Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg. His new book is Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.
“I have a rule of thumb, which is that if somebody did one scam, they probably did another scam. If they did one scam in the past and now they have a new thing, odds are good it’s also a scam. That’s not always true, but that was definitely borne out sometimes in crypto-world.”
Show notes:

@ZekeFaux

zekefaux.com

Faux on Longform

Faux’s Bloomberg archive

06:00 “Secret Network Connects Harvard Money to Payday Loans” (Bloomberg • Sept 2014)

08:00 “Anyone Seen Tether’s Billions?” (Bloomberg • Oct 2021)

21:00 Matt Levine’s Bloomberg archive


22:00 “‘Don’t You Remember Me?’ The Crypto Hell on the Other Side of a Spam Text” (Bloomberg • Aug 2023)

32:00 “The Rise of FTX, and Sam Bankman-Fried, Was a Great Story. Its Implosion Is Even Better.” (Alexandra Alter • New York Times • May 2023)

58:00 The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Penguin Random House • 2020)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 550: Zeke Faux

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder of the nonprofit Freedom Reads. His New York Times Magazine article "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" won the National Magazine Award. His new podcast is Almost There.
“I felt like I had to own becoming something and intuitively understood that if I didn't lay claim to desiring to be something, that it would be too many other forces that would be pulling on me to dictate that I become something else. … When you say you're a writer, if you know nothing else, then you know that you read. You pay attention to the world. … And prison became the metaphor by which I understood the world and poetry became the medium by which I understood what it meant to write about the world and what it meant to take seriously the responsibility to write about the world that I knew.”
Show notes:

dwaynebetts.com

freedomreads.org

01:00 Almost There with Dwayne Betts (Emerson Collective)

05:00 The Black Poets (Dudley Randall • Bantam • 1985)

10:00 Married… with Children (Michael G. Moye and Ron Leavitt • Fox • 1987-1997)

21:00 "Scientists and Engineers" (Killer Mike • Michael • 2023)

24:00 "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" (New York Times Magazine • Oct 2018)

26:00 "The Language of Birds" (Anselm Kiefer • 2018)

28:00 A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery • 2010)

31:00 Felon: An American Washi Tale


32:00 "Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration and Me" (New York Times Magazine • Oct 2020)

33:00 Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books • 2010)

33:00 Bastards of the Reagan Era (Four Way Books • 2015)

33:00 Felon (Norton • 2019)

33:00 Redaction: A Project by Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts (MoMA PS1 • 2019)

33:00 Redaction (Titus Kaphar and Reginald Dwayne Betts • Norton • 2023)

44:00 Creative Nonfiction



Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 549: Reginald Dwayne Betts

Audie Cornish, the former host NPR’s All Things Considered, is an anchor and correspondent for CNN. Her 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

Rerun: #512 Audie Cornish (Nov 2022)

Susan Burton is an editor at This American Life, the author of the memoir Empty, and the host of the podcast The Retrievals.
“I know I have much more anger than I reveal, and I don’t think that’s uncommon. Especially for women. There’s been a lot of attention to that in recent years—the anger of women, how it’s expressed and not expressed. But I think that among the things I’ve stifled for years are just my true feelings, and I’ve always wanted to be close to people and to be intimate with people, and have often felt that I have trouble making myself known or being known or being understood. And so...it felt good to be known.”
Show notes:

@burtonsusan

susanburton.net

Burton on Longform

Burton’s This American Life archive

01:00 “In The Event of an Emergency, Put Your Sister in an Upright Position” (Ira Glass • This American Life • Jan 2001)

05:00 Empty (Random House • 2020)

06:00 “Secrets” (This American Life • Feb 2021)

39:00 “Terry Gross and the Art of Opening Up” (New York Times • Oct 2015)

42:00 “From 'Empty' To 'Satisfied': Author Traces A Hunger That Food Can't Fix” (Terry Gross • NPR • June 2020)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 548: Susan Burton

Jamie Loftus is a comedian, writer, and podcaster. Her new book is Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs.
“Comedy has been super helpful to me because it's so based on failing every night sometimes that I wasn't afraid of failure in the same way because it's just like, Well, that's going to happen to me at some point this week. Why not in this format?”
Show notes:

jamieloftus.xyz

00:00 Lolita Podcast (iHeartRadio • 2020-21)

01:00 Aack Cast! (iHeartRadio • 2021)

