the first story was dry, I already wanted to prove myself with another. 

I never thought I was good enough to be a journalist. I wouldn’t call myself one even two years after being paid to be one.

I often shook quietly with anxiety. My mind raced.

But I was always hungry for the next story.

I once spent four months persuading a local coroner in phone call after phone call to admit that he had dug up the wrong body from a Kentucky cemetery. The story won a national Emmy. 

I've seen the room where Tupac was autopsied in Las Vegas. 

I helped expose a secretive, high-altitude surveillance program that was being conducted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department over Compton, California. 

The mayor of Compton hadn’t known about the program and was furious. 

Compton is the hometown of some of the biggest-ever rappers. That story won a regional Emmy.

I helped expose a secretive, high-altitude surveillance program being conducted over the U.S. border with Mexico by the Texas National Guard and Texas state police.

I obtained 3,000 pages of internal records from the Mall of America in Minnesota that detailed a secretive surveillance program there. It targeted shoppers who might be terrorists but ensnared everyday people.  

Along the way, I couldn't make myself stop drinking. I hid the severity for years. I denied that the binges were slowly killing me.

My body had a story to tell. But I wanted another drink.

• next time "We experience guilt over our love of true crime."
• listening Pissed Jeans "The Bar is Low"

Newsy 📺 🗞️

"Know your audience."

—Journalism maxim

> newsworthy | adjectives

Because of the nature of perception, it’s accurate to say that the entire news industry is built on air. 

News organizations have a need for audiences to perceive them as trustworthy and credible. 

These are two adjectives made of air that we perceive, not measure. 

Scholars and media corporations have studied audience trust and credibility perceptions for decades. 

When it comes to the media, there's far more going on in the human mind than we realize. 

In undergraduate and graduate journalism courses, we read about how media effects prompted shifts in public opinion, persuaded consumers, and directed voters or parents to take desired actions. 

We experience guilt over our media choices and love of true crime and reality shows.

We worry that we’re overindulging. Our favorite media thing makes us feel trashy. 

We worry that the shows we love entertain more than they inform. We worry that gazing at commercials and "bad" or negative news makes us depraved. 

True crime isn't evidence of moral decay. It's evidence that we're human. 

On a Zoom meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous one night, a woman who lived alone said she kept true crime on her TV anytime she was at home. It made her feel safer. 

I don't know why, she said, as if she should be embarrassed.

There's nothing more human than wanting to feel safe. 

My mom listens to the police scanners. My sister loves true crime. 

These facts are not evidence of moral collapse. 

They're evidence that my family is made of human beings.

True crime is neither good nor bad. It just is. 

• next time "At the heart of their cases were questionable eyewitnesses."
• listening Brent Faiyaz "Make Luv"

Witness ⚖️

"Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck."

—Orson Welles

> newsworthy | justice for glynn

While learning how to live without alcohol and working at coffee shops in my hometown of Tulsa, I picked up a side hustle. 

I began writing for the Web site of a local Tulsa attorney named Joe Norwood. He’s helped free five people from different Oklahoma cases who were wrongfully convicted and spent decades in prison.

The first post went smoothly, so I wrote another. And another. 

I wrote about the longest-serving wrongfully convicted man in America, Glynn Simmons. 

A state judge in 2023 declared Simmons fully innocent of a 1974 Oklahoma City murder after Joe took the case. At the heart of the Simmons conviction was a deeply questionable eyewitness.

Then I wrote about Perry Lott and Corey Atchison and Malcolm Scott and Demarchoe Carpenter. At the heart of their cases also were troubling eyewitnesses and no physical evidence.

We have a powerful desire to perceive police and the criminal justice system as emblems of community safety and security. These desires are reinforced through media effects from police-reality shows, the news, movies, and true crime. 

The result is a collective perception of police and criminal justice in which we believe criminal cases must be brimming with solid, physical evidence. They must be stuffed with witnesses who saw everything with near-perfect clarity and memory. 

Not even close. As Oklahoma's wrongfully convicted can testify, Joe's clients were too easily sent to prison when no physical evidence existed at all. And it still happens today.

• next time "His body shook and he dripped with sweat at his own wedding."
• listening Public Enemy "Don't Believe the Hype"

Damaged 📦

"I’m constantly thinking."

—Kendrick Lamar

> newsworthy | fear

It didn't begin to dawn on me until 2014 that I didn’t have to keep so many things that were happening inside of me a secret. 

Anxieties and insecurities didn’t disqualify me from journalism. They didn't make me damaged goods. They made me human. 

