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Longform

645 episodes - English - Latest episode: 5 days ago - ★★★★★ - 1.7K ratings

Interviews 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 93: Michael Paterniti

May 21, 2014 16:58 - 1 hour

Michael Paterniti, a correspondent for GQ, has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone and Outside. His latest book is The Telling Room. "I want to see it, whatever it is. If it's war, if it's suffering, if it's complete, unbridled elation, I just want to see what that looks like—I want to smell it, I want to taste it, I want to think about it, I want to be caught up in it." Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter and Hari Kunzru'sTwice Upon a Time, the new title from and Atavist Books. ...

Episode 92: Leslie Jamison

May 14, 2014 16:59 - 55 minutes

Leslie Jamison has written for The Believer, Harper's and The New York Times. Her latest book is The Empathy Exams. "I sort of love imagining a small army of 22-year-old men who are just like, 'Fuck that book, I wish it was never published.'" Thanks to TinyLetter and Harry's for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @lsjamison lesliejamison.com Jamison on Longform [9:00] The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press • Apr 2014) [12:15] "La Plata Perdida" (A Public Space • Nov 2009) [sub. req'd] ...

Episode 91: Michael Lewis

May 07, 2014 16:57 - 36 minutes

Michael Lewis has written for The New Republic, Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is Flash Boys. "When you're telling a story, you're essentially playing the cards you're dealt. ... Sometimes the hand is very easy to play. Sometimes the hand is difficult to play. At the end, I just try to think, 'Is there anything I would have done differently?' 'Is there any trick I missed?' If I don't have the feeling that I missed something big, I feel happy about the book." Th...

Episode 90: Susan Dominus

April 30, 2014 17:35 - 1 hour

Susan Dominus is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. "A lot of reporting is really just hanging around and not going home until something interesting happens." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @susandominus Dominus on Longform [7:00] Longform Podcast #31: Emily Nussbaum [9:45] "Santa's Little Helper" (New York Times • Dec 1999) [10:00] "The Allergy Prison" (New York Times Magazine • Jun 2001) [11:00] "Shabana is Late for School" (New York Time...

Episode 89: Alice Gregory

April 23, 2014 16:05 - 1 hour

Alice Gregory has written for n+1, GQ, The New York Times and Harper's. "If you don't have a real story with a beginning, middle and an end, you owe it to the reader to kind of serve as their chaperone." Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @alicegregory Gregory on Longform alicegregory.tumblr.com [4:30] "Sad as Hell" (n+1 • Nov 2010) [9:45] "On the Market" (n+1 • Mar 2012) [11:45] "Mavericks" (n+1 • Oct 2013) [21:30] "Ryan McGin...

Episode 88: Sam Biddle

April 16, 2014 15:54 - 55 minutes

Sam Biddle writes for Valleywag. "It's a lot of overgrown, entitled manchildren pulling price tags out of the ether and passing them around. Considering Silicon Valley worthy of contempt is the first premise that we work from." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @samfbiddle [6:15] Valleywag's coverage of Sean Parker [6:45] "'The Uber of Private Jets' is a Real Thing" (Valleywag • Apr 2013) [6:55] "What is Auto-Tune, and Why Does Jay-Z Want It Dead?" (PSFK ...

Episode 87: Amanda Hess

April 09, 2014 20:08 - 53 minutes

Amanda Hess, a staff writer at Slate, has also written for Pacific Standard, GOOD, and ESPN the Magazine. "I ended up not loving the fact that I was getting a bunch of calls from MSNBC and CNN, who mostly wanted to talk about people threatening to rape and kill me and only a tiny bit about the story I'd written. ... It was tiring, and it seemed dismissive of me as a person. It's a strange thing to become somebody else's story, especially when the story is: You're a victim of an insane online...

Episode 86: Mattathias Schwartz

April 02, 2014 16:29 - 56 minutes

Mattathias Schwartz has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Harper's. "I figure it's like digging through a wall with a spoon: if you spend enough time at it eventually you get to the other side." Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: mattathiasschwartz.com Schwartz on Longform [4:00] "A Massacre in Jamaica" (New Yorker • Dec 2011) [20:15] The Philadelphia Independent [25:00] "The Hold-'Em Holdup" (New York Times Magazine •...

