Journalist Matt Bevan's award-winning podcast If You're Listening was meant to be a book about the Trump administration.
He pitched the idea in 2017 and it fell on deaf ears.
"Nobody was particularly interested in reading something written by someone with no specific expertise in American politics, sitting at home in NSW," he tells Weekender.
"Fair point, really. So we turned it into a podcast instead, and now a companion book to the podcast has been released. It's been a 10-year process."
If You're Listening: Declassified looks at historic events and current affairs through a new lens, examining how our biases and assumptions shape the way we interpret the past - and what that means for how we understand the present.
From a decade-long dispute with his mother-in-law over a comment he may - or may not - have made, to unravelling the mysteries of world-shaping events like the Yalta Conference, the assassination of Julius Caesar, and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bevan explores how history is often a patchwork of conflicting accounts, misremembered details and outright myths.
"The book is about interesting stories. That's what my career has been about; identifying interesting stories that have then tied in to the news," Bevan says.
"The last chapter is about the effect of the human dislike of walking up hills on the modern world, on geopolitics today ... how mountain ranges have formed these fascinating boundaries that create choke points that become so important in the news. So often there is a topographical reason for something happening that is overlooked in the telling."
Last month, on a book tour, Bevan shared stories in a conversation with political commentator Elliot Stein who said: "History is jammed full of little 'sliding doors' moments; Matt's book peers into those doorways with great skill."
Bevan has, indeed, disappeared down many a rabbit hole during his career. Most of the time he returns empty-handed. Then there are the occasional, thrilling, moments that bear fruit.
Happening to reach former diplomat Richard Rigby by phone to talk about an emotional speech made by then prime minister Bob Hawke about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 is one example.
"One of the joys of my job is that time goes by and people go 'Well, it doesn't really matter if I talk about this now'," Bevan says.
"I don't think Richard Rigby would have answered my questions had I called him in 1989 - but 30 years later, no problem. Clearly the moment has passed and everything is declassified now so they'll just talk about it.
"This was also the case with me talking to Alexander Downer and Paul Papadopoulos after the 2016 wine room dinner [about alleged Russian interference in a US presidential election]. Both of them were happy to chat to me about their perspective.
"When you're covering breaking news, so often the truth is just impossible to get to in the short term, and you just have to wait a bit for people to decide that they're happy to share their story.
"A big part of this book is fleshing out the narrative dead ends."
For Bevan, the story is the joy. He hopes readers will share those stories with others. He directs me to the index of his book, where there is an alphabetical list of anecdotes.
"It was only when I got the book and looked at the index that I realised how incredibly strange the book is. Some of the groupings of anecdotes, alphabetically, make me laugh. I love it."
How will historians look back at the Trump era, I ask? A time of "fake news" and "alternative facts" where history is rewritten or even erased?
"It's all very strange," he replies. "Although, having said that, Donald Trump has been in the news since 2015 so it's becoming quite normal for me to accept that things change quite quickly every day, and you can't necessarily rely on anything that is said.
"The US government will make an announcement and people think 'Well I'm just going to ignore that, because it's not going to happen', which is so unusual, historically.
"We all know politicians and administrations lie to the public sometimes, but generally you don't just assume what they're saying is wrong or untrue and then be surprised when it actually happens - but that's the situation with Trump.
"He deliberately says things, he says 'I'm going to blow up everything in your country', and he's not doing that necessarily because he means that he will, he's doing it because he thinks it's part of the art of the deal. He uses media communication to try to play a part in political negotiations, which means you can't take anything he says literally - but sometimes he actually does mean what he says.
"It's exhausting. I've noticed that people go in waves with Trump. They want to read about him, then it's like 'If I hear one more thing from that man I'm gonna scream'."
IN NEWS TODAY:
