Longform Longform

Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye.
“At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or not. And I actually like that a lot better than the magazine writing. I respect the magazine writers—obviously, I was one—but for my disposition now, in my lifestyle, I actually enjoy having to produce this thing every week.”
Have a question for the mailbag? Email the show or leave a voicemail at (929) 333-2908.
Show notes:

@jaycaspiankang

Kang on Longform


Kang on Longform Podcast (Oct 2021)


Kang on Longform Podcast (Aug 2017)


Kang on Longform Podcast (Apr 2013)

Kang’s New Yorker archive

06:00 Coin Talk


08:00 Tyler Austin Harper’s Atlantic archive


10:00 Serial


12:00 The Daily


20:00 “The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High” (The Morning News • Oct 2010)

28:00 James (Percival Everett • Doubleday • 2024)

34:00 “American Son” (ESPN • July 2024)

35:00 Kang’s VICE archive


42:00 “Mike Francesa Still Believes in the Power of Radio” (New York Times • Aug 2018)

43:00 Kang’s Grantland archive


43:00 Kang’s New York Times archive



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Joseph Cox is a cybersecurity journalist and co-founder of 404 Media. His new book is Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever.
“In the not too distant future, I will be a very old man, and maybe I won't be able to spend all day talking to drug traffickers. I will be mentally and physically exhausted. So I will doggedly pursue the story right now while I can.”
Show notes:

@josephfcox

Cox's 404 Media archive

Cox's Vice archive


Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever (PublicAffairs • 2024)

08:00 "FBI’s Encrypted Phone Platform Infiltrated Hundreds of Criminal Syndicates; Result is Massive Worldwide Takedown" (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of California • Jun 2021)

10:00 Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (Bradley Hope and Tom Wright • Hachette • 2018)

19:00 "Revealed: The Country that Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI" (404 Media • Sep 2023)

38:00 "Follow The Bitcoins: How We Got Busted Buying Drugs on Silk Road’s Black Market" (Andy Greenberg • Forbes • Sep 2013)

41:00 "Hundreds of Bounty Hunters Had Access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Customer Location Data for Years" (Motherboard • Feb 2019)


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Tavi Gevinson is a writer, actor, and the founder of Rookie. Her new zine is Fan Fiction.
“Stories are unstable, and memory is unstable, and identity is unstable. All of these things that I've tried to make permanent in writing, they're actually unstable. So even though it's tempting to go, Oh, that was fake, it's more like, No, it was just temporary.”
Show notes:

@tavitulle

tavigevinson.world

Gevinson on Longform

Gevinson on Longform Podcast

Gevinson’s Rookie archive

10:00 Operation Shylock (Philip Roth • Simon & Schuster • 1993)

10:00 Erasure (Percival Everett • Graywolf Press • 2011)

14:00 “Taylor Swift Has No Regrets” (Elle • June 2015)

20:00 I Love Dick (Chris Kraus • Semiotext(e) • 1997)

24:00 “Who Would Tavi Gevinson Be Without Instagram?” (New York • Sept 2019)

40:00 “Editor’s Letter” (Rookie • Nov 2018)

50:00 “The Special Panic of Singing Sondheim” (New Yorker • Dec 2021)


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Rachel Khong is a journalist and author whose latest novel is Real Americans.
“It's about the ways in which we miss each other as human beings and can't fully communicate what it is like to be ourselves. … And I think that's what makes it so interesting to me, to work on a novel and to spend so much time trying to get down on the page what it feels like to be a human being who's alive. … I think the effort itself is what human relationships are.”
Show notes:

rachelkhong.com

01:00 Real Americans (Knopf • 2024)

01:00 Goodbye, Vitamin (Picador • 2017)

01:00 Lucky Peach archive


01:00 "Would Limitlessness Make Us Better Writers?" (The Atlantic • Apr 2024)

01:00 "Dust to Dust" (Eater • May 2024)

05:00 "New Pornographers + Stars, 6/25 Prospect Park Summer Stage" (Village Voice • Jun 2005)

09:00 Same Bed Different Dreams (Ed Park • Random House • 2023)

12:00 "Inside My Days as a Content Bot" (Esquire • Apr 2024)

24:00 "The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert" (Rumpus • Oct 2012)

24:00 Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert • Riverhead • 2007)

24:00 Elizabeth Gilbert's GQ archive


54:00 "The Great Pacific Oyster Trail" (Eater • Jun 2017)


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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)


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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)


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