Longform

This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, co-host of Longform and a longtime tech journalist, makes a digital copy of himself, powered by AI, in order to understand how amazing and scary and utterly ridiculous the world is about to get. In Episode 1, Evan clones his voice, hooks it up to ChatGPT and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service representatives. New episodes drop on Tuesdays. Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 16 July 2024

What would happen if you created a digital copy of yourself, powered by AI, and set it loose in the world? Over the past six months, Evan Ratliff has been trying to find out. He combined a clone of his voice, an AI chatbot, and a phone line—many phone lines, actually—into what are called “voice agents.” Then he sent them out… as himself. They talked to sources and colleagues (including his fellow Longform co-hosts), friends and family, scammers and spammers, other AI voice agents, and even therapists. The result is a story of what it feels like when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you. New episodes drop on Tuesdays starting July 9. Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 2 July 2024

John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History. “I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It hasn't faded. The challenges of writing, they still glow.” Show notes: Sullivan on Longform Sullivan’s GQ archive Sullivan’s New York Times Magazine archive 10:00 “Uhtceare” (Paris Review • May 2021) 28:00 Pulphead (FSG Originals • 2011) 30:00 The Best American Essays 2014 (Mariner Books • 2014) 30:00 “The Ill-Defined Plot” (New Yorker • Oct 2014) 50:00 “Man Called Fran” (Harper’s • Sept 2023) 50:00 “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” (GQ • Aug 2006) 50:00 “Upon This Rock” (GQ • Jan 2004) 50:00 “Peyton’s Place” (GQ • Oct 2011) 50:00 “Leaving Reality” (GQ • Oct 2011) 54:00 “Pulp Fever” (Daniel Riley • GQ • Nov 2011) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 26 June 2024

The hosts answer a few listener questions. Evan’s picks for some podcasts to try: Creative Nonfiction Press Box The Stacks Podcast: Sunday Long Read True Stories Question Everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 26 June 2024

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message. “I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here just to make a living? Because there are many other things where you could make more money.” Show notes: ta-nehisicoates.com Coates on Longform Longform Podcast #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #97: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #225: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson Longform Podcast #408: Ta-Nehisi Coates 04:00 "Fear of a Black President" (The Atlantic • Sep 2012) 05:00 The Beautiful Struggle (One World • 2009) 12:00 "The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic • Jun 2014) 13:00 Between the World and Me (One World • 2015) 36:00 "The Mask of Doom" (New Yorker • Sep 2009) 40:00 "How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I." (Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nic Grant • New York Times • Apr 2024) 42:00 Shell Game (Evan Ratliff • 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 19 June 2024

Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye. “At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or not. And I actually like that a lot better than the magazine writing. I respect the magazine writers—obviously, I was one—but for my disposition now, in my lifestyle, I actually enjoy having to produce this thing every week.” Have a question for the mailbag? Email the show or leave a voicemail at (929) 333-2908. Show notes: @jaycaspiankang Kang on Longform Kang on Longform Podcast (Oct 2021) Kang on Longform Podcast (Aug 2017) Kang on Longform Podcast (Apr 2013) Kang’s New Yorker archive 06:00 Coin Talk 08:00 Tyler Austin Harper’s Atlantic archive 10:00 Serial 12:00 The Daily 20:00 “The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High” (The Morning News • Oct 2010) 28:00 James (Percival Everett • Doubleday • 2024) 34:00 “American Son” (ESPN • July 2024) 35:00 Kang’s VICE archive 42:00 “Mike Francesa Still Believes in the Power of Radio” (New York Times • Aug 2018) 43:00 Kang’s Grantland archive 43:00 Kang’s New York Times archive Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 12 June 2024

Joseph Cox is a cybersecurity journalist and co-founder of 404 Media. His new book is Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever. “In the not too distant future, I will be a very old man, and maybe I won't be able to spend all day talking to drug traffickers. I will be mentally and physically exhausted. So I will doggedly pursue the story right now while I can.” Show notes: @josephfcox Cox's 404 Media archive Cox's Vice archive Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever (PublicAffairs • 2024) 08:00 "FBI’s Encrypted Phone Platform Infiltrated Hundreds of Criminal Syndicates; Result is Massive Worldwide Takedown" (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of California • Jun 2021) 10:00 Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (Bradley Hope and Tom Wright • Hachette • 2018) 19:00 "Revealed: The Country that Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI" (404 Media • Sep 2023) 38:00 "Follow The Bitcoins: How We Got Busted Buying Drugs on Silk Road’s Black Market" (Andy Greenberg • Forbes • Sep 2013) 41:00 "Hundreds of Bounty Hunters Had Access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Customer Location Data for Years" (Motherboard • Feb 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 5 June 2024

Tavi Gevinson is a writer, actor, and the founder of Rookie. Her new zine is Fan Fiction. “Stories are unstable, and memory is unstable, and identity is unstable. All of these things that I've tried to make permanent in writing, they're actually unstable. So even though it's tempting to go, Oh, that was fake, it's more like, No, it was just temporary.” Show notes: @tavitulle tavigevinson.world Gevinson on Longform Gevinson on Longform Podcast Gevinson’s Rookie archive 10:00 Operation Shylock (Philip Roth • Simon & Schuster • 1993) 10:00 Erasure (Percival Everett • Graywolf Press • 2011) 14:00 “Taylor Swift Has No Regrets” (Elle • June 2015) 20:00 I Love Dick (Chris Kraus • Semiotext(e) • 1997) 24:00 “Who Would Tavi Gevinson Be Without Instagram?” (New York • Sept 2019) 40:00 “Editor’s Letter” (Rookie • Nov 2018) 50:00 “The Special Panic of Singing Sondheim” (New Yorker • Dec 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 29 May 2024

