Longform

Jack Shafer covers the media for Politico. “This is a true story, not a ‘Brian Williams story’: my first report card said ‘Jack is a very good student, but he has a tendency to start fights on the playground and bring them back into the classroom.’ That's been my career style — start a fight and bring it back to the classroom.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: Show Notes: @jackshafer jackshafer.com Shafer on Longform [2:00] "Why Did Brian Williams Lie?" (Politico • Feb 2015) [2:00] "Brian Williams’ Slow Jam" (Politico • Feb 2015) [18:00] aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads, and Made Millions in the War for the Web (Kara Swisher • Crown Business • 1998) [21:00] Shafer’s archive on Slate [34:00] "The Trial of Stephen Glass" (Reuters • Dec 2011) [37:00] "'I Would Have Loved To Piss on Your Shoes'" (Slate • Jun 2011) [37:00] "'I Would Have Loved To Piss on Your Shoes,'

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer. She is a columnist for VICE and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review and Vanity Fair. “As long as the marginalized communities I’m writing about don’t think I’m full of shit, that’s success to me.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Squarespace and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: @mollycrabapple mollycrabapple.com mollycrabapple.tumblr.com [1:00] "Love and Ruin" (James Verini • The Atavist • Feb 2014) [1:00] "Slaves of Happiness Island" (VICE • Aug 2014) [10:00] Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec [16:00] "My Arrest at Occupy Wall Street" (CNN • Sep 2012) [19:00] "It Don’t Gitmo Better Than This" (VICE • Jul 2013) [24:00] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee and Walker Evans • Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 1941) [25:00] Discordia: Six Nights in Crisis Athens (with Laurie Penny • Vintage Digital • 2012) [30:00] "Caught Between ISIS and Assad" (VICE • Jun 2014) [36:00] "I

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and GQ. “My writing career was something that was always about to happen, just as soon as the baby falls asleep, just as soon as I finish watching this five-hour bout of As the World Turns, just as soon as... What do you do when you realize that you have not been doing the thing you were going to do? You're in your 30s. You get to work.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: @taffyakner taffyakner.com Brodesser-Akner on Longform [20:00] "The Trials of a Chubby Yogi" (Self • Oct 2011) [26:00] "Who Controls Childbirth" (Self • Jul 2010) [31:00] "Who's Killing the Soaps?" (The Daily Beast • Dec 2009) [33:00] "Nicky Minaj: Cheeky Genius" (GQ • Nov 2014) [34:00] "2 Generations of Comedy Musicians Meet!: Weird Al Yankovic and The Lonely Island" (GQ • May 2013) [44:00] "Girls Fight Out" (Matter • Dec 2014) [46:00] "The Leftov

Anand Gopal has written for The Wall Street Journal, Harper’s and Foreign Policy. He’s the author of No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes. “When I got to the Taliban, I got out my notebook and tried to ask the hard-hitting questions. ‘What are you fighting for? Why are you doing this? What’s happening with the civilians you’re killing?’ And of course you do that and you get boilerplate answers and icy stares. So I just started asking them questions about their childhood. ... People love to talk about themselves and he began to open up and very subtly something shifted and it no longer became about the war and America versus the Taliban, it became about him being an Afghan and his experience.” Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes. Show Notes: @Anand_Gopal_ anandgopal.com [9:00] Longform Podcast #1: Matthieu Aikins [12:00] "Ousted By Iran, Afghan Refugees Languis

Alex Blumberg is a former producer for This American Life and Planet Money. Last year he founded Gimlet Media, a podcast network, and hosts its first show, StartUp. “When someone starts talking about something difficult, when they get unexpectedly emotional, your normal human reaction is to sort of comfort and steer away. To say, ‘Oh I’m sorry, let’s move on.’ What you need to do, if you want good tape, is to say, ‘Talk more about how you’re feeling right now.’ It feels like a horrible question to ask. It feels like you're going against your every instinct as a decent human being to go toward the pain that this person is experiencing.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Lynda and Alarm Grid for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @abexlumberg gimletmedia.com Blumberg’s archive on This American Life [2:00] Longform on Reply All #7: This Website Is For Sale [2:00] Longform Podcast #23: Starlee Kine [4:00] "Company Eight" (Matthew Pearl • The Atavist • Jan 2015) [20:00] "91: 33 Million Dollar Box" (This American L