01:00 My Year in Mensa (iHeartRadio • 2020)

01:00 Ghost Church (iHeartRadio • 2022)

01:00 Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs (Forge Books • 2023)

10:00 Sarah Marshall on Longform Podcast


14:00 "Dolores Onstage" (iHeartRadio • Dec 2020)

19:00 The Bechdel Cast (Caitlin Durante and Jamie Loftus • iHeartRadio)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 547: Jamie Loftus

Javier Zamora is the author of Unaccompanied, a poetry collection, and Solito, a memoir.
“There was something that I felt eating away at me, which made me a very angry and volatile teenager. And I think I was an angry teenager because I had this trauma that nobody around me could talk about, and that I didn't have the right therapist to help me unpack. So the cheapest thing that I had was poetry.”
Show notes:

@jzsalvipoet

javierzamora.net

03:00 “Reading Neruda and Learning to Heal My Diasporic Wounds” (Lit Hub • April 2019)

18:00 Krik? Krak! (Edwidge Danticat • Soho Press • 2015)

31:00 franciscocantu.us


37:00 The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail (Óscar Martínez • Verso Books • 2013)

42:00 “Zamora: It’s time for the Pulitzer Prize for literature to accept noncitizens” (Los Angeles Times • July 2023)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 546: Javier Zamora

Jennifer Senior is a staff writer for The Atlantic. Her article ”What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind” won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Her most recent article is ”The Ones We Sent Away.”
“I'm at the point where I'm only thinking about the big questions and the difficulty of being a human as what matter most. That's what I want to keep focusing on. Our common frailties, our common bonds, our common difficulties. Because clearly we are not going to bond politically as a nation, right? … But we can bond over our kids with disabilities. About the fact that we grieve, that we love, that we lose people. That we have friends that we love, friends that we hate. We have friendships that we miss, we have friendships that we can't live without.”
Show notes:

jennifersenior.net

Jennifer Senior on Longform

Jennifer Senior on Longform Podcast

00:00 "What Bobby McIlvaine Left Behind" (Atlantic • Aug 2021)

01:00 On Grief (Atlantic Editions • 2023)

01:00 "The Ones We Sent Away" (Atlantic • Aug 2023)

02:00 All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood (Ecco • 2014)

03:00 The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (Bessel Van Der Kolk • Penguin • 2015)

03:00 Senior's New York Magazine archive


04:00 Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (Atul Gawande • Picador • 2017)

05:00 Senior's New York Times archive


12:00 Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life (Annette Lareau • University of California Press • 2011)

17:00 Heavyweight (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet)

18:00 "#25 Becky and Jo" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Oct 2019)

18:00 "#2 Gregor" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Sep 2016)

28:00 "It’s Your Friends Who Break Your Heart" (Atlantic • Feb 2022)

42:00 Patient H.M. (Luke Dittrich • Random House • 2017)

47:00 "What Not to Ask Me About My Long COVID" (Atlantic • Feb 2023)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 545: Jennifer Senior

Casey Newton writes the Platformer newsletter. Kevin Roose is a technology columnist for The New York Times. Together they co-host the podcast Hard Fork.
CN: “People actually like to be a little bit confused. They like listening to things where people are talking about things they don’t quite understand, which was very counterintuitive to me. I think a lot of editor-types would scoff at, but I’ve come around.”
KR: “We can revisit subjects and we do. We can change our minds. Print pieces feel so permanent, they feel so definitive. Podcasts, we can just sort of say, ‘I don't know what to make of this, ask me again in a month.’”
Show notes:

@CaseyNewton

@kevinroose

cnewton.org

kevinroose.com

Newton on Longform

Roose on Longform

Longorm Podcast #337: Casey Newton

Longform Podcast #81: Kevin Roose

Newton and Roose’s Hard Fork archive

Newton’s Platformer archive

Roose’s New York Times archive

3:00 Newton’s Verge archive


7:00 “Elon’s X Machina, Crypto Orbs, and a Visit to Google’s Robot Lab” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • July 2023)

12:00 Huberman Lab (Andrew Huberman • Huberman Lab • 2023)

14:00 Rabbit Hole (Roose • New York Times • 2020)

25:00 Futureproof (Roose • Random House • 2022)

29:00 “ChatGPT Transforms a Classroom and Is ‘M3GAN’ Real?” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • Jan 2023)

29:00 “Dario Amodei, C.E.O. of Anthropic, on the Paradoxes of A.I. Safety and Netflix’s ‘Deep Fake Love Story’” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • July 2023)

31:00 “Google C.E.O. Sundar Pichai on Bard, A.I. ‘Whiplash’ and Competing with ChatGPT” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • March 2023)

31:00 “Mr. Altman Goes to Washington and Casey Goes on This American Life” (Newton and Roose • New York Times • May 2023)

44:00 “Aided by A.I. Language Models, Google’s Robots Are Getting Smart” (Roose • New York Times • July 2023)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 544: Casey Newton and Kevin Roose

Jeff Goodell is a climate change writer for Rolling Stone and the author of seven books. His new book is The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.
“I would not have said this even five years ago, but I have really come to see this now as a crime story. This is a kind of looting of the atmosphere of the earth, siphoning off resources and grossly profiting off of that at the expense of many other people—billions of people—on this planet. And I understand that’s a big thing to say, but I think it’s just pretty obviously true. … I don’t mean that personally that each one of them personally is a criminal. We are all complicit in this.”
Show notes:

@jeffgoodell

jeffgoodellwriter.com

Goodell on Longform

Goodell’s Rolling Stone archive

11:00 “Who’s a Hero Now?” (New York Times Magazine • July 2003)

15:00 The Water Will Come (Back Bay Books • 2018)

15:00 Big Coal (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2006)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 543: Jeff Goodell

Peter Shamshiri is a lawyer and co-host of the podcast 5-4.
“Because of the nature of law, I think a lot of journalists find it hard to take a position—or to sort of tip their hand about what they actually believe—because so much of the discourse around how law should operate is about neutrality and the general perspective that the law is non-partisan, non-ideological. I think the result is media coverage that is particularly lacking in those regards. And that's where we swoop in.”
Show notes:

@The_Law_Boy


5-4 (Prologue Projects)

02:00 "Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened" (Evan Ratliff • Wired • Nov 2009)

04:00 Mic Dicta


14:00 "Bush v. Gore" (Prologue Projects • Feb 2020)

14:00 "Emergency Episode: RNC v. DNC" (Prologue Projects • Apr 2020)

15:00 "Emergency Episode: Roe Is Overturned" (Prologue Projects • Jun 2022)

16:00 "The Thomas/Crow Affair" (Prologue Projects • Apr 2023)

25:00 "The Hosts of ‘5-4’ Never Trusted the Supreme Court" (Reggie Ugwu • New York Times • Jul 2022)

37:00 Slow Burn (Prologue Projects)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 542: Peter Shamshiri

Donovan X. Ramsey is a journalist and author of the new book When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era.
“I've only ever wanted to write about Black people—and that includes the elements of our lives that are difficult. I’ve always prided myself on being able to metabolize that information and not really be harmed by it. And this book really taught me that writing and processing is not just something that you do in your head. That the information does go through you as you're trying to make sense of it. And it's not happening to you, right? It's not like a direct form of PTSD that you have, but you do experience some trauma when you open up your imagination in that way.”
Show notes:

@donovanxramsey

donovanxramsey.com

Ramsey on Longform Podcast


When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era (One World • 2023)

02:00 Ramsey's Los Angeles Times archive


05:00 The Warmth of Other Suns (Isabel Wilkerson • Vintage • 2011)

35:00 "America’s ‘crack’ plague has roots in Nicaragua war" (Gary Webb • San Jose Mercury News • Aug 1996)

35:00 "Shadowy origins of ‘crack’ epidemic" (Gary Webb • San Jose Mercury News • Aug 1996)

35:00 "War on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans" (Gary Webb • San Jose Mercury News • Aug 1996)

45:00 The 1619 Project (Nikole Hannah-Jones et al. • New York Times • 2019)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 541: Donovan X. Ramsey

David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest 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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rerun: #531 David Grann (Apr 2023)

Heidi Blake is a writer for The New Yorker and the author of two books, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West and The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup, with Jonathan Calvert. Her latest article is “The Fugitive Princess of Dubai.”
“I definitely feel as an investigative reporter that I feel very driven by my own capacity for shock and outrage and genuinely feeling like this is unbelievable. And that kind of makes me want to keep digging. And once I stop feeling that on any given topic, I lose interest. And so I’ve always been a generalist, and I just kind of rove from one topic to the next. I’m always finding myself in new territory where I know absolutely nothing about the thing I’m starting to dig into and have to try and play catch up and get my head around something new.”
Show notes:

@heidiblake

24:00 From Russia with Blood (Mulholland Books • 2020)

24:00 Once Upon a Time in Londongrad (Buzzfeed Studios • 2022)

33:00 “David Cameron’s communication director in tax fraud investigation” (The Daily Telegraph • May 2011)

37:00 The Ugly Game (Blake and Jonathan Calvert • Scribner • 2017)

40:00 Blake's Buzzfeed News archive


42:00 “This Tory Donor Was Secretly Filmed Dropping Cash-Stuffed Rucksacks At Post Offices” (Blake, Michael Gillard, Tom Warren, Jane Bradley, and Richard Holmes • Buzzfeed News • Oct 2015)

45:00 “Friends of the Court” (Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski • ProPublica • 2023)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 540: Heidi Blake

Mitchell Prothero covers intelligence and crime for Vice News. His new podcast with Project Brazen is Gateway: Cocaine, Murder, and Dirty Money in Europe.
“I’m really interested in transnational networks—crime, intelligence. I’m fascinated by the gray. Like, when is something legal and when is something illegal? One thing with this Gateway project [was that] nobody could ever tell me that moment where money goes from absolutely being illegal to being legal.”
Show notes:

@mitchprothero

Prothero on Longform

Prothero’s Vice archive

01:00 “Paintballing with Hezbollah” (Vice • March 2012)

01:00 “Inside the World of ISIS Investigations in Europe” (Buzzfeed News • Aug 2016)

36:00 “The Wild Story of the Psychic, the Sheikh and the $90 Million Diamond Heist” (Vice • June 2023)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 539: Mitchell Prothero

Brittany Luse is the host of NPR’s It’s Been a Minute.
“One of the things I love about this job is everything is practice. I love it. It's like if a show is great and everyone loves it, you gotta put on another one. You just gotta do it again. And if the show didn't quite do what you'd hoped or set out to do in your mind and in your heart, you gotta do another one. I just love it. You can never feel too good and you can never feel too bad.”
Show notes:

@bmluse

02:00 "#497: Sam Sanders" (Longform Podcast • Aug 2022)

02:00 "Kale-flavored Cheez-Its" (Sampler • Gimlet • Jun 2016)

03:00 It’s Been a Minute (NPR)

04:00 "Brittany goes to 'Couples Therapy;' Plus, why Hollywood might strike" (It’s Been a Minute • NPR • Apr 2023)

04:00 "Tina Turner's happy ending" (It’s Been a Minute • NPR • May 2023)

05:00 "Relationship Goals" (Sampler • Gimlet • Mar 2016)

12:00 Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical (Working Title Films • 2022)

24:00 The Nod (Gimlet)

25:00 "Whole Hog" (The Nod • Gimlet • Sep 2017)

27:00 "The Hairstons Part 1: Snakes on a Plantation" (The Nod • Gimlet • Dec 2017)

27:00 "The Hairstons Part 1: Diary of a Mad Black Cousin" (The Nod • Gimlet • Dec 2017)

29:00 "Hair, Laid" (The Nod • Gimlet • May 2018)

29:00 "I Want That Purple Stuff" (The Nod • Gimlet • Aug 2017)

29:00 "Big Freedia’s Bounce" (The Nod • Gimlet • Sep 2020)

29:00 "How to Show Up" (The Nod • Gimlet • Jun 2019)

32:00 For Colored Nerds (Eric Eddings and Brittany Luse)

42:00 "Quibi Is Shutting Down Barely Six Months After Going Live" (Benjamin Mullin, Joe Flint, Maureen Farrell • Wall Street Journal • Oct 2020)

44:00 "Why Am I Watching Married At First Sight Instead of Planning My Wedding?" (Harper’s Bazaar • May 2021)

46:00 "The Hard-To-Take But Smart Relationship Advice Beyoncé Has Given Us" (Refinery29 • Apr 2016)

49:00 "The Fiction of the Color Line" (Vulture • Jan 2021)

53:00 "Death of Adulthood" (For Colored Nerds • 2014)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 538: Brittany Luse

Brady Dale covers cryptocurrency for Axios. His new book is SBF: How The FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy.
“I am a fast writer. I’ve always been fast. I just sat down and did the math on it and I was like, If I can write 1,500 words a day, I can write this book. And I can do that.”
Show notes:

@BradyDale

bradydale.com

Dale's Axios archive

00:00 SBF: How The FTX Bankruptcy Unwound Crypto's Very Bad Good Guy (Wiley • 2023)

09:00 Dale's Observer archive


09:00 Dale's CoinDesk archive


14:00 Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing (Jacob Goldstein • Hachette • 2020)

16:00 Coin Talk (Aaron Lammer and Jay Caspian Kang)

16:00 Techmeme Ride Home (Ride Home Media)

24:00 "#127: Sam Bankman-Fried on taking a high-risk approach to crypto and doing good" (80,000 Hours • Apr 2022)

28:00 Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (Michael Lewis • Norton • 2023)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 537: Brady Dale

Lisa Belkin is a journalist and the author of four books. Her latest is Genealogy of a Murder: Four Generations, Three Families, One Fateful Night.
“I didn’t experience it as luck. It—and this is going to be a little woo woo—but it really felt like these people had been sitting there for 100 years saying, Well, it took you long enough, because everything just fit together. I didn’t have to manipulate anything.”
Show notes:

@lisabelkin

lisabelkin.com

Lisa Belkin on Longform

Belkin’s New York Times archive

Belkin’s Yahoo News archive

Belkin’s HuffPost archive

02:00 “The Odds of That” (The New York Times Magazine • Aug 2002)

09:00 Show Me a Hero (Hachette Book Group • 1999)

09:00 Show Me a Hero (David Simon • HBO • 2015)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 536: Lisa Belkin

Amy Chozick is an author, journalist, executive producer, and showrunner. Her latest feature for The New York Times is ”Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth.”
“The subject thought it was a hit job. Twitter thought it was a puff piece. I don’t know, guys. … I want to explain to people what it feels like to be around someone who you know you shouldn’t believe, but you can’t help believing them because this is what their personality is like when you’re with them.”
Show notes:

@amychozick

amychozick.com

Chozick on Longform

Chozick's New York Times archive

00:00 "Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth" (New York Times • May 2023)

02:00 The Dropout (ABC Audio • 2019)

06:00 "You Know the Lorena Bobbitt Story. But Not All of It." (New York Times • Jan 2019)

24:00 Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyou • Vintage • 2020)

49:00 The Dropout (Hulu • 2022)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 535: Amy Chozick

Tracy Kidder is the author of eleven books, including The Soul of a New Machine and Mountains Beyond Mountains. His latest is Rough Sleepers.
“I do think it’s an interesting challenge to try to write about virtue, with all that’s always mixed with it. Some writers have said it’s virtually impossible … but it’s not impossible. … People who are really trying, struggling against the odds, I think they’re worth writing about.”
Show notes:

tracykidder.com

Kidder on Longform

Kidder’s Atlantic archive

01:00 “‘You Have to Learn to Listen’: How a Doctor Cares for Boston’s Homeless” (The New York Times • Jan 2023)

06:00 “The Good Doctor” (New Yorker • July 2000)

06:00 Mountains Beyond Mountains (Random House • 2009)

19:00 Good Prose (Kidder and Richard Todd • Random House • 2013)

21:00 House (Houghton Mifflin • 1985)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Episode 534: Tracy Kidder

Hua Hsu is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His book Stay True won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for memoir.
“I've worked as a journalist … for quite a while. … But this [book] was the thing that was always in the back of my mind. Like, this was the thing that a lot of that was in service of. Just becoming better at describing a song or describing the look of someone's face—these were all things that I implicitly understood as skills I needed to acquire. ... It is sort of an origin story for why I got so obsessive about writing.”
Show notes:

@huahsu

byhuahsu.com

Hsu on Longform

Hsu on Longform Podcast

Hsu's New Yorker archive

03:00 A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific (Harvard University Press • 2016)

30:00 "Randall Park Breaks Out of Character" (New Yorker • Feb 2023)

33:00 Shortcomings (Adrian Tomine • Drawn & Quarterly • 2007)

39:00 "What Conversation Can Do For Us" (New Yorker • Mar 2023)

39:00 "J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep" (New Yorker • Mar 2023)

39:00 "The Many Afterlives of Vincent Chin" (New Yorker • Jun 2022)

39:00 "How Wayne Wang Faces Failure" (New Yorker • Jun 2022)

39:00 "Maxine Hong Kingston’s Genre-Defying Life and Work" (New Yorker • Jun 2020)


Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get Started

Download the App