Longform

For the first time, Janet Reitman discusses her Rolling Stone cover story on accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. "My editors, myself, a lot of people who work for the magazine — we lived through an act of terrorism. We know what it feels like. There have been accusations to me personally of being insensitive, and I can tell you that I'm far from insensitive, not only to the political...

Kelley Benham is a writer and editor at the Tampa Bay Times. "People connect with this story in a really visceral kind of way, usually because of some experience they've had or someone close to them has had. I've had 90-year-old women crying into my phone about babies they lost 70 years ago. I've had people kind of sneak up to me and tell me about babies that have died that they don't talk about,...

Robert Kolker is the author of Lost Girls and a contributing editor at New York. "For better or for worse, my heart's not in the mystery. I want [the killer] to be caught—he's obviously a predator and he's unstable. But they all are. They're all messed up people who victimize other people and they all look normal. The art and science of catching serial killers has become more than slightly overblo...

Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. "I never wrote anything myself or ran anything from other people that was needlessly negative. It wasn't some false grin plastered all over it — we addressed dark things too, and poked fun at things. But I didn't want there to ever be a tone of yeah, let's really just deflate this. Becau...

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of The Skies Belong to Us. "It was this big review in The New York Times and I was terrified that it was going to say something awful about the book or about me as a writer. And my son said to me — he's 5, I should say — "If it's bad, you won't die." That's a good point, you know? So I always think of that when I pick up a new rev...

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses "The Oilman's Daughter," his new story in The Atavist. "This woman was given the opportunity to take on a new identity. And it was a mistake. She never should've done it. If there was a way for her to go back and say, 'No, I don't want to know this. I want to be who I am,' then I think she should've taken that. … I'm fascinated with people...

Steve Kandell is the longfom editor at BuzzFeed. "What would be the sort of longer, narrative nonfiction, journalistic equivalent of something that would have the same effect on you as a bunch of cat GIFs? And not because it's cute, but it's the kind of thing that makes you go, 'OK, I need a lot of other people to see this.'" Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @St...

Nicholas Schmidle is a staff writer at The New Yorker. "I was in a taxi, leaving Karachi to go attend this festival, and we started getting these very disturbing phone calls from newspaper reporters that didn't exist, all of them asking me to meet them at various places in Karachi. I had read enough about the Daniel Pearl case to know what happened in the days leading up, and this was very similar...

Chris Heath, winner of the 2013 National Magazine Award for Reporting, is a staff writer at GQ. "I present myself as someone who is going to be rigorous and honest. And if you can engage in the way I'm asking you to engage, then I hope you will recognize yourself in a more truthful way in this story than you usually do. And maybe even, with a bit of luck, more than you ever have before. That's wha...

Abrams covers the NBA for Grantland. "Players know that with the stories I do I'm not trying to burn anybody. I'm trying to tell a story for what it's worth and be honest to that person… That's one of my main goals, that you know why this person is [a certain] way when they step on the court. You know why Monta Ellis is going to keep shooting the ball. You know why Zach Randolph is such a gritty p...

Margalit Fox is a senior obituary writer for The New York Times and the author of The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. "You do get emotionally involved with people, even though as a journalist you're not supposed to. But as a human being, how can you not? Particularly people who had difficult, tragic, poignant lives. But there are also people that you just wish you had...

Mat Honan is a senior writer at Wired. "[The tech] industry — especially as it relates to a lot the silly apps and the silly websites and the silly shit that we put up with — is ridiculous. It's just such a hype fest, people living off of jargon and nonsense. There are entire conferences devoted to nonsense! ... I like to skewer that stuff, because I don't want to feel responsible for it. I don't...

Jonathan Shainin, senior editor at The Caravan.   "Working in an environment that's foreign, where you have to kind of think through a lot of things from the ground up...I find it to be really stimulating to have to interrogate the assumptions that you have as an editor about what's interesting and what's not interesting, what's a good story and what's a bad story, what's the story that's been don...

Vanessa Grigoriadis, contributing editor at New York and Vanity Fair. On the art of the celebrity interview: "People are smart. Particularly these people. They're sitting there thinking, "When is she going to drop that question?" They know what you're doing. So the way I think about it is: let's have an actual, genuine, human, interesting conversation. ... [Journalists] have all sorts of schemes o...

Natasha Vargas-Cooper, writer. Show notes: @natashavc natashavc.com Vargas-Cooper on Longform [2:30] "Jesse James Hollywood: On Trial" (The Awl • May-July 2009) [11:00] Mad Men Unbuttoned (2010) [18:30] "The Day-Care Threat" (Brad Schrade, Jeremy Olson and Glenn Howatt • Minneapolis Star Tribune) [19:30] "When A 10-Year-Old Kills His Nazi Father, Who's To Blame?" (BuzzFeed • Feb 2012) [34:00] "Har...

