Longform

Parul Sehgal is a book critic for The New York Times. “I write about books, I review books, but in a sense, to do my job at a newspaper also puts that pressure on a piece to say: why should you read or care about this? You’re trying to tweeze out what is newsworthy, what is interesting, what is vital about this book….My job is I think to be honest with the reader and to keep surfacing new ways for me and for other people to think about books. New vocabularies of pleasure and disgust.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. parulsehgal.com @parul_sehgal Sehgal's archive at the New York Times [17:11] “Mothers of Invention: A Group of Authors Finds New Narrative Possibilities in Parenthood” (Bookforum • 2015) [17:20] “In Letters to the World, a New Wave of Memoirs Draws on the Intimate” (New York Times • 2019) [17:33] “#MeToo Is All Too Real. But to Better Understand it, Turn to Fiction.” (New York Times • 2019) [24:18] Longform Podcast #354: Jia Tolentino [

James Verini is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. His new book is They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate. “War is mostly down time. War is mostly waiting around for something to happen.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and "Couples Therapy" for sponsoring this week's episode. jamesverini.com Verini's archive on Longform Longform Podcast #147: James Verini [4:19] They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate (W.W. Norton • 2019) [12:12] “The Prosecutor and the President” (The New York Times Magazine • 2016) [37:11] Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lori Gottlieb is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her new book is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. “Everything that I had done all coalesced into one thing. As a journalist i was helping people to tell their stories, as a therapist I could help people to edit their stories, to change their stories. I could be immersed in the human condition in both of these things.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Native, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. @LoriGottlieb1 lorigottlieb.com Gottlieb's archive at The Atlantic [2:57] Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed (Houghton Mifflin • 2019) [03:53] Lori Gottlieb's TED Talk: “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life”(2019) [9:46] “Slate Diary: Lori Gottlieb” (Slate • 1998) [11:35] “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” (The Atlantic • 2008) [11:36] Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good

Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, and the novel The Gin Closet. Her new essay collection is Make It Scream, Make It Burn. “My writing is always basically asking: what does it feel like to be alive, and how do we ever try to understand what it feels like for anybody else to be alive? In that sense, on the intellectual level, I’m always going to keep chasing the same unanswerable things.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Mythology for sponsoring this week's episode. Apply to the University of Pittsburgh's Writing Program @lsjamison lesliejamison.com Jamison on Longform Longform Podcast #92: Leslie Jamison [05:19] ”52 Blue”(Atavist • 2014) [16:17] “In the Shadow of a Fairy Tale” (New York Times Magazine • 2017) [32:20] “A24 is Making Limited-Edition Books for Ex Machina, The Witch, and Moonlight”(The Verge • 2019) [33:33] The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press • 2014) [33:54] The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (Little, Brown • 2018) [51:46] “Gi

Errol Morris is the director of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. His latest film is American Dharma. “I don’t make films because it makes sense to make them. Probably if I thought carefully about whether they made sense, I would stop immediately. I make them because I have a need to do it. I have a need to think about stuff. Writing and filmmaking for me is a form of thinking. It’s an opportunity to think about something. And I enjoy it. I don’t know what I would do without filmmaking.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers and SAIC. @errolmorris errolmorris.com [05:37] American Dharma (2019) [11:30] The Fog of War (2003) [11:43] Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred. A Leutcher, Jr. (1999) [19:55] The Unknown Known (2013) [20:49] Twelve O'Clock High (1949) [23:31] The Searchers (1956) [37:38] The Thin Blue Line (1988) [38:13] Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) [39:46] Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising (Penguin • 2017) [39:56] Fire and Fu

