Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip. “I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding it is still a job, and then understanding how you make sure that within the container of the job you can do the work that you want to do. That is a really difficult balance to make. So if you can understand how people who have done it before you, you can copy them.” Show notes: @mckinneykelsey kelseymckinney.com McKinney on Longform McKinney’s Defector archive 04:00 “Why Doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway Get a Day of Her Own?” (Slate • Jan 2000) 13:00 “Chris Evans: American Marvel” (Edith Zimmerman • GQ • July 2011) 23:00 McKinney’s Deadspin archive 31:00 God Spare the Girls (Harper Collins • 2022) 39:00 “Gossip Is Not a Sin” (New York Times • July 2021) 43:00 You Didn’t Hear This From Me (Viking • 2025) 58:00 “Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital” (Defector • Dec 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lissa Soep is an audio producer, editor and author whose latest book is Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End. “I am so keenly aware of how much my own voice is a product of editing relationships and co-producing relationships with other people's words. … I will forever feel indebted to those then young people who are now writers and educators and therapists. … I feel like my voice is sort of a product of that time.” Show notes: 00:00 Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations that Never End (Spiegel & Grau • 2024) 00:00 YR Media 33:00 "Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans" (Sam Anderson • New York Times Magazine • Oct 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

PJ Vogt is the host of Search Engine. “One of our tests editorially is if we think we’ve got something good, but we haven’t started reporting or recording on it, I’ll just try asking the question at dinner and stuff. If it derails conversations, that’s a really good sign.” Show notes: @PJVogt Vogt’s Substack Vogt on Longform Podcast 03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Mar 2024) 03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • April 2024) 03:00 “When Do You Know It’s Time to Stop Drinking?” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024) 13:00 “Is There a Sane Way to Use the Internet?” (Search Engine • Oct 2023) 15:00 “How Do You Survive Fame?” (Search Engine • Feb 2024) 15:00 “The Tao of Rick Rubin” (New York Times • The Ezra Klein Show • Feb 2023) 15:00 “Rick Rubin Says Trust Your Gut, Not Your Audience” (Bari Weiss • The Free Press • Mar 2023) 16:00 “Rick Rubin, The Seclusive Zen Master” (Tim Ferriss • Jan 2023) 16:00 “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Gay Talese • Esquire • April 1966) 18:00 The Ezra Klein Show 18:00 Fresh Air 19:00 Crypto Island (Jigsaw Productions • 2022) 26:00 “Do Political Yard Signs Actually Do Anything?” (Search Engine • Apr 2024) 27:00 Reply All 35:00 “What’s Going on With Elon Musk?” (Search Engine • July 2023) 38:00 “What’s It Like to Go Blind? (Search Engine • July 2023) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lindsay Peoples is the editor-in-chief of The Cut. “You see so many incredible people make one mistake and lose their job or they speak out about something and then the next day something blows up. And so I do think that I often feel like I have to be so careful. And that's hard to do because I'm just naturally curious and I want to know and I want to find and explore and do the things. But I'm aware that … people think I'm too young. I'm too Black. I'm aware of all those things and I'm still going to try.” Show notes: 01:00 "Everywhere and Nowhere: What It’s Really Like to Be Black and Work in Fashion" (The Cut • Aug 2018) 09:00 The Devil Wears Prada (Fox 2000 Pictures • 2006) 29:00 David Haskell on Longform Podcast 31:00 "Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce" (Emily Gould • The Cut • Feb 2024) 31:00 "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger" (Charlotte Cowles • The Cut • Feb 2024) 31:00 "Age Gap Relationships: The Case for Marrying an Older Man" (Grazie Sophia Christie • The Cut • Mar 2024) 50:00 "Is There Room for Fashion Criticism in a Racist Industry?" (The Cut • Aug 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jason Motlagh, a journalist and filmmaker, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the founder of Blackbeard Films. He won the Polk's Sydney Schanberg Prize for “This Will End in Blood and Ashes,” an account of the collapse of order in Haiti. “Once you've gotten used to this kind of metabolism, it can be hard to walk away from it. Ordinary life can be a little flat sometimes. And so that's always kind of built in. I accept that. I think I've just tried to be more honest about like, [am I taking this risk] because I need a bump my life? Or do you really believe in what you're doing? And I feel like I really do need to believe in the purpose of the story. There has to be some motivation greater than myself." This is the last in a series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Howey is a freelance journalist who won the Polk Award for Justice Reporting after exposing a deceptive police tactic widely used in California. He began the project, which was eventually published by the Los Angeles Times and Reveal, as a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. “It’s one thing to hear about this tactic and hear about parents being questioned in this way. It’s another thing entirely to hear the change in a parent’s voice when they realize for the past 20 minutes they’ve been speaking ill of a relative who’s actually been dead the entire time, and to hear that wave of grief and sometimes that feeling of betrayal that cropped up in their voice and how the way that they spoke to the officers afterwards changed.” This is the fourth 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

Meribah Knight is a reporter with Nashville Public Radio. She won the Polk Award for Podcasting for “The Kids of Rutherford County,” produced with ProPublica and Serial, which revealed a shocking approach to juvenile discipline in one Tennessee county. “Where does it leave me? It leaves me with a searing anger that is going to propel me to the next thing. But we’ve made some real improvement. And that’s worth celebrating. That’s worth recognizing and saying, This work matters, people are paying attention.” This is the third 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

Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter at Streetsblog. He won the Polk Award for Local Reporting for "Ghost Tags," his series on the black market for temporary license plates. “You can imagine this having never become a problem, because it’s so weird. What a weird scam. I’m going to print and sell tens of thousands of paper license plates. But someone figured it out. And then a lot more people followed. It just exploded.” This is the second 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

Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers won this year's George Polk Award for Television Reporting for “Inside Wagner,” their Vice News investigation of Russian mercenaries on the Ukraine front and in the Central African Republic.  “One of the best takeaways I got from seven or eight years at Vice is that it’s not enough for something to be important when you’re figuring out how to make a story. It’s the intersection of important and interesting. And that has taught me that people will watch anything, anywhere, as long as it’s interesting. Nobody owes us their time. The onus is on us to explain things in an interesting, compelling way. I’m hoping that a landscape opens up somewhere else that sees that and understands that can be done anywhere in the world.” 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

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His novel, published in March 2024, is Great Expectations. “I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.” Show notes: @vcunningham vinson.nyc Cunningham on Longform Cunningham's New Yorker archive 04:00 "’The Suit’ at BAM" (Brooklyn Paper • Jan 2013) 04:00 "Label Maker: Edward Buchanan" (Nylon Guys • Mar 2015) 09:00 circlejerk.live 11:00 Jeremy O. Harris’ plays 11:00 "How Are Audiences Adapting to the Age of Virtual Theatre?" (New Yorker • Oct 2020) 18:00 "The Season of Russell Westbrook and a New Era in N.B.A. Fandom" (New Yorker • Apr 2017) 25:00 Cunningham's McSweeney’s archive 25:00 "The Flies in Kehinde Wiley’s Milk" (The Awl • Jun 2015) 25:00 "Can Black Art Ever Escape the Politics of Race?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2015) 25:00 "How Chris Jackson is Building a Black Literary Movement" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2016) 27:00 "Stephon Marbury Has His Own Story to Tell" (New Yorker • Apr 2020) 28:00 "The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers" (New Yorker • Jan 2018) 29:00 WTF with Marc Maron 32:00 "Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life into Comedy" (New Yorker • May 2019) 36:00 Redd Foxx party albums 38:00 Alexandra Schwartz’ New Yorker archive 41:00 Simon Parkin on Longform 41:00 Adrian Chen on Longform 42:00 "The Many Lives of Steven Yeun" (Jay Caspian Kang • New York Times Magazine • Feb 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Megan Kimble is the former executive editor of The Texas Observer and has written for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Guardian. Her new book is City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. “I have never lived in a city that was not wrapped in highways. It’s hard for me to imagine anything else. And I think that’s true for a lot of people today. ... [But] we have known since the origins of the interstate highways program that building highways through cities doesn’t fix traffic. And yet we keep doing it. To me, that really fueled a lot of the book. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” Show notes: @megankimble megankimble.com Kimble on Longform Kimble’s Texas Observer archive 11:00 Kimble’s Austin Monthly archive 13:00 “Austin’s Not-So-Fair Housing Market” (Austin Monthly • Sept 2018) 49:00 “The Road Home” (Texas Observer • July 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zach Harris is a journalist whose latest article for Rolling Stone is "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling." “I'm not like a staff writer who has … status and access. But if I come up with something fun that you've never heard of that might connect to the larger culture, then it kind of hits a nerve and a sweet spot for me. Someone like a pro skateboarder or a pro bowler, you guys have never heard of. And so being able to present a person and a culture and a world to a wider audience, I think suits me well and has been really a fun way to do profiles.” Show notes: 00:00 "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling" (Rolling Stone • Jan 2024) 01:00 "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" (Michael J. Mooney • D Magazine • Jan 2000) 02:00 Longform's bowling archive 13:00 Harris’s Vice archive 26:00 Thrasher Magazine 28:00 Harris’s High Times archive 29:00 amandachicagolewis.com 31:00 Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (Malcolm Harris • Little, Brown and Company • 2023) 33:00 firstwefeast.com 36:00 "Pandora’s Bag: Rap Snacks Are Proof that Time Is a Flat Circle" (Vice • Jun 2012) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rozina Ali is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the winner of the 2023 National Magazine Award for Reporting. Her latest article is “Raised in the West Bank, Shot in Vermont.” “I think it’s very, very important to speak to people as people. To speak to sources—even if you have the juiciest story—to really give them the grace. I think everyone deserves it, especially people who are going through such a difficult time.” Show notes: @rozina_ali rozina-ali.com Ali’s New York Times archive 16:00 “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi” (New Yorker • Jan 2017) 17:00 “The ‘Herald Square Bomber’ Who Wasn’t” (New York Times Magazine • April 2021) 25:00 “Marijuana Comes to Coalinga” (The Nation • Nov 2018) 29:00 “‘How Did This Man Think He Had the Right to Adopt This Baby?’” (New York Times Magazine • Nov 2022) 43:00 “The Afghan Women Left Behind” (New Yorker • Aug 2022) 46:00 “What Rashida Tlaib Represents” (New York Times Magazine • March 2022) 61:00 “The ISIS Beat” (The Drift • April 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Derek Thompson is a staff writer for The Atlantic and host of the podcast Plain English. “I am an inveterate dilettante. I lose interest in subjects all the time. Because what I find interesting about my job is the invitation to solve mysteries. And once you solve one, two, three mysteries in a space, then the meta-mystery of that space begins to dim. And all these other subjects—that's the new unlit space that needs the flashlight. And that's the part of the job that I love the most: that there are so many dark corners in the world. And I've just got this flashlight, and I can just shine it wherever the hell I want.” Show notes: @DKThomp Thompson's Atlantic archive 00:00 Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (Penguin • 2018) 00:00 Plain English with Derek Thompson (The Ringer) 05:00 "Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 18:00 "The Americans Who Need Chaos" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 23:00 "America’s Loneliness Epidemic Comes for the Restaurant" (The Atlantic • Mar 2024) 35:00 "Stop Trying to Ask 'Smart Questions'" (The Atlantic • Jan 2023) 39:00 "The Future of Everything With Derek Thompson" (The Bill Simmons Podcast • Feb 2024) 40:00 "What Many Economists (and I) Got Wrong About This Economy" (Plain English • Mar 2024) 43:00 "How Hollywood’s Hit Formula Flopped—and What Could Come Next" (Plain English • Mar 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tessa Hulls is a writer and artist whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and The Capitol Hill Times. Her new book, a graphic memoir, is Feeding Ghosts. “This project is the thing I have spent my entire life running from. I was incredibly determined to never touch this, either personally or professionally. … It was more an eventual act of resignation than a desire.” Show notes: @tessahulls tessahulls.com 17:00 Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi • Pantheon • 2004) 19:00 richardscarry.com 32:00 The Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency 36:00 “Longform Podcast #144: Cheryl Strayed” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sloane Crosley is the author of I Was Told There’d Be Cake and several other books. Her new memoir is Grief Is for People. “You take a little sliver of yourself and you offer it up to be spun around in perpetuity in the public imagination. That is the sacrifice you make. And it makes everything just a little bit worse. So it's the opposite of catharsis, but it's worth it. It's worth it for what you get in return: a book.” Show notes: sloanecrosley.com @askanyone Longform Podcast #343: Sloane Crosley 01:00 Grief Is for People (MCD • 2024) 14:00 Heartburn (Nora Ephron • Vintage • 1996) 25:00 "Patchett: In Bad Relationships, 'There Comes A Day When You Gotta Go.'" (Fresh Air with Terry Gross • WHYY • Jan 2014) 25:00 Joan Didion on Fresh Air with Terry Gross 25:00 "Long COVID, Chronic Illness & Searching For Answers" (Fresh Air with Terry Gross • WHYY • Feb 2022) 32:00 "Obituary: Russell Perreault, V-P at Vintage Anchor, 52" (Rachel Deahl • Publishers Weekly • Jul 2019) 37:00 The Clasp (Picador • 2016) 49:00 How Did You Get This Number (Riverhead Books • 2011) 51:00 "Five O’Clock Somewhere" (Gary Indiana • Granta • Feb 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lauren Markham is the author of The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, and VQR. Her new book is A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. “It took me a while to figure out that this is actually a book about storytelling, about journalistic storytelling, about the kind of myths we spin culturally and politically, about history, about current events, and the role of journalism within all of that, and my role as a journalist.” Show notes: @LaurenMarkham_ laurenmarkham.info Markham on Longform 01:00 The Far Away Brothers (Crown • 2018) 03:00oaklandinternational.org 28:00 How the Word Is Passed (Clint Smith • Little, Brown and Company • 2021) 38:00 “How Greece Secretly Adopted the World’s Most Brazen—and Brutal—Way of Keeping Out Refugees” (Mother Jones • March 2022) 44:00 “For Me, With Love and Squalor” (Longreads • June 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor for Platformer. Her new book is Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter. “Being the person where it's a fireable offense to leak to you … is kind of a badge of honor.” Show notes: zoeschiffer.com Schiffer's Platformer archive Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter (Portfolio • 2024) 03:00 Schiffer's Verge archive 08:00 "How Twitter’s child porn problem ruined its plans for an OnlyFans competitor" (Zoë Schiffer and Casey Newton • Verge • Aug 2022) 16:00 Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon (Michael Lewis • W. W. Norton • 2023) 36:00 Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (Ashlee Vance • Ecco • 2017) 41:00 Ask a Swole Woman (Casey Johnston) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chris Ryan is the editorial director for The Ringer, where he co-hosts The Watch and The Rewatchables. “There is a point where there’s just too much stuff. I can’t read a 5,000-word feature, 10 blog posts, and listen to three podcasts, and then do it all again the next day. So that is the line you walk in digital publishing, whether it’s for editorial stuff or for podcasting. You have to accept the fact that there is not going to be a single person out there who listens to it all, and who can read it all, and who can watch it all. But you can imbue everything you do with a certain quality—both like a personality, characteristic quality, but also like a quality of production—that hopefully anybody who does like this kind of thing will find some value in it.” Show notes: @ChrisRyan77 Ryan’s Ringer archive 3:00Andy Greenwald on Longform Podcast 3:00 Ryan’s Grantland archive 05:00 Ryan’s Spin archive 05:00 Ryan’s Fader archive 05:00 Ryan’s Village Voice archive 06:00 chaunceybillups.blogspot.com 27:00 The Ringer’s Philly Special (The Ringer • 2022) 45:00 Fairway Rollin’ (The Ringer • 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Patricia Evangelista is a trauma journalist whose coverage of the drug war in the Philippines has appeared in Rappler, Esquire, and elsewhere. Her recent book is Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country. “It is hard to describe the beat I do without saying very often it involves people who have died. And it seemed like an unfair way to frame it. It didn't quite seem right. … Sometimes there's no dead body, or sometimes there's 6,000, but the function is the same: that the people you speak to have gone through enormous painful trauma, and then there's a way to cover it that minimizes that trauma. So … I don't cover the dead. I cover trauma.” Show notes: Evangelista's Rappler archive Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country (Random House • 2023) 01:00 The Mastermind: A True Story of Murder, Empire, and a New Kind of Crime Lord (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2020) 11:00 Evangelista's Philippine Daily Inquirer archive 21:00 "The Rapture of Rodrigo Duterte" (Patricia Evangelista and Nicole Curato • Rappler • May 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices