Longform

Jazmine Hughes is an associate editor at The New York Times Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, Cosmopolitan, and The New Republic. “You hope that one day when you’re the editor-in-chief of Blah, Blah, Blah, that you’ll wake up and be like, ‘Okay, I deserve my job.’ But so far I haven’t met anyone who has told me that they feel that way. But, I will say, I don’t talk to white men a lot.” Thanks to MailChimp, MasterClass, and The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jazzedloon [3:00] "I Bled Through My Pants My First Day Working for the The New York Times" (Lenny • Oct 2015) [7:00] "Do You Have Impostor Syndrome?" (The Hairpin• Nov 2014) [15:00] "I Dressed Like Cookie from Empire for a Week to Get Over My Imposter Syndrome" (Cosmopolitan• Oct 2015) [23:00] "How Many White People Does It Take to Ruin a Good Joke? (The New Republic • Sept 2015) [24:00] The Secret Fantasies of Adults (New Yorker • Nov 2014) [26:00] I'm Black, He's White. Who Cares? I Do, A

Lena Dunham, the creator and star of HBO's Girls, is the co-founder of Lenny and the author of Not That Kind of Girl. A special episode hosted by Longform Podcast editor Jenna Weiss-Berman. “Writing across mediums can be a really healthy way to utilize your energy and stay productive while not feeling entrapped. But at the end of the day, the time when I feel like life is most just, like, flying by and I don't even know what's happening to me is when I'm writing prose. It's such an intimate relationship that you're having. When you're writing a script, you're making a blueprint for something that doesn't exist yet. But when you're writing prose, the thing exists immediately. And that's really satisfying. It's the best place to go for my deepest and most in-the-now concerns.” Thanks to MailChimp, Prudential, Casper, and The Great Courses for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @lenadunham Dunham on Longform [2:00] "Women of the Hour," Dunham's new podcast (iTunes) [10:00] "Seeing Nora Everywhere" (N

Matthew Shaer is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York, GQ, and The Atavist Magazine. “I could not turn off the freelance switch in my head. I could not not be thinking about these different types of stories. My Google Alert list looks like a serial killer's.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, Howl, and MasterClass for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @matthewshaer matthewshaer.com Shaer on Longform [12:00] "A Shtetl Divided" (Harper's • Jan 2011) [sub req'd] [15:00] Among Righteous Men: A Tale of Vigilantes and Vindication in Hasidic Crown Heights (Wiley & Sons • 2011) [18:00] "A Monster Among the 'From'" (New York • Dec 2011) [24:00] "The Orthodox Hit Squad" (GQ • Sept 2014) [27:00] "Whatsoever Things Are True" (Atavist • Sept 2015) [46:00] "How Thailand's Most Notorious Prison Became a Fight Club" (Men's Journal• Apr 2014) [47:00] "Freedom Fighters" (Hemispheres• Nov 2013) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Seabrook is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory. “Whether or not the piece succeeds or fails is not going to depend on whether I’m up to the minute on the latest social media spot to hang out or the latest slang words that are thrown around. It’s going to be the old eternal verities of structural integrity. So much of it is narrative and figuring out the tricks—and they are tricks, really—that make it go as a narrative. And that’s really the most interesting thing. Because you never ultimately have a formula that goes from piece to piece; it’s always going to have to be rediscovered every time you work on a long piece. And that’s kind of fun.” Thanks to MailChimp and MasterClass for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jmseabrook Seabrook on Longform Seabrook's New Yorker archive [3:00] The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory (W. W. Norton • 2015) [11:00] "The Doctor Is In" (New Yorker • Oct 2013) [20:00] "Blank Space: What Kind of Genius is Ma

Karina Longworth is a film writer and the creator/host of You Must Remember This, a podcast exploring the secret stories of Hollywood. “For me the thing that’s exciting about it is that it’s research, and it’s reportage, and it’s criticism. But it’s also art. It’s creatively done. It’s drama. It consciously tries to engage people on that emotional level.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and MasterClass for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @KarinaLongworth Longworth on Longform Longworth's LA Weekly archive vidiocy.com [8:00] Meryl Streep: Anatomy of an Actor (Phaidon Press • 2014) [8:00] Hollywood Frame by Frame: The Unseen Silver Screen in Contact Sheets, 1951-1997 (Princeton Architectural Press • 2014) [15:00] Holy Motors (Leos Carax • Arte Cinema • 2012) [18:00] "1: The Hard Hollywood Life of Kim Novak" (You Must Remember This • Mar 2014) [26:00] "7: The Many Loves of Howard Hughes, Chapter 1" (You Must Remember This • June 2014) [32:00] "33: Star Wars Episode VII: Lena Horne" (You Must Rem

Jessica Hopper is editor-in-chief of the Pitchfork Review and the author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. “I have an agenda. You can’t read my writing and not know that I have a staunch fucking agenda at all times.” Thanks to MailChimp, Blue Apron, and Fracture for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jesshopp Hopper on Longform Hopper's Pitchfork archive [28:00] "Review of Superchunk's I Hate Music" (Brandon Stosuy • Pitchfork • Aug 2013) [35:00] "The Passion of David Bazan" (Chicago Reader • July 2009) [39:00] "How Selling Out Saved Indie Rock" (BuzzFeed • Nov 2013) [39:00] "Read the 'Stomach-Churning' Sexual Assault Accusations Against R.Kelly In Full" (The Village Voice • Dec 2013) [41:00] "Deconstructing Lana Del Rey" (Spin • Jan 2012) [48:00] The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic (Featherproof Books • 2015) [50:00] "Gals/other marginalized folks: what was your 1st brush (in music industry, journalism, scene) w/ idea that you didn'

Ira Glass is the host and executive producer of This American Life. “You can only have so many questions about feelings, I think. At some point people are just like alright, enough with the feelings.” Thanks to MailChimp, EA SPORTS FIFA 16, Fracture, and FRONTLINE's "My Brother's Bomber for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @iraglass Out on the Wire (Jessica Abel • Broadway Books • 2015) [10:00] "1: New Beginnings" (This American Life • Nov 1995) [14:00] Serial [21:00] "75: Kindness of Strangers" (This American Life • Nov 1995) [27:00] Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host [28:00] "480: Human Sacrifice" (This American Life • Nov 2012) [30:00] "562: The Problem We All Live With" (Nikole Hannah-Jones • This American Life • July 2015) [31:00] "564: Too Soon" (This American Life • Aug 2015) [31:00] "565: Lower 9+10" (This American Life • Aug 2015) [35:00] "513: 129 Cars" (This American Life • Dec 2013) [53:00] Longform Podcast #124: Alex Blumberg [54:00] Conan's Farewell Speech Learn more about you

Peter Hessler is a staff writer for The New Yorker. “It may have helped that I didn’t have a lot of ideas about China. You know, it was sort of a blank slate in my mind. …I wasn’t a reporter when I went to Fuling, but I was thinking like a reporter or even like a sociologist: try to respond to what you see and what you hear, and not be too oriented by things you’ve heard from others or things you may have read. Be open to new perceptions of the place or of the people.” Thanks to MailChimp and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Hessler on Longform Hessler's New Yorker archive [14:00] "Boomtown Girl" (New Yorker • May 2001) [21:00] Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China (HarperCollins • 2006) [21:00] "Travels With My Censor" (New Yorker • Mar 2015) [24:00] "Dr. Don" (New Yorker • Sept 2011) [25:00] "Tales of the Trash" (New Yorker • Oct 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Margo Jefferson, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, and Harper's. Her latest book is Negroland: A Memoir. “One of the problems with—burdens of—‘race conversations’ in this country is certain ideological, political, sociological narratives keep getting imposed. This is where the conversation should go, these are the roles we need. In a way, this is the comfort level of my discomfort. ... Maybe we’re all somewhat addicted—I think we are—to certain racial conversations, with their limitations and their conventions.” Thanks to MailChimp and Casper for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jeffersonmargo Jefferson on Longform Jefferson's New York Times archive Brownscast: The Official Podcast of the Cleveland Browns [19:00] On Michael Jackson (Pantheon • 2006) [20:00] "Critic Jefferson Stays in Off-Broadway Negroland through November" (David Lefkowitz • Playbill • Nov 2001) [29:00] "Thomas Bradshaw by Margo Jefferson: An interview" (BOMB • 2009) [31:00] The Hunger of M

Renata Adler is a journalist, critic, and novelist. Her latest collection of nonfiction is After the Tall Timber. “Unless you're going to be fairly definite, what's the point of writing?” Thanks to MailChimp, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: 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:

S.L. Price is a senior writer at Sports Illustrated. “The fact is, if you write about sports and people think they're just reading about sports, they'll read about drug use. They'll read about sex. They'll read about sex change. They'll read about communism. They'll read about issues they couldn't possibly care about, issues that if they saw them in any other part of the paper they would just gloss over. But because it's about sports—because there's a boxing ring or a baseball field or a football field—they'll be more patient and you can get some issues under the transom.” Thanks to Pitt Writers and TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @bySLPrice Price on Longform Price's Sports Illustrated archive [8:00] "Too Slick, Too Loud, Too Successful: Why John Calipari Can't Catch a Break" (Sports Illustrated • Mar 2011) [9:00] "A Death in the Baseball Family" (Sports Illustrated • Sept 2007) [9:00] Heart of the Game: Life, Death, and Mercy in Minor League America (Ecco • 2009) [14:00] "Max Le

William Finnegan is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. “I suppose in retrospect I was just trying to find out what the world held that nobody could tell me about until I got there. I was a big reader and had a couple of degrees by that point, but there was something not well over the horizon that I wanted to get near and record and understand, and I even felt like it would transform me.” Thanks to TinyLetter, SquareSpace, and The Great Courses for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Finnegan on Longform Finnegan's New Yorker archive [6:00] "Playing Doc's Games" (New Yorker • Aug 1992) [8:00] Crossing the Line: A Year in the Land of Apartheid (Persea • 1986) [37:00] "The Emergency" (New Yorker • May 1989) [sub req'd] [38:00] "Getting The Story" (New Yorker • June 1987) [sub req'd] [40:00] "A Theft in The Library" (New Yorker • Oct 2005) [sub req'd] [41:00] "Tears of the Sun: A Fortune at the Top of the World" (New Yorker • Apr 2015) [49:00] Of a Fire on the M

Tim Ferriss is the author of The Four Hour Workweek and The Four Hour Body. “If you have a fitness magazine, you can’t just write one issue, ‘Here are the rules!’ ... My job, conversely, is to make myself obsolete. The last thing I want to be is a guru, someone people come to for answers. I want to be the person people come to for better questions.” Thanks to TinyLetter and The Great Courses for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @tferriss Ferriss's blog Ferriss's podcast [8:00] "Brigade De Cuisine" (John McPhee • New Yorker • Feb 1979) [sub req'd] [10:00] "How to Live Like a Rock Star (or Tango Star) in Buenos Aires…" (Four-Hour Workweek • Mar 2007) [13:00] George Plimpton’s Longform Archive [20:00] Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character (Richard Feynman • W.W. Norton • 1985) [22:00] José Aldo MMA Highlights (YouTube) [24:00] "How Choose Your Adventure Was Born" (Marketplace • Apr 2014) [30:00] Episode #304: Heretics (This American Life • Dec 2005) [40:00] "Some Pra

Carol Loomis retired last summer after 60 years at Fortune. She continues to edit Warren Buffett's annual report. “Writing itself makes you realize where there are holes in things. I’m never sure what I think until I see what I write. And so I believe that, even though you’re an optimist, the analysis part of you kicks in when you sit down to construct a story or a paragraph or a sentence. You think, ‘Oh, that can’t be right.’ And you have to go back, and you have to rethink it all.”  Thanks to TinyLetter and SquareSpace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Show Notes: [1:00] "Carol Loomis, Editor for Warren Buffet, Leaves Job After 60 Years" (Christine Haughney • The New York Times • July 2014) [14:00] "My 51 Years (and Counting) at Fortune" (Fortune • Sep 2005) [22:00] "You May Be Missing a Bet in Bonds" (Fortune • Sep 1962) [not available online] [22:00] "Should a Company Promote Its Own Stock?" (Fortune • Dec 1965) [not available online] [26:00] "The Jones Nobody Keeps Up With" (Fortune • A

Noreen Malone wrote "Cosby: The Women — An Unwanted Sisterhood," this week's cover story in New York. “We interviewed them all separately, and that was what was so striking: they all kept saying the same thing, down to the details of what they say Cosby did and how they processed it. Those echoes were what helped us know how to shape the story.” Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter. Show Notes: @noreenmalone Malone on Lognform [2:00] "Hannibal Buress Called Bill Cosby a Rapist During a Stand Up" (YouTube) [2:00] "Bill Cosby Raped me. Why Did It Take 30 years for People to Believe My Story?" (Barbara Bowman • Washington Post • Nov 2014) [12:00] "Bill Cosby, in Deposition, Said Drugs and Fame Helped Him Seduce Women" (Graham Bowley and Sydney Ember • The New York Times • July 2015) [15:00] "Read Her Story: Helen Gumpel" (New York • July 2015) [17:00] "NY Mag Lost Over 500,000 Page Views on Cosby Cover Story During DDoS Attack" (Sage Lazzaro • Observer • July 2014) [19:00] Audiogram: Victoria Valentino (@nymag I

Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, just published "The Outlaw Ocean," a four-part series on crime in international waters. “It is a tribe. It has its norms, its language, and its jealousies. I approached it almost as a foreign country that happened to be disparate, almost a nomadic or exiled population. And one that has extremely strict hierarchies—you know when you’re on a ship that the captain is God.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Casper for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @ian_urbina Urbina's New York Times archive [5:00] Review Longform Podcast in iTunes [17:00] "Stowaways and Crimes Aboard a Scofflaw Ship" (The New York Times • July 2015) [18:00] "'Sea Slaves': The Human Misery that Feeds Pets and Livestock" (The New York Times • July 2015) [19:00] "A Renegade Trawler, Hunted for 10,000 Miles by Vigilantes" (The New York Times • July 2012) [24:00] Lloyd's List [27:00] "Murder at Sea: Captured on Video, but Killers Go Free" (The New York Times • July 2014) Learn more

Margaret Sullivan is the public editor of The New York Times. “Jill Abramson said to me early on, ‘What will happen here is you’ll stick around and eventually you’ll alienate everybody, and then no one will be talking to you, and you’ll have to leave.’ I’m about three-quarters of the way there.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Netflix for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @Sulliview [5:00] "One Year Later, 11 Questions for Dean Baquet"(The New York Times • May 2015) [6:00] The Public Editor's Journal [7:00] "AnonyWatch" (The New York Times) [9:00] "The Disconnect on Anonymous Sources" (The New York Times • Oct 2013) [10:00] "Trend-spotting, With Wink at Mr. Peanut" (The New York Times • March 2014) [11:00] "...Introducing The Monocle Meter" (The New York Times • Nov 2014) [11:00] "Women Who Dye Their Armpit Hair" (Andrew Adam Newman • The New York Times • July 2015) [14:00] "Tennis's Top Women Balance Body Image With Ambition" (Ben Rothenberg • The New York Times • July 2015) [16:00] "Double Fault on Ar

Tavi Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie. "I just want our readers to know that they are already smart enough and cool enough." Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter. Show notes: @tavitulle Rookie thestylerookie.com [4:00] "Tavi Says" (Lizze Widdicombe • New Yorker • Sep 2010) [30:00] "A Teen Just Trying to Figure It Out" (TED • Mar 2012) [33:00] Rookie Yearbook Two (Drawn and Quarterly • Oct 2013) [40:00] Longform Podcast #75: George Saunders [43:00] "Super Heroine: An Interview with Lorde" (Rookie • Jan 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ross Andersen is the deputy editor of Aeon Magazine. “One of the things that’s been really refreshing in dealing with scientists—as opposed to say politicians or most business people—is that scientists are wonderfully candid, they’ll talk shit on their colleagues. They’re just firing on all cylinders all the time because they traffic in ideas, and that’s what’s important to them.” Thanks to TinyLetter and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @andersen Andersen on Longform [2:00] Aeon on Longorm [5:00] "Zapped" (Mary H.K. Choi • Aeon • Sept 2013) [5:00] "Awaiting Renewal" (Heather Havrilesky • Aeon• July 2013) [5:00] "Brigid Hains on the Launch of Aeon" (Interview by Catherine Balavage • Frost Magazine • Oct 2012) [11:00] "Are We Alone?" (Caleb Scharf • Aeon • June 2013) [14:00] "In The Beginning" (Aeon • May 2015) [15:00] Andersen’s Atlantic archive [20:00] "Gravitational-Wave Detectors Get Ready to Hunt for the Big Bang" (Ross Andersen • Scientific American • Oct 2013) [21:00] "Golden

Anna Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel, writes for The New York Times and is the editorial director of Fusion. “I think that Jezebel contributed to what I now call ‘outrage culture,’ but outrage culture has no sense of humor. We had a hell of a sense of humor, that's where it splits off. ... The fact that people who are incredibly intelligent and have interesting things to say aren't given the room to work out their arguments or thoughts because someone will take offense is depressing to me.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: annaholmes.com @annaholmes [2:00] "Is Self-Loathing a Requirement for Writers?" (New York Times Book Review • June 2015) [8:00] Irin Carmon's Jezebel archive [12:00] "The Five Great Lies of Women's Magazines" (Anna Holmes and Moe Tkacik • Jezebel • Nov 2007) [19:00] "Linda Hirshman: I Didn't Call Anyone at Jezebel a Slut" (Emily Bazelon • Double X • May 2009) [24:00] "How to Be a Good Bad American Girl" (New Yorker • Mar 2014) [3