Longform
645 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.7K ratingsInterviews with writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters about how they do their work. Hosted by Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky, and Evan Ratliff.
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Episodes
Episode 138: Alexis Okeowo
April 21, 2015 20:10 - 1 hourAlexis Okeowo, a foreign correspondent, has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Businessweek. “Nigeria is a deeply sexist country. It can be difficult for people to take you seriously. But that also has its benefits, because it’s very easy to disarm your subjects. If I’m interviewing people who underestimate me, I can get them to open up because they somehow think that I’m naïve or I don’t know what I’m doing. So I don’t mind if some sexist general or banker thinks I’...
Episode 137: Rachel Syme
April 15, 2015 16:42 - 42 minutesRachel Syme has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, and more. “You have this sense that you’re bonding, but at the same time you're also going to betray them. Because if you hear this quote that they say or you see it in a mannerism, you write it in your notebook and you think ‘I got it.’” Thanks to TinyLetter, The Great Courses, MarketingProfs, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @rachsyme rachelsyme.com [4:00] "The Broad Strokes" (Grantl...
Episode 136: Anna Sale
April 08, 2015 15:11 - 1 hourAnna Sale is the host of Death, Sex & Money. “It's the result of listening, of feeling listened to, that people open up. I look like a crazy person when I do interviews, because sometimes someone will be describing something and I will close my eyes and try to picture what they’re telling me. And if I can’t picture the moment they’re describing I’ll just try to dig in a little bit more.” Thanks to TinyLetter, The Great Courses, MarketingProfs, and WealthFront for sponsoring this week's epis...
Episode 135: Scott Anderson
April 01, 2015 20:22 - 1 hourScott Anderson is a war correspondent and novelist. He’s written for The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, and more. “I really feel that what’s at the root of so many wars now, modern wars, unconventional wars, it really just comes down to a bunch of young guys with access to guns coming up with a pretext to rape and murder and pillage and steal from their neighbors.” Thanks to TinyLetter, MarketingProfs, and WealthFront for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Anderso...
Episode 134: Dayna Tortorici
March 25, 2015 16:04 - 55 minutesDayna Tortorici is the editor of n+1. “You can't fetishize conflict so much. Because conflict does generate a lot of good work, but it also inhibits a lot of good work. I think people do their best work when they feel good. Or at least don't feel like shit. ... So I've tried to create a culture of mutual encouragement. Especially when you're not paying anybody, that's all you can really offer.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Wealthfront for sponsoring this week's show. Show Notes: @dtortorici np...
Episode 133: Adam Platt
March 18, 2015 16:48 - 59 minutesAdam Platt is the restaurant critic for New York. “My job was described to me recently as ‘the last great job of the 20th century.’ I think there might be something to that.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Lynda, Casper, and Wealthfront for sponsoring this week's show. Show Notes: @plattypants [1:00] Longform Podcast #43: Margalit Fox [12:00] "Apple of the Times" (New Yorker • Jan 1993) [sub required] [12:00] "Messing About" (New Yorker • Mar 1993) [sub required] [18:00] "The Apotheosis of Fresh" ...
Episode 132: Erik Larson
March 10, 2015 16:58 - 1 hourErik Larson is the author of several books, including The Devil in the White City. His latest is Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania. "I realized then and there, that afternoon, the thing that was going to make this interesting was the juxtaposition of light and dark, good and evil. This monument of civic good will versus this monument to the dark side of human nature. ... But that was really hard to pull off. And, frankly, on the eve of publication I was pretty sure my career was ...
Episode 131: Josh Dean
March 04, 2015 19:55 - 1 hourJosh Dean has written for GQ, Fast Company, New York, and more. His latest piece, "The Life and Times of the Stopwatch Gang," was just published by The Atavist. “I sort of reject the whole idea of something being beneath me. There are obviously some stories I wouldn’t do or that I have no interest in, but this job is fun and should be fun. And I wouldn’t turn something down that seems like a fun thing for me to do just because maybe the story is not something that 10,000 people are going to ...
Episode 130: Mac McClelland
February 25, 2015 17:20 - 51 minutesMac McClelland has written for Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone and others. Her book Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story came out this week. “I would just suddenly start sobbing, which is not something I usually do. I felt like I needed to be drunk all the time, which is also not something I usually do. I was having nightmares and I was having flashbacks. I was terrified and confused and disoriented all the time. I was a completely different person, unrecognizable eve...
Episode 129: Rukmini Callimachi (Part 2)
February 19, 2015 21:58 - 48 minutesRukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times. Part 1 of this episode is available here. “Ever since I started in journalism, I feel like I'm perpetually winded. Like I'm just running as hard as I can to stay ahead of this train that's crashing. The caboose is falling off the back and I'm trying to run faster than the train to get to this very limited pool of amazing jobs. Once I got overseas I would say a prayer every night for the amazing life I was finally able to lead.” Thanks t...
Episode 129: Rukmini Callimachi (Part 1)
February 18, 2015 16:57 - 1 hourRukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times. “Nine out of 10 Americans said they were aware of James Foley's execution. That's a huge win for ISIS. That's what they want. I think they've realized that journalists are the crème de la crème as far as targets. And that's a really scary thing for our profession.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: @rcallimachi Callimach...
Episode 128: Jack Shafer
February 11, 2015 16:16 - 57 minutesJack Shafer covers the media for Politico. “This is a true story, not a ‘Brian Williams story’: my first report card said ‘Jack is a very good student, but he has a tendency to start fights on the playground and bring them back into the classroom.’ That's been my career style — start a fight and bring it back to the classroom.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: Show Notes: ...
Episode 127: Molly Crabapple
February 04, 2015 17:50 - 54 minutesMolly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is a columnist for VICE and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review and Vanity Fair. “As long as the marginalized communities I’m writing about don’t think I’m full of shit, that’s success to me.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Squarespace and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: @mollycrabapple mollycrabapple.com mollycrabapple.tumblr.com [1:00...
Episode 126: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
January 28, 2015 15:30 - 1 hourTaffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and GQ. “My writing career was something that was always about to happen, just as soon as the baby falls asleep, just as soon as I finish watching this five-hour bout of As the World Turns, just as soon as... What do you do when you realize that you have not been doing the thing you were going to do? You're in your 30s. You get to work.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you wou...
Episode 125: Anand Gopal
January 21, 2015 16:21 - 1 hourAnand Gopal has written for The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s and Foreign Policy. He’s the author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes. “When I got to the Taliban, I got out my notebook and tried to ask the hard-hitting questions. ‘What are you fighting for? Why are you doing this? What’s happening with the civilians you’re killing?’ And of course you do that and you get boilerplate answers and icy stares. So I just started asking them questi...
Episode 124: Alex Blumberg
January 14, 2015 17:23 - 1 hourAlex Blumberg is a former producer for This American Life and Planet Money. Last year he founded Gimlet Media, a podcast network, and hosts its first show, StartUp. “When someone starts talking about something difficult, when they get unexpectedly emotional, your normal human reaction is to sort of comfort and steer away. To say, ‘Oh I’m sorry, let’s move on.’ What you need to do, if you want good tape, is to say, ‘Talk more about how you’re feeling right now.’ It feels like a horrible quest...
Episode 123: Nicholas Carlson
January 07, 2015 15:33 - 1 hourNicholas Carlson writes for Business Insider. His book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! came out this week. “To me people are what’s really interesting. Marissa Mayer is a once in a lifetime subject. She’s full of contradictions. … There are a million business stories, but if you don’t have that character at the center then you’re lost.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Lynda and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @nichcarlson Carlson on Longform [6:00] Longform Pod...
