Longform

Andy Ward, a former editor at Esquire and GQ, is the editorial director of nonfiction at Random House. "How you gain that trust is a hard thing to quantify. The way I try do it is by caring. If you don't care about every word and every sentence in the piece, writers pick up on that. ... Ultimately, it's their book or their magazine article. Their name is on it, not mine. I always try to keep that in mind." Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA 14. Show notes: @AndyWard15 Andy Ward Picks His Favorite Articles [31:00] "The Perfect Fire" (Sean Flynn • Esquire • Jul 2000) [33:00] "He Came from Outer Space" (Chris Jones • Esquire • Oct 2002) [40:45] Jim Nelson's Memo to GQ staffers when Ward left [42:30] "The Book of Me" (Richard Powers • GQ • Oct 2008) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elizabeth Wurtzel is the author of four books, including Prozac Nation. "It's not that hard to be a lawyer. Any fool can be a lawyer. It's really hard to be a writer. You have to be born with incredible amounts of talent. Then you have to work hard. Then you have to be able to handle tons of rejection and not mind it and just keep pushing away at it. You have to show up at people's doors. You can't just e-mail and text message people. You have to bang their doors down. You have to be interesting. You have to be fucking phenomenal to get a book published and then sell the book. When people think their writing career is not working out, it's not working out because it's so damn hard. It's not harder now than it was 20 years ago. It's just as hard. It was always hard." Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA 14 for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @LizzieWurtzel [16:00] Prozac Nation (1994) [21:00] "The Return of the Replacements: Here Comes a Regular" (The Daily Beast • Sep 2013) [31:00] "Elizabet

Gay Talese, who wrote for Esquire in the 1960s and currently contributes to The New Yorker, is the author of several books. His latest is A Writer's Life. "I want to know how people did what they did. And I want to know how that compares with how I did what I did. That's my whole life. It's not really a life. It's a life of inquiry. It's a life of getting off your ass, knocking on a door, walking a few steps or a great distance to pursue a story. That's all it is: a life of boundless curiosity in which you indulge yourself and never miss an opportunity to talk to someone at length." Thanks to TinyLetter and Warby Parker for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: [14:30] "The Crisis Manager: A profile of Joe Girardi" (The New Yorker • Sep 2012) [pdf] [16:30] "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire • Apr 1966) [22:30] "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold: Annotated" (with Elon Green • Nieman Storyboard • Oct 2013) [16:30] "The Silent Season of a Hero" (Esquire • July 1966) [24:00] "Mr. Bad News" (Esquire • Feb 1966) [

Jon Ronson, a contributor to This American Life, The Guardian and GQ, is the author of six books, including The Men Who Stare at Goats. His latest is Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries. "The older you get, you realize that no uncomfortable fact makes your story worse. Contradictions are great. What's bad, what to me is the worst journalistic sin, is ridiculous polemicism. ... To me, the contradictions, the story not turning out the way you want—you have to be a twig in the tidal wave of the story." Thanks to TinyLetter, EA SPORTS FIFA 14 and Learnvest for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @jonronson jonronson.com Ronson on Longform Ronson's This American Life archive Ronson's Guardian archive Ronson's GQ archive [7:15] "Who Takes the Class Out of Class Reunion" (This American Life • Jun 2006) [21:30] Them: Adventures with Extremists (2001) [26:30] The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) [47:00] The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (2011) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His latest book is David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. "The categories are in motion. You turn into a Goliath, then you topple because of your bigness. You fall to the bottom again. And Davids, after a while, are no longer Davids. Facebook is no longer an underdog—it's now everything it once despised. I'm everything I once despised. When I was 25, I used to write these incredibly snotty, hostile articles attacking big-name, nonfiction journalists. Now I read them and I'm like, 'Oh my God, they're doing a me on me!'" Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA 14 for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @gladwell gladwell.com Gladwell on Longform Gladwell's New Yorker archive [6:30] "How David Beats Goliath" (New Yorker • May 2009) [29:00] The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game (Michael Lewis • 2006) [32:15] Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession (Janet Malcolm • 1981) [32:15] The Journalist and the Murderer (Janet M

Cord Jefferson is the West Coast Editor at Gawker. "I consider myself to be a sincere human being. And I think that the way the internet carries itself, the way the internet has dialogues, is often insincere. That concerns me. I don't ever want to lose my sincerity. I don't ever want to lose my ability to feel emotional about things that I write about. I don't ever want to have a distance from everything that I write. I think that can be a danger of writing too much for the internet, that you develop this elitist distance from everything. That nothing really matters, you know?" Thanks to TinyLetter and Hulu Plus for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @cordjefferson Jefferson on Longform Jefferson's Gawker archive [4:00] Jefferson on MSNBC (MSNBC • Jul 2013) [5:45] "Video of Violent, Rioting Surfers Shows White Culture of Lawlessness" (Gawker • Jul 2013) [7:00] "Don Lemon: Bill O'Reilly's 'Got A Point' About Black People" (Huffington Post • Jul 2013) [20:30] "Don't Stop Running" (The Awl • Dec 2012

Hamilton Morris is the science editor for Vice and a contributor to Harper's. "It's a shame that there isn't more of an interdisciplinary approach to a lot of scientific investigations, because often the result is that misinformation is produced. Again, there's misinformation in journalism and there's misinformation in science. And if you combine the best elements of both of those disciplines you can come a little bit closer to the truth. If you want to understand a drug phenomenon, you're going to need to look at it medically, chemically, anthropologically, you need to talk to people, you need to interview people, you need to look at the drug policy, the chemistry, the history—there's a lot of different factors that need to be examined in order to understand even the most simple, minute drug phenomenon. And if you're approaching something purely as a scientist, as an academic, there are huge limitations as to what you can do." Thanks to TinyLetter and Hulu Plus for sponsoring this week's episode. Show not

Nancy Jo Sales writes for Vanity Fair and is the author of The Bling Ring. "I'm a mom now, so my life's a little different. I can't do certain things that I used to do, and I won't, because they're dangerous or ridiculous or keep me out till five in the morning or whatever. But back in those days, I didn't even really have—I didn't even have a pet! This was everything I did. This was my whole life, this passion to find out these things, and do these things, and see these things, and have these adventures and be able to report about this street life that rarely gets talked about. I just didn't really have a lot of boundaries in those days. I don't think I had any, really. And if you really throw yourself into something, you can get a great story. You can also not have a life of your own." Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: Sales on Longform Sales's Vanity Fair archive [8:30] "A Star Is Bred" (New York • Jul 1996) [pdf] [11:00] "Leo, Prince of the City" (New

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer for The New Yorker. "People don't really care about issues so much as they care about the stories and the characters that bring those issues to life. ... A story needs an engine or something to propel you forward and it can't just be a collection of like, 'Oh, hmm, this was interesting over here and this was interesting over there.' Realizing that helped me sit down with all my stuff on trafficking and labor abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and say 'What are the five craziest things that I found here and how could I weave them together in a way that would actually have some forward motion?'" Thanks to TinyLetter and HuluPlus for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: Stillman on Longform Stillman's New Yorker archive [6:30] "The Throwaways" (New Yorker • Aug 2012) [15:00] "The Invisible Army" (New Yorker • Jun 2011) [31:00] "Taken by the State" (New Yorker • Aug 2013) [49:00] Soul Searching: A Girl's Guide to Finding Herself (2001) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Eli Saslow is a staff writer at the Washington Post and a contributor at ESPN the Magazine. It's not really my place to complain about it being hard for me to write. I wrote the story ("After Newtown Shooting, Mourning Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet") and I got to leave it. And even when I was writing the story, I was only experiencing what they were experiencing in a super fractional way. The hard part is that it was a story where there are no breaks, there's no—it is this relentless, sort of bottomless pain and I struggled with that. … A story can only have so many crushing moments, otherwise they just all wash out. But the other truth is: it is what it is. It's an impossibly heartbreaking situation. And making the story anything other than relentlessly heartbreaking would've been doing an injustice to what they're dealing with. Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @elisaslow Saslow on Longform Saslow's Washington Post archive [14:45] "Life of a Salesm

Joshuah Bearman is the co-founder of Epic Magazine and a freelance writer. His latest story is "Coronado High." "People who know me well will realize that parts of this story are actually about me. … It's about loss of innocence and getting to a certain point in your life where you realize the excitement of youth is over. Life at a certain point gets complicated and there are consequences and things get hard. These are people who dealt with those consequences in a way that I never did — they had to go to prison or destroy their friends lives — but that's what I liked about this story. It's a true crime story, but it became universal when I realized that there is this emotional experience that these characters go through that anybody can relate to." Thanks to TinyLetter and Igloo Software for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @JoshBearman Bearman on Longform [2:45] "Coronado High" (The Atavist • Aug 2013) [3:30] Excerpt of the GQ version of "Coronado High" (GQ • Jun 2013) [6:00] "The Great Escape"

Amy Harmon, a Pulitzer Prize winner, covers science and society for the New York Times. "I'm not looking to expose science as problematic and I'm not looking to celebrate it. But it can be double edged. Genetic knowledge can certainly be double edged. Often the science outpaces where our culture is in terms of grappling with it, with the implications of it. Part of the reason for this widespread fear about GMOs is people don't understand what it is. I'm looking for an emotional way or a vehicle through which to get people to read about it. It's an excuse to talk about the science, not just explain it. … My contribution, what I can do, is try to tell a story that will engage people in the story and then they'll realize at the end that they learned a little bit about the science." Thanks to TinyLetter and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @Amy_Harmon Harmon's New York Times archive [5:45] "A Race to Save the Orange by Altering Its DNA" (New York Times • Jul 2013) [15:15] "Dispute Ov

Sean Flynn is a GQ correspondent and National Magazine Award winner. "I find it satisfying to be able to give a voice to people that sort of get lost…You know, when these big horrible things happen, and the spotlight is very briefly on them, and then it moves away, and it's not that I'm dragging them out and forcing them to 'Relive your horrible moments!' It's more a thing of, 'If you'd like to relive your horrible moment, if you want people to know what actually happened, talk to me. I will tell your story.'" Thanks to TinyLetter and the The Literary Reportage concentration at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: Flynn's GQ archive [00:30] "The Finish Line" (GQ • Jun 2013) [3:45] "Is he coming? Is he? Oh God, I think he is." (GQ • Aug 2012) [11:00] "BOOM" (GQ • Jul 2010) [11:00] "Way Down in the Hole" (GQ • Nov 2010) [19:00] "The End: Boston Phoenix publishes final issue today" (Stephen M. Mindich • The Boston Phoenix • Mar 2013) [22:00] "Barnicle's G

For the first time, Janet Reitman discusses her Rolling Stone cover story on accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. "My editors, myself, a lot of people who work for the magazine — we lived through an act of terrorism. We know what it feels like. There have been accusations to me personally of being insensitive, and I can tell you that I'm far from insensitive, not only to the political realities of terrorism but to the personal realities of terrorism. I breathed it in, literally. … The cover is great on a certain level, because terrorism is emotional, it's real, it affects us. It is not something that happens just overseas or just to people who are somehow "Other." If you talk to terrorism experts around the world, what they will all say is that the vast majority of people who are involved in these violent, extremist acts are what we would consider otherwise to be very normal people. One of us. Part of our community. That's a reality, and it's a very emotional thing and it makes people very uncom

Kelley Benham is a writer and editor at the Tampa Bay Times. "People connect with this story in a really visceral kind of way, usually because of some experience they've had or someone close to them has had. I've had 90-year-old women crying into my phone about babies they lost 70 years ago. I've had people kind of sneak up to me and tell me about babies that have died that they don't talk about, but that they carry with them all the time. I've had premies who are grown up—those are my favorite–you know, "I'm 20 now and I have a scar just like Juniper's scar, and thank you for helping me understand who I am." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @KelleyBFrench Benham's Tampa Bay Times archive [0:30] "Never Let Go" (Tampa Bay Times • Dec 2012) [4:00] "Rampaging Rooster Attacks Girl" (St. Petersburg Times • Oct 2002) [5:45] "From Ordinary Girl to International Icon" (St. Petersburg Times • Mar 2005) [12:30] "23 Weeks, 6 Days" (Radiolab • Apr 2013) [34:00] Learn more about your

Robert Kolker is the author of Lost Girls and a contributing editor at New York. "For better or for worse, my heart's not in the mystery. I want [the killer] to be caught—he's obviously a predator and he's unstable. But they all are. They're all messed up people who victimize other people and they all look normal. The art and science of catching serial killers has become more than slightly overblown in our society. And you know, I love Silence of the Lambs … but I'm not entirely sure that our obsession with who the serial killer is and why a serial killer does it is in proportion with how interesting they end up being." Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @bobkolker robertkolker.com Kolker on Longform Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery (Harper 2013) [2:15] "A Serial Killer in Common" (New York • Jun 2011) [5:15] "Long Island Serial Killer Victims Bond in Support Group" (Christine Pelisek and Roja Heydarpour • The Daily Beast • Apr 2011) [10:30] "Kaboom" (New York • Ma

Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine. "I never wrote anything myself or ran anything from other people that was needlessly negative. It wasn't some false grin plastered all over it — we addressed dark things too, and poked fun at things. But I didn't want there to ever be a tone of yeah, let's really just deflate this. Because ultimately you're just stabbing at a ghost among friends. And then at the end you've all just fallen on the floor and the ghost is gone. You're not really doing anything constructive." Show notes: @edithzimmerman edithzimmerman.com The Hairpin [9:00] Letters to the Editors of Women's Magazines (The Awl) [9:45] Longform Podcast #19: Choire Sicha [13:00] "Chris Evans: American Marvel" (GQ • Jul 2011) [18:30] "99 Ways to Be Naughty in Kazakhstan" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2012) [37:15] "Lively Woman Is in Trouble" (The Hairpin • Nov 2010) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of The Skies Belong to Us. "It was this big review in The New York Times and I was terrified that it was going to say something awful about the book or about me as a writer. And my son said to me — he's 5, I should say — "If it's bad, you won't die." That's a good point, you know? So I always think of that when I pick up a new review and take that risk of someone slamming something that I've genuinely poured my heart and soul into." Thanks to TinyLetter and the Literary Reportage Department at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @brendankoerner microkhan.com [3:30] The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking (Crown • 2013) [5:15] Now The Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II (Penguin • 2009) [7:45] "Piano Demon" (The Atavist • Jan 2011) [37:45] Koerner's archive at Slate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcas

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses "The Oilman's Daughter," his new story in The Atavist. "This woman was given the opportunity to take on a new identity. And it was a mistake. She never should've done it. If there was a way for her to go back and say, 'No, I don't want to know this. I want to be who I am,' then I think she should've taken that. … I'm fascinated with people who want to radically shift their identity. It almost never works out well." Show notes: "The Oilman's Daughter" (The Atavist • June 2013) "Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened" (Wired • Nov 2009) "The Zombie Hunters" (New Yorker • Oct 2005) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Steve Kandell is the longfom editor at BuzzFeed. "What would be the sort of longer, narrative nonfiction, journalistic equivalent of something that would have the same effect on you as a bunch of cat GIFs? And not because it's cute, but it's the kind of thing that makes you go, 'OK, I need a lot of other people to see this.'" Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @SteveKandell "David Lee Roth Will Not Go Quietly" (BuzzFeed • Apr 2012) [7:30] "The Movie Set That Ate Itsef" (Michael Idov • GQ • November 2011) [7:45] "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie" (Stephen Rodrick • New York Times Magazine • January 2013) [16:35] "How 'Golden Eagle Snatches Kid' Ruled the Internet" (Chris Stokel-Walker • BuzzFeed • February 2013) [17:35] "The Ghosts of Jonesboro: Fifteen Years After A School Shooting, a Small Town Is Still Recovering" (David Peisner • BuzzFeed • March 2013) [23:40] "Atari Teenage Riot: The Inside Story of Pong and the Video Game Industry's Big B