Rachel Khong is a journalist and author whose latest novel is Real Americans. “It's about the ways in which we miss each other as human beings and can't fully communicate what it is like to be ourselves. … And I think that's what makes it so interesting to me, to work on a novel and to spend so much time trying to get down on the page what it feels like to be a human being who's alive. … I think the effort itself is what human relationships are.” Show notes: rachelkhong.com 01:00 Real Americans (Knopf • 2024) 01:00 Goodbye, Vitamin (Picador • 2017) 01:00 Lucky Peach archive 01:00 "Would Limitlessness Make Us Better Writers?" (The Atlantic • Apr 2024) 01:00 "Dust to Dust" (Eater • May 2024) 05:00 "New Pornographers + Stars, 6/25 Prospect Park Summer Stage" (Village Voice • Jun 2005) 09:00 Same Bed Different Dreams (Ed Park • Random House • 2023) 12:00 "Inside My Days as a Content Bot" (Esquire • Apr 2024) 24:00 "The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert" (Rumpus • Oct 2012) 24:00 Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert • Riverhead • 2007) 24:00 Elizabeth Gilbert's GQ archive 54:00 "The Great Pacific Oyster Trail" (Eater • Jun 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 22 May 2024

Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip. “I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding it is still a job, and then understanding how you make sure that within the container of the job you can do the work that you want to do. That is a really difficult balance to make. So if you can understand how people who have done it before you, you can copy them.” Show notes: @mckinneykelsey kelseymckinney.com McKinney on Longform McKinney’s Defector archive 04:00 “Why Doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway Get a Day of Her Own?” (Slate • Jan 2000) 13:00 “Chris Evans: American Marvel” (Edith Zimmerman • GQ • July 2011) 23:00 McKinney’s Deadspin archive 31:00 God Spare the Girls (Harper Collins • 2022) 39:00 “Gossip Is Not a Sin” (New York Times • July 2021) 43:00 You Didn’t Hear This From Me (Viking • 2025) 58:00 “Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital” (Defector • Dec 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 15 May 2024

Lissa Soep is an audio producer, editor and author whose latest book is Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End. “I am so keenly aware of how much my own voice is a product of editing relationships and co-producing relationships with other people's words. … I will forever feel indebted to those then young people who are now writers and educators and therapists. … I feel like my voice is sort of a product of that time.” Show notes: 00:00 Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations that Never End (Spiegel & Grau • 2024) 00:00 YR Media 33:00 "Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans" (Sam Anderson • New York Times Magazine • Oct 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 8 May 2024

PJ Vogt is the host of Search Engine. “One of our tests editorially is if we think we’ve got something good, but we haven’t started reporting or recording on it, I’ll just try asking the question at dinner and stuff. If it derails conversations, that’s a really good sign.” Show notes: @PJVogt Vogt’s Substack Vogt on Longform Podcast 03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Mar 2024) 03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • April 2024) 03:00 “When Do You Know It’s Time to Stop Drinking?” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 13:00 “Is There a Sane Way to Use the Internet?” (Search Engine • Oct 2023) 15:00 “How Do You Survive Fame?” (Search Engine • Feb 2024) 15:00 “The Tao of Rick Rubin” (New York Times • The Ezra Klein Show • Feb 2023) 15:00 “Rick Rubin Says Trust Your Gut, Not Your Audience” (Bari Weiss • The Free Press • Mar 2023) 16:00 “Rick Rubin, The Seclusive Zen Master” (Tim Ferriss • Jan 2023) 16:00 “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Gay Talese • Esquire • April 1966) 18:00 The Ezra Klein Show 18:00 Fresh Air 19:00 Crypto Island (Jigsaw Productions • 2022) 26:00 “Do Political Yard Signs Actually Do Anything?” (Search Engine • Apr 2024) 27:00 Reply All 35:00 “What’s Going on With Elon Musk?” (Search Engine • July 2023) 38:00 “What’s It Like to Go Blind? (Search Engine • July 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 1 May 2024

Lindsay Peoples is the editor-in-chief of The Cut. “You see so many incredible people make one mistake and lose their job or they speak out about something and then the next day something blows up. And so I do think that I often feel like I have to be so careful. And that's hard to do because I'm just naturally curious and I want to know and I want to find and explore and do the things. But I'm aware that … people think I'm too young. I'm too Black. I'm aware of all those things and I'm still going to try.” Show notes: 01:00 "Everywhere and Nowhere: What It’s Really Like to Be Black and Work in Fashion" (The Cut • Aug 2018) 09:00 The Devil Wears Prada (Fox 2000 Pictures • 2006) 29:00 David Haskell on Longform Podcast 31:00 "Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce" (Emily Gould • The Cut • Feb 2024) 31:00 "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger" (Charlotte Cowles • The Cut • Feb 2024) 31:00 "Age Gap Relationships: The Case for Marrying an Older Man" (Grazie Sophia Christie • The Cut • Mar 2024) 50:00 "Is There Room for Fashion Criticism in a Racist Industry?" (The Cut • Aug 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 24 April 2024

Jason Motlagh, a journalist and filmmaker, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the founder of Blackbeard Films. He won the Polk's Sydney Schanberg Prize for “This Will End in Blood and Ashes,” an account of the collapse of order in Haiti. “Once you've gotten used to this kind of metabolism, it can be hard to walk away from it. Ordinary life can be a little flat sometimes. And so that's always kind of built in. I accept that. I think I've just tried to be more honest about like, [am I taking this risk] because I need a bump my life? Or do you really believe in what you're doing? And I feel like I really do need to believe in the purpose of the story. There has to be some motivation greater than myself." This is the last in a series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 19 April 2024

Brian Howey is a freelance journalist who won the Polk Award for Justice Reporting after exposing a deceptive police tactic widely used in California. He began the project, which was eventually published by the Los Angeles Times and Reveal, as a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. “It’s one thing to hear about this tactic and hear about parents being questioned in this way. It’s another thing entirely to hear the change in a parent’s voice when they realize for the past 20 minutes they’ve been speaking ill of a relative who’s actually been dead the entire time, and to hear that wave of grief and sometimes that feeling of betrayal that cropped up in their voice and how the way that they spoke to the officers afterwards changed.” This is the fourth in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 18 April 2024

Meribah Knight is a reporter with Nashville Public Radio. She won the Polk Award for Podcasting for “The Kids of Rutherford County,” produced with ProPublica and Serial, which revealed a shocking approach to juvenile discipline in one Tennessee county. “Where does it leave me? It leaves me with a searing anger that is going to propel me to the next thing. But we’ve made some real improvement. And that’s worth celebrating. That’s worth recognizing and saying, This work matters, people are paying attention.” This is the third in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 17 April 2024

Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter at Streetsblog. He won the Polk Award for Local Reporting for "Ghost Tags," his series on the black market for temporary license plates. “You can imagine this having never become a problem, because it’s so weird. What a weird scam. I’m going to print and sell tens of thousands of paper license plates. But someone figured it out. And then a lot more people followed. It just exploded.” This is the second in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 16 April 2024

Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers won this year's George Polk Award for Television Reporting for “Inside Wagner,” their Vice News investigation of Russian mercenaries on the Ukraine front and in the Central African Republic. “One of the best takeaways I got from seven or eight years at Vice is that it’s not enough for something to be important when you’re figuring out how to make a story. It’s the intersection of important and interesting. And that has taught me that people will watch anything, anywhere, as long as it’s interesting. Nobody owes us their time. The onus is on us to explain things in an interesting, compelling way. I’m hoping that a landscape opens up somewhere else that sees that and understands that can be done anywhere in the world.” This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 15 April 2024

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His novel, published in March 2024, is Great Expectations. “I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.” Show notes: @vcunningham vinson.nyc Cunningham on Longform Cunningham's New Yorker archive 04:00 "’The Suit’ at BAM" (Brooklyn Paper • Jan 2013) 04:00 "Label Maker: Edward Buchanan" (Nylon Guys • Mar 2015) 09:00 circlejerk.live 11:00 Jeremy O. Harris’ plays 11:00 "How Are Audiences Adapting to the Age of Virtual Theatre?" (New Yorker • Oct 2020) 18:00 "The Season of Russell Westbrook and a New Era in N.B.A. Fandom" (New Yorker • Apr 2017) 25:00 Cunningham's McSweeney’s archive 25:00 "The Flies in Kehinde Wiley’s Milk" (The Awl • Jun 2015) 25:00 "Can Black Art Ever Escape the Politics of Race?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2015) 25:00 "How Chris Jackson is Building a Black Literary Movement" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2016) 27:00 "Stephon Marbury Has His Own Story to Tell" (New Yorker • Apr 2020) 28:00 "The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers" (New Yorker • Jan 2018) 29:00 WTF with Marc Maron 32:00 "Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life into Comedy" (New Yorker • May 2019) 36:00 Redd Foxx party albums 38:00 Alexandra Schwartz’ New Yorker archive 41:00 Simon Parkin on Longform 41:00 Adrian Chen on Longform 42:00 "The Many Lives of Steven Yeun" (Jay Caspian Kang • New York Times Magazine • Feb 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 10 April 2024

Megan Kimble is the former executive editor of The Texas Observer and has written for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Guardian. Her new book is City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. “I have never lived in a city that was not wrapped in highways. It’s hard for me to imagine anything else. And I think that’s true for a lot of people today. ... [But] we have known since the origins of the interstate highways program that building highways through cities doesn’t fix traffic. And yet we keep doing it. To me, that really fueled a lot of the book. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” Show notes: @megankimble megankimble.com Kimble on Longform Kimble’s Texas Observer archive 11:00 Kimble’s Austin Monthly archive 13:00 “Austin’s Not-So-Fair Housing Market” (Austin Monthly • Sept 2018) 49:00 “The Road Home” (Texas Observer • July 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 3 April 2024

Zach Harris is a journalist whose latest article for Rolling Stone is "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling." “I'm not like a staff writer who has … status and access. But if I come up with something fun that you've never heard of that might connect to the larger culture, then it kind of hits a nerve and a sweet spot for me. Someone like a pro skateboarder or a pro bowler, you guys have never heard of. And so being able to present a person and a culture and a world to a wider audience, I think suits me well and has been really a fun way to do profiles.” Show notes: 00:00 "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling" (Rolling Stone • Jan 2024) 01:00 "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" (Michael J. Mooney • D Magazine • Jan 2000) 02:00 Longform's bowling archive 13:00 Harris’s Vice archive 26:00 Thrasher Magazine 28:00 Harris’s High Times archive 29:00 amandachicagolewis.com 31:00 Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (Malcolm Harris • Little, Brown and Company • 2023) 33:00 firstwefeast.com 36:00 "Pandora’s Bag: Rap Snacks Are Proof that Time Is a Flat Circle" (Vice • Jun 2012) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 27 March 2024

Rozina Ali is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the winner of the 2023 National Magazine Award for Reporting. Her latest article is “Raised in the West Bank, Shot in Vermont.” “I think it’s very, very important to speak to people as people. To speak to sources—even if you have the juiciest story—to really give them the grace. I think everyone deserves it, especially people who are going through such a difficult time.” Show notes: @rozina_ali rozina-ali.com Ali’s New York Times archive 16:00 “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi” (New Yorker • Jan 2017) 17:00 “The ‘Herald Square Bomber’ Who Wasn’t” (New York Times Magazine • April 2021) 25:00 “Marijuana Comes to Coalinga” (The Nation • Nov 2018) 29:00 “‘How Did This Man Think He Had the Right to Adopt This Baby?’” (New York Times Magazine • Nov 2022) 43:00 “The Afghan Women Left Behind” (New Yorker • Aug 2022) 46:00 “What Rashida Tlaib Represents” (New York Times Magazine • March 2022) 61:00 “The ISIS Beat” (The Drift • April 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 20 March 2024

Derek Thompson is a staff writer for The Atlantic and host of the podcast Plain English. “I am an inveterate dilettante. I lose interest in subjects all the time. Because what I find interesting about my job is the invitation to solve mysteries. And once you solve one, two, three mysteries in a space, then the meta-mystery of that space begins to dim. And all these other subjects—that's the new unlit space that needs the flashlight. And that's the part of the job that I love the most: that there are so many dark corners in the world. And I've just got this flashlight, and I can just shine it wherever the hell I want.” Show notes: @DKThomp Thompson's Atlantic archive 00:00 Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (Penguin • 2018) 00:00 Plain English with Derek Thompson (The Ringer) 05:00 "Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 18:00 "The Americans Who Need Chaos" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 23:00 "America’s Loneliness Epidemic Comes for the Restaurant" (The Atlantic • Mar 2024) 35:00 "Stop Trying to Ask 'Smart Questions'" (The Atlantic • Jan 2023) 39:00 "The Future of Everything With Derek Thompson" (The Bill Simmons Podcast • Feb 2024) 40:00 "What Many Economists (and I) Got Wrong About This Economy" (Plain English • Mar 2024) 43:00 "How Hollywood’s Hit Formula Flopped—and What Could Come Next" (Plain English • Mar 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 March 2024

