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Episode 523: Willa Paskin Feb 22, 2023

Show notes

Willa Paskin, a former TV critic, is the host of the podcast Decoder Ring.

“I want it to feel like a trap door. When you push on a trap door, there’s like a little spring. If it’s the right idea, you start to look into it, and you’re like, Oh, it’s giving a little.”

Show notes:

@willapaskin
00:00 Paskin's Slate archive
00:00 Paskin's Salon archive
00:00 Paskin's Vulture archive
00:00 Decoder Ring (Slate)
00:00 "The Invention of Hydration" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Apr 2021)
00:00 "Cellino & Barnes, Injury Attorneys, 800-888-8888 " (Decoder Ring • Slate • Dec 2022)
01:00 "The Sideways Effect" (Decoder Ring • Slate • May 2022)
03:00 "Why I Became a TV Critic" (Slate • Jan 2016)
38:00 "The Laff Box" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Apr 2018)
38:00 "The Blue Steak Experiment" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Dec 2020)
40:00 "Chuck E. Cheese Pizza War" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Jun 2019)
40:00 "The Cabbage Patch Kids Riots" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Nov 2020)
42:00 "Selling Out" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Aug 2021)
42:00 "The Sign Painter" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Jun 2021)
53:00 "The Butt and the Bustle" (Decoder Ring • Slate • Nov 2022)

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Episode 522: Abraham Josephine Riesman Feb 15, 2023

Show notes

Abraham Josephine Riesman is a journalist who writes often for New York and is the author of True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee. Her second book, Ringmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America, will be published in March.

“You’re sure that there’s a level of unreality, but you’re not sure that it’s all fake. There’s stuff there that seems either plausible or sometimes you go ‘there’s no way you could fake that.’ And sometimes you’re right, and a lot of times you’re somewhere in the middle. It’s not as easily distinguished as saying this is fact and this is fiction, this was scripted and this was improvised, whatever. You can’t make those distinctions easily, and one of the things I sort of hope comes out of the book—if it has any impact at all—is to try to get us past this false binary of true and false.”

Show notes:

@abrahamjoseph
abrahamriesman.com
Riesman on Longform
Riesman’s New York Magazine archive
16:00 "She Was WWE’s First Female Referee. She Says Vince McMahon Raped Her." (New York Magazine • June 2022)
27:00 "There Is No Dignity in This Kind of America" (Jamelle Bouie • New York Times • Feb 2023)
28:00 "My Grandfather the Zionist" (New York Magazine • June 2021)
37:00 "How Los Bros Hernandez Stayed Punk for 40 Years with their Epic Comic-Book Saga, Love and Rockets" (GQ • Nov 2022)

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Episode 521: Jonah Weiner Feb 08, 2023

Show notes

Jonah Weiner is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and co-author of the newsletter Blackbird Spyplane.

“It's a version of myself. It's a hyperbolic version of myself. And I think it keeps it fun for me. It doesn't feel like a job. Ideally, it keeps it fun for readers. And I think that there actually is this function where X out of 10 people coming to it, their eyes are going to cross and they're going say, I'm out. No thanks. And that's fine, because the Y out of 10 who stick around feel that much more in on something and it just makes it feel like a funky, special place.”

Show notes:

@jonahweiner
jonahweiner.com
Weiner on Longform
00:00 Weiner on Longform Podcast
01:00 "Prying Eyes" (New Yorker • Oct 2012)
01:00 Blackbird Spyplane (Jonah Weiner and Erin Wylie • Substack)
06:00 "Don’t Take This Hunk at Face Value" (New York Times • Mar 2011)
11:00 "Michael Mann’s Damaged Men" (New York Times Magazine • Jul 2022)
23:00 "Wonders of Tokyo" (Blackbird Spyplane • Nov 2022)
23:00 "It’s-a me, Tokyo!" (Blackbird Spyplane • Nov 2022)
25:00 "Blackpilled Swag" (Blackbird Spyplane • Jan 2023)
31:00 The Warning with Steve Schmidt (Steve Schmidt • Substack)
33:00 Weiner's Rolling Stone archive
34:00 Racket (Matt Taibbi • Substack)
34:00 Glenn Greenwald (Glenn Greenwald • Substack)
36:00 "Bob Odenkirk’s Long Road to Serious Success" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2022)
36:00 "Seth Rogan and the Secret to Happiness" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2021)
37:00 The “Blackbird Spyplane” Interview Archive

