Interviews with writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters about how they do their work. Hosted by Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky, and Evan Ratliff.
Here it is! Evan’s new show, Shell Game
This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, co-host of Longform and a longtime tech journalist, makes a digital copy of himself, powered by AI, in order to understand how amazing and scary and utterly ridiculous the world is about to get.
In Episode 1, Evan clones his voice, hooks it up to ChatGPT and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service representatives.
New episodes drop on Tuesdays.
Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show.
Learn
Coming Soon: Evan’s new show, “Shell Game”
What would happen if you created a digital copy of yourself, powered by AI, and set it loose in the world? Over the past six months, Evan Ratliff has been trying to find out. He combined a clone of his voice, an AI chatbot, and a phone line—many phone lines, actually—into what are called “voice agents.” Then he sent them out… as himself. They talked to sources and colleagues (including his fellow Longform co-hosts), friends and family, scammers and spammers, other AI voice agents, and even thera
Episode 585: John Jeremiah Sullivan
John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History.
“I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It
Bonus: Mailbag
The hosts answer a few listener questions.
Evan’s picks for some podcasts to try:
Creative Nonfiction
Press Box
The Stacks Podcast:
Sunday Long Read
True Stories
Question Everything
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 584: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message.“I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here j
Episode 583: Jay Caspian Kang
Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye.“At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or
Episode 582: Joseph Cox
Joseph Cox is a cybersecurity journalist and co-founder of 404 Media. His new book is Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever.
“In the not too distant future, I will be a very old man, and maybe I won't be able to spend all day talking to drug traffickers. I will be mentally and physically exhausted. So I will doggedly pursue the story right now while I can.”
Show notes:
@josephfcox
Cox's 404 Media archive
Cox's Vice archive
Dark Wire: The Incredible True St
Episode 581: Tavi Gevinson
Tavi Gevinson is a writer, actor, and the founder of Rookie. Her new zine is Fan Fiction.
“Stories are unstable, and memory is unstable, and identity is unstable. All of these things that I've tried to make permanent in writing, they're actually unstable. So even though it's tempting to go, Oh, that was fake, it's more like, No, it was just temporary.”
Show notes:
@tavitulle
tavigevinson.world
Gevinson on Longform
Gevinson on Longform Podcast
Gevinson’s Rookie archive
10:00 Operation Shylo
Episode 580: Rachel Khong
Rachel Khong is a journalist and author whose latest novel is Real Americans.“It's about the ways in which we miss each other as human beings and can't fully communicate what it is like to be ourselves. … And I think that's what makes it so interesting to me, to work on a novel and to spend so much time trying to get down on the page what it feels like to be a human being who's alive. … I think the effort itself is what human relationships are.”Show notes:
rachelkhong.com
01:00 Real Ame
Episode 579: Kelsey McKinney
Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip.
“I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding
Episode 578: Lissa Soep
Lissa Soep is an audio producer, editor and author whose latest book is Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End.“I am so keenly aware of how much my own voice is a product of editing relationships and co-producing relationships with other people's words. … I will forever feel indebted to those then young people who are now writers and educators and therapists. … I feel like my voice is sort of a product of that time.”Show notes:
00:00 Other People’s
Episode 577: PJ Vogt
PJ Vogt is the host of Search Engine.
“One of our tests editorially is if we think we’ve got something good, but we haven’t started reporting or recording on it, I’ll just try asking the question at dinner and stuff. If it derails conversations, that’s a really good sign.”
Show notes:
@PJVogt
Vogt’s Substack
Vogt on Longform Podcast
03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Mar 2024)
03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New
Episode 576: Lindsay Peoples
Lindsay Peoples is the editor-in-chief of The Cut.
“You see so many incredible people make one mistake and lose their job or they speak out about something and then the next day something blows up. And so I do think that I often feel like I have to be so careful. And that's hard to do because I'm just naturally curious and I want to know and I want to find and explore and do the things. But I'm aware that … people think I'm too young. I'm too Black. I'm aware of all those things and I'm still go
Polk Award Winners: Jason Motlagh
Jason Motlagh, a journalist and filmmaker, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the founder of Blackbeard Films. He won the Polk's Sydney Schanberg Prize for “This Will End in Blood and Ashes,” an account of the collapse of order in Haiti.
“Once you've gotten used to this kind of metabolism, it can be hard to walk away from it. Ordinary life can be a little flat sometimes. And so that's always kind of built in. I accept that. I think I've just tried to be more honest about like, [am I t
Polk Award Winners: Brian Howey
Brian Howey is a freelance journalist who won the Polk Award for Justice Reporting after exposing a deceptive police tactic widely used in California. He began the project, which was eventually published by the Los Angeles Times and Reveal, as a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
“It’s one thing to hear about this tactic and hear about parents being questioned in this way. It’s another thing entirely to hear the change in a parent’s voice when they realize for the
Polk Award Winners: Meribah Knight
Meribah Knight is a reporter with Nashville Public Radio. She won the Polk Award for Podcasting for “The Kids of Rutherford County,” produced with ProPublica and Serial, which revealed a shocking approach to juvenile discipline in one Tennessee county.
“Where does it leave me? It leaves me with a searing anger that is going to propel me to the next thing. But we’ve made some real improvement. And that’s worth celebrating. That’s worth recognizing and saying, This work matters, people are paying
Polk Award Winners: Jesse Coburn
Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter at Streetsblog. He won the Polk Award for Local Reporting for "Ghost Tags," his series on the black market for temporary license plates.
“You can imagine this having never become a problem, because it’s so weird. What a weird scam. I’m going to print and sell tens of thousands of paper license plates. But someone figured it out. And then a lot more people followed. It just exploded.”
This is the second in a week-long series of conversations with winners
Polk Award Winners: Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers
Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers won this year's George Polk Award for Television Reporting for “Inside Wagner,” their Vice News investigation of Russian mercenaries on the Ukraine front and in the Central African Republic.
“One of the best takeaways I got from seven or eight years at Vice is that it’s not enough for something to be important when you’re figuring out how to make a story. It’s the intersection of important and interesting. And that has taught me that people will watch anything, a
Rerun: #429 Vinson Cunningham (Feb 2021)
Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His novel, published in March 2024, is Great Expectations.“I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.”Show notes:
@vc
Episode 575: Megan Kimble
Megan Kimble is the former executive editor of The Texas Observer and has written for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Guardian. Her new book is City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways.
“I have never lived in a city that was not wrapped in highways. It’s hard for me to imagine anything else. And I think that’s true for a lot of people today. ... [But] we have known since the origins of the interstate highways program that building highways through
Episode 574: Zach Harris
Zach Harris is a journalist whose latest article for Rolling Stone is "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling."
“I'm not like a staff writer who has … status and access. But if I come up with something fun that you've never heard of that might connect to the larger culture, then it kind of hits a nerve and a sweet spot for me. Someone like a pro skateboarder or a pro bowler, you guys have never heard of. And so being able to present a person and a culture and a world to a wider audience,
Episode 573: Rozina Ali
Rozina Ali is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the winner of the 2023 National Magazine Award for Reporting. Her latest article is “Raised in the West Bank, Shot in Vermont.”“I think it’s very, very important to speak to people as people. To speak to sources—even if you have the juiciest story—to really give them the grace. I think everyone deserves it, especially people who are going through such a difficult time.”Show notes:
@rozina_ali
rozina-ali.com
Ali’s Ne
Episode 572: Derek Thompson
Derek Thompson is a staff writer for The Atlantic and host of the podcast Plain English.
“I am an inveterate dilettante. I lose interest in subjects all the time. Because what I find interesting about my job is the invitation to solve mysteries. And once you solve one, two, three mysteries in a space, then the meta-mystery of that space begins to dim. And all these other subjects—that's the new unlit space that needs the flashlight. And that's the part of the job that I love the most: that there
Episode 571: Tessa Hulls
Tessa Hulls is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and The Capitol Hill Times. Her new book, a graphic memoir, is Feeding Ghosts.
“This project is the thing I have spent my entire life running from. I was incredibly determined to never touch this, either personally or professionally. … It was more an eventual act of resignation than a desire.”
Show notes:
@tessahulls
tessahulls.com
17:00 Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi • Pantheon • 2004)
19:00 richards
Episode 570: Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and several other books. Her new memoir is Grief Is for People.
“You take a little sliver of yourself and you offer it up to be spun around in perpetuity in the public imagination. That is the sacrifice you make. And it makes everything just a little bit worse. So it's the opposite of catharsis, but it's worth it. It's worth it for what you get in return: a book.”
Show notes:
sloanecrosley.com
@askanyone
Longform Podcast #343: Sloane
Episode 569: Lauren Markham
Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and VQR. Her new book is A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging.
“It took me a while to figure out that this is actually a book about storytelling, about journalistic storytelling, about the kind of myths we spin culturally and politically, about history, about current events, and the role of journalism within all of
Episode 568: Zoë Schiffer
Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor for Platformer. Her new book is Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter.“Being the person where it's a fireable offense to leak to you … is kind of a badge of honor.”Show notes:
zoeschiffer.com
Schiffer's Platformer archive
Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter (Portfolio • 2024)
03:00 Schiffer's Verge archive
08:00 "How Twitter’s child porn problem ruined its plans for an OnlyFans competitor" (Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton • Verge •
Episode 567: Chris Ryan
Chris Ryan is the editorial director for The Ringer, where he co-hosts The Watch and The Rewatchables.
“There is a point where there’s just too much stuff. I can’t read a 5,000-word feature, 10 blog posts, and listen to three podcasts, and then do it all again the next day. So that is the line you walk in digital publishing, whether it’s for editorial stuff or for podcasting. You have to accept the fact that there is not going to be a single person out there who listens to it all, and who can re
Episode 566: Patricia Evangelista
Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist whose coverage of the drug war in the Philippines has appeared in Rappler, Esquire, and elsewhere. Her recent book is Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country.“It is hard to describe the beat I do without saying very often it involves people who have died. And it seemed like an unfair way to frame it. It didn't quite seem right. … Sometimes there's no dead body, or sometimes there's 6,000, but the function is the same: that t
Episode 565: Susan B. Glasser
Susan Glasser, the former editor of Politico and Foreign Policy, writes the "Letter from Washington" column for the The New Yorker. Her most recent book, written with Peter Baker, is The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.
“There’s a great benefit to leaving Washington and then coming back, or frankly leaving anywhere and then coming back. I think you have much wider open eyes. Washington, like a lot of company towns, takes on a logic of its own, and things that can seem crazy to the r
Episode 564: Rob Copeland
Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for The New York Times. His recent book is The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend.“If I stab you, I'm going to stab you in the chest, not the back. You're going to see it coming. ... But if you're going to tell me something's wrong, you have to keep talking. I'm not going to take your word for it. I have a reason for why I believe my reporting to be true, and I'm going to present it to you as best I can.
Episode 563: Miles Johnson
Miles Johnson is an investigative reporter for the Financial Times. He is the author of Chasing Shadows: A True Story of Drugs, War and the Secret World of International Crime and the host of Hot Money: The New Narcos.
“I’m really fascinated always by the ways in which people just have to do really boring parts of running a crime organization … I love the banalities of this stuff. We have a fictionalized version of crime groups and it’s obviously glamorous, and they’re really smart, but there’s
Rerun: #533 Hua Hsu (May 2023)
Hua Hsu is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His book Stay True won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for memoir.“I've worked as a journalist … for quite a while. … But this [book] was the thing that was always in the back of my mind. Like, this was the thing that a lot of that was in service of. Just becoming better at describing a song or describing the look of someone's face—these were all things that I implicitly understood as skills I needed to acquire. ... It is sort of an origin story for
Rerun: #528 Roxanna Asgarian (Mar 2023)
Roxanna Asgarian is the author of We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America.“Every once in a while, I'll have someone just freak out at me. And it keeps you honest, in a way, because they don't owe you anything. People don't owe you anything as a journalist. ... But everyone reacts to trauma differently and some people really do want to talk about it. And I think the families in this book really wanted to talk about it and it felt like no one was even p
Episode 562: Daisy Alioto
Daisy Alioto is a journalist and the CEO of Dirt Media.
“I don't think I was ever super precious about my writing, but if I was, I'm zero percent precious about it now. Every time I write for Dirt, it saves the company money. ... Nothing will make you sit down and write 800 words in 20 minutes than just needing to get it done. And that is a change that I've seen in myself. I would encourage everyone to be less precious about their writing.”
Show notes:
daisyalioto.com
00:00 Dirt
09:00 "Marie
Episode 561: Ian Coss
Ian Coss is a journalist, audio producer, and composer. He is the host of Forever is a Long Time and The Big Dig.
“One thing that I really carried with me in making the show is a belief that bureaucracy is interesting. And that once you get through the jargon and wonky sounding stuff … beyond that it’s all just human drama.”
Show notes:
@ian_coss
iancoss.com
32:00 Isabel Hibbard’s website
33:00 Forever is a Long Time (PRX • 2021)
37:00 Lacy Roberts’ website
Learn more about your ad choi
Episode 560: Mosi Secret
Mosi Secret has written for ProPublica, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. His new podcast is Radical.“I think this story made me call on parts of myself that are not journalistic because I don’t really think that’s the way we’re going to get out of this at this point in my life. I think that it takes a more radical reimagining of who we are as human beings, the ways in which we’re connected, and what we owe to each other. And that’s not a reporting thing—that’s a ‘who are you’ kind o
Rerun: #460 Mary Roach (Oct 2021)
Mary Roach is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law."In these realms of the taboo, there's a tremendous amount of material that is really interesting, but that people have stayed away from. ... I'm kind of a bottom feeder. It's down there on the bottom where people don't want to go. But if that's what it takes to find interesting, new material, I'm fine with it. I don't care. I'm not easily grossed out. I don't feel that there's any reason why
Episode 559: Craig Mod
Craig Mod is a writer and photographer who has two newsletters, Roden and Ridgeline. His new book is Things Become Other Things.
“There'll be days where … I’m doing a walk and I'll just be like, I don't know what is going to move me today. And then out of the blue, there'll be this small interaction that when you really pay attention to it, it contains kind of this universe of kindness and patience that you otherwise pass by or ignore. If you're in the general mode of looking at things and then
Episode 558: Mona Chalabi
Mona Chalabi is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, where she is the data editor. Her New York Times Magazine piece “9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting.“I kind of think of protest as just saying what you believe. And sometimes, it’s considered protest because it’s outside of the institutions of power. So you’re saying, Hey, Palestinians deserve human rights,
Episode 557: Adam Grant
Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcasts Work Life and Re: Thinking. His new book is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things.
“If you only focus on your own interest, you tend to develop novel ideas, but not necessarily useful ideas. And so for me, the audience is a filter. … I might have 30 ideas for a book. Let me hone in on the four or five that also might be relevant to other people. The goal there is to make a contribution.”
Show notes
Episode 556: Jesse David Fox
Jesse David Fox covers comedy for Vulture, where he hosts the podcast Good One. His new book is Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work.
“There’s a complete lack of anyone who’s ever written about comedy seriously compared to any other art form. There’s just nothing. … So the challenge was, how do you start a conversation that no one has been participating in?”
Show notes:
@JesseDavidFox
Fox’s Vulture archive
3:00 Jason Zinoman’s New York Times archive
5:0
Episode 555: Evan Hughes
Evan Hughes is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, The Atavist and many others. His book, just out in paperback, is Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup.
“It should be called slow-form journalism…. It is heavily edited. It’s heavily fact checked. And chances are, you’re not going to be the first. Maybe you’re going to be first to reveal some piece of it. I have made peace with like, I’m not the scoop guy. I’m the person who c
Episode 554: Yepoka Yeebo
Yepoka Yeebo has written for The Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Quartz. Her new book is Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World.
“Initially it was like, Why are you writing about a con man? He makes Ghana look bad. Nobody needs another crime story about an African person. I found that irritating, because isn't the whole point of being a complete person, complete people, is we contain multitudes? We too can be epic, world-leading con men! Als
Episode 553: Clare Malone
Clare Malone is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her latest article is ”Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Emotional Truths.’”
“You're going to work a lot of hours if you want to be successful, and you're probably not going to make as much money as your dumb friend from college does. You're choosing it for a different reason, but I do think we have to make efforts to have the [journalism] industry be a middle-class profession.”
Show notes:
Malone's New Yorker archive
Malone's FiveThirtyEight archive
03:00 "CN
Episode 552: Azam Ahmed
Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for The New York Times. His new book is Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance.
“I think the fundamental question I always ask when I go into a new place, whether I’m covering currencies, or hedge funds, or geopolitics in Afghanistan, or the war—it’s what does this mean to the world right now? What does the world need to know and how does it fit into that space?”
Show notes:
@azamsa
Episode 551: Kashmir Hill
Kashmir Hill is a tech reporter for The New York Times. Her new book is Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It.“I often do feel like what my work is doing is preparing people for the way the world is going to change. With something like facial recognition technology, that's really important because if the world is changing such that every photo of you taken that's uploaded is going to be findable, it's going to change the decisions that you mak
Episode 550: Zeke Faux
Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg. His new book is Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.
“I have a rule of thumb, which is that if somebody did one scam, they probably did another scam. If they did one scam in the past and now they have a new thing, odds are good it’s also a scam. That’s not always true, but that was definitely borne out sometimes in crypto-world.”
Show notes:
@ZekeFaux
zekefaux.com
Faux on Longform
Faux’s Bloomberg archive
06:00 “S
Episode 549: Reginald Dwayne Betts
Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder of the nonprofit Freedom Reads. His New York Times Magazine article "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" won the National Magazine Award. His new podcast is Almost There.
“I felt like I had to own becoming something and intuitively understood that if I didn't lay claim to desiring to be something, that it would be too many other forces that would be pulling on me to dictate that I become something else. … When you s
Rerun: #512 Audie Cornish (Nov 2022)
Audie Cornish, the former host NPR’s All Things Considered, is an anchor and correspondent for CNN. Her podcast is The Assignment.
“I think there is journalism inherent in an interview. Like the interview itself should be considered a piece of journalism. It isn't always. Sometimes the vibe is that it’s a little window dressing or that it's personality driven and I don't subscribe to that. I think that it has its own journalism. It's my journalism.”
Show notes:
@AudieCornish
Cornish's NPR arch
Episode 548: Susan Burton
Susan Burton is an editor at This American Life, the author of the memoir Empty, and the host of the podcast The Retrievals.“I know I have much more anger than I reveal, and I don’t think that’s uncommon. Especially for women. There’s been a lot of attention to that in recent years—the anger of women, how it’s expressed and not expressed. But I think that among the things I’ve stifled for years are just my true feelings, and I’ve always wanted to be close to people and to be intimate wi
Episode 547: Jamie Loftus
Jamie Loftus is a comedian, writer, and podcaster. Her new book is Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.
“Comedy has been super helpful to me because it's so based on failing every night sometimes that I wasn't afraid of failure in the same way because it's just like, Well, that's going to happen to me at some point this week. Why not in this format?”
Show notes:
jamieloftus.xyz
00:00 Lolita Podcast (iHeartRadio • 2020-21)
01:00 Aack Cast! (iHeartRadio • 2021)
01:00 My Year in Mensa (iHea
Episode 546: Javier Zamora
Javier Zamora is the author of Unaccompanied, a poetry collection, and Solito, a memoir.
“There was something that I felt eating away at me, which made me a very angry and volatile teenager. And I think I was an angry teenager because I had this trauma that nobody around me could talk about, and that I didn't have the right therapist to help me unpack. So the cheapest thing that I had was poetry.”
Show notes:
@jzsalvipoet
javierzamora.net
03:00 “Reading Neruda and Learning to Heal My Diaspori
Episode 545: Jennifer Senior
Jennifer Senior is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her article ”What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Her most recent article is ”The Ones We Sent Away.”
“I'm at the point where I'm only thinking about the big questions and the difficulty of being a human as what matter most. That's what I want to keep focusing on. Our common frailties, our common bonds, our common difficulties. Because clearly we are not going to bond politically as a nation, right?
Episode 544: Casey Newton and Kevin Roose
Casey Newton writes the Platformer newsletter. Kevin Roose is a technology columnist for The New York Times. Together they co-host the podcast Hard Fork.
CN: “People actually like to be a little bit confused. They like listening to things where people are talking about things they don’t quite understand, which was very counterintuitive to me. I think a lot of editor-types would scoff at, but I’ve come around.”
KR: “We can revisit subjects and we do. We can change our minds. Print pieces feel so
Episode 543: Jeff Goodell
Jeff Goodell is a climate change writer for Rolling Stone and the author of seven books. His new book is The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.
“I would not have said this even five years ago, but I have really come to see this now as a crime story. This is a kind of looting of the atmosphere of the earth, siphoning off resources and grossly profiting off of that at the expense of many other people—billions of people—on this planet. And I understand that’s a big thing
Episode 542: Peter Shamshiri
Peter Shamshiri is a lawyer and co-host of the podcast 5-4.“Because of the nature of law, I think a lot of journalists find it hard to take a position—or to sort of tip their hand about what they actually believe—because so much of the discourse around how law should operate is about neutrality and the general perspective that the law is non-partisan, non-ideological. I think the result is media coverage that is particularly lacking in those regards. And that's where we swoop in.”Show n
Episode 541: Donovan X. Ramsey
Donovan X. Ramsey is a journalist and author of the new book When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era.
“I've only ever wanted to write about Black people—and that includes the elements of our lives that are difficult. I’ve always prided myself on being able to metabolize that information and not really be harmed by it. And this book really taught me that writing and processing is not just something that you do in your head. That the information does go through you as you're
Rerun: #531 David Grann (Apr 2023)
David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
“I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.”
S
Episode 540: Heidi Blake
Heidi Blake is a writer for The New Yorker and the author of two books, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West and The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup, with Jonathan Calvert. Her latest article is “The Fugitive Princess of Dubai.”“I definitely feel as an investigative reporter that I feel very driven by my own capacity for shock and outrage and genuinely feeling like this
Episode 539: Mitchell Prothero
Mitchell Prothero covers intelligence and crime for Vice News. His new podcast with Project Brazen is Gateway: Cocaine, Murder, and Dirty Money in Europe.
“I’m really interested in transnational networks—crime, intelligence. I’m fascinated by the gray. Like, when is something legal and when is something illegal? One thing with this Gateway project [was that] nobody could ever tell me that moment where money goes from absolutely being illegal to being legal.”
Show notes:
@mitchprothero
Prothero
Episode 538: Brittany Luse
Brittany Luse is the host of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute.
“One of the things I love about this job is everything is practice. I love it. It's like if a show is great and everyone loves it, you gotta put on another one. You just gotta do it again. And if the show didn't quite do what you'd hoped or set out to do in your mind and in your heart, you gotta do another one. I just love it. You can never feel too good and you can never feel too bad.”
Show notes:
@bmluse
02:00 "#497: Sam Sanders" (Longfo
Episode 537: Brady Dale
Brady Dale covers cryptocurrency for Axios. His new book is SBF: How The FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy.
“I am a fast writer. I’ve always been fast. I just sat down and did the math on it and I was like, If I can write 1,500 words a day, I can write this book. And I can do that.”
Show notes:
@BradyDale
bradydale.com
Dale's Axios archive
00:00 SBF: How The FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy (Wiley • 2023)
09:00 Dale's Observer archive
09:00 Dale's CoinDesk
Episode 536: Lisa Belkin
Lisa Belkin is a journalist and the author of four books. Her latest is Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night.
“I didn’t experience it as luck. It—and this is going to be a little woo woo—but it really felt like these people had been sitting there for 100 years saying, Well, it took you long enough, because everything just fit together. I didn’t have to manipulate anything.”
Show notes:
@lisabelkin
lisabelkin.com
Lisa Belkin on Longform
Belkin’s New York
Episode 535: Amy Chozick
Amy Chozick is an author, journalist, executive producer, and showrunner. Her latest feature for The New York Times is ”Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth.”
“The subject thought it was a hit job. Twitter thought it was a puff piece. I don’t know, guys. … I want to explain to people what it feels like to be around someone who you know you shouldn’t believe, but you can’t help believing them because this is what their personality is like when you’re with them.”
Show notes:
@amychozick
Episode 534: Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder is the author of eleven books, including The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains. His latest is Rough Sleepers.
“I do think it’s an interesting challenge to try to write about virtue, with all that’s always mixed with it. Some writers have said it’s virtually impossible … but it’s not impossible. … People who are really trying, struggling against the odds, I think they’re worth writing about.”
Show notes:
tracykidder.com
Kidder on Longform
Kidder’s Atlantic archi
Episode 533: Hua Hsu
Hua Hsu is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His book Stay True won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for memoir.
“I've worked as a journalist … for quite a while. … But this [book] was the thing that was always in the back of my mind. Like, this was the thing that a lot of that was in service of. Just becoming better at describing a song or describing the look of someone's face—these were all things that I implicitly understood as skills I needed to acquire. ... It is sort of an origin story for why I g
Episode 532: Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is one of the founding editors of Wired, where his current title is Senior Maverick. His new book is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I'd Known Earlier.
“I never wrote a book because I wanted to do a good deed. I just wanted to tell a good story.”
Show notes:
@kevin2kelly
kk.org
Kelly on Longform
Longform Podcast #376: Kevin Kelly
Kelly’s Wired Magazine archive
13:00 The Inevitable (Penguin Books • 2017)
14:00 Vanishing Asia (Publishers Group West • 2021)
22:00 @MrBeast on
Polk Award Winners: Terrence McCoy
Terrence McCoy is The Washington Post's Rio de Janeiro Bureau Chief. He won the George Polk award for his series "The Amazon, Undone" on the illegal and often violent exploitation of the rainforest.
“When I first got to Brazil, the Amazon was an arena of mystique. But after you spend a fair amount of time in the Amazon, it becomes quite clear what the struggle is—and how human that struggle is.”
This is the last in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Award
Polk Award Winners: Lynsey Addario
Lynsey Addario is a photojournalist for The New York Times and National Geographic. She won the George Polk award for her photograph of the bodies of a woman and her two children alongside a friend who lay dying moments after a mortar struck them as they sought to flee Ukraine.
"If I have time to compose a photo—even if it's of a horrific topic—I will always try to make the most beautiful photograph because I want people to look. I want people to ask questions, to be engaged, to pay attention. A
Polk Award Winners: Tracy Wang and Nick Baker
Tracy Wang and Nick Baker of CoinDesk, along with their colleague Ian Allison, won the George Polk award for reporting that led to the fall of Sam Bankman-Fried and his cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
“Crypto had been kind of a backwater of reporting. It was kind of like nobody took it seriously. People didn’t know if it was a joke and they thought it was all drug dealers and fraudsters. And I was kind of thinking, well, that seems like a great place to be reporting.”
This is the third in a week-lo
Polk Award Winners: Lori Hinnant
Lori Hinnant is a reporter for the Associated Press. Along with videojournalist Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, and video producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, she won the George Polk Award for war reporting for covering the siege of Mariupol.“It’s really easy when you see raw footage flash by on the television to just see it as war as hell and this is very abstract. These are people with lives that were utterly ruined and they want to tell their stories. I mean, we’re not tal
Polk Award Winners: Theo Baker
Theo Baker is the investigations editor at The Stanford Daily. The first college student ever to win a George Polk Award, Baker received a special recognition for uncovering allegations that pioneering research co-authored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a renowned neuroscientist, was supported in part by manipulated imagery.“It’s useful to intellectualize it because when you actually get going, this is something that keeps me up at night. … It’s the last thing I think about
Episode 531: David Grann
David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder.
“I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.”
Show
Episode 530: Vann R. Newkirk II
Vann Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the host of Floodlines: The Story of an Unnatural Disaster. His new podcast is Holy Week: The Story of a Revolution Undone.“I’m often toggling between environmental justice, between the history of race and racial organization in America. And to me, they’re all one story, and I’m trying to tell the story about how the conditions of marginalization in America have made and shaped the present. That’s it. That’s one story.”Show notes:
N
Episode 529: Liz Hoffman
Liz Hoffman, a former The Wall Street Journal reporter, is now the business and finance editor for Semafor. Her new book is Crash Landing: The Inside Story of How the World's Biggest Companies Survived an Economy on the Brink.“I think these systems are hugely important and are wielded by people who are not that accessible. If you can sort of open the aperture a little bit and unpack that and explain to people what’s going on and leave them to sort of, you know, come away with their own
Episode 528: Roxanna Asgarian
Roxanna Asgarian is the law and courts reporter for the Texas Tribune. Her new book is We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America.
“Every once in a while, I'll have someone just freak out at me. And it keeps you honest, in a way, because they don't owe you anything. People don't owe you anything as a journalist.… But everyone reacts to trauma differently and some people really do want to talk about it. And I think the families in this book really wanted to talk a
Episode 527: Mary Childs
Mary Childs is a co-host of the podcast Planet Money and the author of The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All.
“I love aberrations. I love when things go wrong. You get a high stress situation, you get all of the manifestations of personality. We're our most selves, if not our best selves, at those times. I like the [stories] that have embedded in them all of those conduits of power and that reveal the greater system.”
Show notes:
@mdc
marychilds.com
Plane
Episode 526: Laurel Braitman
Laurel Braitman is a science writer, the author of Animal Madness: Inside Their Minds, and the founder of Writing Medicine. Her new book is What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love.
“My life was becoming unmanageable, in a way. I was using success in many ways like a drug, and I’d say like an analgesic on the sorts of difficult feelings I hadn’t wanted to face truly since childhood. And we are rewarded in this culture for these kinds of outward forms of success that often ha
Episode 525: Sam Fragoso
Sam Fragoso is a writer, filmmaker, and the host of the podcast Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso.“We have an hour together. We may not have another. We're here for a brief moment and then, you know, we die. And I want this thing to be as good as it can be. If if it's anything less than that, I'm just not interested. … And that, to me, is why you keep doing it: because that feeling when you really feel like you've put someone's life on the record in a way that is beautiful and painful and idio
Episode 524: Eric Lach
Eric Lach is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers New York. His latest article is “The Mayor and the Con Man.”“I think about my own trajectory, my little generation of journalists—it was easier to get jobs reporting on national politics than to get a job reporting on something that you could see and go to and that is a really strange thing, the relief and the joy that I feel like when I can just take the subway twenty minutes to go see something interesting for a story or t
Episode 523: Willa Paskin
Willa Paskin, a former TV critic, is the host of the podcast Decoder Ring.
“I want it to feel like a trap door. When you push on a trap door, there’s like a little spring. If it’s the right idea, you start to look into it, and you’re like, Oh, it’s giving a little.”
Show notes:
@willapaskin
00:00 Paskin's Slate archive
00:00 Paskin's Salon archive
00:00 Paskin's Vulture archive
00:00 Decoder Ring (Slate)
00:00 "The Invention of Hydration" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Apr 2021)
00:00 "Cellin
Episode 522: Abraham Josephine Riesman
Abraham Josephine Riesman is a journalist who writes often for New York and is the author of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. Her second book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, will be published in March.
“You’re sure that there’s a level of unreality, but you’re not sure that it’s all fake. There’s stuff there that seems either plausible or sometimes you go ‘there’s no way you could fake that.’ And sometimes you’re right, and a lot of times you’re somewhere in
Episode 521: Jonah Weiner
Jonah Weiner is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and co-author of the newsletter Blackbird Spyplane.“It's a version of myself. It's a hyperbolic version of myself. And I think it keeps it fun for me. It doesn't feel like a job. Ideally, it keeps it fun for readers. And I think that there actually is this function where X out of 10 people coming to it, their eyes are going to cross and they're going say, I'm out. No thanks. And that's fine, because the Y out of 10 wh
Episode 520: Delia Cai
Delia Cai is the senior vanities correspondent for Vanity Fair and publishes the media newsletter Deez Links. Her debut novel Central Places is out this week.
“This was in like, 2011, where I think actual journalists were still trying to figure out ‘Is it gross to be a brand?’ And at least in school, they were all about it. They’re like, ‘You need a brand, you need to think about what your niche is going to be, you need to think about engaging your audience.’ We had to make websites, we had to b
Episode 519: Peggy Orenstein
Peggy Orenstein is a journalist and author. Her latest book is Unraveling.
“The challenge is… to not want to say, I need to know what the book is about. I need to have my chapters. I need to know what exactly I'm looking for. Because it's really scary to just go out and report and have trust that there's going to be interesting things and that if you just keep going, you're going to find them. So to not foreclose possibility and options and ideas is the biggest reporting challenge for those sort
Episode 518: Jonathan Goldstein
Jonathan Goldstein is an audio producer and the host of Heavyweight.“I wasn’t taking myself very seriously, initially. I liked working with my friends and family because I think I was a little more comfortable with them. Then in the second season people were writing in with real problems, and they were looking at me as a kind of expert. It was terrifying to meet with these people and see the look of hopefulness in their eyes. ... I realized I need to step it up and even if I didn’t feel
Episode 517: Katy Vine
Katy Vine is an executive editor for Texas Monthly.
“This is a huge state. There’s so much, and it’s different everywhere you look. You just go to Houston and there’s worlds within worlds within worlds just within the one city. You go to San Antonio and you’re in a different country, and you go to Dallas, you’re in a totally different country. … It’s wild to me. It’s endlessly fascinating.”
Show notes:
@Katy_Vine
Vine on Longform
Vine’s Texas Monthly archive
07:00 "Family Circus" (Texas Mont
Rerun: #473 Khabat Abbas (Jan 2022)
Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer from northeastern Syria, and the winner of the 2021 Kurt Schork News Fixer Award.
”I can see from my experience that there is a gap between the editors, who are kind of elites in their luxury offices, and the amazing journalists who are in the field, who all sympathize with what they are seeing on the ground and want to cover [it], but they have to satisfy the editors. And this is how we end up having little gaps in the ways of coverin
Rerun: #483 Chloé Cooper Jones (Apr 2022)
Chloé Cooper Jones is a philosopher and journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, The Verge, The Believer and many other publications. Her new book is Easy Beauty.
”I literally didn't talk to anyone in my life about disability until I was, like, 30. Ever. Not my husband, not my friends, as little as possible to my own mother. I had this very bad idea that what I needed to do in every single social situation was wait until people could unsee my body…. And it was all in service of trying to be tru
Episode 516: David Wolman
David Wolman is the author of six books and a magazine features writer who has written for Wired, Outside, and The New York Times. His latest article is ”Vanished in the Pacific.”
“I feel like conversations about characters, character development, strong characters gets a little nauseating in my field sometimes because it’s like, of course — you need that like you need periods at the ends of sentences. Do we really have to keep saying it? But in this conversation it’s worth saying, because there
Episode 515: Clint Smith
Clint Smith is a poet and a staff writer for The Atlantic. His most recent book is How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America and his latest feature is “Monuments to the Unthinkable.”
“I've been to a lot of places that carry a history of death and slaughter and murder. I've been on plantations. I've been in execution chambers. I've sat on electric chairs. I've been on death row. But I have never experienced anything like what I experienced walking through the
Grant Wahl (1973-2022)
Grant Wahl was the founder of Fútbol with Grant Wahl, a longtime writer for Sports Illustrated, and the author of The Beckham Experiment and Masters of Modern Soccer. He died on December 10, covering the World Cup in Qatar. This interview was recorded in January 2016.
“I never would have predicted I would do soccer full time. And that’s happened. I’d love to say that this was all planned and inevitable but it really wasn’t.”
Show notes:
Fútbol with Grant Wahl
Wahl's Sports Illustrated archive
Episode 514: Ryan O'Hanlon
Ryan O’Hanlon is a soccer writer for ESPN. His new book is Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.
“It wasn’t just that I was burned out from two years at The Ringer, it was being burned out from nine years of just freakin’ bobbing up and down to keep my head above water, and changing the water every year.”
Show notes:
@rwohan
ryanohanlon.com
O’Hanlon’s article archive
05:00 Net Gains (Abrams Books • 2022)
13:00 O’Hanlon’s Run of Play archive
13:00 O’Hanlon’s Grantlan
Episode 513: Bradley Hope and Tom Wright
Bradley Hope and Tom Wright are former journalists at The Wall Street Journal, the co-founders of journalism studio Project Brazen, and the co-authors of the book Billion Dollar Whale.
Their new podcast is Corinna and The King. Hope’s new book is “The Rebel and the Kingdom.”
“We’re a little bit skeptical of just jumping into the big story of the day with something that doesn’t feel differentiated. It needs to have character, storytelling — it can’t just be a great topic, or an important topic, e
Rerun: #481 Hanif Abdurraqib (Mar 2022)
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. His latest book is A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance.
“I learn from hearing my elders tell stories. There’s an inherent knowing of yourself as a vessel for narration who also has to—is required to—hold the attention of others at all costs. And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do. The broader project of my writing is almo
Episode 512: Audie Cornish
Audie Cornish is a journalist and the former host of NPR’s All Things Considered. Her new CNN Audio podcast is The Assignment.“I think there is journalism inherent in an interview. Like the interview itself should be considered a piece of journalism. It isn't always. Sometimes the vibe is that it’s a little window dressing or that it's personality driven and I don't subscribe to that. I think that it has its own journalism. It's my journalism.”Show notes:
@AudieCornish
Cornish's NPR arc
Episode 511: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times and the creator of the new Hulu television series Fleishman Is in Trouble, based on her bestselling novel.
“I took the cast out to dinner … And the way they began talking to each other, which was very intimate, was like a punch in the stomach. Because I had always thought that I got people to open up to me [in celebrity profiles]. And I was like, Oh, no, I got them to answer questions differently than maybe they had before. … And that
Episode 510: Nancy Updike and Jenelle Pifer
Nancy Updike is a founding producer and senior editor at This American Life. Jenelle Pifer, a former Longform Podcast editor, is a senior producer at Serial. Their new three-part podcast, hosted by Updike and produced by Pifer, is We Were Three.
Updike: “I say it’s a story that’s a bit about COVID, but really about a family, and that’s the closest I’ve gotten to a short version. I don’t know. Why is that? I never have a short version of something I’m working on—never.”
Pifer: “We were doing a lo
Episode 509: Andy Kroll
Andy Kroll is an investigative reporter for ProPublica. His new book is A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy.
“I think a book has ruined me for writing hot takes and spicy Twitter dunks and all of these other one- and two-dimensional bits of ephemera. I wasn't really a big fan of it in the first place, but I can't do it anymore. A book forces you to look at the world in a much more fine grained, humane, empathetic way, and there's no going back from that.”
Show
Episode 508: Erika Hayasaki
Erika Hayasaki has written for The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The Atlantic. Her new book is Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family.
“I don’t subscribe to the belief that it’s our story because we’re the journalist that wrote it — especially when people are sharing these really intimate, deep, painful moments. That is not my story. That’s their story that they've collaborated in a way with me to share through these interviews.”
Show notes:
@ErikaHaya
Episode 507: Rachel Aviv
Rachel Aviv is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her new book is Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us.
“I used to feel that if I knew everything, that was a good sign. And I've become more aware that if you know everything you want to argue, that's not such a good sign…. Do I have a genuine question? Is there something I’m trying to figure out? Then the story is worth telling. But if I don’t really have a question or if my question is already answered, then maybe
Episode 506: Sam Anderson
Sam Anderson is a writer for New York Times Magazine and the author of Boom Town.“I love being in that place where everything is just coming in, and everything is potentially important, and I’m underlining every great sentence that John McPhee has ever written and then I’m typing it up into this embarrassingly long set of reading notes, documents, organized by books. And then when you sit down with it as a writer who has a job, and his job is to fill a little window of a magazine or web
Episode 505: Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa are reporters for The Washington Post and co-authors of the new book His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice.
“Looking at George Floyd's family history, looking at the poverty that he grew up in, looking at the schools that he attended, which were segregated, looking at the opportunities that were denied to him and the struggles he had in the criminal justice system—it's an extraordinary American experience, in part becaus
Episode 504: Pablo Torre
Pablo Torre is a sports journalist and the host of the ESPN Daily podcast.“I have an open borders policy as a podcast. All are welcome, but I’m specifically appealing to people who want a little bit more of that magazine curation. What if I gave you one thing today, and that thing was the thing you needed, and what if that thing is deliberately different from every other way you consume sports? That’s the premise.”Show notes:
@pablotorre
pablotorre.squarespace.com
Torre on Longform
Torr
Episode 503: Evan Osnos
Evan Osnos is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury.“I'm always trying to get inside a subculture. That's the thing that I think has been the most enduring, attractive element for me. Is there a world that has its own manners and vocabulary and internal rhythms and status structure? And who looks down on whom? And why? And who venerates whom? Who's a big deal in these worlds? And if I can get into that, it doesn't even really matter to
Episode 502: Graciela Mochkofsky
Graciela Mochkofsky is a writer for The New Yorker and dean of CUNY's Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She has written six nonfiction books in Spanish. Her new book, her first in English, is The Prophet of the Andes.
“It connects with me as a journalist, actually — it’s this idea of just seeking truth and how elusive that is. So this is a person who thinks he can get to the true meaning of God and of how he needs to live. And he thinks that by asking the right questions, and by reading, an
Episode 501: Nona Willis Aronowitz
Nona Willis Aronowitz, an editor and author, writes a sex and love advice column for Teen Vogue. Her new book is Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution.
“I'm getting a lot of emails from people saying basically ‘You've inspired me to break up with my man tomorrow.’ Or ‘I may not ever break up with my man, but I'm starting to tell the truth, at least to myself, about my relationship.’ And I think a lot of people — even though I think being open about your feelings and acceptance o
Episode 500: Caitlin Dickerson
Caitlin Dickerson is a staff writer for The Atlantic covering immigration. Her latest article, on the secret history of U.S. government’s family-separation policy, is ”An American Catastrophe.”
“Interviewing separated families, I’ve found, is just on a whole other scale of pain and trauma. I’ve watched people have really intense PTSD flashbacks in front of me. I never wanted to risk asking a family to open up in that way if I didn’t know that I’d be able to use that material. The worst thing you
Episode 499: Yudhijit Bhattacharjee
Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer for National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. His new podcast is Chameleon: Scam Likely.“I want a crumpled piece of paper where there are enough ridges and valleys and lines for me to be able to navigate, and they have to be authentic. And then of course the best stories among them will have surprise and intrigue, and things that are completely unexpected happen somewhere along the way. But it's hard to anticipate all of that. Y
Episode 498: Hannah Goldfield
Hannah Goldfield is the food critic at The New Yorker.
“There are just only so many ways to say ‘crunchy.’ There's ‘crunchy,’ there's ‘crisp,’ there's ‘crispy,’ you can say something ‘crackles,’ and that's kind of it. It's really, really hard. And a lot of things are crunchy. It's a really specific sensation that needs to be described. But I've had moments where I'm like, I can't say crunchy again in a sentence. What am I going to do? How do I get this across?”
Show notes:
@hannahgoldfield
Gol
Episode 497: Sam Sanders
Sam Sanders is the former host of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. He hosts Vulture’s Into It, which launched last week.
“I don’t think I ever wanted a career where I was doing the same thing for 30 years. I think that, editorially, I had become someone who was really contemplating what kind of capital-j journalist I wanted to be, want to be, and I was questioning a lot of rules and the structure of what we think journalism is supposed to be, and I think I needed to be away from a legacy institution li
Episode 496: Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for New York Times Magazine, the host of Netflix's How to Change Your Mind, and the author of nine books. The latest is This Is Your Mind On Plants.“I have found myself at two distinct points in my history having this transition from being the journalist, learning at the feet of these people, to becoming an advocate. And it’s an awkward role for a journalist, but at a certain point it would be kind of false to pretend you didn't have points of vie
Episode 495: Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, is host of the new podcast Persona: The French Deception.
“One of these big scams is like a story. And in the story, what they're doing is they're manipulating you to be a participant in the story, and they're getting you so hooked that you will not just do anything they say, but you will invest yourself in bringing the story to its conclusion. And like, isn't that what you're doing if you're trying to get someone to listen to eight episodes, spen
Episode 494: Andrea Elliott
Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Her recent book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in An American City, won a Pulitzer Prize.
”I don’t see reporting as a one-way street. ... I think that people need to know as much as they can about you. And yes, there are boundaries ... but at the same time, the fact of the boundaries is something to talk about with the people you’re writing about. Isn’t it weird that this is my job to be reporting on your life when w
Rerun: #412 Nicholson Baker (Sep 2020)
Nicholson Baker is the author of 18 books of fiction and nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and many other publications. His latest book is Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act.
"In the end, I don’t care how famous you get, how widely read you are during your lifetime. You’re going to be forgotten. And you’re going to have five or six fans in the end. It’s going to be your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are going to say,
Episode 493: Rebecca Traister
Rebecca Traister is a writer for New York and the author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger. Her latest article is "The Necessity of Hope."
“A big motivation of this piece, which I think is framed in this there’s still reason to hope is actually the inverse of that. Which is: Let us be crystal clear about what is happening, what is lost, what is violated. The cruelty, the horror, and the injustice, and that is it only moving toward worse right now. And to establish that to
Episode 492: Alexandra Lange
Alexandra Lange is a design critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many other publications. Her new book is Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall.
“I really like to write about things that I can hold and experience. I'm not that interested in biography, but I am very interested in the biography of an object. ... Like I feel about the objects, I think, how most people feel about people. So what I'm always trying to do is communicate that enthusi
Episode 491: Lulu Garcia-Navarro
Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a former war correspondent and host of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Her new podcast, for the New York Times, is First Person.“I would always say that if you go cover a story and you already know what people are going to say, and you already have it in your head what the outcome is, and there's no surprise there, then that's a story that you shouldn't be working on. You have to allow the opportunity for there to be a journey. And for there to be something at the end of i
Episode 490: Matt Levine
Matt Levine is a finance columnist for Bloomberg News. His newsletter is Money Stuff.”I write a lot about people who have gotten in trouble with the SEC or the Justice Department. And a surprising subset of them will email me. And often I will have made fun of them, and they'll be like, ‘That was pretty fair.’”Show notes:
@matt_levine
Levine's Bloomberg News and Money Stuff newsletter archive
19:00 "The Goldman Sachs Aluminum Conspiracy Was Pretty Silly" (Bloomberg News • Nov 2014)
22:0
Introducing "Persona: The French Deception" from Longform's Evan Ratliff
We've got something a little different today, the trailer for co-host Evan Ratliff's brand-new podcast Persona: The French Deception. It's the story of Gilbert Chikli, one of the greatest con artists of all time. Over eight episodes, Evan investigates how Chikli duped some of the world’s most powerful people into handing over their fortunes, evaded the law for years, and became a Robin Hood-like hero to many in the process. More than just a tale of criminal genius, Persona is about the moment we
Episode 489: Molly Lambert
Molly Lambert is a writer and host of the new podcast HeidiWorld: The Heidi Fleiss Story.“I think as a writer I always had this thing: I don't want to be out front. I don't want the spotlight on me. I'm not an actor. I want to be lurking in the back with the cast accepting the applause, but I don't want to be the center of attention. And so I think kind of like making peace with like, Look man, it's fine to be the center of attention when you made something you're proud of.”Show notes:
Episode 488: Sam Knight
Sam Knight is a London-based staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold.“I had a kind of working definition of what a premonition was when I was writing this book, which is: It's not just a feeling. It's not just a hunch. It's just not like a sense in the air. It's like, you know. You know, and you don't even want to know because you can't know and no one's going to believe you that you know, but you know. And what are you
Rerun: #463 Mitchell S. Jackson (Nov 2021)
Mitchell S. Jackson is a journalist and author. His profile of Ahmaud Arbery, ”Twelve Minutes and a Life,” won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.”What is 'great'? 'Great' isn’t really sales, right? No one cares what James Baldwin sold. So: Are you doing the important work?”Show notes:
@MitchSJackson
mitchellsjackson.com
Jackson on Longform
00:00 "Twelve Minutes and a Life" (Runner’s World • Jun 2020)
01:00 Pafko at the Wall (Don DeLillo • Scribner • 2001)
03:00 "Ahmaud Arbery’
Episode 487: Joe Bernstein
Joe Bernstein is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News.
“The question of disinformation is almost an attempt to create a new mythology around why people act the way they do. I don’t mean to say that it’s some kind of nefarious plot. ... It’s a natural, or a convenient explanation. And that’s why I think it caught on for some time anyway.”
Show notes:
@Bernstein
Bernstein on Longform
02:00 "Bad News: Selling the Story of Disinformation" (Harper's • Aug 2021)
12:00 "How Tucker Carlson Stoked Whi
Episode 486: Vauhini Vara
Vauhini Vara is a contributing writer at Wired and author of the novel The Immortal King Rao.
“With a magazine story, it might be like six months or a year or two, if it's something that took you a long time. With this [novel], it was 13 years for me, but the sort of emotional arc felt similar, where there were these periods of despair and a sense that like, this wasn't going anywhere, and then these periods where like, I'm a genius and this is going to be the best book ever written. You go back
Polk Award Winners: Azmat Khan
Azmat Khan is an investigative reporter for the New York Times Magazine. She won the George Polk Award for uncovering intelligence failures and civilian deaths associated with U.S. air strikes.
“I think what was really damning for me is that, when I obtained these 1,300 records, in not one of them was there a single instance in which they describe any disciplinary action for anyone involved, or any findings of wrongdoing. … When I was looking at this in totality, suddenly it’s really hard to say
Polk Award Winners: Daniel Chang
Daniel Chang covers health care for the Miami Herald. Along with Carol Marbin Miller, he won the George Polk Award for "Birth & Betrayal," a series co-published with ProPublica that exposed the consequences of a 1988 law designed to shelter medical providers from lawsuits by funding lifelong care for children severely disabled by birth-related brain injuries.
“I think that someone on the healthcare beat looks for stories from the perspective of patients, people who want or need to access the hea
Polk Award Winners: Sarah Stillman
Sarah Stillman is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the director of the Global Migration Program at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She won the George Polk Award for "The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters."
“I’m all about the Venn diagram where the individual meaningful stories of things people are up against intersect with the big systemic injustice issues of our day. It feels like climate is clearly an enormous domain where it’s been hard in some ways to tell
Polk Award Winners: Maria Abi-Habib
Maria Abi-Habib is the bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for the New York Times. Along with her colleague Frances Robles, Abi-Habib won the George Polk Award for revealing concealed aspects of the murder of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse.
“We’re not going to stop covering Haiti just because you don’t like us … at the end of the day you owe it to your citizens to talk to the media because if you can’t talk to the media and actually answer some questions, how are you goin
Polk Award Winners: Clarissa Ward
Clarissa Ward is the chief international correspondent for CNN. Along with field producer Brent Swails and photojournalists William Bonnett and Scott McWhinnie, Ward won the 2022 George Polk Award for her real-time coverage of the rapid rise of the Taliban as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan last summer.
“I used to come back from war zones and feel completely disconnected from my life—disconnected from my friends, from my family. I would look down on people about the conversations they were
Episode 485: Jackie MacMullan
Jackie MacMullan is an NBA journalist who has written for The Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and ESPN. She hosts the podcast Icons Club for The Ringer.
“[Athletes] think they don't need journalists—and they're wrong. And I tell them all this. I'm like, ‘I know you think you've got your own production company, but we can tell your story better than you can.' That's just the truth. No one tells their own story the best. It's the people around them that tell the story the best. And nobody wants a
Episode 484: Alzo Slade
“Human beings, we are the same, right? Like when you come out of the womb, you need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to pee, you need to shit, and when it comes to emotional needs, you need to feel loved. You need to feel there's compassion, you know? You need to feel significant and of value. And when it comes to like the feeling of significance and feeling valued, I think that's where we start to get into trouble because the same things that you hold of value, I may not in the same way. […]
Episode 483: Chloé Cooper Jones
Chloé Cooper Jones is a philosopher and journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, The Verge, The Believer and many other publications. Her new book is Easy Beauty.”I literally didn't talk to anyone in my life about disability until I was, like, 30. Ever. Not my husband, not my friends, as little as possible to my own mother. I had this very bad idea that what I needed to do in every single social situation was wait until people could unsee my body…. And it was all in service of trying t
Episode 482: Maya Shankar
Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the host of A Slight Change of Plans.
”I am a type A person through and through. I love having the five-year plan and the ten-year plan, and mapping it all out. By nature, that's what I'm like. And I think the series of pivots that my life has naturally taken, or I've had to take, has kind of soured me on that whole way of thinking. […] Maybe it's also that I'm a more grateful person than I used to be. Like, I feel more gratitude, and so part of my orien
Episode 481: Hanif Abdurraqib
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. His new book is A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance.
“I learn from hearing my elders tell stories. There’s an inherent knowing of yourself as a vessel for narration who also has to—is required to—hold the attention of others at all costs. And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do. The broader project of my writing is almost
Episode 480: Joshua Yaffa
Joshua Yaffa is a correspondent for The New Yorker, the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia, and has been reporting from Ukraine for the last several weeks. His most recent article is "What the Russian Invasion Has Done to Ukraine."
“I’m not at all a conflict reporter. I don't like it, though who would like being in these situations? But this is the story, right? If you cover this part of the world, if the war in 2014 felt like the tectonic plates of hi
Episode 479: Heather Havrilesky
Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly and Ask Molly newsletters. Her latest book is Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage.“It’s not a good story when you're bullshitting people. I didn't want this book to feel like bullshit…. I wanted to show enough that you could feel reassured that it's normal to feel conflicted about your life and the people in it. It's normal to feel anxious about how much people love you. And it's normal to feel avoidant about how much people love you. It
Episode 478: Laura Shin
Laura Shin is a journalist covering cryptocurrency and hosts the podcast Unchained. Her new book is The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.“I was extremely well-acquainted with what the failings were with our traditional financial system. I was seeing through my other reporting how everything works now, and really understanding, whoa, this is not a good system. And then getting this education on what bitcoin is, I understood right aw
Episode 477: Tara Westover
Tara Westover is the author of Educated.
“I used to be so fearful. ... I was afraid of losing my family. Then, after I had lost them, I was afraid that I made the wrong decision. Then I wrote the book and I was afraid that was the wrong decision. Everything made me frightened back then, and I just—I don't have that feeling now.”
Show notes:
@tarawestover
tarawestover.com
00:00 Educated (Random House • 2018)
09:00 "I Am Not Proof of the American Dream" (New York Times • Feb 2022)
21:00 A Vis
Episode 476: Matthieu Aikins
Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine who has reported on Afghanistan since 2008. His new book is The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees.
“I think at some point you just say, screw it. I'm gonna act like a human being and help my friend. That's the most important thing. You actually realize, yeah, now that we're in it together, the only thing that matters is both of us staying alive and staying safe and getting where we need
Episode 475: Brian Reed and Hamza Syed
Brian Reed and Hamza Syed are co-hosts of the new podcast The Trojan Horse Affair.
“I had lost all faith in the reporting that already happened on the subject matter. And that was my mentality with each source and each interviewer. I wanted the debate ended in the room because I didn't want commentary beyond it. I didn't want any kind of interpretation beyond it. I wanted the situation to be resolved there and then…. And without certain answers, I thought we weren't going to be able to speak ab
Episode 474: Chuck Klosterman
Chuck Klosterman is a journalist and the author of eleven books, including his latest, The Nineties.
”Selling out… was very much injected into the way I understood the world…. And I am now supposed to do all of these interviews and all of these podcasts promoting this book. And because it's a book about the nineties… it feels incredibly uncomfortable to me…. I think young people assume that selling out is only about money: that if you try to do something to make money, that means you're selling
Episode 473: Khabat Abbas
Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer from northeastern Syria, and the winner of the 2021 Kurt Schork News Fixer Award.
”I can see from my experience that there is a gap between the editors, who are kind of elites in their luxury offices, and the amazing journalists who are in the field, who all sympathize with what they are seeing on the ground and want to cover [it], but they have to satisfy the editors. And this is how we end up having little gaps in the ways of coverin
Episode 472: Michael Schulman
Michael Schulman is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He recently profiled Jeremy Strong of Succession.
”There's an interesting moment that's part of this job where you’ve spent a lot of time with someone and it often feels very personal and very intimate. And then when you go to write the piece, you have to sort of take a breath and say to yourself, Okay, I'm not writing this for this person. I'm writing this for the reader.”
Show notes:
@MJSchulman
michael-schulman.com
Schulman on Longform
Episode 471: Sarah Marshall
Sarah Marshall is a writer and hosts the podcast You're Wrong About.”I love it when people tell me that listening to the way I talk about these people in the stories that we tell, and just about the world generally, has made them practice empathy more. I almost feel like I have preserved this a-little-bit-past version of myself, because I've been on this journey throughout the pandemic of becoming pretty cynical, and then deciding cynicism is a luxury and that it feels better, ultimatel
Episode 470: Abe Streep
Abe Streep is a journalist and contributing editor for Outside. His new book is Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana.”The way journalists talk about, ‘Did you get the story?’—that's not how I see this. That would be extractive in this setting, I think. If someone shares something personal with me, that is a serious matter. It's a gift and you’ve got to treat it with great respect.”Show notes:
@abestreep
abestreep.com
Streep on Long
Rerun: #430 Connie Walker (Feb 2021)
Connie Walker is an investigative reporter and podcast host. Her latest show is Stolen: The Search for Jermain.
“For so long, there has been this kind of history of journalists coming in and taking stories from Indigenous communities. And that kind of extractive, transactional kind of journalism really causes a lot of harm. And so much of our work is trying to undo and address that. There is a way to be a storyteller and help amplify and give people agency in their stories.”
Show notes:
@conn
Rerun: #371 Parul Seghal (Dec 2019)
Parul Sehgal, a former a book critic for The New York Times, is now a staff writer at The New Yorker.
“My job is I think to be honest with the reader and to keep surfacing new ways for me and for other people to think about books. New vocabularies of pleasure and disgust.”
Show notes:
parulsehgal.com
@parul_sehgal
Sehgal's New York Times archive
“Mothers of Invention: A Group of Authors Finds New Narrative Possibilities in Parenthood” (Bookforum • 2015)
“In Letters to the World, a New Wav
Episode 469: George Saunders
George Saunders is the author of eleven books. His latest is A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life.”I really have so much affection for being alive. I really enjoy it. And yet, I’m a little negative minded in a lot of ways too, like I really think things tend to be fucked up. ... To get that on the page—to sufficiently praise the loveliness of the world without being a sap, and also lacerate the world for being so goddamn
Episode 468: Emily Oster
Emily Oster is an economist, professor, and author. Her new book is The Family Firm.
”[COVID] has been 18 months of being a person who is slightly more public, who is saying things that are somewhat more controversial, where people yell at me a lot. ... I do much less reading of the comments than I did early on because I found that eventually I just got mad and that's not a productive way to interact. And it affects how I think about what I write, and I would like what I write to be the things t
Episode 467: Kelefa Sanneh
Kelefa Sanneh is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His book is Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres.
“I’m always thinking about how to not be that person at a party who corners you and tells you about their favorite thing and you’re trying to get away. It’s got to feel light and fun. And what that means in practice is writing about music for readers who don’t care about music, while at the same time writing something that the connoisseurs don’t roll their eyes too hard at.”
Episode 466: Anita Hill
Anita Hill is a professor and author. Her new book is Believing: Our Thirty-Year Journey to End Gender Violence.
"I really do feel that my life now has purpose. And my responsibility really is to live out that purpose as much as possible. The reason that this isn’t entirely daunting is that I realize I am one individual. And that the issues will not depend on me entirely. … But I also realize that every person who has the opportunity should be involved, and that includes me."
Show notes:
@Anita
Episode 465: Ben Austen and Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Ben Austen is a journalist and the author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Together they host the podcast Some of My Best Friends Are.
”We're not pretending to have all the answers, but we are attempting to say, ‘this is a real issue and it c
Episode 464: Casey Johnston
Casey Johnston is a journalist and editor who writes the column "Ask A Swole Woman," which now appears in her newsletter ”She's a Beast.”
”I feel more comfortable lately with a sort of beloved-local-restaurant level of success. What's nice about Substack is that we've come to this place that I hope lasts where we can have this sort of local restaurant relationship with writers, or I can have that with readers, where I don't have to be part of this big machine in order to do something that I real
Episode 463: Mitchell S. Jackson
Mitchell S. Jackson is a journalist and author. His profile of Ahmaud Arbery, ”Twelve Minutes and a Life,” won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.”What is 'great'? 'Great' isn’t really sales, right? No one cares what James Baldwin sold. So: Are you doing the important work?”Show notes:
@MitchSJackson
mitchellsjackson.com
Jackson on Longform
00:00 "Twelve Minutes and a Life" (Runner’s World • Jun 2020)
01:00 Pafko at the Wall (Don DeLillo • Scribner • 2001)
03:00 "Ahmaud Arbery’
Episode 462: Ben Smith
Ben Smith is the media columnist for The New York Times. He was the founding editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News.”I do think there's some kind of personality flaw deep in there of wanting to like, you know, find stuff out and tell people.... I'm not sure that's a totally sane or healthy personality trait, but it is definitely, for me, a personality trait…. I think that in political reporting, certainly, there's a kind of reporter who thinks that their job is basically to pull the masks off
Episode 461: Jay Caspian Kang
Jay Caspian Kang is a contributor at New York Times Magazine. His new book is The Loneliest Americans.”I have a lot of thoughts and talk to people to make sure my thoughts are right, or change them because I think they're wrong. What more does one want out of an intellectual life? It's good work.”Show notes:
@jaycaspiankang
Kang on Longform
Kang on Longform Podcast (Apr 2013)
Kang on Longform Podcast (Aug 2017)
Kang’s New York Times Magazine newsletter
5:00 "The High Is Always the Pa
Episode 460: Mary Roach
Mary Roach is the author of seven nonfiction books, including her latest, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.
"In these realms of the taboo, there's a tremendous amount of material that is really interesting, but that people have stayed away from. ... I'm kind of a bottom feeder. It's down there on the bottom where people don't want to go. But if that's what it takes to find interesting, new material, I'm fine with it. I don't care. I'm not easily grossed out. I don't feel that there's any reason
Episode 459: E. Alex Jung
E. Alex Jung is a senior writer for Vulture and New York.
”When I'm in that space, I try to be a sponge. I'll just absorb whatever's happening or going on, and I'll be down to do mostly anything. I was actually thinking recently about what my limits would be in a profile. I was like—heroin? I don't think I would do that.”
Show notes:
@e_alexjung
Jung on Longform
Jung's Vulture archive
4:00 "Come as You Are" (The Morning News • Apr 2012)
15:00 "Real Talk With RuPaul" (Vulture • Mar 2016)
Episode 458: Max Chafkin
Max Chafkin is a features editor and reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His new book is The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.
“I think there's like a really good way to come up with story ideas where you basically just look for people who have given TED Talks and figure out what they're lying about. And there's also a tendency in the press to pump up these startups based on those stories…. It's worth taking a critical look at these stars of the moment. Because ofte
Episode 457: Hannah Giorgis
Hannah Giorgis is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her latest feature is "Most Hollywood Writers’ Rooms Look Nothing Like America.””In general, when we talk about representation, we talk about what we see on our screens. We're talking about actors, we're talking about who are the lead characters, what are the storylines that they're getting. And I'm always interested in that. But I'm really, really interested in power ... how it operates, and process.”Show notes:
@hannahgiorgis
hannahgio
Episode 456: Sarah A. Topol
Sarah A. Topol is a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. Her latest feature is ”Is Taiwan Next?””I think you never actually ask people head-on about what they've been through. You always ask people to just tell you what they want to tell you about anything that has happened to them…. This event that happened to you, it doesn't define you. It’s not why I'm here necessarily. Like, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your life. Tell me about the things you think are imp
Episode 455: Lawrence Wright
Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker.
”There’s nothing more important about a person than their story. In a way, that’s who we are. And yet, memories fade and people die. So those stories disappear and the job of the journalist is to go out before that happens and accumulate the kinds of stories that are going to help us understand who we are, why we are, where we are right now in time, and try to thread those stories into a coherent narra
Episode 454: Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering
Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering are documentary filmmakers. Their latest miniseries is Allen v. Farrow.”We're constantly looking for those moments that happen before the story is ever told. Or those moments where someone is deciding to tell a story or is going through a process that they think is private… We think there's something about getting the moment before the first moment that people normally see..Show notes:
janedoefilms.com
00:00 Exit Scam (Aaron Lammer and Lane Brown • Treats Medi
Episode 453: Roger Bennett
Roger Bennett is a co-host of Men In Blazers and the author of (Re)born in the USA: An Englishman's Love Letter to His Chosen Home.
“So much of my work is about human tenacity. That value of perseverance, of driving onwards. I believe life is about darkness and happiness. I believe that nothing is given, you fight for everything. And how you operate in moments of doubt and darkness ultimately define you. So I talk a lot as a professional about tenacity. What I've never linked that to before was
Episode 452: Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang are reporters for the New York Times. They are coauthors of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.
“There are two types of reporters. There are reporters who date and reporters who marry. I think both Cecilia and I are reporters who marry our sources and by that I mean they are lifelong sources. It’s not a relationship that you build quickly. It’s one where you have to really let them get to know you as a journalist, show them that you are always
Episode 451: Julie K. Brown
Julie K. Brown is an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald. Her new book is Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.“No reporter wants to be a part of the story. ... But the one thing I know is that the authorities weren't going to do anything about this unless it stayed in the news and there was pressure. And I thought the only way to do pressure was to continue to write stories and to be in their face by going on TV. So I took advantage of the fact that I am sort of a p
Episode 450: Doree Shafrir
Doree Shafrir is a co-host of the podcast Forever35, the former executive editor of Buzzfeed, and the author of the new memoir Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer.”Right now I can make my living from podcasting, but I don’t know what the advertising market for podcasts is going to look like in five years or even one year. The blog advertising market cratered. So one of the challenges of being my own ‘brand’ is that I always do have to think about, what is the next t
Episode 449: Jessica Bruder
Jessica Bruder is a journalist and author of the book Nomadland.“I don’t do a hard sell. I’ll tell people what my MO is, but I don’t push people to talk with me. I want to go deep with people. I want to be able to have the time to just sit with them and to say, ‘start at the beginning.’ Sometimes going chronologically will just take you to these places that wouldn’t have come up if I’ve just done a very guided interview. So I hung out. I’m not relentless. I don’t wear people down. But I
Episode 448: Robert McKee
Robert McKee is an author and screenwriting lecturer. His new book is Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen.”When I'm in conversation with others, I'm always aware—or sensitive, at least—to what they're really thinking and feeling. And writers must have that. They can't possibly create excellent nonfiction or fiction if they're not aware of what is going on inside of other people, really, even subconsciously, while they go about saying whatever they do consciousl
Rerun: #378 Ashley C. Ford (Feb 2020)
Ashley C. Ford is the author of Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir.“For the first time I felt like I had so many more choices in my life than I originally thought I had. That was my first realization that I did not just have to react to the world, that I could be intentional in the world, and just curious about what came back to me.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@iSmashFizzle
ashleycford.net
Fortune Favors the Bold podcast
5:00 "Roger Loves Chaz" (Ro
Episode 447: Aaron Lammer
Aaron Lammer is a co-host of the Longform Podcast and the host of the podcast Exit Scam: The Death and Afterlife of Gerald Cotten.“Something I got from a number of reporters that I’ve interviewed on the Longform Podcast is letting the story guide you, and ultimately that led me to an ambiguous ending. Early on, I was like, the pinnacle achievement is to solve this case. But ultimately, I felt like an ambiguous ending was the most honest to what I actually experienced in reporting it.”
Thanks to
Episode 446: Megha Rajagopalan
Megha Rajagopalan is a senior correspondent for Buzzfeed News. She won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the Xinjiang detention camps.“It’s not so much that I talk to [the Chinese government] to get information. It’s more that I talk to them to see how they think about things and what’s important to them and what’s their view of the world. … There are so many journalists that have been thrown out of China, so there’s very few people that are able to actually have those conversations. And i
Episode 445: Barrett Swanson
Barrett Swanson is a contributing editor at Harper’s and the author of Lost in Summerland.“You just have to sit there for a long time. That lesson was indisputably crucial for me. Just being willing to talk to someone, even if the first half-hour or hour is unutterably boring, or it doesn’t seem pertinent. These little things, the deeper things, take a while to get at and they kind of burble to the surface at moments when you’re not totally expecting it to happen. So for me, it’s just making mys
Episode 444: Dan Rather
Dan Rather is a journalist, author, and the former anchor of CBS Evening News.”I knew that being named to succeed Walter Cronkite would put me in a position of inhaling—every day—a kind of NASA-grade rocket fuel for the ego. And that could be dangerous…. In the end, when the red light goes on, it's just you. You're by yourself.… And the longer you're in that role, the more difficult it is to stay true to yourself and to remember who you are and who you want to be.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for spons
Episode 443: Katherine Eban
Katherine Eban is an investigative journalist and contributor to Vanity Fair. Her latest article is ”The Lab-Leak Theory: Inside the Fight to Uncover COVID-19’s Origins.””You can't make a correction unless you know why something happened. So imagine—if this is a lab leak—the earth shattering consequences for virology. For the science community, for how research is done, for how research is regulated. Or if it is a zoonotic origin, we have to know how our human incursion into wild spaces
Listen to "Last Chance Hotel" from Apple News+
We've got something a little different today from our sponsor Apple News+, a sneak peek of a new article by Joshuah Bearman and Rich Schapiro called "Last Chance Hotel." It's a wild story full of misadventure, get-rich-quick schemes gone wrong, and international intrigue.
Published by New York Magazine in partnership with Epic Magazine, “Last Chance Hotel” is available right now exclusively in Apple News+. After you listen to this preview, tap here to read or listen to the rest of part
Episode 442: Rose Eveleth
Rose Eveleth is the host of Flash Forward and the author of Flash Forward: An Illustrated Guide to Possible (and Not So Possible) Tomorrows.“If I didn’t have that pretty bizarrely insatiable drive to do this stuff and understand things, I don’t know if I’d still be doing this. The curiosity index has to be high in order to make the rest of it worth it. Because otherwise, what’s the point?”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@roseveleth
@flashforwardpod
Episode 441: Theo Padnos
Theo Padnos is a journalist and author of the book Blindfold: A Memoir of Capture, Torture, and Enlightenment.“I'm trying to tell a story about a person who's attracted to dangerous places and people. I think we all have that within us. I wanted to bring my readers along. So I selected details that we all have in common... I'm trying to invite you along on a journey that you yourself might have taken.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@TheoPadnos
00:30 Blindf
Episode 440: Donovan X. Ramsey
Donovan X. Ramsey is a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. His work has appeared in GQ, WSJ Magazine, The Atlantic, and many other publications.“I actually got into writing about criminal justice ... because I was curious about Black life. But that meant the only way I was able to do that was I had to kind of do this really often depressing slice of Black life. And there’s so much more. And there’s so much beauty in the lived experiences of Black people. … There are so many stories that just
Episode 439: Adam McKay
Adam McKay is a film director, writer, and host of the podcast Death at the Wing.“Sometimes you do a project and then you look back and you’re like, Ah, shit. I let some of myself get in the way of that. It sucks, but it’s also a part of it. And there are so many times where you’re excited that the story did take off, the wind did catch the sail and it went off on its own. And that just feels so good that it far outweighs the times when you make a mistake, or let something go wrong, or too long,
Episode 438: Anna Sale
Anna Sale is the host of Death, Sex & Money. Her new book is Let’s Talk About Hard Things.“What hard conversations can do is—you can witness what's hard. You can be with what's hard. Admit what's hard. That can be its own relief. … Some hard conversations … are successful when they end in a place that's like, Oh, we're not going to agree on this. … I think you can get used to the feeling of feeling out of control and that makes them less scary.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's ep
Episode 437: Brooke Jarvis
Brooke Jarvis is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.“Obsession is inherently interesting. We want to know why somebody would care so much about something that it could direct their whole life. ... When people care about something a lot, what can be more interesting than that to understand what drives those powerful emotions? ... Part of why I do this work is that I am able to get temporarily obsessed with a lot of different things and then move on to the next thing that I'm te
Polk Award Winners: Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung
Michael Grabell and Bernice Yeung are investigative reporters at ProPublica. They won the George Polk Award for Health Reporting for their coverage of the meatpacking industry's response to the pandemic, including their feature "The Battle for Waterloo."
This is the final part of our week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Polk Award Winners: Roberto Ferdman
Roberto Ferdman is a correspondent at VICE News. He and his colleagues at VICE News Tonight won the George Polk Award for Television Reporting for their coverage of the killing of Breonna Taylor and the investigations that followed.
This is part four in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Polk Award Winners: Helen Branswell
Helen Branswell is an infectious disease and global health reporter for STAT. She won this year's George Polk Award for Public Service for her coverage of the pandemic.
This is the third in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Polk Award Winners: Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman
Ryan Mac and Craig Silverman are reporters at BuzzFeed News. Together they won this year's George Polk Award for Business Reporting for their coverage of Facebook's handling of disinformation on its platform.
This is the second in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Polk Award Winners: Tristan Ahtone
Tristan Ahtone is the former Indigenous Affairs editor at High Country News and is currently the editor-in-chief at The Texas Observer. His High Country News article “Land-Grab Universities,” co-authored with Robert Lee, won the 2021 George Polk Award for Education Reporting.
This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 436: Dana Goodyear
Dana Goodyear is a staff writer for The New Yorker and host of the new podcast Lost Hills.“I do find people who take risks—artistic and physical or even intellectual risks—really interesting. ... There are so many people that I have written about who take a really long time with their projects, whether years or decades, and they might or might not work out. ... They just don't go along with what's received, and they—at a great personal cost—often do things that are very different. And then those
Episode 435: Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is an investigative journalist and the deputy inequality editor at BuzzFeed News. His book Concepcion: An Immigrant Family's Fortunes comes out in October.“I don’t think any child of the recession will ever not feel precarious. And being in journalism makes that even more so. ... At this point I’ve embraced the precarity of working in this industry. I’m sure at some point it’s going to be grating for people to hear me talk about how precarious and insecure I feel. … But I’ve got to
Rerun: #390 Bonnie Tsui (April 2020)
Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and the author of Why We Swim.“I am a self-motivated person. I really don’t like being told what to do. I’ve thought about this many times over the last 16 years that I’ve been a full-time freelancer... even though I thought my dream was to always and forever be living in New York, working in publishing, working at a magazine, being an editor, writing. When I was an editor, I kind of hated it. I just didn’t like being chained to a desk.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for spons
Episode 434: Jessica Lessin
Jessica Lessin is founder and editor-in-chief of The Information.“It's very, very hard to predict the winners. A lot of investors try to do this. And I think sometimes where the press gets in trouble is trying to make a call.… It's not always our job to say this thing is doomed or not. I think many journalists, unfortunately, are more interested in that than in understanding, What is this company trying to do?”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@Jessicalessin
Episode 433: Elon Green
Elon Green is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Awl, New York, and other publications. His new book is Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York.“The murders and the murderer should not be the driver. It should simply be the catalyst for the other story. And the other story is the victims. And the other story is the political backdrop and the environment that they are walking through.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week'
Episode 432: Jess Zimmerman
Jess Zimmerman is editor-in-chief of Electric Literature. Her new book is Women and Other Monsters.“My goals are to be exactly as vulnerable as I feel is necessary. And not that’s necessary to me—that's necessary to the observer, to the reader. If [my story] is out there, it's out there because in order to make the larger point that I wanted to make … I had to give this level of access. It does kind of feel more strategic than cathartic.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Episode 431: Tejal Rao
Tejal Rao is the California restaurant critic for The New York Times and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine.“I've been thinking a lot about what makes a restaurant good…. Can a restaurant be good if it doesn't have wheelchair access? Can a restaurant be good if the farmers picking the tomatoes are getting sick? How much do we consider when we talk about if a restaurant is good or not? … If people are being exploited at every single point possible along the way, how good is the restauran
Episode 430: Connie Walker
Connie Walker is an investigative reporter and podcast host. Her new show is Stolen: The Search for Jermain.“For so long, there has been this kind of history of journalists coming in and taking stories from Indigenous communities. And that kind of extractive, transactional kind of journalism that really causes a lot of harm. And so much of our work is trying to undo and address that. There is a way to be a storyteller and help amplify and give people agency in their stories.”
Thanks to Mailchim
Episode 429: Vinson Cunningham
Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker.“I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@vcunningham
Episode 428: Katie Engelhart
Katie Engelhart is a journalist and the author of the new book The Inevitable: Dispatches on the Right to Die.“Billions of dollars of government money goes to the nursing home industry every year. And nobody has a nursing home correspondent. Nobody has an assisted living correspondent…. That's wild to me. As a journalist, someone tells me, Oh, there's an industry. It's hugely underregulated. It's getting billions of dollars a year. It is not super-accountable for that money. Who wouldn't want to
Episode 427: Luke Mogelson
Luke Mogelson is a journalist and fiction writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications. His latest feature is ”Among the Insurrectionists.”“Get to the front and document as much as you can. ... I think my approach is much more similar to photographers than other writers. I spend a lot of time with photographers and ... I feel like I've gotten pretty good at getting myself into situations where there's few or maybe no other writers
Episode 426: Mirin Fader
Mirin Fader is a staff writer for The Ringer.
“Nobody ever makes it makes it, right? You make it, and every day, you have to keep making it. That’s how I feel. Would I be the reporter I am if I wasn’t like that? I’m afraid to see what happens if I’m not. I’m afraid what type of reporter or writer I’ll be if I take my foot off the gas.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@MirinFader
mirinfader.com
Fader on Longform
03:00 Fader's Orange County Register archive
Episode 425: Stephanie Clifford
Stephanie Clifford is an investigative journalist and novelist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many other publications. Her most recent article is "The Journalist and the Pharma Bro."“I think your job as a journalist—particularly with people who are in vulnerable situations or people who are not used to press—is to explain what the fallout might be."
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@stephcliff
stephanieclifford.net
Episode 424: Kenneth R. Rosen
Kenneth R. Rosen has written for The New York Times, Wired, The New Yorker, and many other publications. His new book is Troubled: The Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs.
“When I report, I keep two journals. … I keep my reporting notebook, which is sort of an almanac of dates, times, names, quotes, phone numbers. And then I have my personal notebook, which has all my fears and anxieties. And it invariably makes its way into the reporting … which is sort of an ama
Episode 365: Carvell Wallace, author and podcast host
Carvell Wallace is a podcast host and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-author, with Andre Iguodala, of The Sixth Man.“So much of my life experience coalesces into things that are useful… All those years that I was obsessing over this that or the other thing, all the weird stuff that I would do, all the weird things that happened to me, all the places I found myself in that I didn’t want to be in but were interesting - this is all part of what
Episode 378: Ashley C. Ford, author and podcast host
Ashley C. Ford is a writer and podcast host. Her memoir, Somebody's Daughter, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.“For the first time I felt like I had so many more choices in my life than I originally thought I had. That was my first realization that I did not just have to react to the world, that I could be intentional in the world, and just curious about what came back to me.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
@iSmashFizzle
ashleycford.net
Fortune Favors the Bold podcas
Episode 423: Ed Yong
Ed Yong spent 2020 covering the pandemic for The Atlantic. His latest feature is "How Science Beat the Virus."
“I am trying to give readers a platform that they can stand on to observe this raging torrent that is the pandemic, this cascade of information that is threatening to sweep us all away. I’m trying to give people a rock on which they can stand so that they can observe what is happening without themselves being submerged by it. But I am trying to construct that platform while also being
Episode 422: Nilay Patel
Nilay Patel is editor-in-chief of The Verge and hosts the podcast Decoder.
“The instant ability—unmanaged ability—for people to say horrible things to each other because of phones is tearing our culture apart. It just is. And so sometimes, I’m like, Man, I wish our headline had been: ‘iPhone Released. It’s A Mistake.’ … But I think there’s a really important flipside to that … a bunch of teenagers are able to create culture at a scale that has never been possible before. Also, a bunch of margin
Episode 421: Wright Thompson
Wright Thompson is a senior writer for ESPN. His new book is Pappyland: A Story of Family, Fine Bourbon, and the Things That Last.
“If you’re going to write a profile of someone … you have to find some piece of common ground with them so that no matter how famous or good or noble or bad—or no matter how cartoonish their most well-known attributes are—it shrinks them. And once they’re small enough to fit in your hand, I think it changes the entire experience of asking questions about their lives
Episode 420: Melissa del Bosque
Melissa del Bosque is an investigative journalist covering the U.S.-Mexico border.“What I really want people to know is the context within which this traumatic event is happening. It doesn’t have to happen. It’s happening because certain people made certain decisions. Or they made a decision to do nothing. … There are laws, there are policies on the books that are either being ignored or could be changed.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
8:00 The We
Episode 419: Reggie Ugwu
Reggie Ugwu is an arts reporter for The New York Times.
“I find that even though I talk to celebrities or popular artists, I’m not all that interested in celebrity. I’m pretty uninterested in celebrity. But I’m really interested in creativity.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@uugwuu
Ugwu on Longform
Ugwu's New York Times archive
10:00 The Quake (Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria • Frontline • Mar 2010)
12:00 "Inside The Playlist Factory" (Buzzfeed
Episode 418: Stephanie McCrummen
Stephanie McCrummen is a national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post.
“I do have to psych myself up. There’s always something awkward about it and that never goes away. … No matter how long I do this job, that part of it doesn’t get any easier. It’s always a bit awkward and you’re always sort of humbled when someone actually is willing to talk to you. Then it can be kind of thrilling, once you’re in it, once you’re actually in the conversation. ... But the moment a few seconds
Episode 417: Olivia Nuzzi
Olivia Nuzzi is the White House correspondent for New York.“I don’t think that, broadly speaking, this a group of redeemable people. … But I do think there is tremendous value, in this first draft of history, trying to understand why the fuck they are like this. … There is value in understanding why these people are like this because they are the reason why we are here in this situation. And I think it’s a [question] that historians will try to answer years from now. … I view my job as providing
Episode 416: Reeves Wiedeman
Reeves Wiedeman is a reporter at New York and the author of the new book Billion Dollar Loser.
“You get inside these companies and … you assume everything is running based on models and numbers and then you get inside and it’s just people. And sometimes they have MBAs and sometimes they don’t. … At the end of the day, whether you’re running a media company or an office space company, it’s all people making these decisions and they often do very strange, contradictory, and ultimately unsuccessfu
Episode 415: Latif Nasser
Latif Nasser co-hosts Radiolab. He also hosted The Other Latif and the Netflix documentary series Connected.“It’s so easy to hate everything and be cynical. There’s a kind of ease to that. It takes a lot more courage to go up in front of everybody and be like, This is awesome. I love this. That takes a lot of guts, I think.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@latifnasser
02:00 The Other Latif (WNYC Studios • 2020)
02:00 Connected (Netflix • 2020)
0
Episode 414: Barton Gellman
Barton Gellman is a staff writer for The Atlantic. and was previously a Pulitzer-winning reporter at The Washington Post. His latest book is Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and his latest essay is "The Election That Could Break America."“I have found that I have a talent for accidentally pissing people off. ... I’m interested most in accountability and the use and abuse of power. So naturally it’s going to annoy people sometimes. And sometimes they take it like gr
Episode 413: Latria Graham
Latria Graham is a writer living in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in Outside, Garden & Gun, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Her latest essay is "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream."
“My goal as a person—not just as a writer—is to be the adult that I needed when I was younger. That’s why I go and talk to college classes. That’s why I write some of these vulnerable things, to let people that are struggling know that they’re not on their own. … I have to be unmerciful to myself, I
Episode 412: Nicholson Baker
Nicholson Baker is the author of 18 books of fiction and nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and many other publications. His latest book is Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act.
"In the end, I don’t care how famous you get, how widely read you are during your lifetime. You’re going to be forgotten. And you’re going to have five or six fans in the end. It’s going to be your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are goin
Episode 411: Elizabeth Weil
Elizabeth Weil covers California and the climate for ProPublica. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, California Sunday, and more.“As a journalist you’re endlessly asking people to tell you really personal, really vulnerable stuff about their lives. And I feel like you have to be willing to be in that conversation too—or really think about why you’re not willing.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@lizweil
elizabethweil.net
Weil on Longf
Episode 410: Jiayang Fan
Jiayang Fan is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her latest article is a "How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda.""I think considering the unusual shape of our lives—the lives of my mother and I—from bare subsistence to one of the richest enclaves in America … it made me think about what the value of existence is. ... It made me wonder, What should a person be? And how should a person be? And being a writer has been a lifelong quest to answer those questions."
Thanks to Mailchi
Episode 409: Claudia Rankine
Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, and playwright. She is the author of the new book, Just Us: An American Conversation.“I began to wonder, why am I maintaining civility around things that are actually very important to me? This might be the only chance I get to stand up for myself. As Claudia. As a Black person. As a Black woman. As an American citizen. So what am I waiting for? What am I preserving when the thing I am supposedly preserving is also the thing that is on some level killing me?”
Episode 408: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. He served as guest editor for the September issue of Vanity Fair, titled "The Great Fire."“There’s this pressure to say something. Say something. The world’s burning, say something. But I try to stay where I’ve been or where I’ve tried to be in my career. ... Good things take time. You gotta let things cook. You can’t insta-bake something like this.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
ta-nehisicoates.com
Coates o
Episode 407: Brandon Soderberg and Baynard Woods
Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg are the co-authors of the new book I Got A Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad.“We really wanted to create some kind of leftist, anti-racist true crime story that we really haven’t seen. The conventions of the thriller often smuggle in all of this really right-wing, pro-police propaganda that all of our cops were raised on—the story of cops having to crash cars and break rules in order to get the bad guys. We wanted to ta
Episode 406: Andrea Valdez
Andrea Valdez is the editor-in-chief of The 19th*.“You know how sometimes you hear a song and you think, Gosh, it feels like that song has always existed and an artist just plucked it out of the air and played it and now it’s a part of our musical canon? I really hope that The 19th* is a news organization where it feels like it has always been, should have always been, and will always be there.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes
@andreamvaldez
00:30 The 19th*
1
Episode 405: Jason Parham
Jason Parham is a senior writer at Wired.“I think of myself some days as a critic. Some days I think of myself as a journalist. But I essentially mostly think of myself as an essayist, somebody who is trying to bridge those two traditions. My approach to writing now is kind of simple…I’m always writing about things I like and want to hear about.”
Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@nonlinearnotes
jasonparham.com
00:45 "TikTok and the Evolution of Di
Episode 404: Jenny Kleeman
Jenny Kleeman is a journalist, broadcaster and the author of the new book Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death.“It’s better to cover one thing in a really illuminating way than to try and explore every single aspect of a topic in a really superficial way. So if there’s one thing that particularly interests you or fascinates you, if there’s just one question you want to ask, do as much research as you can on that one question and you’ll end up with
Episode 403: Seyward Darby
Seyward Darby is the editor-in-chief of The Atavist Magazine and the author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism.“The most enlightening thing I learned in working on this book ultimately was that when we think of hate we think of animosity. Hate means I do not like someone or I do not like something. I deplore it. I despise it. But hate as a movement is actually a lot more like any social movement where it’s providing something to its supporters, members, ac
Episode 402: Raquel Willis with Patrice Peck
Raquel Willis, the former executive editor of Out, is an activist, journalist, and writer.
Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the Coronavirus News for Black Folks newsletter.“To my peers, I would just say that we have to rethink our idea of leadership. Rethink our idea of storytelling. As the media, we shouldn’t be seeing ourselves as the owners and the gatekeepers of people’s stories. We actually need to be democratizing this experience—sharing the tools of s
Mailchimp Presents: “The Books That Changed Us” with Ashley C. Ford
An episode featuring Ashley C. Ford from "The Books That Changed Us," a new, short-run podcast hosted by Aaron and Max where authors discuss the books that made them who they are. The 10-episode series is part of Mailchimp's By The Books, a summer-long virtual literary festival curated by last week's Longform guests, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 401: Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman
Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman are co-hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend and co-authors of the new book Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close.“People telling you about their lives is a real privilege and honor. No one owes you to tell you their story. Sometimes in the world of people who write or people who make media there is just this expectation that everything is on the table, especially if you’re two women who make media, that we’re supposed to just share our pain and everythin
Episode 400: Maria Konnikova
Maria Konnikova is a journalist, professional poker player, and author of the new book The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win.
“I do think that writing and psychology are so closely interlinked. The connections between the human mind and writing are in some ways the same thing. If you’re a good writer, you have to be a good, intuitive psychologist. You have to understand people, observe them, and really figure out what makes them tick.”
Thanks to Mailchimp f
Episode 399: Tessie Castillo and George Wilkerson
Tessie Castillo, a journalist covering criminal justice reform, and George Wilkerson, a prisoner on death row in North Carolina, are two of the co-authors of Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row.
“I want other people to see what I see, which is that the men on death row are human beings. They’re incredibly intelligent and insightful and they have so many redemptive qualities...I don’t think I could really convey that as well as if they get their own voice out there. So I wanted this book to
Episode 398: Dean Baquet
Dean Baquet is executive editor of The New York Times.
"I always tried to question what is the difference between what is truly tradition and core, and what is merely habit. A lot of stuff we think are core, are just habits. The way we write newspaper stories, that’s not core, that’s habit. I think that’s the most important part about leading a place that’s going through dramatic change and even generational change. You’ve got to say, here’s what’s not going to change. This is core.
Episode 397: Jacqueline Charles with Patrice Peck
Jacqueline Charles is the Caribbean correspondent at the .Miami Herald
Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the newsletterCoronavirus News for Black Folks.
"There are things that you see that if you start taking it in, you’re never going to stop and you’re not going to be able to do your job…I have family in all of these countries and when disaster strikes, you can’t help everyone. But what you hope is that with your pen, with your voice, with your recording
Episode 396: Kierna Mayo with Patrice Peck
Kierna Mayo is the showrunner and head writer for the Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact. She is the former editor-in-chief of Ebony and Honey Magazine, which she co-founded at age 27.
Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the Coronavirus News for Black Folks newsletter. Her most recent article is "Black Journalists Are Exhausted," an op-ed published in The New York Times.
“Advocacy is not a bad word. Telling the truth about a particular slice of life is
Episode 395: Wesley Lowery
Wesley Lowery is a correspondent for “60 in 6” from 60 Minutes. He is the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement and won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for "Fatal Force," a Washington Post project covering fatal shootings by police officers.
“The police are not, in and of themselves, objective observers of things. They are political and government entities who are the literal characters in the story. They are describing the actions of
Episode 394: Philip Montgomery
Philip Montgomery is a photojournalist.
“The photographers that I grew up on all sort of had their moment… I sort of had, in this weird way, this feeling of envy that they had their moment with this story that was all-encompassing. Looking at it now, this is the story of my time, and it’s a little more than I perhaps bargained for.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@philip_nyc
philipmontgomery.com
[04:23] "The Epicenter: A Week Inside New York’s Public H
Episode 393: Isaac Chotiner
Isaac Chotiner conducts interviews for The New Yorker.
“People like to talk. They like to be asked questions, generally. In the space that I’m doing most interviews, which is politics or politics-adjacent, people have strong views and like to express them. It may be just as simple as that.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@IChotiner
Chotiner on Longform
Chotiner's New Yorker archive
[08:03] "V.S. Naipaul on the Arab Spring, Authors He Loathes,
Episode 392: David Haskell
David Haskell is the editor-in-chief of New York Magazine.
“Fingers crossed, knock on wood, we've got time here. You can't ever take that for granted, but I think it's fair to indulge a long-term perspective. More than fair, actually — I think it's part of the job, for me at least, to be plotting and dreaming years out. And to be fashioning the magazine toward that long-term vision as gingerly as I can without it breaking.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Squarespace, and Literati
Episode 391: Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. Her new podcast is Sugar Calling.
“I think that we have this limited idea of what ambition is. All through my twenties, you wouldn’t necessarily have looked at me and been like, ‘she’s ambitious.’ I mean, I was working as a waitress. I was goofing around and doing all kinds of things. But I was always writing. And I was always really sure and clear and serious about my writing. My ambition was this secret thing within me that I ded
Episode 390: Bonnie Tsui
Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and author of the new book Why We Swim.
“I am a self-motivated person. I really don’t like being told what to do. I’ve thought about this many times over the last 16 years that I’ve been a full-time freelancer... even though I thought my dream was to always and forever be living in New York, working in publishing, working at a magazine, being an editor, writing. When I was an editor, I kind of hated it. I just didn’t like being chained to a desk.”
Thanks to Mailchim
Episode 389: Lulu Miller
Lulu Miller is a former producer at Radiolab and a co-founder of Invisibilia. Her new book is Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life.
“I think almost every radio story I’ve ever done comes down to the question of me trying to ask a person how they get through this life thing. How they get through this breakup. How they get through being disabled in a family that's crushing them. How they get through having a head that's poisonous. Every story is just, Oh, what
Episode 388: Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is a senior correspondent at The Intercept and the author of The Shock Doctrine and No Logo. Her most recent book is On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal.
“I have no idea whether we will do this. All I know is there is a slim chance, a very slim chance, that we could make things a lot better than if we do nothing and just let it burn. The stakes of that are so high that I’m not going to spend my time trying to figure out whether our chances are good or not. I’m just gonn
Episode 387: Eva Holland
Eva Holland is a freelance journalist and a correspondent for Outside. Her new book is Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear.
“I'm less caught up in my freelance career anxieties every day that this goes on. Maybe I'll become a paramedic, who knows? Magazines I write for are already shutting down because of this. You can only freak out so much before you decide that if you end up having to find a new way to make a living, that's what you'll do.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for spon
Episode 386: Ed Yong
Ed Yong is the author of I Contain Multitudes and a science writer at The Atlantic . His most recent article is "How the Pandemic Will End."
“Normally when I write things that are about a pressing societal issue, those pieces feel like they’re about things that need to get solved in timeframes of, say, months or years. ... But now I’m writing pieces that are affecting people’s choices and lives, and hopefully the direction of the entire country, on an hourly basis. The changes I hope to see, I
Episode 385: Charlie Warzel
Charlie Warzel is a writer-at-large for The New York Times opinion page.
“I’m relying on my morals more than I normally do, but less on my gut. The stakes are just so high.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@cwarzel
Warzel's archive at The New York Times
Longform Podcast #291: Charlie Warzel
Warzel on Longform
[05:08] "Please, Don’t Go Out to Brunch Today" (New York Times • March 2020)
[10:52] "Please, Listen to Experts About the Coronavirus. Then Step
Episode 384: Jon Mooallem
Jon Mooallem is a journalist, author, and host of The Walking Podcast. His latest book is This is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together.
“There is this impulse that we have, this very clearly documented impulse that people everywhere have, to help. It sounds tacky, but when the bottom drops out, when ordinary life is overturned and there’s this upheaval or this disruption—if it’s a natural disaster or even something like this, that there’s ... in the book I
Episode 383: Jad Abumrad
Jad Abumrad is the co-creator and host of Radiolab. His new podcast is Dolly Parton's America.
“There’s a way in which, I think, it felt more honest to be more confused in our stories. So that’s where we went.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@JadAbumrad
jadabumrad.com
[03:27] "Patient Zero" (Radiolab • Nov 2011)
[04:34] Dolly Parton's America
[17:32] 9 to 5 (1980)
[19:00] "Dixie Disappearance" (Dolly Parton's America • Dec 2017)
[17:32] "My Te
Episode 382: Mara Hvistendahl
Mara Hvistendahl is a freelance reporter and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her first book, Unnatural Selection. Her new book is The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage.
“In times of tension, Cold War historians believe that there’s this mirroring that goes on, that we start to behave like the enemy, and that that is the big risk. And I feel like that’s the moment we’re in now.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episo
Episode 381: Hannah Dreier
Hannah Dreier is a reporter at The Washington Post and the winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
“You can’t come up with a good story idea in the office. I’ve never had a good idea that I just came up with out of thin air. It always comes from being on the ground.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@hannahdreier
hannahdreier.com
Dreier on Longform
[01:49] "Former MS-13 Member Who Secretly Helped Police is Deported" (ProPublica •
Episode 380: Ronan Farrow
Ronan Farrow is a Pulitzer-winning investigative reporter for The New Yorker. He is the author of Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators and hosts The Catch and Kill Podcast.
“It was the opposite of anything I would’ve expected, breaking a story like that. It wasn’t a moment of celebration. I was immensely relieved, and immensely grateful for the sources … and I was so grateful for those people at the New Yorker who had worked so hard. But it was a strange, numb time
Episode 379: Joshua Yaffa
Joshua Yaffa is a Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker. His first book is Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia.
“Especially in a place like Russia, where there’s a lot of sensitivity around what people might tell you—when they do open up to you, there’s a lot of trust there. And you better not abuse it or mishandle it, because you could put people in danger. Just being a decent person, and demonstrating that decency, goes a long way.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and
Episode 378: Ashley C. Ford
Ashley C. Ford is a writer and podcast host. Her memoir, Somebody's Daughter, is forthcoming from Flatiron Books.
“For the first time I felt like I had so many more choices in my life than I originally thought I had. That was my first realization that I did not just have to react to the world, that I could be intentional in the world, and just curious about what came back to me.”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@iSmashFizzle
ashleycford.net
Fort
Episode 377: Andrea Bernstein
Andrea Bernstein is a journalist and co-host of Trump, Inc., a podcast from WNYC and ProPublica. Her new book is American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.
“Hope is an action. And I feel that writing and documenting is an action. When I stop doing those things, I will be hopeless. But because I am still doing those things, it means that I still have hope… so long as we continue to be actors in the world, we can be hopeful human beings.”
Thanks t
Episode 376: Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly is a writer and a founding executive editor of Wired Magazine. He is the author of What Technology Wants, Out of Control and The Inevitable: Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.
“I always try to write about the future—and it became harder and harder because things would catch up so fast. If you read Out of Control now, I’ve heard that people say, ‘well, this is obvious.’ I have to tell you, it was dismissed as entirely pie-in-the-sky, wild-eyed c
Episode 375: Katherine Eban
Katherine Eban is an investigative journalist and contributing writer at Fortune Magazine. Her new book is Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom.
“I am not known for my optimism. I think it’s hard to do this work and retain a sunny view of humankind. I hate to say that. On the other hand, I do believe there will always be whistleblowers. And it’s interesting to me that even in the darkest spaces, even when it looks like everything is arrayed against them, there are people wh
Episode 374: Cord Jefferson
Cord Jefferson is a journalist turned television writer whose credits include Succession, The Good Place, and Watchmen.
“I’m a fearful person. I’m afraid of a lot of things. I’m afraid of how people perceive me, I’m afraid of hurting myself, I’m afraid of heights. I’m afraid of a lot. Bravery does not come naturally to me. But the moments when I feel like I’ve done the best in my life and been the proudest of myself are when I’ve overcome that fear to do something that scares me.”
Tha
Episode 311: Jerry Saltz, art critic at "New York"
Jerry Saltz is a Pulitzer-winning art critic for New York.
“To this day I wake up early and I have to get to my desk to write almost immediately. I mean fast. Before the demons get me. I got to get writing. And once I’ve written almost anything, I’ll pretty much write all day, I don’t leave my desk, I have no other life. I’m not part of the world except when I go to see shows.”
Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@jerrysaltz
Saltz on Instagram
Episode 313: Liana Finck, author of "Excuse Me" and "Passing for Human"
Liana Finck, a cartoonist and illustrator, contributes to The New Yorker and is the author of Excuse Me and Passing for Human.
"I was drawing since I was 10 months old. My mom had left this vibrant community of architects and art people to live in this idyllic country setting with my dad, and she poured all of her art feelings into me. She really praised me for being this baby genius, which I may or may not have been. But I grew up thinking I was an amazing artist. There weren’t any o
Episode 373: Mina Kimes
Mina Kimes is a senior writer at ESPN and the host of the podcast ESPN Daily.
“What I’ve found, and this is something I did not know would be the case going into it, is that sports stories—and, at the risk of sounding a bit self-important, maybe someone like me writing sports stories or talking about it in particular—can have an impact in other ways that have revealed themselves to me over time.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and Native Deodorant for sponsoring this week's episode.
@m
Episode 372: Andy Greenberg
Andy Greenberg is a senior writer for Wired. His new book is Sandworm.
“I kind of knew I was never going to get access to Sandworm, which is the title of the book - so it was all about drawing a picture around this invisible monster.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and Family Ghosts for sponsoring this week's episode.
@a_greenberg
Greenberg's archive at Wired
[03:22] Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers (Doubleday • 2019)
[06:21] D
Episode 371: Parul Sehgal
Parul Sehgal is a book critic for The New York Times.
“I write about books, I review books, but in a sense, to do my job at a newspaper also puts that pressure on a piece to say: why should you read or care about this? You’re trying to tweeze out what is newsworthy, what is interesting, what is vital about this book….My job is I think to be honest with the reader and to keep surfacing new ways for me and for other people to think about books. New vocabularies of pleasure and disgust.”
Episode 370: James Verini
James Verini is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. His new book is They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate.
“War is mostly down time. War is mostly waiting around for something to happen.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and "Couples Therapy" for sponsoring this week's episode.
jamesverini.com
Verini's archive on Longform
Longform Podcast #147: James Verini
[4:19] They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the
Episode 369: Lori Gottlieb
Lori Gottlieb is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her new book is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.
“Everything that I had done all coalesced into one thing. As a journalist i was helping people to tell their stories, as a therapist I could help people to edit their stories, to change their stories. I could be immersed in the human condition in both of these things.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Native, and Squa
Episode 368: Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, and the novel The Gin Closet. Her new essay collection is Make It Scream, Make It Burn.
“My writing is always basically asking: what does it feel like to be alive, and how do we ever try to understand what it feels like for anybody else to be alive? In that sense, on the intellectual level, I’m always going to keep chasing the same unanswerable things.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Mythology for sponsoring this
Episode 367: Errol Morris
Errol Morris is the director of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. His latest film is American Dharma.
“I don’t make films because it makes sense to make them. Probably if I thought carefully about whether they made sense, I would stop immediately. I make them because I have a need to do it. I have a need to think about stuff. Writing and filmmaking for me is a form of thinking. It’s an opportunity to think about something. And I enjoy it. I don’t know what I would do without film
Episode 366: Ashley Feinberg
Ashley Feinberg is a senior writer at Slate. She recently uncovered Mitt Romney's secret Twitter account.
“The whole thing about politics is that they are basically creating this character, this mask, and that is who they are supposed to be. That is who they try to project to the world. We know that it’s not really them but we have no access to what they actually are. This is the closest we get to seeing what they’re doing when they think no one is watching. … This is the most unfilter
Episode 365: Carvell Wallace
Carvell Wallace is a podcast host and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-author, with Andre Iguodala, of The Sixth Man.
“So much of my life experience coalesces into things that are useful… All those years that I was obsessing over this that or the other thing, all the weird stuff that I would do, all the weird things that happened to me, all the places I found myself in that I didn’t want to be in but were interesting - this is all part of what makes m
Episode 364: Nicholas Quah
Nicholas Quah founded and writes Hot Pod, a newsletter about the podcasting industry, and reviews podcasts for Vulture.
“I think to some extent I’m in love with the concept of momentum. Sheer velocity. It’s painful. It’s punishing. Physically, I’m worse off for it. But I feel like if I stop moving, something will fall. Something will break. And I’m over. It’s a horrible feeling.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Audm, and Bayer for sponsoring this week's episode.
@nwquah
nicholasquah.com
hot
Episode 363: Radhika Jones
Radhika Jones is the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and the editor of Women on Women.
“There are a lot of people who still see the value of talking to someone, having a real conversation — about the things that they’re doing, the things that they’re caring about, the things that they’re afraid of, the things that are challenging — because in that conversation, they themselves will discover things that they didn’t realize. It obviously takes courage. It’s a payoff for the reader, certai
Episode 362: Andrew Marantz
Andrew Marantz is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new book is Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation.
“Some nonfiction can be reduced to a bulletpoint primer, but a good book is a good book. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, it should create a feeling, it should create a world, it should be a feeling that you want to live in and that tilts the way you see things. Isn’t that the point?”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Wri
Episode 361: Ken Burns
Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes The Vietnam War, Baseball, and The Central Park Five. His new series is Country Music.
“History, which seems to most people safe — it isn’t. I think the future is pretty safe, it’s the past that’s so terrifying and malleable.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Vistaprint, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@KenBurns
kenburns.com
[01:08] The Vietnam War (2017)
[01:12] Country Music (2019)
[04:58] Salesman (1969)
[09:
Episode 360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and Between the World and Me. His new novel is The Water Dancer. Chris Jackson is Coates's editor, and the publisher and editor-in-chief of One World.
“I don’t think an essay works unless I can pin a story to it. You don’t want people to just say, ‘Oh that was a cool argument.’ You want people to say, ‘I could not stop thinking about this.’ You want them to nudge their wives and husbands and say, ‘You have
Episode 359: Paul Tough
Paul Tough is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us.
“The nice thing about a book as opposed to a magazine article is that it’s less formulaic. As a writer, it gives you more freedom — you’re trying to create an emotional mood where ideas have a place to sit in a person’s brain. And when people are moved by a book, it’s not by being told, ‘Here’s the problem, here’s the answer, now go do it.’ It’s by
Episode 358: Mike Isaac
Mike Issac covers Silicon Valley for The New York Times. He is the author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.
“People try to use journalists all the time. Your job as a journalist is to figure out who’s using you, why they’re using you, and whether you can do something legitimately without playing into one side or another.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Pitt Writers, and Wolverine Podcast for sponsoring this week's episode.
@MikeIsaac
Isaac on Longform
[00:14] Wolverine Podcast
[02:09] Super
Episode 357: Michelle García
Michelle García has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Oxford American. She directed the PBS film, Against Mexico: The Making of Heroes and Enemies.
“We have to see that within difficult stories there is a very important message of humanity triumphing over despair. If you don’t focus on joy, humanity is squashed. If all you see and all you narrate is pain, then you extinguish the possibility of joy and the important part of holding onto humanity.”
Thanks to Mail
Episode 356: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade
Jean-Xavier de Lestrade is a French documentary filmmaker. He directed Murder on a Sunday Morning and The Staircase.
“The courtroom in the United States is not really about the truth. It’s more about a story against another story. It’s more about storytelling. The more compelling or believable story by the jury will win. But in the end, we don’t know: is it the truth or not?”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and We Love You (and So Can You) for sponsoring this week's episode.
Episode 355: Taylor Lorenz
Taylor Lorenz just announced she is leaving her job covering internet culture for The Atlantic to join The New York Times.
“With technology and internet culture, I am more of an optimist than a lot of other people who cover those topics. It’s more ambiguous for me. It's more like, ‘This is the world we live in now and here are the pros and here are the cons. There are a lot of cons, but there are also these pros.’ I like how things shift and change under me. I like to see how things ar
Episode 354: Jia Tolentino
Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion.
“I feel a lot of useful guilt solidifying my own advantages at a time when the ground people stand on is being ripped away. And I feel a lot of emotional anxiety about the systems that connect us - about the things that make my life more convenient and make other people’s lives worse. It’s the reality of knowing that ten years from now, when there are millions o
Episode 353: Baxter Holmes
Baxter Holmes is a senior writer for ESPN. He won the James Beard Award for his 2017 article, “The NBA's Secret Addiction.”
“If there’s anything I’m really fighting for it’s people’s memory. I love the notion of trying to write a story that sticks with people. And that requires really compelling characters. It requires in-depth reporting — you have to take people on a journey. It needs to be so rich and something they didn’t know. I look for a story that I can tell well enough that it will ho
Episode 352: Jenny Odell
Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.
“I’ve noticed that the times I’m extra susceptible to being on social media is when I am feeling personally insecure or when I’m dealing with existential dread. That within itself is not part of the attention economy—that’s just a human being having feelings and reacting to things. For me, it’s a question of like, ‘What do I do with that?’ I can either feed it back into the attentio
Episode 351: Josh Levin
Josh Levin is the national editor at Slate. He is the host of the podcast Hang Up and Listen and the author of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.
“I think it’s a strength to make a thing, one that people might have thought was familiar, feel strange. And reminding people —in general, in life—that you don’t really know as much as you think you know. I think that carries over into any kind of storytelling.”
Thanks to Mailchimp, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for s
Episode 350: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times and the author of Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel.
“As a profile writer, the skill I have is getting in the room and staying in the room until someone is like, ‘Why is this bitch still in the room? Get her out of there?’ It’s a journalistic skill that is not a fluffy skill. There are people who are always actively trying to prevent your story, prevent you from seeing it, from seeing the things that would be good to see. There’s a lo
Episode 156: Renata Adler
Renata Adler is a journalist, critic, and novelist. Her nonfiction collection is After the Tall Timber.
“Unless you're going to be fairly definite, what's the point of writing?”
Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
Adler on Longform
Adler's New Yorker archive
[7:00] I, Libertine (Theodore Sturgeon • Ballantine Books • 1956)
[8:00] After Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction (Ballantine Books • 2015)
[9:00] "Letter from Selma" (New Yorker • Apr 1965)
[9:00] "Fly
Episode 349: Alex Mar
Alex Mar has written for The Believer, Wired, and New York. She is the author of
Witches of America and the director of the documentary American Mystic.
“I really do believe that all of us run on some kind of desire for meaning. And if someone is an atheist and they don’t subscribe to an organized system, it doesn’t mean that they don’t crave something. Maybe it’s their job. Or maybe it’s the way that they raise their children with a certain kind of intense focus. Or something else. As humans
Episode 348: David Epstein
David Epstein has reported for ProPublica, Sports Illustrated, and This American Life. His new book is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.
“You can’t just introspect or take a personality quiz and know what you’re good at or interested in. You actually have to try stuff and then reflect on it. That’s how you learn about yourself—otherwise, your insight into yourself is constrained by your roster of experiences.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Read This Summer, The T
Episode 347: Michael Pollan
Michael Pollan writes for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker and is the author of nine books. His latest is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.
“I don’t like writing as an expert. I’m fine doing public speeches as an expert. Or writing op-ed pieces as an expert. But as a writer, it’s a killer. Nobody likes an expert. Nobody likes to be lectured at. And if you’ve read anything I
Episode 346: Casey Cep
Casey Cep has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.
“I want to meet all of these expectations. I want my book to be a page-turner. I want it to be a beautiful literary object. I want it to sell. I want it to do all of these things. But at the end of the day, I just want to feel like I’ve honored this commitment between writer and reader, and writer and source. And those are somet
Episode 345: Mark Adams
Mark Adams is the author of Mr. America and Turn Right at Machu Picchu. His latest book is Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier.
“It’s always sheer and utter panic the whole time I’m on the road. I never sleep more than like three or four hours a night when I’m on the road because I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and I’m like, Who am I going to talk to today? I don’t have anything scheduled for today. What am I going to do? Sometimes thi
Episode 344: Emily Bazelon
Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Political Gabfest. Her latest book is Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.
“I'm pretty convinced that if everybody went to criminal court we would not have courts that are dysfunctional the way our courts are. Because what you see every day is a lot of dysfunction and disrespect. It’s kind of deadening. Most people—especially most middle and upper-class people in t
Episode 343: Sloane Crosley
Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. Her latest essay collection is Look Alive Out There.
“The more extreme things get in reality, the more extreme escapism has to be. It’s like Game of Thrones or bust. But in reality, I think that part of what I’m trying to do with this book, or in anything I write, is to give permission to be mad about little things. Just because there’s all of this, someone still slid their hand down a subway pole and
Episode 342: Christine Kenneally
Christine Kenneally has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Monthly. Her 2018 Buzzfeed article, “The Ghosts of the Orphanage,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award.
"I understood that the abuse was a big part of the story. But the thing that really hooked me and disturbed me and I wouldn’t forget was the depersonalization that went on in these places. It wasn’t just that the records had been lost along the way. It became really clear that the information was intenti
Episode 341: David Wallace-Wells
David Wallace-Wells is the deputy editor of New York and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming.
“Between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of warming, just that extra half degree of warming, is going to kill 150 million people from air pollution alone. That’s 25 times the death toll of the Holocaust. And when I say that to people, their eyes open. They’re like oh my god, this is suffering on such an unconscionable scale. And it is. But 9 million people are dying already eve
Episode 340: Linda Villarosa
Linda Villarosa directs the journalism program at the City College of New York and is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Her article "Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" was one of Longform's Top Ten of 2018. She is at work on a new book, Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation, due out in 2020.
“I think at the beginning I was afraid to say it right out, so I think I was saying ‘racial bias’ or something like that. Then I
Episode 339: Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis is the author of several bestselling books and the host of the podcast Against the Rules.
“I think anything you do, if it’s going to be any good, there’s got to be some risk involved. I think the reader or the listener will sense that you were taking chances and it will excite them. So, you never want to do the same thing twice, and you don’t want to cling to something because it’s the safe thing. I try to keep that in mind. Ok, I started with this, but if I push off shore clingin
Episode 338: Hillary Frank
Hillary Frank is the creator of The Longest Shortest Time podcast and the author of Weird Parenting Wins.
“I think motherhood is not valued in our culture. We don’t value the work of mothers both at home and then at work. Mothers are the most discriminated against people at work. They’re discriminated more against than fathers or people without children. Mothers are promoted less, hired less, and paid less. People are forced out of their jobs after they announce that they’re pregnant, they’re p
Episode 337: Casey Newton
Casey Newton covers technology for The Verge and writes The Interface newsletter.
“I remember one time a Facebook employee told me when I wrote something critical and I said something like, ‘Yeah, I know that one was a little harder on you.’ I remember he said to me, ‘Please understand that this helps to make the case internally for changes we want to make.’ When this type of criticism get published when we know that this is the conversation, we can push for these kinds of changes on the inside
Episode 336: Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris is a critic at large for The New York Times, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the co-host of Still Processing.
“I think that the taking of extra time to be more thoughtful and less reactive is, to the extent that I have any wisdom to impart, that is it. Just wait a second. Because someone’s going to get there before you get there anyway.”
Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2
Special Episode: Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind
Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, is the author of The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.
“We’re all less moral than we think we are, including myself. I’m interested in the justifications people provide for themselves to get deep into something that starts as one thing and ends up as a murderous criminal cartel. Paul Le Roux, sure—but also doctors and pharmacists. It’s interesting to think about where the pressures in our lives create moral ambiguity that we didn't thi
Episode 335: Kiese Laymon
Kiese Laymon is the author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Heavy: An American Memoir.
“It's ironic to me that my mom was the woman who taught me how to read—she was the black woman who taught me how to read and write—and everything I wrote outside of my house I was taught not to write to my mama. I just think that’s where we are as black writers and black creators in this country. Literally because most of our teachers are white. Principals are white. The stand
Episode 334: Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe is a New Yorker staff writer. His latest book is Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.
“What was strange for me was that it was before I was born, almost a half-century ago. I went to Belfast and asked people about it and you could see the fear on people’s faces. So this notion that this event that’s older than I am still felt so radioactive in the present day was challenging from a reporting point of view, but it also, at every step along the
Episode 333: Rosecrans Baldwin
Rosecrans Baldwin is a writer and regular contributor to GQ. His latest novel is The Last Kid Left.
“It requires a lot of preparation in order to just have lunch with Roger Federer. Being a person who tends toward anxiety and also a former Boy Scout—put those two things together and I will exhaustively prepare so that I can come across like a complete idiot. The idea of sitting down with someone like that is that you should know everything about their life and their career so that you can go in
Episode 332: Christie Aschwanden
The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)
@cragcrest
Aschwanden's personal site
[3:40] Aschwanden's archive at 538
[3:45] Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us Can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery (W. W. Norton & Company • 2019)
[5:20] Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel (Taffy Brodesser-Akner • Random House • 2019)
[13:35] Courage Camp: A Master Class on the Business of Freelancing
[17:35] Aschwanden's freelancing archive
[25:40] "The Change in
Episode 331: Lydia Polgreen
Lydia Polgreen, former foreign correspondent and director of NYT Global at The New York Times, is the editor in chief of HuffPost.
“Like a lot of people, I think I went a little bit crazy after Donald Trump got elected. ... If Hillary Clinton had won the election, I have a feeling that I would still be a mid-level manager at The New York Times. But after the election, I really started to think about journalism, about my role in it, about who journalism was serving and who it was for, and I just
Episode 330: Thomas Morton
Thomas Morton is a writer and former correspondent for HBO's _Vice News_. He was at Vice from 2004-2019 and is a major character in Jill Abramson's _Merchants of Truth_.
“You have to go with your gut and I feel like that’s one of the most essential qualities in doing anything of the nature of what we did. Of making documentaries or reporting news or current events, you really have to have a good sense of intuition for who you’re dealing with, what they’re telling you, what you’re telli
Episode 329: David Grann
David Grann is a staff writer for the New Yorker. His new book is The White Darkness.
“I do think in life, and in reporting, that reckoning with failure is a part of the process. And reckoning with your own limitations. I think that’s probably the arc and change I have made as I get older. Just as O’Shea doesn’t get the squid, failure is such an integral part of life and what you make of it. Too often we’re always focused on the success side, and I don’t always think the successes teach us as m
Episode 328: Tommy Tomlinson
Tommy Tomlinson, a former newspaper columnist, is the host of Southbound podcast. His new book is The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America.
“The thing that galvanized me was the death of my sister. I signed the contract November 2014, she died Christmas Eve of that year. She had been overweight just like me. She was older than me and died from complications, an infection that was directly connected to her weight. And that more than anything made
Episode 327: Julie Snyder
Julie Snyder, one of the first producers at This American Life, is the co-creator of Serial and S-Town. Serial Season 3 is out now.
“I am constantly second-guessing myself. I am full of regret and recrimination all the time. I don’t pride myself on it cause it probably goes too far, but in other ways I do feel like I am a person who is very flawed and I make mistakes and I try and learn from them. And I try to be very open to other people’s thoughts and input and everything like that.
Episode 326: Doug Bock Clark
Doug Bock Clark has written for GQ, Wired, and The New Yorker. His new book is The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life.
“I think for me the answer has always been you just find the people. You just listen to their stories. I think we're all microcosms, right? We're all fractals of the bigger world. Whether it's my own life or your life or the Lamalerans or other people I've encountered reporting. I think one of the things I'm constant
Episode 325: Lizzie Johnson
Lizzie Johnson covers wildfires for the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It’s kind of like when you’re a beginning journalist and you have to write an obituary—calling the family of the person who died seems like this insurmountable, very invasive task and you really don’t want to do it. That’s kind of how I felt about interviewing fire victims at first. I felt like I was somehow intruding on their grief and their pain. But somewhere along the way I realized there’s healing power in talking about what
Episode 324: Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a New Yorker staff writer, the author The Tipping Point and Blink, and the host of Revisionist History. His new podcast is Broken Record.
“The loveliest thing is to interview someone who’s never been interviewed before. To sort of watch them in a totally novel experience. Particularly when you’re interviewing them about things they never thought were worthy of an interview. That’s a really lovely experience. It’s like watching a kid on a roller coaster for the first
Episode 243: Samin Nosrat, host and author of "Salt Fat Acid Heat"
Samin Nosrat is a food writer, educator, and chef. She is the author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and hosts a series by the same name on Netflix.
“I kind of couldn’t exist as just a cook or a writer. I kind of need to be both. Because they fulfill these two totally different parts of myself and my brain. Cooking is really social, it’s very physical, and also you don’t have any time to become attached to your product. You hand it off and somebody eats it, and literally tomorrow it’s shit. … Wherea
Episode 323: Allison P. Davis
Allison P. Davis is a staff writer at The Cut and New York.
“I have no real advice other than don’t fuck it up and be afraid all the time. That’s the key to success. Don’t fuck it up. Be a little bit anxious all the time.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Aspen Ideas To Go, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@AllisonPDavis
Davis's archive at New York Mag
[0:35] "Lena Dunham Comes to Terms with Herself" (The Cut • Nov 2018)
[0:40] "Cardi B Was Made to Be Famous" (The Cut •
Bonus Episode: Dan Taberski
Dan Taberski is the host of Missing Richard Simmons and Surviving Y2K.
“Why would you walk into podcasting, where not a lot of rules have been written yet, why would walk into that space and be like, I'm just going to stick to the rules over here. It doesn't make any sense. ... Sourcing, respect for privacy — all these rules are here for a reason. And there's a line you shouldn't cross. But I don't see the point of not walking up to that line and looking over it. Because that is where
Episode 322: Maria Streshinsky
Maria Streshinsky is the executive editor at Wired.
“Sometimes a story comes in and it’s really lovely and well done. And you think if you just got on the phone with this person and pointed out the structure is wrong here and the chronology is wrong here, ask them to change that and send them what is known at Wired as the ‘praise sandwich letter’: how wonderful something is, how much work it will need, how wonderful it will be. … It’s not the kiss of death, it’s ‘we have a lot of work to do.’ …
Episode 321: Nicholas Schmidle
Nicholas Schmidle is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest article is "Virgin Galactic's Rocket Man."
“I think there’s a lot more pressure that I’ve put on myself to make sure that the next [article] is better than the last one. To make sure there are sourcing standards and expectations I have for myself now that I might not have had earlier. I’m putting even more priority on building long-term relationships in which I trust an individual. ... I feel like the pieces coming in a
Episode 320: Irin Carmon
Irin Carmon is a senior correspondent at New York Magazine, a contributor at CNN, and the co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
“The fact that we were part of this entire wave of reporting was actually exhilarating. Even when it was competitive. For me, my desire to do this comes out of a broader set of commitments to the world. I’m a feminist and I’m a journalist. The ability to do feminist investigative journalism felt like a gift. And it also felt like, wow,
Episode 319: Madeleine Baran
Madeleine Baran is an investigative reporter for APM Reports and the host and lead reporter of the podcast In the Dark.
“We’re always thinking about first not so much the narrative, but first what did we find out and how is it important? And how can we construct a story that’s going to take people along on that and they’re going to care about it and be able to follow it. That’s a challenge in any kind of serialized podcast or film where you have one narrative arc from start to finis
Episode 318: Beth Macy
Beth Macy is an author and former reporter at The Roanoke Times. Her latest book is Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America.
“I learned how to interview by delivering papers. I didn’t know it was interviewing, but I would stop and talk to old people who were bored and lonely and have great conversations. I think I learned how to talk to people by delivering the papers. And there’s a certain thing you have to do when you have to collect the money and learn how to n
Episode 317: Paige Williams
Paige Williams is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy.
“I was just sitting in a coffee shop and saw this thing about a Montana dinosaur thief, and thought, oh that’s really interesting, I don’t know anything about that. And I knew nothing about natural history, nothing about natural history museums. I was born and raised in Mississippi. We didn’t talk about that kind of stuff. I grew up in the Baptist ch
Episode 316: Joe Hagan
Joe Hagan is a correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine.
“It’s the story that begins with John Lennon on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1967 and ends with Donald Trump in the White House. In many ways the book takes you there, I wanted it to. It takes you through the culture as it metastasizes into what it is now. It had a lot to do with a sense of the age of narcissism. The worship of celebrity. Jann was
Episode 315: Elizabeth Kolbert
Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
“I still nurse the idea in my heart of hearts that something you write, that there’s some key to this all. We’re all looking for the skeleton key that’s going to unlock it, and people will go, ‘Oh, that’s why we have to do something!’ I don’t want to say that I completely dispensed with that. I think that’s what motiva
Episode 314: Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Lisa Brennan-Jobs is a New York-based writer. Her new book Small Fry is about her childhood and her relationship with her father, Steve Jobs.
"You find yourself in a whole net, in a constellation of stories, each one connecting to another. It was amazing how much I remembered. Sometimes I meet people and they say, goodness, I can’t even remember what I had for lunch. How can you remember so much? And I think, oh, sit down for a while writing badly and you will remember and remember and remember
Episode 313: Liana Finck
Liana Finck writes for The New Yorker. Her new book is Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir.
"I was drawing since I was 10 months old. My mom had left this vibrant community of architects and art people to live in this idyllic country setting with my dad, and she poured all of her art feelings into me. She really praised me for being this baby genius, which I may or may not have been. But I grew up thinking I was an amazing artist. There weren’t any other artists around besides my mom, so I didn
Episode 312: Rebecca Traister
Rebecca Traister is a writer at New York. Her new book is Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger.
“I don’t want my experience to be held up as so, ladies, your new health regimen is rage all day. Because the fact is we live in a world that does punish women for expressing their anger, that denies them jobs, that attaches to them bad reputations as difficult-to-work-with, crazy bitches. Because they’re reasonably angry about something they have every reason to be angry a
Episode 311: Jerry Saltz
Jerry Saltz is a Pulitzer-winning art critic for New York.
“To this day I wake up early and I have to get to my desk to write almost immediately. I mean fast. Before the demons get me. I got to get writing. And once I’ve written almost anything, I’ll pretty much write all day, I don’t leave my desk, I have no other life. I’m not part of the world except when I go to see shows.”
Thanks to MailChimp, TapeACall, The Dream, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@jerrys
Episode 310: Eli Saslow
Eli Saslow is a Pulitzer-winning feature writer for the Washington Post. His new book is Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist.
“If I'm writing about somebody once for 5,000 words in the Washington Post — someone who's addicted to drugs, say — I am choosing in the public eye where their story ends. Like, that's it. People aren't going to know any more. That's where I'm going to leave them being written about. And of course, that is inherently artificial — nothing end
Episode 309: Jeanne Marie Laskas
Jeanne Marie Laskas writes for GQ and the New York Times Magazine. Her new book is To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope.
“I hate saying this out loud, but it’s true: I’m really shy. Fundamentally, I'm 100% scared most of the time. I’m scared and wondering how I can not be noticed because I don’t know what to say and I’m shy. If you say I’m a good listener, that's why … I become more invisible so I’m more comfortable.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Techmeme Ride Home Podcast, and Pitt Writ
Episode 297: Elif Batuman, author of "Japan's Rent-a-Family Industry" and "The Idiot"
Elif Batuman is a novelist and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her latest article is “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry.”
“I hear novelists say things sometimes like the character does something they don’t expect. It’s like talking to people who have done ayahuasca or belong to some cult. That’s how I felt about it until extremely recently. All of these people have drunk some kind of Kool Aid where they’re like, ‘I’m in this trippy zone where characters are doing things.’ And I would think to my
Episode 308: Jon Caramanica
Jon Caramanica is a music writer at The New York Times.
“I like to interview people very early in their careers or very late in their careers. I think vulnerability and willingness to be vulnerable is at a peak in those two parts. Young enough not to know better, old enough not to give a damn. … The story I want to tell is—how are you this person, and then you became this? Then at the end, let’s look back on these things and let’s paint the art together. But in the middle when your primary obse
Episode 307: Jeff Maysh
Jeff Maysh is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. His latest article is "How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions."
“I’ve always looked for stories with the theme of identity and identity theft. I’m very interested in people leading double lives. All of my stories are the same in a sense. Whether that’s a spy or a fake cheerleader or a bank robber or even a wrestler, someone is pretending to be someone they’re not, leading a double life. I find that really exciting.
Episode 306: David Marchese
David Marchese is the interviewer for New York's "In Conversation" series.
"The thing I like about doing long interviews with people is that each one feels like a totally unique experience to me. It’s not like I go into an interview and already know the arc of the story I’m going to tell, and I’m going to just fill that in the best I can. I have ideas of what to talk about and what the conversation might entail, but it does feel like I’m starting at zero and the conversation can go anywhere.”
Episode 305: Nathaniel Rich
Nathaniel Rich is a novelist and a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. His most recent article is "Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change."
“There’s a huge opportunity with climate change because we talk a lot about the political issue with it, the industry story and the scientific story, but we don’t talk about the human story. And I would say that not only is it a big human story, but it is the human story. ... With every step of the ladder that we’ve advanced,
Episode 304: Laura June
Laura June is author of Now My Heart Is Full.
“Parenting wasn’t considered literary fodder for a long time. I think women in particular are raised not to complain. Which is not what I was doing. If you have to boil it down, it’s base emotion. Then you’re complaining about how hard it is. Or, the opposite end, you’re bragging. There’s no in between. Most of my writing is in between.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@laur
Episode 303: Rukmini Callimachi
Rukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times and is the host of Caliphate.
“My major takeaway that I have come away with in this work is go to the enemy. Talk to the enemy. I think that the way that Al Qaeda and ISIS is typically covered is by reporters who just speak to officials in Washington. ... That’s only one side of the story. And I have learned so much by seeking out their documents, reading their propaganda ... speaking to them themselves.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Rea
Episode 302: Megan Greenwell
Megan Greenwell is the editor-in-chief of Deadspin.
“I’m the first external hire to be the EIC in Deadspin history, so not everybody knew me or knew anything about my work. I don’t think there was resistance to me being hired, but I do think when you’re coming in from outside, there’s a need to say, ‘Hey, no, I can do this.’ Somebody told me about a management adage at one point: everybody tries to prove that they’re competent when they first start, and what you actually have to prove
Episode 301: Bryan Fogel
Bryan Fogel is the Oscar-winning director of Icarus.
“There was a long period of time that none of us were really thinking so much about the film. It was really that we were in a real-world crisis. Gregory's life was essentially in my hands.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, and Stitcher Premium for sponsoring this week's episode.
@bryanfogel
icarus.film
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 260: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Pulitzer-winning author of "A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof"
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an essayist. Her 2017 GQ piece “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof” won the National Magazine Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
“I remember feeling like ‘you’re playing chess with evil, and you gotta win.’ Because this is the most terrible thing I’d ever seen. And I was so mad. I still get so mad. Words aren’t enough. I’m angry about it. I can’t do anything to Dylann Roof, physically, so this is what I could do.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Su
Episode 300: May Jeong
May Jeong is a magazine writer and investigative reporter.
“I don’t have kids, I don’t have an expensive drug habit. Everything that I do right now at this moment in my life is to serve the story. That means that sometimes I’m not the best partner. I’m not the best friend. I’m a really terrible daughter probably. If my parents had a satisfaction survey, I don’t think I’d rank really high. I have friends who are buying houses and stuff. I’m very far away from that. What else have I sacr
Episode 299: Helen Rosner
Helen Rosner is a food correspondent at The New Yorker.
“I believe the things that are really important to me are structure over all and—forgive me, I’ve said this on other podcasts before—if I were going to get a tattoo this is what I would get a tattoo of is that it doesn’t matter what you say, it only matters what they hear. It’s my job to make sure the gulf between those two things is as narrow as possible and there’s as little ambiguity between what I say and what you hear. It’s
Episode 298: Reeves Wiedeman
Reeves Wiedeman is a reporter at New York.
“I think the main reason I love the job is reporting. And the fact that you get to go out into situations that you wouldn’t otherwise as your job. I’m someone who gets antsy if I’m just on a vacation sitting around. I’d much rather go somewhere weird and kind of have a purpose. So, just feeling like you can kind of go anywhere and see anything and talk to anyone is a pretty cool way to live your day.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Pitt Writers, Thermacell, a
Episode 297: Elif Batuman
Elif Batuman is a novelist and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her latest article is “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry.”
“I hear novelists say things sometimes like the character does something they don’t expect. It’s like talking to people who have done ayahuasca or belong to some cult. That’s how I felt about it until extremely recently. All of these people have drunk some kind of Kool Aid where they’re like, ‘I’m in this trippy zone where characters are doing things.’ And I would th
Episode 296: Leon Neyfakh
Leon Neyfakh is a writer and the host of Slow Burn.
“We didn’t want to be coy about why we were doing the show. We wanted to be up front. We’re interested in this era because it seems like the last time in our nation’s history where things were this wild and the news was this rapid fire and the outcome was this uncertain. That was the main parallel we were thinking about when we started. It was only when we started learning the story and identified the turning points we kept running in
Episode 295: Deborah Fallows and James Fallows
James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, and Deborah Fallows, a linguist and writer, are the co-authors of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America.
“The credo of reporting—you know, what you don’t know till you show it—that’s my 'this-I-believe.' That’s the reason I’ve stayed in this line of work for this many decades because there’s nothing more fascinating that you can do but to serially satisfy your curiosity about things. What’s it like on an aircraft ca
Episode 294: Sheila Heti
Sheila Heti is the author of seven books. Her latest is Motherhood: A Novel.
“[My parents] were afraid for me. As anybody who has a kid who wants to be a writer. I think they understood it was a hard life. It was a life in which you wouldn’t necessarily make enough money. It was a life in which you might be setting yourself up for a great amount of disappointment. My dad’s father was a painter, so there was in him this idea that it wasn’t so crazy to him. It wasn’t so outside his understanding.
Episode 293: Adam Davidson
Adam Davidson is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
“I am as shocked this moment that Trump was elected as I was the moment he was elected. That fundamental state of shock. It’s like there’s a pile of putrid, rotting human feces on a table and like six of the people around the table are like, ‘That is disgusting.’ And four are like ‘Oh it’s so delicious. Oh, I love it. It’s delicious.’ And I keep saying, ‘Well, why do you like it?’ ... Trump is not a very interesting person in my mind. He’s a ve
Episode 292: Lauren Hilgers
Lauren Hilgers is a journalist and the author of Patriot Number One: American Dreams in Chinatown.
