Longform

Caitlin Dickerson is a staff writer for The Atlantic covering immigration. Her latest article, on the secret history of U.S. government’s family-separation policy, is ”An American Catastrophe.” “Interviewing separated families, I’ve found, is just on a whole other scale of pain and trauma. I’ve watched people have really intense PTSD flashbacks in front of me. I never wanted to risk asking a family to open up in that way if I didn’t know that I’d be able to use that material. The worst thing you can do is waste someone’s time in a way that causes them pain.” Show notes: @itscaitlinhd Dickerson on Longform Dickerson’s Atlantic archive 09:00 Dickerson’s New York Times archive 09:00 Dickerson’s NPR archive 15:00 The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis • W.W. Norton • 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer for National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. His new podcast is Chameleon: Scam Likely. “I want a crumpled piece of paper where there are enough ridges and valleys and lines for me to be able to navigate, and they have to be authentic. And then of course the best stories among them will have surprise and intrigue, and things that are completely unexpected happen somewhere along the way. But it's hard to anticipate all of that. You still have to have a little bit of faith.” Show notes: @Yudhijit yudhijit.com Bhattacharjee on Longform Bhattacharjee’s National Geographic archive Bhattacharjee’s New York Times archive 03:00 "Who’s Making All Those Scam Calls?" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2021) 06:00 "The Downfall of India’s Kidney Kingpin" (Discover Magazine • Aug 2010) 09:00 Natalie Angier’s New York Times archive 09:00 George Johnson’s New York Times archive 09:00 Gina Kolata’s New York Times archive 18:00 Bhattacharjee’s Science archi

Hannah Goldfield is the food critic at The New Yorker. “There are just only so many ways to say ‘crunchy.’ There's ‘crunchy,’ there's ‘crisp,’ there's ‘crispy,’ you can say something ‘crackles,’ and that's kind of it. It's really, really hard. And a lot of things are crunchy. It's a really specific sensation that needs to be described. But I've had moments where I'm like, I can't say crunchy again in a sentence. What am I going to do? How do I get this across?” Show notes: @hannahgoldfield Goldfield’s New Yorker archive 02:00 My Best Friend’s Wedding (P.J. Hogan • Sony • 1997) 03:00Ruth Reichl's New York Times archive 09:00 Ratatouille (Brad Bird • Disney • 2007) 10:00 Garlic and Sapphires (Ruth Reichl • Penguin Random House • 2005) 15:00 "The Pandemic-Proof Atmosphere of the Odeon Outside" (New Yorker • Oct 2020) 15:00 "The Odeon Responds to the New Yorker" (Lynn Wagenknecht • Tribeca Citizen • Nov 2020) 22:00 "The Glorious Fish and Chips at Dame" (New Yorker • Jan 2021) 27:00 "Burmese Food and a

Sam Sanders is the former host of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute. He hosts Vulture’s Into It, which launched last week. “I don’t think I ever wanted a career where I was doing the same thing for 30 years. I think that, editorially, I had become someone who was really contemplating what kind of capital-j journalist I wanted to be, want to be, and I was questioning a lot of rules and the structure of what we think journalism is supposed to be, and I think I needed to be away from a legacy institution like NPR, at least for a spell, to work that out.” Show notes: @samsanders Sanders’ NPR archive 02:00 It’s Been a Minute (Sam Sanders • NPR • 2017) 02:00 NPR’s Politics Podcast (Tamara Keith and Scott Detrow • NPR • 2022) 28:00 "Eric André Talks ‘Bad Trip’ and Dangerous Pranks with Sam Sanders" (It's Been a Minute • April 2021) 29:00 "Joel Kim Booster Reflects on the 'Pride and Prejudice' of Fire Island's Party Scene" (Fresh Air • June 2022) 30:00 Psychosexual (Joel Kim Booster • Netflix • 2022) 32:00 "Maya Rudol

Michael Pollan is a contributing writer for New York Times Magazine, the host of Netflix's How to Change Your Mind, and the author of nine books. The latest is This Is Your Mind On Plants. “I have found myself at two distinct points in my history having this transition from being the journalist, learning at the feet of these people, to becoming an advocate. And it’s an awkward role for a journalist, but at a certain point it would be kind of false to pretend you didn't have points of view, that there weren't directions in which you think the world should go. And the great thing about doing narrative nonfiction is that editors cut you a fair amount of slack at the end of a 10,000–word piece to say what you think.” Show notes: @michaelpollan michaelpollan.com Pollan on Longform Pollan on Longform Podcast Pollan’s New York Times archive Pollan’s Harper’s archive 01:00 How To Change Your Mind (Penguin Press • 2018) 01:00 How To Change Your Mind (Netflix • 2022) 06:00 "Channels of Communication Magazine"

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, is host of the new podcast Persona: The French Deception. “One of these big scams is like a story. And in the story, what they're doing is they're manipulating you to be a participant in the story, and they're getting you so hooked that you will not just do anything they say, but you will invest yourself in bringing the story to its conclusion. And like, isn't that what you're doing if you're trying to get someone to listen to eight episodes, spend that much of their life listening to your voice? … The idea that every story has this person pulling the strings... I like revisiting that in everything that I do." Show notes: @ev_rat cazart.net Ratliff on Longform Longform Podcast #48: Evan Ratliff Longform Podcast Bonus Episode: Evan Ratliff (April 2016) Longform Podcast: Evan Ratliff, author of The Mastermind (March 2019) 1:00 Persona: The French Deception (Pineapple Street Studios, Wondery • May 2022) 2:00 Exit Scam (Treats Media • May 2021) 7:00 Than

Andrea Elliott is an investigative reporter for The New York Times. Her recent book, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in An American City, won a Pulitzer Prize. ”I don’t see reporting as a one-way street. ... I think that people need to know as much as they can about you. And yes, there are boundaries ... but at the same time, the fact of the boundaries is something to talk about with the people you’re writing about. Isn’t it weird that this is my job to be reporting on your life when we can laugh and we can break bread together and I spend all these hours with you and you know about my kids? ... And at the same time, I’m also here to write a book. ... And those two facts I learned to just allow to coexist within me. But it was not easy.” Show notes: @andreafelliott andrea-elliott.com  Elliott on Longform 00:00 Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in An American City (Random House • 2021) 01:00 "When Dasani Left Home" (New York Times Magazine • Sept 2021) 04:00 "Invisible Child: Girl in th

Nicholson Baker is the author of 18 books of fiction and nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and many other publications. His latest book is Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. "In the end, I don’t care how famous you get, how widely read you are during your lifetime. You’re going to be forgotten. And you’re going to have five or six fans in the end. It’s going to be your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are going to say, Oh, yeah, he was big. … So I think the key is, write what you actually care about. Because in the end, you’re only doing this for yourself. … So maybe do your best stuff for yourself and for the three, four, five people who know in the coming century that you ever existed. That’s all you need to do." Show notes: @nicholsonbaker8 nicholsonbaker.com The Mezzanine (Grove Press • 1988) Baseless (Penguin Press • 2020) 10:00 Human Smoke (Simon & Schuster • 2009) 10:00 "Wrong Answer" (Harper's • Sept 2013) 11:00 Room

Rebecca Traister is a writer for New York and the author of Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger. Her latest article is "The Necessity of Hope." “A big motivation of this piece, which I think is framed in this there’s still reason to hope is actually the inverse of that. Which is: Let us be crystal clear about what is happening, what is lost, what is violated. The cruelty, the horror, and the injustice, and that is it only moving toward worse right now. And to establish that to then say that it is the responsibility to really absorb that, and then figure out how to move forward.” Show notes: @rtraister rebeccatraister.com Traister on Longform Traister on Longform Podcast 5:00 "Roe's Final Hours in One of America's Largest Abortion Clinics" (Stephania Taladrid • New Yorker • Jun 2022) 10:00 "The Dissenters Say You're Not Hysterical" (Irin Carmon • New York • Jun 2022) 23:00 "The Immoderate Susan Collins" (New York • Feb 2020) 26:00 Traister's Salon archive 26:00 "Abortion’s Deadly

Alexandra Lange is a design critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and many other publications. Her new book is Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. “I really like to write about things that I can hold and experience. I'm not that interested in biography, but I am very interested in the biography of an object. ... Like I feel about the objects, I think, how most people feel about people. So what I'm always trying to do is communicate that enthusiasm and that understanding to my reader, because these objects really have a lot of speaking to do.” Show notes: @LangeAlexandra alexandralange.net  Lange on Longform 00:00 Lange's Design Observer archive 00:00 Lange's Curbed archive 00:00 Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall (Bloomsbury • 2022) 15:00 "Malls and the Future of American Retail" (Curbed • Feb 2018) 17:00 "Owings Mills Mall in 1986" (YouTube) 21:00 Lange's New York Magazine archive 21:00 Lange’s Tumblr 26:00 Witold Rybczyns

Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a former war correspondent and host of NPR’s Weekend Edition. Her new podcast, for the New York Times, is First Person. “I would always say that if you go cover a story and you already know what people are going to say, and you already have it in your head what the outcome is, and there's no surprise there, then that's a story that you shouldn't be working on. You have to allow the opportunity for there to be a journey. And for there to be something at the end of it, that is gonna be like, Wow. I really never thought that. I didn't think that I was coming here to report on that, but I guess that's what I'm here to report on.” Show notes: @lourdesgnavarro Garcia-Navarro's NPR archive 00:00 First Person (New York Times • 2022) 19:00 "Polk Award Winners: Clarissa Ward" (Longform Podcast • Apr 2022) 42:00 "Abortion Didn’t Feel Like an Option. Neither Did Motherhood." (New York Times • Jun 2022) 45:00 "Longform Podcast #1: Matthieu Aikins" (Aug 2012) Learn more about your ad choices.

Matt Levine is a finance columnist for Bloomberg News. His newsletter is Money Stuff. ”I write a lot about people who have gotten in trouble with the SEC or the Justice Department. And a surprising subset of them will email me. And often I will have made fun of them, and they'll be like, ‘That was pretty fair.’” Show notes: @matt_levine Levine's Bloomberg News and Money Stuff newsletter archive 19:00 "The Goldman Sachs Aluminum Conspiracy Was Pretty Silly" (Bloomberg News • Nov 2014) 22:00 "Don’t Insider Trade NFTs" (Bloomberg News • Jun 2022) 23:00 "Elon Has a New Bot Excuse" (Bloomberg News • Jun 2022) 24:00 "The GameStop Game Never Stops" (Bloomberg News • Jan 2021) 24:00 "Crypto Is Going Through Some Things" (Bloomberg News • May 2022) 39:00 Levine's Dealbreaker archive 44:00 Noahpinion (Noah Smith • Substack) 45:00 "Everything Everywhere Is Securities Fraud" (Bloomberg News • Jun 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We've got something a little different today, the trailer for co-host Evan Ratliff's brand-new podcast Persona: The French Deception. It's the story of Gilbert Chikli, one of the greatest con artists of all time. Over eight episodes, Evan investigates how Chikli duped some of the world’s most powerful people into handing over their fortunes, evaded the law for years, and became a Robin Hood-like hero to many in the process. More than just a tale of criminal genius, Persona is about the moment we’re living in right now — the golden age of scammers — and the power of seduction. But what happens when the fantasy we’ve been lured into finally crumbles away? The first two episodes of Persona: The French Deception are available starting today wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Molly Lambert is a writer and host of the new podcast HeidiWorld: The Heidi Fleiss Story. “I think as a writer I always had this thing: I don't want to be out front. I don't want the spotlight on me. I'm not an actor. I want to be lurking in the back with the cast accepting the applause, but I don't want to be the center of attention. And so I think kind of like making peace with like, Look man, it's fine to be the center of attention when you made something you're proud of.” Show notes: @mollylambert  Lambert on Longform HeidiWorld: The Heidi Fleiss Story (iHeartPodcasts • 2022) 01:00 Deckheads: Chief Stews! (Anna Hossnieh and Molly Lambert) 07:00 O.J.: Made in America (Ezra Edelman • ESPN Films, Laylow Films • 2016) 10:00 Inherent Vice (Thomas Pynchon • Penguin Books • 2010) 10:00 Vineland (Thomas Pynchon • Penguin Classics • 1997) 11:00 You Must Remember This (Karina Longworth) 11:00 Once Upon a Time… In the Valley: T-R-A-C-I (Lili Anolik • C13Originals • 2020) 12:00 Short Cuts (Robert Altman •

Sam Knight is a London-based staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold. “I had a kind of working definition of what a premonition was when I was writing this book, which is: It's not just a feeling. It's not just a hunch. It's just not like a sense in the air. It's like, you know. You know, and you don't even want to know because you can't know and no one's going to believe you that you know, but you know. And what are you going to do about it? It's a horrible feeling.” Show notes: @samknightwrites samknight.net Knight on Longform Knight's New Yorker archive Knight's Guardian archive 09:00 "Mixed up in Minsk" (Times of London • Mar 2007) 09:00 "Summer Celebrations in Mongolia" (Times of London • Dec 2007) 10:00 "Enter Left" (New Yorker • May 2016) 17:00 "Inside the Snow Globe" (Harper’s • Jul 2011) 21:00 "The Bouvier Affair" (New Yorker • Feb 2016) 21:00 "How Football Leaks is Exposing Corruption in European Soccer" New Yorker • Jun 2