But I still worried people would think I couldn’t think smart enough to be a paid journalist with an audience.  

In 2014,  I started to think differently. 

That’s when The Atlantic magazine's prominent national editor, Scott Stossel, published a highly revealing cover story and book that publicly described for the first time his long war with alcohol and debilitating anxiety.

Stossel went into excruciating and embarrassing detail. 

He talked at length about his ordeal on NPR’s “Fresh Air” with its radio audience of millions. 

I became consumed by Stossel’s piece and began to feel liberated as I read. It felt like the psychic liberation I would experience later at Alcoholics Anonymous. 

It was deeply relieving to hear someone else tell embarrassing stories about their alcohol abuse and anxieties.

His colleagues expressed surprise that Stossel had quietly struggled for so long. 

He drank in the morning before public talks. 

His nervous stomach clogged and overflowed a toilet at a home of the powerful Kennedy family. 

His body shook and he dripped with sweat at his wedding.

Stossel's courage came at a crucial time for me. By then, many of my adult years had been spent living alone. Relationships didn't last. I'd only wanted to be a journalist. 

But villains within were growing in influence. I was far from accepting that anxieties and insecurities would always be part of me. There wasn't a surgical procedure to remove them.

I had to learn to cope.

• next time "Just one shaky eyewitness."
• listening Chet Baker "I Fall in Love Too Easily"

Picking cherries 🍒

"Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons."

—John Grisham

> newsworthy | the first 48 years

Just one shaky eyewitness and no physical evidence landed Glynn Simmons in prison for 48 years. 

The lone witness admitted under oath that she had only glanced for a few seconds at the suspects of a 1974 robbery and murder in Oklahoma City. 

I've written extensively about Glynn Simmons and other wrongful convictions in Oklahoma for Tulsa attorney Joe Norwood. Like so many other things, there's a psychology to why wrongful convictions happen. 

Experts in the human mind say one reason is naturally occurring but unchecked confirmation bias and tunnel vision in detectives. 

We all experience such cognitive biases and thinking lapses as we make decisions throughout the day.

But they can lead to fateful errors in law enforcement investigations. 

Detectives might selectively (and unconsciously) cherry-pick only evidence that supports their existing theories about a case. 

Called "confirmation bias," this is one of the most common cognitive biases known to psychologists.

Tunnel vision, meanwhile, occurs when detectives at the outset of an investigation narrow the scope too tightly and risk overlooking critical leads and suspects.

It doesn't have to be this way. 

We can give ourselves more chances to detect cognitive biases and mental misfires and bring our perceptions into sharper focus.

With a better understanding of the human mind, we can bring down the number of wrongful convictions in America.

• next time I came for your emails.
• listening Roberta Flack "Killing Me Softly With His Song"

Muckraker ‎📸

"Sometimes the hangover provides inspiration."

—Rostam Batmanglij

> newsworthy | bully

As a reporter, press releases were never enough for me.

I came for your emails. Your audits. Your contracts. 

I worked hard and tried to prove myself by the number of hours I worked and the number of times I didn't call in sick.

And like all my favorite writers, I drank hard. 

I thought my drinking was to blame for why I never showed up on time to anything. 

My lateness persists today.

At one time, it was the same with alcohol. Nothing could save me from promising myself again and again – usually with a cruel, bullying hangover – to never drink again.

And again.

But I always drank. Again. And again.

Sounds pretty irrational, huh?

• next time "Contentment eluded me during my years in the media industry."
• listening Nick Drake "One of These Things First"

Golden📱🚎

"I was dying even as I was being born."

—Joy Harjo

> newsworthy | romance

Contentment eluded me during my years in the media industry as my alcoholism worsened. 

While living and working in San Francisco, I was surrounded by journalists and editors and documentary filmmakers and academics who’d gone to UC Berkeley or Columbia in New York or Stanford University.

Having grown up in Oklahoma, I felt un-smart by comparison. I thought people perceived me as a hayseed from flyover country. 

So I worked irresponsibly late at the office to prove myself and feel like I belonged. 

A girlfriend once dumped me late at night by calling my desk phone. There was no other way to contact me at the time, and she knew I'd be there. She dumped me because I was always there.

I'd often go straight to the bar from the office. I relished drinking alone in bars with a book and notebook. I loved bars that were unglamorous and no frills. 

My favorite in San Francisco was called simply Bar Bar.

Drinking like my favorite writers and journalists was my nirvana and my romance.

• next time Chapter end
• listening Kitty Wells "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"

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