Longform

A look back at some of our favorite moments from the first 99. Thanks to our sponsors, TinyLetter and Squarespace. Show Notes: [4:45] #3: David Grann [7:00] #4: Jon Mooallem [10:10] #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates [14:15] #9: Jeanne Marie Laskas [12:32] #10: Chris Jones [18:00] #22: Charles Duhigg [20:00] #29: Matthew Power [23:45] #37: Ann Friedman [26:30] #39: Natasha Vargas-Cooper [28:00] #43: Margalit Fo...

John Heilemann is the managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and the co-author of Game Change and Double Down. "If you're a writer, and you're not an asshole, you want the maximum number of people to read your stuff. There's nothing wrong with that. There's no great glory in cultivating some niche audience. I do this work because I believe in what I'm doing. I'm not trying to compromise my principl...

George Saunders has written for The New Yorker and GQ. His latest collection of short stories is Tenth of December. "Maybe you would understand your artistry to be: put me anywhere. I'll find human beings, I'll find human interest, I'll find literature. And I guess you could argue the weirder, or maybe the less explored the place, the better." Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this e...

Sarah Nicole Prickett is the founding editor of Adult. "I'll admit to being resistant to the 'by women for women' label that Adult had before because I saw it as being just 'by women,' period. That’s way more feminist than making something for women, which is very prescriptive and often comes in various shades of pink." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Pre-order...

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a senior editor at The Atlantic. His latest cover story is "The Case for Reparations." "The writer hopes for change, but writers can't assume that their work is going to cause change." Thanks to TinyLetter andI Am Zlatan, the international bestseller published by Random House, for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @tanehisicoates Coates's blog for The Atlantic Coates...

Nathaniel Rich writes for Rolling Stone, Harper's and the New York Times Magazine. His latest novel is Odds Against Tomorrow. "I'm drawn to obsession. I think I'm an obsessive in a way, probably most writers are. It's an obsessive act to sit at a desk by yourself." Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @NathanielRich nathanielrich.com Ric...

Wesley Morris, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers film at Grantland. "That's what writing about race and popular culture is for me: it's crime reporting. It's not me looking for an agenda when I go to the movies ... but I feel a moral responsibility to report a crime being committed. That's what I'm forced to do over and over again." Thanks to this week's sponsors, Warby Parker and TinyLetter. Show n...

Gary Smith retired last month after more than 30 years of writing for Sports Illustrated. "We were on the Santa Monica Freeway, Ali's driving 70 miles an hour and his eyes are drifting asleep—the medication for Parkinson's would do that to him. I'm thinking, 'Oh, crap.' We're weaving between lanes, cars are honking, and I'm wondering in the passenger seat, 'Should I grab the wheel from the greates...

Michael Paterniti, a correspondent for GQ, has also written for Esquire, Rolling Stone and Outside. His latest book is The Telling Room. "I want to see it, whatever it is. If it's war, if it's suffering, if it's complete, unbridled elation, I just want to see what that looks like—I want to smell it, I want to taste it, I want to think about it, I want to be caught up in it." Thanks to this week's...

Leslie Jamison has written for The Believer, Harper's and The New York Times. Her latest book is The Empathy Exams. "I sort of love imagining a small army of 22-year-old men who are just like, 'Fuck that book, I wish it was never published.'" Thanks to TinyLetter and Harry's for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @lsjamison lesliejamison.com Jamison on Longform [9:00] The Empathy Exams (G...

Michael Lewis has written for The New Republic, Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is Flash Boys. "When you're telling a story, you're essentially playing the cards you're dealt. ... Sometimes the hand is very easy to play. Sometimes the hand is difficult to play. At the end, I just try to think, 'Is there anything I would have done differently?' 'Is there any trick I mis...

Susan Dominus is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. "A lot of reporting is really just hanging around and not going home until something interesting happens." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @susandominus Dominus on Longform [7:00] Longform Podcast #31: Emily Nussbaum [9:45] "Santa's Little Helper" (New York Times • Dec 1999) [10:00] "The Allergy Pr...

Alice Gregory has written for n+1, GQ, The New York Times and Harper's. "If you don't have a real story with a beginning, middle and an end, you owe it to the reader to kind of serve as their chaperone." Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @alicegregory Gregory on Longform alicegregory.tumblr.com [4:30] "Sad as Hell" (n+1 • Nov 2010) [9...

Sam Biddle writes for Valleywag. "It's a lot of overgrown, entitled manchildren pulling price tags out of the ether and passing them around. Considering Silicon Valley worthy of contempt is the first premise that we work from." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @samfbiddle [6:15] Valleywag's coverage of Sean Parker [6:45] "'The Uber of Private Jets' is a Real Thi...

Amanda Hess, a staff writer at Slate, has also written for Pacific Standard, GOOD, and ESPN the Magazine. "I ended up not loving the fact that I was getting a bunch of calls from MSNBC and CNN, who mostly wanted to talk about people threatening to rape and kill me and only a tiny bit about the story I'd written. ... It was tiring, and it seemed dismissive of me as a person. It's a strange thing to...

Mattathias Schwartz has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and Harper's. "I figure it's like digging through a wall with a spoon: if you spend enough time at it eventually you get to the other side." Thanks to TinyLetter and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: mattathiasschwartz.com Schwartz on Longform [4:00] "A Massacre in Jamaica" (New Yorker • Dec 2011)...

Tavi Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie. "I just want our readers to know that they are already smart enough and cool enough." Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Atavist Books. Show notes: @tavitulle Rookie thestylerookie.com [4:15] "Tavi Says" (Lizze Widdicombe • New Yorker • Sep 2010) [30:30] "A Teen Just Trying to Figure It Out" (TED • Mar 2012) [33:30] Rookie Yea...

Sabrina Rubin Erdely, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has also written for GQ, Philadelphia and SELF.  "I think that people are, by their nature, good and want to act rightly. So I'm very interested in why people do these things that result in really bad actions. My lack of outrage actually is one of the things that probably helps me in my reporting because I really am propelled by this pu...

"The kind of stories I've gotten to do have involved fulfilling my childhood fantasies of having an adventurous life. Even though I don't make a ton of money doing it, I've never felt like I was missing out on something." Our friend Matt Power, a freelance journalist, died this week while on assignment in Uganda. Matt recorded this episode of the Longform Podcast with Evan Ratliff in February 2013...

Lawrence Wright, author of The Looming Tower and Going Clear, is a staff writer for The New Yorker. "If I had the chance to interview Osama Bin Laden, should I kill him? It’s a fair question. Suppose we’re having dinner — should I stab him with the bread knife? Do I have a moral obligation to kill him? Or do I have a moral obligation as a reporter to simply hear him? … It’s sometimes difficult to...

Pamela Colloff and Mimi Swartz are executive editors of Texas Monthly. Colloff: "That sense of loss, that sense of normal life turning on a dime is something that, in a very different way, I’ve experienced. And I carry that with me into some of the more difficult stories." Swartz: "Here’s this great [public interest] story that nobody’s ever told. Now how can I write it so the maximum number of pe...

Jennifer Senior is a contributing editor at New York and the author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood. "I've had moments in motherhood that have been close to something like religious. But I don't think social scientists say things like, "How many numinous moments have you had?" They don't do that, so you have to figure out what to do. I was suddenly turning to other texts to...

Kevin Roose, a writer at New York, has contributed to The New York Times, GQ and Esquire. His latest book is Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits. "Google will give you away. I feel like one undercover book is all you get these days before the jig is up. ... Unless, like Barbara Ehrenreich, you legally change your name. I was not quite prepared to go that far."...

Wil S. Hylton, a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of Vanished. "I despise the fucking nut graf. I think it's a joke, a cop out. The story probably should be about something larger than itself but if you have to tell people what that is, you've failed form the beginning. If they can't find it, you didn't put it there and you shouldn't be beating them over the head...

David Kushner, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Wired and The Atavist. "The minute you see an incredible character, you know. The only thing I can compare it to is bowling, not that I'm much of a bowler. On the few times I've thrown a strike, you know it before it hits the pins." Thanks to TinyLetter and ProFlowers for sponsoring this week's epis...