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 DIY Past Could Soon Become Its Future" (New York • Jan 2017)

27:00 "Let's Just Say It: Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do" (The New Republic • Nov 2014)

27:00 "The Institutionalist" (The Cut • Jun 2022)


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Episode 493: Rebecca Traister

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 Rybczynski’s Architect Magazine archive


30:00 The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids (Bloomsbury • 2018)

35:00 New Angle: Voice (Beverly Willis Architecture Foundation)


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Episode 492: Alexandra Lange

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)


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Episode 491: Lulu Garcia-Navarro

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)


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Episode 490: Matt Levine

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.
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Introducing "Persona: The French Deception" from Longform's Evan Ratliff

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 • Fine Line Features • 1993)

16:00 "Young Playwrights Get Off-Bway Spotlight in Sondheim Founded Fest" (Playbill • Sep 2002)

21:00 Lolita Podcast (Jamie Loftus • iHeartRadio • 2021)

24:00 "Porntopia" (Grantland • Mar 2015)

24:00 Karina Longworth on Longform Podcast


32:00 "‘Mad Men’ Week 1: Catching Tigers in Red Weather" (Grantland • Apr 2015)


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Episode 489: Molly Lambert

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 2019)

21:00 "How the Sandwich Consumed Britain" (Guardian • Nov 2017)

21:00 "The Spectacular Power of Big Lens" (Guardian • May 2018)

27:00 "Sadiq Khan Takes on Brexit and Terror" (New Yorker • Jul 2017)

27:00 "The Empty Promise of Boris Johnson" (New Yorker • Jun 2019)

27:00 "Theresa May’s Impossible Choice" (New Yorker • Jul 2018)

27:00 "Nicola Sturgeon’s Quest for Scottish Independence" (New Yorker • May 2021)

28:00 "Operation London Bridge: The Secret Plans for the Days After the Queen's Death" (Guardian • Mar 2017)

30:00 "President Trump’s First Term" (Evan Osnos • New Yorker • Sep 2016)

30:00 "The Earthquake That Will Devastate the Pacific Northwest" (Kathryn Schulz • New Yorker • Jul 2015)

34:00 The Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold (Penguin • 2022)

45:00 "The Psychiatrist Who Believed People Could Tell the Future" (New Yorker • Mar 2019)


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Episode 488: Sam Knight

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 Rock's Plan for Immortality" (Esquire • May 2021)

44:00 "Prison" (Richard Just, Editor • Washington Post • Oct 2019)

44:00 "Calendars" (Washington Post • Oct 2019)

45:00 Olio (Tyehimba Jess • Wave Books • 2016)


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Rerun: #463 Mitchell S. Jackson (Nov 2021)

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)

36:00 "'Corrosive Communities': How A Facebook Fight Over Wind Power Predicts the Future of Local Politics in America" (BuzzFeed News • Dec 2021)


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Episode 487: Joe Bernstein

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 the World" (Bloomberg Businessweek • Jul 2017)

32:00 "Can This Startup Break Big Tech’s Hold on A.I.?" (Fortune • Jun 2018)

32:00 "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise" (Wired • May 2022)

37:00 "Ghosts" (The Believer • Aug 2021)

37:00 "The Political Awakening of Silicon Valley" (California Sunday • Sep 2017)


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Episode 486: Vauhini Vara

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.
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Polk Award Winners: Azmat Khan

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.
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Polk Award Winners: Daniel Chang

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the director of the Global Migration Program at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She won the George Polk Award for "The Migrant Workers Who Follow Climate Disasters."
“I’m all about the Venn diagram where the individual meaningful stories of things people are up against intersect with the big systemic injustice issues of our day. It feels like climate is clearly an enormous domain where it’s been hard in some ways to tell substantive stories of where actual human beings are navigating and pushing back on some of these huge cultural forces.”
This is the third in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
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Polk Award Winners: Sarah Stillman

Maria Abi-Habib is the bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for the New York Times. Along with her colleague Frances Robles, Abi-Habib won the George Polk Award for revealing concealed aspects of the murder of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse.
“We’re not going to stop covering Haiti just because you don’t like us … at the end of the day you owe it to your citizens to talk to the media because if you can’t talk to the media and actually answer some questions, how are you going to run a country? We’re not doing this for ourselves, we’re doing this because we think that Haiti matters and we think Haitians, like all citizens in this world, actually deserve some answers to their questions and to know what the truth is.”
This is the second in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.
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Polk Award Winners: Maria Abi-Habib

Clarissa Ward is the chief international correspondent for CNN. Along with field producer Brent Swails and photojournalists William Bonnett and Scott McWhinnie, Ward won the 2022 George Polk Award for her real-time coverage of the rapid rise of the Taliban as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan last summer.
“I used to come back from war zones and feel completely disconnected from my life—disconnected from my friends, from my family. I would look down on people about the conversations they were having about silly things. I would feel kind of numb and miserable. And then I realized that if you want to be able to keep doing this work, you have to choose to embrace the privileges that you've been given. And you have to choose joy and choose love and be kind to yourself and have a glass of wine and go dancing or run up a mountain—whatever it is that does it for you, embrace it. That is part of the tax you pay for surviving these things: You've got to continue to love life.”
This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.

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Polk Award Winners: Clarissa Ward

Jackie MacMullan is an NBA journalist who has written for The Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and ESPN. She hosts the podcast Icons Club for The Ringer.
“[Athletes] think they don't need journalists—and they're wrong. And I tell them all this. I'm like, ‘I know you think you've got your own production company, but we can tell your story better than you can.' That's just the truth. No one tells their own story the best. It's the people around them that tell the story the best. And nobody wants a whitewashed version of you. They want warts and all. That's what makes you lovable. That's what makes you interesting. ... There are great journalists out there that can tell your story—and it might not be exactly the way you want it to be told, but it'll have weight and it'll have legacy to it.”
Show notes:

MacMullan's Sports Illustrated archive

MacMullan's ESPN archive

Jackie MacMullan says goodbye to Around the Horn

01:00 "Journalism Pioneer Jackie MacMullan, Former Globe Columnist, to Retire From ESPN" (Chad Finn • Boston Globe • Aug 2021)

18:00 Bird Watching: On Playing and Coaching the Game I Love (Larry Bird, Jackie MacMullan • Grand Central Publishing • 1999)

21:00 When the Game Was Ours (Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson, Jackie MacMullan • Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2009)

22:00 Shaq Uncut (Shaquille O’Neal, Jackie MacMullan • Grand Central Publishing • 2011)

24:00 Icons Club (The Ringer • 2022)

27:00 ESPN Daily (Pablo Torre • ESPN)

27:00 The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy (Bill Simmons • ESPN • 2010)

39:00 The Last Dance (Netflix • 2020)

49:00 "When Making the NBA Isn't a Cure-All: Mental Health and Black Athletes" (ESPN • Aug 2018)


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Episode 485: Jackie MacMullan

“Human beings, we are the same, right? Like when you come out of the womb, you need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to pee, you need to shit, and when it comes to emotional needs, you need to feel loved. You need to feel there's compassion, you know? You need to feel significant and of value. And when it comes to like the feeling of significance and feeling valued, I think that's where we start to get into trouble because the same things that you hold of value, I may not in the same way. […] And so if I can engage you and recognize the perspective from which you come, and at least give you an entry level or a human level of respect from the beginning, then the departure point for our engagement is a proper one, as opposed to an antagonistic one.”

@alzoslade

VICE on Showtime

Cheat on Apple Podcasts

15:00 "Moment of Truth: The Day Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Told Her Story About Brett Kavanaugh" (VICE News • Oct 2018 2019)

20:00 "Season 1, Episode 2: India Burning & Russia's Fight Factory" (VICE on Showtime • Apr 2020)

25:00 "Season 1, Episode 5: Quitting WeWork & Losing Ground & Italy's Darkest Hour" (VICE on Showtime • Apr 2020)


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Episode 484: Alzo Slade

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)

02:00 "Contemplating Beauty in a Disabled Body" (New York Times Magazine • Mar 2022)

19:00 "Such Perfection" (The Believer • Jun 2019)


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Episode 483: Chloé Cooper Jones

Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the host of A Slight Change of Plans.
”I am a type A person through and through. I love having the five-year plan and the ten-year plan, and mapping it all out. By nature, that's what I'm like. And I think the series of pivots that my life has naturally taken, or I've had to take, has kind of soured me on that whole way of thinking. […] Maybe it's also that I'm a more grateful person than I used to be. Like, I feel more gratitude, and so part of my orientation now is, well, how lucky am I that I even stumbled upon something?”
Show notes:

@drmayashankar

mayashankar.com

Apple Podcasts' Best of 2021

35:00 A Slight Change of Plans, "A Black Musician Takes on the KKK" (Pushkin Industries • May 2021)

38:00 A Slight Change of Plans, "Maya's Slight Change of Plans" (Pushkin Industries • Oct 2021)


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Episode 482: Maya Shankar

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 new 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 Stakes Is High (De La Soul • Tommy Boy, Warner Brothers • 1996)

33:00 Black Movie (Danez Smith • Button Poetry • 2014)

37:00 Abdurraqib's MTV News archive


39:00 "Mo Salah Is Ready to Make the Whole World Smile" (Bleacher Report • Jun 2018)

44:00 Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games • 2010)

47:00 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo • 2017)

47:00 Elden Ring (Bandai Namco Entertainment • 2022)


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