Nicholas Carlson writes for Business Insider. His book Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! came out this week. “To me people are what’s really interesting. Marissa Mayer is a once in a lifetime subject. She’s full of contradictions. … There are a million business stories, but if you don’t have that character at the center then you’re lost.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Lynda and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @nichcarlson Carlson on Longform [6:00] Longform Podcast #81: Kevin Roose [13:00] "What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2014) [16:00] "Viacom Takes Google, YouTube Fight to Court" (InternetNews.com • Mar 2007) [18:00] Disney War (James B. Stewart • Simon & Schuster • 2005) [19:00] Longform Podcast #19: Choire Sicha [23:00] Longform Podcast #88: Sam Biddle [23:00] Carlson’s archive on Valleywag [33:00] "Google Gave Employees This Smartwatch As A Holiday Gift, And Some Of Them Are Whining About It" (Business Insider • Dec 20

Dan P. Lee is a contributing writer at New York. "I don't believe in answers. That's what compels me to write all of these stories. None of them ends nicely, none of them ends neatly." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @Dan_P_Lee Lee on Longform Lee's New York archive [13:30] "Who Killed Ellen Andros?" (Philadelphia Magazine • Oct 2006) [22:45] "Travis the Menace" (New York • Jan 2011) [45:00] "Paw Paw & Lady Love" (New York • Jun 2011) [48:45] "4:52 on Christmas Morning" (New York • Dec 2012) [49:15] "The Camera's Cusp" (New York • Sep 2013) [49:15] "Where It Hurts" (New York • Dec 2013) [51:30] "The Good Seed" (GQ • Jun 2011) [55:30] "'I Just Want to Feel Everything'" (New York • Jun 2012) [1:04:00] "Welcome to the Real Space Age" (New York • May 2013) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Evan Wright, a two-time National Magazine Award winner, is the author of Generation Kill. "When people were killed, civilians especially, I realized I was the only person there who would write it down. I was frantic about getting names, and in the book there are a few Arabic names, some of the victims. Not that anyone cares. But I thought, 'At least somewhere there's a record of this.'" Thanks to our sponsor, TinyLetter. Show notes: @evanscribe Wright on Longform [3:45] Generation Kill (2004) [10:00] "Scenes From My Life in Porn" (L.A. Weekly • Mar 2000) [12:15] A.J. Liebling’s New Yorker archive [14:15] "Big Red Son" (David Foster Wallace • Consider the Lobster • 1998) [pdf] [16:30] Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (D.T. Max • 2012) [18:15] Hella Nation: Looking for Happy Meals in Kandahar, Rocking the Side Pipe,Wingnut's War Against the Gap, and Other Adventures with the Totally Lost Tribes of America (2009) [28:00] "The Killer Elite" (Rolling Stone • Jul 2003) [30:30] Lo

Hanna Rosin is a senior editor at The Atlantic and a founder and editor at DoubleX. “I often think of reporting as dating, or even speed dating. You’re looking for someone where there’s a spark there between you and them. Sometimes that happens right away and sometimes it takes forever. ... You have to determine if they're reflective, friendly, open. It could be love at first sight and they're still all wrong, which is really heartbreaking.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos and The Los Angeles Times' Bookshelf Newsletter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @HannaRosin hannarosin.com Rosin on Longform [1:00] "Murder by Craigslist" (The Atlantic • Aug 2013) [1:00] "Hello, My Name Is Stephen Glass, and I’m Sorry" (The New Republic • Nov 2014) [7:00] The End of Men: And the Rise of Women (Riverhead Books • 2012) [18:00] The Executioner's Song (Norman Mailer • Little, Brown • 1979) [18:00] "The Evil Empire: The Scoop on Ben & Jerry's Crunchy Capitalism" (The New Republic • Sep 1995) [23:00] "The New Re

Meghan Daum's latest book of essays is The Unspeakable. “As writers we think, well there has to be closure, there has to be a beginning middle end, the character has to go through a change. And then in life we're supposed to have some sort of arc or aha moment, as if the experience isn't legitimate unless we get something out of it. That's so culturally constructed, as they say. It's so artificial.” Thanks to TinyLetter, Scribd, and Oscar for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @meghan_daum meghandaum.com Daum on Longform [1:00] The Unspeakable (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2014) [1:00] "My Misspent Youth" (New Yorker • Oct 1999) [18:00] "All About My Mother" (The Guardian • Nov 2014) [35:00] Daum’s archive of Los Angeles Times columns [38:00] My Misspent Youth (Open City Books • 2001) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Katie J.M. Baker is a reporter for BuzzFeed. “I went to Steubenville a year after the sexual assault to cover their first big football game of the season and I was face-to-face with these people who I had been writing about without knowing much about them. From far away it seems like, do these details matter? Do we care if these people’s lives get messed up when the narrative is so strong, when Steubenville now stands for more awareness around rape culture? But when you’re there, of course it matters. After that piece I realized I didn’t want to blog anymore and I wanted to just focus on reporting.” Thanks to Casper, Scribd, and TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @katiejmbaker katiejmbaker.com Baker on Longform [4:00] "Forever Young" (BuzzFeed • Sep 2014) [13:00] "In West Virginia, Playing Hooky Can Get You Locked Up" (BuzzFeed • Oct 2014) [20:00] "Supervisor Wants Motive Spelled Out at S.F.'s Antiabortion Clinics" (San Francisco Chronicle • Jun 2011) [20:00] "Teacher Leaves Elite L

