Episode 486: Vauhini Vara

Longform

Education, Arts, Books, News

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2022

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vauhini Vara is a contributing writer at Wired and author of the novel The Immortal King Rao. “With a magazine story, it might be like six months or a year or two, if it's something that took you a long time. With this [novel], it was 13 years for me, but the sort of emotional arc felt similar, where there were these periods of despair and a sense that like, this wasn't going anywhere, and then these periods where like, I'm a genius and this is going to be the best book ever written. You go back and forth, as we do with our journalism. But then with every draft of it, I always felt like, all right, this is better than the last draft at least. I don't know what the next one is going to look like, but this is definitely an improvement. And I feel like that's what kept me feeling like I was at least moving in the right direction.” Show notes: @vauhinivara vauhinivara.com Vara on Longform 01:00 "Bee-Brained" (Harper's • May 2017) 11:00 "Special Counsel" (California Sunday • Jun 2015) 30:00 "New Workers of the World" (Bloomberg Businessweek • Jul 2017) 32:00 "Can This Startup Break Big Tech’s Hold on A.I.?" (Fortune • Jun 2018) 32:00 "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise" (Wired • May 2022) 37:00 "Ghosts" (The Believer • Aug 2021) 37:00 "The Political Awakening of Silicon Valley" (California Sunday • Sep 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this podcast comes from Amazon Prime.
0:06.1	Being a Prime member comes with a ton of perks, especially during Prime Big Deal days
0:10.4	on October 10th and 11th.
0:12.4	This two-day shopping event will give Prime members exclusive deals on the things they love.
0:17.4	Fashion, electronics, home goods, you name it.
0:20.9	And that can make you feel like a big deal.
0:23.8	Don't miss out on two days of big savings.
0:26.4	On Prime now, just in time for Prime Big Deal days, happening October 10th and 11th.
0:31.8	Learn more at Amazon.com slash Prime Big Deal days.
0:48.9	Hello and welcome to the long-form podcast.
0:51.3	I'm Evan Ratliffe, one of your co-hosts, Max Lonsky and Aaron Lammer are the other two.
0:56.7	Hey, hey guys, Evan, who is on the program?
1:00.2	This week, my guest was Wahini Vara, who is a long-form journalist and editor as well.
1:08.3	She was reported at the Wall Street Journal.
1:10.2	She's been an editor at the New Yorker.
1:12.4	Now she contributes to places like Wired of the New York Times Magazine.
1:15.4	In fact, she has a big story out this week in Wired, which we discussed,
1:19.9	which is about a kind of mysterious but enormous, fast fashion company that sells clothes
1:25.4	incredibly cheaply online.
1:27.3	And it also happens that her debut novel is out this week.
1:31.3	It's called The Immortal King Row.
1:33.4	Regular listeners will know that we don't often talk fiction on the show,
	...

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