“You just need to spend a lot of time with people. And it’s awkward. I read something when I was first starting out as a journalist in China, ‘Make a discipline out of being uncomfortable.’ I think that’s very helpful. You’re going to feel uncomfortable a lot of the time, and just decide to be okay with it and just keep going with it.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Substack, and Skillshare for sponsoring
Episode 291: Charlie Warzel
Charlie Warzel is a senior tech writer for BuzzFeed.
“Part of the big tech reckoning that we’re seeing since the election isn’t really about the election, it isn’t really about Trump or politics. It’s more about this idea that: Wow, these services have incredibly real consequences in our everyday lives. I think that realization is really profound and is going to shape how we try to figure out what it means to be online from here on out. To keep stories relevant, we have to keep that in mind an
Episode 290: Michelle Dean
Michelle Dean is a journalist and critic. Her new book is Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion.
“There isn’t one answer. I wish there was one answer. The answer is: You just have to wing it. And I’m learning that — I’m learning to be okay with the winging it. ... I guess the lesson to me of what went on with a lot of women in the book is: You have to be comfortable with the fact that some days are going to be good, and some days are going to not be good.”
Thanks to MailChimp
Episode 289: Craig Mod
Craig Mod is a writer and photographer. His podcast is On Margins.
“You pick up an iPad, you pick up an iPhone—what are you picking up? You’re picking up a chemical-driven casino that just plays on your most base desires for vanity and ego and our obsession with watching train wrecks happen. That’s what we’re picking up and it’s counted in pageviews, because—not to be reductive and say that it’s a capitalist issue, but when you take hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital,
Episode 288: Tom Bissell
Tom Bissell is a journalist, critic, video game writer, and author of The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made. His latest book is Magic Hours.
“I kind of have come around to maybe not as monkish or fanatical devotion to sentence idolatry as I was when I was a younger writer, earlier in my career. I think I’m coming around to a place where a lot of middle-aged writers get to, which is: I tried to rewire and change the world with the beauty of language alon
Episode 287: Will Mackin
Will Mackin is a U.S. Navy veteran who served with a SEAL team in Iraq and Afghanistan. His debut book is Bring Out the Dog.
“I wanted to write nonfiction and I started writing nonfiction. And the reason I did that was — first of all, I felt all the people did all the hard work, and who was I to take liberties? And the second reason was, I just felt an obligation to the men and women who I served with not to misrepresent them, or what they’d been through, or what it had meant to them, or how t
Episode 286: Nitasha Tiku
Nitasha Tiku is a senior writer at Wired.
“I’ve always been an incredibly nosy person—not nosy, curious. Curious about the world. It just gives you a license to ask any question, and hopefully if you have a willing editor, the freedom to see something fascinating and pursue it. It was just a natural fit from there. But that also means I don’t have the machismo, ‘breaking news’ sort of a thing. I feel like I can try on different hats, wherever I am.”
Thanks to MailChimp and Credible.com for sp
Episode 285: Chana Joffe-Walt
Chana Joffe-Walt is a producer and reporter at This American Life. Her latest story is "Five Women."
“I felt like there was more to learn from these stories, more than just which men are bad and shouldn’t have the Netflix special that they wanted to have. And I was interested, also, in that there were groups of women, and that somehow, in having a group of women, you would have variation of experience. There could be a unifying person who they all experienced, but they would inevitably experie
Episode 284: Joe Weisenthal
Joe Weisenthal is the executive editor of news for Bloomberg Digital and the co-host of What’d You Miss? and Odd Lots.
"If I don’t say yes to this, then I can never say yes to anything again. Because when else am I going to get a chance in life to co-host a tv show? Even if it’s terrible, and I’m terrible at it, and it’s cancelled after three months, and everyone thinks it’s awful, for the rest of my life, I’ll be able to say I co-hosted a cable TV show. And so I was like, you know what—I have
Episode 283: Sean Fennessey
Sean Fennessy is the editor-in-chief of The Ringer and a former Grantland editor. He hosts The Big Picture.
"What I try to do is listen to people as much as I can. And try to be compassionate. I think it’s really hard to be on the internet. This is an internet company, in a lot of ways. We have a documentary coming out that’s going to be on linear television that’s really exciting. Maybe we’ll have more of those. But for the moment, podcast, writing, video: it’s internet. [The internet] is an
Episode 282: Jenna Wortham
Jenna Wortham is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Still Processing.
“I feel like I’m still writing to let my 10-year-old self know it’s okay to be you. It’s okay to be a chubby androgynous weirdo. You know what I mean? Like this weird black kid. It’s okay. There are others like you.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, "Food: A Cultural Culinary History," and "Tales" for sponsoring this week's episode.
@jennydeluxe
www.jennydeluxe.com
Wortham on Longform
[02:00] Wortham’s
Episode 281: Michael Idov
Michael Idov is a screenwriter, journalist, and the former editor-in-chief of GQ Russia. His latest book is Dressed Up for a Riot.
"It just goes to show that the best thing you can possibly do as a journalist is to forget you’re a journalist, go out, have some authentic experiences, preferably fail at something really hard, and then write about that."
Thanks to MailChimp and Mubi for sponsoring this week's episode.
@michaelidov
Idov on Longform
[01:15] "The Movie Set That Ate Itself" (GQ • Oc
Episode 280: Liliana Segura
Liliana Segura writes for The Intercept.
“My form of advocacy against the death penalty, frankly, has always been to tell those stories that other people aren’t seeing. And to humanize the people—not just the people facing execution, but everyone around them.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, and Tripping.com for sponsoring this week's episode.
@LilianaSegura
Segura on Longform
[01:50] "Dispatch From Angola: Faith-Based Slavery in a Louisiana Prison" (Colorlines • Aug 2011)
[02:10] "What Happened t
Episode 279: Seth Wickersham
Seth Wickersham is a senior writer for ESPN. His latest article is "For Kraft, Brady and Belichick, Is This the Beginning of the End?"
“You want to write about something real. I hate stories that are, the tension of the story is, talk radio perception versus the reality that I see when I’m with somebody. I can’t stand those stories because to me, you’re just writing about the ether versus a real person, and that’s not a real tension to me. The inner tensions are the best tensions. You can’t ge
Episode 278: Nathan Thornburgh
Nathan Thornburgh is the co-founder of Roads & Kingdoms.
"You have to remain committed to the kind of irrational act of producing journalism for an uncaring world. You have to want to do that so bad, that you will never not be doing that. There’s so many ways to die in this business."
Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, and Rise and Grind for sponsoring this week's episode.
@thornburgh
Thornburgh on Longform
[01:45] Roads & Kingdoms
[02:50] Pico Iyer
[01:45] Coin Talk
[05:35] "SATW Fo
Episode 277: Kiera Feldman
Kiera Feldman is an investigative reporter. Her latest article is "Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection."
"I used to have a lot of anxiety that I don’t seem like an investigative reporter. Utlimately, my reporting personality is just me. It’s just, I want to be real with people. And the number one rule of reporting is to be a human being to other people. Be decent. Be kind."
Thanks to MailChimp, RXBAR, and Tripping.com for sponsoring this week's episode.
@kierafeldma
Episode 276: Azmat Khan
Azmat Khan is an investigative reporter and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
"For me, what matters most is systematic investigation, and I think that’s different than an investigative story that might explore one case. It’s about stepping back and understanding the big picture and getting to the heart of something. It doesn’t have to be a number’s game, but being able to say: Look, I looked at a wide enough sample of whatever this issue is, and here is what this tells us.
Episode 210: Ben Taub, New Yorker Staff Writer
Ben Taub is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
“I don’t think it’s my place to be cynical because I’ve observed some of the horrors of the Syrian War through these various materials, but it’s Syrians that are living them. It’s Syrians that are being largely ignored by the international community and by a lot of political attention on ISIS. And I think that it wouldn’t be my place to be cynical when some of them still aren’t.”
Thanks to MailChimp and Tripping for sponsoring this week's episode.
Episode 254: Maggie Haberman, New York Times White House Correspondent
Maggie Haberman covers the White House for The New York Times.
“If I start thinking about it, then I’m not going to be able to just keep doing my job. I'm being as honest as I can — I try not to think about it. If you’re flying a plane and you think about the fact that if the plane blows up in midair you’re gonna die, do you feel like you can really focus as well? So, I’m not thinking about [the stakes]. This is just my job. This is what we do. Ask me another question.”
Thanks to MailChimp fo
Episode 275: Tina Brown
Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, is the founder of Women in the World. Her latest book is The Vanity Fair Diaries.
“I believed that my bravado had no limit, if you know what I mean. I see limits now, let’s put it that way. I do see limits. But you know, I’m still pretty reckless when I want something. That’s why I don’t tweet much. I’ll say something that will just cause me too much trouble.”
Thanks to MailChimp and Squarespace for sponsoring this week
Episode 274: Mara Shalhoup
Mara Shalhoup was until recently editor-in-chief of LA Weekly. She is the author of BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family.
“I’m so fearful about what it will look like for cities without an outlet for [alt-weekly] stories. And for young writers, who need and deserve the hands-on editing these kind of editors can give them and help really launch careers … it’s a tragedy for journalism. It’s a tragedy for young people, people of color. It’s a tragedy for the sub
Episode 273: Zoe Chace
Zoe Chace is a reporter and producer at This American Life.
“Radio is a movie in your head. It’s a very visual thing. It’s a transporting thing—when it’s done well. And it’s louder than your thoughts. It is both of those things. It would just take me out of the place that I was, where I was lost and couldn’t figure things out. ... They had a very personal way of telling the story to you, so that you kind of felt like you’re there with them. Like it’s less lonely, it’s literally less lonely to
Episode 272: Jason Leopold
Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for Buzzfeed and the author of News Junkie.
“I made the worst mistake that cost me my credibility and I could have done two things. I could have walked away, and said I’m done with this, no one wants me anymore. Or I could have—which I did—say, I’m going to learn how to do this differently, and be better. And that’s ultimately is what paved the way to this FOIA work. Because no one trusted me anymore.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Credible, Mubi, and S
Episode 271: Kara Swisher
Kara Swisher is the executive editor and co-founder of Recode.
“I do the work. I just work harder than other people. I really do. I work harder, I interview more people, I call more people, I text more people. And so I find out, and they can not talk to me — fine. I know anyway. I’d like to talk to you, I’d like to give you a chance. I’d like to be fair. I’d like to hear your side of the story. And the most important thing is, I think smart people – and these are very smart people — l
Episode 270: Tyler Cowen
Tyler Cowen is an economist, the co-founder of Marginal Revolution, and the host of Conversations with Tyler. His latest book is The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream.
“I think of my central contribution, or what I’m trying to have it be, is teaching people to think of counter arguments. I’m trying to teach a method: always push things one step further. What if, under what conditions, what would make this wrong? If I write something and people respond to it that
Episode 269: Jodi Kantor
Jodi Kantor is a New York Times investigative reporter and the author of The Obamas.
“Being a reporter really robs you of self-consciousness and shyness. You realize that it’s this great gift of being able to ask crazy questions, either really personal or very probing or especially with a powerful — to walk up to Harvey Weinstein, essentially and say, ‘What have you been doing to women all these years, and for how long? All of these other people may be afraid to confront you about it, but we a
Episode 268: Jim Nelson
Jim Nelson is the editor-in-chief of GQ.
“One of the things that was initially a challenge was we would all think of ‘the print side’ and ‘the digital side.’ Now what we all think about is, ‘Okay, stop saying GQ.com and GQ the print edition. It’s just GQ!’ And once you cross that line, you don’t ever want to go back to it. I can’t imagine. The job has changed so much, even in the last three years, that when I look back, I think, ‘God, I was just such a quaint little fucker.’”
Thanks to MailCh
Episode 267: Sarah Ellison
Sarah Ellison is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of War at the Wall Street Journal.
“There’s no lack of stories. ... There’s always an element where you’re going to be parachuting into something that someone has likely written about, to some degree. You can’t shy away from going into something that’s a crowded field.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Quip, and BarkBox for sponsoring this week's episode.
@Sarahlellison
sarahlellison.com
Ellison on Longform
[00:15] 11/15: Lon
Episode 266: Patricia Bosworth
Patricia Bosworth is a journalist and biographer. Her latest book is The Men in My Life.
“The [acting] rejections are hellish and ghastly. At least they were to me. And I got tired of being rejected so much and also tired of not being able to control my life. And as soon as I became a writer, I had this control, I felt more active, more energized. But it was a decision that took a long time coming.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Heaven's Gate for sponsoring this week's episode.
@p_bos
Episode 265: Michael Barbaro
Michael Barbaro is the host of The Daily.
“I don’t think The Daily should ever be my therapy session. That’s not what it’s meant to be, but I’m a human being. I arrive at work on a random Tuesday, and I do an interview with a guy like that, and it just punched me right in the stomach.”
Thanks to MailChimp, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Blinkist for sponsoring this week's episode.
@mikiebarb
Barbaro on Longform
[00:55] The Daily
[01:20] Barbaro’s Archive at The New York Times
[03
Episode 264: Vanessa Grigoriadis
Vanessa Grigoriadis writes for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine. Her new book is Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus.
“I’m a controversial writer. I’ve never shied away from controversy. I’ve only really courted it because I realized a lot earlier than a lot of other people who are involved in this whole depressing business that clicks are the way to go, right? Or eyeballs, as we used to call them, or readership. I come out of a Tom W
Episode 263: Jelani Cobb
Dr. Jelani Cobb is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of three books, including The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress. He teaches journalism at Columbia University.
“Ralph Wiley — the sports writer, late Ralph Wiley — told me something when I was 25 or so, and he was so right. He said I should never fall in love with anything I’ve written. … The second thing he told me was, ‘You won’t get there overnight, and believe me, you don’t want to.’ I’m embarras
Episode 262: PJ Vogt of Reply All (Part 2)
PJ Vogt is the co-host of Reply All.
“Every radio story is broken. Everything is missing some piece it’s supposed to have. Everything has some weird interview that didn’t go the way you thought it was going to go, or you thought you had an answer but you were wrong.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Blinkist for sponsoring this week's episode.
@PJVogt
[01:00] "Black Box" (This American Life • Oct 1988)
[1:45] On The Media
[1:50] TLDR
[03:10] David Sedaris’s Archive at This Ameri
Episode 262: Alex Goldman of Reply All (Part 1)
Alex Goldman is the co-host of Reply All.
“I am not the authority on the internet. I’m not an expert on particularly anything, except stuff that I like.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Blinkist for sponsoring this week's episode.
@AGoldmund
Goldman on Longform
[01:30] "Long Distance" (Reply All • Jul 2017)
[01:30] "Long Distance, Part II" (Reply All • Jul 2017)
[02:00] "This Website is For Sale" (Reply All • Dec 2014)
[02:45] TLDR
[05:15] metafilter.com
[05:15] Matt Haughey on Stoner
[
Episode 261: Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton is the former Democratic nominee for president. Her new book is What Happened.
“I hugged a lot of people after [my concession speech] was over. A lot of people cried … and then it was done. So Bill and I went out and got in the back of the van that we drive around in, and I just felt like all of the adrenaline was drained. I mean there was nothing left. It was like somebody had pulled the plug on a bathtub and everything just drained out. I just slumped over. Sat there. … And t
Episode 260: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an essayist. Her latest piece is “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof.”
“I remember feeling like ‘you’re playing chess with evil, and you gotta win.’ Because this is the most terrible thing I’d ever seen. And I was so mad. I still get so mad. Words aren’t enough. I’m angry about it. I can’t do anything to Dylann Roof, physically, so this is what I could do.”
Thanks to MailChimp, HelloFresh, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
the-rache
Episode 259: Ellen Barry
Ellen Barry is the former New York Times bureau chief for South Asia.
“Every time you leave a beat—and this is something that I think as foreign correspondents we rarely communicate to our readers—you’re walking away from a story which has really been your whole life for four or five years. And it’s hard to walk away…The majority of us live a story for a certain number of years, and then we just turn our backs on it.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Of a Kind for sponsoring this week's epis
Episode 258: Kate Fagan
Kate Fagan is a columnist and feature writer for ESPN. Her latest book is What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen.
“When I was professionally closeted, I was kind of bitter. I didn’t have a ton of empathy. And I don’t think I always asked the right question, because I wouldn’t ask people questions that I wouldn’t want to be asked…I had walls up. I wouldn’t even allow myself to be vulnerable in my writing. Because the whole point of my existence at tha
Episode 257: Jay Caspian Kang
Jay Caspian Kang is a writer at large at The New York Times Magazine and a correspondent for Vice News Tonight.
“I make a pretty provocative argument about how Asian American identity doesn’t really exist—how it’s basically just an academic idea, and it’s not lived within the lives of anybody who’s Asian. Like you grow up, you’re Korean, you’re a minority. You don’t have any sort of kinship with, like, Indian kids. You know? And there’s no cultural sharedness where you’re just like, ‘
Episode 256: David Gessner
David Gessner is the author of ten books. His latest is Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth.
“The ambition got in my way at first. Because I wanted my stuff to be great, and it froze me up. But later on it was really helpful. I’m startled by the way people don’t, you know, admit [they care] … it seems unlikely people wouldn’t want to be immortal.”
Thanks to Casper, Squarespace, and MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
@BDsCocktailHour
davidgessner.com
Gessner on Lon
Episode 255: Matthew Klam
Matthew Klam is a journalist and fiction writer. His new novel is Who Is Rich?.
“The New Yorker had hyped me with this “20 Under 40” thing…and when the tenth anniversary of that list [came], somebody wrote an article about it. And they found everybody in it, and I was the only one who hadn’t done anything since then, according to them. And the article, it was a little paragraph or two, it ended with ‘poor Matthew Klam.’”
Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, and Squarespace for sponsoring thi
Episode 254: Maggie Haberman
Maggie Haberman covers the White House for The New York Times.
“If I start thinking about it, then I’m not going to be able to just keep doing my job. I'm being as honest as I can — I try not to think about it. If you’re flying a plane and you think about the fact that if the plane blows up in midair you’re gonna die, do you feel like you can really focus as well? So, I’m not thinking about [the stakes]. This is just my job. This is what we do. Ask me another question.”
Thanks to MailChimp, B
Episode 253: Steven Levy
Steven Levy writes for Wired, where he is the editor of Backchannel.
“It’s about people. Travis Kalanick’s foibles aren’t because he’s a technology executive. It’s because he’s Travis Kalanick. That’s the way he is. There is a certain strain in Silicon Valley, which rewards totally driven people, but that is humanity. And advanced technology is no guarantee—and as a matter of fact I don’t think it’ll do anything—from stopping ill-intentioned people from doing ill-intentioned things.”
Thanks t
Episode 252: Mark Bowden
Mark Bowden is a journalist and the author of 13 books, including Black Hawk Down and his latest, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam.
“My goal is never to condemn someone that I’m writing about. It’s always to understand them. And that, to me, is far more interesting than passing judgment on them. I want you to read about Che Thi Mung, an 18-year-old village girl, who was selling hats on corners in Hue in the daytime and going home and sharpening spikes to go into booby t
Episode 239: S-Town's Brian Reed
Brian Reed, a senior producer at This American Life, is the host of S-Town.
“It’s a story about the remarkableness of what could be called an unremarkable life.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Babbel, and Squarespace for sponsoring this episode.
@brihreed
Reed's This American Life archive
[28:45] Cops See It Differently, Part One (This American Life • Feb 2015)
[28:45] Wake Up Now (This American Life • Dec 2014)
[44:30] Stoner (John Wiliams • Viking • 1965)
[45:15] Photo of the S-Town planning room
[46
Episode 251: Ginger Thompson
Ginger Thompson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning senior reporter at ProPublica. Her most recent article is "How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico."
“How many times have I written the phrase ‘a town that was controlled by drug traffickers?' I had no idea what that really meant. What does it mean to live in a town that’s controlled by drug traffickers? And how does it get that way? One of the things I was hoping that we could do by having the people who actually lived through that expl
Episode 250: Patricia Lockwood
Patricia Lockwood is a poet and essayist. Her new book is Priestdaddy: A Memoir.
“[Prose writing is] strange to me as a poet. I’m like, ‘Well I guess I’ll tell you just what happened then.’ But the humor has to be there as well. Because in my family household…the absurdity or the surrealism that we have is in reaction to the craziness of the household. So something like your underwear-clad father with his hand in a vat of pickles, sitting in a room full of $10,000 guitars and telling you that
Episode 249: John Grisham
John Grisham is the author of 38 books, including his latest novel, Camino Island.
“A Time to Kill didn’t sell. It just didn’t sell. There was never any talk of going back for a second printing. No talk of paper back. No foreign deal. It was a flop. And I told my wife, I said, ‘Look, I’m gonna do it one more time. I’m gonna write one more book…hopefully something more commercial, more accessible, more popular. If this doesn’t work, forget this career. Forget this hobby. I’m just gonna be a law
Episode 248: Erin Lee Carr
Erin Lee Carr is a documentary filmmaker and writer. Her new film is Mommy Dead and Dearest.
“I feel like I’ve always had the story down—that’s not been really difficult for me. So the difficult thing, I think, for me, has always been access. Can I get the access? Can I withstand the pressure? You know, there’s been so many times where I wasn’t being paid to do the job, and I had to wait on the access. And it’s not for the faint of heart. You know, I could have spent a year and a half
Episode 247: Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy, a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of The Rules Do Not Apply.
“I don’t believe in ‘would this’ and ‘would that.’ There’s no ‘everything happens for a reason.’ Everything happens, and then you just fucking deal. I mean we could play that game with everything, but time only moves in one direction. That’s a bad game. You shouldn’t play that game—you’ll break your own heart.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Kindle, V by Viacom, and 2U for sponsoring this week's episode.
@avlskies
ariellevy
Episode 246: Jeffrey Gettleman
Jeffrey Gettleman is the East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times and the author of Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival.
“I’m not an adventure-seeking adrenaline junky. I like to explore new worlds, but I’m not one of these chain-smoking, hard-drinking, partying types that just wants thrills all the time. And unfortunately that’s an aspect of the job. And as I get older and I’ve been through more and more, the question gets louder. Which is: Why do you keep doi
Episode 245: Rafe Bartholomew
Rafe Bartholomew is the former features editor at Grantland and the author of Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me.
“I never saw it as something negative because [my dad] comes out, to me, at the end, extremely heroic. … He becomes this dad who I idolized as a bartender, a guy who would hang out with me and make me laugh, a guy I just adored almost every step of the way. I mean, of course, everybody gets into fights. But to me it was always so obvious that he had overcome the problems in hi
Episode 244: Nick Bilton
Nick Bilton is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road.
“I’ve been covering tech for a long, long time. And the thing I’ve always tried to do is cover the people of the tech culture, not the tech itself. … I've always been interested in the good and bad side of technology. A lot of times the problem in Silicon Valley is that people come up with a good idea that’s supposed to do a good thing—you k
Episode 243: Samin Nosrat
Samin Nosrat is a food writer, educator, and chef. Her new book is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking.
“I kind of couldn’t exist as just a cook or a writer. I kind of need to be both. Because they fulfill these two totally different parts of myself and my brain. Cooking is really social, it’s very physical, and also you don’t have any time to become attached to your product. You hand it off and somebody eats it, and literally tomorrow it’s shit. … Whereas with writin
Episode 242: Sarah Menkedick
Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer and the founder of Vela. Her upcoming book is Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm.
“I’d been rejected a ton of times—I had that 400-page thing that never became a book. So there were plenty of epic rejections that felt catastrophic. And I’d sort of arrived at this point where I was like: I’m living in my parents' cabin, and I’m pregnant, so whatever. Fuck it. I’m gonna write whatever I want to write.”
Thanks to MailChimp and Blue Apron
Episode 241: David Grann
David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new book is Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.
“The more stories I reported over time, the more I just realized there are parts of the story I can’t always get to. You know, unless this is a reality show and there’s 18 cameras in every room, and people [talk] before they sleep, and maybe you have some mind-bug in their brain for their unconscious, there are just parts you’re just not gonna know. You get a
Episode 240: Alex Kotlowitz
Alex Kotlowitz is a journalist whose work has appeared in print, radio, and film. He’s the author of three books, including There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America.
“The truth of the matter is, given what we do, we’re always outsiders. If it’s not by race or class, it’s by gender, religion, politics. It’s just the nature of being a nonfiction writer—going into communities that, at some level, feel unfamiliar. If you’re writing about stuff you already k
Episode 239: Brian Reed
Brian Reed, a senior producer at This American Life, is the host of S-Town.
“It’s a story about the remarkableness of what could be called an unremarkable life.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
@brihreed
Reed's This American Life archive
[30:00] "Cops See It Differently" (This American Life • Feb 2015)
[30:00] "Wake Up Now" (This American Life • Dec 2014)
[45:45] Stoner (John Wiliams • Viking • 1965)
[49:30] Photo of the S-Town plannin
Episode 238: Hrishikesh Hirway
Hrishikesh Hirway is the host of Song Exploder.
“I love the idea that somebody would listen to an episode [of Song Exploder] and then the feeling that they would have afterwards is, ‘Now I want to make something.’ That’s the best possible reaction. Whether it’s music or not, just that idea: ‘I want to make something.’ Because that is the thing that I love most, getting that feeling.”
Thanks to MailChimp and MeUndies for sponsoring this week's episode.
@HrishiHirway
[00:00] Stoner
[01:45] BBC’
Episode 237: Sheelah Kolhatkar
Sheelah Kolhatkar is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street.
“Suddenly the financial crisis happened and all this stuff that had been hidden from view came out into the open. It was like, ‘Oh, this was actually all kind of a big façade.’ And there was all this fraud and stealing and manipulation and corruption, and all these other things going on underneath the whole shiny ro
Episode 236: Al Baker
Al Baker is a crime reporter at The New York Times, where he writes the series “Murder in the 4-0.”
“When there’s a murder in a public housing high rise, there’s a body on the floor. Jessica White in a playground, on a hot summer night. Her children saw it. Her body fell by a bench by a slide. You look up and there’s hundreds of windows, representing potentially thousands of eyes, looking down on that like a fishbowl. …They’re seeing it through the window and they can see that there’s
Episode 235: Caity Weaver
Caity Weaver is a staff writer at GQ.
“I always try to remember: you don’t have to tell people what you’re not good at. You don’t have to remind them of what you’re not doing well or what your weak points are. Don’t apologize for things immediately. Always give a little less information than they need. Don’t overshare.”
Thanks to MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
@caityweaver
caity.info
Weaver on Longform
[02:30] "Kim Kardashian West Has a Few Things to Get Off Her Chest"
Episode 234: Matthew Cole
Matthew Cole is an investigative reporter at The Intercept, where he recently published “The Crimes of Seal Team 6.”
“I’ve gotten very polite and very impolite versions of ‘go fuck yourself.’ I used to have a little sheet of paper where I wrote down those responses just as the vernacular that was given to me: ‘You’re a shitty reporter, and I don’t talk to shitty reporters.’ You know, I’ve had some very polite ones, [but] I’ve had people threaten me with their dogs. Some of it is absolutely col
Episode 233: Alexis C. Madrigal
Alexis C. Madrigal is an editor-at-large for Fusion, where he’s producing the upcoming podcast, Containers.
“Sometimes you think like, 'Man the media business is the worst. This is so hard.' When you spend time with all these other business people, you probably are going to say, ‘Capitalism is the worst. This is hard.’ Competition that’s linked to global things is so hard because global companies are locked in this incredible efficiency battle that just drives all of the slack out of the syste
Episode 232: Ana Marie Cox
Ana Marie Cox is the senior political correspondent for MTV News, conducts the “Talk” interviews in The New York Times Magazine, and founded Wonkette.
“When people are sending me hate mail or threats, one defense I have against that is ‘you don’t know me.’ You know? That wasn’t something I always was able to say. As I’ve become a stronger person, it’s been easier for me to be like, ‘The person they’re attacking, it’s not me.’”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Blue Apron for spon
Episode 231: Brooke Gladstone
Brooke Gladstone is the host of On the Media.
“I’ve learned so much about how easy it is to redefine reality in this era of billions of filter bubbles. How easy it is to cast doubt on what is undeniably true. And I think that that’s what frightens me the most. I actually think that’s what frightens most people the most. How do we make sure that we all live in the same world? Or do we?”
Thanks to MailChimp, Texture, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago for sponsoring this week's episode.
Episode 230: Ezra Edelman
Ezra Edelman is the director of O.J.: Made in America.
“When I say what I learned is that America is even more fucked up than I had previously thought, it’s that—the superficiality of it. How we are willingly seduced by these shiny people and these shiny things. And, again, when I looked at O.J.’s trajectory, that was an operating principle.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, Casper, and Secrets, Crimes, & Audiotape for sponsoring this week's episode.
@ezraedelman
[00:45] "Vanish" (Evan Ratli
Episode 229: Alexey Kovalev
Alexey Kovalev is a Moscow-based journalist and the author of the recent article, “A Message to My Doomed Colleagues in the American Media."
“It’s really disheartening to see how little it takes for people to start believing in something that directly contradicts the empirical facts that they are directly confronting. The Russian TV channel tells you that the pill is red, but the pill in front of you is blue. It completely alters the perception of reality. You don’t know what’s real anymore.”
Episode 228: Jeff Sharlet
Jeff Sharlet writes about politics and religion for Esquire, GQ, New York Times Magazine, and more.
“I like the stories with difficult people. I like the stories about people who are dismissed as monsters. I hate the term ‘monster.’ ‘Monster’ is a safe term for us, right? Trump’s a monster. Great, we don’t need to wrestle with, ‘Uh oh, he’s not a monster. He’s in this human family with us.’ I’m not normalizing him. I’m acknowledging the fact. Now, what’s wrong with us? If Trump is human, what’
Episode 227: Jace Clayton
Jace Clayton is a music writer and musician who records as DJ /rupture. His book is Uproot: Travels in 21st-Century Music and Digital Culture.
“What does it mean to be young and have some sound inside your head? Or to be in a scene that you want to broadcast to the world? That notion of the world is changing, who you’re broadcasting to is changing, all these different things—the tool sets. But there’s this very fundamental joy of music making. I was like, ‘Ok. Let’s find flashpoints where inte
Episode 226: Terry Gross
Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air.
“Part of my philosophy of life is that you have to live with a certain amount of delusion. And part of the delusion I live with is that maybe, from experience, I’m getting a little bit better. But then the other part of me, the more overpowering part of me, is the pessimistic part that says, ‘It’s going to be downhill from here.’ I try not to judge myself too much because I’m so self-judgmental that I don’t want to over-judge and
Episode 225: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of Between the World and Me and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His latest cover story is “My President Was Black."
“[People] have come to see me as somebody with answers, but I don’t actually have answers. I’ve never had answers. The questions are the enthralling thing for me. Not necessarily at the end of the thing getting somewhere that’s complete—it’s the asking and repeated asking. I don’t know how that happened, but I felt like after a w
Episode 224: Hua Hsu
Hua Hsu writes for The New Yorker and is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific.
“I remember, as a kid, my dad telling me that when he moved to the United States he subscribed to The New Yorker, and then he canceled it after a month because he had no idea what any of it was about. You know, at the time, it certainly wasn’t a magazine for a Chinese immigrant fresh off the boat—or off the plane, rather—in the early 70s. And I always think about that. I always t
Episode 223: Carl Zimmer
Carl Zimmer, a columnist for the New York Times and a national correspondent at STAT, writes about science.
“[Criticism] doesn’t change the truth. You know? Global warming is still happening. Vaccines still work. Evolution is still true. No matter what someone on Twitter or someone in an administration is going to say, it’s still true. So, we science writers have to still be letting people know about what science has discovered, what we with our minds have discovered about the world—to the bes
Episode 222: Wesley Lowery
Wesley Lowery is a national reporter at the Washington Post, where he worked on the Pulitzer-winning project, "Fatal Force." His new book is They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement.
“I think that we decided at some point that either you are a journalist or you are an activist. And I identify as a journalist, to be clear, but one of the reasons I often don’t engage in that conversation—when someone throws that back at me I kind of deflect
Episode 221: Adam Moss
Adam Moss is the editor of New York Magazine.
“I think [change] is good for journalism—it’s what journalism is about. You can’t write about something static. News is about what is new. So there’s plenty of new right now. I’m not saying it’s good for the citizenry or anything like that, but, yeah, for journalists it’s an extremely interesting time. There’s no denying that.”
Thanks to MailChimp, BarkBox, Squarespace, and Sock Fancy for sponsoring this week's episode.
[03:15] "Meet the
Episode 220: Kyle Chayka
Kyle Chayka is a freelance writer who writes for Businessweek, The Verge, Racked, The New Yorker, and more.
“I love that idea of form and content being the same. I want to write about lifestyle in a lifestyle magazine. I want to critique technology in the form of technology, and kind of have the piece be this infiltrating force that explodes from within or whatever. You want something that gets into the space, and sneaks in, and then blows up.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Textu
Episode 219: Susan Casey
Susan Casey is the former editor of O and the author of three New York Times bestselling books. Her latest is Voices in the Ocean: A Journey into the Wild and Haunting World of Dolphins.
“The funny thing is people often say, ‘You must be fearless.’ I’m always afraid of whatever it is. But for whatever reason—I think it’s partly naïvety, partly just overwhelming curiosity—I am also not going to let fear stop me from doing things even if I feel it. Unless it’s that pure …you do have to listen to
Episode 218: Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris is a critic at large for The New York Times, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the co-host of Still Processing. His latest article is "Last Taboo: Why Pop Culture Just Can’t Deal With Black Male Sexuality."
“You learn a lot of things about your sexuality at an early age. You know, I learned that your penis is a problem for white people, that you can’t be too openly sexual in general because that could get you in trouble because someone could misconstrue what you
Episode 217: Doreen St. Félix
Doreen St. Félix is a writer at MTV News.
“It feels like there are images of black utopias that are arising. And you can’t—even if you’re not as superstitious as me—you can’t possibly think that that doesn’t have to do with the decline, the final, to me, last gasp of white supremacy. It really does feel like we’re approaching that, [but] that approach might be a thousand years.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Texture, Harry’s, and HelloFresh, for sponsoring this week's episode.
@dstfelix
[7:45
Episode 216: Emily Witt
Emily Witt is a freelance writer and the author of Future Sex.
“I think I had always thought that—maybe this is coming from a WASPy, protestant background—if I presented myself as overtly sexual in any way, it would be a huge turnoff. That they would see me as a certain type of person. They wouldn’t have respect for me. And I thought this both professionally—I thought maybe writing this book was going to be really bad for my career, that nobody would take me seriously anymore—and also
Episode 215: Krista Tippett
Krista Tippett is the host of On Being and the author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.
“Good journalists in newsrooms hold themselves to primitive standards when they’re covering religious ideas and people. They’re sloppy and simplistic in a way that they would never be with a political or economic person or idea. I mean they get facts wrong. They generalize. Because they don’t take it seriously, and they don’t know how to take it seriously.”
Thanks to
Episode 214: Luke Dittrich
Luke Dittrich is a contributing editor at Esquire. His new book is Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets.
“As soon as I told [my mom] that I got my first book deal for this story about Patient H.M., her first words were, ‘Oh no.’ That was sort of her gut reaction to it because, I think, she knew at a certain level that I was going to be dredging up very painful stories. And I think at that point even she didn’t know the depth of the pain that some of the stories that I w
Episode 213: A.J. Daulerio
A.J. Daulerio is the former editor-in-chief of Gawker.
“The choices they’ve given me are take back everything that you loved about Nick [Denton], Gawker, and your job, and we’ll give you your $1,000 back or your ability to make money. You can walk away from this, but you just can’t talk about it ever again. I don’t see there’s any question for me. I definitely thought long and hard about it, and I’ve talked to a lot of people about it. It’s just not in me. Some days I absolutely wish I could s
Episode 212: Julia Turner
Julia Turner is editor-in-chief of Slate.
“That’s what we’ve been focused on: trying to double down on the stuff that feels distinctive and original. Because if you spend all your time on a social platform, and a bunch of media brands are optimizing all their content for that social platform, all those media brands’ headlines say the same, all the content is pretty interchangeable. It turns media into this commodity where then what is the point of developing a media company for 20 years? You m
Episode 211: Naomi Zeichner
Naomi Zeichner is editor-in-chief of The Fader.
“Right now in rap there’s kind of a huge tired idea that kids are trying to kill their idols, and kids have no respect for history, and kids are making bastardized crazy music, and how dare they? I just don’t even know why we still care about this false dichotomy. Kids are coming from where they come from, they’re going where they’re going. And it’s like, do you want to try to learn about where they’re coming from and where they’re going, or do y
Episode 210: Ben Taub
Ben Taub is a contributing writer at The New Yorker.
“I don’t think it’s my place to be cynical because I’ve observed some of the horrors of the Syrian War through these various materials, but it’s Syrians that are living them. It’s Syrians that are being largely ignored by the international community and by a lot of political attention on ISIS. And I think that it wouldn’t be my place to be cynical when some of them still aren’t.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Squarespace for sp
Episode 209: Sarah Schweitzer
Sarah Schweitzer is a former feature writer for the Boston Globe.
“I just am drawn, I think, to the notion that we start out as these creatures that just want love and were programmed that way—to try to find it and to make our lives whole. We are, as humans, so strong in that way. We get knocked down, and adults do some horrible things to us because adults have had horrible things done to [them]. There are some terrible cycles in this world. But there’s always this opportunity to stop that cyc
Episode 208: Rachel Monroe
Rachel Monroe is a freelance writer based in Texas.
“I will totally go emotionally deep with people. If I can find a subject who is into that then it will probably be a good story. Whether that person is a victim of a crime, or a committer of a crime, or a woman who spends a lot of time on the internet looking for hoaxes, or whatever it may be—I guess I just think people are interesting. Particularly when those people have gone through some sort of extreme situation.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Clu
Episode 207: McKay Coppins
McKay Coppins is a senior political writer for Buzzfeed News and the author of The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House.
“I am part of the problem. Not in the sense that it’s my fault Trump ran, but in the sense that I’m one of many who for his entire life have mocked him and ridiculed him. He’s a billionaire—I don’t feel any moral guilt about it. But if being I’m honest with myself that same part of me can also, when
Episode 206: Gabriel Sherman
Gabriel Sherman is the national affairs editor at New York and the author of the New York Times best-seller The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country.
“There was a time when we got death threats at home. Some crank called and said, ‘We’re gonna come after you. You’re coming after the right, we’re gonna get you.’ That was scary because, again, you don’t know if it’s just a crank when you have right wing websites that are turning
Special 'Love and Ruin' Reissue: Jon Mooallem
Jon Mooallem is the author of "American Hippopotamus," a story included in Love and Ruin, the new Atavist Magazine collection. Buy your copy today.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 205: Ezra Klein
Ezra Klein the editor-in-chief of Vox.
“I think that if any of these big players collapse, when their obits are written, it’ll be because they did too much. I’m not saying I think any of them in particular are doing too much. But I do think, when I look around and I think, ‘What is the danger here? What is the danger for Vox?’ I think it is losing too much focus because you’re trying to do too many things.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
@ezra
Episode 204: Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new podcast is Revisionist History.
“The amount of criticism you get is a constant function of the size of your audience. So if you think that, generously speaking, 80% of the people who read your work like it, that means if you sell ten books you have two enemies. And if you sell a million books you have 200,000 enemies. So be careful what you wish for. The volume of critics grows linearly with the size of your audience.”
Thanks to Ma
Episode 203: Ellis Jones
Ellis Jones is the editor-in-chief of VICE Magazine.
“I’m just not an edgy person. You know what I mean? I think I am a nice person. I think VICE Magazine reflects the qualities that I want to have or think that I have or that my team has. The magazine would be terrible if I tried to make edgy content ... people would just see right through it. It wouldn’t be good.
Thanks to MailChimp and EveryLibrary for sponsoring this week's episode.
@ellisjones
[00:15] "RNC 2016" (Justin Peters • Atavist
Episode 202: David Remnick
David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker.
“I think it’s important — not just for me, but for the readers — that this thing exists at the highest possible level in 2016, in 2017, and on. That there’s a continuity to it. I know, because I’m not entirely stupid, that these institutions, no matter how good they are, all institutions are innately fragile. Innately fragile.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, EveryLibrary, and Igloo for sponsoring this week's episode.
Remnick on Longform
[
Episode 201: T. Christian Miller & Ken Armstrong
Christian Miller, senior investigative reporter at ProPublica, and Ken Armstrong, staff writer at The Marshall Project, co-wrote the Pulitzer-winning article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape.”
“I won’t forget this: when T. and I talked on the phone and agreed that we were going to work on [“An Unbelievable Story of Rape”] together, T. created a Google Drive site, and we decided we’d both dump all our documents in it. And I remember seeing all the records that T. had gathered in Colorado, and th
Episode 200: Jack Hitt
Jack Hitt contributes to Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and This American Life.
“I’ve always lived more or less unemployed in these markets, and happily so. I think being unemployed keeps you a little more sharp in terms of looking for stories. It never gets any easier. That motivation and that desperation, whatever you want to call that, is still very much behind many of the conversations I have all day long trying to find those threads, those strings, that are going to pull together
Episode 199: Kathryn Schulz
Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer for The New Yorker. "The Really Big One," her article about the rupturing of the Cascadia fault line, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize.
“I can tell you in absolute sincerity: I didn't realize I was writing a scary story. Obviously I know the earthquake is going to be terrifying, and that our lack of preparedness is genuinely really scary. But, as I think often happens as a reporter, you toggle between professional happiness, which is sometimes, frankly, even profess
Bonus Episode: Shane Bauer
Shane Bauer, a senior reporter for Mother Jones, spent four months working undercover as a guard in a private prison.
“The thing that I grappled with the most afterward was a feeling of shame about who I was as a guard and some of the things that I had done. Sending people to solitary confinement is hard to come to terms with even though, in that situation, I don't know what else I could have done. ... I had to do what I could to keep myself safe.”
Thanks to MailChimp for sponsoring this week
Episode 198: Frank Rich
Frank Rich, a former culture and political columnist for The New York Times, writes for New York and is the executive producer of Veep.
“All audiences bite back. If you have an opinion—forget about whether it’s theater or politics. If it’s about sports, fashion, or food—it doesn’t really matter. Readers are gonna bite back. And they should, you know? Everyone’s entitled. Everyone’s a critic. Everyone should have an opinion. You’re not laying down the law, and people should debate it.”
Thanks
Bonus Episode: Louisa Thomas and Evan Thomas
Louisa Thomas, a former writer and editor at Grantland, is a New Yorker contributor and the author of Louisa. Her father Evan Thomas, a longtime writer for Newsweek and Time, is the author of several award-winning books, including last year's Being Nixon.
“That's one thing I've learned from my dad: the capacity to be open to becoming more open.”
Thanks to MailChimp's Freddie and Co. for sponsoring this bonus episode.
Show Notes:
@louisahthomas
louisathomas.com
Louisa Thomas on Longform
[:30]
Episode 197: Nikole Hannah-Jones
Nikole Hannah-Jones covers civil rights for The New York Times Magazine.
“I don’t think there’s any beat you can cover in America that race is not intertwined with—environment, politics, business, housing, you name it. So, whatever beat you put me on, this is what I was going to cover because I think it’s just intrinsic. If you’re not being blind to what’s on your beat, then it’s part of the beat.”
Thanks to MailChimp's Freddie and Co., Audible, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episo
Episode 196: Jon Favreau
Jon Favreau, former chief speechwriter for President Obama, is a columnist at The Ringer and co-host of Keepin’ It 1600.
“And then Obama comes over to my desk with the speech, and he has a few edits. And he’s like, ‘I just want to go through some of these edits and make sure you’re ok with this. I did this for this reason. Are you ok with that?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, buddy. You’re Barack Obama.’”
Thanks to MailChimp's Freddie and Co., Freshbooks, Audible, and Squarespace for sponsoring this we
Episode 195: Leah Finnegan
Leah Finnegan, a former New York Times and Gawker editor, is the managing news editor at Genius.
“After the Condé Nast article, Nick Denton decided Gawker needed to be 20% nicer, and I took a buyout because I was not 20% nicer.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, Squarespace, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@leahfinnegan
leahfinnegan.com
genius.com/Leah
[02:00] "Sunk" (Mitch Moxley • Atavist Magazine • May 2016)
[05:00] Alec Baldwin’s Blog at The Huffington Post
[05
Episode 194: Pablo S. Torre
Pablo Torre is a senior writer at ESPN the Magazine and frequently appears on Around the Horn, PTI, and other ESPN shows.
“Most of my friends are not sports fans. My parents aren't. Brother and sister — no. So I just want to make things that they want to read. That's the big litmus test for me in deciding if a story is worth investing my time into: Is somebody who doesn’t give a shit about sports gonna be interested in this?”
Thanks to MailChimp, Johnson & Johnson, FreshBooks, an
Episode 193: Robin Marantz Henig
Robin Marantz Henig, the author of nine books, writes about science and medicine for The New York Times Magazine.
“I have my moments of thinking, ‘Well, why is this still so hard? Why do I still have to prove myself after all this time?’ If I were in a different field, or if I were even on a staff, I’d have a title that gave me more respect. I still have to wait just as long as any other writer to get any kind of response to a pitch. I still have to pitch. Nothing is automatic, even after all
Episode 192: Seymour Hersh
Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of The Killing of Osama Bin Laden.
“The government had denied everything we said. We just asked them and they said, ‘Oh no, not true, not true.’ That’s just—it’s all pro forma. You ask them to get their lie and you write their lie. I’m sorry to be so cynical about it, but that’s basically what it comes to.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Johnson & Johnson, Freshbooks, Trunk Club, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Sho
Episode 191: Kelly McEvers
Kelly McEvers, a former war correspondent, hosts NPR's All Things Considered and the podcast Embedded.
“Listeners want you to be real, a real person. Somebody who stumbles and fails sometimes. I think the more human you are, the more people can then relate to you. The whole point is not so everybody likes me, but it’s so people will want to take my hand and come along. It's so they feel like they trust me enough to come down the road with me. To do that, I feel like you need to be honest and tr
Bonus Episode: Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses"The Mastermind,” his new 7-part serialized story in The Atavist Magazine.
“On several occasions [sources] didn’t want to go into the details of how they were identified. They were just like, ‘My safety is in your hands. Just be careful.’ And I didn’t really know what to do with that. I was sort of trying to balance what to include and what not to include and trying to make these decisions. Will Paul Le Roux know it’s this person? It’s i
Episode 190: Susie Cagle
Susie Cagle is a journalist and illustrator.
“I don’t really know what it was that made me not quit. I still kind of wonder that. There have been many times over the last couple of years even, as things are taking off in my career, things are going well, I’m writing about wonderful things that are interesting to me, and I still wonder—should I be doing this? What the hell is next year gonna look like?”
Thanks to MailChimp, FreshBooks, and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Not
Episode 189: Maciej Ceglowski
Maciej Ceglowski is the founder of Pinboard. He writes at Idle Words.
“My natural contrarianism makes me want to see if I can do something long-term in an industry where everything either changes until it's unrecognizable or gets sold or collapses. I like the idea of things on the web being persistent. And more basically, I reject this idea that everything has to be on a really short time scale just because it involves technology. We’ve had these computers around for a while now. It’s
Episode 188: Nate Silver
Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and the author of The Signal and the Noise.
“I know in a perfectly rational world, if you make an 80/20 prediction, people should know that not only will this prediction not be right all the time, but you did something wrong if it’s never wrong. The 20% underdog should come through sometimes. People in sports understand that sometimes a 15 seed beats a 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. That’s much harder to explain to people in politics.”
Thanks to Ma
Episode 187: Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert has written for Spin, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of several books, including Eat, Pray, Love.
“I call it the platinum rule. The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but the platinum rule is even higher: don’t be a dick.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Bombas, Squarespace, and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@GilbertLiz
elizabethgilbert.com
Gilbert on Longform
[36:00] "Buckle Bunnies" (Spin • Sep 1994) [Go
Episode 186: Gabriel Synder
Gabriel Snyder is the editor-in-chief of The New Republic.
“I had a new job, I was new to the place, and I came to it with a great deal of respect but didn’t feel like I had any special claim to it. But in that moment I realized that there were all of these people who wanted to see the place die. And that the only way The New Republic was going to continue was by someone wanting to see it continue, and I realized I was one of those people now.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Bombas, Harry's, an
Episode 185: Ben Smith
Ben Smith is the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed.
“I do think as a reporter in general, most of what we deal in is ephemera. And I love that. I mean that’s the business, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, I think that’s a plus and something that shapes how you succeed at the job because you realize that this thing you’re writing is about this moment and right now, and about its place in the conversation. It’s not some piece of art to hang on the wall.”
Thanks to MailChimp
Episode 184: Daniel Alarcón
Daniel Alarcón, a novelist and the co-founder of Radio Ambulante, has written for Harper's, California Sunday, and the New York Times Magazine.
“I’m a writer. I’ve written a bunch of books, and I care a lot about my sentences and my prose and all that. But would I be willing to defend my book in a Peruvian prison? That’s a litmus test I think a lot of writers I know would fail.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Home Chef for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@DanielGAlarco
Episode 183: Jia Tolentino
Jia Tolentino is the deputy editor of Jezebel.
“Insult itself is an opportunity. I’m glad to be a woman, and I’m glad not to be white. I think it’s made me tougher. I’ve never been able to assume comfort or power. I’m just glad. I’m glad, especially as you watch the great white male woke freak-out meltdown that’s happening right now, I’m glad that it’s good to come from below.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Home Chef for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@jiatolentino
jiatol
Episode 182: Heather Havrilesky
Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly advice column for New York and is the author of the upcoming How to Be a Person in the World.
“I don’t give a shit if I succeed or fail or what I do next, I just want to do things that are strange and not sound bitey. I don’t want to be polished. I want to be such a wreck that no one will ever say ‘let’s put her on her own talk show.’”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@hhavrilesky
rabbitblog.c
Episode 181: Wesley Yang
Wesley Yang writes for New York and other publications.
“If a person remains true to some part of their experience, no matter what it is, and they present it in full candor, there’s value to that. People will recognize it. Once I knew that was true, I knew I could do this.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Home Chef, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@wesyang
Yang on Longform
[02:00] "Paper Tigers" (New York • May 2011)
[10:00] "The Snakehead" (Patrick Radden Keefe • New York
Episode 180: Mishka Shubaly
Mishka Shubaly is the author of I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You and several best-selling Kindle Singles.
“I remember thinking when I was shipwrecked in the Bahamas, ‘I’m going to fucking die here. I’m 24 years old, I’m going to die, and no one will miss me. I’m never going to see my mother again.’ And then the guy with the boat came around the corner and my first thought was ‘Man, this is going to be one hell of a story.’”
Thanks to MailChimp and Audible for sponsoring this week's epis
Episode 179: Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton
Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton host Another Round.
“I’m just trying to follow my curiosities. You know how kids always ask the best questions because they haven’t lost the will to live? I’m just desperately trying to keep that childish curiosity about the world. Is that horribly depressing?”
Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, Igloo, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@heavenrants
@brokeymcpoverty
Another Round
[8:00] "1128: Free the McGriddle" (The Black Guy Who Tips •
Episode 178: Michael J. Mooney
Michael J. Mooney is a staff writer at D Magazine and the author of The Life and Legend of Chris Kyle.
“There are some elements of crime stories that are so absurd that it’s funny, and so working on the “How Not to Get Away With Murder” story, it was actually really funny thinking about it for a long time. Until I met Nancy Howard, the woman who was shot in the face and has one eye now. This is her entire life, and it was destroyed. This is not a crime story to her, it’s her life.”
Th
Episode 177: Alex Perry
Alex Perry, based in England, has covered Africa and Asia for Newsweek and Time. His most recent book is The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free.
“I got a call from one of my editors in 2003 or 2004, and he said something like, ‘You realize someone has died in the first line of every story you’ve filed for the last eight months?’ And my response was, ‘Of course. Isn’t that how we know it’s important?’ It took me a long time to work out that the importance of a story isn’t established only by death.”
Episode 176: Grant Wahl
Grant Wahl is senior writer at Sports Illustrated and the author of The Beckham Experiment.
“I said to Balotelli, ‘I know you’re into President Obama. There’s a decent chance that he might read this story.’ He kind of perked up. I don’t think I was deliberately misleading him. There was a chance!”
Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, Feverborn, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@GrantWahl
Wahl's Sports Illustrated archive
Wahl on Longform
[4:00] "Hidden Damages" (M.R. O
Episode 175: Brooke Gladstone
Brooke Gladstone is the co-host of On the Media and the author of The Influencing Machine.
“I'm not going to get any richer or more famous than I am right now. This is it, this is fine — it's better than I ever expected. I don't have anything to risk anymore. As far as I’m concerned, I want to just spend this last decade, decade and a half, twenty years, doing what I think is valuable. I don’t have any career path anymore. I’m totally off the career path. The beautiful thing is that I just don’
Episode 174: Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao is the founder of Ribbonfarm and the author of Breaking Smart.
“I would say I was blind and deaf and did not know anything about how the world worked until I was about 25. It took until almost 35 before I actually cut loose from the script. The script is a very, very powerful thing. The script wasn’t working for me.”
Thanks to MailChimp and CreativeLive for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@vgr
Ribbonfarm
Rao on Longform
[3:00] "Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater" (
Episode 173: Doug McGray
Doug McGray is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of California Sunday and Pop-Up.
“Your life ends up being made up of the things you remember. You forget most of it, but the things that you remember become your life. And if you can make something that someone remembers, then you’re participating in their life. There’s something really meaningful about that. It feels like something worth trying to do.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Smart People Podcast, Howl, and CreativeLive for sponsoring th
Episode 172: Kliph Nesteroff
Kliph Nesteroff writes for WFMU's Beware of the Blog. His book, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy, was released in November.
“Well, comedy always becomes stale. Whether it’s offensive or not offensive, it has an expiry date, unfortunately. A lot of people don’t want to hear this because that means a lot of their favorite comedians suddenly become irrelevant. But that’s the history of comedy: the hippest, coolest guy today—whoever that is to you in co
Episode 171: Adrian Chen
Adrian Chen is a freelance journalist who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Wired. His latest article is "Unfollow," about a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church.
“Twitter and social media get such a bad rep for being full of hate and trolls. And, you know, a lot of the stories I’ve written have probably bolstered that stereotype. I think a lot of people have a lot of anxiety and ambivalence about social media even though they love it—they’re on it all the
Episode 170: Aleksandar Hemon at the Miami Book Fair
Aleksandar Hemon is a writer from Bosnia whose fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and Granta. His books include The Lazarus Project, The Question of Bruno, and The Book of My Lives.
“For me and for everyone I know, that's the central fact of our lives. It's the trauma that we carry, that we cannot be cured of. The way things are in Bosnia, it's far from over. It's not peace, it's the absence of war. It's always there as a possibility. There's no way to imagine anything beyon
Episode 169: Chip Kidd at the Miami Book Fair
Chip Kidd is a book designer and author. His most recent book is Only What's Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts.
“The curious thing about doing a book cover is that you're creating a piece of art, but it is in service to a greater piece of art that is dictating what you're going to do. I may think I've come up with the greatest design in the world, but if the author doesn't like it, they win. And I have to start over.”
Thanks to The Standard Hotels, MailChimp, Mack We
Episode 168: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His latest book, Between the World and Me, just won the National Book Award.
“When I first came to New York, I couldn't see any of this. I felt like a complete washout. I was in my little apartment, eating donuts and playing video games. The only thing I was doing good with my life was being a father and a husband. That was it. David [Carr] was a big shot. And he would call me in, just out of the blue, to have lunch. I was
Episode 167: Kurt Andersen
Kurt Andersen is the co-founder of Spy Magazine, the author of several books, and the host of Studio 360.
“As a young person, I never thought of myself as a risk-taker. Then I did this risky thing that shouldn't have succeeded, I started this magazine. And it did encourage me to think, ‘Eh, how bad can it be if it fails? Sometimes these long shots work. So fuck it, try it.’”
Thanks to MailChimp, MasterClass, The Message, RealtyShares, and Prudential for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show No
Episode 166: Ed Caesar
Ed Caesar is a freelance writer based in England whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, British GQ, and The Sunday Times Magazine. He is the author of Two Hours: The Quest to Run the Impossible Marathon.
“That was a really horrific situation. People were being killed in the street in front of us. People were firing weapons in all directions. It was really chaotic and quite scary. It freaked me out. And I thought, 'Actually, there's not a huge amount more of this I want to do in my
Episode 165: Jazmine Hughes
Jazmine Hughes is an associate editor at The New York Times Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and The New Republic.
“You hope that one day when you’re the editor-in-chief of Blah, Blah, Blah, that you’ll wake up and be like, ‘Okay, I deserve my job.’ But so far I haven’t met anyone who has told me that they feel that way. But, I will say, I don’t talk to white men a lot.”
Thanks to MailChimp, MasterClass, and The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this we
Episode 164: Lena Dunham
Lena Dunham, the creator and star of HBO's Girls, is the co-founder of Lenny and the author of Not That Kind of Girl. A special episode hosted by Longform Podcast editor Jenna Weiss-Berman.
“Writing across mediums can be a really healthy way to utilize your energy and stay productive while not feeling entrapped. But at the end of the day, the time when I feel like life is most just, like, flying by and I don't even know what's happening to me is when I'm writing prose. It's such an int
Episode 163: Matthew Shaer
Matthew Shaer is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York, GQ, and The Atavist Magazine.
“I could not turn off the freelance switch in my head. I could not not be thinking about these different types of stories. My Google Alert list looks like a serial killer's.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, Howl, and MasterClass for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@matthewshaer
matthewshaer.com
Shaer on Longform
[12:00] "A Shtetl Divided" (Harper's
Episode 162: John Seabrook
John Seabrook is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory.
“Whether or not the piece succeeds or fails is not going to depend on whether I’m up to the minute on the latest social media spot to hang out or the latest slang words that are thrown around. It’s going to be the old eternal verities of structural integrity. So much of it is narrative and figuring out the tricks—and they are tricks, really—that make it go as a narrative. And that’s really the
Episode 161: Karina Longworth
Karina Longworth is a film writer and the creator/host of You Must Remember This, a podcast exploring the secret stories of Hollywood.
“For me the thing that’s exciting about it is that it’s research, and it’s reportage, and it’s criticism. But it’s also art. It’s creatively done. It’s drama. It consciously tries to engage people on that emotional level.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and MasterClass for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@KarinaLongworth
Longworth on Lo
Episode 160: Jessica Hopper
Jessica Hopper is editor-in-chief of the Pitchfork Review and the author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic.
“I have an agenda. You can’t read my writing and not know that I have a staunch fucking agenda at all times.”
Thanks to MailChimp, Blue Apron, and Fracture for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@jesshopp
Hopper on Longform
Hopper's Pitchfork archive
[28:00] "Review of Superchunk's I Hate Music" (Brandon Stosuy • Pitchfork • Aug 2013)
[35:00] "
Episode 159: Ira Glass
Ira Glass is the host and executive producer of This American Life.
“You can only have so many questions about feelings, I think. At some point people are just like alright, enough with the feelings.”
Thanks to MailChimp, EA SPORTS FIFA 16, Fracture, and FRONTLINE's "My Brother's Bomber for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@iraglass
Out on the Wire (Jessica Abel • Broadway Books • 2015)
[10:00] "1: New Beginnings" (This American Life • Nov 1995)
[14:00] Serial
[21:00] "75: Kindness
Episode 158: Peter Hessler (live)
Peter Hessler is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
“It may have helped that I didn’t have a lot of ideas about China. You know, it was sort of a blank slate in my mind. …I wasn’t a reporter when I went to Fuling, but I was thinking like a reporter or even like a sociologist: try to respond to what you see and what you hear, and not be too oriented by things you’ve heard from others or things you may have read. Be open to new perceptions of the place or of the people.”
Thanks to MailC
Episode 157: Margo Jefferson
Margo Jefferson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, and Harper's. Her latest book is Negroland: A Memoir.
“One of the problems with—burdens of—‘race conversations’ in this country is certain ideological, political, sociological narratives keep getting imposed. This is where the conversation should go, these are the roles we need. In a way, this is the comfort level of my discomfort. ... Maybe we’re all somewhat addicted—I think we are—to certain racial conver
Episode 156: Renata Adler
Renata Adler is a journalist, critic, and novelist. Her latest collection of nonfiction is After the Tall Timber.
“Unless you're going to be fairly definite, what's the point of writing?”
Thanks to MailChimp, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
Adler on Longform
Adler's New Yorker archive
[7:00] I, Libertine (Theodore Sturgeon • Ballantine Books • 1956)
[8:00] After Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction (Ballantine Books • 2015)
[9:00] "Letter from Selma" (New Yorker •
Episode 155: S.L. Price
S.L. Price is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated.
“The fact is, if you write about sports and people think they're just reading about sports, they'll read about drug use. They'll read about sex. They'll read about sex change. They'll read about communism. They'll read about issues they couldn't possibly care about, issues that if they saw them in any other part of the paper they would just gloss over. But because it's about sports—because there's a boxing ring or a baseball field or a footba
Episode 154: William Finnegan
William Finnegan is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.
“I suppose in retrospect I was just trying to find out what the world held that nobody could tell me about until I got there. I was a big reader and had a couple of degrees by that point, but there was something not well over the horizon that I wanted to get near and record and understand, and I even felt like it would transform me.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, SquareSpace, and The Great Courses
Episode 153: Tim Ferriss
Tim Ferriss is the author of The Four Hour Workweek and The Four Hour Body.
“If you have a fitness magazine, you can’t just write one issue, ‘Here are the rules!’ ... My job, conversely, is to make myself obsolete. The last thing I want to be is a guru, someone people come to for answers. I want to be the person people come to for better questions.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and The Great Courses for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@tferriss
Ferriss's blog
Ferriss's podcast
[8:00] "Bri
Episode 152: Carol Loomis
Carol Loomis retired last summer after 60 years at Fortune. She continues to edit Warren Buffett's annual report.
“Writing itself makes you realize where there are holes in things. I’m never sure what I think until I see what I write. And so I believe that, even though you’re an optimist, the analysis part of you kicks in when you sit down to construct a story or a paragraph or a sentence. You think, ‘Oh, that can’t be right.’ And you have to go back, and you have to rethink it all.”
Thanks t
Bonus Episode: Noreen Malone
Noreen Malone wrote "Cosby: The Women — An Unwanted Sisterhood," this week's cover story in New York.
“We interviewed them all separately, and that was what was so striking: they all kept saying the same thing, down to the details of what they say Cosby did and how they processed it. Those echoes were what helped us know how to shape the story.”
Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter.
Show Notes:
@noreenmalone
Malone on Lognform
[2:00] "Hannibal Buress Called Bill Cosby a Rapist During a
Episode 151: Ian Urbina
Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, just published "The Outlaw Ocean," a four-part series on crime in international waters.
“It is a tribe. It has its norms, its language, and its jealousies. I approached it almost as a foreign country that happened to be disparate, almost a nomadic or exiled population. And one that has extremely strict hierarchies—you know when you’re on a ship that the captain is God.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Casper for sponsoring this week's epis
Episode 150: Margaret Sullivan
Margaret Sullivan is the public editor of The New York Times.
“Jill Abramson said to me early on, ‘What will happen here is you’ll stick around and eventually you’ll alienate everybody, and then no one will be talking to you, and you’ll have to leave.’ I’m about three-quarters of the way there.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Netflix for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@Sulliview
[5:00] "One Year Later, 11 Questions for Dean Baquet"(The New York Times • May 2015)
[6:00] The Public Edito
Episode 85: Tavi Gevinson
Tavi Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie.
"I just want our readers to know that they are already smart enough and cool enough."
Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter.
Show notes:
@tavitulle
Rookie
thestylerookie.com
[4:00] "Tavi Says" (Lizze Widdicombe • New Yorker • Sep 2010)
[30:00] "A Teen Just Trying to Figure It Out" (TED • Mar 2012)
[33:00] Rookie Yearbook Two (Drawn and Quarterly • Oct 2013)
[40:00] Longform Podcast #75: George Saunders
[43:00] "Super Heroine: An Intervie
Episode 149: Ross Andersen
Ross Andersen is the deputy editor of Aeon Magazine.
“One of the things that’s been really refreshing in dealing with scientists—as opposed to say politicians or most business people—is that scientists are wonderfully candid, they’ll talk shit on their colleagues. They’re just firing on all cylinders all the time because they traffic in ideas, and that’s what’s important to them.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@andersen
Andersen on Longform
Episode 148: Anna Holmes
Anna Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel, writes for The New York Times and is the editorial director of Fusion.
“I think that Jezebel contributed to what I now call ‘outrage culture,’ but outrage culture has no sense of humor. We had a hell of a sense of humor, that's where it splits off. ... The fact that people who are incredibly intelligent and have interesting things to say aren't given the room to work out their arguments or thoughts because someone will take offense is depressing to m
Episode 147: James Verini
James Verini, a freelance writer based out of Nairobi, won the 2015 National Magazine Award for Feature Writing.
“That is probably the most alien, jarring thing about working in Africa: life is much cheaper. More to the point, death is very close to you. We're very removed from death here. Someone can die at 89 in their sleep here and it's called a tragedy. In Africa, I find that I'm often exposed to it. That's part of why I wanted to live there.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Trunk Club for spons
Episode 146: Rembert Browne
Rembert Browne is a staff writer at Grantland.
“I'm ok with not being at my most refined online. It's happening in real time and some of that is therapeutic. I could write a lot this stuff privately, but I'd rather just hit publish and see what happens. It's a weird world. But I'm super deep in.”
Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter, Trunk Club, and QuickBooks Self-Employed.
Show Notes:
@rembert
REMBLR
Browne on Longform
[6:00] 500 Days Asunder
[7:00] The Dartmouth, America's O
Episode 145: Ashlee Vance
Ashlee Vance covers technology for Bloomberg Businessweek and is the author of of Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future.
“To be totally clear, I don’t cover them (apps). I like people who try to solve big problems. Wherever I go, I try to run away from the consumer stuff. I love writing about giant manufacturing plants that make stuff and employ tens of thousands of people.”
Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter, Trunk Club, QuickBooks, and The School of Continuin
Episode 144: Cheryl Strayed
Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things.
“There's a long history, of women especially, saying 'Well, I just got lucky.' I didn't just get lucky. I worked my fucking ass off. And then I got lucky. And if I hadn't worked my ass off, I wouldn't have gotten lucky. You have to do the work. You always have to do the work.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Trunk Club, and HP Matter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@CherylStrayed
cherylstrayed.com
The Complete Dear Sugar Ar
Episode 143: Masha Gessen
Masha Gessen has written for The New York Times, The London Review of Books, Vanity Fair, and others. Her book about Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, The Brothers: The Road to an American Tragedy, came out in April.
“The moment she said it, it was obvious that I'd been created to write this story. I'd covered both wars in Chechnya. I'd covered a lot of terrorism. I'd studied terrorism. And I'd been a Russian-speaking immigrant in Boston, which actually is the most important qualification for wri
Episode 142: Sarah Maslin Nir
Sarah Maslin Nir, a reporter for The New York Times, recently published an exposé of labor practices in the nail salons of New York.
“The idea of a discount luxury is an oxymoron. And it’s an oxymoron for a reason: because someone is bearing the cost of that discount. In nail salons it’s always the person doing your nails, my investigation found. That has put a new lens on the world for me.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Trunk Club, and Aspiration for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@Sara
Episode 141: Stephen J. Dubner
Stephen J. Dubner is the co-author, with Steven D. Levitt, of Freakonomics. Their latest book, When to Rob a Bank, came out last week.
“I’ve abandoned more books than I’ve written, which I’m happy about. I’m very pro-quitting. We get preached this idea that if you quit something, if you don’t see something through to completion then you’re a loser, you’re a failure. I just think that’s a crazy way to look at things. But it’s also easy to overlook opportunity costs. Like, what could I be doing i
Episode 140: George Quraishi
George Quraishi is the co-founder and editor of Howler.
“We raised $69,001. And that paid for the first issue. I call it subsistence magazine making, because every issue pays for the next one.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Squarespace, The Great Courses, and Aspiration for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@quraishi
georgequraishi.com
[23:00] "Dispatches From the World Cup" (Luke O'Brien • Slate • Jun 2006)
[23:00] "The Beast Of Brazil: A Savage Trip To The Dark Heart Of The World Cup" (Lu
Episode 139: Andy Greenwald
Andy Greenwald covers television for Grantland.
“People are enthusiastic about TV. People want to read about it. They want to talk about it. They want to know more. They want to extend its presence in their lives. People used to talk about the water cooler show, but the internet is that water cooler now and people want to be part of the conversation.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Two5six Festival, The Great Courses, and Aspiration for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@andygreenwald
Greenw
Episode 138: Alexis Okeowo
Alexis Okeowo, a foreign correspondent, has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Businessweek.
“Nigeria is a deeply sexist country. It can be difficult for people to take you seriously. But that also has its benefits, because it’s very easy to disarm your subjects. If I’m interviewing people who underestimate me, I can get them to open up because they somehow think that I’m naïve or I don’t know what I’m doing. So I don’t mind if some sexist general or banker thinks I’m t
Episode 137: Rachel Syme
Rachel Syme has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, and more.
“You have this sense that you’re bonding, but at the same time you're also going to betray them. Because if you hear this quote that they say or you see it in a mannerism, you write it in your notebook and you think ‘I got it.’”
Thanks to TinyLetter, The Great Courses, MarketingProfs, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@rachsyme
rachelsyme.com
[4:00] "The Broad Strokes" (Grantland
Episode 136: Anna Sale
Anna Sale is the host of Death, Sex & Money.
“It's the result of listening, of feeling listened to, that people open up. I look like a crazy person when I do interviews, because sometimes someone will be describing something and I will close my eyes and try to picture what they’re telling me. And if I can’t picture the moment they’re describing I’ll just try to dig in a little bit more.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, The Great Courses, MarketingProfs, and WealthFront for sponsoring this w
Episode 135: Scott Anderson
Scott Anderson is a war correspondent and novelist. He’s written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, and more.
“I really feel that what’s at the root of so many wars now, modern wars, unconventional wars, it really just comes down to a bunch of young guys with access to guns coming up with a pretext to rape and murder and pillage and steal from their neighbors.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, MarketingProfs, and WealthFront for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
A
Episode 134: Dayna Tortorici
Dayna Tortorici is the editor of n+1.
“You can't fetishize conflict so much. Because conflict does generate a lot of good work, but it also inhibits a lot of good work. I think people do their best work when they feel good. Or at least don't feel like shit. ... So I've tried to create a culture of mutual encouragement. Especially when you're not paying anybody, that's all you can really offer.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Wealthfront for sponsoring this week's show.
Show Notes:
@dtortor
Episode 133: Adam Platt
Adam Platt is the restaurant critic for New York.
“My job was described to me recently as ‘the last great job of the 20th century.’ I think there might be something to that.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Lynda, Casper, and Wealthfront for sponsoring this week's show.
Show Notes:
@plattypants
[1:00] Longform Podcast #43: Margalit Fox
[12:00] "Apple of the Times" (New Yorker • Jan 1993) [sub required]
[12:00] "Messing About" (New Yorker • Mar 1993) [sub required]
[18:00] "The Apotheosis of Fresh" (Ne
Episode 132: Erik Larson
Erik Larson is the author of several books, including The Devil in the White City. His latest is Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania.
"I realized then and there, that afternoon, the thing that was going to make this interesting was the juxtaposition of light and dark, good and evil. This monument of civic good will versus this monument to the dark side of human nature. ... But that was really hard to pull off. And, frankly, on the eve of publication I was pretty sure my career was ove
Episode 131: Josh Dean
Josh Dean has written for GQ, Fast Company, New York, and more. His latest piece, "The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang," was just published by The Atavist.
“I sort of reject the whole idea of something being beneath me. There are obviously some stories I wouldn’t do or that I have no interest in, but this job is fun and should be fun. And I wouldn’t turn something down that seems like a fun thing for me to do just because maybe the story is not something that 10,000 people are going to twe
Episode 130: Mac McClelland
Mac McClelland has written for Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and others. Her book Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story came out this week.
“I would just suddenly start sobbing, which is not something I usually do. I felt like I needed to be drunk all the time, which is also not something I usually do. I was having nightmares and I was having flashbacks. I was terrified and confused and disoriented all the time. I was a completely different person, unrecognizable even t
Episode 129: Rukmini Callimachi (Part 2)
Rukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times. Part 1 of this episode is available here.
“Ever since I started in journalism, I feel like I'm perpetually winded. Like I'm just running as hard as I can to stay ahead of this train that's crashing. The caboose is falling off the back and I'm trying to run faster than the train to get to this very limited pool of amazing jobs. Once I got overseas I would say a prayer every night for the amazing life I was finally able to lead.”
Th
Episode 129: Rukmini Callimachi (Part 1)
Rukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times.
“Nine out of 10 Americans said they were aware of James Foley's execution. That's a huge win for ISIS. That's what they want. I think they've realized that journalists are the crème de la crème as far as targets. And that's a really scary thing for our profession.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes.
Show Notes:
@rcallimachi
Cal
Episode 128: Jack Shafer
Jack Shafer covers the media for Politico.
“This is a true story, not a ‘Brian Williams story’: my first report card said ‘Jack is a very good student, but he has a tendency to start fights on the playground and bring them back into the classroom.’ That's been my career style — start a fight and bring it back to the classroom.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes.
Show Notes:
Show Notes:
@ja
Episode 127: Molly Crabapple
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is a columnist for VICE and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review and Vanity Fair.
“As long as the marginalized communities I’m writing about don’t think I’m full of shit, that’s success to me.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Squarespace and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes.
Show Notes:
@mollycrabapple
mollycrabapple.com
mollycrabapple.tumblr.com
Episode 126: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and GQ.
“My writing career was something that was always about to happen, just as soon as the baby falls asleep, just as soon as I finish watching this five-hour bout of As the World Turns, just as soon as... What do you do when you realize that you have not been doing the thing you were going to do? You're in your 30s. You get to work.”
Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If y
Episode 125: Anand Gopal
Anand Gopal has written for The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s and Foreign Policy. He’s the author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes.
“When I got to the Taliban, I got out my notebook and tried to ask the hard-hitting questions. ‘What are you fighting for? Why are you doing this? What’s happening with the civilians you’re killing?’ And of course you do that and you get boilerplate answers and icy stares. So I just started asking them questions
Episode 124: Alex Blumberg
Alex Blumberg is a former producer for This American Life and Planet Money. Last year he founded Gimlet Media, a podcast network, and hosts its first show, StartUp.
“When someone starts talking about something difficult, when they get unexpectedly emotional, your normal human reaction is to sort of comfort and steer away. To say, ‘Oh I’m sorry, let’s move on.’ What you need to do, if you want good tape, is to say, ‘Talk more about how you’re feeling right now.’ It feels like a horrible question
Episode 123: Nicholas Carlson
Nicholas Carlson writes for Business Insider. His book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! came out this week.
“To me people are what’s really interesting. Marissa Mayer is a once in a lifetime subject. She’s full of contradictions. … There are a million business stories, but if you don’t have that character at the center then you’re lost.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Lynda and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@nichcarlson
Carlson on Longform
[6:00] Longform Podcas
Episode 77: Dan P. Lee
Dan P. Lee is a contributing writer at New York.
"I don't believe in answers. That's what compels me to write all of these stories. None of them ends nicely, none of them ends neatly."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@Dan_P_Lee
Lee on Longform
Lee's New York archive
[13:30] "Who Killed Ellen Andros?" (Philadelphia Magazine • Oct 2006)
[22:45] "Travis the Menace" (New York • Jan 2011)
[45:00] "Paw Paw & Lady Love" (New York • Jun 2011)
[48:45] "4:52 on Chri
Episode 67: Evan Wright
Evan Wright, a two-time National Magazine Award winner, is the author of Generation Kill.
"When people were killed, civilians especially, I realized I was the only person there who would write it down. I was frantic about getting names, and in the book there are a few Arabic names, some of the victims. Not that anyone cares. But I thought, 'At least somewhere there's a record of this.'"
Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter.
Show notes:
@evanscribe
Wright on Longform
[3:45] Generation Kill (2004)
Episode 122: Hanna Rosin
Hanna Rosin is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a founder and editor at DoubleX.
“I often think of reporting as dating, or even speed dating. You’re looking for someone where there’s a spark there between you and them. Sometimes that happens right away and sometimes it takes forever. ... You have to determine if they're reflective, friendly, open. It could be love at first sight and they're still all wrong, which is really heartbreaking.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos and The Los A
Episode 121: Meghan Daum
Meghan Daum's latest book of essays is The Unspeakable.
“As writers we think, well there has to be closure, there has to be a beginning middle end, the character has to go through a change. And then in life we're supposed to have some sort of arc or aha moment, as if the experience isn't legitimate unless we get something out of it. That's so culturally constructed, as they say. It's so artificial.”
Thanks to TinyLetter, Scribd, and Oscar for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@megha
Episode 120: Katie J.M. Baker
Katie J.M. Baker is a reporter for BuzzFeed.
“I went to Steubenville a year after the sexual assault to cover their first big football game of the season and I was face-to-face with these people who I had been writing about without knowing much about them. From far away it seems like, do these details matter? Do we care if these people’s lives get messed up when the narrative is so strong, when Steubenville now stands for more awareness around rape culture? But when you’re there, of course it m
Episode 119: Alec Wilkinson
Alec Wilkinson is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
“My hero was Joseph Mitchell, that was how you did reporting. There was nothing conniving about it or cunning — you just simply kept returning and kept returning.”
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
Wilkinson on Longform
[2:00] "The Protest Singer" (New Yorker • Apr 2006)
[6:00] Midnights: A Year With the Welfleet Police (Random House • 1982)
[9:00] My Mentor (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2002)
[9:00] Across
Episode 118: Emma Carmichael
Emma Carmichael, a former editor at Deadspin and The Hairpin, is the editor in chief of Jezebel.
"Online feminism has more and more rules lately. There are only so many things you can say. And while our opinions are getting more constrained online, personal feminism and face-to-face conversations are looser and more complicated and don't go by any rules. ... The ideal with Jezebel is getting to a point where you can say, 'This is what I think, so who gives a fuck.'"
Thanks to TinyLetter for sp
Episode 117: Reihan Salam
Reihan Salam is the executive editor of National Review.
"I’m incredibly curious about other people. I’m curious about what they think of as the constraints operating on their lives. Why do they think what they think? If I weren’t doing this job, I’d want to be a high school guidance counselor."
Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos, and Cards Against Humanity’s Ten Days or Whatever of Kwanzaa for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@reihan
reihansalam.com
[11:00] "The White Ghetto" (Kevin D.
Episode 116: Jake Halpern
Jake Halpern, a contributor to This American Life, has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld.
"I test out my stories on my kids. You should be able to tell any story, now matter how complicated, to a seven-year-old in a way that they understand. If you can't, that probably means that either a) you're telling the story wrong or b) it's not really a story."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Bonobos for spo
Episode 115: Jen Percy
Jen Percy is the author of Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism.
"As is the nature of obsession, you just start gathering materials, hoarding documents and taking notes in a way that’s totally chaotic and overwhelming. You don’t even care yet because you’re so excited by what you’re gathering. If you start trying to make a narrative out of it too soon it will be false or it will fall apart."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Dear Thief, the new novel by Samantha Harvey, for sponsoring this week's
Episode 114: Jessica Pressler
Jessica Pressler writes for New York, Elle and GQ.
"I really like hustlers, stories about someone who comes out of nowhere and tries to do it for themselves. Those people are just easy to like. Even when they're sort of terrible, they're easy to like."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Warby Parker for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@jpressler
Pressler on Longform
[3:00] jessicapressler.com
[11:00] "Philadelphia Story: The Next Borough" (The New York Times • Aug 2005)
[17:00] Longform Pod
Episode 113: Wendy MacNaughton
Wendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist and the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them.
"We mostly hear stories from big personalities who already have a spotlight on them. I think that everybody carries stories that are just as profound as the ones we hear from celebrities or whoever. I’m interested in the stories of people who don’t usually get to tell them. I think those are sometimes the most interesting."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Sho
Episode 112: Don Van Natta Jr.
Don Van Natta Jr., a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, writes for ESPN and is the author of several books, including Wonder Girl.
"The nature of the kind of work I do as an investigative reporter, every story you do is going to get attacked and the tires are going to get kicked. It’s going to get scrutinized down to every phrase and down to every letter. You have to have multiple sources for key facts on this type of story. We set out to get that and we got it."
Thanks to TinyLetter a
The Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award
Today we are re-airing our February 2013 interivew with our friend Matt Power, who died earlier this year while on assignment in Uganda, to help raise money for Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award.
We have also reprinted Matt's classic 2005 article, "The Lost Buddhas of Bamiyan," which is available online for the first time.
Founded by Matt's friends and family, the annual award will support promising writers early in their careers with a stipend of $12,500 to bring forward an unreported st
Episode 111: Anne Helen Petersen
Anne Helen Petersen writes for BuzzFeed. Her book Scandals of Classic Hollywood is out this week.
"I was obsessed with Entertainment Weekly from the very first issue and I obsessively catalogued it. I made a database on my Apple IIe where I put in the title of the magazine and the number and whether it was a little 'e' or a big 'E' on the cover and the different topics and then I gave it a grade. You know how in Entertainment Weekly they give everything a grade, so I’d be like 'Oscar’s Issue: A
Episode 110: Chris Hayes
Chris Hayes hosts All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and is an editor-at-large for The Nation.
"The instability was so intense and the anguish and frustration were so intense that there wasn’t a ton of time to think through, 'Well, what is my role in this?' Mostly it was: wake up in the morning after two or three hours of sleep and start going to stuff, talking to people, and keep doing that until the show happens."
Thanks to GoDaddy for sponsoring this week's episode. Apply for the Tin
Episode 109: Buzz Bissinger
Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and more. He is the author of several books, including Friday Night Lights.
"It’s quiet. And I really felt I needed that quiet. People say, 'Well anger was your edge, and agitation was your edge, and that’s going to hurt your writing.' I don’t know, maybe. It may be that in order to live a happier life you become a shittier writer. I don't know. But I just couldn't live in that fashion
Episode 108: Sean Wilsey
Sean Wilsey has written for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s Quarterly, where he is an editor-at-large. His latest book is More Curious.
"I’m actually apparently a fairly competent person at getting things done, making deadlines and all these things. But the Wilsey you might get in the piece about NASA is the guy who eats a ton of oysters and drinks a lot of beer before getting on the vomit comet."
Thanks to TinyLetter and GoDaddy for spo
Episode 107: Emily Bazelon
Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of Sticks and Stones.
"There’s nothing purely, or maybe even at all, altruistic about this exchange. It’s transactional in the Janet Malcolm classical sense, but also in the emotional sense. There is a way in which I’m super open. I take in these experiences. They keep me up at night. They really get inside me. But then, I'm also using them to craft whatever I’m working on."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsori
Episode 106: Zach Baron
Zach Baron is a staff writer for GQ.
"People love to put celebrity stuff or culture stuff lower on the hierarchy than, say, a serial killer story. I think they're all the same story. If you crack the human, you crack the human."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@xzachbaronx
Baron's personal site
Baron on Longform
[7:00] "Kanye West: A Brand-New Ye" (GQ • Jul 2014)
[17:30] "Steve McQueen: Auteur of the Year 2013" (GQ • Dec 2013)
[
Episode 105: Ben Anderson
Ben Anderson is a war journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest book, The Interpreters, is available free from Vice.
"You're surrounded by people who are so poor. Maybe their family members have already been killed. And they still can't leave. So compared to that, I can't really take the idea that I've suffered and that I need stop and go to a spa for a few days. I can't take that idea that seriously. Compared to them, it feels like I am leading an almost privileged existence."
Episode 104: Lewis Lapham
Lewis Lapham, formerly the editor of Harper's, is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly.
"The best part of my job was to come across a manuscript. You never knew what would show up. ... I always had the sense of opening a present, hoping to be both delighted and surprised. Often I was disappointed. But when I wasn't, it was a lot of fun. And word got around that I was that kind of an editor, that I was willing to try anything if you could make it interesting."
Thanks to TinyLetter and GoD
Episode 103: Adam Higginbotham
Adam Higginbotham has written for Businessweek, Wired and The New Yorker. His latest story is A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite, for The Atavist.
"There's always a narrative in a crime story. Something has always gone wrong. These guys are always in prison, because they all fucked something up or trusted the wrong person. They always get caught in the end. Because if they hadn't, you wouldn't be reading about it."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@Higg
Episode 102: Brin-Jonathan Butler
Brin-Jonathan Butler has written for SB Nation, ESPN, and The New York Times. His new book is A Cuban Boxer’s Journey.
"He smiled at me and just to make small talk, I said, 'You know, you’ve got this gold grill on your teeth. Where did you get that from?' And he said, 'Oh, I just melted my gold medals into my mouth.' And I thought, 'I think I’ve got a story here.'"
Thanks to TinyLetter, WW Norton & Company and Open Road Integrated Media for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show No
Episode 101: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah has written for The Believer, The LA Review of Books, Transition and The Paris Review. "If He Hollers Let Him Go," her essay on Dave Chappelle, was a 2014 National Magazine Award finalist.
"So the stakes are high. I’m not just writing this to write. I’m writing because I think there’s something I need to say. And there’s something that needs to be said. ... What I hope is that a young kid or an older person will see that you have choices, that you don't have to accept what
The 100th Episode
A look back at some of our favorite moments from the first 99.
Thanks to our sponsors, TinyLetter and Squarespace.
Show Notes:
[4:45] #3: David Grann
[7:00] #4: Jon Mooallem
[10:10] #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
[14:15] #9: Jeanne Marie Laskas
[12:32] #10: Chris Jones
[18:00] #22: Charles Duhigg
[20:00] #29: Matthew Power
[23:45] #37: Ann Friedman
[26:30] #39: Natasha Vargas-Cooper
[28:00] #43: Margalit Fox
[31:20] #57: Eli Saslow
[34:50] #62: Malcolm Gladwell
[39:00] #64: Gay Talese
[43:35] #
Episode 99: John Heilemann
John Heilemann is the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and the co-author of Game Change and Double Down.
"If you're a writer, and you're not an asshole, you want the maximum number of people to read your stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no great glory in cultivating some niche audience. I do this work because I believe in what I'm doing. I'm not trying to compromise my principles or my standards to get a larger audience. But once I've written the thing of which I fe
Episode 75: George Saunders
George Saunders has written for The New Yorker and GQ. His latest collection of short stories is Tenth of December.
"Maybe you would understand your artistry to be: put me anywhere. I'll find human beings, I'll find human interest, I'll find literature. And I guess you could argue the weirder, or maybe the less explored the place, the better."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this episode.
Show notes:
georgesaundersbooks.com
Saunders on Longform
[5:00] Tenth of December (Rando
Episode 98: Sarah Nicole Prickett
Sarah Nicole Prickett is the founding editor of Adult.
"I'll admit to being resistant to the 'by women for women' label that Adult had before because I saw it as being just 'by women,' period. That’s way more feminist than making something for women, which is very prescriptive and often comes in various shades of pink."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
Pre-order: Adult #2
Prickett's TinyLetter
@snpsnpsnp
snpsnpsnp.com
[8:40] Fashion
[2:30] "How to
Episode 97: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic. His latest cover story is "The Case for Reparations."
"The writer hopes for change, but writers can't assume that their work is going to cause change."
Thanks to TinyLetter andI Am Zlatan, the international bestseller published by Random House, for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show Notes:
@tanehisicoates
Coates's blog for The Atlantic
Coates on Longform
"The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic • May 2014)
[4:20] "Longform Podcas
Episode 96: Nathaniel Rich
Nathaniel Rich writes for Rolling Stone, Harper's and the New York Times Magazine. His latest novel is Odds Against Tomorrow.
"I'm drawn to obsession. I think I'm an obsessive in a way, probably most writers are. It's an obsessive act to sit at a desk by yourself."
Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@NathanielRich
nathanielrich.com
Rich on Longform
[15:45] "Diving Deep Into Danger" (New York Review of Books • Feb 2013)
[21:45] Odd
Episode 95: Wesley Morris
Wesley Morris, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers film at Grantland.
"That's what writing about race and popular culture is for me: it's crime reporting. It's not me looking for an agenda when I go to the movies ... but I feel a moral responsibility to report a crime being committed. That's what I'm forced to do over and over again."
Thanks to this week's sponsors, Warby Parker and TinyLetter.
Show notes:
@wesley_morris
Morris's Grantland archive
[1:15] Reba modeling Warby Parker
[37:15] "The Cu
Episode 94: Gary Smith
Gary Smith retired last month after more than 30 years of writing for Sports Illustrated.
"We were on the Santa Monica Freeway, Ali's driving 70 miles an hour and his eyes are drifting asleep—the medication for Parkinson's would do that to him. I'm thinking, 'Oh, crap.' We're weaving between lanes, cars are honking, and I'm wondering in the passenger seat, 'Should I grab the wheel from the greatest champ of all-time?' The writer in me wants to let it go, let the crash happen just so I get a sce
Episode 93: Michael Paterniti
Michael Paterniti, a correspondent for GQ, has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone and Outside. His latest book is The Telling Room.
"I want to see it, whatever it is. If it's war, if it's suffering, if it's complete, unbridled elation, I just want to see what that looks like—I want to smell it, I want to taste it, I want to think about it, I want to be caught up in it."
Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter and Hari Kunzru'sTwice Upon a Time, the new title from and Atavist Books.
Sh
Episode 92: Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison has written for The Believer, Harper's and The New York Times. Her latest book is The Empathy Exams.
"I sort of love imagining a small army of 22-year-old men who are just like, 'Fuck that book, I wish it was never published.'"
Thanks to TinyLetter and Harry's for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@lsjamison
lesliejamison.com
Jamison on Longform
[9:00] The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press • Apr 2014)
[12:15] "La Plata Perdida" (A Public Space • Nov 2009) [sub. r
Episode 91: Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis has written for The New Republic, Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is Flash Boys.
"When you're telling a story, you're essentially playing the cards you're dealt. ... Sometimes the hand is very easy to play. Sometimes the hand is difficult to play. At the end, I just try to think, 'Is there anything I would have done differently?' 'Is there any trick I missed?' If I don't have the feeling that I missed something big, I feel happy about the book."
Thank
Episode 90: Susan Dominus
Susan Dominus is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine.
"A lot of reporting is really just hanging around and not going home until something interesting happens."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@susandominus
Dominus on Longform
[7:00] Longform Podcast #31: Emily Nussbaum
[9:45] "Santa's Little Helper" (New York Times • Dec 1999)
[10:00] "The Allergy Prison" (New York Times Magazine • Jun 2001)
[11:00] "Shabana is Late for School" (New Yor
Episode 89: Alice Gregory
Alice Gregory has written for n+1, GQ, The New York Times and Harper's.
"If you don't have a real story with a beginning, middle and an end, you owe it to the reader to kind of serve as their chaperone."
Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@alicegregory
Gregory on Longform
alicegregory.tumblr.com
[4:30] "Sad as Hell" (n+1 • Nov 2010)
[9:45] "On the Market" (n+1 • Mar 2012)
[11:45] "Mavericks" (n+1 • Oct 2013)
[21:30] "Ryan McGinley
Episode 88: Sam Biddle
Sam Biddle writes for Valleywag.
"It's a lot of overgrown, entitled manchildren pulling price tags out of the ether and passing them around. Considering Silicon Valley worthy of contempt is the first premise that we work from."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@samfbiddle
[6:15] Valleywag's coverage of Sean Parker
[6:45] "'The Uber of Private Jets' is a Real Thing" (Valleywag • Apr 2013)
[6:55] "What is Auto-Tune, and Why Does Jay-Z Want It Dead?"
Episode 87: Amanda Hess
Amanda Hess, a staff writer at Slate, has also written for Pacific Standard, GOOD, and ESPN the Magazine.
"I ended up not loving the fact that I was getting a bunch of calls from MSNBC and CNN, who mostly wanted to talk about people threatening to rape and kill me and only a tiny bit about the story I'd written. ... It was tiring, and it seemed dismissive of me as a person. It's a strange thing to become somebody else's story, especially when the story is: You're a victim of an insane online ha
Episode 86: Mattathias Schwartz
Mattathias Schwartz has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Harper's.
"I figure it's like digging through a wall with a spoon: if you spend enough time at it eventually you get to the other side."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
mattathiasschwartz.com
Schwartz on Longform
[4:00] "A Massacre in Jamaica" (New Yorker • Dec 2011)
[20:15] The Philadelphia Independent
[25:00] "The Hold-'Em Holdup" (New York Times Magazine • Ju
Episode 85: Tavi Gevinson
Tavi Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie.
"I just want our readers to know that they are already smart enough and cool enough."
Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Atavist Books.
Show notes:
@tavitulle
Rookie
thestylerookie.com
[4:15] "Tavi Says" (Lizze Widdicombe • New Yorker • Sep 2010)
[30:30] "A Teen Just Trying to Figure It Out" (TED • Mar 2012)
[33:30] Rookie Yearbook Two (Drawn and Quarterly • Oct 2013)
[39:45] Longform Podcast #75: George Saunders
[43:15]
Episode 84: Sabrina Rubin Erdely
Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has also written for GQ, Philadelphia and SELF.
"I think that people are, by their nature, good and want to act rightly. So I'm very interested in why people do these things that result in really bad actions. My lack of outrage actually is one of the things that probably helps me in my reporting because I really am propelled by this pure curiosity. ... I just want to know, 'Where did that come from?'"
Thanks to TinyLetter and PillP
Matthew Power (1974-2014)
"The kind of stories I've gotten to do have involved fulfilling my childhood fantasies of having an adventurous life. Even though I don't make a ton of money doing it, I've never felt like I was missing out on something."
Our friend Matt Power, a freelance journalist, died this week while on assignment in Uganda. Matt recorded this episode of the Longform Podcast with Evan Ratliff in February 2013.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 83, Part 2: Lawrence Wright, Live from Austin
Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
"If I had the chance to interview Osama Bin Laden, should I kill him? It’s a fair question. Suppose we’re having dinner — should I stab him with the bread knife? Do I have a moral obligation to kill him? Or do I have a moral obligation as a reporter to simply hear him? … It’s sometimes difficult to take away the judgements that you naturally have. But when you do that, when you strip yourself and
Episode 83, Part 1: Pamela Colloff & Mimi Swartz, Live from Austin
Pamela Colloff and Mimi Swartz are executive editors of Texas Monthly.
Colloff: "That sense of loss, that sense of normal life turning on a dime is something that, in a very different way, I’ve experienced. And I carry that with me into some of the more difficult stories."
Swartz: "Here’s this great [public interest] story that nobody’s ever told. Now how can I write it so the maximum number of people want to read it? I try to make the homework part as interesting and compelling as po
Episode 82: Jennifer Senior
Jennifer Senior is a contributing editor at New York and the author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood.
"I've had moments in motherhood that have been close to something like religious. But I don't think social scientists say things like, "How many numinous moments have you had?" They don't do that, so you have to figure out what to do. I was suddenly turning to other texts to try and explain all of this."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show note
Episode 81: Kevin Roose
Kevin Roose, a writer at New York, has contributed to The New York Times, GQ and Esquire. His latest book is Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits.
"Google will give you away. I feel like one undercover book is all you get these days before the jig is up. ... Unless, like Barbara Ehrenreich, you legally change your name. I was not quite prepared to go that far."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@kevinroose
kevinr
Episode 80: Wil S. Hylton
Wil S. Hylton, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of Vanished.
"I despise the fucking nut graf. I think it's a joke, a cop out. The story probably should be about something larger than itself but if you have to tell people what that is, you've failed form the beginning. If they can't find it, you didn't put it there and you shouldn't be beating them over the head with it."
Thanks to TinyLetter and The Fog Horn for sponsoring this week's episode, and to the Wri
Episode 79: David Kushner
David Kushner, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired and The Atavist.
"The minute you see an incredible character, you know. The only thing I can compare it to is bowling, not that I'm much of a bowler. On the few times I've thrown a strike, you know it before it hits the pins."
Thanks to TinyLetter and ProFlowers for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@davidkushner
davidkushner.com
Kushner on Longform
[1:00] "The Bones of Marianna
Episode 78: Ariel Levy
Ariel Levy is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
"I like an older awesome lady, I don't think enough is written about older awesome ladies and I don't think there are enough role models for younger awesome ladies. It’s great fun hanging out with an older awesome lady. It’s inspiring. And it makes you think 'Jesus, I might be rocking it when I’m 80!'"
Thanks to ProFlowers and TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@avlskies
Levy on Longform
[3:00] "My First Time, Tw
Episode 77: Dan P. Lee
Dan P. Lee is a contributing writer at New York.
"I don't believe in answers. That's what compels me to write all of these stories. None of them ends nicely, none of them ends neatly."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@Dan_P_Lee
Lee on Longform
Lee's New York archive
[13:30] "Who Killed Ellen Andros?" (Philadelphia Magazine • Oct 2006)
[22:45] "Travis the Menace" (New York • Jan 2011)
[45:00] "Paw Paw & Lady Love" (New York • Jun 2011)
[48:45] "4:52 on Chri
Episode 76: Roger D. Hodge
Roger D. Hodge is the editor of Oxford American.
"My career isn't all that interesting insofar as I've been an editor. I'm much more interested in talking about writers and stories. That's the main thing: telling these stories, creating this platform, this context for the best possible storytelling."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Random House for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@RogerDHodge
oxfordamerican.org
[5:15] "Long Way Home" (Rosanne Cash • Oxford American • Nov 2013)
[5:45] The
Episode 75: George Saunders
George Saunders has written for The New Yorker and GQ. His latest collection of short stories is Tenth of December.
"Maybe you would understand your artistry to be: put me anywhere. I'll find human beings, I'll find human interest, I'll find literature. And I guess you could argue the weirder, or maybe the less explored the place, the better."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
georgesaundersbooks.com
Saunders on Longform
[5:00] Tenth of December
Episode 74: Jon Mooallem
Jon Mooallem, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, is the author of Wild Ones and American Hippopotamus, the latest story from The Atavist.
"I'm terrible at writing nut graphs. I never know why people should keep reading. That’s the menace of my professional existence, trying to figure that out. Because often you have to explain that to an editor before you even start, and I may not even know while I'm writing what the bigger point is."
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this
Episode 73: Joe Sexton
Joe Sexton is a senior editor at ProPublica and a former reporter and editor at the New York Times, where he led the team that produced "Snow Fall."
"My experience in a newspaper newsroom over the years has been: The word you hear least often, the word that's hardest for people to say in that environment, is the word yes. It's safer to say no. You get second-guessed less often if you say no. Your job's not on the line if you say no. But if you're willing to say yes and you're willing t
Episode 72: Andrew Leland
Andrew Leland is an editor at The Believer and hosts The Organist.
"I think a good editor has a strong stomach for crazy assholes. Because often crazy assholes are really brilliant great writers."
Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
Leland's archive at the Oakland Standard
Leland's blog, "Good Jobbbbbbbbb"
[4:00] "Web Dreams" (Josh Quittner • Wired • Nov 1996)
[5:15] 826 Valencia
[5:45] A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (David Eggers •
Episode 71: Jason Fagone
Jason Fagone, a contributing editor at Wired and a writer-at-large for Philadelphia, is the author of Ingenious.
"It seemed like all the big guys in American society had let us down, all the elites. And here was a contest that was explicitly looking to the little guy and saying, 'We don't care what you've done before or how much money you have in your pocket. If you solve this problem, you win the money.' There was something so optimistic and hopeful and cool about that to me."
Thanks to TinyL
Episode 70: Amy Wallace
Amy Wallace is an editor-at-large for Los Angeles and a correspondent for GQ .
"I've written about the anti-vaccine movement. I love true crime. I've written a lot of murder stories. The thing that unites all of them—whether it's a celebrity profile or a biologist who murdered a bunch of people or Justin Timberlake—it's almost trite to say, but there's a humanity to each of these people. And figuring out what's making them tick in the moment, or in general, is interesting to me. In a way, that'
Episode 69: Rachel Aviv
Rachel Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
"If I'm writing about the criminal justice system, I wish I were a lawyer. If I'm writing about psychiatry, I wish I were a psychiatrist. I have often filled out half my application to get a Ph.D in clinical psychology. That is one area where I am constantly on the verge of jumping the fence. But even when I wrote about religion, I thought I wanted to be a priest."
Thanks to TinyLetter and HostGator for sponsoring this week's episode.
Episode 68: Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery are the co-editors of Mother Jones.
"We probably pay more attention to our fact-checking and our research than almost everybody in our industry. By the time we publish stuff, we make sure it's unimpeachable because people would like to impeach it."
Thanks to TinyLetter and HostGator for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@MonikaBauerlein
@ClaraJeffery
motherjones.com
Mother Jones on Longform
[16:45] Mac McClelland's Mother Jones archive
[18
Episode 67: Evan Wright
Evan Wright, a two-time National Magazine Award winner, is the author of Generation Kill.
"When people were killed, civilians especially, I realized I was the only person there who would write it down. I was frantic about getting names, and in the book there are a few Arabic names, some of the victims. Not that anyone cares. But I thought, 'At least somewhere there's a record of this.'"
Thanks to this week’s sponsors: TinyLetter and HostGator.
Show notes:
@evanscribe
Wright on Longform
[3:45]
Episode 66: Andy Ward
Andy Ward, a former editor at Esquire and GQ, is the editorial director of nonfiction at Random House.
"How you gain that trust is a hard thing to quantify. The way I try do it is by caring. If you don't care about every word and every sentence in the piece, writers pick up on that. ... Ultimately, it's their book or their magazine article. Their name is on it, not mine. I always try to keep that in mind."
Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA 14.
Show notes:
Episode 65: Elizabeth Wurtzel
Elizabeth Wurtzel is the author of four books, including Prozac Nation.
"It's not that hard to be a lawyer. Any fool can be a lawyer. It's really hard to be a writer. You have to be born with incredible amounts of talent. Then you have to work hard. Then you have to be able to handle tons of rejection and not mind it and just keep pushing away at it. You have to show up at people's doors. You can't just e-mail and text message people. You have to bang their doors down. You have to be interestin
Episode 64: Gay Talese
Gay Talese, who wrote for Esquire in the 1960s and currently contributes to The New Yorker, is the author of several books. His latest is A Writer's Life.
"I want to know how people did what they did. And I want to know how that compares with how I did what I did. That's my whole life. It's not really a life. It's a life of inquiry. It's a life of getting off your ass, knocking on a door, walking a few steps or a great distance to pursue a story. That's all it is: a life of boundless curiosity
Episode 63: Jon Ronson
Jon Ronson, a contributor to This American Life, The Guardian and GQ, is the author of six books, including The Men Who Stare at Goats. His latest is Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries.
"The older you get, you realize that no uncomfortable fact makes your story worse. Contradictions are great. What's bad, what to me is the worst journalistic sin, is ridiculous polemicism. ... To me, the contradictions, the story not turning out the way you want—you have to be a twig in the tidal wav
Episode 62: Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His latest book is David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.
"The categories are in motion. You turn into a Goliath, then you topple because of your bigness. You fall to the bottom again. And Davids, after a while, are no longer Davids. Facebook is no longer an underdog—it's now everything it once despised. I'm everything I once despised. When I was 25, I used to write these incredibly snotty, hostile articles at
Episode 61: Cord Jefferson
Cord Jefferson is the West Coast Editor at Gawker.
"I consider myself to be a sincere human being. And I think that the way the internet carries itself, the way the internet has dialogues, is often insincere. That concerns me. I don't ever want to lose my sincerity. I don't ever want to lose my ability to feel emotional about things that I write about. I don't ever want to have a distance from everything that I write. I think that can be a danger of writing too much for the internet, that you d
Episode 60: Hamilton Morris
Hamilton Morris is the science editor for Vice and a contributor to Harper's.
"It's a shame that there isn't more of an interdisciplinary approach to a lot of scientific investigations, because often the result is that misinformation is produced. Again, there's misinformation in journalism and there's misinformation in science. And if you combine the best elements of both of those disciplines you can come a little bit closer to the truth. If you want to understand a drug phenomenon, you're goin
Episode 59: Nancy Jo Sales
Nancy Jo Sales writes for Vanity Fair and is the author of The Bling Ring.
"I'm a mom now, so my life's a little different. I can't do certain things that I used to do, and I won't, because they're dangerous or ridiculous or keep me out till five in the morning or whatever. But back in those days, I didn't even really have—I didn't even have a pet! This was everything I did. This was my whole life, this passion to find out these things, and do these things, and see these things, and have these
Episode 58: Sarah Stillman
Sarah Stillman is a staff writer for The New Yorker.
"People don't really care about issues so much as they care about the stories and the characters that bring those issues to life. ... A story needs an engine or something to propel you forward and it can't just be a collection of like, 'Oh, hmm, this was interesting over here and this was interesting over there.' Realizing that helped me sit down with all my stuff on trafficking and labor abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and say 'What are the f
Episode 57: Eli Saslow
Eli Saslow is a staff writer at the Washington Post and a contributor at ESPN the Magazine.
It's not really my place to complain about it being hard for me to write. I wrote the story ("After Newtown Shooting, Mourning Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet") and I got to leave it. And even when I was writing the story, I was only experiencing what they were experiencing in a super fractional way. The hard part is that it was a story where there are no breaks, there's no—it is this relentless, sor
Episode 56: Joshuah Bearman
Joshuah Bearman is the co-founder of Epic Magazine and a freelance writer. His latest story is "Coronado High."
"People who know me well will realize that parts of this story are actually about me. … It's about loss of innocence and getting to a certain point in your life where you realize the excitement of youth is over. Life at a certain point gets complicated and there are consequences and things get hard. These are people who dealt with those consequences in a way that I never did
Episode 55: Amy Harmon
Amy Harmon, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers science and society for the New York Times.
"I'm not looking to expose science as problematic and I'm not looking to celebrate it. But it can be double edged. Genetic knowledge can certainly be double edged. Often the science outpaces where our culture is in terms of grappling with it, with the implications of it. Part of the reason for this widespread fear about GMOs is people don't understand what it is. I'm looking for an emotional way or a vehicle
Episode 54: Sean Flynn
Sean Flynn is a GQ correspondent and National Magazine Award winner.
"I find it satisfying to be able to give a voice to people that sort of get lost…You know, when these big horrible things happen, and the spotlight is very briefly on them, and then it moves away, and it's not that I'm dragging them out and forcing them to 'Relive your horrible moments!' It's more a thing of, 'If you'd like to relive your horrible moment, if you want people to know what actually happened, talk to me. I will te
Episode 53: Janet Reitman
For the first time, Janet Reitman discusses her Rolling Stone cover story on accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
"My editors, myself, a lot of people who work for the magazine — we lived through an act of terrorism. We know what it feels like. There have been accusations to me personally of being insensitive, and I can tell you that I'm far from insensitive, not only to the political realities of terrorism but to the personal realities of terrorism. I breathed it in, literally. …
Episode 52: Kelley Benham
Kelley Benham is a writer and editor at the Tampa Bay Times.
"People connect with this story in a really visceral kind of way, usually because of some experience they've had or someone close to them has had. I've had 90-year-old women crying into my phone about babies they lost 70 years ago. I've had people kind of sneak up to me and tell me about babies that have died that they don't talk about, but that they carry with them all the time. I've had premies who are grown up—those are my
Episode 51: Robert Kolker
Robert Kolker is the author of Lost Girls and a contributing editor at New York.
"For better or for worse, my heart's not in the mystery. I want [the killer] to be caught—he's obviously a predator and he's unstable. But they all are. They're all messed up people who victimize other people and they all look normal. The art and science of catching serial killers has become more than slightly overblown in our society. And you know, I love Silence of the Lambs … but I'm not entirely sure that our o
Episode 50: Edith Zimmerman
Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.
"I never wrote anything myself or ran anything from other people that was needlessly negative. It wasn't some false grin plastered all over it — we addressed dark things too, and poked fun at things. But I didn't want there to ever be a tone of yeah, let's really just deflate this. Because ultimately you're just stabbing at a ghost among friends. And then at the end you've all just fa
Episode 49: Brendan I. Koerner
Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of The Skies Belong to Us.
"It was this big review in The New York Times and I was terrified that it was going to say something awful about the book or about me as a writer. And my son said to me — he's 5, I should say — "If it's bad, you won't die." That's a good point, you know? So I always think of that when I pick up a new review and take that risk of someone slamming something that I've genuinely poured my heart and soul i
Episode 48: Evan Ratliff
Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses "The Oilman's Daughter," his new story in The Atavist.
"This woman was given the opportunity to take on a new identity. And it was a mistake. She never should've done it. If there was a way for her to go back and say, 'No, I don't want to know this. I want to be who I am,' then I think she should've taken that. … I'm fascinated with people who want to radically shift their identity. It almost never works out well."
Show notes:
"The Oil
Episode 47: Steve Kandell
Steve Kandell is the longfom editor at BuzzFeed.
"What would be the sort of longer, narrative nonfiction, journalistic equivalent of something that would have the same effect on you as a bunch of cat GIFs? And not because it's cute, but it's the kind of thing that makes you go, 'OK, I need a lot of other people to see this.'"
Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.
Show notes:
@SteveKandell
"David Lee Roth Will Not Go Quietly" (BuzzFeed • Apr 2012)
[7:30] "The Movie Set That
Episode 46: Nicholas Schmidle
Nicholas Schmidle is a staff writer at The New Yorker.
"I was in a taxi, leaving Karachi to go attend this festival, and we started getting these very disturbing phone calls from newspaper reporters that didn't exist, all of them asking me to meet them at various places in Karachi. I had read enough about the Daniel Pearl case to know what happened in the days leading up, and this was very similar. ... We kept driving towards the festival, and shortly after that, friends started calling. They w
Episode 45: Chris Heath
Chris Heath, winner of the 2013 National Magazine Award for Reporting, is a staff writer at GQ.
"I present myself as someone who is going to be rigorous and honest. And if you can engage in the way I'm asking you to engage, then I hope you will recognize yourself in a more truthful way in this story than you usually do. And maybe even, with a bit of luck, more than you ever have before. That's what I bring. That's my offer."
Thanks to TinyLetter and the Literary Reportage Department at NYU's A
Episode 44: Jonathan Abrams
Abrams covers the NBA for Grantland.
"Players know that with the stories I do I'm not trying to burn anybody. I'm trying to tell a story for what it's worth and be honest to that person… That's one of my main goals, that you know why this person is [a certain] way when they step on the court. You know why Monta Ellis is going to keep shooting the ball. You know why Zach Randolph is such a gritty player. What these guys have gone through growing up, it materializes in their game."
Show notes:
@
Episode 43: Margalit Fox
Margalit Fox is a senior obituary writer for The New York Times and the author of The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code.
"You do get emotionally involved with people, even though as a journalist you're not supposed to. But as a human being, how can you not? Particularly people who had difficult, tragic, poignant lives. But there are also people that you just wish you had known. And, of course, the painful irony is that you're only getting to know them by virtue of the
Episode 42: Mat Honan
Mat Honan is a senior writer at Wired.
"[The tech] industry — especially as it relates to a lot the silly apps and the silly websites and the silly shit that we put up with — is ridiculous. It's just such a hype fest, people living off of jargon and nonsense. There are entire conferences devoted to nonsense! ... I like to skewer that stuff, because I don't want to feel responsible for it. I don't want to feel like I'm making someone go out and buy some piece of shit they don't need."
Show note
Episode 41: Jonathan Shainin
Jonathan Shainin, senior editor at The Caravan.
"Working in an environment that's foreign, where you have to kind of think through a lot of things from the ground up...I find it to be really stimulating to have to interrogate the assumptions that you have as an editor about what's interesting and what's not interesting, what's a good story and what's a bad story, what's the story that's been done a million times already. When you get out of a place that is your place, you have to ki
Episode 40: Vanessa Grigoriadis
Vanessa Grigoriadis, contributing editor at New York and Vanity Fair.
On the art of the celebrity interview: "People are smart. Particularly these people. They're sitting there thinking, "When is she going to drop that question?" They know what you're doing. So the way I think about it is: let's have an actual, genuine, human, interesting conversation. ... [Journalists] have all sorts of schemes of what they think works for them. My scheme is no scheme."
Show notes:
@thevanessag
vanessagrigori
Episode 39: Natasha Vargas-Cooper
Natasha Vargas-Cooper, writer.
Show notes:
@natashavc
natashavc.com
Vargas-Cooper on Longform
[2:30] "Jesse James Hollywood: On Trial" (The Awl • May-July 2009)
[11:00] Mad Men Unbuttoned (2010)
[18:30] "The Day-Care Threat" (Brad Schrade, Jeremy Olson and Glenn Howatt • Minneapolis Star Tribune)
[19:30] "When A 10-Year-Old Kills His Nazi Father, Who's To Blame?" (BuzzFeed • Feb 2012)
[34:00] "Hard Core" (The Atlantic • Jan 2011)
[40:45] Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer • 1999)
[41:30] "Bath Salts:
Episode 38: Ted Conover
Ted Conover, author of five books and the recent Harper's article "The Way of All Flesh."
Show notes:
tedconover.com
Interview Transcript
Personal Archive
[1:00] "The Way of All Flesh" (Harper's • April 2013)
[3:30] "Power Steer" (Michael Pollan • New York Times Magazine • March 2002)
[15:00] Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Illegal Migrants (1987)
[33:30] "Enter the Chicken" (Burkhard Bilger • Harper's • March 1999)
[34:00] Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000)
[36:15] The Routes
Episode 37: Ann Friedman
Ann Friedman, writer, editor and co-founder of Tomorrow.
Show notes:
@annfriedman
annfriedman.com
Personal Archive
[5:45] Pie Charts Archive (The Hairpin)
[7:15] #realtalk Column (CJR)
[15:00] "The Ann Friedman Weekly"
[22:00] "Minimum Rage" (Nona Willis Aronowitz • GOOD • March 2012)
[23:00] "What Women Want" A profile of James Deen (Amanda Hess • GOOD • Nov 2011)
[34:45] Tomorrow
[39:00] Tomorrow Budget Breakdown
[43:00] 2013 National Magazine Awards Finalists Learn more about your a
Episode 36: Patrick Symmes
Patrick Symmes, foreign correspondent and contributor to Outside and Harper's.
Show notes:
@patricksymmes
patricksymmes.com
Symmes's Outside archive
Symmes's Harper's archive
[2:30] Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend (2000)
[7:00] The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile (2008)
[21:45] "Taking the Measure of Castro, Ounce by Ounce" (Harper's • Jan 1996) (subscription required)
[22:00] "Ten Thousand Revolutions" (Harper's • June 1
Episode 35: Jay Caspian Kang
Jay Caspian Kang, writer and editor at Grantland.
Show notes:
@jaycaspiankang
[2:00] "Online Poker's Big Winner" (New York Times Magazine • 2011)
[4:30] The Dead Do Not Improve (2012)
[8:00] "The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High" (The Morning News • 2010)
[11:30] "Immigrant Misappropriations: The Importance of Ichiro" (Grantland • 2011)
[15:00] "The White Album" A profile of Royce White (Chuck Klosterman • Grantland • 2012)
[21:00] Bill Simmons's Grantland archive
Learn m
Episode 34: Molly Young
Molly Young, freelance writer for GQ and New York.
Show notes:
@rolfpotts
rolfpotts.com
[2:00] Murder of football player in Kansas shakes town (Sports Illustrated • Feb 2013)
[15:00] Salon travel column (1999-2000)
[16:30] "Storming the Beach" (Salon • Jan 1999)
[19:30] "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" (2002)
[21:00] "My Beirut Hostage Crisis" (Salon • June 2000)
[25:00] Wikipedia: Flaneur
[35:30] 'No Baggage' web series
Learn more about your ad choices. Vis
Episode 33: Rolf Potts
Rolf Potts, travel writer.
Show notes:
@rolfpotts
rolfpotts.com
[2:00] Murder of football player in Kansas shakes town (Sports Illustrated • Feb 2013)
[15:00] Salon travel column (1999-2000)
[16:30] "Storming the Beach" (Salon • Jan 1999)
[19:30] "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" (2002)
[21:00] "My Beirut Hostage Crisis" (Salon • June 2000)
[25:00] Wikipedia: Flaneur
[35:30] 'No Baggage' web series
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad
Episode 32: Jake Silverstein
Jake Silverstein, editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly.
Show notes:
@jakesilverstein
Silverstein's Texas Monthly archive
[5:00] Welcome to the New National Homepage of Texas (Texas Monthly • Jan 2013)
[14:00] "The Innocent Man, Part 1" (Pamela Colloff • Texas Monthly • Nov 2012)
[14:30] Colloff's ongoing coverage of the Michael Morton case
[19:30] "Walking the Border" (Luke Dittrich • Esquire • April 2011)
[20:00] Nothing Happened and Then It Did: A Chronicle of Fact and Fiction
[27:00] "The Devil
Episode 31: Emily Nussbaum
Emily Nussbaum, television critic at The New Yorker.
Show notes:
@emilynussbaum
emilynussbaum.com
Nussbaum's New Yorker archive
Nussbaum's New York archive
[1:30] Tina Fey at the Paley Center for Media
[5:45] "Shark Week: House of Cards, Scandal, and the political game" (The New Yorker • Feb 2013)
[8:00] "My Strange Addiction: The sleazy wisdom of Big Brother" (The New Yorker • Aug 2012)
[8:40] "My Breaking Bad Bender" (New York • July 2011)
[8:40] "Child's Play: Breaking Bad's Bad Dad" (The Ne
Episode 30: Keith Gessen
Keith Gessen, founding editor of n+1 and contributor to The New Yorker.
Show notes:
Gessen's Personal Archive
Gessen's n+1 archive
Gessen's New Yorker archive
[5:15] Money (n+1 • Mar 2006)
[6:15] Ugly Duckling Presse
[13:15] "Stuck" (New Yorker • Aug 2010) [sub req'd]
[20:30] n+1 Digital Issue 1: Negation
[22:30] McSweeny's
[34:00] "The Intellectual Situation" (n+1 • Nov 2012)
[35:00] Indecision (Benjamin Kunkel • Random House • 2005)
[35:15] The Art of Fielding (Chad Harbach • Hachette • 2011)
Episode 29: Matthew Power
Matthew Power, freelance writer and contributing editor at Harper's.
Show notes:
@matthew_power
matthewpower.net
Power's Harper's archive
Power's complete archive
[2:00] "Excuse Us While We Kiss the Sky" (GQ • March 2013)
[10:30] "Mississippi Drift" (Harper's • March 2008)
[18:00] "Immersion Journalism" [pdf] (Harper's • Dec 2005)
[22:30] "The Cherry Tree Garden" [pdf] (Granta • May 2008)
[24:00] "Guerrillas in the Mist" (Feed • 2000)
[26:15] "Train Hopping in Canada" (Blue • 2000)
[32:30] "The
Episode 28: Joel Lovell
Joel Lovell, deputy editor of The New York Times Magazine.
Show notes:
@lovelljoel
Lovell's New York Times archive
Lovell's GQ archive
Lovell's This American Life archive
[2:00] "George Saunders Has Written the Best Book You'll Read This Year" (Joel Lovell • New York Times Magazine • 2013)
[8:20] "The Semplica-Girl Diaries" (George Saunders • New Yorker • 2012)
[12:40] George Saunders on respect
[12:55] Twitter response to Lovell's profile of George Saunders
[14:50] The first time Lovell read S
Episode 27: Joshua Topolsky
Joshua Topolsky, editor-in-chief of The Verge.
Show notes:
@joshuatopolsky
joshuatopolsky.com
The Verge
The Verge on Longform
[3:45] "Spacewar" (Stewart Brand • Rolling Stone • 1972)
[6:45] The Face magazine)
[8:00] jasonsantamaria.com
[9:00] "Condo at the End of the World" (Joseph L. Flatley • The Verge • Nov 2011)
[9:30] "For Amusement Only: The Life and Death of the American Arcade" (Laura June • The Verge • Jan 2013)
[11:00] "Launch Party: A Crowdfunding Revolution Ignites the Next Space Ra
Episode 26: Jennifer Gonnerman
Jennifer Gonnerman, contributing editor at New York and contributing writer for Mother Jones.
Show notes:
JenniferGonnerman.com
Gonnerman on Longform
[5:00] Wayne Barrett's Village Voice Archive
[10:30] "The House Where They Live: Inside the Sex-Offender Cluster of One Long Island Town (New York • Dec 2007)
[16:00] "Blood Brothers: How Felix Aponte’s Kidney Transplant to Friend Robert Sanchez Saved Both Their Lives (New York • Nov 2009)
[22:00] "Tuesdays With Judy: Battling Mental Illness With
Episode 25: Susan Orlean
Susan Orlean, staff writer at The New Yorker.
Show notes:
@susanorlean
Orlean on Longform
Interview Transcript
The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Extraordinary People (Amazon)
"Orchid Fever" (New Yorker • 1995)
"Meet the Shaggs" (New Yorker • 1995)
"Life's Swell" (New Yorker • 1995)
"Thinking in the Rain" (New Yorker • 2008)
"I Want This Apartment" (New Yorker • 1999)
Rin Tin Tin (Published 2012)
Animalish (Kindle Single)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices
Episode 24: Stephen Rodrick
A special episode with Stephen Rodrick, contritbuting writer at the New York Times Magazine and contributing editor at Men's Journal, to discuss his recent story "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie."
Show notes:
@stephenrodrick
"Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2013)
The Magical Stranger: A Son's Journey into His Father's Life (Due out May 2013)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad
Episode 23: Starlee Kine
Starlee Kine, contributor to This American Life and the New York Times Magazine.
Show notes:
@StarleeKine
Kine's archive on This American Life
"Dr. Phil" (This American Life • August 2007)
"Where's Walter?" (This American Life • February 2005)
Kine's archive at the New York Times
Journalism Is Not Narcissism (Hamilton Nolan • Gawker • January 2013)
Elizabeth Wurtzel Confronts Her One-Night Stand of a Life (Elizabeth Wurtzel • New York • January 2013)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podc
Episode 22: Charles Duhigg
Charles Duhigg, New York Times reporter and author of The Power of Habit.
Show notes:
@cduhigg
charlesduhigg.com
"The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business" (Random House • Feb 2012)
The iEconomy Series
"How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work" (Duhigg and Kieth Bradsher • January 2012)
"In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad " (Duhigg and David Barboza • January 2012)
The Golden Opporunities Series
"How Companies Learn Your Secrets" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2012)
L
Episode 21: Eli Sanders
Eli Sanders, associate editor at The Stranger and winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.
Show notes:
@elijsanders
elisanders.com
"The Bravest Woman in Seattle" (The Stranger • June 2011)
"The Great West Coast Newspaper War" (The Stranger • Mar 2010)
"Gay Marriage's Jewish Pioneer" (Tablet • June 2012)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 20: Patrick Radden Keefe
Patrick Radden Keefe, staff writer at The New Yorker.
Show notes:
@praddenkeefe
patrickraddenkeefe.com
Keefe on Longform
Patrick Radden Keefe's books, Chatter and The Snakehead
"Cocaine Incorporated" (New York Times Magazine • June 2012)
"Revearsal of Fortune" (New Yorker • Jan 2012)
"The Trafficker" (New Yorker • Feb 2010)
"Welcome to Newburgh, Murder Capital of New York" (New York • Sep 2011)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 19: Choire Sicha
Choire Sicha, co-founder of The Awl, interviewed by Aaron Lammer.
Show notes:
@choire
choiresicha.com
The Awl on Longform
The Awl
Very Recent History: An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. 2009 A.D.) in a Large City (Amazon pre-order)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 18: Mike Sager
Mike Sager, writer-at-large for Esquire and founder of The Sager Group, interviewed by Max Linsky.
Show notes:
@therealsager
Sager on Longform
thesagergroup.net
Sager's latest collection: The Someone You're Not
The Sager Group's first anthology: Next Wave: America's New Generation of Great Literary Journalists (Featuring Justin Heckert, Pamela Colloff, Chris Jones and more)
"The Devil and John Holmes" (Rolling Stone • May 1989)
"The Man Who Never Was" (Esquire • May 2009)National Magazine Awa
Episode 17: Joshua Davis
Joshua Davis, contributing editor at Wired and author of the new ebook John McAfee's Last Stand, interviewed by Aaron Lammer.
Show notes:
joshuadavis.net
Davis on Longform
@joshuadavisnow: On Twitter, Davis continues to report the McAfee story as it unfolds
John McAfee's Last Stand (Kindle Single)
Read an excerpt from John McAfee's Last Stand
"The Hinterland": McAfee's blog, which he is updating while on the run
"The World’s Biggest Diamond Heist" (Wired • Mar 2009)
"High Tech Cowboys of the De
Episode 16: Pamela Colloff
Pamela Colloff, executive editor and staff writer at Texas Monthly, interviewed by Max Linsky.
Show notes:
@pamelacolloff
Colloff on Longform
"The Innocent Man" (Texas Monthly • Nov-Dec 2012)
"Innocence Lost" (Texas Monthly • Oct 2010)
"Innocence Found" (Texas Monthly • Jan 2011)
"Lip Shtick" (Texas Monthly • Sep 2003)
"Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch" (Texas Monthly • Nov 2002)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 15: Jonah Weiner
Jonah Weiner, contributing editor at Rolling Stone, pop critic at Slate, and contributor to The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker, interviewed by Aaron Lammer.
Show notes and links:
@jonahweiner
jonahweiner.com
Weiner on Longform
"Prying Eyes" (New Yorker • Oct 2012)
"Kanye West Has a Goblet" (Slate • Aug 2010)
"The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2008)
Interview: Vanessa Grigoriadis (The Writearound • Sep 2011)
The Writearound
Learn more about your ad choi
Episode 14: David Samuels
David Samuels, contributing editor at Harper's and frequent contributor to The New Yorker and The Atlantic, interviewed by Evan Ratliff.
Show notes:
Samuels on Longform
Only Love Can Break Your Heart (Anthology)
"Wild Things" (Harper's • June 2012)
"Atomic John" (The New Yorker • Dec 2008)
"Let’s Die Together" (The Atlantic • May 2007)
"Dr. Kush" (The New Yorker • Jul 2008)
"Barack and Hamid's Excellent Adventure" (Harper's • Jul 2010)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/
Episode 13: Adrian Chen
Adrian Chen, staff writer at Gawker and editor at The New Inquiry, interviewed by Max Linsky.
Show notes:
@adrianchen
"Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, the Biggest Troll on the Web" (Gawker • Oct 2012)
"The Long, Fake Life of J.S. Dirr" (Gawker • Jun 2012)
"Finding Goatse: The Mystery Man Behind the Most Disturbing Internet Meme in History" (Gawker • Apr 2012)
"The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers" (Gawker • Jan 2012)
The New Inquiry
Learn more about your a
Episode 12: Mina Kimes
Mina Kimes, writer at Fortune, interviewed by Aaron Lammer.
Show notes:
@minakimes
Kimes on Longform
"Bad to the Bone: A Medical Horror Story" (Fortune • Sep 2012)
"America's Hottest Export: Weapons" (Fortune • Feb 2011)
"Why J&J's Headache Won't Go Away" (Fortune • Mar 2008)
"Railroads: Cartel or Free Market Success Story?" (Fortune • Sep 2011)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 11: Joshuah Bearman
Joshuah Bearman discusses "The Great Escape," his article about a CIA operation in Iran that became the basis for the new film Argo.
Show notes:
@mysecondempire
Jones on Longform
"The Honor System" (Esquire • Sep 2012)
"Animals" (Esquire • Mar 2012)
"The Things That Carried Him" (Esquire • Mar 2008)
"TV's Crowning Moment of Awesome" (Esquire • Jul 2010)
"Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" (Esquire • Mar 2010)
Decât o Revistă magazine
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho
Episode 10: Chris Jones (Live in Romania)
Before a live audience in Bucharest hosted by the Romanian magazine Decât o Revistă, Evan Ratliff interviews Chris Jones.
Show notes:
@mysecondempire
Jones on Longform
"The Honor System" (Esquire • Sep 2012)
"Animals" (Esquire • Mar 2012)
"The Things That Carried Him" (Esquire • Mar 2008)
"TV's Crowning Moment of Awesome" (Esquire • Jul 2010)
"Roger Ebert: The Essential Man" (Esquire • Mar 2010)
Decât o Revistă magazine
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 9: Jeanne Marie Laskas
Jeanne Marie Laskas, author of the new book Hidden America and correspondent for GQ, interviewed by Max Linsky.
Show notes:
@jmlaskas
jeannemarielaskas.com
Laskas on Longform
Hidden America: From Coal Miners to Cowboys, an Extraordinary Exploration of the Unseen People Who Make This Country Work
"Guns 'R Us" (GQ • Sep 2012)
"Underworld" (GQ • Apr 2007)
"Traffic" (GQ • Apr 2009)
"Empire of Ice" (GQ • Sep 2008)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 8: Gideon Lewis-Kraus
Gideon Lewis-Kraus, author of A Sense of Direction, interviewed by Aaron Lammer.
Show notes:
GideonLK.com
Lewis-Kraus on Longform
A Sense of Direction on Amazon
"In Search of the Living, Purring, Singing Heart of the Online Cat-Industrial Complex" (Wired • Aug 2012)
"Tokeville: On the Frontiers of Federalism and Dope" (Harper's • Dec 2009)
"The Last Book Party" (Harper's • Mar 2009)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates, senior editor at The Atlantic and author of The Beatiful Struggle, interviewed by Evan Ratliff.
Show notes:
Coates on Longform
Coates's blog for The Atlantic
"Fear of a Black President" (The Atlantic • Aug 2012)
"'This Is How We Lost to the White Man'" (The Atlantic • May 2008)
"Confessions of a Black Mr. Mom" (Washington Monthly • March 2002)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 6: Mac McClelland
Max Linsky talks with Mac McClelland, human rights reporter for Mother Jones.
Show notes:
@MacMcClelland
McClelland on Longform
"For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question" (Mother Jones • Mar 2010)
"I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" (Mother Jones • Feb 2012)
"The Love That Dares" (Mother Jones • Jan 2012)
"I'm Gonna Need You to Fight Me on This" (GOOD • Jun 2011)
Welcome to Haiti's Reconstruction Hell (Mother Jones • Jan 2011)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 5: Paul Ford
Aaron Lammer talks with writer and programmer Paul Ford.
Show notes:
@ftrain
ftrain.com
Ford on Longform
"The Web Is a Customer Service Medium" (Ftrain.com • Jan 2011)
"The Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (The Morning News • July 2011)
"10 Timeframes" (Contents • June 2012)
"Rotary Dial" (Ftrain.com • Aug 2012)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 4: Jon Mooallem
Evan Ratliff talks with Jon Mooallem, contributor at the New York Times Magazine and author of an upcoming book about people and wild animals.
Show notes:
@jmooallem
jonmooallem.com
Mooallem on Longform
"Twelve Easy Pieces" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2006)
"What's a Monkey to Do in Tampa?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2012)
"Who Invented the High Five?" (ESPN the Magazine • July 2011)
"Rescue Flight" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2009)
"Can Animals Be Gay?" (New York Times Magazine • Mar
Episode 3: David Grann
David Grann, staff writer at The New Yorker, talks with Max Linsky.
Show notes:
@davidgrann
davidgrann.com
Grann on Longform
"The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon" (Amazon)
"Crimetown, U.S.A." (The New Republic • July 2000)
"The Yankee Comandante" (New Yorker • May 2012)
"The Squid Hunter" (New Yorker • May 2004)
"Trial By Fire" (New Yorker • Sep 2009)
"The Chameleon" (New Yorker • Aug 2008)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Episode 2: Janet Reitman
A contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the author of Inside Scientology, Reitman talks to Aaron Lammer about her career and offers advice to young writers.
Show notes:
@janetreitman
janetreitman.com
Reitman on Longform
"Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion" (Amazon)
"Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth's Hazing Abuses" (Rolling Stone • Mar 2012)
"Sex and Scandal at Duke" (Rolling Stone • June 2006)
"Baghdad Follies" (Rolling Stone • July 200
Episode 1: Matthieu Aikins
This week, Evan Ratliff talks to Matthieu Aikins (Harper's, The Atlantic) on the eve of his move to Kabul.
Show notes:
@mattaikins
maikins.com
Matthieu Aikins on Longform
"The Master of Spin Boldak" (Harper's • Dec 2009)
"The Siege of September 13" (GQ • Mar 2012)
"Our Man in Kandahar" (The Atlantic • Nov 2011)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices