Longform

Josh Levin is the national editor at Slate. He is the host of the podcast Hang Up and Listen and the author of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth. “I think it’s a strength to make a thing, one that people might have thought was familiar, feel strange. And reminding people —in general, in life—that you don’t really know as much as you think you know. I think that carries over into any kind of storytelling.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @josh_levin Levin on Longform [01:48] The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth (Little, Brown and Company • 2019) [01:52] “The Welfare Queen” (Slate • 2013) [02:47] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) [03:25] Levin’s Archive at Slate [04:55] Other Magazines Column [05:03] Today’s Papers [07:25] “Little League Bullies” (Slate • 2007) [10:38] Dahlia Lithwick at Slate [12:22] Paul Ford on the Longform Podcast [13

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times and the author of Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel. “As a profile writer, the skill I have is getting in the room and staying in the room until someone is like, ‘Why is this bitch still in the room? Get her out of there?’ It’s a journalistic skill that is not a fluffy skill. There are people who are always actively trying to prevent your story, prevent you from seeing it, from seeing the things that would be good to see. There’s a lot of convincing, comforting and listening going on. And there’s a lot of dealing with the fact that somebody in the middle of talking to you can suddenly decide that you are the worst. Those things are very tense and it’s a specific skill that I have that can defray all those things. Or it lets me stay.” Thanks to MailChimp, Netflix, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @taffyakner taffyakner.com Brodesser-Akner on Longform [01:11] Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel (Random House • 2019) [02:

Renata Adler is a journalist, critic, and novelist. Her nonfiction collection is After the Tall Timber. “Unless you're going to be fairly definite, what's the point of writing?” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. Adler on Longform Adler's New Yorker archive [7:00] I, Libertine (Theodore Sturgeon • Ballantine Books • 1956) [8:00] After Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction (Ballantine Books • 2015) [9:00] "Letter from Selma" (New Yorker • Apr 1965) [9:00] "Fly Trans-love Airways" (New Yorker • Feb 1967) [15:00] "Letter from Israel" (New Yorker • Jun 1967) [sub req'd] [17:00] "Letter from Biafra" (New Yorker • Oct 1969) [sub req'd] [34:00] Adler's New York Times film reviews archive [47:00] "An American Original: Excerpts from Pat Moynihan's letters" (Steven Weisman • Vanity Fair • Oct 2010) [50:00] "The Perils of Pauline" (The New York Review of Books • Aug 1980) [1:08:00] "Two Trials" (New Yorker • June 1986) [sub req'd] [1:09:00] Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS,

Alex Mar has written for The Believer, Wired, and New York. She is the author of Witches of America and the director of the documentary American Mystic. “I really do believe that all of us run on some kind of desire for meaning. And if someone is an atheist and they don’t subscribe to an organized system, it doesn’t mean that they don’t crave something. Maybe it’s their job. Or maybe it’s the way that they raise their children with a certain kind of intense focus. Or something else. As humans, we are built to crave meaning, right? For me, that was something that I wanted to explore about myself.” Thanks to MailChimp, On the Media, The TED Interview,and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @alex_mar Mar on Longform [02:20] Witches of America (Sarah Crichton Books • 2016) [02:37] "Are We Ready for Intimacy With Androids?" (Wired • Oct 2017) [10:00] Mar’s Documentary: American Mystic [10:17] ”Satan in Poughkeepsie" (The Believer • 2015) [15:12] No Man Knows My History: The Life of

David Epstein has reported for ProPublica, Sports Illustrated, and This American Life. His new book is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. “You can’t just introspect or take a personality quiz and know what you’re good at or interested in. You actually have to try stuff and then reflect on it. That’s how you learn about yourself—otherwise, your insight into yourself is constrained by your roster of experiences.” Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Read This Summer, The TED Interview, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @DavidEpstein davidepstein.com Epstein on Longform [02:20] Epstein’s Sports Illustrated archive [02:21] Epstein’s ProPublica Archive [02:26] The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance (Portfolio • 2014) [02:29] Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Riverhead Books • 2019) [03:15] Longform Podcast #282: Jenna Wortham [05:40] Gladwell and Epstein Conversation [07:58] Gladwell and Epstei

Michael Pollan writes for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker and is the author of nine books. His latest is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. “I don’t like writing as an expert. I’m fine doing public speeches as an expert. Or writing op-ed pieces as an expert. But as a writer, it’s a killer. Nobody likes an expert. Nobody likes to be lectured at. And if you’ve read anything I’ve written, I’m kind of an idiot on page one. I am the naïve fish out of water. I’m learning though. The narrative that we always have as writers is our own education on the topic. We can recreate the process of learning that's behind the book.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @michaelpollan michaelpollan.com Pollan on Longform [00:38] How to Change Your Mind (Penguin Press • 2018) [00:46] Pollan's Harper’s archive [02:58] ”The Trip Treatment” (New Yorker • 2015)

Casey Cep has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. “I want to meet all of these expectations. I want my book to be a page-turner. I want it to be a beautiful literary object. I want it to sell. I want it to do all of these things. But at the end of the day, I just want to feel like I’ve honored this commitment between writer and reader, and writer and source. And those are sometimes in conflict.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @cncep Cep on Longform [00:07] Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Knopf • 2019) [09:51] The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (Erik Larson • Vintage • 2004) [10:39] The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (David Grann • Vintage Books • 2010) [14:30] The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Boo

Mark Adams is the author of Mr. America and Turn Right at Machu Picchu. His latest book is Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. “It’s always sheer and utter panic the whole time I’m on the road. I never sleep more than like three or four hours a night when I’m on the road because I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and I’m like, Who am I going to talk to today? I don’t have anything scheduled for today. What am I going to do? Sometimes things work out for that day and sometimes they don’t. I think when you start to lose that feeling — that tense feeling, that pit in your stomach — then the work starts to lose something as well.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @markcadams [00:35] Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time (Dutton • 2012) [00:43] Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton • 2018) [06:28] Mr. Amer

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Political Gabfest. Her latest book is Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. “I'm pretty convinced that if everybody went to criminal court we would not have courts that are dysfunctional the way our courts are. Because what you see every day is a lot of dysfunction and disrespect. It’s kind of deadening. Most people—especially most middle and upper-class people in this country—don’t know anything about the system. They haven’t experienced it first-hand and they prefer not to think about it. It’s very stigmatized. A lot of what I do is just bear witness.’” Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @emilybazelon Bazelon on Longform [02:16] Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Emily Bazelon • Random House • 2019) [03:38] Bazelon's Slate archive [03:38] Bazelon's Ne

Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. Her latest essay collection is Look Alive Out There. “The more extreme things get in reality, the more extreme escapism has to be. It’s like Game of Thrones or bust. But in reality, I think that part of what I’m trying to do with this book, or in anything I write, is to give permission to be mad about little things. Just because there’s all of this, someone still slid their hand down a subway pole and touched you. Or somebody bumped into you. There are still these minor indignities and infractions that occur consistently. And I think there’s some sort of robbing if you tell yourself, Well, I’m not going to be mad about this because of the political landscape that we’re in.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, The Great Courses Plus, and @askanyone Crosley on Longform [11:20] ”Goodbye, Columbus” (Village Voice • 2004) [14:15] Read Bottom Up: A Novel (Riverhead Books • 2016) [22:00] I Was Told There’d Be Cake

Christine Kenneally has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Monthly. Her 2018 Buzzfeed article, “The Ghosts of the Orphanage,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award. "I understood that the abuse was a big part of the story. But the thing that really hooked me and disturbed me and I wouldn’t forget was the depersonalization that went on in these places. It wasn’t just that the records had been lost along the way. It became really clear that the information was intentionally withheld, and it was all part of just this extraordinary depersonalization that happened to these kids.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @chriskenneally Christine Kenneally on Longform [8:25] The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language (Christine Kenneally • Penguin Books • 2007) [14:05] "The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures" (Christine Kenneally • Penguin Books • 2015) [21:18] Kenneally’

David Wallace-Wells is the deputy editor of New York and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. “Between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of warming, just that extra half degree of warming, is going to kill 150 million people from air pollution alone. That’s 25 times the death toll of the Holocaust. And when I say that to people, their eyes open. They’re like oh my god, this is suffering on such an unconscionable scale. And it is. But 9 million people are dying already every year from air pollution. That’s a Holocaust every year, right now. And our lives aren’t meaningfully oriented around those people and those deaths. And very few people we know have their lives meaningfully oriented around those people and those deaths. And I think it’s quite likely that, going forward, those impulses of compartmentalization and denial and narcissism will continue to govern our response to this crisis. Which is tragic.” Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, The Primary Ride Home Podcast, and Pitt Writ

Linda Villarosa directs the journalism program at the City College of New York and is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Her article "Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" was one of Longform's Top Ten of 2018. She is at work on a new book, Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation, due out in 2020. “I think at the beginning I was afraid to say it right out, so I think I was saying ‘racial bias’ or something like that. Then I stopped. ... I think how I learned about it both in earlier reporting and in grad school and in my own research was that race is a risk factor for a bunch of different health problems, whether it’s heart disease, infant and maternal mortality, or HIV. It’s just said that race is a risk factor. It’s disproportionate. What it really is is that race is a risk factor, but it’s also a risk marker. Instead of looking at what individuals are doing wrong, it’s what society is doing wrong in creating problems for individual peo

Michael Lewis is the author of several bestselling books and the host of the podcast Against the Rules. “I think anything you do, if it’s going to be any good, there’s got to be some risk involved. I think the reader or the listener will sense that you were taking chances and it will excite them. So, you never want to do the same thing twice, and you don’t want to cling to something because it’s the safe thing. I try to keep that in mind. Ok, I started with this, but if I push off shore clinging to this life raft or this floatation device and I get way out of swimming range of the beach, but I find this more interesting flotation device, have the nerve to jump from one to the next. You never know where it’s going to lead.” Thanks to MailChimp, Going Through It, Green Chef, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. Lewis's author site Lewis on Longform [1:40] Against the Rules with Michael Lewis [4:55] The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (W. W. Norton & Company • 2007 [9:50] The Big Sh

Hillary Frank is the creator of The Longest Shortest Time podcast and the author of Weird Parenting Wins. “I think motherhood is not valued in our culture. We don’t value the work of mothers both at home and then at work. Mothers are the most discriminated against people at work. They’re discriminated more against than fathers or people without children. Mothers are promoted less, hired less, and paid less. People are forced out of their jobs after they announce that they’re pregnant, they’re passed over for promotions, and they get horrible, discriminatory comments like, ‘Oh, don’t you really think you want to be at home? Do you really want to come back?‘ And American work culture is not set up for people to be parents and mothers.” Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @hillaryfrank hillaryfrank.com [0:35] The Longest Shortest podcast [6:00] The Special Misogyny Reserved for Mothers (New York Times • Dec 2018) [19:20] This American Li

Casey Newton covers technology for The Verge and writes The Interface newsletter. “I remember one time a Facebook employee told me when I wrote something critical and I said something like, ‘Yeah, I know that one was a little harder on you.’ I remember he said to me, ‘Please understand that this helps to make the case internally for changes we want to make.’ When this type of criticism get published when we know that this is the conversation, we can push for these kinds of changes on the inside. If you believe that these platforms are going to be around and that they aren’t going to be shut down and all the executives put into jail, I think what you actually want is to see them get better at things.” Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) CoinTalk Podcast @CaseyNewton Newton on Longform [1:40] The Interface [5:00] Newton's archive at The Verge [20:20] Longform Podcast #171: Adrian C

Wesley Morris is a critic at large for The New York Times, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the co-host of Still Processing. “I think that the taking of extra time to be more thoughtful and less reactive is, to the extent that I have any wisdom to impart, that is it. Just wait a second. Because someone’s going to get there before you get there anyway.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) @Wesley_Morris Morris on Longform Morris's New York Times archive [1:55] Still Processing Podcast [3:25] Longform Podcast #95: Wesley Morris [3:30] Longform Podcast #218: Wesley Morris [6:55] In the Land of Women (Warner Brothers • John Kasdan • 2008) [9:25] Boomerang (Paramount • Reginald Hudlin • 2002 [10:45] "The Morality Wars" (New York Times • Oct 2018) [10:50] Insecure (HBO • 2016) [16:00] Crazy Rich Asians (Warner Brothers • Jon M. Chu • 2018) [30:25] "The Governor Who Partied Like I

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, is the author of The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. “We’re all less moral than we think we are, including myself. I’m interested in the justifications people provide for themselves to get deep into something that starts as one thing and ends up as a murderous criminal cartel. Paul Le Roux, sure—but also doctors and pharmacists. It’s interesting to think about where the pressures in our lives create moral ambiguity that we didn't think was there, and why we do things that we’ve said we'll never do. We look at someone else and think that they’re really bad or evil, but then we’ve never experienced those pressures. That cauldron of factors is something I’m very interested in because I think it applies to everyone.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @ev_rat cazart.net Ratliff on Longform Longform Podcast #48: Evan Ratliff Longform Podcast Bonus Episode: Evan Ratliff (April 2016) [3:00] The Oilman's Da

Kiese Laymon is the author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Heavy: An American Memoir. “It's ironic to me that my mom was the woman who taught me how to read—she was the black woman who taught me how to read and write—and everything I wrote outside of my house I was taught not to write to my mama. I just think that’s where we are as black writers and black creators in this country. Literally because most of our teachers are white. Principals are white. The standards are white. But I wanted to flip this on its head and I wanted to write this book to the person who taught me how to read and write. And, yeah, we got some dysfunctional, fucked-up shit going on. But we also have some abundant love shit going on, too.” Thanks to MailChimp, The Last Column, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) @KieseLaymon Laymon on Longform [1:30] Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner • 2018) [1:40] How to Slowly Kill Yourself an

Patrick Radden Keefe is a New Yorker staff writer. His latest book is Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. “What was strange for me was that it was before I was born, almost a half-century ago. I went to Belfast and asked people about it and you could see the fear on people’s faces. So this notion that this event that’s older than I am still felt so radioactive in the present day was challenging from a reporting point of view, but it also, at every step along the way, made me feel as though it was good that I was doing this project. That this was not a kind of inert, stale history story I was telling. It was something that was vivid and palpable and menacing even now.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) @praddenkeefe Patrick Radden Keefe on Longform Longform Podcast #20: Patrick Radden Keefe [2:15] The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the