Tessa Hulls is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and The Capitol Hill Times. Her new book, a graphic memoir, is Feeding Ghosts. “This project is the thing I have spent my entire life running from. I was incredibly determined to never touch this, either personally or professionally. … It was more an eventual act of resignation than a desire.” Show notes: @tessahulls tessahulls.com 17:00 Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi • Pantheon • 2004) 19:00 richardscarry.com 32:00 The Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency 36:00 “Longform Podcast #144: Cheryl Strayed” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 6 March 2024

Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and several other books. Her new memoir is Grief Is for People. “You take a little sliver of yourself and you offer it up to be spun around in perpetuity in the public imagination. That is the sacrifice you make. And it makes everything just a little bit worse. So it's the opposite of catharsis, but it's worth it. It's worth it for what you get in return: a book.” Show notes: sloanecrosley.com @askanyone Longform Podcast #343: Sloane Crosley 01:00 Grief Is for People (MCD • 2024) 14:00 Heartburn (Nora Ephron • Vintage • 1996) 25:00 "Patchett: In Bad Relationships, 'There Comes A Day When You Gotta Go.'" (Fresh Air with Terry Gross • WHYY • Jan 2014) 25:00 Joan Didion on Fresh Air with Terry Gross 25:00 "Long COVID, Chronic Illness & Searching For Answers" (Fresh Air with Terry Gross • WHYY • Feb 2022) 32:00 "Obituary: Russell Perreault, V-P at Vintage Anchor, 52" (Rachel Deahl • Publishers Weekly • Jul 2019) 37:00 The Clasp (Picador • 2016) 49:00 How Did You Get This Number (Riverhead Books • 2011) 51:00 "Five O’Clock Somewhere" (Gary Indiana • Granta • Feb 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 28 February 2024

Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and VQR. Her new book is A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. “It took me a while to figure out that this is actually a book about storytelling, about journalistic storytelling, about the kind of myths we spin culturally and politically, about history, about current events, and the role of journalism within all of that, and my role as a journalist.” Show notes: @LaurenMarkham_ laurenmarkham.info Markham on Longform 01:00 The Far Away Brothers (Crown • 2018) 03:00oaklandinternational.org 28:00 How the Word Is Passed (Clint Smith • Little, Brown and Company • 2021) 38:00 “How Greece Secretly Adopted the World’s Most Brazen—and Brutal—Way of Keeping Out Refugees” (Mother Jones • March 2022) 44:00 “For Me, With Love and Squalor” (Longreads • June 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 21 February 2024

Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor for Platformer. Her new book is Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter. “Being the person where it's a fireable offense to leak to you … is kind of a badge of honor.” Show notes: zoeschiffer.com Schiffer's Platformer archive Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter (Portfolio • 2024) 03:00 Schiffer's Verge archive 08:00 "How Twitter’s child porn problem ruined its plans for an OnlyFans competitor" (Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton • Verge • Aug 2022) 16:00 Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (Michael Lewis • W. W. Norton • 2023) 36:00 Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Ashlee Vance • Ecco • 2017) 41:00 Ask a Swole Woman (Casey Johnston) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 14 February 2024

Chris Ryan is the editorial director for The Ringer, where he co-hosts The Watch and The Rewatchables. “There is a point where there’s just too much stuff. I can’t read a 5,000-word feature, 10 blog posts, and listen to three podcasts, and then do it all again the next day. So that is the line you walk in digital publishing, whether it’s for editorial stuff or for podcasting. You have to accept the fact that there is not going to be a single person out there who listens to it all, and who can read it all, and who can watch it all. But you can imbue everything you do with a certain quality—both like a personality, characteristic quality, but also like a quality of production—that hopefully anybody who does like this kind of thing will find some value in it.” Show notes: @ChrisRyan77 Ryan’s Ringer archive 3:00Andy Greenwald on Longform Podcast 3:00 Ryan’s Grantland archive 05:00 Ryan’s Spin archive 05:00 Ryan’s Fader archive 05:00 Ryan’s Village Voice archive 06:00 chaunceybillups.blogspot.com 27:00 The Ringer’s Philly Special (The Ringer • 2022) 45:00 Fairway Rollin’ (The Ringer • 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 7 February 2024

Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist whose coverage of the drug war in the Philippines has appeared in Rappler, Esquire, and elsewhere. Her recent book is Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country. “It is hard to describe the beat I do without saying very often it involves people who have died. And it seemed like an unfair way to frame it. It didn't quite seem right. … Sometimes there's no dead body, or sometimes there's 6,000, but the function is the same: that the people you speak to have gone through enormous painful trauma, and then there's a way to cover it that minimizes that trauma. So … I don't cover the dead. I cover trauma.” Show notes: Evangelista's Rappler archive Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country (Random House • 2023) 01:00 The Mastermind: A True Story of Murder, Empire, and a New Kind of Crime Lord (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2020) 11:00 Evangelista's Philippine Daily Inquirer archive 21:00 "The Rapture of Rodrigo Duterte" (Patricia Evangelista and Nicole Curato • Rappler • May 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 31 January 2024

Susan Glasser, the former editor of Politico and Foreign Policy, writes the "Letter from Washington" column for the The New Yorker. Her most recent book, written with Peter Baker, is The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. “There’s a great benefit to leaving Washington and then coming back, or frankly leaving anywhere and then coming back. I think you have much wider open eyes. Washington, like a lot of company towns, takes on a logic of its own, and things that can seem crazy to the rest of the country, to the rest of the world, somehow end up making more sense than they should when you’re just doing that all day long, every day.” Show notes: @sbg1 Glasser on Longform Glasser’s New Yorker archive 05:00 “The Year We Stopped Being Able to Pretend About Trump” (New Yorker • Dec 2023) 16:00 Glasser’s Politico archive 20:00 The Man Who Ran Washington (Glasser and Peter Baker • Anchor • 2021) 28:00 Peter Baker's New York Times archive 29:00 Kremlin Rising (Glasser and Peter Baker • Scribner • 2005) 37:00Theo Baker on the Longform Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 24 January 2024

Rob Copeland is a finance reporter for The New York Times. His recent book is The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend. “If I stab you, I'm going to stab you in the chest, not the back. You're going to see it coming. ... But if you're going to tell me something's wrong, you have to keep talking. I'm not going to take your word for it. I have a reason for why I believe my reporting to be true, and I'm going to present it to you as best I can. But just because you say something's wrong doesn't make it so.” Show notes: @realrobcopeland Copeland's New York Times archive Copeland’s Wall Street Journal archive 02:00 The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend (St. Martin’s Press • 2023) 20:00 The Vow (HBO) 27:00 Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyou • Vintage • 2020) 29:00 "#557: Adam Grant" (Longform Podcast • Nov 2023) 29:00 Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Adam Grant • Penguin Books • 2017) 31:00 "Elon Musk Says He Lives in a $50,000 House. He Doesn’t Talk About the Austin Mansion." (Wall Street Journal • Dec 2021) 37:00 Principles: Life and Work (Ray Dalio • Avid Reader Press • 2017) 46:00 Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (Michael Lewis • W. W. Norton & Company • 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 17 January 2024

Miles Johnson is an investigative reporter for the Financial Times. He is the author of Chasing Shadows: A True Story of Drugs, War and the Secret World of International Crime and the host of Hot Money: The New Narcos. “I’m really fascinated always by the ways in which people just have to do really boring parts of running a crime organization … I love the banalities of this stuff. We have a fictionalized version of crime groups and it’s obviously glamorous, and they’re really smart, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s bumbling incompetence as well or just quite unglamorous.” Show notes: @MilesMJohnson Johnson’s Financial Times archive 06:00 Johnson’s Guardian archive 07:00 Paul Murphy’s Financial Times archive 9:00 “How the Mafia Infiltrated Italy’s Hospitals and Laundered the Profits Globally” (Financial Times • July 2020) 14:00 “The Mystery of the Mogul, the Casino and the Heist that Rocked Mayfair” (Financial Times • May 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 10 January 2024

Hua Hsu is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His book Stay True won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for memoir. “I've worked as a journalist … for quite a while. … But this [book] was the thing that was always in the back of my mind. Like, this was the thing that a lot of that was in service of. Just becoming better at describing a song or describing the look of someone's face—these were all things that I implicitly understood as skills I needed to acquire. ... It is sort of an origin story for why I got so obsessive about writing.” Show notes: @huahsu byhuahsu.com Hsu on Longform Hsu on Longform Podcast Hsu's New Yorker archive 03:00 A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press • 2016) 30:00 "Randall Park Breaks Out of Character" (New Yorker • Feb 2023) 33:00 Shortcomings (Adrian Tomine • Drawn & Quarterly • 2007) 39:00 "What Conversation Can Do For Us" (New Yorker • Mar 2023) 39:00 "J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep" (New Yorker • Mar 2023) 39:00 "The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin" (New Yorker • Jun 2022) 39:00 "How Wayne Wang Faces Failure" (New Yorker • Jun 2022) 39:00 "Maxine Hong Kingston’s Genre-Defying Life and Work" (New Yorker • Jun 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 3 January 2024

Roxanna Asgarian is the author of We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America. “Every once in a while, I'll have someone just freak out at me. And it keeps you honest, in a way, because they don't owe you anything. People don't owe you anything as a journalist. ... But everyone reacts to trauma differently and some people really do want to talk about it. And I think the families in this book really wanted to talk about it and it felt like no one was even paying attention to them.” Show notes: @strawburriez Asgarian's Texas Tribune archive We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2023) 12:00 "Child in viral Portland police hug photo missing, 5 family members dead after California cliff crash" (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Mar 2018) 12:00 "Devonte Hart family crash: Sarah Hart sent alarming 3 a.m. text to friend ... then silence" (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Apr 2018) 13:00 "Devonte Hart family crash: 'It's just devastating,' says aunt who fought for custody" (Roxanna Asgarian and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Apr 2018) 34:00 "Devonte Hart's biological mom: They gave my kids 'to monsters'" (The Oregonian • Apr 2018) 45:00 "Before Children’s Grisly Deaths, A Family Fought for Them and Lost" (The Appeal • Jul 2018) 45:00 "A Mother Grapples with an Adoption that Led to Deaths" (The Appeal • Feb 2019) 45:00 "His siblings were killed by their adoptive mother. He was left in foster care to suffer a more common fate." (Washington Post • Dec 2019) 46:00 Broken Harts (Glamour and HowStuffWorks • 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 27 December 2023

Daisy Alioto is a journalist and the CEO of Dirt Media. “I don't think I was ever super precious about my writing, but if I was, I'm zero percent precious about it now. Every time I write for Dirt, it saves the company money. ... Nothing will make you sit down and write 800 words in 20 minutes than just needing to get it done. And that is a change that I've seen in myself. I would encourage everyone to be less precious about their writing.” Show notes: daisyalioto.com 00:00 Dirt 09:00 "Marie Colvin’s Private War" (Marie Brenner • Vanity Fair • Jul 2012) 09:00 A Private War (Acacia Filmed Entertainment, Savvy Media Holdings, Thunder Road Pictures • 2018) 05:00 Airmail 11:00 "Pretend it’s a living" (Dirt • Jan 2021) 15:00 Prune 16:00 Hung Up (Hunter Harris) 16:00 Maybe Baby (Hayley Nahman) 16:00 Today in Tabs (Rusty Foster) 16:00 Blackbird Spyplane (Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie) 16:00 Singal-Minded (Jesse Singal) 17:00 "The Complete History & Strategy of LVMH" (Acquired • Feb 2023) 24:00 "Grizzly man" (Amelia K. • Dirt • Jun 2023) 24:00 "The Question of U" (Amelia K. • Dirt • Nov 2023) 25:00 "Diary of a chess tournament" (Akram Herrak • Dirt • Nov 2023) 25:00 "The sound of your voice" (Joann Plockova • Dirt • Nov 2023) 25:00 "For the love of chickens" (Tove Danovich • Dirt • Sep 2023) 26:00 "Bad waitress" (Becca Schuh • Dirt • Jun 2023) 28:00 "Užupis Utopia" (Playboy • Dec 2019) 35:00 Someone Who Isn’t Me (Geoff Rickly • Rose Books • 2023) 37:00 Fragantica 37:00 "Bottle Elizabeth Taylor" (Daisy Alioto • Dirt • Jun 2023) 39:00 The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption (Katy Kelleher • Simon & Schuster • 2023) 41:00 Scent + Song (Vivian Medithi) 44:00 Axios 44:00 The Information 44:00 Punchbowl News 44:00 The Ankler 44:00 Semafor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 20 December 2023

Ian Coss is a journalist, audio producer, and composer. He is the host of Forever is a Long Time and The Big Dig. “One thing that I really carried with me in making the show is a belief that bureaucracy is interesting. And that once you get through the jargon and wonky sounding stuff … beyond that it’s all just human drama.” Show notes: @ian_coss iancoss.com 32:00 Isabel Hibbard’s website 33:00 Forever is a Long Time (PRX • 2021) 37:00 Lacy Roberts’ website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 December 2023

Mosi Secret has written for ProPublica, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. His new podcast is Radical. “I think this story made me call on parts of myself that are not journalistic because I don’t really think that’s the way we’re going to get out of this at this point in my life. I think that it takes a more radical reimagining of who we are as human beings, the ways in which we’re connected, and what we owe to each other. And that’s not a reporting thing—that’s a ‘who are you’ kind of thing.” Show notes: mosisecret.com Secret on Longform Secret’s New York Times archive 10:00 “Stolen Youth: How Durham's Criminal Justice System Sent Erick Daniels to Prison Based on the Shape of His Eyebrows” (INDYWeek • May 2007) 18:00 “On the Brink in Brownsville” (New York Times Magazine • May 2014) 21:00 “‘The Way to Survive It Was to Make A’s’” (New York Times Magazine • September 2017) 23:00 Johnny Kauffman’s website 28:00 “Having a Drink With Mosi Secret, the New York Times’ First-Ever Sin and Vice Reporter” (Joe Coscarelli • New York Magazine • June 2014) 29:00 “Behind the Red Door” (New York Times • May 2014) 38:00 “The Real CSI: How America’s Patchwork System of Death Investigations Puts the Living at Risk” (A.C. Thompson • ProPublica • Feb 2011) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 6 December 2023

Mary Roach is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. "In these realms of the taboo, there's a tremendous amount of material that is really interesting, but that people have stayed away from. ... I'm kind of a bottom feeder. It's down there on the bottom where people don't want to go. But if that's what it takes to find interesting, new material, I'm fine with it. I don't care. I'm not easily grossed out. I don't feel that there's any reason why we shouldn't look at this. And over time, I started to feel that ... the taboo was preventing people from having conversations that it would be healthy to have." Show notes: @mary_roach maryroach.net Roach on Longform 00:00 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (W.W. Norton • 2021) 01:00 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (W.W. Norton • 2003) 01:00 Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W. Norton • 2008) 01:00 Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (W.W. Norton • 2010) 01:00 Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (W.W. Norton • 2014) 02:00 "Cute Inc." (Wired • Dec 1999) 12:00 Roach's Salon archive 46:00 "Hot Seat" (Discover • Mar 1998) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 29 November 2023

Craig Mod is a writer and photographer who has two newsletters, Roden and Ridgeline. His new book is Things Become Other Things. “There'll be days where … I’m doing a walk and I'll just be like, I don't know what is going to move me today. And then out of the blue, there'll be this small interaction that when you really pay attention to it, it contains kind of this universe of kindness and patience that you otherwise pass by or ignore. If you're in the general mode of looking at things and then being able to take that experience and try to transmute it into an essay for the evening and send it out, it just develops your eye. You just start being able to look more and more and more closely.” Show notes: craigmod.com Things Become Other Things (Fine art edition • 2023 // Hardcover edition • Random House • 2025) Roden (Newsletter) Ridgeline (Newsletter) 1:00 Mod on Longform Podcast 6:30 Koya Bound: Eight Days on the Kumano Kodō (with Dan Rubin • PRE/POST • 2016) 16:00 Kiiiiiiiiiiiiii 16:00 Special Projects (Newsletter) 20:00 Kissa by Kissa (2020) 31:00 Pachinko Road (Pop Up Newsletter) 32:00 "I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast" (Eater • Dec 2019) 32:00 "The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan" (Wired • May 2019) 45:00 Longform Podcast #533: Hua Hsu (May 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 22 November 2023

Mona Chalabi is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, where she is the data editor. Her New York Times Magazine piece “9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting. “I kind of think of protest as just saying what you believe. And sometimes, it’s considered protest because it’s outside of the institutions of power. So you’re saying, Hey, Palestinians deserve human rights, and that’s considered a form of protest, right? I want the work to change things and I think I’m quite unapologetic about that, and most journalists are like No no no no no, we’re just reporting the world, we’re just reporting things as we see it. There’s no desire for change. I think that is so messed up. This idea that your work has no impact in the world is incorrect. You can’t wash yourself of the consequences of the work, you have to be considering the consequences while you’re doing it.” Show notes: monachalabi.com Chalabi on Instagram Chalabi's Guardian archive 1:00 "9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos' Wealth" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2022) 1:00 "How Does the Reality TV Show Cops Stack Up with Real-Life Crime Figures?" (The Guardian • May 2019) 6:00 "Striving For Justice: Lowkey in Conversation with Mona Chalabi" (GQ • Jun 2023) 8:30 "NY Times Writers Jazmine Hughes & Jamie Keiles Resign After Signing Letter Against Israeli War on Gaza" (Democracy Now! • Nov 2023) 8:30 Samira Nasr on Instagram 8:30 "Inside MSNBC’s Middle East Conflict" (Max Tani • Semafor • Oct 2023) 16:00 "Mentions of Israeli and Palestinian Deaths in The New York Times" (Instagram • Oct 2023) 18:00 "Circumcision Rates" (Instagram • Oct 2025) 21:00 New America Fellow 21:00 Emerson Collective 21:00 "The Gray-Green Divide" (Brooklyn Museum • Jun-Dec 2022) 21:00 "Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi" (TED Audio Collective) 54:00 Muntadhar al-Zaidi 54:00 Longform Podcast #276: Azmat Khan 54:00 Yousur Al-Hlou's New York Times archive 54:00 Jazmine Hughes' New York Times archive 54:00 “Regarding the Pain of Others” (Marty Peretz • The New Republic • 1996) 54:00 Longform Podcast #553: Clare Malone Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 15 November 2023

