Longform

Episode 506: Sam Anderson

Listen Later

Sam Anderson is a writer for New York Times Magazine and the author of Boom Town.

“I love being in that place where everything is just coming in, and everything is potentially important, and I’m underlining every great sentence that John McPhee has ever written and then I’m typing it up into this embarrassingly long set of reading notes, documents, organized by books. And then when you sit down with it as a writer who has a job, and his job is to fill a little window of a magazine or website, all of that ecstatic inhaling has to stop. You realize that you’ve collected approximately 900,000% of what you need or could ever use.”

Show notes:

  • @shamblanderson
  • shamblanderson.com
  • Anderson on Longform
  • Anderson’s New York TImes Magazine archive
  • 03:00 "Kevin Durant and (Possibly) the Greatest Basketball Team of All Time" (New York Times Magazine • June 2021)
  • 05:00 "The Mind of John McPhee" (New York Times Magazine • Sept. 2017)
  • 05:00 Draft No. 4 (John McPhee • Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2017)
  • 07:00 "The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami" (New York Times Magazine • Oct, 2011)
  • 10:00 Boom Town (Crown • 2019)
  • 19:00 "The Inscrutable Brilliance of Anne Carson" (New York Times Magazine • March 2013)
  • 20:00 "David’s Ankles: How Imperfections Could Bring Down the World’s Most Perfect Statue" (New York Times Magazine • Aug. 2016)
  • 35:00 "The Weirdly Enduring Appeal of Weird Al Yankovic" (New York Times Magazine • April 2022)
  • 35:00 "The Mad Liberationist" (New York • May 2010)
  • 35:00 "Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans" (New York Times Magazine • Nov. 2021)
  • 35:00 "The Uses of ‘Mythologies’" (Richard Brody • New Yorker • April 2012)

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

    ...more
    View all episodesView all episodes
    Download on the App Store
    LongformBy Longform
    • 4.6
    • 4.6
    • 4.6
    • 4.6
    • 4.6

    4.6

    1,742 ratings

    More shows like Longform

    View all
    On the Media by WNYC Studios

    On the Media

    9,121 Listeners

    The Book Review by The New York Times

    The Book Review

    3,893 Listeners

    Fresh Air by NPR

    Fresh Air

    38,196 Listeners

    The New Yorker: Fiction by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

    The New Yorker: Fiction

    3,317 Listeners

    The Political Scene | The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

    The Political Scene | The New Yorker

    3,908 Listeners

    Otherppl with Brad Listi by Brad Listi

    Otherppl with Brad Listi

    503 Listeners

    Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry by David Naimon, Tin House Books

    Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry

    443 Listeners

    The New Yorker Radio Hour by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

    The New Yorker Radio Hour

    6,639 Listeners

    The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

    The Gray Area with Sean Illing

    10,637 Listeners

    The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

    The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

    2,079 Listeners

    Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso by Lemonada Media

    Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

    1,220 Listeners

    The Paris Review by The Paris Review

    The Paris Review

    784 Listeners

    City Arts & Lectures by City Arts & Lectures

    City Arts & Lectures

    373 Listeners

    The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

    The Ezra Klein Show

    15,321 Listeners

    Critics at Large | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

    Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    575 Listeners