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Latest Episodes:

Episode 577: PJ Vogt May 01, 2024

Show notes

“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)

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Episode 576: Lindsay Peoples Apr 24, 2024

Show notes

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)

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Polk Award Winners: Jason Motlagh Apr 19, 2024

Show notes

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.

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Polk Award Winners: Brian Howey Apr 18, 2024

Show notes

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.

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Polk Award Winners: Meribah Knight Apr 17, 2024

Show notes

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.

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Polk Award Winners: Jesse Coburn Apr 16, 2024

Show notes

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.

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Polk Award Winners: Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers Apr 15, 2024

Show notes

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.

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Rerun: #429 Vinson Cunningham (Feb 2021) Apr 10, 2024

Show notes

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)

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Episode 575: Megan Kimble Apr 03, 2024

Show notes

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)

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Episode 574: Zach Harris Mar 27, 2024

Show notes

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)

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