Longform

Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.

“I’ve noticed that the times I’m extra susceptible to being on social media is when I am feeling personally insecure or when I’m dealing with existential dread. That within itself is not part of the attention economy—that’s just a human being having feelings and reacting to things. For me, it’s a question of like, ‘What do I do with that?’ I can either feed it back into the attention economy and actually get more of it back—more anxiety or more existential dread—or I can go in this other direction and spend time alone or with people who care about the same things. Those are places where I can bring my feelings and they won’t destroy me.”

Thanks to Mailchimp, Substack, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@the_jennitaur

jennyodell.com

Jenny Odell on Longform

[00:49] How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Melville House • 2019)

[00:51] ”How To Do Nothing” transcript of keynote talk (Medium • 2017)

[01:10] “A Business With No End” (New York Times • 2018)

[02:30] Evan Ratliff on Cointalk

[02:42] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)

[03:18] “There’s No Such Thing As A Free Watch” (Museum of Capitalism • 2017)

[05:05] The Bureau of Suspended Objects

[16:55] Gordon Hempton’s “Desert Thunder”

[29:27] Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (Adam Greenfield • Verso • 2017)

[37:32] Braiding Sweetgrass (Robin Wall Kimmerer • Milkweed Editions • 2015)

[39:25] “Notes of a Bioregional Interloper” (SFMOMA • 2017)

[53:30] Mark Lombardi’s drawings

[56:40] “On How to Grow an Idea” (Creative Independent • 2018)

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Josh Levin is the national editor at Slate. He is the host of the podcast Hang Up and Listen and the author of The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth.

“I think it’s a strength to make a thing, one that people might have thought was familiar, feel strange. And reminding people —in general, in life—that you don’t really know as much as you think you know. I think that carries over into any kind of storytelling.”

Thanks to Mailchimp, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@josh_levin

Levin on Longform

[01:48] The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth (Little, Brown and Company • 2019)

[01:52] “The Welfare Queen” (Slate • 2013)

[02:47] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)

[03:25] Levin’s Archive at Slate

[04:55] Other Magazines Column

[05:03] Today’s Papers

[07:25] “Little League Bullies” (Slate • 2007)

[10:38] Dahlia Lithwick at Slate

[12:22] Paul Ford on the Longform Podcast

[13:00] Hang Up And Listen

[13:17] Slow Burn

[14:01] The Queen podcast

[14:33] Jet Article on Linda Taylor (Jet • 1974) [pdf]

[42:08] ”Dispatches From the R.Kelly Trial” (Slate • 2008)

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Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a staff writer at the New York Times and the author of Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel.

“As a profile writer, the skill I have is getting in the room and staying in the room until someone is like, ‘Why is this bitch still in the room? Get her out of there?’ It’s a journalistic skill that is not a fluffy skill. There are people who are always actively trying to prevent your story, prevent you from seeing it, from seeing the things that would be good to see. There’s a lot of convincing, comforting and listening going on. And there’s a lot of dealing with the fact that somebody in the middle of talking to you can suddenly decide that you are the worst. Those things are very tense and it’s a specific skill that I have that can defray all those things. Or it lets me stay.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Netflix, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@taffyakner

taffyakner.com

Brodesser-Akner on Longform

[01:11] Fleishman Is in Trouble: A Novel (Random House • 2019)

[02:31] They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate

(James Verini • W. W. Norton & Company • 2019)

[03:50] Taffy Brodessor-Akner on the Longform Podcast

[05:07] “How Goop’s Haters Made Gwyneth Paltrow’s Company Worth $250 Million”(New York Times • 2018)

[06:21] Brodesser-Akner's New York Times Archive

[06:23] Brodesser-Akner's GQ Archive

[07:10] “Taffy Brodesser-Akner Really, Really, Really Wanted to Write This Profile” (Jen Ortiz • Cosmopolitan • 2019)

[07:25] “Is Everyone Having Anal Without Me?” (Cosmopolitan • 2015)

[12:25] “Bradley Cooper Is Not Really Into This Profile” (New York Times • 2018)

[14:55] “Who Controls Childbirth?” (Self • 2010)

[15:18] "The Company That Sells Love to America Had a Dark Secret” (New York Times • 2019)

[28:50] "Antonio Banderas Doesn’t Think You’ll Remember Him. Not Yet.” (New York Times • 2018)

[42:30] "Jonathan Franzen Is Fine With All of It” (New York Times • 2018)

[47:39] "Losing It in the Anti-Dieting Age” (New York Times • 2017)

[48:00] "Are You Woman Enough For The UFC” (Medium • 2014)

[49:20] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)

[54:10] "Billy Bob Thornton on Bad Santa 2, Ungrateful Fans, and Why He Won't Direct Anymore” (GQ • 2016)

[58:17] Gone Girl (Gilliam Flynn • Broadway Books • 2014)

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Renata Adler is a journalist, critic, and novelist. Her nonfiction collection is After the Tall Timber.

“Unless you're going to be fairly definite, what's the point of writing?”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

Adler on Longform

Adler's New Yorker archive

[7:00] I, Libertine (Theodore Sturgeon • Ballantine Books • 1956)

[8:00] After Tall Timber: Collected Nonfiction (Ballantine Books • 2015)

[9:00] "Letter from Selma" (New Yorker • Apr 1965)

[9:00] "Fly Trans-love Airways" (New Yorker • Feb 1967)

[15:00] "Letter from Israel" (New Yorker • Jun 1967) [sub req'd]

[17:00] "Letter from Biafra" (New Yorker • Oct 1969) [sub req'd]

[34:00] Adler's New York Times film reviews archive

[47:00] "An American Original: Excerpts from Pat Moynihan's letters" (Steven Weisman • Vanity Fair • Oct 2010)

[50:00] "The Perils of Pauline" (The New York Review of Books • Aug 1980)

[1:08:00] "Two Trials" (New Yorker • June 1986) [sub req'd]

[1:09:00] Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS, et al; Sharon v. Time (Knopf • 1986)

[1:03:00] Gone: The Last Days of the New Yorker (Simon & Schuster • 1999)

[1:10:00] "Decoding the Starr Report" (Vanity Fair • Dec 1998)

[1:19:00] Canaries in a Mineshaft: Essay on Politics and Media (St. Martin's Press • 2001)

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Alex Mar has written for The Believer, Wired, and New York. She is the author of

Witches of America and the director of the documentary American Mystic.

“I really do believe that all of us run on some kind of desire for meaning. And if someone is an atheist and they don’t subscribe to an organized system, it doesn’t mean that they don’t crave something. Maybe it’s their job. Or maybe it’s the way that they raise their children with a certain kind of intense focus. Or something else. As humans, we are built to crave meaning, right? For me, that was something that I wanted to explore about myself.”

Thanks to MailChimp, On the Media, The TED Interview,and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@alex_mar

Mar on Longform

[02:20] Witches of America (Sarah Crichton Books • 2016)

[02:37] "Are We Ready for Intimacy With Androids?" (Wired • Oct 2017)

[10:00] Mar’s Documentary: American Mystic

[10:17] ”Satan in Poughkeepsie" (The Believer • 2015)

[15:12] No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (Fawn McKay Brodie • Vintage • 1995)

[16:07] Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief (Lawrence Wright • Vintage • 2013)

[34:15] Mar’s Rolling Stone archive

[39:10] ”Man of the Future" (The Believer • 2013)

[55:40] ”Breakdown Palace” (Topic • 2019)

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David Epstein has reported for ProPublica, Sports Illustrated, and This American Life. His new book is Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.

“You can’t just introspect or take a personality quiz and know what you’re good at or interested in. You actually have to try stuff and then reflect on it. That’s how you learn about yourself—otherwise, your insight into yourself is constrained by your roster of experiences.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Time Sensitive, Read This Summer, The TED Interview, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@DavidEpstein

davidepstein.com

Epstein on Longform

[02:20] Epstein’s Sports Illustrated archive

[02:21] Epstein’s ProPublica Archive

[02:26] The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance (Portfolio • 2014)

[02:29] Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World (Riverhead Books • 2019)

[03:15] Longform Podcast #282: Jenna Wortham

[05:40] Gladwell and Epstein Conversation

[07:58] Gladwell and Epstein Return

[08:14] Outliers: The Story of Success (Malcolm Gladwell • Back Bay Books • 2011)

[08:40] The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. (Daniel Coyle • Bantam • 2009)

[10:51] Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice (Matthew Syed • Fourth Estate • 2010)

[12:10] NPR review of Range

[16:10] The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019)

[28:21] Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave (Adam Alter • Penguin Books • 2014)

[28:31] Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked (Adam Alter • Penguin Press • 2017)

[32:02] Epstein’s Science Research Project Abstract

[33:33] Epstein’s Daily News archive

[38:47] "Birds and Frogs" (Freeman Dyson • American Mathematical Society • 2009) [pdf]

[42:11] "Bright Future" (Sports Illustrated • 2007)

[45:29] Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career (Herminia Ibarra • Harvard Business School Press • 2004)

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

Michael Pollan writes for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker and is the author of nine books. His latest is How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence.

“I don’t like writing as an expert. I’m fine doing public speeches as an expert. Or writing op-ed pieces as an expert. But as a writer, it’s a killer. Nobody likes an expert. Nobody likes to be lectured at. And if you’ve read anything I’ve written, I’m kind of an idiot on page one. I am the naïve fish out of water. I’m learning though. The narrative that we always have as writers is our own education on the topic. We can recreate the process of learning that's behind the book.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@michaelpollan

michaelpollan.com

Pollan on Longform

[00:38] How to Change Your Mind (Penguin Press • 2018)

[00:46] Pollan's Harper’s archive

[02:58] ”The Trip Treatment” (New Yorker • 2015)

[03:30] The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (Penguin Press • 2007)

[03:31] A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams (Penguin Press • 1997)

[03:35] Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation (Penguin Press • 2014)

[04:35] Paper Lion (George Plimpton • Harper • 1966)

[06:18] "Power Steer” (New York Times • Oct 2002)

[06:58] National Lampoon's 1973 cover

[09:12] ”Gardening Means War” (New York Times • 1988)

[16:06] Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education (Grove Press; Reprint Edition • 2003)

[16:15] The End of Nature (Bill McKibben • Random House • 1989)

[16:06] The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World (Random House • 2002)

[28:53] "Town-Building is No Mickey Mouse Operation” (New York Times • 1997)

[31:34] "Some of My Best Friends Are Germs” (New York Times • 2013)

[31:50] "The Intelligent Plant” (New Yorker • 2013)

[32:09] The Overstory: A Novel (Richard Powers • W.W Norton & Company • 2018)

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Casey Cep has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The New Republic. She is the author of Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee.

“I want to meet all of these expectations. I want my book to be a page-turner. I want it to be a beautiful literary object. I want it to sell. I want it to do all of these things. But at the end of the day, I just want to feel like I’ve honored this commitment between writer and reader, and writer and source. And those are sometimes in conflict.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@cncep

Cep on Longform

[00:07] Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee (Knopf • 2019)

[09:51] The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America (Erik Larson • Vintage • 2004)

[10:39] The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon (David Grann • Vintage Books • 2010)

[14:30] The Book of Lost Books: An Incomplete History of All the Great Book You’ll Never Read (Stuart Kelly • Random House • 2006)

[16:50] Go Set a Watchman (Harper Lee • HarperCollins • 2015)

[17:08] Calpurnia’s Cookbook (Monroe County Heritage Museums • 2000)

[20:08] To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee • Grand Central Publishing • 1988)

[22:30] Cep’s Harvard Crimson archive

[22:45] Cep’s Harvard Magazine archive

[23:36] In Cold Blood (Truman Capote • Vintage • 1994)

[23:52] Harper Lee’s Profile of In Cold Blood (Real Simple • 2014)

[24:28] Cep’s Pacific Standard archive

[24:32] Cep's New York Times archive

[24:36] Cep’s New Yorker archive

[25:26] "Mystery in Monroeville" (New Yorker • 2015)

[25:42] "Harper Lee’s Forgotten True Crime Project" (New Yorker • 2015)

[27:42] All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Theodore Rosegarten • Alfred A. Knopf • 1974)

[27:42] Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (James Agee • Mariner Books • 2001)

[30:35] S-Town

[31:50] "In Cold Blood: The Last to See Them Alive" (Truman Capote • The New Yorker • 1965)

[31:55] Evidence of Things Not Seen (James Baldwin • Picador • 1995)

[32:00] The Basement: Meditiations on Human Sacrifice (Kate Millett • Simon Schuster • 1979)

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Mark Adams is the author of Mr. America and Turn Right at Machu Picchu. His latest book is Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier.

“It’s always sheer and utter panic the whole time I’m on the road. I never sleep more than like three or four hours a night when I’m on the road because I wake up at 4:00 in the morning and I’m like, Who am I going to talk to today? I don’t have anything scheduled for today. What am I going to do? Sometimes things work out for that day and sometimes they don’t. I think when you start to lose that feeling — that tense feeling, that pit in your stomach — then the work starts to lose something as well.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@markcadams

[00:35] Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time (Dutton • 2012)

[00:43] Tip of the Iceberg: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton • 2018)

[06:28] Mr. America (It Books • 2010)

[19:20] Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (Tom Wolfe • Picador • 2009)

[21:52] Letters to a Young Writer (Colum McCann • Bloomsbury • 2018)

[24:40] Adams’ Men’s Journal archive

[28:18] Into the Wild (Jon Krakauer • Anchor Books • 1997)

[28:44] Inside Maya 5 (Mark Adams, Erick Miller, Max Simms • New Riders Press • 2003)

[36:14] The Dinosaur Artist: Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth's Ultimate Trophy (Paige Williams • Hachettte Books • 2018)

[39:10] The Fifth Risk (Michael Lewis • W. W. Norton & Company • 2018)

[39:42] ”Philosophy 101” (Real Simple • 2014)

[40:34] ”German Discovers Atlantis in Africa” (New York Times • 1911)

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Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Political Gabfest. Her latest book is Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.

“I'm pretty convinced that if everybody went to criminal court we would not have courts that are dysfunctional the way our courts are. Because what you see every day is a lot of dysfunction and disrespect. It’s kind of deadening. Most people—especially most middle and upper-class people in this country—don’t know anything about the system. They haven’t experienced it first-hand and they prefer not to think about it. It’s very stigmatized. A lot of what I do is just bear witness.’”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@emilybazelon

Bazelon on Longform

[02:16] Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration (Emily Bazelon • Random House • 2019)

[03:38] Bazelon's Slate archive

[03:38] Bazelon's New York Times Magazine archive

[04:01] Political Gabfest

[04:28] ”She was Convicted of Killing Her Mother. Prosecutors Withheld the Evidence That Would Have Freed Her.” (New York Times • 2017)

[14:38] Charged: A True Punishment Story

[22:15] Eric Gonzalez Interview

[26:14] Uncivil

[41:11] "Conservatives for Criminal Justice Reform" (Grover Norquist • Wall Street Journal • Sep 2017)

[45:43] The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Michelle Alexander • The New Press • 2012)

[49:11] Court Watch

[51:18] "Kavanaugh Was Questioned by Police After Bar Fight in 1985” (Emily Bazelon and Ben Protess • New York Times • Oct 2018)

[52:02] "Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father” (David Barstow, Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner • New York Times • Oct 2018)

[57:26] Sarah Huckabee Sanders's tweet about Bazelon

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