Longform

Latest Episodes:

Episode 563: Miles Johnson Jan 10, 2024

Show notes

Miles Johnson is an investigative reporter for the Financial Times. He is the author of Chasing Shadows: A True Story of Drugs, War and the Secret World of International Crime and the host of Hot Money: The New Narcos.

“I’m really fascinated always by the ways in which people just have to do really boring parts of running a crime organization … I love the banalities of this stuff. We have a fictionalized version of crime groups and it’s obviously glamorous, and they’re really smart, but there’s a lot of stuff that’s bumbling incompetence as well or just quite unglamorous.”

Show notes:

@MilesMJohnson
Johnson’s Financial Times archive
06:00 Johnson’s Guardian archive
07:00 Paul Murphy’s Financial Times archive
9:00 “How the Mafia Infiltrated Italy’s Hospitals and Laundered the Profits Globally” (Financial Times • July 2020)
14:00 “The Mystery of the Mogul, the Casino and the Heist that Rocked Mayfair” (Financial Times • May 2022)

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

Rerun: #533 Hua Hsu (May 2023) Jan 03, 2024

Show notes

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

Rerun: #528 Roxanna Asgarian (Mar 2023) Dec 27, 2023

Show notes

Roxanna Asgarian is the author of We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America.

“Every once in a while, I'll have someone just freak out at me. And it keeps you honest, in a way, because they don't owe you anything. People don't owe you anything as a journalist. ... But everyone reacts to trauma differently and some people really do want to talk about it. And I think the families in this book really wanted to talk about it and it felt like no one was even paying attention to them.”

Show notes:

@strawburriez
Asgarian's Texas Tribune archive
We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2023)
12:00 "Child in viral Portland police hug photo missing, 5 family members dead after California cliff crash" (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Mar 2018)
12:00 "Devonte Hart family crash: Sarah Hart sent alarming 3 a.m. text to friend ... then silence" (Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Apr 2018)
13:00 "Devonte Hart family crash: 'It's just devastating,' says aunt who fought for custody" (Roxanna Asgarian and Shane Dixon Kavanaugh • The Oregonian • Apr 2018)
34:00 "Devonte Hart's biological mom: They gave my kids 'to monsters'" (The Oregonian • Apr 2018)
45:00 "Before Children’s Grisly Deaths, A Family Fought for Them and Lost" (The Appeal • Jul 2018)
45:00 "A Mother Grapples with an Adoption that Led to Deaths" (The Appeal • Feb 2019)
45:00 "His siblings were killed by their adoptive mother. He was left in foster care to suffer a more common fate." (Washington Post • Dec 2019)
46:00 Broken Harts (Glamour and HowStuffWorks • 2018)

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

Episode 562: Daisy Alioto Dec 20, 2023

Show notes

Daisy Alioto is a journalist and the CEO of Dirt Media.

“I don't think I was ever super precious about my writing, but if I was, I'm zero percent precious about it now. Every time I write for Dirt, it saves the company money. ... Nothing will make you sit down and write 800 words in 20 minutes than just needing to get it done. And that is a change that I've seen in myself. I would encourage everyone to be less precious about their writing.”

Show notes:

daisyalioto.com
00:00 Dirt
09:00 "Marie Colvin’s Private War" (Marie Brenner • Vanity Fair • Jul 2012)
09:00 A Private War (Acacia Filmed Entertainment, Savvy Media Holdings, Thunder Road Pictures • 2018)
05:00 Airmail
11:00 "Pretend it’s a living" (Dirt • Jan 2021)
15:00 Prune
16:00 Hung Up (Hunter Harris)
16:00 Maybe Baby (Hayley Nahman)
16:00 Today in Tabs (Rusty Foster)
16:00 Blackbird Spyplane (Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie)
16:00 Singal-Minded (Jesse Singal)
17:00 "The Complete History & Strategy of LVMH" (Acquired • Feb 2023)
24:00 "Grizzly man" (Amelia K. • Dirt • Jun 2023)
24:00 "The Question of U" (Amelia K. • Dirt • Nov 2023)
25:00 "Diary of a chess tournament" (Akram Herrak • Dirt • Nov 2023)
25:00 "The sound of your voice" (Joann Plockova • Dirt • Nov 2023)
25:00 "For the love of chickens" (Tove Danovich • Dirt • Sep 2023)
26:00 "Bad waitress" (Becca Schuh • Dirt • Jun 2023)
28:00 "Užupis Utopia" (Playboy • Dec 2019)
35:00 Someone Who Isn’t Me (Geoff Rickly • Rose Books • 2023)
37:00 Fragantica
37:00 "Bottle Elizabeth Taylor" (Daisy Alioto • Dirt • Jun 2023)
39:00 The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption (Katy Kelleher • Simon & Schuster • 2023)
41:00 Scent + Song (Vivian Medithi)
44:00 Axios
44:00 The Information
44:00 Punchbowl News
44:00 The Ankler
44:00 Semafor

