Longform

Nitasha Tiku is a senior writer at Wired. “I’ve always been an incredibly nosy person—not nosy, curious. Curious about the world. It just gives you a license to ask any question, and hopefully if you have a willing editor, the freedom to see something fascinating and pursue it. It was just a natural fit from there. But that also means I don’t have the machismo, ‘breaking news’ sort of a thing. I f...

Chana Joffe-Walt is a producer and reporter at This American Life. Her latest story is "Five Women." “I felt like there was more to learn from these stories, more than just which men are bad and shouldn’t have the Netflix special that they wanted to have. And I was interested, also, in that there were groups of women, and that somehow, in having a group of women, you would have variation of experi...

Joe Weisenthal is the executive editor of news for Bloomberg Digital and the co-host of What’d You Miss? and Odd Lots. "If I don’t say yes to this, then I can never say yes to anything again. Because when else am I going to get a chance in life to co-host a tv show? Even if it’s terrible, and I’m terrible at it, and it’s cancelled after three months, and everyone thinks it’s awful, for the rest of...

Sean Fennessy is the editor-in-chief of The Ringer and a former Grantland editor. He hosts The Big Picture. "What I try to do is listen to people as much as I can. And try to be compassionate. I think it’s really hard to be on the internet. This is an internet company, in a lot of ways. We have a documentary coming out that’s going to be on linear television that’s really exciting. Maybe we’ll hav...

Jenna Wortham is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Still Processing. “I feel like I’m still writing to let my 10-year-old self know it’s okay to be you. It’s okay to be a chubby androgynous weirdo. You know what I mean? Like this weird black kid. It’s okay. There are others like you.” Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, "Food: A Cultural Culinary History," and "Tales" for spons...

Michael Idov is a screenwriter, journalist, and the former editor-in-chief of GQ Russia. His latest book is Dressed Up for a Riot. "It just goes to show that the best thing you can possibly do as a journalist is to forget you’re a journalist, go out, have some authentic experiences, preferably fail at something really hard, and then write about that." Thanks to MailChimp and Mubi for sponsoring th...

Liliana Segura writes for The Intercept. “My form of advocacy against the death penalty, frankly, has always been to tell those stories that other people aren’t seeing. And to humanize the people—not just the people facing execution, but everyone around them.” Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, and Tripping.com for sponsoring this week's episode. @LilianaSegura Segura on Longform [01:50] "Dispatch From An...

Seth Wickersham is a senior writer for ESPN. His latest article is "For Kraft, Brady and Belichick, Is This the Beginning of the End?" “You want to write about something real. I hate stories that are, the tension of the story is, talk radio perception versus the reality that I see when I’m with somebody. I can’t stand those stories because to me, you’re just writing about the ether versus a real p...

Nathan Thornburgh is the co-founder of Roads & Kingdoms. "You have to remain committed to the kind of irrational act of producing journalism for an uncaring world. You have to want to do that so bad, that you will never not be doing that. There’s so many ways to die in this business." Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, and Rise and Grind for sponsoring this week's episode. @thornburgh Thornburgh on Longfo...

Kiera Feldman is an investigative reporter. Her latest article is "Trashed: Inside the Deadly World of Private Garbage Collection." "I used to have a lot of anxiety that I don’t seem like an investigative reporter. Utlimately, my reporting personality is just me. It’s just, I want to be real with people. And the number one rule of reporting is to be a human being to other people. Be decent. Be kin...

Azmat Khan is an investigative reporter and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. "For me, what matters most is systematic investigation, and I think that’s different than an investigative story that might explore one case. It’s about stepping back and understanding the big picture and getting to the heart of something. It doesn’t have to be a number’s game, but being able to say:...

Ben Taub is a staff writer at The New Yorker. “I don’t think it’s my place to be cynical because I’ve observed some of the horrors of the Syrian War through these various materials, but it’s Syrians that are living them. It’s Syrians that are being largely ignored by the international community and by a lot of political attention on ISIS. And I think that it wouldn’t be my place to be cynical when...