Ted Conover, author of five books and the recent Harper's article "The Way of All Flesh." Show notes: tedconover.com Interview Transcript Personal Archive [1:00] "The Way of All Flesh" (Harper's • April 2013) [3:30] "Power Steer" (Michael Pollan • New York Times Magazine • March 2002) [15:00] Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Illegal Migrants (1987) [33:30] "Enter the Chicken" (Burk...

Ann Friedman, writer, editor and co-founder of Tomorrow. Show notes: @annfriedman annfriedman.com Personal Archive [5:45] Pie Charts Archive (The Hairpin) [7:15] #realtalk Column (CJR) [15:00] "The Ann Friedman Weekly" [22:00] "Minimum Rage" (Nona Willis Aronowitz • GOOD • March 2012) [23:00] "What Women Want" A profile of James Deen (Amanda Hess • GOOD • Nov 2011) [34:45] Tomorrow [39:00] Tomorro...

Patrick Symmes, foreign correspondent and contributor to Outside and Harper's.  Show notes: @patricksymmes patricksymmes.com Symmes's Outside archive Symmes's Harper's archive [2:30] Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend (2000) [7:00] The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile (2008) [21:45] "Taking the Measure of Castro, Ounce by Ounce"...

Jay Caspian Kang, writer and editor at Grantland. Show notes: @jaycaspiankang [2:00] "Online Poker's Big Winner" (New York Times Magazine • 2011) [4:30] The Dead Do Not Improve (2012) [8:00] "The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High" (The Morning News • 2010) [11:30] "Immigrant Misappropriations: The Importance of Ichiro" (Grantland • 2011) [15:00] "The White Album" A profile of...

Molly Young, freelance writer for GQ and New York. Show notes: @rolfpotts rolfpotts.com [2:00] Murder of football player in Kansas shakes town (Sports Illustrated • Feb 2013) [15:00] Salon travel column (1999-2000) [16:30] "Storming the Beach" (Salon • Jan 1999) [19:30] "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" (2002) [21:00] "My Beirut Hostage Crisis" (Salon • June 200...

Rolf Potts, travel writer. Show notes: @rolfpotts rolfpotts.com [2:00] Murder of football player in Kansas shakes town (Sports Illustrated • Feb 2013) [15:00] Salon travel column (1999-2000) [16:30] "Storming the Beach" (Salon • Jan 1999) [19:30] "Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel" (2002) [21:00] "My Beirut Hostage Crisis" (Salon • June 2000) [25:00] Wikipedia: Fl...

Jake Silverstein, editor-in-chief of Texas Monthly. Show notes: @jakesilverstein Silverstein's Texas Monthly archive [5:00] Welcome to the New National Homepage of Texas (Texas Monthly • Jan 2013) [14:00] "The Innocent Man, Part 1" (Pamela Colloff • Texas Monthly • Nov 2012) [14:30] Colloff's ongoing coverage of the Michael Morton case [19:30] "Walking the Border" (Luke Dittrich • Esquire • April...

Emily Nussbaum, television critic at The New Yorker. Show notes: @emilynussbaum emilynussbaum.com Nussbaum's New Yorker archive Nussbaum's New York archive [1:30] Tina Fey at the Paley Center for Media [5:45] "Shark Week: House of Cards, Scandal, and the political game" (The New Yorker • Feb 2013) [8:00] "My Strange Addiction: The sleazy wisdom of Big Brother" (The New Yorker • Aug 2012) [8:40] "M...

Keith Gessen, founding editor of n+1 and contributor to The New Yorker. Show notes: Gessen's Personal Archive Gessen's n+1 archive Gessen's New Yorker archive [5:15] Money (n+1 • Mar 2006) [6:15] Ugly Duckling Presse [13:15] "Stuck" (New Yorker • Aug 2010) [sub req'd] [20:30] n+1 Digital Issue 1: Negation [22:30] McSweeny's [34:00] "The Intellectual Situation" (n+1 • Nov 2012) [35:00] Indecision (...

Matthew Power, freelance writer and contributing editor at Harper's. Show notes: @matthew_power matthewpower.net Power's Harper's archive Power's complete archive [2:00] "Excuse Us While We Kiss the Sky" (GQ • March 2013) [10:30] "Mississippi Drift" (Harper's • March 2008) [18:00] "Immersion Journalism" [pdf] (Harper's • Dec 2005) [22:30] "The Cherry Tree Garden" [pdf] (Granta • May 2008) [24:00]...