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

Episode 561: Ian Coss Dec 13, 2023

Show notes

Ian Coss is a journalist, audio producer, and composer. He is the host of Forever is a Long Time and The Big Dig.

“One thing that I really carried with me in making the show is a belief that bureaucracy is interesting. And that once you get through the jargon and wonky sounding stuff … beyond that it’s all just human drama.”

Show notes:

@ian_coss
iancoss.com
32:00 Isabel Hibbard’s website
33:00 Forever is a Long Time (PRX • 2021)
37:00 Lacy Roberts’ website

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

Episode 560: Mosi Secret Dec 06, 2023

Show notes

Mosi Secret has written for ProPublica, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. His new podcast is Radical.

“I think this story made me call on parts of myself that are not journalistic because I don’t really think that’s the way we’re going to get out of this at this point in my life. I think that it takes a more radical reimagining of who we are as human beings, the ways in which we’re connected, and what we owe to each other. And that’s not a reporting thing—that’s a ‘who are you’ kind of thing.”

Show notes:

mosisecret.com
Secret on Longform
Secret’s New York Times archive
10:00 “Stolen Youth: How Durham's Criminal Justice System Sent Erick Daniels to Prison Based on the Shape of His Eyebrows” (INDYWeek • May 2007)
18:00 “On the Brink in Brownsville” (New York Times Magazine • May 2014)
21:00 “‘The Way to Survive It Was to Make A’s’” (New York Times Magazine • September 2017)
23:00 Johnny Kauffman’s website
28:00 “Having a Drink With Mosi Secret, the New York Times’ First-Ever Sin and Vice Reporter” (Joe Coscarelli • New York Magazine • June 2014)
29:00 “Behind the Red Door” (New York Times • May 2014)
38:00 “The Real 'CSI': How America’s Patchwork System of Death Investigations Puts the Living at Risk” (A.C. Thompson • ProPublica • Feb 2011)

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

Rerun: #460 Mary Roach (Oct 2021) Nov 29, 2023

Show notes

Mary Roach is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law.

"In these realms of the taboo, there's a tremendous amount of material that is really interesting, but that people have stayed away from. ... I'm kind of a bottom feeder. It's down there on the bottom where people don't want to go. But if that's what it takes to find interesting, new material, I'm fine with it. I don't care. I'm not easily grossed out. I don't feel that there's any reason why we shouldn't look at this. And over time, I started to feel that ... the taboo was preventing people from having conversations that it would be healthy to have."

Show notes:

@mary_roach
maryroach.net
Roach on Longform
00:00 Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law (W.W. Norton • 2021)
01:00 Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (W.W. Norton • 2003)
01:00 Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (W.W. Norton • 2008)
01:00 Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void (W.W. Norton • 2010)
01:00 Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal (W.W. Norton • 2014)
02:00 "Cute Inc." (Wired • Dec 1999)
12:00 Roach's Salon archive
46:00 "Hot Seat" (Discover • Mar 1998)

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

Episode 559: Craig Mod Nov 22, 2023

Show notes

Craig Mod is a writer and photographer who has two newsletters, Roden and Ridgeline. His new book is Things Become Other Things.

“There'll be days where … I’m doing a walk and I'll just be like, I don't know what is going to move me today. And then out of the blue, there'll be this small interaction that when you really pay attention to it, it contains kind of this universe of kindness and patience that you otherwise pass by or ignore. If you're in the general mode of looking at things and then being able to take that experience and try to transmute it into an essay for the evening and send it out, it just develops your eye. You just start being able to look more and more and more closely.”

