Longform

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an essayist. Her latest piece is “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof.” “I remember feeling like ‘you’re playing chess with evil, and you gotta win.’ Because this is the most terrible thing I’d ever seen. And I was so mad. I still get so mad. Words aren’t enough. I’m angry about it. I can’t do anything to Dylann Roof, physically, so this is what I could do.” Thanks to MailChimp, HelloFresh, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. the-rachelkaadzighansah.tumblr.com Kaadzi Ghansah on Longform [00:45] Kaadzi Ghansah on the Longform Podcast [00:45] "A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof" (GQ • Aug 2017) [22:45] "America’s Most Political Food" (Lauren Collins • New Yorker • Apr 2017) [24:30] Light in August (William Faulkner • Random House • 1990) [44:45] "The Rise of the Valkyries" (Seyward Darby • Harper’s • Sep 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ellen Barry is the former New York Times bureau chief for South Asia. “Every time you leave a beat—and this is something that I think as foreign correspondents we rarely communicate to our readers—you’re walking away from a story which has really been your whole life for four or five years. And it’s hard to walk away…The majority of us live a story for a certain number of years, and then we just turn our backs on it.” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Of a Kind for sponsoring this week's episode. @EllenBarryNYT Barry on Longform [01:15] Barry’s New York Times archive [01:30] "How to Get Away With Murder in Small-Town India" (New York Times • Aug 2017) [03:00] readthissummer.com [06:45] "A Newspaper for Its Time" (Moscow Times • Oct 2012) [07:30] "Lost Exile" (James Verini • Vanity Fair • Feb 2010) [09:15] "The Russia Left Behind" (New York Times • Oct 2013) [11:15] "A Specter’s Shadow Returns to Haunt Moscow" (New York Times • Oct 2008) [16:00] Alice Gregory on the Longform Podcast [17:30] The Name of the

Kate Fagan is a columnist and feature writer for ESPN. Her latest book is What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen. “When I was professionally closeted, I was kind of bitter. I didn’t have a ton of empathy. And I don’t think I always asked the right question, because I wouldn’t ask people questions that I wouldn’t want to be asked…I had walls up. I wouldn’t even allow myself to be vulnerable in my writing. Because the whole point of my existence at that time was to circumvent any moment that could create vulnerability in a way that would frighten me. And I think you could that see in my writing.” Thanks to MailChimp and HelloFresh for sponsoring this week's episode. @katefagan3 bykatefagan.com [00:00] Stoner [00:45] Fagan’s Archive at ESPN [00:45] Around the Horn [01:00] What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen (Little, Brown and Company • 2017) [01:15] "Split Image" (ESPN • May 2015) [06:30] The Reappearing Act: Coming Out

Jay Caspian Kang is a writer at large at The New York Times Magazine and a correspondent for Vice News Tonight. “I make a pretty provocative argument about how Asian American identity doesn’t really exist—how it’s basically just an academic idea, and it’s not lived within the lives of anybody who’s Asian. Like you grow up, you’re Korean, you’re a minority. You don’t have any sort of kinship with, like, Indian kids. You know? And there’s no cultural sharedness where you’re just like, ‘oh yeah…Asia!’” Thanks to MailChimp, "Mussolini’s Arctic Airship", Blinkist and for sponsoring this week's episode. @jaycaspiankang Kang’s Blog Kang on Longform [00:00] Mussolini’s Arctic Airship (Eva Holland • Kindle Single • Aug 2017) [00:45] "What a Fraternity Hazing Death Revealed About the Painful Search for an Asian-American Identity" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2017) [00:45] Kang on the Longform Podcast [01:15] Kang’s Archive at The New Yorker [02:30] readthissummer.com [02:45] Havrilesky on the Longform Podcast [05:

David Gessner is the author of ten books. His latest is Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth. “The ambition got in my way at first. Because I wanted my stuff to be great, and it froze me up. But later on it was really helpful. I’m startled by the way people don’t, you know, admit [they care] … it seems unlikely people wouldn’t want to be immortal.” Thanks to Casper, Squarespace, and MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode. @BDsCocktailHour davidgessner.com Gessner on Longform "Not Fuzz" (David Mark Simpson • Atavist • Jul 2017) [01:00] Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth (Riverhead Books • 2017) [02:00] readthissummer.com [04:45] "No Disc-Respect" (Outside • Jun 2017) [08:15] A Wild, Rank Place: One Year on Cape Cod (University Press of New England • 1997) [08:30] Under the Devil’s Thumb (University of Arizona Press • 1999) [11:00] Sick of Nature (University Press of New England • 2004) [11:00] "Ultimate Glory" (Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour • Jan 2012) [11:15] Bill

