Longform Longform
-
- News
Interviews with writers, journalists, filmmakers, and podcasters about how they do their work. Hosted by Aaron Lammer, Max Linsky, and Evan Ratliff.
-
Episode 584: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message.
“I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here just to make a living? Because there are many other things where you could make more money.”
Show notes:
ta-nehisicoates.com
Coates on Longform
Longform Podcast #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #97: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #225: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson
Longform Podcast #408: Ta-Nehisi Coates
04:00 "Fear of a Black President" (The Atlantic • Sep 2012)
05:00 The Beautiful Struggle (One World • 2009)
12:00 "The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic • Jun 2014)
13:00 Between the World and Me (One World • 2015)
36:00 "The Mask of Doom" (New Yorker • Sep 2009)
40:00 "How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I." (Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nic Grant • New York Times • Apr 2024)
42:00 Shell Game (Evan Ratliff • 2024)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Episode 583: Jay Caspian Kang
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
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Episode 582: Joseph Cox
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)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Episode 581: Tavi Gevinson
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)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Episode 580: Rachel Khong
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)
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices -
Episode 579: Kelsey McKinney
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