Maggie Haberman covers the White House for The New York Times. “If I start thinking about it, then I’m not going to be able to just keep doing my job. I'm being as honest as I can — I try not to think about it. If you’re flying a plane and you think about the fact that if the plane blows up in midair you’re gonna die, do you feel like you can really focus as well? So, I’m not thinking about [the s...

Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, is the founder of Women in the World. Her latest book is The Vanity Fair Diaries. “I believed that my bravado had no limit, if you know what I mean. I see limits now, let’s put it that way. I do see limits. But you know, I’m still pretty reckless when I want something. That’s why I don’t tweet much. I’ll say something that will just...

Mara Shalhoup was until recently editor-in-chief of LA Weekly. She is the author of BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family. “I’m so fearful about what it will look like for cities without an outlet for [alt-weekly] stories. And for young writers, who need and deserve the hands-on editing these kind of editors can give them and help really launch careers … it’s a tragedy for...

Zoe Chace is a reporter and producer at This American Life. “Radio is a movie in your head. It’s a very visual thing. It’s a transporting thing—when it’s done well. And it’s louder than your thoughts. It is both of those things. It would just take me out of the place that I was, where I was lost and couldn’t figure things out. ... They had a very personal way of telling the story to you, so that y...

Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for Buzzfeed and the author of News Junkie. “I made the worst mistake that cost me my credibility and I could have done two things. I could have walked away, and said I’m done with this, no one wants me anymore. Or I could have—which I did—say, I’m going to learn how to do this differently, and be better. And that’s ultimately is what paved the way...

Kara Swisher is the executive editor and co-founder of Recode. “I do the work. I just work harder than other people. I really do. I work harder, I interview more people, I call more people, I text more people. And so I find out, and they can not talk to me — fine. I know anyway. I’d like to talk to you, I’d like to give you a chance. I’d like to be fair. I’d like to hear your side of the story. An...

Tyler Cowen is an economist, the co-founder of Marginal Revolution, and the host of Conversations with Tyler. His latest book is The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream. “I think of my central contribution, or what I’m trying to have it be, is teaching people to think of counter arguments. I’m trying to teach a method: always push things one step further. What if, und...

Jodi Kantor is a New York Times investigative reporter and the author of The Obamas. “Being a reporter really robs you of self-consciousness and shyness. You realize that it’s this great gift of being able to ask crazy questions, either really personal or very probing or especially with a powerful — to walk up to Harvey Weinstein, essentially and say, ‘What have you been doing to women all these y...

Jim Nelson is the editor-in-chief of GQ. “One of the things that was initially a challenge was we would all think of ‘the print side’ and ‘the digital side.’ Now what we all think about is, ‘Okay, stop saying GQ.com and GQ the print edition. It’s just GQ!’ And once you cross that line, you don’t ever want to go back to it. I can’t imagine. The job has changed so much, even in the last three years,...

Sarah Ellison is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of War at the Wall Street Journal. “There’s no lack of stories. ... There’s always an element where you’re going to be parachuting into something that someone has likely written about, to some degree. You can’t shy away from going into something that’s a crowded field.” Thanks to MailChimp, Quip, and BarkBox for sponsoring this...

Patricia Bosworth is a journalist and biographer. Her latest book is The Men in My Life. “The [acting] rejections are hellish and ghastly. At least they were to me. And I got tired of being rejected so much and also tired of not being able to control my life. And as soon as I became a writer, I had this control, I felt more active, more energized. But it was a decision that took a long time coming...

Michael Barbaro is the host of The Daily. “I don’t think The Daily should ever be my therapy session. That’s not what it’s meant to be, but I’m a human being. I arrive at work on a random Tuesday, and I do an interview with a guy like that, and it just punched me right in the stomach.” Thanks to MailChimp, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Blinkist for sponsoring this week's episode. @mi...

Vanessa Grigoriadis writes for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine. Her new book is Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus. “I’m a controversial writer. I’ve never shied away from controversy. I’ve only really courted it because I realized a lot earlier than a lot of other people who are involved in this whole depressing business that clicks are the way...