Longform

Roxanna Asgarian is the author of We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America. “Every once in a while, I'll have someone just freak out at me. And it keeps you honest, in a way, because they don't owe you anything. People don't owe you anything as a journalist. ... But everyone reacts to trauma differently and some people really do want to talk about it. And I think the families in this book really wanted to talk about it and it felt like no one was even paying attention to them.” Show notes: @strawburriez Asgarian's Texas Tribune archive We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2023) 12:00 "Child in viral Portland police hug photo missing, 5 family members dead after California cliff crash" (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Mar 2018) 12:00 "Devonte Hart family crash: Sarah Hart sent alarming 3 a.m. text to friend ... then silence" (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Apr 2018) 13:00 "Devonte Hart

Daisy Alioto is a journalist and the CEO of Dirt Media. “I don't think I was ever super precious about my writing, but if I was, I'm zero percent precious about it now. Every time I write for Dirt, it saves the company money. ... Nothing will make you sit down and write 800 words in 20 minutes than just needing to get it done. And that is a change that I've seen in myself. I would encourage everyone to be less precious about their writing.” Show notes: daisyalioto.com 00:00 Dirt 09:00 "Marie Colvin’s Private War" (Marie Brenner • Vanity Fair • Jul 2012) 09:00 A Private War (Acacia Filmed Entertainment, Savvy Media Holdings, Thunder Road Pictures • 2018) 05:00 Airmail 11:00 "Pretend it’s a living" (Dirt • Jan 2021) 15:00 Prune 16:00 Hung Up (Hunter Harris) 16:00 Maybe Baby (Hayley Nahman) 16:00 Today in Tabs (Rusty Foster) 16:00 Blackbird Spyplane (Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie) 16:00 Singal-Minded (Jesse Singal) 17:00 "The Complete History & Strategy of LVMH" (Acquired • Feb 2023) 24:00 "Grizzl

Ian Coss is a journalist, audio producer, and composer. He is the host of Forever is a Long Time and The Big Dig. “One thing that I really carried with me in making the show is a belief that bureaucracy is interesting. And that once you get through the jargon and wonky sounding stuff … beyond that it’s all just human drama.” Show notes: @ian_coss iancoss.com 32:00 Isabel Hibbard’s website 33:00 Forever is a Long Time (PRX • 2021) 37:00 Lacy Roberts’ website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mosi Secret has written for ProPublica, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. His new podcast is Radical. “I think this story made me call on parts of myself that are not journalistic because I don’t really think that’s the way we’re going to get out of this at this point in my life. I think that it takes a more radical reimagining of who we are as human beings, the ways in which we’re connected, and what we owe to each other. And that’s not a reporting thing—that’s a ‘who are you’ kind of thing.” Show notes: mosisecret.com Secret on Longform Secret’s New York Times archive 10:00 “Stolen Youth: How Durham's Criminal Justice System Sent Erick Daniels to Prison Based on the Shape of His Eyebrows” (INDYWeek • May 2007) 18:00 “On the Brink in Brownsville” (New York Times Magazine • May 2014) 21:00 “‘The Way to Survive It Was to Make A’s’” (New York Times Magazine • September 2017) 23:00 Johnny Kauffman’s website 28:00 “Having a Drink With Mosi Secret, the New York Times’ First-Ever Sin and Vice Reporter” 

Mary Roach is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law. "In these realms of the taboo, there's a tremendous amount of material that is really interesting, but that people have stayed away from. ... I'm kind of a bottom feeder. It's down there on the bottom where people don't want to go. But if that's what it takes to find interesting, new material, I'm fine with it. I don't care. I'm not easily grossed out. I don't feel that there's any reason why we shouldn't look at this. And over time, I started to feel that ... the taboo was preventing people from having conversations that it would be healthy to have." Show notes: @mary_roach maryroach.net Roach on Longform 00:00 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (W.W. Norton • 2021) 01:00 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (W.W. Norton • 2003) 01:00 Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W. Norton • 2008) 01:00 Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (W.W. Norton • 2010) 01:00 Gulp: Advent

