Episode 449: Jessica Bruder

Longform

Education, Arts, Books, News

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 July 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jessica Bruder is a journalist and author of the book Nomadland.“I don’t do a hard sell. I’ll tell people what my MO is, but I don’t push people to talk with me. I want to go deep with people. I want to be able to have the time to just sit with them and to say, ‘start at the beginning.’ Sometimes going chronologically will just take you to these places that wouldn’t have come up if I’ve just done a very guided interview. So I hung out. I’m not relentless. I don’t wear people down. But I stick around. If people just want me to fuck off, I fuck off, and I talk to other people..” Thanks to Mailchimp and The London Review of Books for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: jessicabruder.com @jessbruder 01:00 Nomadland (W. W. Norton & Company • 2018) 11:30 Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man (Gallery Books • 2007) 13:00 "Snowball's Court Decision Set for Tomorrow" (The Oregonian • October 2007) 13:30 "Faith-healing Deaths " (The Oregonian • June 2009) 16:00 "Has Perky Jerky Lost Its Perk?" (New York Times • August 2011) 19:30 "Slump in construction industry creates a Sheetrock ghost town" (The Christian Science Monitor • June 2011) 21:30 "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" (Gabriel Mac • Mother Jones • March/April 2012) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, before we get going, I just want to thank our sponsor this week, the London Review of Books.
0:05.6	It is one of the only publications that I receive in print. I just enjoy reading it that way.
0:11.9	And you will enjoy it too if you subscribe for 86% off the cost of a subscription by going to
0:19.6	lrb.me slash long form. You'll get six issues for just six dollars. Again lrb.me slash long form.
0:37.3	Hello and thanks for joining us for a new episode of the long form podcast.
0:41.1	I am your co-host Evan Ratliff. I'm here with Aaron Lammer. Our third co-host Max is off this
0:46.7	week. Aaron, I don't know what to do right now without Max here. It's all a blank slate. Max keeps
0:53.5	it together. So we'll just muddle through. Let's just keep this utilitarian. Who is on the show
1:00.2	this week? This week I spoke to Jessica Bruder, who a lot of you will know because she authored the
1:07.6	book Nomad Land, which became the film Nomad Land, which among other things, one best picture at
1:13.5	the Oscars this year. She, for that book, spent years following a group of Americans who were sort
1:20.8	of victims of economic forces and are living on the road and working seasonal jobs, including
1:28.0	through a program at Amazon called Camper Force, which comes up in this interview. And she really
1:33.2	immersed herself in their lives, including living at different times in her own van up close with
1:40.4	them. And she's, in addition to that, had a long and fascinating career as a journalist,
1:44.4	including Stens at the New York Times and the Oregonian, lots of magazine writing. And she's a real
1:50.0	master of the kind of reporting that's on display in Nomad Land, which I highly encourage people to
1:55.0	read even if they've seen the movie. And it was great to talk to her. That sounds very interesting.
2:01.5	I have not seen the movie. So I'm going to use this as an excuse to catch up on the entire media
2:07.2	history of this story. We are brought to you, as always, by MailChimp.
2:15.4	Evan, it shows you how incapable I am doing this stuff. Max, I, for a minute went, who,
2:22.2	who is the log term sponsor of this show? It's MailChimp. They make it easy to send an email newsletter.
	...

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