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Episode 520: Delia Cai Feb 01, 2023

Show notes

Delia Cai is the senior vanities correspondent for Vanity Fair and publishes the media newsletter Deez Links. Her debut novel Central Places is out this week.

“This was in like, 2011, where I think actual journalists were still trying to figure out ‘Is it gross to be a brand?’ And at least in school, they were all about it. They’re like, ‘You need a brand, you need to think about what your niche is going to be, you need to think about engaging your audience.’ We had to make websites, we had to blog, and of course, all of us being college students, we started using our blogs to write about each other. We used Twitter to talk shit about each other in a very thinly veiled way. So really, it was the best training for being online.”

Show notes:

@delia_cai
deliacai.com
Cai’s Vanity Fair archive
Deez Links archive
15:00 Cai’s blog
27:00 "Three Generations of Blue's Clues Hosts Are Still Cool With Being Your Best Friend" (Vanity Fair • Dec 2022)
37:00 "She Invented Adulting. Her Life Fell Apart. She Wants You to Know That’s Okay." (Vanity Fair • May 2022)

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Episode 519: Peggy Orenstein Jan 25, 2023

Show notes

Peggy Orenstein is a journalist and author. Her latest book is Unraveling.

“The challenge is… to not want to say, I need to know what the book is about. I need to have my chapters. I need to know what exactly I'm looking for. Because it's really scary to just go out and report and have trust that there's going to be interesting things and that if you just keep going, you're going to find them. So to not foreclose possibility and options and ideas is the biggest reporting challenge for those sorts of books for me.”

Show notes:

@peggyorenstein
peggyorenstein.com
01:00Girls & Sex (Harper • 2016)
01:00 Boys & Sex (Harper • 2020)
01:00 Cinderella Ate My Daughter (Harper • 2012)
01:00 Waiting for Daisy (Bloomsbury • 2007)
01:00 Unraveling (Harper • 2023)
14:00 Salt: A World History (Mark Kurlansky • Penguin Books • 2003)
18:00 "Mourning My Miscarriage" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2002)
21:00 Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap (Anchor • 1995)
25:00 "Champion of the Deep" (New York Times Magazine • Jun 1991)
37:00 Bird by Bird (Anne Lamott • Anchor • 1995)
47:00 Aftersun (A24 • 2022)

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Episode 518: Jonathan Goldstein Jan 18, 2023

Show notes

Jonathan Goldstein is an audio producer and the host of Heavyweight.

“I wasn’t taking myself very seriously, initially. I liked working with my friends and family because I think I was a little more comfortable with them. Then in the second season people were writing in with real problems, and they were looking at me as a kind of expert. It was terrifying to meet with these people and see the look of hopefulness in their eyes. ... I realized I need to step it up and even if I didn’t feel like an expert—an expert in an invented field that doesn’t really exist—that I’d really have to take that on with seriousness.”

Show notes:

@J_Goldstein
Goldstein’s Heavyweight archive
02:00 "Plan B" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Feb 2002)
10:00 Goldstein’s This American Life archive
14:00 Lenny Bruce is Dead (Counterpoint Press • 2006)
16:00 "I Know What You Did This Summer" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Aug 2001)
17:00 "Other People’s Problems" (Jonathan Goldstein • CBC • Sept 2020)
19:00Goldstein’s Wiretap archive, selected and republished by the CBC
23:00 "What I Should’ve Said" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Jan 2004)
23:00 "Recordings for Someone" (Ira Glass • This American Life • Jan 2002)
26:00 "Buzz" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Sept 2016)
31:00 "The Elliotts" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Dec 2022)
33:00 "Justine" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Oct 2021)
33:00 "Stephen" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Oct 2021)
37:00 "Dr. Muller" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Nov 2019)
43:00 "Another Roadside Attraction" (Jonathan Goldstein • Gimlet • Nov 2022)

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Episode 517: Katy Vine Jan 11, 2023

Show notes

Katy Vine is an executive editor for Texas Monthly.

“This is a huge state. There’s so much, and it’s different everywhere you look. You just go to Houston and there’s worlds within worlds within worlds just within the one city. You go to San Antonio and you’re in a different country, and you go to Dallas, you’re in a totally different country. … It’s wild to me. It’s endlessly fascinating.”

Show notes:

@Katy_Vine
Vine on Longform
Vine’s Texas Monthly archive
07:00 "Family Circus" (Texas Monthly • Aug 2002)
16:00 "Just Desserts" (Texas Monthly • Jan 2016)
20:00 "The Wildest Insurance Fraud Scheme Texas Has Ever Seen" (Texas Monthly • Sep 2020)
23:00 "Plenty of Ammo" (Texas Monthly • Aug 2001)

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Rerun: #473 Khabat Abbas (Jan 2022) Jan 04, 2023

Show notes

Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer from northeastern Syria, and the winner of the 2021 Kurt Schork News Fixer Award.

”I can see from my experience that there is a gap between the editors, who are kind of elites in their luxury offices, and the amazing journalists who are in the field, who all sympathize with what they are seeing on the ground and want to cover [it], but they have to satisfy the editors. And this is how we end up having little gaps in the ways of covering in general. It's not a matter of like, they shaped it in this way. The problem, I think, it’s bigger. How this industry is working, how this industry is deciding what they should cover.”

Show notes:

@khabat_abas
Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism
34:00 "'Belief Allows Us to Move Forward,' Said One Female Soldier in Battle Against ISIS" (ABC News • July 2017)
40:00 "The Former 'Caliphate Capital' Is Haunted by Fears of an ISIS Comeback" (Washington Post • May 2020)
43:00 "How ISIS Women and Their Children Are Being Left Stranded in the Desert" (Washington Post • Dec 2019)
43:00 "ISIS at a Crossroads" (Washington Post • Dec 2019)
43:00 "After the ISIS Caliphate: Thousands of Islamic State Fighters Captured in Syria Face Uncertain Fate" (Washington Post • Dec 2019)
51:00 "'This Is Ethnic Cleansing': A Dispatch from Kurdish Syria" (New York Review of Books • Oct 2019)
51:00 "For Kurds on the Syrian Front Line There’s No Ceasefire" (The Daily Beast • Nov 2019)

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Rerun: #483 Chloé Cooper Jones (Apr 2022) Dec 28, 2022

Show notes

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 516: David Wolman Dec 21, 2022

Show notes

David Wolman is the author of six books and a magazine features writer who has written for Wired, Outside, and The New York Times. His latest article is ”Vanished in the Pacific.”

“I feel like conversations about characters, character development, strong characters gets a little nauseating in my field sometimes because it’s like, of course — you need that like you need periods at the ends of sentences. Do we really have to keep saying it? But in this conversation it’s worth saying, because there are great ideas out there where the sources or the characters just really weren't there and then you’re tucking your tail in between your legs to look for the next one.”

Show notes:

@davidwolman
david-wolman.com
03:00 Aloha Rodeo (Wolman and Julian Smith • Harpers Collins • 2020)
09:00 "The Ultimate Counterfeiter Isn't a Crook—He's an Artist" (Wired • May 2012)
13:00 "The Cold War" (Wolman and Julian Smith • Epic Magazine • Sept 2015)
21:00 Atellan Media
31:00 The End of Money (Da Capo • 2013)

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