Ashley Feinberg is a senior writer at Slate. She recently uncovered Mitt Romney's secret Twitter account. “The whole thing about politics is that they are basically creating this character, this mask, and that is who they are supposed to be. That is who they try to project to the world. We know that it’s not really them but we have no access to what they actually are. This is the closest we get to seeing what they’re doing when they think no one is watching. … This is the most unfiltered access to what they’re actually thinking.” @ashleyfeinberg ashleyfeinberg.com Feinberg's archive at Slate [03:55] “This Sure Looks Like Mitt Romney’s Secret Twitter Account (Update: It Is)” (Slate • 2019) [04:50] “The Liberation of Mitt Romney” (The Atlantic • 2019) [10:03] “This Is Almost Certainly James Comey's Twitter Account” (Gizmodo • 2017) [10:19] “'Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters.' James Comey Is Trolling Trump With Bible Verse” (Time • 2017) [13:24] “That Idiot on Your Hunting Message Board Might

Carvell Wallace is a podcast host and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-author, with Andre Iguodala, of The Sixth Man. “So much of my life experience coalesces into things that are useful… All those years that I was obsessing over this that or the other thing, all the weird stuff that I would do, all the weird things that happened to me, all the places I found myself in that I didn’t want to be in but were interesting - this is all part of what makes me the writer that I am today.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Native, and Villains for sponsoring this week's episode. @carvellwallace carvellwallace.com [02:15] Slate's Mom and Dad are Fighting Podcast [02:21] Season One of Closer Than They Appear Podcast [02:35] The Sixth Man: A Memoir (Blue Rider Press • 2019) [05:09] Episode One of Finding Fred [09:17] Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (Bradbury Press • 1970) [09:35] Purple Rain (1984) [09:40] The Karate Kid (Scholastic • 1984) [10:24

Nicholas Quah founded and writes Hot Pod, a newsletter about the podcasting industry, and reviews podcasts for Vulture. “I think to some extent I’m in love with the concept of momentum. Sheer velocity. It’s painful. It’s punishing. Physically, I’m worse off for it. But I feel like if I stop moving, something will fall. Something will break. And I’m over. It’s a horrible feeling.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Audm, and Bayer for sponsoring this week's episode. @nwquah nicholasquah.com hotpodnews.com Quah's archive at Vulture [13:51] Business Insider Intelligence [17:26] Season One of Serial Podcast [17:26] Longform Podcast #327: Julie Snyder [30:56] Megaphone (formerly Panoply Media) [52:30] New York Post's We Hear Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Radhika Jones is the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and the editor of Women on Women. “There are a lot of people who still see the value of talking to someone, having a real conversation — about the things that they’re doing, the things that they’re caring about, the things that they’re afraid of, the things that are challenging — because in that conversation, they themselves will discover things that they didn’t realize. It obviously takes courage. It’s a payoff for the reader, certainly, but I think that there are subjects who understand that there is something there for them, too.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @radhikajones [03:28] Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit [08:45] “The Beautiful Power of Ta-Nehisi Coates” (Vanity Fair • 2019) [11:42] “Delta Nights” (New Yorker • 2000) [31:05] “Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist” (TIME • 2010) [39:50] George Magazine [40:37] Dominick Dunne's Vanity Fair archive [41:15] “The Often Perilous,

Andrew Marantz is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new book is Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. “Some nonfiction can be reduced to a bulletpoint primer, but a good book is a good book. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, it should create a feeling, it should create a world, it should be a feeling that you want to live in and that tilts the way you see things. Isn’t that the point?” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @andrewmarantz andrewmarantz.com Marantz on Longform [01:34] Antisocial (Random House • 2019) [03:13] Marantz's Tour Schedule [11:54] Longform Podcast #193: Robin Marantz Henig [18:58] “A Rising Tide”(Harper's • 2011) [19:00] “My Summer at an Indian Call Center”(Mother Jones • 2011) [27:20] “How Silicon Valley Nails Silicon Valley”(New Yorker • 2016) [27:58] “Ready for Prime Time”(New Yorker • 2016) [28:03] “The Virologist”(New Yorker • 2014) [39:31] “Trolls For T

Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes The Vietnam War, Baseball, and The Central Park Five. His new series is Country Music. “History, which seems to most people safe — it isn’t. I think the future is pretty safe, it’s the past that’s so terrifying and malleable.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Vistaprint, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @KenBurns kenburns.com [01:08] The Vietnam War (2017) [01:12] Country Music (2019) [04:58] Salesman (1969) [09:04] Jazz (2001) [13:45] The Civil War (1990) [13:48] Baseball (1994) [13:55] The War (miniseries • 2007) [13:57] The National Parks (2009) [14:00] The Roosevelts (2014) [44:49] Odd Man Out (1947) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and Between the World and Me. His new novel is The Water Dancer. Chris Jackson is Coates's editor, and the publisher and editor-in-chief of One World. “I don’t think an essay works unless I can pin a story to it. You don’t want people to just say, ‘Oh that was a cool argument.’ You want people to say, ‘I could not stop thinking about this.’ You want them to nudge their wives and husbands and say, ‘You have to read this.’ You want them to be bothered by it.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, Vistaprint, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @cjaxone ta-nehisicoates.com cjaxone.tumblr.com Coates on Longform Coates's first appearance on the Longform Podcast [02:00] The Water Dancer: A Novel (One World • 2019) [02:45] Coates’s Tour Schedule [04:30] Jackson's Email [06:45] The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (Spiegel & Grau • 2009) [12:58] ”Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War”(The Atlan

Paul Tough is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us. “The nice thing about a book as opposed to a magazine article is that it’s less formulaic. As a writer, it gives you more freedom — you’re trying to create an emotional mood where ideas have a place to sit in a person’s brain. And when people are moved by a book, it’s not by being told, ‘Here’s the problem, here’s the answer, now go do it.’ It’s by having your vision of the world slightly changed.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. [03:25] The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2019) [04:00] “Terminal Delinquents”(Esquire • 1990) [04:50] Tough’s Harper’s archive [05:50] 2600: The Hacker Quarterly [09:00] Longform Podcast #104: Lewis Lapham [10:30] “The Alchemy of OxyContin” (New York Times Magazine • 2001) [11:40] Tough’s New York Times Magazine archive [16:

Mike Issac covers Silicon Valley for The New York Times. He is the author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. “People try to use journalists all the time. Your job as a journalist is to figure out who’s using you, why they’re using you, and whether you can do something legitimately without playing into one side or another.” Thanks to MailChimp, Pitt Writers, and Wolverine Podcast for sponsoring this week's episode. @MikeIsaac Isaac on Longform [00:14] Wolverine Podcast [02:09] Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (W. W. Norton & Company • 2019) [02:20] Issac’s New York Times archive [03:57] Issac’s Paste Magazine archive [06:15] Longform Podcast #337: Casey Newton [08:40] Steve Jobs and Walt Mossberg [25:38] “How Uber Deceives the Authorities Worldwide” (New York Times • 2017) [25:44] “Inside Uber’s Aggressive, Unrestrained Workplace Culture” (New York Times • 2017) [25:48] Susan Fowler blog post [31:00] Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou • Knopf • 2018) [36:31] Isaac on

Michelle García has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Oxford American. She directed the PBS film, Against Mexico: The Making of Heroes and Enemies. “We have to see that within difficult stories there is a very important message of humanity triumphing over despair. If you don’t focus on joy, humanity is squashed. If all you see and all you narrate is pain, then you extinguish the possibility of joy and the important part of holding onto humanity.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @pistoleraprod michellegarciainc.com Rally+PEN America event on September 5 [00:42] “Against Mexico: The Making of Heroes and Enemies” (PBS • 2012) [01:04] “The Border and the American Imagination” (The Baffler • 2018) [01:07] “Rewriting the West” (Guernica • 2019) [02:12] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) [02:30] Evan Ratliff on CoinTalk [09:30] “New Tack Against Illegal Immigrants: Trespassing Cha

