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 be a platform for them and for their voices.” –Tessie Castillo

“For me, writing was like a form of conversation with myself or with my past, like therapy. So I just chose these periods in my life that I didn’t really understand and that were really powerful and impactful to me, and I just sat down and started writing to understand them and make peace with them.” –George Wilkerson 

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@TessietheWriter
Castillo's archive
[06:15] "A Second Chance" (Slate • May 2014)
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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 for sponsoring this week's episode.
[13:30] Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes (2013)
[14:15] Longform Podcast #324: Malcolm Gladwell
[16:30] "When Authors Disown Their Work, Should Readers Care?" (The Atlantic • August 2012)
[16:30] "Is Huckleberry Finn's ending really lacking? Not if you're talking psychology." (Scientific American • October 2012)
[19:45] The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It . . . Every Time (2017)
[23:15] The Grift Podcast
[34:45] Rounders (1998) 
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Episode 400: Maria Konnikova

Episode 399: Tessie Castillo and George Wilkerson

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. This is who we are. Everything else is sort of up for grabs."

Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
Baquet’s archive at The New York Times
[03:15] "Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops" (The New York Times • June 2020)
[03:30] "A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists" (The New York Times • June 2020)
[10:00] The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times  (Jones, Tifft • Little, Brown • 1999)
[29:45] Dean Baquet’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize
[55:15] “Still Processing: The Day After” (The New York Times • November 2016)
[1:09:15] Longform Podcast #254: Maggie Haberman
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Episode 398: Dean Baquet

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 of history…somebody somewhere will feel compelled to do something. So that’s what keeps me going."



MailchimpApple BooksThanks to  and  for sponsoring this week's episode.
@Jacquiecharles
Charles’s archive at Miami Herald
[58:45] "Flowers and Calls for Unity Mark Haiti’s 10th Anniversary Quake Commemoration" (Miami Herald • January 2020)
[1:03:30] "Journalist Jacqueline Charles, Child of the Caribbean" (South Florida Times • July 2011)
[1:03:30] “NABJ Names Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles Journalist of the Year” (National Association of Black Journalists • 2011)
[1:04:15] Patrick Farrell’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize
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Episode 397: Jacqueline Charles 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 what my career has been. That slice of life started about young people who were partaking in hip hop culture. Most of them were of color, most of them were poor. So that was a perspective. If you begin to tell the stories of those people at that time, that begins to have an advocacy feel and taste and touch. Not even with a consciousness to it. Because this is a lost voice. This is a lost point of view. It is not in the mainstream. It is not being centered. No one is telling it. So the mere act of shedding light journalistically in places where there has been no light before is advocacy. Sorry, journalists. Sorry, all you impartial, fair-and-balanced folks.”

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@kiernamayo
kierna-mayo.format.com
@speakpatrice
Coronavirus News for Black Folks
[3:00]"'Ebony Magazine' Explores 'The Cosby Show's' Tainted Legacy" (All Things Considered • Oct 2015)
[4:30] "Black Journalists Are Exhausted" (Patrice Peck • New York Times • Jun 2020)
[10:00] Jamilah Lemieux
[48:00] "Does America Love Black People?" (Ebony • Jul 2015)
[48:45] Amy DuBois Barnett
[54:00] Damon Young
[54:00] Michael Arceneaux
[54:00] Zerlina Maxwell
[54:00] Longform Podcast #395: Wesley Lowery
[1:16:45] cassiuslife.com
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Episode 396: Kierna Mayo with Patrice Peck

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 people who are protesting them. They have incentives.”

Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.
@WesleyLowery
Longform Podcast #222: Wesley Lowery
In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrest" (Washington Post • Aug 2014)
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Episode 395: Wesley Lowery

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 Hospitals." (New York Times Magazine • April 2020)
[24:55] "How Do You Maintain Dignity for the Dead in a Pandemic?" (New York Times Magazine • May 2020)
[34:05] War Photographer (2001)
[24:55] "Is Stop and Frisk Worth It?" (The Atlantic • April 2014)
[48:28] "The Longest Night" (2014)
[24:55] "Flash Points" (New Yorker • Aug 2015)
[53:24] "‘We’ve Upped the Ante.’ Why Nancy Pelosi Is Going All in Against Trump" (Time • Jan 2020)
[53:28] "Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job" (Time • March 2018)
[53:30] "De Niro and Pacino Have Always Connected. Just Rarely Onscreen." (New York Times • Oct 2019)
[54:00] "The Year's Great Performers Dancing in a Series of Short Films" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2018)
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Episode 394: Philip Montgomery

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, and the Books He will Never Write" (The New Republic • Dec 2012)
[25:16] Talk (New York Times Magazine)
[28:30] He Was a Science Star. Then He Promoted a Questionable Cure for Covid-19." (New York Times Magazine • May 2020)
[29:24] "What We Know About Masks and the New Coronavirus" (New Yorker • April 2020)
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Episode 393: Isaac Chotiner

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.”

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@DavidGHaskell
davidhaskell.us
Kings County Distillery
[13:29] "Rich Corona, Poor Corona: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Thrives" (New York Magazine • April 2020)
[15:00] I Was Caroline Calloway (Natalie Beach • The Cut)
[30:10] "What is College Without the Campus?" (New York Magazine • May 2020)
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Episode 392: David Haskell

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 dedicated myself to.”

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@CherylStrayed
cherylstrayed.com
Longform Podcast #144: Cheryl Strayed
Strayed on Longform
[07:12] Sugar Calling
[23:21] Transparent
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Episode 391: Cheryl Strayed

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.”

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@bonnietsui
bonnietsui.com
[02:34] Why We Swim (Algonquin • 2020)
[03:50] American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods  (Tsui • Free Press • 2009)
[11:02] The Deep (2012)
[28:25] "With His Absence, My Artist Father Taught Me the Art of Vanishing" (Catapult • Feb 2019)
[42:11] "After Fires, Napa and Sonoma Tourism Industry Is Getting Back on Its Feet" (New York Times • Oct 2017)
[45:04] "Child Care: What — and Who — It Takes to Raise a Family" (California Sunday • July 2019)
[49:38] "The Break: Female Big-Wave Surfers Prepare to Compete on Mavericks’s 50-Foot Waves for the First Time" (California Sunday • Aug 2018)
[50:46] "Meet the Women Who Are Changing What it Means to be a Mom and a Professional Athlete" (Sports Illustrated • Dec 2019)
[54:03] "You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything" (New York Times • June 2019)
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Episode 390: Bonnie Tsui

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's your trick?”

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@lmillernpr
lutimestwo.com
Miller's archive at NPR
Invisibilia
[04:57] Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life (Simon &amp; Schuster • 2020)
[15:18] "The Reluctant Immortalist" (Invisibilia • April 2020)
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Episode 389: Lulu Miller

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 gonna try to enlarge those chances.”

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@NaomiAKlein
naomiklein.org
Klein on Longform
[20:09] "The Problem With Hillary Clinton Isn’t Just Her Corporate Cash. It’s Her Corporate Worldview." (The Nation • April 2016)
[23:46] On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal. (Naomi Klein • Simon &amp; Schuster • 2019)
[25:38] No Logo (Picador • 1999)
[25:39] The Shock Doctrine (Picador • 2007)
[25:40] This Changes Everything (Simon &amp; Schuster • 2014)
[44:31] "In a Summer of Wildfires and Hurricanes, My Son Asks 'Why Is Everything Going Wrong?'" (The Intercept • Sep 2017)
[45:13] The Take (2004)
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Episode 388: Naomi Klein

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.”

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@evaholland
Holland's archive at Outside Magazine
Holland on Longform
[07:31] Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear (Eva Holland • The Experiment • 2020)
[30:50] "No Sleep 'Till Fairbanks" (SB Nation • March 2013)
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Episode 387: Eva Holland

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 hope to see immediately. Like right now. And that does create a massive sense of urgency, a sense of pressing, incredibly high stakes. And it’s a burden.”

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@edyong209
edyong.me
Yong on Longform
[01:08] "How the Pandemic Will End" (The Atlantic • March 2020)
[02:49] "The Next Plague Is Coming. Is America Ready?" (The Atlantic • July 2018)
[28:21] "How a Pandemic Might Play Out Under Trump" (The Atlantic • Dec 2016)
[39:33] Flash Forward Podcast
[46:02] "The Last Giraffes on Earth" (The Atlantic • March 2020)
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Episode 386: Ed Yong

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 Up." (New York Times • March 2020)
[29:57] "They Went off the Grid. They Came Back to Coronavirus." (New York Times • March 2020)
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Episode 385: Charlie Warzel

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 call it a ‘civic immune response.’ People do spontaneously help each other, they work together, they collaborate. This whole idea that society falls apart and everyone descends into madness and violence is just not true. And we know that. We have science that shows it.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@jmooallem
jonmooallem.com
Mooallem on Longform
Longform Podcast #74: Jon Mooallem
[08:29] This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together (Random House • 2020)
[11:26] "The Senseless Logic of the Wild" (New York Times Magazine • March 2019)
[11:32] "Neanderthals Were People, Too" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2017)
[11:35] "We Have Fire Everywhere" (New York Times Magazine • July 2019)
[34:45] Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America (Penguin • 2013)
[34:58] Black Prairie's soundtrack album to Wild Ones
[35:39] "Wild Ones Live" (99% Invisible • Oct 2013)
[36:47] "Death, Redesigned" (California Sunday • April 2015)
[37:46] "One Man’s Quest to Change the Way We Die" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2017)
[44:10] Our Town: A Play in Three Acts (Thornton Wilder • 1938)
[53:45] The Walking Podcast
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Episode 384: Jon Mooallem

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 Tennessee Mountain Home" (1973)
[33:10] More Perfect
[33:19] "The Architect" (More Perfect • Dec 2017)
[36:12] Democracy in America (Alexis de Tocqueville • 1835)
[40:05] "Where Does the Term Redneck Come From?" (Slate • Dec 2019)
[40:58] "Race" (Radiolab • Dec 2008)
[42:10] "Yellow Rain" (Radiolab • Sep 2012)
[1:05:47] "Playing God" (Radiolab • Aug 2016)
[1:06:21] "Words" (Radiolab • Aug 2010)
[1:07:31] "Musical Language" (Radiolab • Sep 2007)
[1:08:07] "Lucy" (Radiolab • Feb 2010)
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Episode 383: Jad Abumrad

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 episode.
@MaraHvistendahl
marahvistendahl.com
Hvistendahl on Longform
The Scientist and the Spy excerpt
[00:45] The Scientist and the Spy: A True Story of China, the FBI, and Industrial Espionage (Mara Hvistendahl • Riverhead • 2020)
[04:20] "Some People Just Smell Like Republicans" (Village Voice • Sep 2004)
[09:36] "Rich Pickings" (Financial Times • Nov 2007)
[10:42] Hvistendahl's archive at Science
[15:20] "Half the Sky: How China’s Gender Imbalance Threatens Its Future" (Virginia Quarterly Review • Fall 2008)
[15:20] "Can AI Escape Our Control and Destroy Us?" (Popular Science • May 2019)
[16:42] "Meet the Flat-Earthers of the Modern Era" (Popular Science • Oct 2019)
[16:44] "Inside China's Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking" (Wired • Dec 2017)
[22:33] "The FBI’s China Obsession" (The Intercept • Feb 2020)
[25:37] North by Northwest (1959)
[30:20] "Some True Information is Impossible to Censor" (Matter • Oct 2014)
[41:12] "‘If You Want to Kill Someone, We Are the Right Guys’" (Wired • April 2019)
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Episode 382: Mara Hvistendahl

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 • Jan 2019)
[02:05] "Trust and Consequences" (Washington Post • Jan 2020)
[02:33] Dreier's archive at New York
[02:35] Dreier on This American Life
[02:37] "How a Crackdown on MS-13 Caught Up Innocent High School Students" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2019)
[07:52] "A Child's Scraped Knee a Life or Death Matter in Venezuela" (Associated Press • Oct 2016)
[08:50] "Life on the Line in Venezuela as Economic Crisis Worsens" (Associated Press • July 2016)
[15:55] "Venezuela's Newest Shortage: Breast Implants" (Hartford Courant • Sep 2014)
[17:52] "No Food, No Teachers, Violence in Failing Venezuela Schools" (Hartford Courant • Jun 2016)
[30:29] "How a Crackdown on MS-13 Caught Up Innocent High School Students" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2019)
[30:34] "The Disappeared" (ProPublica • Sep 2018)
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Episode 381: Hannah Dreier

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 for me that ended, at the end of that day, with me bursting into tears.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@RonanFarrow
Farrow's archive at The New Yorker
The Catch and Kill Podcast
[09:24] "How an Élite University Research Center Concealed its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein" (New Yorker • Sep 2019)
[09:56] "Les Moonves and CBS Face Allegations of Sexual Misconduct" (New Yorker • Jul 2018)
[10:20] "From Aggressive Overtures to Sexual Assault: Harvey Weinstein's Accusers Tell Their Stories" (New Yorker • Oct 2017)
[10:52] Ronan Farrow Daily on MSNBC
[11:45] War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence (Ronan Farrow • W.W. Norton • 2018)
[27:50] "My Oh Miley!" (W Magazine • Feb 2014)
[32:53] Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators (Little, Brown • 2019)
[33:18] "My Father, Woody Allen, and the Danger of Questions Unasked" (Hollywood Reporter • May 2016)
[47:22] Farrow's interview on The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC • Oct 2017)
[51:44] "The Black Cube Chronicles, Part I: The Private Investigators" (New Yorker • Oct 2019)
[51:59] "Four Women Accuse New York's Attorney General of Physical Abuse" (New Yorker • May 2018)
[52:40] "Donald Trump, a Playboy Model, and a System For Concealing Infidelity" (New Yorker • Feb 2018)
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Episode 380: Ronan Farrow

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 Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@yaffaesque
joshuayaffa.com
[19:45] "The Search for Petr Khokhlov" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2015)
[22:45] Longform Podcast #339: Michael Lewis
[26:15] "Ukraine's Unlikely President, Promising New Style of Politics, Gets a Tase of Trump's Swamp" (New Yorker • Oct 2019)
[30:15] "The Double Sting" (New Yorker • Jul 2015)
[37:45] "Russia's House of Shadows" (New Yorker • Oct 2017)
[37:45] "A Village Doctor's Literary Calling" (New Yorker • May 2019)
[38:00] Citizen K (Alex Gibney)
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Episode 379: Joshua Yaffa

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


Fortune Favors the Bold


[5:00] "Roger Loves Chaz" (Roger Ebert • Sep 2012)


[11:34] The Giver (Lois Lowry • Houghton Mifflin • 1993)


[17:47] Ford's commencement speech at Ball State


[26:09] Ford's archive at Buzzfeed


[41:00] "Ashley C. Ford’s Debut Memoir ‘Somebody’s Daughter’ Finds Home at Flatiron" (Paperback Paris • 2018)
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Episode 378: Ashley C. Ford

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 to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@AndreaWNYC


Trump, Inc.


Bernstein's archive at ProPublica


[04:07] Ilya Marritz on the "Nine Pillars of Bernstein"


[11:12] Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election [pdf]


[11:47] The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life (Ivanka Trump • Simon &amp; Schuster • 2009)


[14:31] American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power (W.W. Norton • 2020)


[19:09] City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York (Jack Newfield, Wayne Barrett • HarperCollins • 1988)


[34:28] The Origins of Totalitarianism (Hannah Arendt • Shocken • 1951)


[35:06] “Truth and Politics” (Hannah Arendt • New Yorker • 1967)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 377: Andrea Bernstein

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 craziness twenty-five years ago.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




kk.org


@kevin2kelly


[08:54] CoEvolution Quarterly


[09:06] “Low-Rent Himalayas” (CoEvolution Quarterly • 1981) [pdf]


[18:06] “Information as a Communicable Disease” (CoEvolution Quarterly • 1984) [pdf]


[22:30] sci-hub.tw


[28:28] Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities (Cool Tools Lab • 2013)


[31:31] Whole Earth Software Catalog and Review


[48:08] Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World (Basic Books • 1995)


[48:19] “New Rules for the New Economy: Twelve Dependable Principles for Thriving in a Turbulent World” (Wired • 1997)


[48:23] New Rules for the New Economy: Ten Radical Strategies for a Connected World (Penguin • 1999)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 376: Kevin Kelly

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 who will say: ‘This just isn’t right, and I must do something.’ Which is kind of extraordinary.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




katherineeban.com


@KatherineEban


[08:00] “Bellevue's Emergency” (New York Times Magazine • 1996)


[08:42] “Corrections Officials See Medical Neglect of Rikers Prisoners” (Observer • 1998)


[08:44] “Complaints Prompt Scrutiny of St. Barnabas Hospital” (Observer • 1998)


[12:04] Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom (Ecco • 2019)


[12:28] “Rorschach and Awe” (Vanity Fair • 2007)


[19:23] The Report (2019)


[21:25] Dangerous Doses: A True Story of Cops, Counterfeiters, and the Contamination of America’s Drug Supply (Ecco • 2019)


[25:18] “Pharmacy Fakes” (Self • 2006)


[41:28] “Dirty Medicine” (Fortune • 2013)


[43:10] “Centre Mulling Action to Counter US Journalist's Allegations About Indian Pharma” (The Wire • 2020)


[45:24] “The Truth About the Fast and Furious Scandal” (Fortune • 2012)


[48:09] Eban's guide to investigating your own drugs


[48:15] Eban's FAQs 
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 375: Katherine Eban

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.”

Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.




@cordjefferson


cordjefferson.tumblr.com


Longform Podcast #61: Cord Jefferson


Jefferson on Longform


[01:55] “Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness” (Gawker • 2013)


[02:02] “Cord Jefferson, Chris Hayes Ask What White Community Will Do About ‘White Criminal Culture’ (VIDEO)” (HuffPost • 2013)


[10:05] “Manti Te'o's Dead Girlfriend, The Most Heartbreaking And Inspirational Story Of The College Football Season, Is A Hoax” (Deadspin • 2013)


[22:58] The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (2015-2016)


[29:50] Master of None


[29:55] The Good Place


[29:57] Watchmen


[29:59] Succession


[30:05] “Mackenzie Davis &amp; Himesh Patel To Star In ‘Station Eleven’ HBO Max Limited Series” (Deadline • 2019)


[59:31] “Don't Stop Running: A Case for Trying” (The Awl • 2012)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 374: Cord Jefferson

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


Saltz on Longform


Saltz's archive at New York Magazine
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 311: Jerry Saltz, art critic at "New York"

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 other artists around besides my mom, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. There were no art classes around. … I was so shy, so I was just always drawing and making things."



Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@lianafinck


Finck's archive at The New Yorker


Finck on Instagram


Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir (Random House • 2018)


Excuse Me: Cartoons, Complaints, and Notes to Self (Random House • 2019)


[10:00] "What I Miss: A List" (Catapult • Apr 2018)


[40:00] Very Semi-Serious (The New Yorker • 2015)


[50:00] "Dear Pepper: Airport Pickups, Where to Live, and Departed Dogs" (The New Yorker • Aug 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 313: Liana Finck, author of "Excuse Me" and "Passing for Human"

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.




@minakimes


minakimes.tumblr.com


Kimes on Longform


Longform Podcast #12: Mina Kimes


ESPN Daily Podcast


[05:37] “Me, My Father, and Russell Wilson: Why This Seahawks Season Makes Me Unspeakably Happy” (Slate • 2014)


[10:46] “Aly Raisman Takes the Floor” (ESPN • 2018)


[10:55] “Drew Brees Has a Dream He'd Like to Sell You” (ESPN • 2016)


[12:11] ESPN's Around the Horn


[12:12] ESPN's Highly Questionable


[20:48] “How Darrelle Revis Became the NFL's Savviest Negotiator” (ESPN • 2015)


[24:18] “The Unkillable Demon King” (ESPN • 2015)


[26:23] “The Art of Letting Go” (ESPN • 2016)


[27:31] “The Unbreakable Bond” (ESPN • 2016)


[34:09] “The Work Diary of ESPN's Mina Kimes (and Her Dog, Lenny)” (The New York Times • 2019)


[34:32] ESPN Daily


[35:26] The Mina Kimes Show Featuring Lenny


[36:52] “Baker Mayfield Isn't Afraid of the Hype” (ESPN • 2019)


[39:16] “After a Decade Apart, Antonio Brown and T.Y. Hilton Share an Unlikely Bond” (ESPN • 2015)


[39:41] “The Search for Aaron Rodgers” (ESPN • 2017)


[49:35] “Everything You Need To Know About the Ray Rice Case” (Time • 2014)


[49:35] “
ESPN's Mina Kimes Will Be Preseason Analyst for the Los Angeles Rams” (Sports Illustrated • 2019)


[56:33] Michael Barbaro on Longform
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 373: Mina Kimes

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] Dune (Chilton Books • 1965)


[07:03] “How an Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab for Cyberwar” (Wired • 2017)


[33:50]Greenberg's archive at Forbes


[37:09]“Is Bitcoin's Creator this Unknown Australian Genius? Probably Not (Updated)” (Wired • 2015)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 372: Andy Greenberg

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.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




parulsehgal.com


@parul_sehgal


Sehgal's archive at the New York Times


[17:11] “Mothers of Invention: A Group of Authors Finds New Narrative Possibilities in Parenthood” (Bookforum • 2015)


[17:20] “In Letters to the World, a New Wave of Memoirs Draws on the Intimate” (New York Times • 2019)


[17:33] “#MeToo Is All Too Real. But to Better Understand it, Turn to Fiction.” (New York Times • 2019)


[24:18] Longform Podcast #354: Jia Tolentino


[41:39] “Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters.” (New York Times • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 371: Parul Sehgal

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 Caliphate (W.W. Norton • 2019)


[12:12] “The Prosecutor and the President” (The New York Times Magazine • 2016)


[37:11] Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 370: James Verini

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 Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.




@LoriGottlieb1


lorigottlieb.com


Gottlieb's archive at The Atlantic


[2:57] Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed (Houghton Mifflin • 2019)


[03:53] Lori Gottlieb's TED Talk: “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life”(2019)


[9:46] “Slate Diary: Lori Gottlieb” (Slate • 1998)


[11:35] “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” (The Atlantic • 2008)


[11:36] Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (E.P. Dutton • 2010)


[15:51] Modern Romance (Aziz Ansari • Penguin • 2015)


[19:44] “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy: Why the Obsession with our Kids’ Happiness May be Dooming them to Unhappy Adulthoods” (The Atlantic • 2011)


[25:38] "Dear Therapist" column archive at The Atlantic


[40:39] Couples Therapy (2019)


[54:34] Guy Winch's TEDTalk: “Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid”(2014)


[55:08] “ABC Nabs ‘Maybe You Should Talk To Someone’ Therapist Drama From Maggie Friedman &amp; Eva Longoria Based On Book” (Deadline • 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 369: Lori Gottlieb

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 week's episode.




Apply to the University of Pittsburgh's Writing Program


@lsjamison


lesliejamison.com


Jamison on Longform


Longform Podcast #92: Leslie Jamison


[05:19] ”52 Blue”(Atavist • 2014)


[16:17] “In the Shadow of a Fairy Tale” (New York Times Magazine • 2017)


[32:20] “A24 is Making Limited-Edition Books for Ex Machina, The Witch, and Moonlight”(The Verge • 2019)


[33:33] The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press • 2014)


[33:54] The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (Little, Brown • 2018)


[51:46] “Giving Up the Ghost” (Harper's • 2015)


[54:08] “Sim Life” (The Atlantic • 2017)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 368: Leslie Jamison

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 filmmaking.”


Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers and SAIC.




@errolmorris


errolmorris.com


[05:37] American Dharma (2019)


[11:30] The Fog of War (2003)


[11:43] Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred. A Leutcher, Jr. (1999)


[19:55] The Unknown Known (2013)


[20:49] Twelve O'Clock High (1949)


[23:31] The Searchers (1956)


[37:38] The Thin Blue Line (1988)


[38:13] Fast, Cheap &amp; Out of Control (1997)


[39:46] Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising (Penguin • 2017)


[39:56] Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (Henry Holt and Co. • 2018)


[41:59] “Predilections” (New Yorker • 1988)


[42:03] “The Friendly Executioner” (New Yorker • 1999)


[44:01] Gates of Heaven (1978)


[41:59] “Blood Spore” (Harper's • 2013)


[46:24] Hamilton's Pharmacopeia Docuseries (Viceland • 2016)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 367: Errol Morris

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 unfiltered access to what they’re actually thinking.”




@ashleyfeinberg


ashleyfeinberg.com


Feinberg's archive at Slate


[03:55] “This Sure Looks Like Mitt Romney’s Secret Twitter Account (Update: It Is)” (Slate • 2019)


[04:50] “The Liberation of Mitt Romney” (The Atlantic • 2019)


[10:03] “This Is Almost Certainly James Comey's Twitter Account” (Gizmodo • 2017)


[10:19] “'Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters.' James Comey Is Trolling Trump With Bible Verse” (Time • 2017)


[13:24] “That Idiot on Your Hunting Message Board Might Be Donald Trump Jr.” (Deadspin • 2016)


[34:22] “This Appears to Be Eric Trump's YouTube Playlist, And Now I'm Depressed” (Slate • 2019)


[35:54] “Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants” (Huffington Post • 2019)


[43:51] “Paying Dues: Today's Economy Makes Internships a Must” (San Antonio Current • 2011)


[47:33] “Toys For Tight Schedules” (Wall Street Journal • 2013)


[47:44] “Monopoly is Getting Rid of Jail. That's Some Bullshit.” (Gizmodo • 2013)


[55:32] “Gawker and Hulk Hogan Reach $31 Million Settlement” (New York Times • 2016)


[57:44] “How to Talk About Suicide on Father's Day” (Gawker • 2015)


[57:44] “My Suicide Week” (Huffington Post • 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 366: Ashley Feinberg

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 me the writer that I am today.”

Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Native, and Villains for sponsoring this week's episode.




@carvellwallace


carvellwallace.com


[02:15] Slate's Mom and Dad are Fighting Podcast


[02:21] Season One of Closer Than They Appear Podcast


[02:35] The Sixth Man: A Memoir (Blue Rider Press • 2019)


[05:09] Episode One of Finding Fred


[09:17] Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (Bradbury Press • 1970)


[09:35] Purple Rain (1984)


[09:40] The Karate Kid (Scholastic • 1984)


[10:24] “The Two Lives of Michael Jackson” (New Yorker • 2015)


[27:55] “How to Parent on a Night Like This” (Huffington Post • 2014)


[32:24] Wallace's Pitchfork archive 


[32:30] “On Kendrick Lamar and Black Humanity” (Pitchfork • 2015)


[34:11] “Thelonious Monk: So Plain Only the Deaf Can Hear” (Pitchfork • 2016)


[38:00] Wallace's MTV archive 


[40:09] “The Roots of Cowboy Music” (MTV • 2017)


[46:01] “The Negro Motorist Green Book and Black America's Perpetual Search for a Home” (The Toast • 2016)


[50:28] “Mahershala Ali Thinks We Can Still Make this Country Great” (GQ • 2017)


[50:29] “Samuel L. Jackson Operates Like He Owns the Place. (He Does.)” (Esquire • 2019)


[50:57] “Steph Curry and the Warriors' Astonishing Season” (New Yorker • 2016)


[55:36] “The Spirit of Miles Bridges” (ESPN • 2017)


[1:02:07] Why Me?  (Closer Than They Appear • 2017)


[1:04:54] Working (Pantheon • 1974)


[1:06:36] “How Do We Measure the Value of a Life?” (MTV • 2016)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 365: Carvell Wallace

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
hotpodnews.com
Quah's archive at Vulture
[13:51] Business Insider Intelligence
[17:26] Season One of Serial Podcast
[17:26] Longform Podcast #327: Julie Snyder
[30:56] Megaphone (formerly Panoply Media)
[52:30] New York Post's We Hear Podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 364: Nicholas Quah

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, certainly, but I think that there are subjects who understand that there is something there for them, too.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@radhikajones


[03:28] Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit


[08:45] “The Beautiful Power of Ta-Nehisi Coates” (Vanity Fair • 2019)


[11:42] “Delta Nights” (New Yorker • 2000)


[31:05] “Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist” (TIME • 2010)


[39:50] George Magazine


[40:37] Dominick Dunne's Vanity Fair archive


[41:15] “The Often Perilous, Sometimes Lucrative, and Ever-Evolving Business of Being a YouTube Star in 2019” (Vanity Fair • 2019)


[41:53] Vanity Fair's Women on Women (Penguin Press • 2019)


[54:56] “Inside TheMaven's Plan To Turn Sports Illustrated Into A Rickety Content Mill” (Deadspin • 2019)


[1:00:00] “You Won't Believe What Happened: The Wild, Disturbing Saga of Robert Kraft's Visit to a Strip Mall Sex Spa” (Vanity Fair • 2019)


[1:00:45] “To Cheat and Lie in L.A.: How the College-Admissions Scandal Ensnared the Richest Families in Southern California” (Vanity Fair • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 363: Radhika Jones

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 Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@andrewmarantz


andrewmarantz.com


Marantz on Longform


[01:34] Antisocial (Random House • 2019)


[03:13] Marantz's Tour Schedule


[11:54] Longform Podcast #193: Robin Marantz Henig


[18:58] “A Rising Tide”(Harper's • 2011)


[19:00] “My Summer at an Indian Call Center”(Mother Jones • 2011)


[27:20] “How Silicon Valley Nails Silicon Valley”(New Yorker • 2016)


[27:58] “Ready for Prime Time”(New Yorker • 2016)


[28:03] “The Virologist”(New Yorker • 2014)


[39:31] “Trolls For Trump”(New Yorker • 2016)


[40:22] “A Voice of Hate in America's Heartland”(New York Times • 2017)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 362: Andrew Marantz

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)


[09:04] Jazz (2001)


[13:45] The Civil War (1990)


[13:48] Baseball (1994)


[13:55] The War (miniseries • 2007)


[13:57] The National Parks (2009)


[14:00] The Roosevelts (2014)


[44:49] Odd Man Out (1947)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 361: Ken Burns

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 to read this.’ You want them to be bothered by it.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, Vistaprint, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@cjaxone


ta-nehisicoates.com


cjaxone.tumblr.com


Coates on Longform


Coates's first appearance on the Longform Podcast


[02:00] The Water Dancer: A Novel (One World • 2019)


[02:45] Coates’s Tour Schedule


[04:30] Jackson's Email


[06:45] The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (Spiegel &amp; Grau • 2009)


[12:58] ”Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War”(The Atlantic  • 2011)


[14:00] Between the World and Me (Spiegel &amp; Grau • 2015)


[20:23] The Secret History (Donna Tartt • Alfred A Knopf • 1992)


[20:30] The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro • Faber and Faber • 1990)


[20:40] Billy Bathgate: A Novel (E.L. Doctorow • Random House • 1989)


[28:10] Underground Railroad (William Still • 1872)


[32:45] The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (Ulysses Grant • 1885)


[35:20] ”The Case for Reparations”(The Atlantic • 2014)


[37:05] Coates's archive at The Atlantic


[37:10] We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (One World • 2017)


[45:15] Captain in America Vol. 1: Winter in America (Marvel • 2019)


[54:00] Coates Testifies Before Congress (2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson

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 having your vision of the world slightly changed.”



Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


[03:25] The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2019)


[04:00] “Terminal Delinquents”(Esquire • 1990)


[04:50] Tough’s Harper’s archive


[05:50] 2600: The Hacker Quarterly


[09:00] Longform Podcast #104: Lewis Lapham


[10:30] “The Alchemy of OxyContin” (New York Times Magazine • 2001)


[11:40] Tough’s New York Times Magazine archive


[16:15] “The Harlem Project” (New York Times Magazine • 2004)


[16:20] Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America (Mariner Books • 2009)


[17:15] Open Letters


[26:00] Longform Podcast #347: Michael Pollan


[45:20] Helping Children Succeed: What Works and Why (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2016)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 359: Paul Tough

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 Pumped: The Battle for Uber (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2019)
[02:20] Issac’s New York Times archive
[03:57] Issac’s Paste Magazine archive
[06:15] Longform Podcast #337: Casey Newton
[08:40] Steve Jobs and Walt Mossberg
[25:38] “How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide” (New York Times • 2017)
[25:44] “Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture” (New York Times • 2017)
[25:48] Susan Fowler blog post
[31:00] Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou • Knopf • 2018)
[36:31] Isaac on The Daily
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 358: Mike Isaac

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 MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@pistoleraprod


michellegarciainc.com


Rally+PEN America event on September 5


[00:42] “Against Mexico: The Making of Heroes and Enemies” (PBS • 2012)


[01:04] “The Border and the American Imagination” (The Baffler • 2018)


[01:07] “Rewriting the West” (Guernica • 2019)


[02:12] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


[02:30] Evan Ratliff on CoinTalk


[09:30] “New Tack Against Illegal Immigrants: Trespassing Charges (Michael Powell • Washington Post • 2005)


[14:44] “Michelle Has A Polyamourous Relationship With Texas And New York” (KSTX • 2017)


[21:05] “On the Texas Borderline, A Solid, if Invisible, Wall” (Washington Post • 2008)


[23:16] “The War of Forgetting” (Guernica • 2015)


[32:40] García’s AlJazeera America archive


[33:55] “Myths of Mexico” (Columbia Journalism Review • 2009)


[45:45] “The Year of the Heavy Moon” (Oxford American • 2017)


[47:55] “My Name is Alex” (Oxford American • 2017)


[48:50] “Mexico’s City of Dogs” (AlJazeera America • 2013)


[1:05:45] “Searching for La Perdida” (Oxford American • 2016)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 357: Michelle García

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.


[00:05] We Love You (And So Can You)


[01:00] You Can’t Make This Up


[02:16] The Staircase (2004)


[02:50] The Staircase II: The Last Chance (2013)


[02:53] The Staircase (2018)


[05:15] Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001)


[05:35] The Justice of the Men (2001)


[11:35] Caught in the Acts (Raymond Depardon • 1994)


[12:05] Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman • 1969)


[12:12] Welfare(Frederick Wiseman • 1975)


[12:16] Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman • 1997)


[25:23] Making a Murderer (Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos • 2015)


[25:25] The Jinx (Andrew Jarecki • 2015)


[25:27] The Keepers (Ryan White • 2017)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 356: Jean-Xavier de Lestrade

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 are constantly evolving.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@taylorlorenz


Lorenz on Longform


[01:45] Lorenz’s archive at The Atlantic 


[06:15] "The Shooter’s Manifesto Was Designed to Troll" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[06:30] "Instagram Is the Internet’s New Home for Hate" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[07:50] "The Real Difference Between Creators and Influencers" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[17:15] INSTANT


[19:00] The Daily What


[21:20] "Where Everyone’s an Influencer" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[22:30] "How an App for Gamers Went Viral" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[23:50] "The Instagram Aesthetic is Over" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[35:55] "How Tea Accounts Are Fueling Influencer Feuds" (The Atlantic • 2019)


[36:00] The Shade Room


[37:00] "How DramaAlert Became the TMZ of YouTube" (Daily Beast • 2018)


[41:00] Lorenz at Mic


[46:45] "The Mysterious Disappearance (and Eventual Rebirth) of YouTube Star Issa Twaimz" (New York • 2017)


[54:40] "What Is the Momo Challenge?" (E.J Dickson • Rolling Stone • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 355: Taylor Lorenz

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 of more climate refugees, that you’ll be okay. It makes me feel so crazy and lucky and intent on doing something with being alive.”



Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@jiatolentino


Tolentino on Longform


[01:47] Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion (Random House • 2019)


[02:15] Jia’s archive at the New Yorker


[02:18] Longform Podcast #183: Jia Tolentino


[09:08] “The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul” (New Yorker • 2018)


[11:31] “Gloria Allred’s Crusade” (New Yorker • 2017)


[17:37] “Please, My Wife, She’s Very Online” (New Yorker • 2019)


[20:49] “A Chat with Malcolm Brenner, Man Famous for Having Sex with a Dolphin” (Jezebel • 2015)


[21:03] “Interview With a Woman Who Recently Had an Abortion at 32 Weeks” (Jezebel • 2016)


[26:20] Panel with Tolentino, Nussbaum, Holmes, and Brodesser-Akner


[27:50] “The Land of the Large Adult Son” (New Yorker • 2017)


[33:22] “Losing Religion and Finding Ecstasy in Houston” (New Yorker • 2019)


[36:10] “A Quick Chat With a Guy at Lolla Wearing a 'Rape Your Face' T-Shirt” (Jezebel • 2015)


[40:22] “Athleisure, Barre and Kale: The Tyranny of the Ideal Woman” (The Guardian • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 354: Jia Tolentino

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 hold up, that it will earn someone’s memory.”



Thanks to Mailchimp, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@Baxter


Holmes on Longform


[00:25] "The Threat of Youth Basketball" (ESPN • 2019)


[01:00] "The NBA's Secret Addiction" (ESPN • 2017)


[01:15] "The Secret Team Dinners That Have Built the Spurs' Dynasty" (ESPN • 2019)


[01:20] "Lakers 2.0: The Failed Reboot of the NBA's Crown Jewel" (ESPN • 2019)


[03:02] Longform Podcast #226: Terry Gross


[30:40] "Inside the Corrosive Workplace Culture of the Dallas Mavericks" (Jon Wertheim and Jessica Luther • Sports Illustrated • 2018)


[43:10] Magic Johnson denies allegations on ESPN


[44:00] Holmes talks about response to his Lakers piece


[44:33] Longform Podcast #112: Don Van Natta Jr.


[58:54] "The NBA's Secret Wine Society" (ESPN • 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 353: Baxter Holmes

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 attention economy and actually get more of it back—more anxiety or more existential dread—or I can go in this other direction and spend time alone or with people who care about the same things. Those are places where I can bring my feelings and they won’t destroy me.”



Thanks to Mailchimp, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@the_jennitaur


jennyodell.com


Jenny Odell on Longform


[00:49] How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Melville House • 2019)


[00:51] ”How To Do Nothing” transcript of keynote talk (Medium • 2017)


[01:10] “A Business With No End” (New York Times • 2018)


[02:30] Evan Ratliff on Cointalk


[02:42] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


[03:18] “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Watch” (Museum of Capitalism • 2017)


[05:05] The Bureau of Suspended Objects


[16:55] Gordon Hempton’s “Desert Thunder”


[29:27] Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (Adam Greenfield • Verso • 2017)


[37:32] Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer • Milkweed Editions • 2015)


[39:25] “Notes of a Bioregional Interloper” (SFMOMA • 2017)


[53:30] Mark Lombardi’s drawings


[56:40] “On How to Grow an Idea” (Creative Independent • 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 352: Jenny Odell

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 sponsoring this week's episode.




@josh_levin


Levin on Longform


[01:48] The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth (Little, Brown and Company • 2019)


[01:52] “The Welfare Queen” (Slate • 2013)


[02:47] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


[03:25] Levin’s Archive at Slate


[04:55] Other Magazines Column


[05:03] Today’s Papers


[07:25] “Little League Bullies” (Slate • 2007)


[10:38] Dahlia Lithwick at Slate


[12:22] Paul Ford on the Longform Podcast


[13:00] Hang Up And Listen


[13:17] Slow Burn


[14:01] The Queen podcast


[14:33] Jet Article on Linda Taylor (Jet • 1974) [pdf]


[42:08] ”Dispatches From the R.Kelly Trial” (Slate • 2008)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 351: Josh Levin

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 lot of convincing, comforting and listening going on. And there’s a lot of dealing with the fact that somebody in the middle of talking to you can suddenly decide that you are the worst. Those things are very tense and it’s a specific skill that I have that can defray all those things. Or it lets me stay.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Netflix, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@taffyakner


taffyakner.com


Brodesser-Akner on Longform


[01:11] Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel (Random House • 2019)


[02:31] They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate(James Verini • W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2019)


[03:50] Taffy Brodessor-Akner on the Longform Podcast


[05:07] “How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million”(New York Times • 2018)


[06:21] Brodesser-Akner's  New York Times Archive


[06:23] Brodesser-Akner's GQ Archive


[07:10] “Taffy Brodesser-Akner Really, Really, Really Wanted to Write This Profile” (Jen Ortiz • Cosmopolitan • 2019)


[07:25] “Is Everyone Having Anal Without Me?” (Cosmopolitan • 2015)


[12:25] “Bradley Cooper Is Not Really Into This Profile” (New York Times • 2018)


[14:55] “Who Controls Childbirth?” (Self • 2010)


[15:18] "The Company That Sells Love to America Had a Dark Secret” (New York Times • 2019)


[28:50] "Antonio Banderas Doesn’t Think You’ll Remember Him. Not Yet.” (New York Times • 2018)


[42:30] "Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It” (New York Times • 2018)


[47:39] "Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age” (New York Times • 2017)


[48:00] "Are You Woman Enough For The UFC” (Medium • 2014)


[49:20] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


[54:10] "Billy Bob Thornton on Bad Santa 2, Ungrateful Fans, and Why He Won't Direct Anymore” (GQ • 2016)


[58:17] Gone Girl (Gilliam Flynn • Broadway Books • 2014)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 350: Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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 Trans-love Airways" (New Yorker • Feb 1967)
[15:00] "Letter from Israel" (New Yorker • Jun 1967) [sub req'd]
[17:00] "Letter from Biafra" (New Yorker • Oct 1969) [sub req'd]
[34:00] Adler's New York Times film reviews archive
[47:00] "An American Original: Excerpts from Pat Moynihan's letters"  (Steven Weisman • Vanity Fair • Oct 2010) 
[50:00] "The Perils of Pauline" (The New York Review of Books • Aug 1980)
[1:08:00] "Two Trials" (New Yorker • June 1986) [sub req'd]
[1:09:00] Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS, et al; Sharon v. Time (Knopf • 1986)
[1:03:00] Gone: The Last Days of the New Yorker (Simon &amp; Schuster • 1999)
[1:10:00] "Decoding the Starr Report" (Vanity Fair • Dec 1998)
[1:19:00] Canaries in a Mineshaft: Essay on Politics and Media (St. Martin's Press • 2001)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 156: Renata Adler

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, we are built to crave meaning, right? For me, that was something that I wanted to explore about myself.”



Thanks to MailChimp, On the Media, The TED Interview,and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@alex_mar


Mar on Longform


[02:20] Witches of America (Sarah Crichton Books • 2016)


[02:37] "Are We Ready for Intimacy With Androids?" (Wired • Oct 2017)


[10:00] Mar’s Documentary: American Mystic


[10:17] ”Satan in Poughkeepsie" (The Believer • 2015)


[15:12] No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (Fawn McKay Brodie • Vintage • 1995)


[16:07] Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Lawrence Wright • Vintage • 2013)


[34:15] Mar’s Rolling Stone archive


[39:10] ”Man of the Future" (The Believer • 2013)


[55:40] ”Breakdown Palace” (Topic • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 349: Alex Mar

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 TED Interview, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@DavidEpstein


davidepstein.com


Epstein on Longform


[02:20] Epstein’s Sports Illustrated archive


[02:21] Epstein’s ProPublica Archive


[02:26] The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance (Portfolio • 2014)


[02:29] Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Riverhead Books • 2019)


[03:15] Longform Podcast #282: Jenna Wortham


[05:40] Gladwell and Epstein Conversation


[07:58] Gladwell and Epstein Return


[08:14] Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell • Back Bay Books • 2011)


[08:40] The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. (Daniel Coyle • Bantam • 2009)


[10:51] Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice (Matthew Syed • Fourth Estate • 2010)


[12:10] NPR review of Range


[16:10] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


[28:21] Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave (Adam Alter • Penguin Books • 2014)


[28:31] Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Adam Alter • Penguin Press • 2017)


[32:02] Epstein’s Science Research Project Abstract


[33:33] Epstein’s Daily News archive


[38:47] "Birds and Frogs" (Freeman Dyson • American Mathematical Society • 2009) [pdf]


[42:11] "Bright Future" (Sports Illustrated • 2007)


[45:29] Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Herminia Ibarra • Harvard Business School Press • 2004)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 348: David Epstein

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’ve written, I’m kind of an idiot on page one. I am the naïve fish out of water. I’m learning though. The narrative that we always have as writers is our own education on the topic. We can recreate the process of learning that's behind the book.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@michaelpollan


michaelpollan.com


Pollan on Longform


[00:38] How to Change Your Mind (Penguin Press • 2018)


[00:46] Pollan's Harper’s archive


[02:58] ”The Trip Treatment” (New Yorker • 2015)


[03:30] The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press • 2007)


[03:31] A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams (Penguin Press • 1997)


[03:35] Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (Penguin Press • 2014)


[04:35] Paper Lion (George Plimpton • Harper • 1966)


[06:18] "Power Steer” (New York Times • Oct 2002)


[06:58] National Lampoon's 1973 cover


[09:12] ”Gardening Means War” (New York Times • 1988)


[16:06] Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (Grove Press; Reprint Edition • 2003)


[16:15] The End of Nature (Bill McKibben • Random House • 1989)


[16:06] The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (Random House • 2002)


[28:53] "Town-Building is No Mickey Mouse Operation” (New York Times • 1997)


[31:34] "Some of My Best Friends Are Germs” (New York Times • 2013)


[31:50] "The Intelligent Plant” (New Yorker • 2013)


[32:09] The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers • W.W Norton &amp; Company • 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 347: Michael Pollan

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 sometimes in conflict.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@cncep


Cep on Longform


[00:07] Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Knopf • 2019)


[09:51] The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (Erik Larson • Vintage • 2004)


[10:39] The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (David Grann • Vintage Books • 2010)


[14:30] The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Book You’ll Never Read (Stuart Kelly • Random House • 2006)


[16:50] Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee • HarperCollins • 2015)


[17:08] Calpurnia’s Cookbook (Monroe County Heritage Museums • 2000)


[20:08] To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee • Grand Central Publishing • 1988)


[22:30] Cep’s Harvard Crimson archive


[22:45] Cep’s Harvard Magazine archive


[23:36] In Cold Blood (Truman Capote • Vintage • 1994)


[23:52] Harper Lee’s Profile of In Cold Blood (Real Simple • 2014)


[24:28] Cep’s Pacific Standard archive


[24:32] Cep's New York Times archive


[24:36] Cep’s New Yorker archive


[25:26] "Mystery in Monroeville" (New Yorker • 2015)


[25:42] "Harper Lee’s Forgotten True Crime Project" (New Yorker • 2015)


[27:42] All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Theodore Rosegarten • Alfred A. Knopf • 1974)


[27:42] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee • Mariner Books • 2001)


[30:35] S-Town


[31:50] "In Cold Blood: The Last to See Them Alive" (Truman Capote • The New Yorker • 1965)


[31:55] Evidence of Things Not Seen (James Baldwin • Picador • 1995)


[32:00] The Basement: Meditiations on Human Sacrifice (Kate Millett • Simon Schuster • 1979)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 346: Casey Cep

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 things work out for that day and sometimes they don’t. I think when you start to lose that feeling — that tense feeling, that pit in your stomach — then the work starts to lose something as well.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@markcadams


[00:35] Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time (Dutton • 2012)


[00:43] Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton • 2018)


[06:28] Mr. America (It Books • 2010)


[19:20] Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (Tom Wolfe • Picador • 2009)


[21:52] Letters to a Young Writer (Colum McCann • Bloomsbury • 2018)


[24:40] Adams’ Men’s Journal archive


[28:18] Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer • Anchor Books • 1997)


[28:44] Inside Maya 5 (Mark Adams, Erick Miller, Max Simms • New Riders Press • 2003)


[36:14] The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy (Paige Williams • Hachettte Books • 2018)


[39:10] The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis • W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2018)


[39:42] ”Philosophy 101” (Real Simple • 2014)


[40:34] ”German Discovers Atlantis in Africa” (New York Times • 1911)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 345: Mark Adams

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 this country—don’t know anything about the system. They haven’t experienced it first-hand and they prefer not to think about it. It’s very stigmatized. A lot of what I do is just bear witness.’”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@emilybazelon


Bazelon on Longform


[02:16] Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Emily Bazelon • Random House • 2019)


[03:38] Bazelon's Slate archive


[03:38] Bazelon's New York Times Magazine archive


[04:01] Political Gabfest


[04:28] ”She was Convicted of Killing Her Mother. Prosecutors Withheld the Evidence That Would Have Freed Her.” (New York Times • 2017)


[14:38] Charged: A True Punishment Story


[22:15] Eric Gonzalez Interview


[26:14] Uncivil


[41:11] "Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform" (Grover Norquist • Wall Street Journal • Sep 2017)


[45:43] The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander • The New Press • 2012)


[49:11] Court Watch


[51:18] "Kavanaugh Was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985” (Emily Bazelon and Ben Protess • New York Times • Oct 2018)


[52:02] "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father” (David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner • New York Times • Oct 2018)


[57:26] Sarah Huckabee Sanders's tweet about Bazelon
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 344: Emily Bazelon

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 touched you. Or somebody bumped into you. There are still these minor indignities and infractions that occur consistently. And I think there’s some sort of robbing if you tell yourself, Well, I’m not going to be mad about this because of the political landscape that we’re in.”



Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, The Great Courses Plus, and @askanyone


Crosley on Longform


[11:20] ”Goodbye, Columbus” (Village Voice • 2004)


[14:15] Read Bottom Up: A Novel (Riverhead Books • 2016)


[22:00] I Was Told There’d Be Cake: Essays (Dey Street Books • 2008)


[25:50] Look Alive Out There: Essays (MCD • 2018)


[26:00] "A Dog Named Humphrey" (Believer Magazine • June 2012)


[26:00] Outside Voices (New Yorker • 2018)


[26:00] Up the Down Volcano (Kindle Single • 2011)


[26:00] "Light Pollution" (Vice • May 2010)


[36:15] "My Uncle, The 70s Porn Star" (Esquire • Apr 2018)


[37:47] "The Doctor Is a Woman" (The Cut • 2018)


[43:25] "Spin the Globe: Sloane Crosley in Ecuador" (Afar • Nov 2011)


[46:00] "All Aboard the Good Ship Self-Care" (Vogue • Mar 2019)


[53:45] "Living in Print: David Sedaris and Sloane Crosley in Conversation”


[1:02:30] "Laura Dern’s Big Little Truths" (Vanity Fair • Feb 2019)


[1:02:30] "The Art of the Real Starring Stormy Daniels" (Playboy • Dec 2018)


[1:02:30] "The Dr. Ruth You Don't Know" (InStyle • May 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 343: Sloane Crosley

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 intentionally withheld, and it was all part of just this extraordinary depersonalization that happened to these kids.”



Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@chriskenneally


Christine Kenneally on Longform


[8:25] The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Christine Kenneally • Penguin Books • 2007)


[14:05] "The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures" (Christine Kenneally • Penguin Books • 2015)


[21:18] Kenneally’s New Yorker archive


[22:22] "The Inferno" (New Yorker • Oct 2009)


[24:53] "We Saw Nuns Kill Children: The Ghosts of St. Joseph’s Catholic Orphanage" (Buzzfeed News • Aug 2018)


[25:21] "The Deepest Cut" (New Yorker • June 2006)


[51:07] Spotlight


[51:20] Pennsylvania Diocese Victims Report
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Episode 342: Christine Kenneally

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 every year from air pollution. That’s a Holocaust every year, right now. And our lives aren’t meaningfully oriented around those people and those deaths. And very few people we know have their lives meaningfully oriented around those people and those deaths. And I think it’s quite likely that, going forward, those impulses of compartmentalization and denial and narcissism will continue to govern our response to this crisis. Which is tragic.”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, The Primary Ride Home Podcast, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming


@dwallacewells


Wallace-Wells on Longform


[3:45] "When Will the Planet Be Too Hot for Humans? Much, Much Sooner Than You Imagine." (New York • Jul 2017)


[4:00] Wallace-Wells's New York archive


[13:00] "Are We as Doomed as That New York Magazine Article Says?" (Robinson Meyer • The Atlantic • Jul 2017)


[13:30] "Scientific Reticence: a DRAFT Discussion" (James Hansen • Earth Institute • Oct 2017)


[15:55] Silent Spring (Rachel Carson • Houghton Mifflin • 1962)


[26:45] "The Doomed Earth Controversy: David Wallace-Wells and Michael Mann" (YouTube • Nov 2017)


[27:30] "Stop Scaring People About Climate Change. It Doesn’t Work." (Eric Holthaus • Grist • Jul 2017)


[27:30] "Scientists Challenge Magazine Story About 'Uninhabitable Earth'" (Chris Mooney • Washington Post • Jul 2017)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 341: David Wallace-Wells

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 stopped. ... I think how I learned about it both in earlier reporting and in grad school and in my own research was that race is a risk factor for a bunch of different health problems, whether it’s heart disease, infant and maternal mortality, or HIV. It’s just said that race is a risk factor. It’s disproportionate. What it really is is that race is a risk factor, but it’s also a risk marker. Instead of looking at what individuals are doing wrong, it’s what society is doing wrong in creating problems for individual people which lead to health crisis. It’s sort of like bias, related to racism, is creating problems in people’s actual bodies. That’s what I came to understand. It really shifts the blame off the individual.”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@lindavillarosa


lindavillarosa.com


Villarosa on Longform


[0:40] "Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" (New York Times  Magazine • Apr 2018)


[5:00] "America’s Hidden H.I.V. Epidemic" (New York Times  Magazine • Jun 2017)


[13:20] "A Conversation With: Phill Wilson; Speaking Out to Make AIDS an Issue of Color" (New York Times  Magazine • Dec 2000)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 340: Linda Villarosa

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 clinging to this life raft or this floatation device and I get way out of swimming range of the beach, but I find this more interesting flotation device, have the nerve to jump from one to the next. You never know where it’s going to lead.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Going Through It, Green Chef, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




Lewis's author site


Lewis on Longform


[1:40] Against the Rules with Michael Lewis


[4:55] The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2007


[9:50] The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2011)


[11:10] The Fifth Risk (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2018)


[11:40] Revisionist History


[13:15] Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2004)


[14:35] The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2016)


[14:50] Home Game: An Accidental Guide to Fatherhood (W. W. Norton &amp; Company • 2010)


[27:10] How I Got Into College (This American Life • 2013)


[30:00] Ref, You Suck! (Against the Rules • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 339: Michael Lewis

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 passed over for promotions, and they get horrible, discriminatory comments like, ‘Oh, don’t you really think you want to be at home? Do you really want to come back?‘ And American work culture is not set up for people to be parents and mothers.”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@hillaryfrank


hillaryfrank.com


[0:35] The Longest Shortest podcast


[6:00] The Special Misogyny Reserved for Mothers (New York Times • Dec 2018)


[19:20] This American Life archives on family


[41:35] Weird Parenting Wins: Bathtub Dining, Family Screams, and Other Hacks from the Parenting Trenches (Penguin • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 338: Hillary Frank

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. If you believe that these platforms are going to be around and that they aren’t going to be shut down and all the executives put into jail, I think what you actually want is to see them get better at things.”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


CoinTalk Podcast


@CaseyNewton


Newton on Longform


[1:40] The Interface


[5:00] Newton's archive at The Verge


[20:20] Longform Podcast #171: Adrian Chen


[24:25] "The Trauma Floor" (The Verge • Feb 2019)


[29:00] Sarah Frier's archive at Bloomberg


[32:40] The Bill Simmons Podcast


[49:00] Newton's archive at San Francisco Chronicle
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 337: Casey Newton

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 • 2019)


@Wesley_Morris


Morris on Longform


Morris's New York Times archive


[1:55] Still Processing Podcast


[3:25] Longform Podcast #95: Wesley Morris


[3:30] Longform Podcast #218: Wesley Morris


[6:55] In the Land of Women (Warner Brothers • John Kasdan • 2008)


[9:25] Boomerang (Paramount • Reginald Hudlin • 2002


[10:45] "The Morality Wars" (New York Times • Oct 2018)


[10:50] Insecure (HBO • 2016)


[16:00] Crazy Rich Asians (Warner Brothers • Jon M. Chu • 2018)


[30:25] "The Governor Who Partied Like It’s 1884" (New York Times • Feb 2019)


[34:55] Green Book (Universal • Peter Farrelly • 2018)


[37:05] Get Out (Blumhouse Productions • Jordan Peele • 2017)


[37:10] Moonlight (A24 • Barry Jenkins • 2016)


[42:10] Black Panther (Marvel • Ryan Coogler • 2018)


[43:25] Wonder Woman (Warner Brothers • Patty Jenkins • 2017)


[44:30] King Kong: Skull Island (Warner Brothers • Jordan Vogt-Roberts • 2017)


[44:35] Captain Marvel (Marvel • Anna Boden • 2019


[46:00] Russian Doll (Netflix • Leslye Headland • 2019)


[46:10] Catastrophe (Amazon • 2019)


[46:15] Game of Thrones (Netflix • Leslye Headland • 2019)


[50:55] Us (Monkeypaw Productions • Jordan Peele • 2019)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 336: Wesley Morris

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 think was there, and why we do things that we’ve said we'll never do. We look at someone else and think that they’re really bad or evil, but then we’ve never experienced those pressures. That cauldron of factors is something I’m very interested in because I think it applies to everyone.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




@ev_rat
cazart.net
Ratliff on Longform


Longform Podcast #48: Evan Ratliff


Longform Podcast Bonus Episode: Evan Ratliff (April 2016)


[3:00] The Oilman's Daughter (The Atavist • 2013)


[3:05] The Mastermind (The Atavist • Mar 2016)


[5:15] The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


[17:10] Longform Podcast #66: Andy Ward


[49:50] Hunting LeRoux: The Inside Story of the DEA Takedown of a Criminal Genius and His Empire (Elaine Shannon • HarperLuxe • 2019)


[1:03:20] Ratliff's New Yorker archive


[1:03:25] Ratliff's Atavist Magazine archive
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Special Episode: Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind

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 standards are white. But I wanted to flip this on its head and I wanted to write this book to the person who taught me how to read and write. And, yeah, we got some dysfunctional, fucked-up shit going on. But we also have some abundant love shit going on, too.”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Last Column, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


@KieseLaymon


Laymon on Longform


[1:30] Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner • 2018)


[1:40] How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (Agate Bolden • 2013)


[01:45] "The Worst of White Folks" (Gawker • Jul 2013)


[01:50] "How They Do in Ole Miss" (ESPN • Oct 2015)


[03:20] The lamppost


[08:40] "Da Art of Storytellin’ (A Prequel)" (Oxford American • Nov 2015)


[33:45] "You Are the Second Person" (Guernica • Jun 2013)


[35:05] Where the Line Bleeds (Jesmyn Ward • Agate Bolden • 2008)


[35:15] Long Division (Agate Bolden • 2013)


[36:00] "D'Andre Brown's Basketball Dream" (ESPN • Aug 2013)


[39:40] "My Vassar College Faculty ID Makes Everything OK" (Gawker • Nov 2014)


[55:35] "Michelle Obama Should Go High—And Kick" (Vanity Fair • Nov 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 335: Kiese Laymon

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 way, made me feel as though it was good that I was doing this project. That this was not a kind of inert, stale history story I was telling. It was something that was vivid and palpable and menacing even now.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.






The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


@praddenkeefe


Patrick Radden Keefe on Longform


Longform Podcast #20: Patrick Radden Keefe


[2:15] The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream (Anchor • 2010)


[3:25] Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland (Doubleday • 2019)


[23:05] "Where the Bodies Are Buried" (New Yorker • Mar 2015)


[31:00] "The Secrets of Lyndon Johnson’s Archives" (Robert A. Caro • New Yorker • Jan 2019)


[42:10] "Picturing the Bishops" (New Yorker • Feb 2013)


[43:25] "How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success" (New Yorker • Jan 2019)


[44:25] "The Family That Built an Empire of Pain" (New Yorker • Oct 2017)


[50:35] "Anthony Bourdain's Moveable Feast" (New Yorker • Feb 2017)


[52:00] "The Worst of the Worst" (New Yorker • Sep 2015)


[54:10] "The Avenger" (New Yorker • Sep 2015)


[55:40] "The Hunt for El Chapo" (New Yorker • May 2014)


[58:15] Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America's Opioid Epidemic 2nd Edition (Barry Meier • Random House • 2018)


[58:20] Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (Sam Quinones • Bloomsbury Press • 2016)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 334: Patrick Radden Keefe

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 with 12 questions in the back of your mind.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Breach, CoinTalk, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)


@rosecrans


Baldwin on Longform


rosecransbaldwin.com


[1:15]The Morning News


[1:50] "My Life Cleanse: One Month Inside L.A.'s Cult of Betterness" (GQ • Nov 2018)


[9:15] "The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High" (Jay Caspian Kang • The Morning News • Oct 2010)


[11:40] All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel (Anthony Doerr • Scribner • 2017)


[12:15] "A Year of Kibble-and-Playdates Calculus" (New York • Oct 2007)


[12:45] Paris, I Love You but You're Bringing Me Down (Picador • 2013)


[13:00] Baldwin's archive at GQ


[13:05] "Am I Too Old to Win the U.S. Open?" (GQ • Sep 2014)


[13:45] "Will Roger Federer Ever Be Done?" (GQ • Mar 2017)


[18:35] "Welcome to Camp Midlife Crisis!" (GQ • Aug 2016)


[22:40] "Learn to Kill in Seven Days or Less" (GQ • Mar 2014)


[33:50] Cults in Our Midst: The Continuing Fight Against Their Hidden Menace (Margaret Thaler Singer • Jossey-Bass • 2003)


[34:20] "I Cried Enough to Fill a Glass" (Mark Fisher • Washington Post • Oct 1987)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 333: Rosecrans Baldwin

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 &amp; 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 Mammogram Guidelines" (LA Times • Mar 2011)


[25:45] "Cancer Screening Can Do More Harm Than Good" (Popular Science • Jul 2014)


[28:25] "Believe Tyler?" (Bicycling • Nov 2007) [pdf]
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 332: Christie Aschwanden

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 became really enamored with this idea that you could create a news organization that was less about people who are left out of the political and economic power equations, but actually for them.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@lpolgreen
Polgreen on Longform
[1:00] "Layoffs Underway at HuffPost a Day After Parent Company Verizon Announced Cuts" (Tom Kludt • CNN • Jan 2019)
[7:45] Polgreen's New York Times archive
[8:30] Marty Baron on Twitter
[13:30] Roseveill Area Middle School
[23:15] Washington Monthly
[27:00] "Correcting the Record Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception" (New York Times • May 2003)
[28:30] "A Racial Acceptance That Resonates" (New York Times • Dec 2013)
[29:00] "200 Years After Napoleon, Haiti Finds Little to Celebrate" (New York Times • Jan 2004)
[33:30] "Covering Sudan and Darfur's Plight" (NPR • May 2006)
[35:30] "Money and Violence Hobble Democracy in Nigeria" (New York Times • Nov 2006)
[45:30] "Lydia Polgreen on Leaving to Lead Huffington Post: ‘Hardest Decision I’ve Ever Made’" (New York Times • Dec 2016)
[53:00] "Layoffs Hit HuffPost After $4.6 Billion Verizon Media Write-Down" (Andy Campbell • HuffPost • Jan 2019)
[55:30] "Mic Shuts Down, a Victim of Management Hubris and Facebook’s Pivot to Video" (Mathew Ingram • CJR • Dec 2018)
[56:00] "Founder’s Big Idea to Revive BuzzFeed’s Fortunes? A Merger With Rivals" (Edmund Lee • New York Times • Nov 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 331: Lydia Polgreen

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 telling them, how you’re behaving. It’s all human interaction, you can’t govern that with hard and fast rules or with extremely set rules. Beyond the extreme ones there are always going to be murky areas. You have to be willing to accept that and work with those.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • Jan 2019)
The Longform Podcast Live: The Mastermind book release party with special guests
@Babyballs69
Morton on Longform
"Oh, This Is Great" (Vice • Jan 2008)
"In the Land of the Juggalos—A Juggalo Is King" (Vice • Sep 2007)
[0:50] "News to Me" (Medium • Jan 2019)
[1:00] The Merchants of Truth (Jill Abramson • Simon &amp; Schuster • 2019)
[20:45] Morton's archive at Vice
[23:50] "I Joined Three Cults Simultaneously" (Vice • Sep 2006)
[24:45] Aum Shinrikyo Wikipedia page
[35:30]  "Tobaccoland" (Vice • May 2013)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 330: Thomas Morton

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 much as the journey and having things elude us. ... I'm being completely honest, I look at every story I've ever written as a failure. Because I always have some model, some perfect ideal, that I want to try to reach.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • Jan 2019)


The Longform Podcast Live: The Mastermind book release party with special guests


@DavidGrann


Grann on Longform


Longform Podcast #3: David Grann


Longform Podcast #241: David Grann


[1:50] The White Darkness (Doubleday • 2018)


[1:55] "The White Darkness" (New Yorker • Feb 2018)


[4:10] "The Squid Hunter" (New Yorker • May 2004)


[11:40] Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday • 2017)


[13:35] "The Lost City of Z" (New Yorker • Sep 2005)


[13:40] The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (Vintage • 2010)


[14:45] "The Hero Myth" (New Republic • May 1999)


[22:30] "The Yankee Comandante" (New Yorker • May 2012)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 329: David Grann

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 me think if I don’t deal with this now, I’m not going to be around in 10 years to write this book. So, the book helped certainly. The idea that I was going to put this stuff on paper and expose myself in this way to the world and I didn’t want to be a failure at the end of it. More than that, I didn’t want to be a failure because I didn’t want to be a failure. I don’t want to die.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • Jan 2019)


The Longform Podcast Live: The Mastermind book release party with special guests


@tommytomlinson


Tomlinson on Longform


tommytomlinson.com


[1:55] "You Can't Quit Cold Turkey" (ESPN Magazine • Aug 2014)


[2:10] The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man's Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America (Simon &amp; Schuster • 2019)


[2:25] "The Weight I Carry" (The Atlantic • Jan 2019)


[14:45] Longform podcast #317: Paige Williams


[18:25] "The Hunley 8, The Charleston 9" (Charlotte Observer • Apr 2004)


[22:20] "Something Went Very Wrong at Toomer's Corner" (Sports Illustrated • Aug 2011)


[31:55] Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Roxane Gay • Harper • 2017)


[36:20] Olive Kitteridge (Elizabeth Strout • Random House • 2008)


[48:20] Southbound podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 328: Tommy Tomlinson

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. So to be that open to criticism after season one [of Serial] was rough for being that open because we just got so much attention. I could feel people being like, ‘Oh, go cry on your bags of money.’ It was huge. I got that, but at the same time, it was hard to ignore.”

Thanks to MailChimp, First Day Back, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.




The Longform Podcast Live: The Mastermind book release party with special guests


Serial


S-Town


Longform Podcast #159: Ira Glass


Longform Podcast #239: Brian Reed


Longform Podcast #273: Zoe Chace


[7:20] Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse (Steve Bogira • Vintage • 2006)


[58:50] Snyder on This American Life


[59:05] "Throwing the First Punch" (This American Life • Mar 1998)


[1:11:45] "Ira Glass's Commencement Speech at the Columbia Journalism School Graduation" (Ira Glass • This American Life • May 2018)


[1:18:10] "Harper High School—Part One" (This American Life • Feb 2013)


[1:18:15] "Harper High School—Part Two" (This American Life • Feb 2013)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 327: Julie Snyder

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 constantly aware of is how these sort of greater world historical forces are working on us and shaping our lives. For more people than most people would assume, if you just followed their life and looked at it in the particulars but also in the broader circumstances, you could probably draw larger themes from them and their experiences. I never had any worries about whether I could expand the Lamaleran story. It was always just about getting those specific stories right, and I knew the rest of it would come.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace,  and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
The Longform Podcast Live: The Mastermind book release party with special guests
@DougBockClark
Clark on Longform
[1:10] "The Untold Story of Otto Warmbier, American Hostage" (GQ • Jul 2018)
[1:20] "The Untold Story of Kim Jong-nam’s Assassination" (GQ • Sep 2018)
[2:10] The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Courageous Tribe and a Vanishing Way of Life (Little, Brown and Company • 2019)
[2:10] "The Whalers' Odyssey" (The Atavist Magazine • Nov 2018)
[2:20] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)
[8:00] Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity (Katherine Boo • Random House • 2014)
[16:40] "The Second Tsunami" (Glimpse • Oct 2011)
[22:20] "The Bot Bubble: How click farms have inflated social media currency" (The New Republic • Apr 2015)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 326: Doug Bock Clark

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 you’ve been through. Saying it out loud and being able to claim ownership to it. I found that time after time these people are very grateful because they need to talk. They have something to say in the aftermath of this big, massive thing that just came and wiped out everything they knew. They really do just need someone to listen to them. I have never had someone tell me, ‘Go away, we don’t want to talk to you.’ And I’m completely bowled over by that every single time.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@lizziejohnsonnn
Johnson on Longform
Johnson's archive at San Francisco Chronicle
[0:40] "A Fire, a Newborn Baby and a Pact: Tales of Survival From Paradise" (San Francisco Chronicle • Nov 2018)
[3:20] "For Survivors of the Tubbs Fire, a New, Unhappy Normal" (San Francisco Chronicle • Oct 2018)
[4:05] "After Deadly Carr Fire, a Question of How—and Whether—to Rebuild 1,000 Homes" (San Francisco Chronicle • Aug 2018)
[17:45] Noah Berger Photography
[23:40] "After Wine Country Fires, Victims Confront Emotional Ruins: ‘We Have a Long Way to Go’" (San Francisco Chronicle • Dec 2017)
[29:45] "150 Minutes of Hell" (San Francisco Chronicle • Dec 2018)
[39:20] "Ed Bledsoe Couldn’t Outrace the Carr Fire to Save His Family. But in His Heart, They’re Alive" (San Francisco Chronicle • Aug 2018)
[41:05] "Signs of Life Amid Scars and Loss" (San Francisco Chronicle • Apr 2018)
[42:50] "Regret Haunts Wine Country Fire Hero: ‘I’ve Never Cried This Much’" (San Francisco Chronicle • Jul 2018)
[55:10] The Centerpiece
[55:15] "City of Ash"(The Centerpiece • Oct 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 325: Lizzie Johnson

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 time. But a celebrity is a very different kind of experience. The bar for them is quite high. They’ve been interviewed a million times, so you have to be on your game. You have to take them somewhere that’s a little unfamiliar to get them to perk up. Otherwise it’s just another of a long line of interviews. It’s a lot more demanding.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Aspen Ideas To Go, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@Gladwell
Gladwell on Longform
[0:30] Gladwell on Episode 62 of the Longform Podcast
[0:35] Gladwell on Episode 204 of the Longform Podcast
[0:40] Revisionist History
[0:45] Broken Record
[2:20] David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants (Little, Brown and Company • 2013)
[2:30] Panoply
[10:45] It's a Long Story: My Life (Willie Nelson • Little, Brown and Company • 2015)
[28:00] Gladwell's archive at The New Yorker
[28:50] Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (Little, Brown and Company • 2005)
[30:20] Revisionist History: Analysis, Parapraxis, Elvis
[30:45] Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments (Gina Perry • The New Press • 2013)
[38:20] Revisionist History: Free Brian Williams
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 324: Malcolm Gladwell

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. … Whereas with writing, it’s the exact opposite. It’s super solitary. It’s super cerebral. And you have all the time in the world to get attached to your thing and freak out about it.”

Thanks to MailChimp, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this episode.
@CiaoSamin
ciaosamin.com
Salt Fat Acid Heat (Netflix) 
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking (Simon &amp; Schuster • 2017)
[01:00] Pop-Up Magazine
[23:00] Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (Michael Pollan • Penguin Books • 2014)
[25:15] Nosrat’s Archive at Edible
[25:00] "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch" (Michael Pollan • New York Times Magazine • Jul 2009)
[28:45] Wendy MacNaughton on the Longform Podcast
[32:30] An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace (Tamar Adler • Scribner • 2012)
[34:00] Levels of the Game (John McPhee • Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 1979)
[46:50] Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell • Back Bay Books • 2011)
[49:00] Golden Boy Pizza
[50:15] "Cookbook Author Samin Nosrat Celebrates with Champagne and Babybels" (Sierra Tishgart • Grub Street • Apr 2017)
[51:50] Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us (Michael Moss • Random House • 2014)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 243: Samin Nosrat, host and author of "Salt Fat Acid Heat"

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 • Nov 2017)


[0:50] Longform's Best of 2018 List


[5:40] "Teen Mom Maci Bookout: In Her Own Words" (Teen Vogue • Nov 2010)


[12:40] Davis's archive at Elle


[16:40] "5 Reasons Why Hometown Tinder is The Worst Tinder" (GQ • Nov 2015)


[18:05] "Gigi Hadid Is Now on the Cover of CR Fashion Book" (The Cut • Feb 2014)


[20:50] Davis's archive at The Ringer


[22:55] "Lainey Is Yours in Gossip" (The Ringer • Oct 2016)


[28:10] "97 Minutes With John David Washington" (Vulture • Aug 2018)


[28:15] "Tessa Thompson Knows People Can’t Stop Thinking About Her" (The Cut • Aug 2018)


[35:45] "My Date with Noah Centineo" (The Cut • Sep 2018)


[37:10] "Michael B. Jordan Will Be King" (GQ • Nov 2018)


[57:45] "You Know He Got That Big Dick Energy" (The Cut • Jun 2018)


[58:30] "Are We Ready for Robot Sex? " (The Cut • May 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 323: Allison P. Davis

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 interesting stuff is happening. ... To be able to earn that ability to cross the line a little bit and then jump back to where you belong, I think that's where beautiful storytelling happens.”



Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this bonus episode.
@dtaberski


Missing Richard Simmons


Surviving Y2K


[21:30] “‘Missing Richard Simmons’ and the Queasiness of Deep-Dive Entertainment Journalism” (Sarah Larson • New Yorker • Mar 2017)


[21:40] Richard Simmons’s Disappearing Act Inspires a Hit Podcast (Sopan Deb • New York Times • Mar 2017)


[21:40] “‘Missing Richard Simmons,’ the Morally Suspect Podcast” (Amanda Hess • New York Times • Mar 2017)


[34:00] S-Town


[46:15] Longform Podcast #44: Gay Talese


[46:15] Longform Podcast #226: Terry Gross
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bonus Episode: Dan Taberski

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.’ … There are lots of pieces that come in that you’ve assigned because it’s the person with the right information with the right access, and they’re a good reporter, but maybe not a terrific wordsmith. So, you do more rewriting. Then there’s the other person that’s a really lovely, lovely writer that doesn’t have the structure and the reporting so you push on that. It’s sort of a three or four-pronged thing—it depends on the piece. I will say, somewhat controversially, there aren’t that many pieces that come in pretty clean.”



Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@mstreshinsky


Streshinsky's archive at Wired


[5:40] Streshinsky's archive at Mother Jones


[7:45] Streshinsky's archive at The Atlantic


[8:45] "Women Aren't Welcome Here" (Amanda Hess • Pacific Standard • Jan 2014)


[12:00] "How One Woman's Digital Life Was Weaponized Against Her" (Brooke Jarvis • Wired • Nov 2017)


[23:05] "Inside the Two Years That Shook Facebook—and the World" (Nick Thompson &amp; Dave Vogelstein • Wired • Feb 2018)


[25:15] "Saving Lives with Tech Amid Syria's Endless Civil War" (Danny Gold • Wired • Aug 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 322: Maria Streshinsky

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 are tighter in terms of sourcing, but story selection becomes a lot more difficult. You want to do a different story.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@nickschmidle
Schmidle on Longform
Longform Podcast #46: Nicholas Schmidle
[2:00] "In the Crosshairs" (New Yorker • Jun 2013)
[2:00] "Getting bin Laden" (New Yorker • Aug 2011)
[2:20] "Virgin Galactic's Rocket Man" (New Yorker • Aug 2018)
[20:45] "Michael Flynn, General Chaos" (New Yorker • Feb 2017)
[24:30] A Man in Full (Tom Wolfe • Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux • 1998)
[24:40] I Am Charlotte Simmons: A Novel (Tom Wolfe • Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux • 2004)
[25:00] The Right Stuff (Tom Wolfe • Farrar, Straus &amp; Giroux • 1979)
[31:45] "Freedom for Tyrone Hood" (New Yorker • Jan 2015)
[33:45] "A Very Rare Book" (New Yorker • Dec 2013)
[37:00] The Staircase (Jean-Xavier de Lestrade • Netflix • 2004)
[39:45] "The Digital Dirt" (The New Yorker • Feb 2016)
[40:10] "The Kings of the Desert" (New Yorker • Apr 2015)
[48:00] "Ten Borders" (New Yorker • Oct 2015)
[56:20] "The Digital Vigilantes Who Hack Back" (New Yorker • May 2008)
[57:00] Scrivener software
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 321: Nicholas Schmidle

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, this thing I’d been working on for a long time is something that institutions—the most prestigious and well-resourced institutions—wanted to put resources to. … I think that that kind of commitment is significant in our culture because it is validating us as a point of inquiry.”



Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, TBD with Tina Brown, Screen Dive, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@irin


Carmon on Longform


irincarmon.com


[2:20] "Eight Women Say Charlie Rose Sexually Harassed Them — With Nudity, Groping and Lewd Calls" (Washington Post • Nov 2018)


[33:05] Carmon's archive at Village Voice


[34:20]Carmon's archive at Women's Wear Daily


[34:40] Carmon's archive at Jezebel


[44:25] "College Girl's PowerPoint 'Fuck List' Goes Viral" (Jezebel • Oct 2010)


[53:00] "Heidi Heitkamp Doesn’t Care That You Think She’s Going to Lose" (The Cut • Oct 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 320: Irin Carmon

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 finish in a season, but you also have all these individual episodes with narrative arcs. And because we’re not novelists, we don’t get to change the facts, sometimes there are these facts you do not like cause they’re really confusing and you wish they were not that way. We spend a lot of time in storyboarding and edits and group edits and sound edits. We bring in people who don’t know what we’re doing and have them listen for mostly for clarity and confusion.”



Thanks to MailChimp, Screen Dive podcast, Skagen, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@madeleinebaran


[1:15] In the Dark podcast


[22:20] Jerry Mitchell at Clarion Ledger


[58:55] Caliphate podcast
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode  319: Madeleine Baran

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 negotiate with people when you’re 11. That’s some reporting skills too.”



Thanks to MailChimp, School of Art Institute of Chicago, Skagen, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@papergirlmacy


[1:15] Headlong: Surviving Y2K


[1:50] Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America (Little, Brown and Company • 2018)


[2:00] Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local - and Helped Save an American Town (Little, Brown and Company • 2015)


[2:05] Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South (Little, Brown and Company • 2016)


[3:50] Longform newsletter


[22:20] Macy on Nieman Foundation


[54:00] "After the Shouting" (Roanoke Times • Jun 2014)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 318: Beth Macy

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 church. It certainly wasn’t mentioned there. … It just was a world completely alien to me, which I love. I love going into worlds that I know nothing about, and I like to take them apart and put them back together again.”



Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@williams_paige


Williams on Longform


[3:30] "Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s Battering Ram" (New Yorker • Sep 2018)


[9:30] "The Bizarre Tale of the ‘Dinosaur Artist’ Who Trafficked in Stolen Fossils" (Peter Brannen • New York Times • Oct 2018)


[41:30] "Observer Wins Pulitzer Prize for Coverage of PTL, Bakkers" (Karen Garloch • Charlotte Observer • April 1988)


[41:30] "Sketches of the New Pulitzer Winners, including 'Brown Lung: A Case of Deadly Neglect'" (New York Times • April 1981)


[42:30] Nieman Fellowship


[48:00] "How Waffle House Became a Cultural Icon" (Atlanta • Dec 2007)


[48:45] "'You Have Thousands of Angels Around You'" (Atlanta • Oct 2007)


[57:00] "Finding Dolly Freed" (Self-Published • Jan 2010)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 317: Paige Williams

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 very into celebrity, and worshipful of it and glorifying it and turning it into a thing and eventually celebrity displaces a lot of the ideas they originally started with in my estimation. That was a narrative thread that I began to pull in the book.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Screen Dive, Stoner, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@joehagansays


Hagan on Longform


[09:45] "Blues Cruise" (New York • Dec 2012)


[09:50] "Shipping Out" (David Foster Wallace • Harper's • Jan 1996)


[11:10] Among the Thugs (Bill Buford • Vintage • 1993)


[16:25] "An Incorrect Artifact With Aging Fans" (New York Times • Oct 2000)


[22:10] "The Long, Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe Arpaio" (Rolling Stone • Aug 2012)


[25:45] "Tenacious G" (New York • Jul 2009)


[33:35] Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña (David Hajdu • Picador • 2011)


[42:20] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (Hunter S. Thompson • Random House • 1972)


[1:09:30] "The Trouble With Johnny Depp" (Stephen Rodrick • Rolling Stone • Jun 2018)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 316: Joe Hagan

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 motivates most journalists—this information is going to somehow make a difference. On the other hand, I have dispensed a lot of that. Now we’re so deep into all of this. The more you know about climate change and the numbers involved and the scale involved of what we need to do to really mitigate this problem, you know that we’re moving in absolutely the wrong direction. It’s not like we’re moving slowly, we’re moving in the wrong direction. It’s very hard to say anything I write is going to turn this battleship around.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@ElizKolbert
Kolbert on Longform
[0:10]The TED Interview
[0:45]Underdog
[2:20] The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Picador • 2014)
[2:25] Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (Bloomsbury • 2006)
[7:55] "The Fate of Earth" (New Yorker • Oct 2017)
[22:30] "The Calculator" (New Yorker • Nov 2002)
[28:45] The End of Nature (Bill McKibben • Random House • 2006)
[40:05] "The Climate of Man" (New Yorker • Apr 2005)
[40:20] "The Darkening Sea" (New Yorker • Nov 2006)
[40:30] "Enter the Anthropocene—Age of Man" (National Geographic • Nov 2006)
[40:30] No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies (William Vollman • Viking • 2018)
[40:35] No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies (William Vollman • Viking • 2018)
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Episode 315: Elizabeth Kolbert

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. Some things weren’t terribly pleasant to remember. And some things were incredibly wonderful."



Thanks to MailChimp, Under My Skin, Skagen, Sleeping Beauty Dreams, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@LisaBrennanJobs


Brennan-Jobs on Longform


[1:35] Small Fry (Grove Press • 2018)


[48:55] "Growing Up Jobs" (Vanity Fair • Sep 2018)


[49:00] "In ‘Small Fry,’ Steve Jobs Comes Across as a Jerk. His Daughter Forgives Him. Should We?" (Nellie Bowles • The New York Times • Aug 2018)


[56:15] Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson • Simon &amp; Schuster • 2011)


[56:20] Steve Jobs (Aaron Sorkin • Universal Pictures • 2015)
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Episode 314: Lisa Brennan-Jobs

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’t have anything to compare it to. There were no art classes around. … I was so shy, so I was just always drawing and making things."



Thanks to MailChimp, Lean In podcast, Under My Skin, Skagen, Squarespace, Sleeping Beauty Dreams, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@lianafinck


[2:10]Finck's archive at The New Yorker


[2:15]Finck on Instagram


[2:25]Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir (Random House • 2018)


[3:20] "The Silk Road's Dark-Web Dream Is Dead" (Andy Greenburg • Wired • Jan 2016)


[3:25] "The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History" (Andy Greenburg • Wired • Aug 2018)


[13:40] "What I Miss: A List" (Catapult • Apr 2018)


[43:05] Very Semi-Serious (The New Yorker • 2015)


[53:00] "Dear Pepper: Airport Pickups, Where to Live, and Departed Dogs" (The New Yorker • Aug 2018)
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Episode 313: Liana Finck

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 about. We live in a world in which black women’s anger is either caricatured and they get written off as cartoons, or regarded as threats and face steep, often physical penalties for expressing dissent or dissatisfaction. When I talk about this, I don’t mean it to be prescriptive, I mean it to be descriptive of a particular experience I had that was extraordinarily unusual but which made me question a premise that I think all of us internalize that the anger is bad for us. I no longer believe that that’s true.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Under My Skin, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.
@rtraister
Traister on Longform
[2:30] Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (Rebecca Traister • 2018)
[7:55] "What a Good Boy" (The Cut • Sep 2018)
[26:50]Traister's archive at Observer
[29:05]Traister's archive at Salon
[32:50] "Hillary Clinton Didn’t Shatter the Glass Ceiling. This Is What Broke Instead." (The Cut • Nov 2016)
[35:50] "Michelle Obama Gets Real" (Salon • Nov 2007)
[38:55] Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women (Free Press • 2011)
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Episode 312: Rebecca Traister

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.
@jerrysaltz


Saltz on Instagram


Saltz on Longform


[2:35] Saltz's archive at New York Magazine


[12:50] Jerry Saltz YOUNG-HOFFMAN GALLERY AND N.A.M.E. GALLERY (Art Forum Magazine • Dec 1977)


[1:01:35] Saltz's archive at  The Village Voice
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Episode 311: Jerry Saltz

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 ends, their life is continuing. This is just where the narrative ends. I recognize the weight in ways that maybe I didn’t before.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Outside the Box, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@elisaslow


Saslow on Longform


Longform Podcast #57: Eli Saslow


Saslow's Washington Post archive


[1:20] Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist (Doubleday • 2018)


[18:00] ‘It Was My Job, and I Didn’t Find Him’: Stoneman Douglas Resource Officer Remains Haunted by Massacre (Washington Post • Jun 2018)


[25:55] The White Flight of Derek Black (Washington Post • Oct 2016)


[33:20] Gun Violence’s Distant Echo (Washington Post • May 2016)


[48:15] ‘You’re One of Us Now' (Washington Post • Aug 2015)
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Episode 310: Eli Saslow

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 Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@jmlaskas


Longform Podcast #9: Jeanne Marie Laskas


Laskas on Longform


jeannemarielaskas.com


[2:10] Concussion (Random House • 2015)


[2:20] To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope (Random House • 2018)


[2:30] "To Obama With Love, and Hate, and Desperation" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2017)


[23:20] "Have You Heard the One About President Joe Biden?" (GQ • Jul 2013)


[43:20] "Guns 'R Us" (GQ • Aug 2012)


[43:25] "Inside the Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns" (GQ • Aug 2016)
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Episode 309: Jeanne Marie Laskas

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 myself, if they were men—Wow, this person has devised this really ingenious way to avoid self-knowledge. If they were women, I would think—Wow, this woman has found an ingenious way to become complicit in her own bullying and silencing. It’s only kind of recently—and with a lot of therapy actually—that I’ve come to see that there is a mode of fiction that I can imagine participating in where, once I’ve freed myself of a certain amount of stuff I feel like I have to write about, which has gotten quite large by this point, it would be fun to make things up and play around.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Google Play, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@BananaKarenina


Batuman on Longform


Batuman's archive at The New Yorker


Batuman's archive at Harper's


Batuman's archive at London Review of Books


[1:00] “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry”  (The New Yorker • Apr 2018)


[10:00] The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2010)


[10:00] The Demons (Fyodor Dostoevsky • The Russian Messenger • 1812)


[11:00] The Idiot (Penguin Book • 2017)


[14:00] Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (Lennard Davis • Columbia University Press • 1983)


[20:00] The Exception (Christian Jungersen • Anchor • 2008)


[21:00] The End of the Story: A Novel (Lydia Davis • Picador • 2004)


[27:00] Culture and Imperialism (Edward Said • Vintage • 1994)


[28:00] Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (Soren Kierkegaard • Victor Eremita • 1843)


[29:00] Scrivener
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Episode 297: Elif Batuman, author of "Japan's Rent-a-Family Industry" and "The Idiot"

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 obsession is how do I protect my role? How do I keep my spot? How do I keep the throne? I’m not as interested in that personally as a journalist or as a critic. ”

Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.


@joncaramanica


Caramanica on Longform


[3:35] "The Education of Kanye West" (New York Times • Aug 2007)


[4:00] Caramanica's archive at The New York Times


[4:05] Popcast


[13:30] "Pitched to Perfection: Pop Star's Silent Partner" (New York Times • Jun 2012)


[25:45] "Two SoundCloud Rap Outlaws Push Boundaries From the Fringes" (New York Times • Mar 2018)


[28:45] "Dick Cavett in the Digital Age" (Alex Williams • New York Times • Aug 2018)


[28:55] "Hip-Hop’s Elders and Youth Go to Battle (Again)" (New York Times • Jan 2017)


[34:10] "Into the Wild
With Kanye West" (New York Times • Jun 2018)


[57:10] "Post Malone and Rae Sremmurd, Hip-Hop Impressionists Shaping the Stream" (New York Times • May 2018)
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Episode 399: Tessie Castillo and George Wilkerson

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