Episode 85: Tavi Gevinson

March 26, 2014 16:22 - 1 hour - 57.6 MB

Tavi Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie. "I just want our readers to know that they are already smart enough and cool enough." Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Atavist Books. Show notes: @tavitulle Rookie thestylerookie.com [4:15] "Tavi Says" (Lizze Widdicombe • New Yorker • Sep 2010) [30:30] "A Teen Just Trying to Figure It Out" (TED • Mar 2012) [33:30] Rookie Yearbook Two (Drawn and Quarterly • Oct 2013) [39:45] Longform Podcast #75: George Saunders [43:...

Episode 84: Sabrina Rubin Erdely

March 19, 2014 18:49 - 1 hour

Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has also written for GQ, Philadelphia and SELF.  "I think that people are, by their nature, good and want to act rightly. So I'm very interested in why people do these things that result in really bad actions. My lack of outrage actually is one of the things that probably helps me in my reporting because I really am propelled by this pure curiosity. ... I just want to know, 'Where did that come from?'" Thanks to TinyLetter and Pi...

Matthew Power (1974-2014)

March 13, 2014 02:23 - 46 minutes

"The kind of stories I've gotten to do have involved fulfilling my childhood fantasies of having an adventurous life. Even though I don't make a ton of money doing it, I've never felt like I was missing out on something." Our friend Matt Power, a freelance journalist, died this week while on assignment in Uganda. Matt recorded this episode of the Longform Podcast with Evan Ratliff in February 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 83, Part 2: Lawrence Wright, Live from Austin

March 12, 2014 17:24 - 36 minutes

Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, is a staff writer for The New Yorker. "If I had the chance to interview Osama Bin Laden, should I kill him? It’s a fair question. Suppose we’re having dinner — should I stab him with the bread knife? Do I have a moral obligation to kill him? Or do I have a moral obligation as a reporter to simply hear him? … It’s sometimes difficult to take away the judgements that you naturally have. But when you do that, when you strip yourself ...

Episode 83, Part 1: Pamela Colloff & Mimi Swartz, Live from Austin

March 12, 2014 17:21 - 44 minutes

Pamela Colloff and Mimi Swartz are executive editors of Texas Monthly. Colloff: "That sense of loss, that sense of normal life turning on a dime is something that, in a very different way, I’ve experienced. And I carry that with me into some of the more difficult stories." Swartz: "Here’s this great [public interest] story that nobody’s ever told. Now how can I write it so the maximum number of people want to read it? I try to make the homework part as interesting and compelling as possible...

Episode 82: Jennifer Senior

March 05, 2014 17:04 - 1 hour

Jennifer Senior is a contributing editor at New York and the author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. "I've had moments in motherhood that have been close to something like religious. But I don't think social scientists say things like, "How many numinous moments have you had?" They don't do that, so you have to figure out what to do. I was suddenly turning to other texts to try and explain all of this." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show n...

Episode 81: Kevin Roose

February 26, 2014 16:10 - 57 minutes

Kevin Roose, a writer at New York, has contributed to The New York Times, GQ and Esquire. His latest book is Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits. "Google will give you away. I feel like one undercover book is all you get these days before the jig is up. ... Unless, like Barbara Ehrenreich, you legally change your name. I was not quite prepared to go that far." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @kevinroose kevinroose.c...

Episode 80: Wil S. Hylton

February 18, 2014 05:10 - 54 minutes

Wil S. Hylton, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of Vanished. "I despise the fucking nut graf. I think it's a joke, a cop out. The story probably should be about something larger than itself but if you have to tell people what that is, you've failed form the beginning. If they can't find it, you didn't put it there and you shouldn't be beating them over the head with it." Thanks to TinyLetter and The Fog Horn for sponsoring this week's episode, and to the ...

Episode 79: David Kushner

February 12, 2014 17:34 - 1 hour

David Kushner, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired and The Atavist. "The minute you see an incredible character, you know. The only thing I can compare it to is bowling, not that I'm much of a bowler. On the few times I've thrown a strike, you know it before it hits the pins." Thanks to TinyLetter and ProFlowers for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @davidkushner davidkushner.com Kushner on Longform [1:00] "The Bones of Maria...

Episode 78: Ariel Levy

February 05, 2014 17:22 - 54 minutes

Ariel Levy is a staff writer at The New Yorker. "I like an older awesome lady, I don't think enough is written about older awesome ladies and I don't think there are enough role models for younger awesome ladies. It’s great fun hanging out with an older awesome lady. It’s inspiring. And it makes you think 'Jesus, I might be rocking it when I’m 80!'" Thanks to ProFlowers and TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @avlskies Levy on Longform [3:00] "My First Time, Twice" (...

Episode 77: Dan P. Lee

January 29, 2014 16:21 - 1 hour - 61.6 MB

Dan P. Lee is a contributing writer at New York. "I don't believe in answers. That's what compels me to write all of these stories. None of them ends nicely, none of them ends neatly." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @Dan_P_Lee Lee on Longform Lee's New York archive [13:30] "Who Killed Ellen Andros?" (Philadelphia Magazine • Oct 2006) [22:45] "Travis the Menace" (New York • Jan 2011) [45:00] "Paw Paw & Lady Love" (New York • Jun 2011) [48:45] "4:52 on ...

Episode 76: Roger D. Hodge

January 22, 2014 17:46 - 56 minutes

Roger D. Hodge is the editor of Oxford American. "My career isn't all that interesting insofar as I've been an editor. I'm much more interested in talking about writers and stories. That's the main thing: telling these stories, creating this platform, this context for the best possible storytelling." Thanks to TinyLetter and Random House for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @RogerDHodge oxfordamerican.org [5:15] "Long Way Home" (Rosanne Cash • Oxford American • Nov 2013) [5:45] ...

Episode 75: George Saunders

January 15, 2014 16:39 - 1 hour - 57.9 MB

George Saunders has written for The New Yorker and GQ. His latest collection of short stories is Tenth of December. "Maybe you would understand your artistry to be: put me anywhere. I'll find human beings, I'll find human interest, I'll find literature. And I guess you could argue the weirder, or maybe the less explored the place, the better." Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode.  Show notes: georgesaundersbooks.com Saunders on Longform [5:00] Tenth of Dece...

Episode 74: Jon Mooallem

January 08, 2014 17:40 - 53 minutes

Jon Mooallem, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, is the author of Wild Ones and American Hippopotamus, the latest story from The Atavist. "I'm terrible at writing nut graphs. I never know why people should keep reading. That’s the menace of my professional existence, trying to figure that out. Because often you have to explain that to an editor before you even start, and I may not even know while I'm writing what the bigger point is." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring t...

Episode 73: Joe Sexton

December 19, 2013 19:10 - 1 hour

Joe Sexton is a senior editor at ProPublica and a former reporter and editor at the New York Times, where he led the team that produced "Snow Fall." "My experience in a newspaper newsroom over the years has been: The word you hear least often, the word that's hardest for people to say in that environment, is the word yes. It's safer to say no. You get second-guessed less often if you say no. Your job's not on the line if you say no. But if you're willing to say yes and you're willing to face...

Episode 72: Andrew Leland

December 11, 2013 16:11 - 57 minutes

Andrew Leland is an editor at The Believer and hosts The Organist. "I think a good editor has a strong stomach for crazy assholes. Because often crazy assholes are really brilliant great writers." Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: Leland's archive at the Oakland Standard Leland's blog, "Good Jobbbbbbbbb" [4:00] "Web Dreams" (Josh Quittner • Wired • Nov 1996) [5:15] 826 Valencia [5:45] A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (David Eggers...

Episode 71: Jason Fagone

December 04, 2013 17:23 - 56 minutes

Jason Fagone, a contributing editor at Wired and a writer-at-large for Philadelphia, is the author of Ingenious. "It seemed like all the big guys in American society had let us down, all the elites. And here was a contest that was explicitly looking to the little guy and saying, 'We don't care what you've done before or how much money you have in your pocket. If you solve this problem, you win the money.' There was something so optimistic and hopeful and cool about that to me." Thanks to Ti...

Episode 70: Amy Wallace

November 27, 2013 18:30 - 54 minutes

Amy Wallace is an editor-at-large for Los Angeles and a correspondent for GQ . "I've written about the anti-vaccine movement. I love true crime. I've written a lot of murder stories. The thing that unites all of them—whether it's a celebrity profile or a biologist who murdered a bunch of people or Justin Timberlake—it's almost trite to say, but there's a humanity to each of these people. And figuring out what's making them tick in the moment, or in general, is interesting to me. In a way, th...

Episode 69: Rachel Aviv

November 20, 2013 16:58 - 51 minutes

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer at The New Yorker. "If I'm writing about the criminal justice system, I wish I were a lawyer. If I'm writing about psychiatry, I wish I were a psychiatrist. I have often filled out half my application to get a Ph.D in clinical psychology. That is one area where I am constantly on the verge of jumping the fence. But even when I wrote about religion, I thought I wanted to be a priest." Thanks to TinyLetter and HostGator for sponsoring this week's episode. Show n...

Episode 68: Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery

November 13, 2013 16:55 - 1 hour

Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery are the co-editors of Mother Jones. "We probably pay more attention to our fact-checking and our research than almost everybody in our industry. By the time we publish stuff, we make sure it's unimpeachable because people would like to impeach it." Thanks to TinyLetter and HostGator for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @MonikaBauerlein @ClaraJeffery motherjones.com Mother Jones on Longform [16:45] Mac McClelland's Mother Jones archive [18:00] "...

Episode 67: Evan Wright

November 06, 2013 15:20 - 1 hour - 63.2 MB

Evan Wright, a two-time National Magazine Award winner, is the author of Generation Kill. "When people were killed, civilians especially, I realized I was the only person there who would write it down. I was frantic about getting names, and in the book there are a few Arabic names, some of the victims. Not that anyone cares. But I thought, 'At least somewhere there's a record of this.'" Thanks to this week’s sponsors: TinyLetter and HostGator. Show notes: @evanscribe Wright on Longform [3...

Episode 66: Andy Ward

October 30, 2013 17:34 - 59 minutes

Andy Ward, a former editor at Esquire and GQ, is the editorial director of nonfiction at Random House. "How you gain that trust is a hard thing to quantify. The way I try do it is by caring. If you don't care about every word and every sentence in the piece, writers pick up on that. ... Ultimately, it's their book or their magazine article. Their name is on it, not mine. I always try to keep that in mind." Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA 14. Show notes: @AndyW...

Episode 65: Elizabeth Wurtzel

October 23, 2013 17:14 - 1 hour

Elizabeth Wurtzel is the author of four books, including Prozac Nation. "It's not that hard to be a lawyer. Any fool can be a lawyer. It's really hard to be a writer. You have to be born with incredible amounts of talent. Then you have to work hard. Then you have to be able to handle tons of rejection and not mind it and just keep pushing away at it. You have to show up at people's doors. You can't just e-mail and text message people. You have to bang their doors down. You have to be interes...

Episode 64: Gay Talese

October 17, 2013 16:34 - 1 hour

Gay Talese, who wrote for Esquire in the 1960s and currently contributes to The New Yorker, is the author of several books. His latest is A Writer's Life. "I want to know how people did what they did. And I want to know how that compares with how I did what I did. That's my whole life. It's not really a life. It's a life of inquiry. It's a life of getting off your ass, knocking on a door, walking a few steps or a great distance to pursue a story. That's all it is: a life of boundless curiosi...

Episode 63: Jon Ronson

October 09, 2013 17:04 - 59 minutes

Jon Ronson, a contributor to This American Life, The Guardian and GQ, is the author of six books, including The Men Who Stare at Goats. His latest is Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries. "The older you get, you realize that no uncomfortable fact makes your story worse. Contradictions are great. What's bad, what to me is the worst journalistic sin, is ridiculous polemicism. ... To me, the contradictions, the story not turning out the way you want—you have to be a twig in the tidal wave of t...

Episode 62: Malcolm Gladwell

October 01, 2013 16:10 - 59 minutes

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His latest book is David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. "The categories are in motion. You turn into a Goliath, then you topple because of your bigness. You fall to the bottom again. And Davids, after a while, are no longer Davids. Facebook is no longer an underdog—it's now everything it once despised. I'm everything I once despised. When I was 25, I used to write these incredibly snotty, hostile articles...

Episode 61: Cord Jefferson

September 25, 2013 16:23 - 50 minutes

Cord Jefferson is the West Coast Editor at Gawker. "I consider myself to be a sincere human being. And I think that the way the internet carries itself, the way the internet has dialogues, is often insincere. That concerns me. I don't ever want to lose my sincerity. I don't ever want to lose my ability to feel emotional about things that I write about. I don't ever want to have a distance from everything that I write. I think that can be a danger of writing too much for the internet, that yo...

Episode 60: Hamilton Morris

September 18, 2013 16:00 - 1 hour

Hamilton Morris is the science editor for Vice and a contributor to Harper's. "It's a shame that there isn't more of an interdisciplinary approach to a lot of scientific investigations, because often the result is that misinformation is produced. Again, there's misinformation in journalism and there's misinformation in science. And if you combine the best elements of both of those disciplines you can come a little bit closer to the truth. If you want to understand a drug phenomenon, you're g...

Episode 59: Nancy Jo Sales

September 11, 2013 17:50 - 1 hour

Nancy Jo Sales writes for Vanity Fair and is the author of The Bling Ring. "I'm a mom now, so my life's a little different. I can't do certain things that I used to do, and I won't, because they're dangerous or ridiculous or keep me out till five in the morning or whatever. But back in those days, I didn't even really have—I didn't even have a pet! This was everything I did. This was my whole life, this passion to find out these things, and do these things, and see these things, and have the...

Episode 58: Sarah Stillman

September 04, 2013 16:14 - 54 minutes

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer for The New Yorker. "People don't really care about issues so much as they care about the stories and the characters that bring those issues to life. ... A story needs an engine or something to propel you forward and it can't just be a collection of like, 'Oh, hmm, this was interesting over here and this was interesting over there.' Realizing that helped me sit down with all my stuff on trafficking and labor abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and say 'What are th...

Episode 57: Eli Saslow

August 28, 2013 15:44 - 1 hour

Eli Saslow is a staff writer at the Washington Post and a contributor at ESPN the Magazine. It's not really my place to complain about it being hard for me to write. I wrote the story ("After Newtown Shooting, Mourning Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet") and I got to leave it. And even when I was writing the story, I was only experiencing what they were experiencing in a super fractional way. The hard part is that it was a story where there are no breaks, there's no—it is this relentless, ...

Episode 56: Joshuah Bearman

August 21, 2013 12:34 - 50 minutes

Joshuah Bearman is the co-founder of Epic Magazine and a freelance writer. His latest story is "Coronado High." "People who know me well will realize that parts of this story are actually about me. … It's about loss of innocence and getting to a certain point in your life where you realize the excitement of youth is over. Life at a certain point gets complicated and there are consequences and things get hard. These are people who dealt with those consequences in a way that I never did — they...

Episode 55: Amy Harmon

August 14, 2013 16:40 - 56 minutes

Amy Harmon, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers science and society for the New York Times. "I'm not looking to expose science as problematic and I'm not looking to celebrate it. But it can be double edged. Genetic knowledge can certainly be double edged. Often the science outpaces where our culture is in terms of grappling with it, with the implications of it. Part of the reason for this widespread fear about GMOs is people don't understand what it is. I'm looking for an emotional way or a vehi...

Episode 54: Sean Flynn

August 07, 2013 14:24 - 53 minutes

Sean Flynn is a GQ correspondent and National Magazine Award winner. "I find it satisfying to be able to give a voice to people that sort of get lost…You know, when these big horrible things happen, and the spotlight is very briefly on them, and then it moves away, and it's not that I'm dragging them out and forcing them to 'Relive your horrible moments!' It's more a thing of, 'If you'd like to relive your horrible moment, if you want people to know what actually happened, talk to me. I will...

Episode 53: Janet Reitman

August 02, 2013 15:23 - 38 minutes

For the first time, Janet Reitman discusses her Rolling Stone cover story on accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. "My editors, myself, a lot of people who work for the magazine — we lived through an act of terrorism. We know what it feels like. There have been accusations to me personally of being insensitive, and I can tell you that I'm far from insensitive, not only to the political realities of terrorism but to the personal realities of terrorism. I breathed it in, literally....

Episode 52: Kelley Benham

July 31, 2013 16:32 - 51 minutes

Kelley Benham is a writer and editor at the Tampa Bay Times. "People connect with this story in a really visceral kind of way, usually because of some experience they've had or someone close to them has had. I've had 90-year-old women crying into my phone about babies they lost 70 years ago. I've had people kind of sneak up to me and tell me about babies that have died that they don't talk about, but that they carry with them all the time. I've had premies who are grown up—those are my favor...

Episode 51: Robert Kolker

July 24, 2013 15:09 - 52 minutes

Robert Kolker is the author of Lost Girls and a contributing editor at New York. "For better or for worse, my heart's not in the mystery. I want [the killer] to be caught—he's obviously a predator and he's unstable. But they all are. They're all messed up people who victimize other people and they all look normal. The art and science of catching serial killers has become more than slightly overblown in our society. And you know, I love Silence of the Lambs … but I'm not entirely sure that ou...

Episode 50: Edith Zimmerman

July 17, 2013 15:50 - 44 minutes

Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. "I never wrote anything myself or ran anything from other people that was needlessly negative. It wasn't some false grin plastered all over it — we addressed dark things too, and poked fun at things. But I didn't want there to ever be a tone of yeah, let's really just deflate this. Because ultimately you're just stabbing at a ghost among friends. And then at the end you've all just...

