Episode 534: Tracy Kidder

Longform

Education, Arts, Books, News

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 May 2023

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Tracy Kidder is the author of eleven books, including The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains. His latest is Rough Sleepers. “I do think it’s an interesting challenge to try to write about virtue, with all that’s always mixed with it. Some writers have said it’s virtually impossible … but it’s not impossible. … People who are really trying, struggling against the odds, I think they’re worth writing about.” Show notes: tracykidder.com Kidder on Longform Kidder’s Atlantic archive 01:00 “‘You Have to Learn to Listen’: How a Doctor Cares for Boston’s Homeless” (The New York Times • Jan 2023) 06:00 “The Good Doctor” (New Yorker • July 2000) 06:00 Mountains Beyond Mountains (Random House • 2009) 19:00 Good Prose (Kidder and Richard Todd • Random House • 2013) 21:00 House (Houghton Mifflin • 1985) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Pounds and pounds of flour, 15 bakers, and some of the world's most unique microbes.
0:08.0	That's right, it's a sourdough bake-off.
0:10.5	And not just any bake-off.
0:12.0	This episode of Gastropod, we've got the story of the world's first sourdough science experiment
0:17.5	to figure out where all the bacteria and fungi that make sourdough sourdough, where did they come from?
0:22.5	Are they blowing in the wind, hidden in the flour, on the baker's hands?
0:27.0	Listen to Gastropod now for the secret of bread's deliciousness.
0:30.5	Plus more delicious bread than you can even imagine.
0:33.5	Find Gastropod wherever you get your podcasts.
0:47.0	Hello and welcome to the long-form podcast.
0:49.5	I'm Evan Ratliffe, one co-host and Maxlinsky and Aaron Lamar are the others.
0:54.5	Hello!
0:55.5	Hey you guys, Evan, who is on the program this week?
0:58.5	This week, my guest was Tracy Kitter, and I have to tell you guys a little story about this one.
1:05.0	When I started working in magazines, one of the first feature assignments, I think it was the second feature assignment I ever got,
1:12.0	was to revisit Tracy Kitter's The Soul of a New Machine on the 20th anniversary of that book.
1:20.0	The Soul of a New Machine is an absolute classic, it was published in 1981.
1:24.0	You can do the math on that.
1:26.0	I still think it's one of the best narrative nonfiction books ever written.
1:30.0	It's about how people create technology.
1:32.0	You will not find a better book about technology and how humans create it than the Soul of a New Machine.
1:36.0	For that story, I went and interviewed Tracy Kitter at his home, which was a huge deal for me at the time, and he was lovely.
	...

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