Alec Wilkinson is a staff writer for The New Yorker. “My hero was Joseph Mitchell, that was how you did reporting. There was nothing conniving about it or cunning — you just simply kept returning and kept returning.” Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Wilkinson on Longform [2:00] "The Protest Singer" (New Yorker • Apr 2006) [6:00] Midnights: A Year With the Welfleet Police (Random House • 1982) [9:00] My Mentor (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2002) [9:00] Across the River and into the Trees (Ernest Hemingway • 1950) [24:00] Moonshine: A Life in Pursuit of White Liquor (Knopf • 1985) [25:00] Big Sugar (Knopf • 1989) [27:00] The Happiest Man in the World (Random House • 2007) [34:00] "New York Is Killing Me" (New Yorker • Aug 2010) [42:00] "Sam and Other Reflections on Being a Father" (Esquire • Jun 2000) [47:00] The Ice Balloon (Knopf • 2012) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emma Carmichael, a former editor at Deadspin and The Hairpin, is the editor in chief of Jezebel. "Online feminism has more and more rules lately. There are only so many things you can say. And while our opinions are getting more constrained online, personal feminism and face-to-face conversations are looser and more complicated and don't go by any rules. ... The ideal with Jezebel is getting to a point where you can say, 'This is what I think, so who gives a fuck.'" Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @emmacargo emmacarmichael.com Carmichael on Longform Jezebel Deadspin The Hairpin [1:00] Laura Olin’s TinyLetter [5:00] "Brett Favre Has His Hands Full With Himself" (Deadspin • Oct 2010) [9:00] "Letter From A Young Female Sportswriter: Ines Sainz, You Make Me Want To Stop Trying" (Deadspin • Sep 2010) [31:00] "Saartjie Baartman: The Original Booty Queen" (Cleuci de Oliveira • Jezebel • Nov 2014) [35:00] "The Right to a Sexual Narrative: On the Lena Dunham Abuse Claims" (Jia T

Reihan Salam is the executive editor of National Review. "I’m incredibly curious about other people. I’m curious about what they think of as the constraints operating on their lives. Why do they think what they think? If I weren’t doing this job, I’d want to be a high school guidance counselor." Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos, and Cards Against Humanity’s Ten Days or Whatever of Kwanzaa for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @reihan reihansalam.com [11:00] "The White Ghetto" (Kevin D. Williamson • National Review • Jan 2014) [18:00] "Is Free Content Ruining Journalism?" (The VICE Podcast • Sep 2013) [30:00] "Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League" (William Deresiewicz • New Republic • Jul 2014) [33:00] Longform Podcast #35: Jay Caspian Kang [34:00] "How the Suburbs Got Poor" (Slate • Sep 2014) [38:00] Longform Podcast #12: Mina Kimes [42:00] "Jason Schwartzman and Alex Ross Perry Discuss Their New Film, 'Listen Up Philip'" (The VICE Podcast Show • Oct 2014) [57:00] "In Praise of Amazon" (Slate • Oct

Jake Halpern, a contributor to This American Life, has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. His latest book is Bad Paper: Chasing Debt from Wall Street to the Underworld. "I test out my stories on my kids. You should be able to tell any story, now matter how complicated, to a seven-year-old in a way that they understand. If you can't, that probably means that either a) you're telling the story wrong or b) it's not really a story." Thanks to TinyLetter and Bonobos for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: jakehalpern.com Halpern on Longform [2:00] "The Devil Underground" (Nadja Drost • The Atavist • Oct 2014) [2:00] Longform App Exclusive: "The Trials of White Boy Rick" (Evan Hughes • The Atavist • Sep 2014) [3:00] Braving Home (Houghton Mifflin • 2003) [4:00] "Jungle Boy" (The New Republic • 2006) [14:00] Fame Junkies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2006) [14:00] Bad Paper (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2014) [17:00] "Selling the Beat" (New Yorker • Apr 2004) [21:00] "Pay Up" (New Y

Jen Percy is the author of Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism. "As is the nature of obsession, you just start gathering materials, hoarding documents and taking notes in a way that’s totally chaotic and overwhelming. You don’t even care yet because you’re so excited by what you’re gathering. If you start trying to make a narrative out of it too soon it will be false or it will fall apart." Thanks to TinyLetter and Dear Thief, the new novel by Samantha Harvey, for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @JenPercy Percy on Longform [1:00] "My Terrifying Night With Afghanistan's Only Female Warlord" (The New Republic • Oct 2014) [1:00] Demon Camp: A Soldier's Exorcism (Scribner • 2014) [19:00] "Voice in the Night" An excerpt from Demon Camp (Harper’s • Nov 2013) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jessica Pressler writes for New York, Elle and GQ. "I really like hustlers, stories about someone who comes out of nowhere and tries to do it for themselves. Those people are just easy to like. Even when they're sort of terrible, they're easy to like." Thanks to TinyLetter and Warby Parker for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jpressler Pressler on Longform [3:00] jessicapressler.com [11:00] "Philadelphia Story: The Next Borough" (The New York Times • Aug 2005) [17:00] Longform Podcast #77: Dan P. Lee [24:00] "It’s Too Bad. And I Don’t Mean It’s Too Bad Like ‘Screw ’Em.’" (New York • Jul 2011) [29:00] "The Dumbest Person in Your Building Is Passing Out Keys to Your Front Door!" (New York • Sep 2014) [29:00] "Let’s, Like, Demolish Laundry" (New York • May 2014) [30:00] "20/30 Vision" (New York • Aug 2013) [39:00] "The GQ Cover Story: Adam Driver" (GQ • Sep 2014) [41:00] "Adam Levine Doesn't Care If You Like Him (But He'd Really Prefer That You Did)" (GQ • Jul 2014) [41:00] "The Full Tatum" (GQ •

Wendy MacNaughton is a graphic journalist and the co-author of Pen & Ink: Tattoos and the Stories Behind Them. "We mostly hear stories from big personalities who already have a spotlight on them. I think that everybody carries stories that are just as profound as the ones we hear from celebrities or whoever. I’m interested in the stories of people who don’t usually get to tell them. I think those are sometimes the most interesting." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @wendymac wendymacnaughton.com wendymacnaughton.tumblr.com [1:00] Pen & Ink (with Isaac Fitzgerald • Bloomsbury • Oct 2014) [4:00] Pop-Up Magazine [14:00] Meanwhile in San Francisco (Chronicle Books • Mar 2014) [16:00] "The Making of Longshot" [20:00] "Meanwhile, The San Francisco Public Library" (The Rumpus • May 2011) [31:00] Lost Cat (with Caroline Paul • Bloomsbury • Apr 2013) [37:00] "The Price of Black Ambition" (Roxane Gay • VQR • Oct 2014) [40:00] "Universal Laws of Safe Distance" [45:00] "Meanwhile, M

Don Van Natta Jr., a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, writes for ESPN and is the author of several books, including Wonder Girl. "The nature of the kind of work I do as an investigative reporter, every story you do is going to get attacked and the tires are going to get kicked. It’s going to get scrutinized down to every phrase and down to every letter. You have to have multiple sources for key facts on this type of story. We set out to get that and we got it." Thanks to TinyLetter and Bonobos for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @DVNJr Van Natta Jr. on Longform [3:00] "The Trials of White Boy Rick" (Evan Hughes • The Atavist • Sep 2014) [3:00] The Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award [4:00] "His Game, His Rules" (ESPN • Mar 2013) [4:00] "Rice Case: Purposeful Misdirection by Team, Scant Investigation by NFL" (with Kevin Van Valkenburg • ESPN • Sep 2014) [11:00] "Sources: Rice Told NFL He Hit Fiancee" (ESPN • Sep 2014) [14:00] "Ravens Respond to OTL Story" (ESPN • Sep 2014) [14:00] Steve Bisc

Today we are re-airing our February 2013 interivew with our friend Matt Power, who died earlier this year while on assignment in Uganda, to help raise money for Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award. We have also reprinted Matt's classic 2005 article, "The Lost Buddhas of Bamiyan," which is available online for the first time. Founded by Matt's friends and family, the annual award will support promising writers early in their careers with a stipend of $12,500 to bring forward an unreported story of importance in some overlooked corner of the world. Please donate today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices