Longform

Joe Hagan is a correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine.

“It’s the story that begins with John Lennon on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1967 and ends with Donald Trump in the White House. In many ways the book takes you there, I wanted it to. It takes you through the culture as it metastasizes into what it is now. It had a lot to do with a sense of the age of narcissism. The worship of celebrity. Jann was very into celebrity, and worshipful of it and glorifying it and turning it into a thing and eventually celebrity displaces a lot of the ideas they originally started with in my estimation. That was a narrative thread that I began to pull in the book.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Screen Dive, Stoner, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@joehagansays

Hagan on Longform

[09:45] "Blues Cruise" (New York • Dec 2012)

[09:50] "Shipping Out" (David Foster Wallace • Harper's • Jan 1996)

[11:10] Among the Thugs (Bill Buford • Vintage • 1993)

[16:25] "An Incorrect Artifact With Aging Fans" (New York Times • Oct 2000)

[22:10] "The Long, Lawless Ride of Sheriff Joe Arpaio" (Rolling Stone • Aug 2012)

[25:45] "Tenacious G" (New York • Jul 2009)

[33:35] Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña (David Hajdu • Picador • 2011)

[42:20] Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream (Hunter S. Thompson • Random House • 1972)

[1:09:30] "The Trouble With Johnny Depp" (Stephen Rodrick • Rolling Stone • Jun 2018)

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Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change and The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

“I still nurse the idea in my heart of hearts that something you write, that there’s some key to this all. We’re all looking for the skeleton key that’s going to unlock it, and people will go, ‘Oh, that’s why we have to do something!’ I don’t want to say that I completely dispensed with that. I think that’s what motivates most journalists—this information is going to somehow make a difference. On the other hand, I have dispensed a lot of that. Now we’re so deep into all of this. The more you know about climate change and the numbers involved and the scale involved of what we need to do to really mitigate this problem, you know that we’re moving in absolutely the wrong direction. It’s not like we’re moving slowly, we’re moving in the wrong direction. It’s very hard to say anything I write is going to turn this battleship around.”

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

@ElizKolbert

Kolbert on Longform

[0:10]The TED Interview

[0:45]Underdog

[2:20] The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Picador • 2014)

[2:25] Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change (Bloomsbury • 2006)

[7:55] "The Fate of Earth" (New Yorker • Oct 2017)

[22:30] "The Calculator" (New Yorker • Nov 2002)

[28:45] The End of Nature (Bill McKibben • Random House • 2006)

[40:05] "The Climate of Man" (New Yorker • Apr 2005)

[40:20] "The Darkening Sea" (New Yorker • Nov 2006)

[40:30] "Enter the Anthropocene—Age of Man" (National Geographic • Nov 2006)

[40:30] No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies (William Vollman • Viking • 2018)

[40:35] No Good Alternative: Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies (William Vollman • Viking • 2018)

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Lisa Brennan-Jobs is a New York-based writer. Her new book Small Fry is about her childhood and her relationship with her father, Steve Jobs.

"You find yourself in a whole net, in a constellation of stories, each one connecting to another. It was amazing how much I remembered. Sometimes I meet people and they say, goodness, I can’t even remember what I had for lunch. How can you remember so much? And I think, oh, sit down for a while writing badly and you will remember and remember and remember. Some things weren’t terribly pleasant to remember. And some things were incredibly wonderful."

Thanks to MailChimp, Under My Skin, Skagen, Sleeping Beauty Dreams, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@LisaBrennanJobs

Brennan-Jobs on Longform

[1:35] Small Fry (Grove Press • 2018)

[48:55] "Growing Up Jobs" (Vanity Fair • Sep 2018)

[49:00] "In ‘Small Fry,’ Steve Jobs Comes Across as a Jerk. His Daughter Forgives Him. Should We?" (Nellie Bowles • The New York Times • Aug 2018)

[56:15] Steve Jobs (Walter Isaacson • Simon & Schuster • 2011)

[56:20] Steve Jobs (Aaron Sorkin • Universal Pictures • 2015)

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Liana Finck writes for The New Yorker. Her new book is Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir.

"I was drawing since I was 10 months old. My mom had left this vibrant community of architects and art people to live in this idyllic country setting with my dad, and she poured all of her art feelings into me. She really praised me for being this baby genius, which I may or may not have been. But I grew up thinking I was an amazing artist. There weren’t any other artists around besides my mom, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to. There were no art classes around. … I was so shy, so I was just always drawing and making things."

Thanks to MailChimp, Lean In podcast, Under My Skin, Skagen, Squarespace, Sleeping Beauty Dreams, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@lianafinck

[2:10]Finck's archive at The New Yorker

[2:15]Finck on Instagram

[2:25]Passing for Human: A Graphic Memoir (Random House • 2018)

[3:20] "The Silk Road's Dark-Web Dream Is Dead" (Andy Greenburg • Wired • Jan 2016)

[3:25] "The Untold Story of NotPetya, the Most Devastating Cyberattack in History" (Andy Greenburg • Wired • Aug 2018)

[13:40] "What I Miss: A List" (Catapult • Apr 2018)

[43:05] Very Semi-Serious (The New Yorker • 2015)

[53:00] "Dear Pepper: Airport Pickups, Where to Live, and Departed Dogs" (The New Yorker • Aug 2018)

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Rebecca Traister is a writer at New York. Her new book is Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger.

“I don’t want my experience to be held up as so, ladies, your new health regimen is rage all day. Because the fact is we live in a world that does punish women for expressing their anger, that denies them jobs, that attaches to them bad reputations as difficult-to-work-with, crazy bitches. Because they’re reasonably angry about something they have every reason to be angry about. We live in a world in which black women’s anger is either caricatured and they get written off as cartoons, or regarded as threats and face steep, often physical penalties for expressing dissent or dissatisfaction. When I talk about this, I don’t mean it to be prescriptive, I mean it to be descriptive of a particular experience I had that was extraordinarily unusual but which made me question a premise that I think all of us internalize that the anger is bad for us. I no longer believe that that’s true.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Skagen, Under My Skin, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@rtraister

Traister on Longform

[2:30] Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger (Rebecca Traister • 2018)

[7:55] "What a Good Boy" (The Cut • Sep 2018)

[26:50]Traister's archive at Observer

[29:05]Traister's archive at Salon

[32:50] "Hillary Clinton Didn’t Shatter the Glass Ceiling. This Is What Broke Instead." (The Cut • Nov 2016)

[35:50] "Michelle Obama Gets Real" (Salon • Nov 2007)

[38:55] Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women (Free Press • 2011)

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Jerry Saltz is a Pulitzer-winning art critic for New York.

“To this day I wake up early and I have to get to my desk to write almost immediately. I mean fast. Before the demons get me. I got to get writing. And once I’ve written almost anything, I’ll pretty much write all day, I don’t leave my desk, I have no other life. I’m not part of the world except when I go to see shows.”

Thanks to MailChimp, TapeACall, The Dream, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@jerrysaltz

Saltz on Instagram

Saltz on Longform

[2:35] Saltz's archive at New York Magazine

[12:50] Jerry Saltz YOUNG-HOFFMAN GALLERY AND N.A.M.E. GALLERY (Art Forum Magazine • Dec 1977)

[1:01:35] Saltz's archive at The Village Voice

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Eli Saslow is a Pulitzer-winning feature writer for the Washington Post. His new book is Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist.

“If I'm writing about somebody once for 5,000 words in the Washington Post — someone who's addicted to drugs, say — I am choosing in the public eye where their story ends. Like, that's it. People aren't going to know any more. That's where I'm going to leave them being written about. And of course, that is inherently artificial — nothing ends, their life is continuing. This is just where the narrative ends. I recognize the weight in ways that maybe I didn’t before.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Outside the Box, Squarespace, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@elisaslow

Saslow on Longform

Longform Podcast #57: Eli Saslow

Saslow's Washington Post archive

[1:20] Rising Out of Hatred: The Awakening of a Former White Nationalist (Doubleday • 2018)

[18:00] ‘It Was My Job, and I Didn’t Find Him’: Stoneman Douglas Resource Officer Remains Haunted by Massacre (Washington Post • Jun 2018)

[25:55] The White Flight of Derek Black (Washington Post • Oct 2016)

[33:20] Gun Violence’s Distant Echo (Washington Post • May 2016)

[48:15] ‘You’re One of Us Now' (Washington Post • Aug 2015)

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Jeanne Marie Laskas writes for GQ and the New York Times Magazine. Her new book is To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope.

“I hate saying this out loud, but it’s true: I’m really shy. Fundamentally, I'm 100% scared most of the time. I’m scared and wondering how I can not be noticed because I don’t know what to say and I’m shy. If you say I’m a good listener, that's why … I become more invisible so I’m more comfortable.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Techmeme Ride Home Podcast, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@jmlaskas

Longform Podcast #9: Jeanne Marie Laskas

Laskas on Longform

jeannemarielaskas.com

[2:10] Concussion (Random House • 2015)

[2:20] To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope (Random House • 2018)

[2:30] "To Obama With Love, and Hate, and Desperation" (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2017)

[23:20] "Have You Heard the One About President Joe Biden?" (GQ • Jul 2013)

[43:20] "Guns 'R Us" (GQ • Aug 2012)

[43:25] "Inside the Federal Bureau Of Way Too Many Guns" (GQ • Aug 2016)

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Elif Batuman is a novelist and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her latest article is “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry.”

“I hear novelists say things sometimes like the character does something they don’t expect. It’s like talking to people who have done ayahuasca or belong to some cult. That’s how I felt about it until extremely recently. All of these people have drunk some kind of Kool Aid where they’re like, ‘I’m in this trippy zone where characters are doing things.’ And I would think to myself, if they were men—Wow, this person has devised this really ingenious way to avoid self-knowledge. If they were women, I would think—Wow, this woman has found an ingenious way to become complicit in her own bullying and silencing. It’s only kind of recently—and with a lot of therapy actually—that I’ve come to see that there is a mode of fiction that I can imagine participating in where, once I’ve freed myself of a certain amount of stuff I feel like I have to write about, which has gotten quite large by this point, it would be fun to make things up and play around.”

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

@BananaKarenina

Batuman on Longform

Batuman's archive at The New Yorker

Batuman's archive at Harper's

Batuman's archive at London Review of Books

[1:00] “Japan’s Rent-a-Family Industry” (The New Yorker • Apr 2018)

[10:00] The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2010)

[10:00] The Demons (Fyodor Dostoevsky • The Russian Messenger • 1812)

[11:00] The Idiot (Penguin Book • 2017)

[14:00] Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (Lennard Davis • Columbia University Press • 1983)

[20:00] The Exception (Christian Jungersen • Anchor • 2008)

[21:00] The End of the Story: A Novel (Lydia Davis • Picador • 2004)

[27:00] Culture and Imperialism (Edward Said • Vintage • 1994)

[28:00] Either/Or: A Fragment of Life (Soren Kierkegaard • Victor Eremita • 1843)

[29:00] Scrivener

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Jon Caramanica is a music writer at The New York Times.

“I like to interview people very early in their careers or very late in their careers. I think vulnerability and willingness to be vulnerable is at a peak in those two parts. Young enough not to know better, old enough not to give a damn. … The story I want to tell is—how are you this person, and then you became this? Then at the end, let’s look back on these things and let’s paint the art together. But in the middle when your primary obsession is how do I protect my role? How do I keep my spot? How do I keep the throne? I’m not as interested in that personally as a journalist or as a critic. ”

Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

@joncaramanica

Caramanica on Longform

[3:35] "The Education of Kanye West" (New York Times • Aug 2007)

[4:00] Caramanica's archive at The New York Times

[4:05] Popcast

[13:30] "Pitched to Perfection: Pop Star's Silent Partner" (New York Times • Jun 2012)

[25:45] "Two SoundCloud Rap Outlaws Push Boundaries From the Fringes" (New York Times • Mar 2018)

[28:45] "Dick Cavett in the Digital Age" (Alex Williams • New York Times • Aug 2018)

[28:55] "Hip-Hop’s Elders and Youth Go to Battle (Again)" (New York Times • Jan 2017)

[34:10] "Into the Wild

With Kanye West" (New York Times • Jun 2018)

[57:10] "Post Malone and Rae Sremmurd, Hip-Hop Impressionists Shaping the Stream" (New York Times • May 2018)

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