Mitchell S. Jackson is a journalist and author. His profile of Ahmaud Arbery, ”Twelve Minutes and a Life,” won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. ”What is 'great'? 'Great' isn’t really sales, right? No one cares what James Baldwin sold. So: Are you doing the important work?” Show notes: @MitchSJackson mitchellsjackson.com Jackson on Longform 00:00 "Twelve Minutes and a Life" (Runner’s World • Jun 2020) 01:00 Pafko at the Wall (Don DeLillo • Scribner • 2001) 03:00 "Ahmaud Arbery’s Final Minutes: What Videos and 911 Calls Show" (Malachy Browne, Drew Jordan, Dmitriy Khavin and Ainara Tiefenthaler • New York Times • May 2020) 12:00 "We Went to Vegas to Wring Joy From Heartbreak" (New York Times Magazine • Sep 2021) 16:00 Survival Math (Scribner • 2020) 24:00 The Residue Years (Bloomsbury • 2014) 29:00 "Chuck Palahniuk, Tom Spanbauer Share Writing Secrets" (Jeff Baker • Oregonian • May 2014) 34:00 "When Michael B. Jordan Promises to Come Home, He Means It" (Esquire • Nov 2019) 36:00 "Chris Ro

Joe Bernstein is a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News. “The question of disinformation is almost an attempt to create a new mythology around why people act the way they do. I don’t mean to say that it’s some kind of nefarious plot. ... It’s a natural, or a convenient explanation. And that’s why I think it caught on for some time anyway.” Show notes: @Bernstein Bernstein on Longform 02:00 "Bad News: Selling the Story of Disinformation" (Harper's • Aug 2021) 12:00 "How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable" (Nicholas Confessore • New York Times • Apr 2022) 18:00 Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet (Tim Hwang • FSG Originals • Oct 2020) 25:00 Charlie Warzel on Longform Podcast (Mar 2020) 26:00 "'Look At What We’re Doing With Your Money, You Dick': How Peter Thiel Backed An 'Anti-Woke' Film Festival" (BuzzFeed News • Mar 2022) 28:00 "The Curious Life and Mind-Altering Death of Justin Clark" (Christopher Robbins • New York Magazine • Feb 2022) 3

Vauhini Vara is a contributing writer at Wired and author of the novel The Immortal King Rao. “With a magazine story, it might be like six months or a year or two, if it's something that took you a long time. With this [novel], it was 13 years for me, but the sort of emotional arc felt similar, where there were these periods of despair and a sense that like, this wasn't going anywhere, and then these periods where like, I'm a genius and this is going to be the best book ever written. You go back and forth, as we do with our journalism. But then with every draft of it, I always felt like, all right, this is better than the last draft at least. I don't know what the next one is going to look like, but this is definitely an improvement. And I feel like that's what kept me feeling like I was at least moving in the right direction.” Show notes: @vauhinivara vauhinivara.com Vara on Longform 01:00 "Bee-Brained" (Harper's • May 2017) 11:00 "Special Counsel" (California Sunday • Jun 2015) 30:00 "New Workers of t

Azmat Khan is an investigative reporter for the New York Times Magazine. She won the George Polk Award for uncovering intelligence failures and civilian deaths associated with U.S. air strikes. “I think what was really damning for me is that, when I obtained these 1,300 records, in not one of them was there a single instance in which they describe any disciplinary action for anyone involved, or any findings of wrongdoing. … When I was looking at this in totality, suddenly it’s really hard to say you have a system of accountability.” This is the last in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Daniel Chang covers health care for the Miami Herald. Along with Carol Marbin Miller, he won the George Polk Award for "Birth & Betrayal," a series co-published with ProPublica that exposed the consequences of a 1988 law designed to shelter medical providers from lawsuits by funding lifelong care for children severely disabled by birth-related brain injuries. “I think that someone on the healthcare beat looks for stories from the perspective of patients, people who want or need to access the healthcare system and for different reasons cannot. It’s a pretty complicated system and it’s difficult for most people to understand how their health insurance works — and that’s if they have health insurance. If they don’t, there is a whole other system they have to go through. What you look for is access issues and accountability for that.” This is the latest in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad