Ken Burns is a documentary filmmaker whose work includes The Vietnam War, Baseball, and The Central Park Five. His new series is Country Music. “History, which seems to most people safe — it isn’t. I think the future is pretty safe, it’s the past that’s so terrifying and malleable.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Vistaprint, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @KenBurns kenburns.com [01:08] The Vietnam War (2017) [01:12] Country Music (2019) [04:58] Salesman (1969) [09:04] Jazz (2001) [13...
Sep 25, 2019•49 min•Ep 383•Transcript available on Metacast Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, and Between the World and Me. His new novel is The Water Dancer. Chris Jackson is Coates's editor, and the publisher and editor-in-chief of One World. “I don’t think an essay works unless I can pin a story to it. You don’t want people to just say, ‘Oh that was a cool argument.’ You want people to say, ‘I could not stop thinking about this.’ You want them to nudge their wives and husbands and say, ‘You have to...
Sep 18, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep 382•Transcript available on Metacast Paul Tough is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of The Years That Matter Most: How College Makes or Breaks Us. “The nice thing about a book as opposed to a magazine article is that it’s less formulaic. As a writer, it gives you more freedom — you’re trying to create an emotional mood where ideas have a place to sit in a person’s brain. And when people are moved by a book, it’s not by being told, ‘Here’s the problem, here’s the answer, now go do it.’ It’s by havi...
Sep 11, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep 381•Transcript available on Metacast Mike Issac covers Silicon Valley for The New York Times. He is the author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber. “People try to use journalists all the time. Your job as a journalist is to figure out who’s using you, why they’re using you, and whether you can do something legitimately without playing into one side or another.” Thanks to MailChimp, Pitt Writers, and Wolverine Podcast for sponsoring this week's episode. @MikeIsaac Isaac on Longform [00:14] Wolverine Podcast [02:09] Super Pumped: Th...
Sep 04, 2019•54 min•Ep 380•Transcript available on Metacast Michelle García has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post and Oxford American. She directed the PBS film, Against Mexico: The Making of Heroes and Enemies. “We have to see that within difficult stories there is a very important message of humanity triumphing over despair. If you don’t focus on joy, humanity is squashed. If all you see and all you narrate is pain, then you extinguish the possibility of joy and the important part of holding onto humanity.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pit...
Aug 28, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Ep 379•Transcript available on Metacast Jean-Xavier de Lestrade is a French documentary filmmaker. He directed Murder on a Sunday Morning and The Staircase. “The courtroom in the United States is not really about the truth. It’s more about a story against another story. It’s more about storytelling. The more compelling or believable story by the jury will win. But in the end, we don’t know: is it the truth or not?” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and We Love You (and So Can You) for sponsoring this week's episode. [00:05] We Love Y...
Aug 21, 2019•48 min•Ep 378•Transcript available on Metacast Taylor Lorenz just announced she is leaving her job covering internet culture for The Atlantic to join The New York Times. “With technology and internet culture, I am more of an optimist than a lot of other people who cover those topics. It’s more ambiguous for me. It's more like, ‘This is the world we live in now and here are the pros and here are the cons. There are a lot of cons, but there are also these pros.’ I like how things shift and change under me. I like to see how things are constant...
Aug 14, 2019•58 min•Ep 377•Transcript available on Metacast Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of the essay collection Trick Mirror: Reflections of Self-Delusion. “I feel a lot of useful guilt solidifying my own advantages at a time when the ground people stand on is being ripped away. And I feel a lot of emotional anxiety about the systems that connect us - about the things that make my life more convenient and make other people’s lives worse. It’s the reality of knowing that ten years from now, when there are millions of m...
Aug 07, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Ep 376•Transcript available on Metacast Baxter Holmes is a senior writer for ESPN. He won the James Beard Award for his 2017 article, “The NBA's Secret Addiction.” “If there’s anything I’m really fighting for it’s people’s memory. I love the notion of trying to write a story that sticks with people. And that requires really compelling characters. It requires in-depth reporting — you have to take people on a journey. It needs to be so rich and something they didn’t know. I look for a story that I can tell well enough that it will hold ...
Jul 31, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Ep 375•Transcript available on Metacast Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. “I’ve noticed that the times I’m extra susceptible to being on social media is when I am feeling personally insecure or when I’m dealing with existential dread. That within itself is not part of the attention economy—that’s just a human being having feelings and reacting to things. For me, it’s a question of like, ‘What do I do with that?’ I can either feed it back into the attention e...
Jul 24, 2019•1 hr•Ep 374•Transcript available on Metacast Josh Levin is the national editor at Slate. He is the host of the podcast Hang Up and Listen and the author of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth. “I think it’s a strength to make a thing, one that people might have thought was familiar, feel strange. And reminding people —in general, in life—that you don’t really know as much as you think you know. I think that carries over into any kind of storytelling.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this ...
Jul 17, 2019•50 min•Ep 373•Transcript available on Metacast Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times and the author of Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel. “As a profile writer, the skill I have is getting in the room and staying in the room until someone is like, ‘Why is this bitch still in the room? Get her out of there?’ It’s a journalistic skill that is not a fluffy skill. There are people who are always actively trying to prevent your story, prevent you from seeing it, from seeing the things that would be good to see. There’s a lot...
Jul 10, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 372•Transcript available on Metacast Renata Adler is a journalist, critic, and novelist. Her nonfiction collection is After the Tall Timber. “Unless you're going to be fairly definite, what's the point of writing?” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. Adler on Longform Adler's New Yorker archive [7:00] I, Libertine (Theodore Sturgeon • Ballantine Books • 1956) [8:00] After Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction (Ballantine Books • 2015) [9:00] "Letter from Selma" (New Yorker • Apr 1965) [9:00] "Fly Tr...
Jul 03, 2019•1 hr 22 min•Ep 371•Transcript available on Metacast Alex Mar has written for The Believer, Wired, and New York. She is the author of Witches of America and the director of the documentary American Mystic. “I really do believe that all of us run on some kind of desire for meaning. And if someone is an atheist and they don’t subscribe to an organized system, it doesn’t mean that they don’t crave something. Maybe it’s their job. Or maybe it’s the way that they raise their children with a certain kind of intense focus. Or something else. As humans, w...
Jun 26, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep 370•Transcript available on Metacast David Epstein has reported for ProPublica, Sports Illustrated, and This American Life. His new book is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. “You can’t just introspect or take a personality quiz and know what you’re good at or interested in. You actually have to try stuff and then reflect on it. That’s how you learn about yourself—otherwise, your insight into yourself is constrained by your roster of experiences.” Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Read This Summer, The TED In...
Jun 19, 2019•53 min•Ep 369•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Pollan writes for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker and is the author of nine books. His latest is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence. “I don’t like writing as an expert. I’m fine doing public speeches as an expert. Or writing op-ed pieces as an expert. But as a writer, it’s a killer. Nobody likes an expert. Nobody likes to be lectured at. And if you’ve read anything I’...
Jun 12, 2019•59 min•Ep 368•Transcript available on Metacast Casey Cep has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. “I want to meet all of these expectations. I want my book to be a page-turner. I want it to be a beautiful literary object. I want it to sell. I want it to do all of these things. But at the end of the day, I just want to feel like I’ve honored this commitment between writer and reader, and writer and source. And those are someti...
Jun 05, 2019•51 min•Ep 367•Transcript available on Metacast Mark Adams is the author of Mr. America and Turn Right at Machu Picchu. His latest book is Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier. “It’s always sheer and utter panic the whole time I’m on the road. I never sleep more than like three or four hours a night when I’m on the road because I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and I’m like, Who am I going to talk to today? I don’t have anything scheduled for today. What am I going to do? Sometimes thin...
May 29, 2019•48 min•Ep 366•Transcript available on Metacast Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Political Gabfest. Her latest book is Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration. “I'm pretty convinced that if everybody went to criminal court we would not have courts that are dysfunctional the way our courts are. Because what you see every day is a lot of dysfunction and disrespect. It’s kind of deadening. Most people—especially most middle and upper-class people in thi...
May 22, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep 365•Transcript available on Metacast Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and How Did You Get This Number. Her latest essay collection is Look Alive Out There. “The more extreme things get in reality, the more extreme escapism has to be. It’s like Game of Thrones or bust. But in reality, I think that part of what I’m trying to do with this book, or in anything I write, is to give permission to be mad about little things. Just because there’s all of this, someone still slid their hand down a subway pole and tou...
May 15, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep 364•Transcript available on Metacast Christine Kenneally has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Monthly. Her 2018 Buzzfeed article, “The Ghosts of the Orphanage,” was nominated for a National Magazine Award. "I understood that the abuse was a big part of the story. But the thing that really hooked me and disturbed me and I wouldn’t forget was the depersonalization that went on in these places. It wasn’t just that the records had been lost along the way. It became really clear that the information was intentiona...
May 08, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep 363•Transcript available on Metacast David Wallace-Wells is the deputy editor of New York and the author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming. “Between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of warming, just that extra half degree of warming, is going to kill 150 million people from air pollution alone. That’s 25 times the death toll of the Holocaust. And when I say that to people, their eyes open. They’re like oh my god, this is suffering on such an unconscionable scale. And it is. But 9 million people are dying already every year fr...
May 01, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Ep 362•Transcript available on Metacast Linda Villarosa directs the journalism program at the City College of New York and is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. Her article "Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis" was one of Longform's Top Ten of 2018. She is at work on a new book, Under the Skin: Race, Inequality and the Health of a Nation, due out in 2020. “I think at the beginning I was afraid to say it right out, so I think I was saying ‘racial bias’ or something like that. Then I s...
Apr 24, 2019•55 min•Ep 361•Transcript available on Metacast Michael Lewis is the author of several bestselling books and the host of the podcast Against the Rules. “I think anything you do, if it’s going to be any good, there’s got to be some risk involved. I think the reader or the listener will sense that you were taking chances and it will excite them. So, you never want to do the same thing twice, and you don’t want to cling to something because it’s the safe thing. I try to keep that in mind. Ok, I started with this, but if I push off shore clinging...
Apr 17, 2019•53 min•Ep 360•Transcript available on Metacast Hillary Frank is the creator of The Longest Shortest Time podcast and the author of Weird Parenting Wins. “I think motherhood is not valued in our culture. We don’t value the work of mothers both at home and then at work. Mothers are the most discriminated against people at work. They’re discriminated more against than fathers or people without children. Mothers are promoted less, hired less, and paid less. People are forced out of their jobs after they announce that they’re pregnant, they’re pa...
Apr 10, 2019•46 min•Ep 359•Transcript available on Metacast Casey Newton covers technology for The Verge and writes The Interface newsletter. “I remember one time a Facebook employee told me when I wrote something critical and I said something like, ‘Yeah, I know that one was a little harder on you.’ I remember he said to me, ‘Please understand that this helps to make the case internally for changes we want to make.’ When this type of criticism get published when we know that this is the conversation, we can push for these kinds of changes on the inside....
Apr 03, 2019•57 min•Ep 358•Transcript available on Metacast Wesley Morris is a critic at large for The New York Times, a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, and the co-host of Still Processing. “I think that the taking of extra time to be more thoughtful and less reactive is, to the extent that I have any wisdom to impart, that is it. Just wait a second. Because someone’s going to get there before you get there anyway.” Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. The Mastermind (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) @...
Mar 27, 2019•54 min•Ep 357•Transcript available on Metacast Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, is the author of The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. “We’re all less moral than we think we are, including myself. I’m interested in the justifications people provide for themselves to get deep into something that starts as one thing and ends up as a murderous criminal cartel. Paul Le Roux, sure—but also doctors and pharmacists. It’s interesting to think about where the pressures in our lives create moral ambiguity that we didn't thin...
Mar 25, 2019•1 hr 20 min•Ep 356•Transcript available on Metacast Kiese Laymon is the author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Heavy: An American Memoir. “It's ironic to me that my mom was the woman who taught me how to read—she was the black woman who taught me how to read and write—and everything I wrote outside of my house I was taught not to write to my mama. I just think that’s where we are as black writers and black creators in this country. Literally because most of our teachers are white. Principals are white. The standards are w...
Mar 20, 2019•1 hr 5 min•Ep 355•Transcript available on Metacast Patrick Radden Keefe is a New Yorker staff writer. His latest book is Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland. “What was strange for me was that it was before I was born, almost a half-century ago. I went to Belfast and asked people about it and you could see the fear on people’s faces. So this notion that this event that’s older than I am still felt so radioactive in the present day was challenging from a reporting point of view, but it also, at every step along the w...
Mar 13, 2019•1 hr 3 min•Ep 354•Transcript available on Metacast 