Episode 49: Brendan I. Koerner

July 10, 2013 16:51 - 52 minutes

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of The Skies Belong to Us. "It was this big review in The New York Times and I was terrified that it was going to say something awful about the book or about me as a writer. And my son said to me — he's 5, I should say — "If it's bad, you won't die." That's a good point, you know? So I always think of that when I pick up a new review and take that risk of someone slamming something that I've genuinely poured my heart and sou...

Episode 48: Evan Ratliff

June 28, 2013 16:00 - 25 minutes

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses "The Oilman's Daughter," his new story in The Atavist. "This woman was given the opportunity to take on a new identity. And it was a mistake. She never should've done it. If there was a way for her to go back and say, 'No, I don't want to know this. I want to be who I am,' then I think she should've taken that. … I'm fascinated with people who want to radically shift their identity. It almost never works out well." Show notes: "The ...

Episode 47: Steve Kandell

June 26, 2013 16:43 - 46 minutes

Steve Kandell is the longfom editor at BuzzFeed. "What would be the sort of longer, narrative nonfiction, journalistic equivalent of something that would have the same effect on you as a bunch of cat GIFs? And not because it's cute, but it's the kind of thing that makes you go, 'OK, I need a lot of other people to see this.'" Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @SteveKandell "David Lee Roth Will Not Go Quietly" (BuzzFeed • Apr 2012) [7:30] "The Movie Set Th...

Episode 46: Nicholas Schmidle

June 19, 2013 16:27 - 52 minutes

Nicholas Schmidle is a staff writer at The New Yorker. "I was in a taxi, leaving Karachi to go attend this festival, and we started getting these very disturbing phone calls from newspaper reporters that didn't exist, all of them asking me to meet them at various places in Karachi. I had read enough about the Daniel Pearl case to know what happened in the days leading up, and this was very similar. ... We kept driving towards the festival, and shortly after that, friends started calling. The...

Guests

Jon Mooallem
4 Episodes
Malcolm Gladwell
3 Episodes
ann friedman
2 Episodes
Ariel Levy
2 Episodes
Ed Yong
2 Episodes
George Saunders
2 Episodes
James Verini
2 Episodes
Jerry Saltz
2 Episodes
Jia Tolentino
2 Episodes
Michael Lewis
2 Episodes
Mina Kimes
2 Episodes
Samin Nosrat
2 Episodes
Tavi Gevinson
2 Episodes
Adam Davidson
1 Episode
Aleksandar Hemon
1 Episode
Alex Blumberg
1 Episode
Alex Kotlowitz
1 Episode
Aminatou Sow
1 Episode
Andy Greenberg
1 Episode
Ben Smith
1 Episode
Buzz Bissinger
1 Episode
Carl Zimmer
1 Episode
Chip Kidd
1 Episode
David Epstein
1 Episode
Elizabeth Gilbert
1 Episode
Elizabeth Wurtzel
1 Episode
Erik Larson
1 Episode
Erin Lee Carr
1 Episode
Evan Thomas
1 Episode
Ezra Klein
1 Episode
Gary Smith
1 Episode
Gay Talese
1 Episode
Hanna Rosin
1 Episode
Heather Havrilesky
1 Episode
Helen Rosner
1 Episode
James Fallows
1 Episode
jelani cobb
1 Episode
Jennifer Senior
1 Episode
John Grisham
1 Episode
John Heilemann
1 Episode
Jon Favreau
1 Episode
Jon Ronson
1 Episode
Joshua Topolsky
1 Episode
Kara Swisher
1 Episode
Karina Longworth
1 Episode
Kathryn Schulz
1 Episode
Kevin Kelly
1 Episode
Krista Tippett
1 Episode
Lena Dunham
1 Episode
Lori Gottlieb
1 Episode
Mark Bowden
1 Episode
Matt Levine
1 Episode
Michael Pollan
1 Episode
Mirin Fader
1 Episode
Nate Silver
1 Episode
Noreen Malone
1 Episode
Paige Williams
1 Episode
Parul Sehgal
1 Episode
Peter Hessler
1 Episode
Rose Eveleth
1 Episode
Sam Biddle
1 Episode
Shane Bauer
1 Episode
Sheera Frenkel
1 Episode
Starlee Kine
1 Episode
Stephen J. Dubner
1 Episode
Terry Gross
1 Episode
Tim Ferriss
1 Episode
Tom Bissell
1 Episode
Tyler Cowen
1 Episode

Twitter Mentions

@davidgrann 6 Episodes
@wesley_morris 3 Episodes
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