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcasts Work Life and Re: Thinking. His new book is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. “If you only focus on your own interest, you tend to develop novel ideas, but not necessarily useful ideas. And so for me, the audience is a filter. … I might have 30 ideas for a book. Let me hone in on the four or five that also might be relevant to other people. The goal there is to make a contribution.” Show notes: adamgrant.net Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Penguin • 2014) Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Penguin • 2017) Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (Viking • 2023) Work Life with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective) Re: Thinking with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective) Grant's New York Times archive 17:00 "The Necessity of Others is The Mother of Invention: Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivations, Perspective Taking, and Creativity" (Adam Grant and James Berry • Academy of Management • Nov 2017) 22:00 "It's Not the Ideas You Create, It's Which Ones You Choose" (Leigh Buchanan • Inc. • Feb 2016) 40:00 Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (Viking • 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 8 November 2023

Jesse David Fox covers comedy for Vulture, where he hosts the podcast Good One. His new book is Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work. “There’s a complete lack of anyone who’s ever written about comedy seriously compared to any other art form. There’s just nothing. … So the challenge was, how do you start a conversation that no one has been participating in?” Show notes: @JesseDavidFox Fox’s Vulture archive 3:00 Jason Zinoman’s New York Times archive 5:00 “What Is the Best Adam Sandler Movie?” (Vulture • April 2023) 6:00 Kathryn VanArendonk’s Vulture archive 8:00 “A Note About Splitsider” (Megh Wright• Vulture • Mar 2018) 11:00 “Jerry Seinfeld at Vulture Festival 2015” (Vulture • June 2015) 12:00 WTF with Marc Maron Podcast (Marc Maron • WTF • 2009) 14:00 “Jen Kirkman Turned Catcalling Into One of the Best Street Harassment Jokes Ever” (Vulture • April 2017) 23:00 “An Appreciation of the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” (Ramsey Ess • Vulture • Mar 2018) 23:00 “Maria Bamford Wants to Tell You How Much Money She Makes” (Vulture • Oct 2017) 23:00 “How Funny Does Comedy Need to Be?” (Vulture • Sep 2018) 23:00 “Michelle Wolf on Correspondents Dinner, Social Media” (Vulture • Mar 2020) 23:00 “Disgust is Tom Segura’s Love Language” (Vulture • Sept 2022) 23:00 “The Story Behind Bert Kreischer’s ‘Machine’ Joke” (Vulture • May 2023) 23:00 “Katt Williams Explains Jacksonville Florida” (Katt Williams • Netflix • Jan 2020) 36:00 “How the Internet and a New Generation of Superfans Helped Create the Second Comedy Boom” (Vulture • Mar 2015) 37:00 Las Culturistas (Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang • iHeartRadio • 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 1 November 2023

Evan Hughes is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, The Atavist and many others. His book, just out in paperback, is Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup. “It should be called slow-form journalism…. It is heavily edited. It’s heavily fact checked. And chances are, you’re not going to be the first. Maybe you’re going to be first to reveal some piece of it. I have made peace with like, I’m not the scoop guy. I’m the person who comes in and I’m good at telling the story in a thorough and deep way.” Show notes: evanhughes.co Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup (Anchor • 2023) 03:00 "Longform Podcast #503: Evan Osnos" (Longform Podcast • Sep 2022) 03:00 "The Trials of White Boy Rick" (Atavist • Sep 2014) 04:00 "The Shocking True Tale of the Mad Genius Who Invented Sea-Monkeys" (The Awl • Jun 2011) 06:00 "Just Kids" (New York Magazine • Oct 2011) 07:00 Literary Brooklyn: The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of American City Life (Holt • 2011) 12:00 "The Fugitive, His Dead Wife, and the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory That Explains Everything" (GQ • Jun 2016) 20:00 "Trial by Fire" (David Grann • New Yorker • Aug 2009) 25:00 Opioids, Inc. (Frontline • 2021) 25:00 The Crime of the Century (HBO • 2021) 47:00 Pain Hustlers (Netflix • 2023) 54:00 White Boy Rick (LBI Productions • 2018) 60:00 Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (Michael Lewis • W.W. Norton • 2004) 60:00 Moneyball (Columbia Pictures • 2011) 61:00 "The Man Who Moves Markets" (Atlantic • Mar 2023) 63:00 "Bringing Down the Hachette" (Slate • May 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 25 October 2023

Yepoka Yeebo has written for The Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Quartz. Her new book is Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World. “Initially it was like, Why are you writing about a con man? He makes Ghana look bad. Nobody needs another crime story about an African person. I found that irritating, because isn't the whole point of being a complete person, complete people, is we contain multitudes? We too can be epic, world-leading con men! Also, it's a great story. Everybody should revel in the insanity of what happened.” Show notes: @yepoka yepokayeebo.com Yeebo on Longform Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World 16:00 “The True Story of the Fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana” (The Guardian • Nov 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 18 October 2023

Clare Malone is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her latest article is ”Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Emotional Truths.’” “You're going to work a lot of hours if you want to be successful, and you're probably not going to make as much money as your dumb friend from college does. You're choosing it for a different reason, but I do think we have to make efforts to have the [journalism] industry be a middle-class profession.” Show notes: Malone's New Yorker archive Malone's FiveThirtyEight archive 03:00 "CNN’s New White Knight" (New Yorker • Sep 2023) 08:00 "Ben Smith Can’t Say What His New Media Venture Is" (New Yorker • Jan 2022) 09:00 "How Trump Changed America" (FiveThirtyEight • Nov 2020) 18:00 Just Like Us (The Ringer • 2022) 25:00 Semafor (Newsletter) 25:00 Confider (Lachlan Cartwright • Daily Beast) 27:00 "Inside the Meltdown at CNN" (Tim Alberta • Atlantic • Jun 2023) 27:00 "What the Shakeup at CNN Says About the Future of Cable News" (New Yorker • Jun 2023) 28:00 "David Zaslav, Hollywood Antihero" (New Yorker • Aug 2023) 37:00 "Ann Selzer Is the Best Pollster in American Politics" (FiveThirtyEight • Jan 2016) 39:00 Politics Podcast (FiveThirtyEight) 48:00 The Ankler (Newsletter) 49:00 "The E-Mail Newsletter for the Mogul Set" (New Yorker • Dec 2022) 57:00 ”Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Emotional Truths’” (New Yorker • Sep 2023) 58:00 Patriot Act (Hasan Minhaj • Netflix • 2020) 61:00 "Hasan Minhaj Eyed For ‘Daily Show’ Host" (Brian Steinberg • Variety • Aug 2023) 65:00 "Episode 1273 - Hasan Minhaj" (WTF with Marc Maron • Oct 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 11 October 2023

Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for The New York Times. His new book is Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance. “I think the fundamental question I always ask when I go into a new place, whether I’m covering currencies, or hedge funds, or geopolitics in Afghanistan, or the war—it’s what does this mean to the world right now? What does the world need to know and how does it fit into that space?” Show notes: @azamsahmed Ahmed on Longform Ahmed’s New York Times archive 20:00 “For Afghan Officials, Prospect of Death Comes with Territory” (New York Times • Dec 2012) 21:00 “A Day’s Toil in the Suicide Bombers’ Graveyard” (New York Times • Aug 2013) 21:00 “2 Afghan Sisters, Swept Up in a Suicide Wave” (New York Times • March 2013) 25:00 “She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One” (New York Times • Dec 2020) 46:00 “Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families” (New York Times • June 2017) 48:00 “In Mexico, ‘It’s Easy to Kill a Journalist’” (New York Times • April 2017) 54:00 “Kill, or Be Killed: Latin America’s Homicide Crisis” (New York Times • May 2019–Feb 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 4 October 2023

Kashmir Hill is a tech reporter for The New York Times. Her new book is Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It. “I often do feel like what my work is doing is preparing people for the way the world is going to change. With something like facial recognition technology, that's really important because if the world is changing such that every photo of you taken that's uploaded is going to be findable, it's going to change the decisions that you make.” Show notes: kashmirhill.com Hill on Longform Hill's New York Times archive Hill's Gizmodo archive Hill's Forbes archive 01:00 "Life Without the Tech Giants" (Gizmodo • Jan 2019) 01:00 "Living On Bitcoin for a Week: The Journey Begins" (Forbes • May 2013) 01:00 "Your Face Is Not Your Own" (New York Times • Mar 2021) 01:00 Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It (Random House • 2023) 03:00 "Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened" (Wired • Nov 2009) 11:00 Hill's Above the Law archive 16:00 Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep (Ted Conover • University of Chicago Press • 2016) 19:00 "The House That Spied on Me" (Gizmodo • Feb 2018) 23:00 "I Used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS Tracker to Watch My Husband’s Every Move" (New York Times • Feb 2022) 25:00 "Bing’s A.I. Chat: ‘I Want to Be Alive’" (Kevin Roose • New York Times • Feb 2023) 26:00 "What Our Reporter Learned Delivering Burritos to New Yorkers" (Andy Newman • New York Times • July 2019) 27:00 "A Vast Web of Vengeance" (New York Times • Jun 2023) 27:00 "The Slander Industry" (Aaron Krolik and Kashmir Hill • New York Times • Apr 2021) 55:00 Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa • 1950) 59:00 "Eight Months Pregnant and Arrested After False Facial Recognition Match" (New York Times • Aug 2023) 68:00 "Clearview’s Facial Recognition App Has Been Used By The Justice Department, ICE, Macy’s, Walmart, And The NBA" (Ryan Mac, Caroline Haskins, Logan McDonald • Buzzfeed • Feb 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 27 September 2023

Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg. His new book is Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. “I have a rule of thumb, which is that if somebody did one scam, they probably did another scam. If they did one scam in the past and now they have a new thing, odds are good it’s also a scam. That’s not always true, but that was definitely borne out sometimes in crypto-world.” Show notes: @ZekeFaux zekefaux.com Faux on Longform Faux’s Bloomberg archive 06:00 “Secret Network Connects Harvard Money to Payday Loans” (Bloomberg • Sept 2014) 08:00 “Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?” (Bloomberg • Oct 2021) 21:00 Matt Levine’s Bloomberg archive 22:00 “‘Don’t You Remember Me?’ The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text” (Bloomberg • Aug 2023) 32:00 “The Rise of FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried, Was a Great Story. Its Implosion Is Even Better.” (Alexandra Alter • New York Times • May 2023) 58:00 The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Penguin Random House • 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 20 September 2023

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder of the nonprofit Freedom Reads. His New York Times Magazine article "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" won the National Magazine Award. His new podcast is Almost There. “I felt like I had to own becoming something and intuitively understood that if I didn't lay claim to desiring to be something, that it would be too many other forces that would be pulling on me to dictate that I become something else. … When you say you're a writer, if you know nothing else, then you know that you read. You pay attention to the world. … And prison became the metaphor by which I understood the world and poetry became the medium by which I understood what it meant to write about the world and what it meant to take seriously the responsibility to write about the world that I knew.” Show notes: dwaynebetts.com freedomreads.org 01:00 Almost There with Dwayne Betts (Emerson Collective) 05:00 The Black Poets (Dudley Randall • Bantam • 1985) 10:00 Married… with Children (Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt • Fox • 1987-1997) 21:00 "Scientists and Engineers" (Killer Mike • Michael • 2023) 24:00 "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" (New York Times Magazine • Oct 2018) 26:00 "The Language of Birds" (Anselm Kiefer • 2018) 28:00 A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery • 2010) 31:00 Felon: An American Washi Tale 32:00 "Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me" (New York Times Magazine • Oct 2020) 33:00 Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books • 2010) 33:00 Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books • 2015) 33:00 Felon (Norton • 2019) 33:00 Redaction: A Project by Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts (MoMA PS1 • 2019) 33:00 Redaction (Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts • Norton • 2023) 44:00 Creative Nonfiction Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 13 September 2023

Audie Cornish, the former host NPR’s All Things Considered, is an anchor and correspondent for CNN. Her podcast is The Assignment. “I think there is journalism inherent in an interview. Like the interview itself should be considered a piece of journalism. It isn't always. Sometimes the vibe is that it’s a little window dressing or that it's personality driven and I don't subscribe to that. I think that it has its own journalism. It's my journalism.” Show notes: @AudieCornish Cornish's NPR archive 01:00 The Assignment (CNN Audio • 2022) 25:00 "Letters: 'Music Curator' Diplo" (NPR • Jun 2012) 36:00 Cornish’s Twitter thread (Jan 2022) 43:00 Serial (Serial Productions) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcribed - Published: 6 September 2023