Longform

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

Anne Helen Petersen writes for BuzzFeed. Her book Scandals of Classic Hollywood is out this week. "I was obsessed with Entertainment Weekly from the very first issue and I obsessively catalogued it. I made a database on my Apple IIe where I put in the title of the magazine and the number and whether it was a little 'e' or a big 'E' on the cover and the different topics and then I gave it a grade. You know how in Entertainment Weekly they give everything a grade, so I’d be like 'Oscar’s Issue: A minus.' But I learned how to obsessively track Hollywood industry even though I grew up in a very small town in northern Idaho." Thanks to TinyLetter, Bonobos, and EA SPORTS FIFA 15 for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @annehelen annehelenpetersen.com Petersen on Longform [1:00] "The Down and Dirty History of TMZ" (BuzzFeed • Jul 2014) [1:00] Scandals of Classic Hollywood (Plume • Sep 2014) [3:00] EA SPORTS FIFA 15 Readers' Poll Results [5:00] "The Gossip Industry" (Petersen's Dissertation • 2011) [pdf] [

Chris Hayes hosts All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and is an editor-at-large for The Nation. "The instability was so intense and the anguish and frustration were so intense that there wasn’t a ton of time to think through, 'Well, what is my role in this?' Mostly it was: wake up in the morning after two or three hours of sleep and start going to stuff, talking to people, and keep doing that until the show happens." Thanks to GoDaddy for sponsoring this week's episode. Apply for the TinyLetter Writers Residency by September 26. And nominate your favorite soccer article for a chance to win a free Xbox One and EA SPORTS FIFA 15. Show Notes: @chrislhayes [1:55] Evan on The Rachel Maddow Show (MSNBC • Apr 2014) [7:30] "Al-Jazeera runs from teargas in Ferguson" (YouTube) [10:30] "St Louis police officer shoots Kajieme Powell [Graphic]" (YouTube) [26:00] Hayes's archive in The Chicago Reader [28:00] "Trapped" (The Chicago Reader • Dec 2002) [34:00] Hayes's archive in The Nation [39:30] "The NAFTA Superhighway" (Th

Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and more. He is the author of several books, including Friday Night Lights. "It’s quiet. And I really felt I needed that quiet. People say, 'Well anger was your edge, and agitation was your edge, and that’s going to hurt your writing.' I don’t know, maybe. It may be that in order to live a happier life you become a shittier writer. I don't know. But I just couldn't live in that fashion anymore, I just couldn't. It would've destroyed my marriage. It was destroying me." Thanks to this week's sponsors. The Longform App is now available. Apply for the TinyLetter Writers Residency by September 26. And nominate your favorite soccer article for a chance to win a free Xbox One and EA SPORTS FIFA 15. Show Notes: buzzbissinger.com Bissinger on Longform [7:00] Friday Night Lights (Da Capo Press • 1990) [7:30] "Pursuit Of A Big Blue Chipper" (Sports Illustrated • Sep 1968) [12:00] "Disorder in the Court" series (The P

Sean Wilsey has written for The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and McSweeney’s Quarterly, where he is an editor-at-large. His latest book is More Curious. "I’m actually apparently a fairly competent person at getting things done, making deadlines and all these things. But the Wilsey you might get in the piece about NASA is the guy who eats a ton of oysters and drinks a lot of beer before getting on the vomit comet." Thanks to TinyLetter and GoDaddy for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @seanwilsey [1:20] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and the author of Sticks and Stones. "There’s nothing purely, or maybe even at all, altruistic about this exchange. It’s transactional in the Janet Malcolm classical sense, but also in the emotional sense. There is a way in which I’m super open. I take in these experiences. They keep me up at night. They really get inside me. But then, I'm also using them to craft whatever I’m working on." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @emilybazelon emilybazelon.com Bazelon on Longform [17:30] "What Really Happened to Phoebe Prince?" (Slate • July 2010) [25:45] Sticks and Stones: Defeating the Culture of Bullying and Rediscovering the Power of Character and Empathy (2013 • Random House) [27:15] "The Price of a Stolen Childhood" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2013) [37:45] Double X [41:00] Political Gabfest [45:00] Bazelon on Colbert Report (Mar 2012) [46:00] Bazelon’s television appearances [47:45] "The Dawn of the Post-Cl

Zach Baron is a staff writer for GQ. "People love to put celebrity stuff or culture stuff lower on the hierarchy than, say, a serial killer story. I think they're all the same story. If you crack the human, you crack the human." Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes:   @xzachbaronx Baron's personal site Baron on Longform [7:00] "Kanye West: A Brand-New Ye" (GQ • Jul 2014) [17:30] "Steve McQueen: Auteur of the Year 2013" (GQ • Dec 2013) [22:50] "The Secret Double Life of Mister Cee" (GQ • Feb 2014) [39:10] Baron's archive on Grantland [45:00] "Fear and Self-Loathing in Las Vegas" (The Daily • Oct 2011) [45:40] "50 Cent Is My Life Coach" (GQ • Jun 2014) [52:00] "Cliven Bundy's War" (GQ • Jul 2014) [52:20] "Why Are They (Armed) 'Patriots' in Nevada But (Unarmed) Rioters in Ferguson?" (GQ • Aug 2014)   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ben Anderson is a war journalist and documentary filmmaker. His latest book, The Interpreters, is available free from Vice. "You're surrounded by people who are so poor. Maybe their family members have already been killed. And they still can't leave. So compared to that, I can't really take the idea that I've suffered and that I need stop and go to a spa for a few days. I can't take that idea that seriously. Compared to them, it feels like I am leading an almost privileged existence." Thanks to TinyLetter and GoDaddy for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @BenJohnAnderson Ben Anderson on Vice [12:00] The Slaves of Dubai (Vice • Apr 2009) [15:30] "My Holidays in the Axis of Evil" (BBC • Feb 2003) [20:43] No Worse Enemy (Oneworld Publications • Oct 2012) [21:15] This is What Winning Looks Like (Vice • May 2013) [23:20] The Battle for Marjah (HBO • Feb 2010) [33:16] Vice on HBO [40:00] James Wood's New Yorker archive [42:40] Afghan Interpreters (Vice • Jul 2014) [42:40] The Interpreters (Vice • Aug 2

Lewis Lapham, formerly the editor of Harper's, is the founder of Lapham's Quarterly. "The best part of my job was to come across a manuscript. You never knew what would show up. ... I always had the sense of opening a present, hoping to be both delighted and surprised. Often I was disappointed. But when I wasn't, it was a lot of fun. And word got around that I was that kind of an editor, that I was willing to try anything if you could make it interesting." Thanks to TinyLetter and GoDaddy for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: Lapham's Quarterly Lapham on Longform [2:30] With the Beatles (Melville House • Oct 2005) [17:00] "Who is Lyndon B. Johnson?" (The Saturday Evening Post • Sep 1965) [unavailable online] [21:00] "Monk: High Priest of Jazz" (The Saturday Evening Post • Apr 1964) [unavailable online] [29:00] "Alaksa: Politicians and Natives, Money and Oil" (Harper's • May 1970) [paywall] [31:00] "The Coming Wounds of Wall Street" (Harper's • May 1971) [paywall] [43:30] "Harper's Lapham: Good-by