Episode 77: Dan P. Lee
December 31, 2014 17:38 - 1 hourDan P. Lee is a contributing writer at New York. "I don't believe in answers. That's what compels me to write all of these stories. None of them ends nicely, none of them ends neatly." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @Dan_P_Lee Lee on Longform Lee's New York archive [13:30] "Who Killed Ellen Andros?" (Philadelphia Magazine • Oct 2006) [22:45] "Travis the Menace" (New York • Jan 2011) [45:00] "Paw Paw & Lady Love" (New York • Jun 2011) [48:45] "4:52 on C...
Episode 67: Evan Wright
December 24, 2014 16:08 - 1 hourEvan Wright, a two-time National Magazine Award winner, is the author of Generation Kill. "When people were killed, civilians especially, I realized I was the only person there who would write it down. I was frantic about getting names, and in the book there are a few Arabic names, some of the victims. Not that anyone cares. But I thought, 'At least somewhere there's a record of this.'" Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter. Show notes: @evanscribe Wright on Longform [3:45] Generation Kill (20...
Episode 122: Hanna Rosin
December 17, 2014 20:01 - 1 hourHanna Rosin is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a founder and editor at DoubleX. “I often think of reporting as dating, or even speed dating. You’re looking for someone where there’s a spark there between you and them. Sometimes that happens right away and sometimes it takes forever. ... You have to determine if they're reflective, friendly, open. It could be love at first sight and they're still all wrong, which is really heartbreaking.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos and The Los Angeles...
Episode 121: Meghan Daum
December 10, 2014 19:08 - 51 minutesMeghan Daum's latest book of essays is The Unspeakable. “As writers we think, well there has to be closure, there has to be a beginning middle end, the character has to go through a change. And then in life we're supposed to have some sort of arc or aha moment, as if the experience isn't legitimate unless we get something out of it. That's so culturally constructed, as they say. It's so artificial.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Scribd, and Oscar for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @me...
Episode 120: Katie J.M. Baker
December 03, 2014 18:00 - 44 minutesKatie J.M. Baker is a reporter for BuzzFeed. “I went to Steubenville a year after the sexual assault to cover their first big football game of the season and I was face-to-face with these people who I had been writing about without knowing much about them. From far away it seems like, do these details matter? Do we care if these people’s lives get messed up when the narrative is so strong, when Steubenville now stands for more awareness around rape culture? But when you’re there, of course i...
Episode 119: Alec Wilkinson
November 26, 2014 15:20 - 52 minutesAlec Wilkinson is a staff writer for The New Yorker. “My hero was Joseph Mitchell, that was how you did reporting. There was nothing conniving about it or cunning — you just simply kept returning and kept returning.” Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Wilkinson on Longform [2:00] "The Protest Singer" (New Yorker • Apr 2006) [6:00] Midnights: A Year With the Welfleet Police (Random House • 1982) [9:00] My Mentor (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2002) [9:00] Acr...
Episode 118: Emma Carmichael
November 19, 2014 17:58 - 52 minutesEmma Carmichael, a former editor at Deadspin and The Hairpin, is the editor in chief of Jezebel. "Online feminism has more and more rules lately. There are only so many things you can say. And while our opinions are getting more constrained online, personal feminism and face-to-face conversations are looser and more complicated and don't go by any rules. ... The ideal with Jezebel is getting to a point where you can say, 'This is what I think, so who gives a fuck.'" Thanks to TinyLetter for...
Episode 117: Reihan Salam
November 12, 2014 14:32 - 1 hourReihan Salam is the executive editor of National Review. "I’m incredibly curious about other people. I’m curious about what they think of as the constraints operating on their lives. Why do they think what they think? If I weren’t doing this job, I’d want to be a high school guidance counselor." Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos, and Cards Against Humanity’s Ten Days or Whatever of Kwanzaa for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @reihan reihansalam.com [11:00] "The White Ghetto" (Kevin...
Episode 116: Jake Halpern
November 05, 2014 17:34 - 1 hourJake Halpern, a contributor to This American Life, has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld. "I test out my stories on my kids. You should be able to tell any story, now matter how complicated, to a seven-year-old in a way that they understand. If you can't, that probably means that either a) you're telling the story wrong or b) it's not really a story." Thanks to TinyLetter and Bonobos for ...
Episode 115: Jen Percy
October 29, 2014 23:13 - 46 minutesJen Percy is the author of Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism. "As is the nature of obsession, you just start gathering materials, hoarding documents and taking notes in a way that’s totally chaotic and overwhelming. You don’t even care yet because you’re so excited by what you’re gathering. If you start trying to make a narrative out of it too soon it will be false or it will fall apart." Thanks to TinyLetter and Dear Thief, the new novel by Samantha Harvey, for sponsoring this week's episod...
Episode 114: Jessica Pressler
October 22, 2014 16:42 - 1 hourJessica Pressler writes for New York, Elle and GQ. "I really like hustlers, stories about someone who comes out of nowhere and tries to do it for themselves. Those people are just easy to like. Even when they're sort of terrible, they're easy to like." Thanks to TinyLetter and Warby Parker for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jpressler Pressler on Longform [3:00] jessicapressler.com [11:00] "Philadelphia Story: The Next Borough" (The New York Times • Aug 2005) [17:00] Longform ...
Episode 113: Wendy MacNaughton
October 15, 2014 17:34 - 1 hourWendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist and the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them. "We mostly hear stories from big personalities who already have a spotlight on them. I think that everybody carries stories that are just as profound as the ones we hear from celebrities or whoever. I’m interested in the stories of people who don’t usually get to tell them. I think those are sometimes the most interesting." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. ...
Episode 112: Don Van Natta Jr.
October 08, 2014 17:49 - 1 hourDon Van Natta Jr., a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, writes for ESPN and is the author of several books, including Wonder Girl. "The nature of the kind of work I do as an investigative reporter, every story you do is going to get attacked and the tires are going to get kicked. It’s going to get scrutinized down to every phrase and down to every letter. You have to have multiple sources for key facts on this type of story. We set out to get that and we got it." Thanks to TinyLetter and Bon...
The Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award
October 08, 2014 16:38 - 47 minutesToday we are re-airing our February 2013 interivew with our friend Matt Power, who died earlier this year while on assignment in Uganda, to help raise money for Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award. We have also reprinted Matt's classic 2005 article, "The Lost Buddhas of Bamiyan," which is available online for the first time. Founded by Matt's friends and family, the annual award will support promising writers early in their careers with a stipend of $12,500 to bring forward an unreported...
Episode 111: Anne Helen Petersen
October 01, 2014 19:24 - 1 hourAnne Helen Petersen writes for BuzzFeed. Her book Scandals of Classic Hollywood is out this week. "I was obsessed with Entertainment Weekly from the very first issue and I obsessively catalogued it. I made a database on my Apple IIe where I put in the title of the magazine and the number and whether it was a little 'e' or a big 'E' on the cover and the different topics and then I gave it a grade. You know how in Entertainment Weekly they give everything a grade, so I’d be like 'Oscar’s Issue...
Episode 110: Chris Hayes
September 24, 2014 15:54 - 1 hourChris Hayes hosts All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and is an editor-at-large for The Nation. "The instability was so intense and the anguish and frustration were so intense that there wasn’t a ton of time to think through, 'Well, what is my role in this?' Mostly it was: wake up in the morning after two or three hours of sleep and start going to stuff, talking to people, and keep doing that until the show happens." Thanks to GoDaddy for sponsoring this week's episode. Apply for the TinyLette...
Episode 109: Buzz Bissinger
September 16, 2014 22:40 - 1 hourBuzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and more. He is the author of several books, including Friday Night Lights. "It’s quiet. And I really felt I needed that quiet. People say, 'Well anger was your edge, and agitation was your edge, and that’s going to hurt your writing.' I don’t know, maybe. It may be that in order to live a happier life you become a shittier writer. I don't know. But I just couldn't live in that fashion anymo...
Episode 108: Sean Wilsey
September 10, 2014 16:16 - 55 minutesSean Wilsey has written for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s Quarterly, where he is an editor-at-large. His latest book is More Curious. "I’m actually apparently a fairly competent person at getting things done, making deadlines and all these things. But the Wilsey you might get in the piece about NASA is the guy who eats a ton of oysters and drinks a lot of beer before getting on the vomit comet." Thanks to TinyLetter and GoDaddy for sponsorin...
Episode 107: Emily Bazelon
September 03, 2014 16:26 - 1 hourEmily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of Sticks and Stones. "There’s nothing purely, or maybe even at all, altruistic about this exchange. It’s transactional in the Janet Malcolm classical sense, but also in the emotional sense. There is a way in which I’m super open. I take in these experiences. They keep me up at night. They really get inside me. But then, I'm also using them to craft whatever I’m working on." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring thi...
Episode 106: Zach Baron
August 27, 2014 17:50 - 1 hourZach Baron is a staff writer for GQ. "People love to put celebrity stuff or culture stuff lower on the hierarchy than, say, a serial killer story. I think they're all the same story. If you crack the human, you crack the human." Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @xzachbaronx Baron's personal site Baron on Longform [7:00] "Kanye West: A Brand-New Ye" (GQ • Jul 2014) [17:30] "Steve McQueen: Auteur of the Year 2013" (GQ • Dec 2013) [22:50]...
Episode 105: Ben Anderson
August 20, 2014 17:02 - 1 hourBen Anderson is a war journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest book, The Interpreters, is available free from Vice. "You're surrounded by people who are so poor. Maybe their family members have already been killed. And they still can't leave. So compared to that, I can't really take the idea that I've suffered and that I need stop and go to a spa for a few days. I can't take that idea that seriously. Compared to them, it feels like I am leading an almost privileged existence." Thank...
Episode 104: Lewis Lapham
August 13, 2014 16:43 - 51 minutesLewis Lapham, formerly the editor of Harper's, is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly. "The best part of my job was to come across a manuscript. You never knew what would show up. ... I always had the sense of opening a present, hoping to be both delighted and surprised. Often I was disappointed. But when I wasn't, it was a lot of fun. And word got around that I was that kind of an editor, that I was willing to try anything if you could make it interesting." Thanks to TinyLetter and GoDaddy f...
Episode 103: Adam Higginbotham
August 06, 2014 17:39 - 56 minutesAdam Higginbotham has written for Businessweek, Wired and The New Yorker. His latest story is A Thousand Pounds of Dynamite, for The Atavist. "There's always a narrative in a crime story. Something has always gone wrong. These guys are always in prison, because they all fucked something up or trusted the wrong person. They always get caught in the end. Because if they hadn't, you wouldn't be reading about it." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @Higginboth...
Episode 102: Brin-Jonathan Butler
July 30, 2014 17:25 - 54 minutesBrin-Jonathan Butler has written for SB Nation, ESPN, and The New York Times. His new book is A Cuban Boxer’s Journey. "He smiled at me and just to make small talk, I said, 'You know, you’ve got this gold grill on your teeth. Where did you get that from?' And he said, 'Oh, I just melted my gold medals into my mouth.' And I thought, 'I think I’ve got a story here.'" Thanks to TinyLetter, WW Norton & Company and Open Road Integrated Media for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @brin...
Episode 101: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah
July 23, 2014 16:34 - 56 minutesRachel Kaadzi Ghansah has written for The Believer, The LA Review of Books, Transition and The Paris Review. "If He Hollers Let Him Go," her essay on Dave Chappelle, was a 2014 National Magazine Award finalist. "So the stakes are high. I’m not just writing this to write. I’m writing because I think there’s something I need to say. And there’s something that needs to be said. ... What I hope is that a young kid or an older person will see that you have choices, that you don't have to accept w...
The 100th Episode
July 16, 2014 19:04 - 1 hourA look back at some of our favorite moments from the first 99. Thanks to our sponsors, TinyLetter and Squarespace. Show Notes: [4:45] #3: David Grann [7:00] #4: Jon Mooallem [10:10] #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates [14:15] #9: Jeanne Marie Laskas [12:32] #10: Chris Jones [18:00] #22: Charles Duhigg [20:00] #29: Matthew Power [23:45] #37: Ann Friedman [26:30] #39: Natasha Vargas-Cooper [28:00] #43: Margalit Fox [31:20] #57: Eli Saslow [34:50] #62: Malcolm Gladwell [39:00] #64: Gay Talese [43:35] #65: El...
Episode 99: John Heilemann
July 09, 2014 17:06 - 1 hourJohn Heilemann is the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and the co-author of Game Change and Double Down. "If you're a writer, and you're not an asshole, you want the maximum number of people to read your stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no great glory in cultivating some niche audience. I do this work because I believe in what I'm doing. I'm not trying to compromise my principles or my standards to get a larger audience. But once I've written the thing of which I feel con...
Episode 75: George Saunders
July 02, 2014 18:27 - 1 hourGeorge Saunders has written for The New Yorker and GQ. His latest collection of short stories is Tenth of December. "Maybe you would understand your artistry to be: put me anywhere. I'll find human beings, I'll find human interest, I'll find literature. And I guess you could argue the weirder, or maybe the less explored the place, the better." Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this episode. Show notes: georgesaundersbooks.com Saunders on Longform [5:00] Tenth of December (Ra...
Episode 98: Sarah Nicole Prickett
June 25, 2014 17:47 - 46 minutesSarah Nicole Prickett is the founding editor of Adult. "I'll admit to being resistant to the 'by women for women' label that Adult had before because I saw it as being just 'by women,' period. That’s way more feminist than making something for women, which is very prescriptive and often comes in various shades of pink." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Pre-order: Adult #2 Prickett's TinyLetter @snpsnpsnp snpsnpsnp.com [8:40] Fashion [2:30] "How to Make L...
Episode 97: Ta-Nehisi Coates
June 18, 2014 17:00 - 1 hourTa-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic. His latest cover story is "The Case for Reparations." "The writer hopes for change, but writers can't assume that their work is going to cause change." Thanks to TinyLetter andI Am Zlatan, the international bestseller published by Random House, for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @tanehisicoates Coates's blog for The Atlantic Coates on Longform "The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic • May 2014) [4:20] "Longform Podcast #7: ...
Episode 96: Nathaniel Rich
June 11, 2014 16:43 - 59 minutesNathaniel Rich writes for Rolling Stone, Harper's and the New York Times Magazine. His latest novel is Odds Against Tomorrow. "I'm drawn to obsession. I think I'm an obsessive in a way, probably most writers are. It's an obsessive act to sit at a desk by yourself." Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @NathanielRich nathanielrich.com Rich on Longform [15:45] "Diving Deep Into Danger" (New York Review of Books • Feb 2013) [21:45] ...
Episode 95: Wesley Morris
June 04, 2014 19:11 - 1 hourWesley Morris, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers film at Grantland. "That's what writing about race and popular culture is for me: it's crime reporting. It's not me looking for an agenda when I go to the movies ... but I feel a moral responsibility to report a crime being committed. That's what I'm forced to do over and over again." Thanks to this week's sponsors, Warby Parker and TinyLetter. Show notes: @wesley_morris Morris's Grantland archive [1:15] Reba modeling Warby Parker [37:15] "The...
Episode 94: Gary Smith
May 28, 2014 16:32 - 56 minutesGary Smith retired last month after more than 30 years of writing for Sports Illustrated. "We were on the Santa Monica Freeway, Ali's driving 70 miles an hour and his eyes are drifting asleep—the medication for Parkinson's would do that to him. I'm thinking, 'Oh, crap.' We're weaving between lanes, cars are honking, and I'm wondering in the passenger seat, 'Should I grab the wheel from the greatest champ of all-time?' The writer in me wants to let it go, let the crash happen just so I get a ...