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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

Grant Wahl was the founder of Fútbol with Grant Wahl, a longtime writer for Sports Illustrated, and the author of The Beckham Experiment and Masters of Modern Soccer. He died on December 10, covering the World Cup in Qatar. This interview was recorded in January 2016. “I never would have predicted I would do soccer full time. And that’s happened. I’d love to say that this was all planned and inevitable but it really wasn’t.” Show notes:  Fútbol with Grant Wahl Wahl's Sports Illustrated archive “Soccer Journalist Dies at World Cup After Collapsing at Argentina Game” (The New York Times) “RIP Grant Wahl” (Chris Wittyngham, Fútbol with Grant Wahl) “Remembering Grant Wahl: A Sterling Example of How to Work With Principle” (Sports Illustrated) “Remembering Grant Wahl, a champion of American soccer” (The Atlantic) “Live like adored soccer writer Grant Wahl and smell those roses” (Indy Star) “There was something Bourdain-like about the big, soccer life Grant Wahl led” (Los Angeles Times) “Grant Wahl'

Ryan O’Hanlon is a soccer writer for ESPN. His new book is Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution. “It wasn’t just that I was burned out from two years at The Ringer, it was being burned out from nine years of just freakin’ bobbing up and down to keep my head above water, and changing the water every year.” Show notes: @rwohan ryanohanlon.com O’Hanlon’s article archive 05:00 Net Gains (Abrams Books • 2022) 13:00 O’Hanlon’s Run of Play archive 13:00 O’Hanlon’s Grantland archive 13:00 O’Hanlon’s The Ringer archive 22:00 O’Hanlon’s The Good Men Project archive 22:00 O’Hanlon’s Buzzfeed archive 22:00 "Living the Yahoo! Answers Lifestyle" (Buzzfeed • Jun 2012) 23:00 "A Q&A With Red Bulls Goalie and Yonkers Native Ryan Meara" (New York • April 2012) 26:00 No Grass in the Clouds 26:00 O’Hanlon’s Outside archive 33:00 "Bill Simmons Suspended by ESPN for Tirade on Roger Goodell" (Richard Sandomir • New York Times • Sept 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch

Bradley Hope and Tom Wright are former journalists at The Wall Street Journal, the co-founders of journalism studio Project Brazen, and the co-authors of the book Billion Dollar Whale. Their new podcast is Corinna and The King. Hope’s new book is “The Rebel and the Kingdom.” “We’re a little bit skeptical of just jumping into the big story of the day with something that doesn’t feel differentiated. It needs to have character, storytelling — it can’t just be a great topic, or an important topic, even.” Show notes: @bradleyhope @TomWrightAsia Hope’s Wall Street Journal archive Wright’s Wall Street Journal archive 06:00 Billion Dollar Whale (Hachette Books • 2019) 09:00 Project Brazen 10:00 Blood and Oil (Hope and Justin Sheck • Hachette Books • 2020) 19:00 Fat Leonard (Project Brazen • 2021) 25:00 Persona: The French Deception (Evan Ratliff • Verified • 2022) 47:00 "Road Trip! American Student Joins Rebels in Fight for Qaddafi Stronghold" (Hope • The National • Aug 2011) Learn more about your ad cho

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. His latest book is A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance. “I learn from hearing my elders tell stories. There’s an inherent knowing of yourself as a vessel for narration who also has to—is required to—hold the attention of others at all costs. And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do. The broader project of my writing is almost a constant pleading of: Don’t leave yet. Stay here with me for just a little bit longer.” Show notes: @NifMuhammad abdurraqib.com Abdurraqib on Longform 02:00 A Little Devil in America (Random House • 2021) 09:00 Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Lester Bangs • Anchor • 1988) 10:00 The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry • 2016) 14:00 They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio • 2017) 20:00 Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press • 2019) 25:00 Sta

Audie Cornish is a journalist and the former host of NPR’s All Things Considered. Her new CNN Audio podcast is The Assignment. “I think there is journalism inherent in an interview. Like the interview itself should be considered a piece of journalism. It isn't always. Sometimes the vibe is that it’s a little window dressing or that it's personality driven and I don't subscribe to that. I think that it has its own journalism. It's my journalism.” Show notes: @AudieCornish Cornish's NPR archive 01:00 The Assignment (CNN Audio • 2022) 25:00 "Letters: 'Music Curator' Diplo" (NPR • Jun 2012) 36:00 Cornish’s Twitter thread (Jan 2022) 43:00 Serial (Serial Productions) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times and the creator of the new Hulu television series Fleishman Is in Trouble, based on her bestselling novel. “I took the cast out to dinner … And the way they began talking to each other, which was very intimate, was like a punch in the stomach. Because I had always thought that I got people to open up to me [in celebrity profiles]. And I was like, Oh, no, I got them to answer questions differently than maybe they had before. … And that was a little devastating to me.” Show notes: @taffyakner taffyakner.com  Brodesser-Akner on Longform 00:00 Brodesser-Akner on Longform Podcast (#126) 00:00 Brodesser-Akner on Longform Podcast (#350) 01:00 Brodesser-Akner's New York Times archive 01:00 Brodesser-Akner's GQ archive 01:00 Fleishman Is in Trouble (Hulu • 2022) 01:00 Fleishman Is in Trouble (Random House • 2020) 04:00 "Billy Bob Thornton on Bad Santa 2, Ungrateful Fans, and Why He Won't Direct Anymore" (GQ • Nov 2016) 09:00 "Jimmy Buffett Do

Nancy Updike is a founding producer and senior editor at This American Life. Jenelle Pifer, a former Longform Podcast editor, is a senior producer at Serial. Their new three-part podcast, hosted by Updike and produced by Pifer, is We Were Three. Updike: “I say it’s a story that’s a bit about COVID, but really about a family, and that’s the closest I’ve gotten to a short version. I don’t know. Why is that? I never have a short version of something I’m working on—never.” Pifer: “We were doing a lot of talking about, for Nancy, what are the driving questions you tend to be attracted to? There were a few things we came up with, one of which was that you tend to gravitate toward stories where somebody is in the middle of something that they don’t know what to make of yet, and you kind of just want to sit with them and see what direction they walk in, or what they say, or what meaning they put onto something.” Show notes: @jenellepifer jenelle-pifer.com Updike’s This American Life archive Updike’s New York Time

Andy Kroll is an investigative reporter for ProPublica. His new book is A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy. “I think a book has ruined me for writing hot takes and spicy Twitter dunks and all of these other one- and two-dimensional bits of ephemera. I wasn't really a big fan of it in the first place, but I can't do it anymore. A book forces you to look at the world in a much more fine grained, humane, empathetic way, and there's no going back from that.” Show notes: @AndyKroll andy-kroll.com Kroll on Longform Kroll's ProPublica archive Kroll's Rolling Stone archive 01:00 A Death on W Street: The Murder of Seth Rich and the Age of Conspiracy (PublicAffairs • 2022) 21:00 "Ted Cruz’s Secret Weapon to Win the Right" (National Journal • Jun 2015) 22:00 "Ted Cruz’s Howitzer" (New Republic • Jan 2016) 22:00 "The Staying Power of Nancy Pelosi" (The Atlantic • Sep 2015) 22:00 "The Last Days of Jerry Brown" (California Sunday Magazine • Mar 2018) 31:00 "Seth Rich, Slain DN

Erika Hayasaki has written for The New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The Atlantic. Her new book is Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family. “I don’t subscribe to the belief that it’s our story because we’re the journalist that wrote it — especially when people are sharing these really intimate, deep, painful moments. That is not my story. That’s their story that they've collaborated in a way with me to share through these interviews.” Show notes: @ErikaHayasaki erikahayasaki.com  Hayasaki on Longform Hayasaki’s Atlantic archive 04:00 "Hiroshima" (John Hersey • New Yorker • Aug. 1946) 12:00 "A deadly hush in Room 211 — then the killer returned" (Los Angeles Times • April 2007) 16:00 "A Criminal Mind" (California Sunday Magazine • Oct. 2015) 17:00 "In a Perpetual Present" (Wired • April 2016) 18:00 Somewhere Sisters (Algonquin Books • 2022) 19:00 "Identical Twins Hint at How Environments Change Gene Expression" (The Atlantic • May 2018) Learn more about your ad

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her new book is Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us. “I used to feel that if I knew everything, that was a good sign. And I've become more aware that if you know everything you want to argue, that's not such a good sign…. Do I have a genuine question? Is there something I’m trying to figure out? Then the story is worth telling. But if I don’t really have a question or if my question is already answered, then maybe that should give you pause.” Show notes: @rachelaviv Aviv on Longform Aviv on Longform Podcast Aviv's New Yorker archive 05:00 Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2022) 03:00 "How An Ivy League School Turned Against A Student" (New Yorker • Mar 2022) 11:00 "Anorexia, The Impossible Subject" (Alice Gregory • New Yorker • Dec 2013) 12:00 "The Trauma of Facing Deportation" (New Yorker • Mar 2017) 28:00 The Warmth of Other Suns (Isabel Wilkerson • Vin

Sam Anderson is a writer for New York Times Magazine and the author of Boom Town. “I love being in that place where everything is just coming in, and everything is potentially important, and I’m underlining every great sentence that John McPhee has ever written and then I’m typing it up into this embarrassingly long set of reading notes, documents, organized by books. And then when you sit down with it as a writer who has a job, and his job is to fill a little window of a magazine or website, all of that ecstatic inhaling has to stop. You realize that you’ve collected approximately 900,000% of what you need or could ever use.” Show notes: @shamblanderson shamblanderson.com Anderson on Longform Anderson’s New York TImes Magazine archive 03:00 "Kevin Durant and (Possibly) the Greatest Basketball Team of All Time" (New York Times Magazine • June 2021) 05:00 "The Mind of John McPhee" (New York Times Magazine • Sept. 2017) 05:00 Draft No. 4 (John McPhee • Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2017) 07:00 "The Fierce

Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa are reporters for The Washington Post and co-authors of the new book His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice. “Looking at George Floyd's family history, looking at the poverty that he grew up in, looking at the schools that he attended, which were segregated, looking at the opportunities that were denied to him and the struggles he had in the criminal justice system—it's an extraordinary American experience, in part because it's so outside of the norm of what we think of when we think of the American dream…. And so we wanted to be able to showcase that that kind of extraordinary American experience is ordinary for so many people.” Show notes: @newsbysamuels @ToluseO Samuels’s Washington Post archive Olorunnipa’s Washington Post archive 00:00 His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice (Viking • 2022) 03:00 "Covid-19 Is Ravaging Black Communities. A Milwaukee Neighborhood Is Figuring Out How to Figh

Pablo Torre is a sports journalist and the host of the ESPN Daily podcast. “I have an open borders policy as a podcast. All are welcome, but I’m specifically appealing to people who want a little bit more of that magazine curation. What if I gave you one thing today, and that thing was the thing you needed, and what if that thing is deliberately different from every other way you consume sports? That’s the premise.” Show notes: @pablotorre pablotorre.squarespace.com Torre on Longform Torre on Longform Podcast Torre’s ESPN Daily archive 11:00 "Sue Bird on the WNBA Finals, Retirement, and a Career Like No Other" (Torre • ESPN • Sept 2022) 15:00 "The Survivor: From the Holocaust to the Munich Massacre, One Athlete’s Incredible Story" (Torre • ESPN • Sept 2022) 18:00 "The No. 16 Seed University of Maryland Baltimore County Topples Virginia in a Historic Sports Upset" (Ian Crouch • New Yorker • March 2018) 21:00 "Inside Jeremy Lin’s Life After Linsanity and the New York Knicks" (ESPN The Magazine • March

Evan Osnos is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His new book is Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury. “I'm always trying to get inside a subculture. That's the thing that I think has been the most enduring, attractive element for me. Is there a world that has its own manners and vocabulary and internal rhythms and status structure? And who looks down on whom? And why? And who venerates whom? Who's a big deal in these worlds? And if I can get into that, it doesn't even really matter to me that much what the subculture is. I'm fascinated by trying to map that thing out.” Show notes: @eosnos evanosnos.com Osnos on Longform Osnos’s New Yorker archive 00:00 The Making of America’s Fury (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2021) 02:00 "Life After White Collar Crime" (New Yorker • Aug 2021) 03:00 "Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich" (New Yorker • Jan 2017) 05:00 Osnos’s Chicago Tribune archive 19:00 "The Boxing Rebellion" (New Yorker • Jan 2008) 24:00 "Born Red" (New Yorker • Apr 2015) 34:00 "Wastepaper Queen" 

Graciela Mochkofsky is a writer for The New Yorker and dean of CUNY's Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She has written six nonfiction books in Spanish. Her new book, her first in English, is The Prophet of the Andes. “It connects with me as a journalist, actually — it’s this idea of just seeking truth and how elusive that is. So this is a person who thinks he can get to the true meaning of God and of how he needs to live. And he thinks that by asking the right questions, and by reading, and reading, and reading, and by discussing collectively, he can get to the truth. And he can’t.” Show notes: @gmochkofsky  Mochkofsky on Longform Mochkofsky’s New Yorker archive 03:00 Timerman: El periodista que quiso ser parte del poder (Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial Argentina • 2012) 14:00 The Sirens of Mars (Sarah Stewart Johnson • Crown • 2021) 21:00 "The Missing Borges" (The Paris Review • April 2014) 21:00 "Henry Kissinger Will Not Apologize" (The Atlantic • Nov 2016) 21:00 "Obama’s Bittersweet Visi

Nona Willis Aronowitz, an editor and author, writes a sex and love advice column for Teen Vogue. Her new book is Bad Sex: Truth, Pleasure, and an Unfinished Revolution. “I'm getting a lot of emails from people saying basically ‘You've inspired me to break up with my man tomorrow.’ Or ‘I may not ever break up with my man, but I'm starting to tell the truth, at least to myself, about my relationship.’ And I think a lot of people — even though I think being open about your feelings and acceptance of all kinds of lifestyles are two tenants of modern society — I still think there's a lot of silence around dissatisfaction around sex and love.” Show notes: @nona theothernwa.com Willis Aronowitz on Longform Willis Aronowitz’s Teen Vogue archive 02:00Willis Aronowitz’s Good archive 02:00Willis Aronowitz’s Splinter archive 04:00 "Ellen Willis, 64, Journalist and Feminist, Dies" (Margalit Fox • New York Times • Nov 2006) 10:00 "Consciousness-Raising Groups and the Women’s Movement" (Erin Blakemore • JSTOR Dail

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