In Conversation with Terry Shepherd
In Conversation with Terry Shepherd, award-winning broadcaster and author of the Jessica Ramirez Thrillers. A deep dive into the people and support systems behind the stories we love.
In Conversation with Terry Shepherd
Judy Foreman - The Scallop Plot
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What happens when cutting-edge science, climate politics, corporate greed, and murder collide off the coast of Cape Cod? In this episode of In Conversation, Terry Shepherd sits down with award-winning journalist and author Judy Foreman to discuss her new thriller, The Scallop Plot.
Judy shares how she transitioned from a career rooted in hard journalistic facts to crafting suspenseful fiction, all while keeping the science in her novels 100% accurate. The story follows Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Samantha Fuller and a fiercely determined Cape Cod fisherwoman as they uncover a deadly scheme involving offshore wind power, genetically altered scallops, and CRISPR gene editing.
Beyond the thriller, Terry and Judy dive deep into the real-world issues that inspired the book, the current state of the media landscape, and Judy's profound personal journey.
Key Topics Discussed:
- How Judy's real-life Cape Cod handywoman—a former crane operator and scallop fisherwoman—inspired one of the book's main characters.
- The fascinating and terrifying realities of CRISPR gene editing, including its medical promise and ethical boundaries.
- The nuanced debate surrounding offshore wind farms and how right-wing fossil fuel "dark money" frequently funds what appear to be local protests.
- The dangerous polarization of modern media, the rise of disinformation, and why consumers must "consider the source and follow the buck."
- Judy's powerful memoir, Let the More Loving One Be Me: My Journey from Trauma to Freedom, which chronicles her lifelong journey of healing from childhood sexual abuse through therapy and love.
- Why exercise is crucial for brain health and how it produces BDNF (brain-derived neurotrophic factor), a topic from Judy's non-fiction book Exercise Is Medicine.
About Our Guest: Judy Foreman is a former health columnist for The Boston Globe who has earned more than 50 journalism awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award. Throughout her distinguished career, she has held positions at Harvard Medical School, MIT, and Brandeis University.
Connect with Judy Foreman:
- Visit her official website to learn more about her fiction, memoirs, and non-fiction work at judyforeman.com.
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In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author. A deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.
SPEAKER_00What happens when cutting-edge science, climate politics, corporate greed, and murder collide off the coast of Cape Cod? Award-winning journalist Judy Foreman has spent a career digging into complicated stories and making sense of the science behind them. A former health columnist for the Boston Globe, she's earned more than 50 journalism awards, including the George Foster Peabody Award. She has held positions at Harvard Medical School, MIT, and Brandeis University. Now she brings that investigative eye to fiction in her new thriller, The Scallop Plot. The story follows Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Samantha Fuller and a fiercely determined Cape Cod Fisherwoman as they uncover a scheme involving offshore wind power, genetically altered scallops, CRISPR gene editing, and a deadly form of shellfish poisoning. What begins as a local battle over turbines quickly becomes something far more sinister, with hundreds of lives at stake and powerful interests determined to keep the truth buried. Judy Foreman, welcome to the conversation.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. You flatter me, but I'll take it. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00Where did the idea come from for the book?
SPEAKER_02I'm not sure. First of all, I had written a previous through I was a journalist as for my whole life. Telling the truth, being as clear as possible, quoting people, telling everything up front to be really clear and laying out the story. And with writing thrillers, it's really different. You try to confuse confuse people, tease things, hide things, put in some red herrings. So it was a very different story. The one common thing is truth, but I always told the truth as best I could figure it out as a journalist. And the science in this book and in my previous book, CRISPR, the science is absolutely true and up to date. It's not science fiction. I didn't make up the science. So where did the idea come from? I wanted to do a sequel to CRISPR, and I want I started out as a character-driven book because my husband and I had a house in Truro, which is a cute little town on Cape Cod, right near Provincetown, which is where the story takes place. It's the most, I think it's the most eastern point in the United States. It's a fishing town full of lots of Portuguese people who've been there for centuries, not centuries, but many decades. And we had this handy woman in our house who, when she wasn't working for us, was out scallop fishing. And she and I were very different. I was a strong, this was during COVID, I was a very strong vaccine supporter. She was an anti-vaxxer. I had gone to college, she had not, but she could do things that I was amazed at. We had a hot tub, and she took it apart with this little tool called a sawzall, all by herself. She demolished this hot tub and took it away. She told me that she has been a crane operator and she could drop a whole load of stuff on a dime. And she did some of our electricity off the grid, and a little plumbing and a little carpentry, and she had three kids by three different guys. And she was very fit and very articulate, had a very hard life, and I thought I gotta write about her. So I interviewed her a lot, videotaped a lot of interviews, but then I felt a little stuck because I didn't know quite where this character was gonna go, and I realized I I really needed a plot that she could be the hero in, but I needed a plot. And I'm not sure how I figured out it was gonna be centered on scallops of all things. I don't even really like scallops, but I wanted again to use the genetic engineering thing, CRISPR. And so it came to me that I could. And I thought, okay, I could have someone do this, but for sinister reasons. And then somehow I came upon the idea of making it there be an evil guy trying to put in wind farms. And I should say up front, I think ocean wind farms are a great idea. There are problems, but I do think it's a great idea. But I thought I would have my evil character, my villain, and that was a lot of fun to figure out. And somehow it grew from there. And that I visited a scalopatry and talked to a bunch of scientists who do aquaculture, which is this manipulating the genes of marine life for profit. So I learned a lot, I learned a lot about wind energy, and it somehow evolved, not all at once, step by step, character by character.
SPEAKER_00We're talking with Judy Foreman about the scallop plot. Her website is Judy Foreman, F-O-R-E-M-A-N, Judyforeman.com. Your protagonist is a reporter. How much of Judy is in Samantha?
SPEAKER_02Quite a lot. Quite a lot. And she's also happens to be married to, I was married to uh a laser physicist who unfortunately died, and most recently to a psychiatrist. So I'm very and I was a medical writer for the globe. So I I'm very oriented towards science. And my character is married to an MIT geneticist, which comes in very handy.
SPEAKER_00Two of the most interesting characters to me were Provincetown and Cape Cod. Why was the setting so important to the story?
SPEAKER_02I love it there. I guess that's why. And initially, this woman who was our handy woman who became my one of my main one of my two main characters, she was from Provincetown. And once I decided it was going to be sort of a story about offshore wind, there have been a lot of projects proposed and dumped and reproposed. It's been a huge issue as offshore wind is on the coasts, all over, actually. So it was a natural place to set the book because this would involve scallops and offshore wind, and I knew the town well, and it's a wonderful town. It's really terrific.
SPEAKER_00CRISPR gene editing. What is it?
SPEAKER_02It's a technique, and two women, one of them in California and the other one, I think in France, got the Nobel Prize for it, I would say, four or five years ago. It's a very powerful way of basically using modern genetic engineering techniques to cut little places out of the DNA and take out bad genes and put in good genes. That's a simple way to do it. It's incredibly promising medically. It also raises a lot of ethical questions. How much do you really want to tamper with human beings' genes? And would it ever be passed down to children, or is it just for the person involved? But it's incredibly powerful. I think they have already treated at least one woman with sickle cell anemia by replacing the bad gene and giving her the good gene. And that's huge. That's one disease that causes enormous pain for people. And if you can just fix the genes, you're in much better shape. And they've done it, it's just an exploding technology. And having written about that in my previous book, I was up to speed on that. I worked with a world-class geneticist at Harvard, not the one who ones who got the Nobel Prize, although he should have been part of the team, but he was wonderfully fact-checked everything for me. So I'm very solid about the technology.
SPEAKER_00It did take me back to some of the 1950s sci-fi movies that gave me nightmares. How plausible is it that gene editing could be used in nefarious ways?
SPEAKER_02A lot of major scientific advantages or experiments, like the atom bomb, nuclear energy, all that stuff has wonderful positive things and destructive things. These new technologies really challenge the limits of what humans can and should do.
SPEAKER_00One of the things that fascinated me most about the book is the way that you presented the offshore wind debate as not completely black and white. Was that important to give legitimate arguments to people on both sides?
SPEAKER_02That is key. I'm glad you noticed that. Yeah, that made it much more nuanced, more sophisticated, and way harder to write. Because the good guys weren't totally good, the bad guys weren't totally bad, and you couldn't really always tell the good guys from the bad guys. And made it much more realistic. And journalism is to hit back on journalism for a second. Journalism is not good at nuance. Nuance doesn't get you on page one. Clear-cut things do. But a lot of things in life are not that clear-cut, including this debate. Although I just want to reiterate, I think offshore wind is terrific and we need it. And I deplore our president for trying to stop it. Unsuccessfully so far, but trying to stop it.
SPEAKER_00Investigative journalism really depends on following evidence wherever it leads. Is that becoming harder in an era when people increasingly choose which facts they want to believe?
SPEAKER_02Yes. We're very divided as a country in terms of where your news comes from. We're living in different, I would say some of us are living in reality, and some of us are getting false information and in on purpose disinformation, and it's frightening how much the press can be manipulated or individual media outlets. There's some you can trust and some you can't.
SPEAKER_00Judy Foreman is our special guest. We're talking about the scallop plot. Her website is JudyForeman.com. What made you decide to become a journalist?
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness. I was gonna be a psychologist. I was on track to be a psychologist. And a friend of mine had just a college friend had just gotten a job as a reporter at the Lowell Sun. I lived in Cambridge and still live in Cambridge, actually. And the Lowell Sun is a Lowell is a town, maybe, I don't know, 20 minutes, half an hour north of Boston, Boston and Cambridge. And he said, it's really fun. You get to talk to people from all realms of life and make a difference. You write for the paper and it comes out the next day. And he helped me get an interview there, and I was sold. It was great. It has been great the whole time. It's a lot of work, but it's exciting.
SPEAKER_00And how did that journalist become a novelist?
SPEAKER_02Oh boy. Jeez, I can't answer that. I don't know. I just thought it would be fun. I thought it would be a challenge. That you're asking me really good questions. I don't have the best answers, but I just did it for fun. And it was. It still is.
SPEAKER_00Is it harder to write fiction than it is to document fact?
SPEAKER_02Yes. I am very glad you asked me that one. That one I do have a clear answer for you. I found it much harder. And I was not an English major. So I had never heard of anything called an omniscient narrator until several years ago. Started realizing I was being an omniscient narrator and wasn't supposed to be. My characters were supposed to be telling the story. So I learned a lot, especially in thrillers. It was very hard to keep track of who knew what when. What information was in one person's head, but not in another person's. And I knew both, but they didn't know each other's. And just try to make sure you're not having one character say something that he or she shouldn't know. That was hard to keep track. And I found point of view a trickier thing than I ever realized. In fact, one of my editors, when I would mess it up, she said, Oh, you're doing head hopping. You're having something from the point of view of one person coming out the other person's mouth. And oh God, that's right. So it was very interesting to learn, like at least for a thriller, that what people are reading is if there was a camera. You have to have things be smellable or touchable or some sort of visual. The person you can't put interior thoughts into a person's mind that they say that they you the reader couldn't tell. It's as if everything goes through a camera. Or almost more like you're writing a film script or something. It's a very interesting process.
SPEAKER_00When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
SPEAKER_02I went to Wellesley College, which then and now is all women, and that was life-changing to be valued as a woman. I was not as a growing up as a child and teenager. And many may partly that was my specific family, but also a lot of women in my generation weren't expected to be anything or do anything. But going to a woman's college really made a difference. The women could do something interesting.
SPEAKER_00What was it about Wellesley that created that environment for you?
SPEAKER_02There were a lot of women professors, which was good, and at a women's college that wasn't rare. And the other students were all interested in interesting things and taking taking their minds seriously and being taken seriously automatically.
SPEAKER_00Journalism is so different today than it was when it was your full-time profession. What do you think about where it is and where do you see it going?
SPEAKER_02For people still at newspapers like the Boston Globe where I work, it doesn't seem like as much fun. I don't think people are as happy being journalists now. And there's so much competition from online sources, some of which are very good. What worries me more is that people's news outlets are totally different. People with my political slant read the New York Times and the Boston Globe and listen to NPR, and we are getting what I think is real truthful information. And then other people are listening to Fox News and other outlets that are not telling the same story. How can we ever get together as a country if we're getting all different information? That's just crazy. And horrible things have happened at the Washington Post. A lot of really good people have left. I think not just newspaper journalism, but the media in general is in big trouble. I really worry that parts of the country are getting totally different information, some of it valid and some of it not. And thank God for the New York Times and other papers that really pursue every story they can.
SPEAKER_00As consumers of news and information, what should our mindset be as we're presented with that content?
SPEAKER_02Who's the source? Where does this information come from? And is it valid? That's for science writing and medical writing as well as political writing. Who is saying this? And what are they and where does the money come from? Who's paying? Is this real information or is this planted information that comes checkbook journalism, which is a total no-no in in real journalism? Consider the source and follow the book, basically.
SPEAKER_00And a lot of these networks that brand themselves as news networks are really opinion networks now.
SPEAKER_02And when I was at the Globe, and still there was a huge line between what we call church and state. State was the normal the world, and church was the opinion. Church was the editorial page. And we really opinions were on the opinion page in the editorial section. Facts were in the main core of the newspaper. Not that the opinions didn't use facts, but they were clearly opinion and marked as opinions, clearly opinion, and often differing opinions, which is also good.
SPEAKER_00Judy Foreman is our special guest. I want to make sure we have some time to talk about your totally engrossing memoir, Let the More Loving One Be Me. My Journey from Trauma to Freedom. How did that book come about?
SPEAKER_02Oh, that came about because I was writing and then teaching a memoir class at the Harvard Institute for Learning and Retirement. And I do teach a memoir class there now, and it's the highlight of my week. It's wonderful. People come and they write everything about their lives. And I wanted to write about my life with many good things, a lot of love and good marriages. But also growing up, my father was a corporate person, made a lot of money, lost a lot of money, and was abusive. And my mother, I assume she knew about it, but I don't know. But how could she not? Most people, if they've had a happy childhood, cannot fathom that this is going on in other households. But it is. And I thought it was valuable to tell that story. And I've gotten a lot of good comments from telling that story.
SPEAKER_00One of the things that spoke to me in your memoir was one of my favorite books of all time, which of course is Dr. Victor Frankel's Man's Search for Meaning. When did you make the choice to become the woman that you are?
SPEAKER_02Ah, I love that book. I'm rereading it now for a course. I think therapy had a lot to do with it, which involved honoring and talking about and understanding the reality of my experience and not denying it as my family did. And coming to that truth. And but it's not like a it wasn't like one beautiful moment and everything fell into place.
SPEAKER_00It's so easy to give up and fall into a victim mentality. What kept you going?
SPEAKER_02Oh, I had good therapists, which was great. And I also had my first marriage did end in divorce, but we were happy for until it didn't. And then I have had two other wonderful marriages. Unfortunately, both of the men have died, but I have had a lot of good luck with love, which makes huge, a huge difference. As it was with Victor Frankel in the concentration camp. What kept him going was his love for his wife, even though he didn't know at the time whether she was alive or dead. And I'm a believer in love, not just marital love, but re you know, love for other people in general.
SPEAKER_00You have also written a very fascinating book called Exercise is Medicine.
SPEAKER_02Now we're talking about my favorite book. I was a medical rhetoric for all these years at the Globe, and I love that book because I keep referring back to it, and I also do exercise a lot because I figure I gotta keep my street creds up. I learned so much in that book. We all know exercise is good for you, but I had no idea how good it was for so many different organs and parts of the body, especially the brain. It's just there's a chemical that our brains make when we exercise. It's called BDNF. It stands for brain derived neurotrophic factor. Exercise really creates this little chemical in the brain that makes nerves grow. And it's why would you not exercise? We have an obesity epidemic here in this country. And we are a pretty unhealthy country in a lot of ways. And a lot of people do not exercise or hate exercise. And we grew up, we didn't grow up, we didn't evolve sitting in front of computers and or screens in general all day. We were hunters and gatherers, and that's who we really are. We're not supposed to be sedentary.
SPEAKER_00What do you hope people will take away from their encounter with the scallop plot?
SPEAKER_02I hope they think about wind energy thoughtfully and positively. And I hope people are more aware of the influence of dark money. The right-wing fossil fuel interests are really behind a lot of what look like local little fishermen protesting. A lot of that is funded by dark money. They have a they're very clever. They have whole networks of funding and sharing information, and the groups have benign sounding names for let's protect the ocean, save the whales. You think, oh, these are the good guys, but they're not. They're really not. And also all over Europe, they're using a lot of ocean wind farms. And as usual, we're behind. So I hope that I hope people are more receptive to wind farms.
SPEAKER_00The book is The Scallop Plot. It's written by our very special guest, Judy Foreman. Her website is Judy F-O-R-E-M-A-N, Judyforman.com. A fascinating conversation. It's always wonderful to talk to somebody from my generation who shares so many of my memories. Judy Foreman, thanks a million.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. I had a wonderful time. Thank you. In conversation with Terry Shepard, it's a copyrighted presentation. All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepard next time in conversation.