Longform

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 •

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

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 Atlant

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

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)

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

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

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

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 Evan

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 • 2

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 •

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

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 Afterl

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

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 "Grizzl

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

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” 

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: Advent

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 P

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 Cha