Craig Mod is a writer and photographer who has two newsletters, Roden and Ridgeline. His new book is Things Become Other Things. “There'll be days where … I’m doing a walk and I'll just be like, I don't know what is going to move me today. And then out of the blue, there'll be this small interaction that when you really pay attention to it, it contains kind of this universe of kindness and patience that you otherwise pass by or ignore. If you're in the general mode of looking at things and then being able to take that experience and try to transmute it into an essay for the evening and send it out, it just develops your eye. You just start being able to look more and more and more closely.” Show notes: craigmod.com Things Become Other Things (Fine art edition • 2023 // Hardcover edition • Random House • 2025) Roden (Newsletter) Ridgeline (Newsletter) 1:00 Mod on Longform Podcast 6:30 Koya Bound: Eight Days on the Kumano Kodō (with Dan Rubin • PRE/POST • 2016) 16:00 Kiiiiiiiiiiiiii 16:00 Special P

Mona Chalabi is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, where she is the data editor. Her New York Times Magazine piece “9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting. “I kind of think of protest as just saying what you believe. And sometimes, it’s considered protest because it’s outside of the institutions of power. So you’re saying, Hey, Palestinians deserve human rights, and that’s considered a form of protest, right? I want the work to change things and I think I’m quite unapologetic about that, and most journalists are like No no no no no, we’re just reporting the world, we’re just reporting things as we see it. There’s no desire for change. I think that is so messed up. This idea that your work has no impact in the world is incorrect. You can’t wash yourself of the consequences of the work, you have to be considering the consequences while you’re doing it.” Show notes: monachalabi.com Cha

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcasts Work Life and Re: Thinking. His new book is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things. “If you only focus on your own interest, you tend to develop novel ideas, but not necessarily useful ideas. And so for me, the audience is a filter. … I might have 30 ideas for a book. Let me hone in on the four or five that also might be relevant to other people. The goal there is to make a contribution.” Show notes: adamgrant.net Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Penguin • 2014) Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Penguin • 2017) Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (Viking • 2023) Work Life with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective) Re: Thinking with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective) Grant's New York Times archive 17:00 "The Necessity of Others is The Mother of Invention: Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivations, Perspective Taking, and Creativity" (Adam Grant and James Be

Jesse David Fox covers comedy for Vulture, where he hosts the podcast Good One. His new book is Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture—and the Magic That Makes It Work. “There’s a complete lack of anyone who’s ever written about comedy seriously compared to any other art form. There’s just nothing. … So the challenge was, how do you start a conversation that no one has been participating in?” Show notes: @JesseDavidFox Fox’s Vulture archive 3:00 Jason Zinoman’s New York Times archive 5:00 “What Is the Best Adam Sandler Movie?” (Vulture • April 2023) 6:00 Kathryn VanArendonk’s Vulture archive 8:00 “A Note About Splitsider” (Megh Wright• Vulture • Mar 2018) 11:00 “Jerry Seinfeld at Vulture Festival 2015” (Vulture • June 2015) 12:00 WTF with Marc Maron Podcast (Marc Maron • WTF • 2009) 14:00 “Jen Kirkman Turned Catcalling Into One of the Best Street Harassment Jokes Ever” (Vulture • April 2017) 23:00 “An Appreciation of the Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” (Ramsey Ess • Vulture • Mar 2018) 23:00 

Evan Hughes is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, GQ, The Atlantic, The Atavist and many others. His book, just out in paperback, is Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup. “It should be called slow-form journalism…. It is heavily edited. It’s heavily fact checked. And chances are, you’re not going to be the first. Maybe you’re going to be first to reveal some piece of it. I have made peace with like, I’m not the scoop guy. I’m the person who comes in and I’m good at telling the story in a thorough and deep way.” Show notes: evanhughes.co Pain Hustlers: Crime and Punishment at an Opioid Startup (Anchor • 2023) 03:00 "Longform Podcast #503: Evan Osnos" (Longform Podcast • Sep 2022) 03:00 "The Trials of White Boy Rick" (Atavist • Sep 2014) 04:00 "The Shocking True Tale of the Mad Genius Who Invented Sea-Monkeys" (The Awl • Jun 2011) 06:00 "Just Kids" (New York Magazine • Oct 2011) 07:00 Literary Brooklyn: The Writers of Brooklyn and the Story of Americ

Yepoka Yeebo has written for The Guardian, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Quartz. Her new book is Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World. “Initially it was like, Why are you writing about a con man? He makes Ghana look bad. Nobody needs another crime story about an African person. I found that irritating, because isn't the whole point of being a complete person, complete people, is we contain multitudes? We too can be epic, world-leading con men! Also, it's a great story. Everybody should revel in the insanity of what happened.” Show notes: @yepoka yepokayeebo.com Yeebo on Longform Anansi’s Gold: The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World 16:00 “The True Story of the Fake U.S. Embassy in Ghana” (The Guardian • Nov 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Clare Malone is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her latest article is ”Hasan Minhaj’s ‘Emotional Truths.’” “You're going to work a lot of hours if you want to be successful, and you're probably not going to make as much money as your dumb friend from college does. You're choosing it for a different reason, but I do think we have to make efforts to have the [journalism] industry be a middle-class profession.” Show notes: Malone's New Yorker archive Malone's FiveThirtyEight archive 03:00 "CNN’s New White Knight" (New Yorker • Sep 2023) 08:00 "Ben Smith Can’t Say What His New Media Venture Is" (New Yorker • Jan 2022) 09:00 "How Trump Changed America" (FiveThirtyEight • Nov 2020) 18:00 Just Like Us (The Ringer • 2022) 25:00 Semafor (Newsletter) 25:00 Confider (Lachlan Cartwright • Daily Beast) 27:00 "Inside the Meltdown at CNN" (Tim Alberta • Atlantic • Jun 2023) 27:00 "What the Shakeup at CNN Says About the Future of Cable News" (New Yorker • Jun 2023) 28:00 "David Zaslav, Hollywood Antihero" (New

Azam Ahmed is an international investigative correspondent for The New York Times. His new book is Fear Is Just a Word: A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance. “I think the fundamental question I always ask when I go into a new place, whether I’m covering currencies, or hedge funds, or geopolitics in Afghanistan, or the war—it’s what does this mean to the world right now? What does the world need to know and how does it fit into that space?” Show notes: @azamsahmed Ahmed on Longform Ahmed’s New York Times archive 20:00 “For Afghan Officials, Prospect of Death Comes with Territory” (New York Times • Dec 2012) 21:00 “A Day’s Toil in the Suicide Bombers’ Graveyard” (New York Times • Aug 2013) 21:00 “2 Afghan Sisters, Swept Up in a Suicide Wave” (New York Times • March 2013) 25:00 “She Stalked Her Daughter’s Killers Across Mexico, One by One” (New York Times • Dec 2020) 46:00 “Using Texts as Lures, Government Spyware Targets Mexican Journalists and Their Families” (New Yo

Kashmir Hill is a tech reporter for The New York Times. Her new book is Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It. “I often do feel like what my work is doing is preparing people for the way the world is going to change. With something like facial recognition technology, that's really important because if the world is changing such that every photo of you taken that's uploaded is going to be findable, it's going to change the decisions that you make.” Show notes: kashmirhill.com Hill on Longform Hill's New York Times archive Hill's Gizmodo archive Hill's Forbes archive 01:00 "Life Without the Tech Giants" (Gizmodo • Jan 2019) 01:00 "Living On Bitcoin for a Week: The Journey Begins" (Forbes • May 2013) 01:00 "Your Face Is Not Your Own" (New York Times • Mar 2021) 01:00 Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup’s Quest to End Privacy as We Know It (Random House • 2023) 03:00 "Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened" (Wired • Nov 2009) 11:00

Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg. His new book is Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall. “I have a rule of thumb, which is that if somebody did one scam, they probably did another scam. If they did one scam in the past and now they have a new thing, odds are good it’s also a scam. That’s not always true, but that was definitely borne out sometimes in crypto-world.” Show notes: @ZekeFaux zekefaux.com Faux on Longform Faux’s Bloomberg archive 06:00 “Secret Network Connects Harvard Money to Payday Loans” (Bloomberg • Sept 2014) 08:00 “Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?” (Bloomberg • Oct 2021) 21:00 Matt Levine’s Bloomberg archive 22:00 “‘Don’t You Remember Me?’ The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text” (Bloomberg • Aug 2023) 32:00 “The Rise of FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried, Was a Great Story. Its Implosion Is Even Better.” (Alexandra Alter • New York Times • May 2023) 58:00 The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Penguin Random House • 2020) Learn more about your ad

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder of the nonprofit Freedom Reads. His New York Times Magazine article "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" won the National Magazine Award. His new podcast is Almost There. “I felt like I had to own becoming something and intuitively understood that if I didn't lay claim to desiring to be something, that it would be too many other forces that would be pulling on me to dictate that I become something else. … When you say you're a writer, if you know nothing else, then you know that you read. You pay attention to the world. … And prison became the metaphor by which I understood the world and poetry became the medium by which I understood what it meant to write about the world and what it meant to take seriously the responsibility to write about the world that I knew.” Show notes: dwaynebetts.com freedomreads.org 01:00 Almost There with Dwayne Betts (Emerson Collective) 05:00 The Black Poets (Dudley Randall • Bantam • 1985) 10:00

Audie Cornish, the former host NPR’s All Things Considered, is an anchor and correspondent for CNN. Her podcast is The Assignment. “I think there is journalism inherent in an interview. Like the interview itself should be considered a piece of journalism. It isn't always. Sometimes the vibe is that it’s a little window dressing or that it's personality driven and I don't subscribe to that. I think that it has its own journalism. It's my journalism.” Show notes: @AudieCornish Cornish's NPR archive 01:00 The Assignment (CNN Audio • 2022) 25:00 "Letters: 'Music Curator' Diplo" (NPR • Jun 2012) 36:00 Cornish’s Twitter thread (Jan 2022) 43:00 Serial (Serial Productions) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Susan Burton is an editor at This American Life, the author of the memoir Empty, and the host of the podcast The Retrievals. “I know I have much more anger than I reveal, and I don’t think that’s uncommon. Especially for women. There’s been a lot of attention to that in recent years—the anger of women, how it’s expressed and not expressed. But I think that among the things I’ve stifled for years are just my true feelings, and I’ve always wanted to be close to people and to be intimate with people, and have often felt that I have trouble making myself known or being known or being understood. And so...it felt good to be known.” Show notes: @burtonsusan susanburton.net Burton on Longform Burton’s This American Life archive 01:00 “In The Event of an Emergency, Put Your Sister in an Upright Position” (Ira Glass • This American Life • Jan 2001) 05:00 Empty (Random House • 2020) 06:00 “Secrets” (This American Life • Feb 2021) 39:00 “Terry Gross and the Art of Opening Up” (New York Times • Oct 2015) 42:00 “

Jamie Loftus is a comedian, writer, and podcaster. Her new book is Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs. “Comedy has been super helpful to me because it's so based on failing every night sometimes that I wasn't afraid of failure in the same way because it's just like, Well, that's going to happen to me at some point this week. Why not in this format?” Show notes: jamieloftus.xyz 00:00 Lolita Podcast (iHeartRadio • 2020-21) 01:00 Aack Cast! (iHeartRadio • 2021) 01:00 My Year in Mensa (iHeartRadio • 2020) 01:00 Ghost Church (iHeartRadio • 2022) 01:00 Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs (Forge Books • 2023) 10:00 Sarah Marshall on Longform Podcast 14:00 "Dolores Onstage" (iHeartRadio • Dec 2020) 19:00 The Bechdel Cast (Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus • iHeartRadio) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Javier Zamora is the author of Unaccompanied, a poetry collection, and Solito, a memoir. “There was something that I felt eating away at me, which made me a very angry and volatile teenager. And I think I was an angry teenager because I had this trauma that nobody around me could talk about, and that I didn't have the right therapist to help me unpack. So the cheapest thing that I had was poetry.” Show notes: @jzsalvipoet javierzamora.net 03:00 “Reading Neruda and Learning to Heal My Diasporic Wounds” (Lit Hub • April 2019) 18:00 Krik? Krak! (Edwidge Danticat • Soho Press • 2015) 31:00 franciscocantu.us 37:00 The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail (Óscar Martínez • Verso Books • 2013) 42:00 “Zamora: It’s time for the Pulitzer Prize for literature to accept noncitizens” (Los Angeles Times • July 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices