“I approach these things almost novelistically. I start with character.”

Luke Epplin joins the show for the first time for a deep dive into the writing and reporting of his new book, “Moses and the Doctor: Two Men, One Championship and the Birth of Modern Basketball.”

Luke talks about how his experience as a failed novelist — his exact words — trained him to write and research and report the way he does. He describes how learning about one moment from the 1982 NBA Finals propelled him into this story. 

We talk about how he humanized the almost mythical figures of Julies Erving and Moses Malone, how he made Philadelphia a character in the book, and why pace is so important to him as a writer.

“The sort of trick with the book is to convey that larger than lifeness as it was experienced at the time.”

Links

Moses and the Doctor on Amazon.

Moses and the Doctor on Bookshop

Our Team (Luke’s first book) on Bookshop

What We Can Know by Ian McEwan (the best thing Luke’s read lately)

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