Matthew Klam is a journalist and fiction writer. His new novel is Who Is Rich?. “The New Yorker had hyped me with this “20 Under 40” thing…and when the tenth anniversary of that list [came], somebody wrote an article about it. And they found everybody in it, and I was the only one who hadn’t done anything since then, according to them. And the article, it was a little paragraph or two, it ended with ‘poor Matthew Klam.’” Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. @MatthewKlam matthewklam.com [01:00] Sam the Cat: and Other Stories (Vintage • 2001) [01:00] Who Is Rich?: A Novel (Random House • 2017) [01:45] Doree Shafrir on Longform [01:45] Elif Batuman on Longform [02:00] readthissummer.com [03:00] "Matthew Klam’s New Book Is Only 17 Years Overdue" (Taffy Brodesser-Akner • Vulture • Jul 2017) [03:15] "Experiencing Ecstasy" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2001) [04:15] "Sam the Cat" (New Yorker • May 1993) [sub req’d] [05:30] "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" (Rich

Maggie Haberman covers the White House for The New York Times. “If I start thinking about it, then I’m not going to be able to just keep doing my job. I'm being as honest as I can — I try not to think about it. If you’re flying a plane and you think about the fact that if the plane blows up in midair you’re gonna die, do you feel like you can really focus as well? So, I’m not thinking about [the stakes]. This is just my job. This is what we do. Ask me another question.” Thanks to MailChimp, Bombfell, Babbel, and HelloFresh for sponsoring this week's episode. @maggieNYT Haberman on Longform [01:45] "Manafort Talks With Senate Investigators About Meeting With Russians" (with Eileen Sullivan and Adam Goldman • New York Times • Jul 2017) [02:15] Haberman’s New York Times archive [02:30] Haberman’s New York Post archive [02:30] Haberman’s New York Daily News archive [03:15] readthissummer.com [03:45] "Paladino assails Cuomo’s parenting" (Politico • Oct 2010) [09:00] Harold and the Purple Crayon (Crockett Johnso

Steven Levy writes for Wired, where he is the editor of Backchannel. “It’s about people. Travis Kalanick’s foibles aren’t because he’s a technology executive. It’s because he’s Travis Kalanick. That’s the way he is. There is a certain strain in Silicon Valley, which rewards totally driven people, but that is humanity. And advanced technology is no guarantee—and as a matter of fact I don’t think it’ll do anything—from stopping ill-intentioned people from doing ill-intentioned things.” Thanks to MailChimp, Audm, Rover, and Babbel for sponsoring this week's episode. @StevenLevy stevenlevy.com Levy on Longform [03:00] readthissummer.com [04:00] "Hackers in Paradise" (Rolling Stone • Apr 1982) [05:45] Whole Earth Catalog [06:15] Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (O’Reilly Media • 2010) [11:00] "The Birth of the Mac: Rolling Stone’s 1984 Feature on Steve Jobs and his Whiz Kids" (Rolling Stone • Oct 2011) [19:00] "Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook’s Future, From Virtual Reality to Anonymity" (Wired • Apr 2014)

Mark Bowden is a journalist and the author of 13 books, including Black Hawk Down and his latest, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. “My goal is never to condemn someone that I’m writing about. It’s always to understand them. And that, to me, is far more interesting than passing judgment on them. I want you to read about Che Thi Mung, an 18-year-old village girl, who was selling hats on corners in Hue in the daytime and going home and sharpening spikes to go into booby traps to try and kill American soldiers and ARVN soldiers in the evening. I want to understand why she would do that, why she would be so motivated to do that. And I think I did.” Thanks to MailChimp, LeVar Burton Reads, Babbel, and HelloFresh for sponsoring this week's episode. @markbowdenwrite markbowdenbooks.com Bowden on Longform [01:00] Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (Grove Press • 2010) [01:00] Bowden’s Black Hawk Down Series at The Inquirer [01:15] Bowden’s Archive at The Atlantic [01:15] Hue 1968: A Tur

Brian Reed, a senior producer at This American Life, is the host of S-Town. “It’s a story about the remarkableness of what could be called an unremarkable life.” Thanks to MailChimp, Babbel, and Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. @brihreed Reed's This American Life archive [28:45] Cops See It Differently, Part One (This American Life • Feb 2015) [28:45] Wake Up Now (This American Life • Dec 2014) [44:30] Stoner (John Wiliams • Viking • 1965) [45:15] Photo of the S-Town planning room [46:00] The Known World: A Novel (Edward P. Jones • HarperCollins • 2003) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ginger Thompson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning senior reporter at ProPublica. Her most recent article is "How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico." “How many times have I written the phrase ‘a town that was controlled by drug traffickers?' I had no idea what that really meant. What does it mean to live in a town that’s controlled by drug traffickers? And how does it get that way? One of the things I was hoping that we could do by having the people who actually lived through that explain it to us was that—to bring you close to that and say, ‘No, here’s what that means.’” Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, and Outside the Box for sponsoring this week's episode. @gingerthomp1 Thompson on Longform [01:30] "How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico" (ProPublica / National Geographic • Jun 2017) [01:45] Thompson’s Archive at The New York Times [01:45] "Trafficking In Terror" (New Yorker • Dec 2015) [02:30] readthissummer.com [02:45] Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets (Luke Dittrich • Rando

Patricia Lockwood is a poet and essayist. Her new book is Priestdaddy: A Memoir. “[Prose writing is] strange to me as a poet. I’m like, ‘Well I guess I’ll tell you just what happened then.’ But the humor has to be there as well. Because in my family household…the absurdity or the surrealism that we have is in reaction to the craziness of the household. So something like your underwear-clad father with his hand in a vat of pickles, sitting in a room full of $10,000 guitars and telling you that he can’t afford to send you to college—that’s bad. That’s a sad scene. But it’s also totally a lunatic scene. It’s, just the very fact of it, all these accoutrements, all the elements of the scene—they are funny.” Thanks to Audible and MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode. @TriciaLockwood Lockwood on Longform [00:00] Stoner [01:00] Priestdaddy: A Memoir (Riverhead Books • 2017) [02:00] readthissummer.com [02:30] How To Be a Person in the World (Heather Havrilesky • Doubleday • 2016) [02:30] Heather Havrilesky

John Grisham is the author of 38 books, including his latest novel, Camino Island. “A Time to Kill didn’t sell. It just didn’t sell. There was never any talk of going back for a second printing. No talk of paper back. No foreign deal. It was a flop. And I told my wife, I said, ‘Look, I’m gonna do it one more time. I’m gonna write one more book…hopefully something more commercial, more accessible, more popular. If this doesn’t work, forget this career. Forget this hobby. I’m just gonna be a lawyer and get on with it.” Thanks to Casper, Squarespace, and MailChimp for sponsoring this week's episode. @JohnGrisham jgrisham.com [00:30] The Firm (Dell • 2009) [00:30] The Pelican Brief: A Novel (Dell • 2010) [00:30] The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town (Dell • 2012) [01:30] Wesley Lowery on the Longform Podcast [01:30] Heather Havrilesky on the Longform Podcast [01:30] Hua Hsu on the Longform Podcast [01:45] Luke Dittrich on the Longform Podcast [01:45] Krista Tippett on the Longform Podcast [02:

Erin Lee Carr is a documentary filmmaker and writer. Her new film is Mommy Dead and Dearest. “I feel like I’ve always had the story down—that’s not been really difficult for me. So the difficult thing, I think, for me, has always been access. Can I get the access? Can I withstand the pressure? You know, there’s been so many times where I wasn’t being paid to do the job, and I had to wait on the access. And it’s not for the faint of heart. You know, I could have spent a year and a half of my life doing [Mommy Dead and Dearest] and I could’ve not gotten the access to Gypsy, and it kind of would’ve been a wash.” Thanks to MailChimp, Kindle, Squarespace, V by Viacom, and HelloFresh for sponsoring this week's episode. @erinleecarr erinleecarr.com [02:00] Mommy Dead and Dearest [02:00] Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop [02:30] "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom To Be Murdered" (Michelle Dean • BuzzFeed • Aug 2016) [04:30] Carr’s Vice archive [05:15] Girls [05:45] Capturing t

Ariel Levy, a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of The Rules Do Not Apply. “I don’t believe in ‘would this’ and ‘would that.’ There’s no ‘everything happens for a reason.’ Everything happens, and then you just fucking deal. I mean we could play that game with everything, but time only moves in one direction. That’s a bad game. You shouldn’t play that game—you’ll break your own heart.” Thanks to MailChimp, Kindle, V by Viacom, and 2U for sponsoring this week's episode. @avlskies ariellevy.net Levy on Longform [00:45] The Front Row [01:00] Outside the Box [02:15] Levy’s New Yorker archive [02:30] Ariel Levy on the Longform Podcast [02:30] The Rules Do Not Apply: A Memoir (Random House • 2017) [13:00] Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Free Press • 2005) [20:00] Fan Club [24:15] "Thanksgiving in Mongolia" (New Yorker • Nov 2013) [25:30] "Trial by Twitter" (New Yorker • Aug 2013) [25:30] "The Perfect Wife" (New Yorker • Sep 2013) [25:45] "Breaking the Waves" (New Yorker • Feb 20

Jeffrey Gettleman is the East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times and the author of Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival. “I’m not an adventure-seeking adrenaline junky. I like to explore new worlds, but I’m not one of these chain-smoking, hard-drinking, partying types that just wants thrills all the time. And unfortunately that’s an aspect of the job. And as I get older and I’ve been through more and more, the question gets louder. Which is: Why do you keep doing this? Because you feel like you only have so many points, and eventually the points are going to run out.” Thanks to MailChimp, V by Viacom, 2U, and Kindle for sponsoring this week's episode. @gettleman Gettleman on Longform [01:15] Gettleman’s Archive at The New York Times [01:30] Gettleman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning work [01:30] Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival (Harper • 2017) [08:30] Tampa Bay Times (Previously St. Petersburg Times) [11:30] Fan Club [12:30] The Front Row [18:00] "Into the Heart of Fallu

Rafe Bartholomew is the former features editor at Grantland and the author of Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me. “I never saw it as something negative because [my dad] comes out, to me, at the end, extremely heroic. … He becomes this dad who I idolized as a bartender, a guy who would hang out with me and make me laugh, a guy I just adored almost every step of the way. I mean, of course, everybody gets into fights. But to me it was always so obvious that he had overcome the problems in his childhood, he’d overcome his own drinking problem, he’d done all these things, and by the time I was older, he’d even found a way to get back into writing and self-publish a couple of books of poems about the bar. So he’s sort of managed to tick off all those goals, just maybe not on the same schedule, maybe not in the most normal way.” Thanks to MailChimp, V by Viacom, and 2U for sponsoring this week's episode. @Rafeboogs rafebartholomew.com Bartholomew on Longform Pacific Rims: Beermen Ballin’ in Flip-Flops and th

Nick Bilton is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road. “I’ve been covering tech for a long, long time. And the thing I’ve always tried to do is cover the people of the tech culture, not the tech itself. … I've always been interested in the good and bad side of technology. A lot of times the problem in Silicon Valley is that people come up with a good idea that’s supposed to do a good thing—you know, to change the world and make it a better place. And it ends up inevitably having a recourse that they don’t imagine.” Thanks to MailChimp, Viacom, and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode. @nickbilton nickbilton.com Bilton on Longform [00:00] Ponzi Supernova [01:15] American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road (Portfolio • 2017) [01:45] Bilton’s New York Times archive [01:45] Bilton’s Vanity Fair archive [01:45] Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship,

Samin Nosrat is a food writer, educator, and chef. Her new book is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. “I kind of couldn’t exist as just a cook or a writer. I kind of need to be both. Because they fulfill these two totally different parts of myself and my brain. Cooking is really social, it’s very physical, and also you don’t have any time to become attached to your product. You hand it off and somebody eats it, and literally tomorrow it’s shit. … Whereas with writing, it’s the exact opposite. It’s super solitary. It’s super cerebral. And you have all the time in the world to get attached to your thing and freak out about it.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, Away, and Masters of Scale for sponsoring this week's episode. @CiaoSamin ciaosamin.com [01:45] Chez Panisse [02:00] Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking (Simon & Schuster • 2017) [03:30] Pop-Up Magazine [27:45] Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (Michael Pollan • Penguin Books • 2014) [30:

Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer and the founder of Vela. Her upcoming book is Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm. “I’d been rejected a ton of times—I had that 400-page thing that never became a book. So there were plenty of epic rejections that felt catastrophic. And I’d sort of arrived at this point where I was like: I’m living in my parents' cabin, and I’m pregnant, so whatever. Fuck it. I’m gonna write whatever I want to write.” Thanks to MailChimp and Blue Apron for sponsoring this week's episode. @sarahmenkedick sarahmenkedick.com Menkedick on Longform [00:15] The Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh [01:00] Aaron and the Donut Dude [01:15] Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm (Pantheon • 2017) [01:15] Vela [02:15] "Why don’t people take writing about motherhood seriously? Because women do it" (Los Angeles Times • Apr 2017) [07:45] "A Wilderness of Waiting" (Vela • Feb 2015) [09:15] "Good Pilgrims" (Harper’s • Jul 2014) [17:30] "Living on the Hy