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade is a French documentary filmmaker. He directed Murder on a Sunday Morning and The Staircase. “The courtroom in the United States is not really about the truth. It’s more about a story against another story. It’s more about storytelling. The more compelling or believable story by the jury will win. But in the end, we don’t know: is it the truth or not?” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and We Love You (and So Can You) for sponsoring this week's episode. [00:05] We Love You (And So Can You) [01:00] You Can’t Make This Up [02:16] The Staircase (2004) [02:50] The Staircase II: The Last Chance (2013) [02:53] The Staircase (2018) [05:15] Murder on a Sunday Morning (2001) [05:35] The Justice of the Men (2001) [11:35] Caught in the Acts (Raymond Depardon • 1994) [12:05] Law and Order (Frederick Wiseman • 1969) [12:12] Welfare(Frederick Wiseman • 1975) [12:16] Public Housing (Frederick Wiseman • 1997) [25:23] Making a Murderer (Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos • 2

Taylor Lorenz just announced she is leaving her job covering internet culture for The Atlantic to join The New York Times. “With technology and internet culture, I am more of an optimist than a lot of other people who cover those topics. It’s more ambiguous for me. It's more like, ‘This is the world we live in now and here are the pros and here are the cons. There are a lot of cons, but there are also these pros.’ I like how things shift and change under me. I like to see how things are constantly evolving.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @taylorlorenz Lorenz on Longform [01:45] Lorenz’s archive at The Atlantic [06:15] "The Shooter’s Manifesto Was Designed to Troll" (The Atlantic • 2019) [06:30] "Instagram Is the Internet’s New Home for Hate" (The Atlantic • 2019) [07:50] "The Real Difference Between Creators and Influencers" (The Atlantic • 2019) [17:15] INSTANT [19:00] The Daily What [21:20] "Where Everyone’s an Influencer" (The Atlantic • 201

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion. “I feel a lot of useful guilt solidifying my own advantages at a time when the ground people stand on is being ripped away. And I feel a lot of emotional anxiety about the systems that connect us - about the things that make my life more convenient and make other people’s lives worse. It’s the reality of knowing that ten years from now, when there are millions of more climate refugees, that you’ll be okay. It makes me feel so crazy and lucky and intent on doing something with being alive.” Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @jiatolentino Tolentino on Longform [01:47] Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion (Random House • 2019) [02:15] Jia’s archive at the New Yorker [02:18] Longform Podcast #183: Jia Tolentino [09:08] “The Promise of Vaping and the Rise of Juul” (New Yorker • 2018) [11:31] “

Baxter Holmes is a senior writer for ESPN. He won the James Beard Award for his 2017 article, “The NBA's Secret Addiction.” “If there’s anything I’m really fighting for it’s people’s memory. I love the notion of trying to write a story that sticks with people. And that requires really compelling characters. It requires in-depth reporting — you have to take people on a journey. It needs to be so rich and something they didn’t know. I look for a story that I can tell well enough that it will hold up, that it will earn someone’s memory.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @Baxter Holmes on Longform [00:25] "The Threat of Youth Basketball" (ESPN • 2019) [01:00] "The NBA's Secret Addiction" (ESPN • 2017) [01:15] "The Secret Team Dinners That Have Built the Spurs' Dynasty" (ESPN • 2019) [01:20] "Lakers 2.0: The Failed Reboot of the NBA's Crown Jewel" (ESPN • 2019) [03:02] Longform Podcast #226: Terry Gross [30:40] "Inside the Corrosive Workpla

Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. “I’ve noticed that the times I’m extra susceptible to being on social media is when I am feeling personally insecure or when I’m dealing with existential dread. That within itself is not part of the attention economy—that’s just a human being having feelings and reacting to things. For me, it’s a question of like, ‘What do I do with that?’ I can either feed it back into the attention economy and actually get more of it back—more anxiety or more existential dread—or I can go in this other direction and spend time alone or with people who care about the same things. Those are places where I can bring my feelings and they won’t destroy me.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @the_jennitaur jennyodell.com Jenny Odell on Longform [00:49] How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Melville House • 2019) [00:51] ”How To Do Nothing” t