Show notes:

craigmod.com
Things Become Other Things (Fine art edition • 2023 // Hardcover edition • Random House • 2025)
Roden (Newsletter)
Ridgeline (Newsletter)
1:00 Mod on Longform Podcast
6:30 Koya Bound: Eight Days on the Kumano Kodō (with Dan Rubin • PRE/POST • 2016)
16:00 Kiiiiiiiiiiiiii
16:00 Special Projects (Newsletter)
20:00 Kissa by Kissa (2020)
31:00 Pachinko Road (Pop Up Newsletter)
32:00 "I Walked 600 Miles Across Japan for Pizza Toast" (Eater • Dec 2019)
32:00 "The Glorious, Almost-Disconnected Boredom of My Walk in Japan" (Wired • May 2019)
45:00 Longform Podcast #533: Hua Hsu (May 2023)

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

Episode 558: Mona Chalabi Nov 15, 2023

Show notes

Mona Chalabi is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Guardian, where she is the data editor. Her New York Times Magazine piece “9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos’ Wealth” won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting.

“I kind of think of protest as just saying what you believe. And sometimes, it’s considered protest because it’s outside of the institutions of power. So you’re saying, Hey, Palestinians deserve human rights, and that’s considered a form of protest, right? I want the work to change things and I think I’m quite unapologetic about that, and most journalists are like No no no no no, we’re just reporting the world, we’re just reporting things as we see it. There’s no desire for change. I think that is so messed up. This idea that your work has no impact in the world is incorrect. You can’t wash yourself of the consequences of the work, you have to be considering the consequences while you’re doing it.”

Show notes:

monachalabi.com
Chalabi on Instagram
Chalabi's Guardian archive
1:00 "9 Ways to Imagine Jeff Bezos' Wealth" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2022)
1:00 "How Does the Reality TV Show Cops Stack Up with Real-Life Crime Figures?" (The Guardian • May 2019)
6:00 "Striving For Justice: Lowkey in Conversation with Mona Chalabi" (GQ • Jun 2023)
8:30 "NY Times Writers Jazmine Hughes & Jamie Keiles Resign After Signing Letter Against Israeli War on Gaza" (Democracy Now! • Nov 2023)
8:30 Samira Nasr on Instagram
8:30 "Inside MSNBC’s Middle East Conflict" (Max Tani • Semafor • Oct 2023)
16:00 "Mentions of Israeli and Palestinian Deaths in The New York Times" (Instagram • Oct 2023)
18:00 "Circumcision Rates" (Instagram • Oct 2025)
21:00 New America Fellow
21:00 Emerson Collective
21:00 "The Gray-Green Divide" (Brooklyn Museum • Jun-Dec 2022)
21:00 "Am I Normal? with Mona Chalabi" (TED Audio Collective)
54:00 Muntadhar al-Zaidi
54:00 Longform Podcast #276: Azmat Khan
54:00 Yousur Al-Hlou's New York Times archive
54:00 Jazmine Hughes' New York Times archive
54:00 “Regarding the Pain of Others” (Marty Peretz • The New Republic • 1996)
54:00 Longform Podcast #553: Clare Malone

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

Episode 557: Adam Grant Nov 08, 2023

Show notes

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist, author, and host of the podcasts Work Life and Re: Thinking. His new book is Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things.

“If you only focus on your own interest, you tend to develop novel ideas, but not necessarily useful ideas. And so for me, the audience is a filter. … I might have 30 ideas for a book. Let me hone in on the four or five that also might be relevant to other people. The goal there is to make a contribution.”

Show notes:

adamgrant.net
Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success (Penguin • 2014)
Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World (Penguin • 2017)
Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things (Viking • 2023)
Work Life with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective)
Re: Thinking with Adam Grant (TED Audio Collective)
Grant's New York Times archive
17:00 "The Necessity of Others is The Mother of Invention: Intrinsic and Prosocial Motivations, Perspective Taking, and Creativity" (Adam Grant and James Berry • Academy of Management • Nov 2017)
22:00 "It's Not the Ideas You Create, It's Which Ones You Choose" (Leigh Buchanan • Inc. • Feb 2016)
40:00 Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (Viking • 2021)

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

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected