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Theo Baker is the investigations editor at The Stanford Daily. The first college student ever to win a George Polk Award, Baker received a special recognition for uncovering allegations that pioneering research co-authored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a renowned neuroscientist, was supported in part by manipulated imagery. “It’s useful to intellectualize it because when you actually get going, this is something that keeps me up at night. … It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep, and the first thing on my mind when I wake up.” This is the first 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

David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder. “I became very haunted by the stories that [nations] don't tell. Nations and empires preserve their powers not only by the stories they tell, but also by the stories they leave out. … Early in my career, if I came across the silences in a story, I might not have highlighted them, because I thought, Well, there's nothing to tell there. And now I try to let the silences speak.” Show notes: @DavidGrann davidgrann.com Grann on Longform Grann on Longform Podcast #3 Grann on Longform Podcast #241 Grann on Longform Podcast #329 Grann's New Yorker archive 01:00 The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder (Doubleday • 2023) 02:00 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI (Doubleday • 2017) 28:00 The White Darkness (Doubleday • 2018) 61:00 Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese • Appian Way, Apple Studios • 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit

Vann Newkirk II is a senior editor at The Atlantic and the host of Floodlines: The Story of an Unnatural Disaster. His new podcast is Holy Week: The Story of a Revolution Undone. “I’m often toggling between environmental justice, between the history of race and racial organization in America. And to me, they’re all one story, and I’m trying to tell the story about how the conditions of marginalization in America have made and shaped the present. That’s it. That’s one story.” Show notes: Newkirk II on Longform Newkirk II’s Atlantic archive 04:00 Floodlines (The Atlantic • 2020) 08:00 “The New Coretta Scott King: Emerging From the Legacy” (Jaqueline Trescott • The Washington Post • Jan 1978) 17:00 “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” transcript (Martin Luther King Jr. • April 1968) 42:00 “The Battle for North Carolina” (The Atlantic • Oct 2016) 43:00 “Puerto Rico’s Environmental Catastrophe” (The Atlantic • Oct 2017) 53:00 “The Case for a Voting-Rights Amendment” (The Atlantic • Feb 2021) 53:00 “The Great La

Liz Hoffman, a former The Wall Street Journal reporter, is now the business and finance editor for Semafor. Her new book is Crash Landing: The Inside Story of How the World's Biggest Companies Survived an Economy on the Brink. “I think these systems are hugely important and are wielded by people who are not that accessible. If you can sort of open the aperture a little bit and unpack that and explain to people what’s going on and leave them to sort of, you know, come away with their own conclusions about the morality of the whole thing — that's where I’m most comfortable.” Show notes: @lizrhoffman Hoffman’s Semafor archive Hoffman’s Wall Street Journal archive 30:00 Ben Smith on Longform Podcast 37:00 "Microsoft eyes $10 billion bet on ChatGPT" (Hoffman and Reed Albergotti • Semafor • Jan 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roxanna Asgarian is the law and courts reporter for the Texas Tribune. Her new book is 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 Kavanaug

Mary Childs is a co-host of the podcast Planet Money and the author of The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All. “I love aberrations. I love when things go wrong. You get a high stress situation, you get all of the manifestations of personality. We're our most selves, if not our best selves, at those times. I like the [stories] that have embedded in them all of those conduits of power and that reveal the greater system.” Show notes: @mdc marychilds.com Planet Money (NPR) The Bond King: How One Man Made a Market, Built an Empire, and Lost It All (Flatiron • 2022) 26:00 American Bonds: How Credit Markets Shaped the Nation (Sarah L. Quinn • Princeton University Press • 2019) 33:00 The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (Michael Lewis • Norton • 2010) 33:00 The Bond King: Investment Secrets from PIMCO's Bill Gross (Tim Middleton • Wiley • 2004) 43:00 "J. Screwed" (Planet Money • NPR • May 2020) 43:00 "Banque Worms" (Planet Money • NPR • Jul 2021) Learn more about

Laurel Braitman is a science writer, the author of Animal Madness: Inside Their Minds, and the founder of Writing Medicine. Her new book is What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love. “My life was becoming unmanageable, in a way. I was using success in many ways like a drug, and I’d say like an analgesic on the sorts of difficult feelings I hadn’t wanted to face truly since childhood. And we are rewarded in this culture for these kinds of outward forms of success that often have nothing to do with what’s going on inside of you.” Show notes: @LaurelBraitman laurelbraitman.com 01:00 Pop-Up Magazine 01:00 Animal Madness (Simon & Schuester • 2015) 05:00 “The Strange Tale of Echo, the Parrot Who Saw Too Much” (Atlas Obscura • March 2016) 07:00 Braitman’sTED archive 11:00 “Birds & Bees” (Ira Glass • This American Life • May 2015) 32:00 “Duck Syndrome” (Arifeen Rahman • KQED • July 2019) 40:00 Dear Sugar archive Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sam Fragoso is a writer, filmmaker, and the host of the podcast Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso. “We have an hour together. We may not have another. We're here for a brief moment and then, you know, we die. And I want this thing to be as good as it can be. If if it's anything less than that, I'm just not interested. … And that, to me, is why you keep doing it: because that feeling when you really feel like you've put someone's life on the record in a way that is beautiful and painful and idiosyncratic and triumphant … when it goes well, it's like I lost 20 pounds. I am never a nicer or happier person than immediately after a taping. I'm kind of goofy and silly and delirious and grateful to be doing this. Like, so fucking grateful.” Show notes: @SamFragoso samfragoso.com 00:00 Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso 08:00 "#1: Matthieu Aikins" (Longform Podcast • Aug 2012) 09:00 "#156: Renata Adler" (Longform Podcast • Sep 2015) 09:00 "#187: Elizabeth Gilbert" (Longform Podcast • Apr 2016) 16:00 "Dr. Ashish Jha" (Talk E

Eric Lach is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he covers New York. His latest article is “The Mayor and the Con Man.” “I think about my own trajectory, my little generation of journalists—it was easier to get jobs reporting on national politics than to get a job reporting on something that you could see and go to and that is a really strange thing, the relief and the joy that I feel like when I can just take the subway twenty minutes to go see something interesting for a story or talk to somebody interesting or explore physically and not just feel like I’m making phone calls and Googling. It’s a very different kind of work, but it’s just not something that was super available.” Show notes: @Eric Lach Lach on Longform Lach’s New Yorker archive 08:00 "Eric Adams Says He Has Swagger. What Else Does He Have?" (New Yorker • Jan 2022) 12:00 "What is Eric Adams’s Plan for the Riker Island Crisis?" (New Yorker • Jan 2022) 13:00 "Eric Adams Wants to Compstat New York City" (New Yorker • May 2021) 15:00 “E

Willa Paskin, a former TV critic, is the host of the podcast Decoder Ring. “I want it to feel like a trap door. When you push on a trap door, there’s like a little spring. If it’s the right idea, you start to look into it, and you’re like, Oh, it’s giving a little.” Show notes: @willapaskin 00:00 Paskin's Slate archive 00:00 Paskin's Salon archive 00:00 Paskin's Vulture archive 00:00 Decoder Ring (Slate) 00:00 "The Invention of Hydration" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Apr 2021) 00:00 "Cellino & Barnes, Injury Attorneys, 800-888-8888 " (Decoder Ring • Slate • Dec 2022) 01:00 "The Sideways Effect" (Decoder Ring • Slate • May 2022) 03:00 "Why I Became a TV Critic" (Slate • Jan 2016) 38:00 "The Laff Box" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Apr 2018) 38:00 "The Blue Steak Experiment" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Dec 2020) 40:00 "Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Jun 2019) 40:00 "The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Nov 2020) 42:00 "Selling Out" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Aug 2021) 42:00 "

Abraham Josephine Riesman is a journalist who writes often for New York and is the author of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. Her second book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, will be published in March. “You’re sure that there’s a level of unreality, but you’re not sure that it’s all fake. There’s stuff there that seems either plausible or sometimes you go ‘there’s no way you could fake that.’ And sometimes you’re right, and a lot of times you’re somewhere in the middle. It’s not as easily distinguished as saying this is fact and this is fiction, this was scripted and this was improvised, whatever. You can’t make those distinctions easily, and one of the things I sort of hope comes out of the book—if it has any impact at all—is to try to get us past this false binary of true and false.” Show notes: @abrahamjoseph abrahamriesman.com Riesman on Longform Riesman’s New York Magazine archive 16:00 "She Was WWE’s First Female Referee. She Says Vince McMahon Raped Her." (New

Jonah Weiner is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and co-author of the newsletter Blackbird Spyplane. “It's a version of myself. It's a hyperbolic version of myself. And I think it keeps it fun for me. It doesn't feel like a job. Ideally, it keeps it fun for readers. And I think that there actually is this function where X out of 10 people coming to it, their eyes are going to cross and they're going say, I'm out. No thanks. And that's fine, because the Y out of 10 who stick around feel that much more in on something and it just makes it feel like a funky, special place.” Show notes: @jonahweiner jonahweiner.com Weiner on Longform 00:00 Weiner on Longform Podcast 01:00 "Prying Eyes" (New Yorker • Oct 2012) 01:00 Blackbird Spyplane (Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie • Substack) 06:00 "Don’t Take This Hunk at Face Value" (New York Times • Mar 2011) 11:00 "Michael Mann’s Damaged Men" (New York Times Magazine • Jul 2022) 23:00 "Wonders of Tokyo" (Blackbird Spyplane • Nov 2022) 23:00 "It’s

Delia Cai is the senior vanities correspondent for Vanity Fair and publishes the media newsletter Deez Links. Her debut novel Central Places is out this week. “This was in like, 2011, where I think actual journalists were still trying to figure out ‘Is it gross to be a brand?’ And at least in school, they were all about it. They’re like, ‘You need a brand, you need to think about what your niche is going to be, you need to think about engaging your audience.’ We had to make websites, we had to blog, and of course, all of us being college students, we started using our blogs to write about each other. We used Twitter to talk shit about each other in a very thinly veiled way. So really, it was the best training for being online.” Show notes: @delia_cai deliacai.com Cai’s Vanity Fair archive Deez Links archive 15:00 Cai’s blog 27:00 "Three Generations of Blue's Clues Hosts Are Still Cool With Being Your Best Friend" (Vanity Fair • Dec 2022) 37:00 "She Invented Adulting. Her Life Fell Apart. She Wants You

Peggy Orenstein is a journalist and author. Her latest book is Unraveling. “The challenge is… to not want to say, I need to know what the book is about. I need to have my chapters. I need to know what exactly I'm looking for. Because it's really scary to just go out and report and have trust that there's going to be interesting things and that if you just keep going, you're going to find them. So to not foreclose possibility and options and ideas is the biggest reporting challenge for those sorts of books for me.” Show notes: @peggyorenstein peggyorenstein.com 01:00Girls & Sex (Harper • 2016) 01:00 Boys & Sex (Harper • 2020) 01:00 Cinderella Ate My Daughter (Harper • 2012) 01:00 Waiting for Daisy (Bloomsbury • 2007) 01:00 Unraveling (Harper • 2023) 14:00 Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky • Penguin Books • 2003) 18:00 "Mourning My Miscarriage" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2002) 21:00 Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap (Anchor • 1995) 25:00 "Champion of the Deep" (New

Jonathan Goldstein is an audio producer and the host of Heavyweight. “I wasn’t taking myself very seriously, initially. I liked working with my friends and family because I think I was a little more comfortable with them. Then in the second season people were writing in with real problems, and they were looking at me as a kind of expert. It was terrifying to meet with these people and see the look of hopefulness in their eyes. ... I realized I need to step it up and even if I didn’t feel like an expert—an expert in an invented field that doesn’t really exist—that I’d really have to take that on with seriousness.” Show notes: @J_Goldstein Goldstein’s Heavyweight archive 02:00 "Plan B" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Feb 2002) 10:00 Goldstein’s This American Life archive 14:00 Lenny Bruce is Dead (Counterpoint Press • 2006) 16:00 "I Know What You Did This Summer" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Aug 2001) 17:00 "Other People’s Problems" (Jonathan Goldstein • CBC • Sept 2020) 19:00Goldstein’s Wiretap

Katy Vine is an executive editor for Texas Monthly. “This is a huge state. There’s so much, and it’s different everywhere you look. You just go to Houston and there’s worlds within worlds within worlds just within the one city. You go to San Antonio and you’re in a different country, and you go to Dallas, you’re in a totally different country. … It’s wild to me. It’s endlessly fascinating.” Show notes: @Katy_Vine Vine on Longform Vine’s Texas Monthly archive 07:00 "Family Circus" (Texas Monthly • Aug 2002) 16:00 "Just Desserts" (Texas Monthly • Jan 2016) 20:00 "The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen" (Texas Monthly • Sep 2020) 23:00 "Plenty of Ammo" (Texas Monthly • Aug 2001) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer from northeastern Syria, and the winner of the 2021 Kurt Schork News Fixer Award. ”I can see from my experience that there is a gap between the editors, who are kind of elites in their luxury offices, and the amazing journalists who are in the field, who all sympathize with what they are seeing on the ground and want to cover [it], but they have to satisfy the editors. And this is how we end up having little gaps in the ways of covering in general. It's not a matter of like, they shaped it in this way. The problem, I think, it’s bigger. How this industry is working, how this industry is deciding what they should cover.” Show notes: @khabat_abas Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism 34:00 "'Belief Allows Us to Move Forward,' Said One Female Soldier in Battle Against ISIS" (ABC News • July 2017) 40:00 "The Former 'Caliphate Capital' Is Haunted by Fears of an ISIS Comeback" (Washington Post • May 2020) 43:00 "How ISIS Women and Their Chil

Chloé Cooper Jones is a philosopher and journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, The Verge, The Believer and many other publications. Her new book is Easy Beauty. ”I literally didn't talk to anyone in my life about disability until I was, like, 30. Ever. Not my husband, not my friends, as little as possible to my own mother. I had this very bad idea that what I needed to do in every single social situation was wait until people could unsee my body…. And it was all in service of trying to be truly recognized or truly seen. And, of course, what was happening is I was involved in a complete act of self erasure because my body and my real self are related…. There is no real me without my physical self…. I did not think I was going to ever write about this, but once I started, it felt like I met myself for the first time.” Show notes: @CCooperJones chloecooperjones.com  Cooper Jones on Longform 00:00 Easy Beauty (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster • 2022) 01:00 "Fearing for His Life" (The Verge • Mar 2019)

David Wolman is the author of six books and a magazine features writer who has written for Wired, Outside, and The New York Times. His latest article is ”Vanished in the Pacific.” “I feel like conversations about characters, character development, strong characters gets a little nauseating in my field sometimes because it’s like, of course — you need that like you need periods at the ends of sentences. Do we really have to keep saying it? But in this conversation it’s worth saying, because there are great ideas out there where the sources or the characters just really weren't there and then you’re tucking your tail in between your legs to look for the next one.” Show notes: @davidwolman david-wolman.com 03:00 Aloha Rodeo (Wolman and Julian Smith • Harpers Collins • 2020) 09:00 "The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn't a Crook—He's an Artist" (Wired • May 2012) 13:00 "The Cold War" (Wolman and Julian Smith • Epic Magazine • Sept 2015) 21:00 Atellan Media 31:00 The End of Money (Da Capo • 2013) Learn more abo

Clint Smith is a poet and a staff writer for The Atlantic. His most recent book is How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America and his latest feature is “Monuments to the Unthinkable.” “I've been to a lot of places that carry a history of death and slaughter and murder. I've been on plantations. I've been in execution chambers. I've sat on electric chairs. I've been on death row. But I have never experienced anything like what I experienced walking through the gas chamber in Dachau. I mean, there's reading books about the Holocaust, and then there's that. And that is something that I hope to continue doing for the rest of my life: putting my body where these things happen. Because it completely transforms your understanding of what it was like.” Show notes: @ClintSmithIII clintsmithiii.com Smith on Longform Smith's Atlantic archive 00:00 How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America (Little Brown • 2021) 01:00 "Monuments to the Unthinka