Longform

Kelly McEvers, a former war correspondent, hosts NPR's All Things Considered and the podcast Embedded. “Listeners want you to be real, a real person. Somebody who stumbles and fails sometimes. I think the more human you are, the more people can then relate to you. The whole point is not so everybody likes me, but it’s so people will want to take my hand and come along. It's so they feel like they trust me enough to come down the road with me. To do that, I feel like you need to be honest and transparent about what that road’s like.” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @kellymcevers McEvers on Longform [02:00] "How It Ends" (Lenny • Apr 2016) [06:00] "Diary of a Bad Year: A War Correspondent’s Dilemma" (Transom • Jun 2013) [08:00] "The Capital" (Embedded • Apr 2016) [25:00] Friday Was the Bomb: Five Years in the Middle East (Nathan Deuel • Disquiet • 2014) [28:00] All Things Considered [38:00] Embedded [39:00] Marketplace [42:00] "The Fight for the F

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses"The Mastermind,” his new 7-part serialized story in The Atavist Magazine. “On several occasions [sources] didn’t want to go into the details of how they were identified. They were just like, ‘My safety is in your hands. Just be careful.’ And I didn’t really know what to do with that. I was sort of trying to balance what to include and what not to include and trying to make these decisions. Will Paul Le Roux know it’s this person? It’s impossible to know. I tried to err on the side of caution, but there’s no ethics hotline you can call and be like, ‘What do I do in this situation?’”   Thanks to our friends at MailChimpfor making today's episode possible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Susie Cagle is a journalist and illustrator. “I don’t really know what it was that made me not quit. I still kind of wonder that. There have been many times over the last couple of years even, as things are taking off in my career, things are going well, I’m writing about wonderful things that are interesting to me, and I still wonder—should I be doing this? What the hell is next year gonna look like?” Thanks to MailChimp, FreshBooks, and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @susie_c susie-c.tumblr.com [10:00] Cagle’s Curbed San Francisco Archive [21:00] "The Free and the Antifree" (n+1 Editors • n+1 • Fall 2014) [21:00] "Freedom Isn’t Antifree; Responding to Privilege"(with Manjula Martin • n+1 • Winter 2015) [22:00] Who Pays Writers? [30:00] "Is Wall Street Making a Killing off Cities’ Debt?" (Next City • Oct 2014) [34:00] "Cartoonist Susie Cagle on Her Tear Gassing and Arrest While Covering Occupy Oakland" (Laura Hudson • Comics Alliance • Nov 2011) [36:00] "Ledger #1: Spreadsheets

Maciej Ceglowski is the founder of Pinboard. He writes at Idle Words. “My natural contrarianism makes me want to see if I can do something long-term in an industry where everything either changes until it's unrecognizable or gets sold or collapses. I like the idea of things on the web being persistent. And more basically, I reject this idea that everything has to be on a really short time scale just because it involves technology. We’ve had these computers around for a while now. It’s time we start treating them like everything else in our lives, where it kind of lives on the same time scale that we do and doesn’t completely fall off the end of the world every three or four years.” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Casper, and MIT Press for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @baconmeteor idlewords.com Ceglowski on Longform [2:00] Pinboard [2:00] The Bedbug Registry [17:00] "The Internet With a Human Face" (YouTube) [20:00] "Thoreau 2.0" (Idle Words • Sep 2013) [27:00] The Longform Guide to Sleep (

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and the author of The Signal and the Noise. “I know in a perfectly rational world, if you make an 80/20 prediction, people should know that not only will this prediction not be right all the time, but you did something wrong if it’s never wrong. The 20% underdog should come through sometimes. People in sports understand that sometimes a 15 seed beats a 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. That’s much harder to explain to people in politics.” Thanks to MailChimp, Bombas, Squarespace, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @NateSilver538 fivethirtyeight.com Silver on Longform [2:00] FiveThirtyEight Podcasts [2:00] "Why The Dean Scream Sounded So Different On TV" (Jody Avirgan, Clare Malone • FiveThirtyEight) [10:00] The Burrito Bracket [12:00] Silver’s Daily Kos Archive [19:00] The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail—but Some Don’t (Penguin Books • 2012) [19:00] "FiveThirtyEight’s 2012 Forecast" (New York Times • Nov 2012) [45:00]

Elizabeth Gilbert has written for Spin, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of several books, including Eat, Pray, Love. “I call it the platinum rule. The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but the platinum rule is even higher: don’t be a dick.” Thanks to MailChimp, Bombas, Squarespace, and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @GilbertLiz elizabethgilbert.com Gilbert on Longform [36:00] "Buckle Bunnies" (Spin • Sep 1994) [Google Books] [39:00] Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Riverhead Books • 2006) [42:00] "The Last American Man" (GQ • Aug 2010) [42:00] "The Ghost" (GQ • Aug 2010) [42:00] "The Muse of the Coyote Ugly Saloon" (GQ • Jun 2012) [42:00] "Dumb and Dumber" (Spin • Jul 1995) [Google Books] [43:00] "Dead Rock West" (Spin • Aug 1996) [Google Books] [48:58] "Play It Like Your Hair’s On Fire" (GQ • Jun 2002) [49:00] "Gotta Dance!" (GQ • Dec 1998) [1:02:00] Pilgrims (Houghton Miffl

Gabriel Snyder is the editor-in-chief of The New Republic. “I had a new job, I was new to the place, and I came to it with a great deal of respect but didn’t feel like I had any special claim to it. But in that moment I realized that there were all of these people who wanted to see the place die. And that the only way The New Republic was going to continue was by someone wanting to see it continue, and I realized I was one of those people now.” Thanks to MailChimp, Bombas, Harry's, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @gabrielsnyder [03:00] "The Mastermind" (Evan Ratliff • The Atavist Magazine • Mar 2016) [05:00] Inside [05:00] "How Journalism’s New Golden Boy Got Thrown Out Of New Republic" (Warren St. John • Observer • May 1998) [8:00] Longform Podcast #171: Adrian Chen [17:00] "The New Republic Turns 100 Today. Here’s Our First Issue, Ever." (The New Republic Staff • The New Republic • Nov 2014) [36:00] The New Republic on Longform [37:00] "The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens" (El

Ben Smith is the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. “I do think as a reporter in general, most of what we deal in is ephemera. And I love that. I mean that’s the business, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, I think that’s a plus and something that shapes how you succeed at the job because you realize that this thing you’re writing is about this moment and right now, and about its place in the conversation. It’s not some piece of art to hang on the wall.” Thanks to MailChimp, Harry's, and Reveal, and Home Chef for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @buzzfeedben Smith on Longform [11:00] "Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt on Journalists" (BuzzFeed • Nov 2014) [11:00] "Donald Trump Secretly Told the New York Times What He Really Thinks About Immigration" (BuzzFeed • Feb 2016) [11:00] "Why BuzzFeed Doesn’t Do Clickbait" (BuzzFeed • Nov 2014) [11:00] "What the Longform Backlash Is All About" (Medium • Jan 2014) [12:00] "What the Hell Happened To Mickey Kaus?" (BuzzFeed • Dec 2

Daniel Alarcón, a novelist and the co-founder of Radio Ambulante, has written for Harper's, California Sunday, and the New York Times Magazine. “I’m a writer. I’ve written a bunch of books, and I care a lot about my sentences and my prose and all that. But would I be willing to defend my book in a Peruvian prison? That’s a litmus test I think a lot of writers I know would fail.” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Home Chef for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @DanielGAlarcon danielalarcon.org Alarcón on Longform [3:00] Pop-Up Magazine [3:00] "Rigoberto" (Harper’s • Jan 2012) [7:00] War by Candlelight: Stories (Harper Perennial • 2006) [9:00] "All Politics Is Local" (Harper’s • Feb 2012) [15:00] At Night We Walk in Circles: A Novel (Riverhead Books • 2013) [17:00] "Let’s Go, Country" (Harper’s • Sep 2006) [18:00] Etiqueta Negra [19:-0] "City of Clowns" (New Yorker • Jun 2003) [19:00] "Grand Mall Seizure" (Alternet • Dec 2004) [26:00] Lost City Radio (Harper Perennial • 2008) [28:00] Radio Ambulant

Jia Tolentino is the deputy editor of Jezebel. “Insult itself is an opportunity. I’m glad to be a woman, and I’m glad not to be white. I think it’s made me tougher. I’ve never been able to assume comfort or power. I’m just glad. I’m glad, especially as you watch the great white male woke freak-out meltdown that’s happening right now, I’m glad that it’s good to come from below.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Home Chef for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @jiatolentino jiatolentino.tumblr.com Tolentino on Longform [08:00] "A Chat with Malcolm Brenner, Man Famous for Having Sex with a Dolphin" (Jezebel • Feb 2015) [08:00] Wet Goddess (Malcolm J. Brenner • Eyes Open Media • 2009) [11:00] Tolentino’s Interview With a Virgin Archive (The Hairpin) [15:00] "Rush After ‘A Rape On Campus’: A UVA Alum Goes Back to Rugby Road" (Jezebel • Jan 2015) [16:00] "No Offense" (Jezebel • Dec 2015) [18:00] "How Should Asian-Americans Feel About the Peter Liang Protests?" (Jay Caspian Kang • New York Times Mag

Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly advice column for New York and is the author of the upcoming How to Be a Person in the World. “I don’t give a shit if I succeed or fail or what I do next, I just want to do things that are strange and not sound bitey. I don’t want to be polished. I want to be such a wreck that no one will ever say ‘let’s put her on her own talk show.’” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @hhavrilesky rabbitblog.com Havrilesky on Longform [01:00] "What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage" (New York • Feb 2016) [19:00] "’Mad Men’ Finale Recap: ‘The Moon Belongs to Everyone’" (Salon • May 2014) [20:00] "‘Mad Men’ Cartoon Countdown: The Seventh- and Sixth-to-Last Episodes" (New Yorker • Apr 2015) [26:00] "Chicks ‘n’ Shit" (Suck • Dec 1995) [30:00] Havrilesky’s Filler Archive (Suck • 2001) [36:00] Havrilesky’s Ask Polly Archive at The Awl [36:00] Ask Polly archive at New York [44:00] "Katy Perry and the Fear of a Female

Wesley Yang writes for New York and other publications. “If a person remains true to some part of their experience, no matter what it is, and they present it in full candor, there’s value to that. People will recognize it. Once I knew that was true, I knew I could do this.” Thanks to MailChimp, Home Chef, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @wesyang Yang on Longform [02:00] "Paper Tigers" (New York • May 2011) [10:00] "The Snakehead" (Patrick Radden Keefe • New Yorker • Apr 2006) [24:00] "Eddie Huang Against the World" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2015) [24:00] "The Face of Seung-Hui Cho" (n+1 • Jun 2011) [27:00] "The Life and Afterlife of Aaron Swartz" (New York • Feb 2013) [32:00] "The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts)" (Nikki Giovanni) [42:00] "Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates" (Nov 2015) [47:00] "We Out Here" (Harper’s Magazine • Mar 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adch

Mishka Shubaly is the author of I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You and several best-selling Kindle Singles. “I remember thinking when I was shipwrecked in the Bahamas, ‘I’m going to fucking die here. I’m 24 years old, I’m going to die, and no one will miss me. I’m never going to see my mother again.’ And then the guy with the boat came around the corner and my first thought was ‘Man, this is going to be one hell of a story.’” Thanks to MailChimp and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @MishkaShubaly mishkashubaly.com [2:00] I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You: A Life on the Low Road (PublicAffairs • 2016) [3:00] "Questions Outweigh Answers In Shooting Spree at College" (Anthony DePalma • The New York Times • Dec 1992) [13:00] Beat the Devil [18:00] "Bad Dreams" (New York Press • Mar 2008) [29:00] "Shipwrecked" (Kindle Single • Apr 2011) [31:00] "The Long Run" (Kindle Single • Oct 2011) [46:00] Coward’s Path (Invisible Hands Music Limited • 2015) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastcho

Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton host Another Round. “I’m just trying to follow my curiosities. You know how kids always ask the best questions because they haven’t lost the will to live? I’m just desperately trying to keep that childish curiosity about the world. Is that horribly depressing?” Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, Igloo, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @heavenrants @brokeymcpoverty Another Round [8:00] "1128: Free the McGriddle" (The Black Guy Who Tips • Feb 2016) [9:00] "Episode 1: Unlearning (with Durga Chew-Bose)" (Another Round • Mar 2015) [15:00] "Episode 28: Madam Secretary, What’s Good? (with Hillary Clinton)" (Another Round • Oct 2015) [33:00] "Chatterati" (The Root) [36:00] "The 45 Most Hilarious Tweets From #BlackBuzzFeed" (BuzzFeed • Jul 2013) [44:00] "When Taking Anxiety Medication Is a Revolutionary Act" (BuzzFeed • Feb 2015) [54:00] Forbes 30 Under 30: Heben Nigatu (Forbes • Jan 2016) [57:00] "The Tennis Racket" (BuzzFeed • Jan 2016) [1:01:00] "13 Top Edi

Michael J. Mooney is a staff writer at D Magazine and the author of The Life and Legend of Chris Kyle. “There are some elements of crime stories that are so absurd that it’s funny, and so working on the “How Not to Get Away With Murder” story, it was actually really funny thinking about it for a long time. Until I met Nancy Howard, the woman who was shot in the face and has one eye now. This is her entire life, and it was destroyed. This is not a crime story to her, it’s her life.” Thanks to MailChimp, Feverborn, Audible, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @MooneyMichaelJ michaeljmooney.com Mooney on Longform [5:00] "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" (D Magazine • Jul 2012) [10:00] "The Real Girlfriend Experience" (New Times • Sep 2008) [17:00] "The New Glenn Beck" (D Magazine • Nov 2014) [23:00] "The Day Kennedy Died" (D Magazine • Nov 2008) [32:00] "How Not to Get Away With Murder" (D Magazine • Dec 2014) [33:00] "When Lois Pearson Started Fighting Back" (D Magazine • Jun

Alex Perry, based in England, has covered Africa and Asia for Newsweek and Time. His most recent book is The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. “I got a call from one of my editors in 2003 or 2004, and he said something like, ‘You realize someone has died in the first line of every story you’ve filed for the last eight months?’ And my response was, ‘Of course. Isn’t that how we know it’s important?’ It took me a long time to work out that the importance of a story isn’t established only by death.” Thanks to MailChimp,Feverborn, and AlarmGrid for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @PerryAlexJ alex-perry.com Perry on Longform [2:00] The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free (Weidenfeld & Nicolson • 2015) [3:00] The Hunt for Boko Haram (Newsweek Insights • 2014) [4:00] "Inside the World of Louis Sarno, the Pygmy Chief from New Jersey" (Howard Swains • Newsweek • Apr 2015) [4:00] "Behind the Scenes in Putin’s Court: The Private Habits of a Latter-Day Dictator" (Ben Judah • Newsweek • Jul 2014) [27:20] "The Coll

Grant Wahl is senior writer at Sports Illustrated and the author of The Beckham Experiment. “I said to Balotelli, ‘I know you’re into President Obama. There’s a decent chance that he might read this story.’ He kind of perked up. I don’t think I was deliberately misleading him. There was a chance!” Thanks to MailChimp, Audible, Feverborn, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @GrantWahl Wahl's Sports Illustrated archive Wahl on Longform [4:00] "Hidden Damages" (M.R. O'Conner • The Atavist Magazine • Jan 2015) [19:00] "Home at Last" (William Mack • Sports Illustrated • Mar 1997) [20:00] "Men on a Mission" (Sports Illustrated • Feb 1997) [22:00] "The Odd Coupling" (Sports Illustrated • Oct 1997) [24:00] "Paternity Ward" (Sports Illustrated • May 1998) [27:00] The Beckham Experiment: How the World’s Most Famous Athlete Tried to Conquer America (Three Rivers Press • 2009) [28:00] "The Americanization of David Beckham" (Sports Illustrated • Jul 2007) [34:00] "Mario Balotelli Has a Talen

Brooke Gladstone is the co-host of On the Media and the author of The Influencing Machine. “I'm not going to get any richer or more famous than I am right now. This is it, this is fine — it's better than I ever expected. I don't have anything to risk anymore. As far as I’m concerned, I want to just spend this last decade, decade and a half, twenty years, doing what I think is valuable. I don’t have any career path anymore. I’m totally off the career path. The beautiful thing is that I just don’t have any more fucks to give.” Thanks to Audible, Open Source, MailChimp, Igloo, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @OTMBrooke On the Media [10:00] "The Case Against the MX" (Inquiry • Aug 1979) [pdf] [12:00] Fred Kaplan's Slate archive [22:00] "Vanity Plates" (Bob Garfield • On the Media • Feb 2003) [24:00] "Reporting Around DHS Opacity" (On the Media • Oct 2013) [33:00] "The Anatomy of Six Shootings" (On The Media • Aug 2014) [35:00] The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Med

Venkatesh Rao is the founder of Ribbonfarm and the author of Breaking Smart. “I would say I was blind and deaf and did not know anything about how the world worked until I was about 25. It took until almost 35 before I actually cut loose from the script. The script is a very, very powerful thing. The script wasn’t working for me.” Thanks to MailChimp and CreativeLive for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @vgr Ribbonfarm Rao on Longform [3:00] "Seeking Density in the Gonzo Theater" (Ribbonfarm • Jan 2012) [5:00] "You Are Not an Artisan" (Ribbonfarm • July 2013) [6:00] Breaking Smart: Season 1 [11:00] "Why Software Is Eating the World" (Marc Andreessen • Wall Street Journal • Aug 2011) [19:00] Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (Philip E. Tetlock • Crown • 2015) [31:00] "The End of History?" (Francis Fukuyama • The National Interest • 1989) [pdf] [39:00] Quora [48:00] "Deep Play" (Aeon • Nov 2013) [48:00] "The American Cloud" (Aeon • July 2013) [48:00] "Why Solving Climate Change W

Doug McGray is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of California Sunday and Pop-Up. “Your life ends up being made up of the things you remember. You forget most of it, but the things that you remember become your life. And if you can make something that someone remembers, then you’re participating in their life. There’s something really meaningful about that. It feels like something worth trying to do.” Thanks to MailChimp, Smart People Podcast, Howl, and CreativeLive for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @dougmcgray douglasmcgray.com Pop-Up Magazine McGray on Longform California Sunday on Longform [11:00] "The Invisibles" (West • Apr 2006) [14:00] "Episode 329: Nice Work If You Can Get It" (This American Life • Apr 2007) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices