The Nonfiction Podcast

In this episode, I talk with Robert Samuels about his story for the Washington Post: “His American Dream died. His town got over it.” The story explores what he found when he went to Granger, Indiana one year after a popular local restaurant owner was deported.

Robert Samuels is a national politics reporter for the Washington Post. His official bio says that he “focuses on the intersection of politics, policy, and people.” It also says that Robert “travels the country to chronicle how the vivacious political discussion in the nation's capital is impacting the lives of everyday Americans.” [Editor's note: that's possibly the best job description I've ever read]

Before working for the Post, Robert spent five years at the Miami Herald. He’s a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism and the former editor in chief of the school newspaper, The Daily Northwestern. (Go Cats!)

 

“This is How They Saved Me” is writer Neda Semnani's narrative story about how she escaped Iran with her family in 1982, and how close they came to not making it at all. In this episode, I talk with Neda about the unique challenges of reporting her own family history and piecing together what really happened 36 years ago. 

Neda Toloui-Semnani is a journalist and writer whose work has appeared in various online and print publications, including the Washington Post, New York, LA Review of Books, The Baffler, The Week, BuzzFeed, and Roll Call among others. Her work has also been featured in The Rumpus and This American Life.

“The Making of a Mexican-American Dream” looks at how one young woman faces the challenges of assimilation, identity, and acceptance in modern American culture. In this episode, I talk with author Sarah Menkedick about her story and what it says about America in 2017.   Sarah Menkedick's writing has been featured in Harper's, Pacific Standard, Oxford American, Aeon, The Paris Review Daily, Guernica, Amazon's Kindle Singles, and elsewhere. She is the founder of Vela, an online magazine of nonfiction writing by women. Her first book, Homing Instincts, is forthcoming from Pantheon on May 2nd.    

I talk with Washington Post reporter and Pulitzer Prize winner Eli Saslow about his story, “How’s Amanda,” which ran in July 2016. The story takes a close, personal look at a woman fighting to overcome drug addiction, and what that struggle means for her mother.

Eli Saslow writes for the Washington Post, where he covered the 2008 presidential campaign and has chronicled the president’s life inside the White House. He won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his year-long series about food stamps in America. He has won multiple awards for news and feature writing.  

In today’s show, I talk with Sabine Heinlein about her story, “Truther Love,” which appeared at Longreads.com in November 2016.

Sabine Heinlein is the author of the narrative nonfiction book Among Murderers: Life After Prison. Her work can be found in The New York Times, The Guardian, Psychology Today, Poets & Writers, Longreads, and many other publications. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Margolis Award, a Sidney Gross Award for Investigative Reporting, and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

  "Truther Love” looks at the social lives of conspiracy theorists, also known as “truthers,” and how one new dating site is trying to bring them together.        Related links:

For the article I mentioned in the interview about a Sandy Hook victim's father (but couldn't remember the name of the article or the author), it's here: "The Sandy Hook Hoax" by Reeves Wiedeman for New York Magazine, 9.5.2016. Another good read.   And yes, the truther dating site in the story is real. If you're curious about it, or just "awake" and looking for love, here you go. 

On this episode, I talk with John Woodrow Cox about his story, “Telling JJ,” which appeared in the Washington Post in September 2015. "Telling JJ” is the story of a 10-year-old girl who is about to learn that she has been HIV positive since birth. The story explores the critical juncture she has reached in life as she is about to learn the truth.

John Woodrow Cox is an reporter at the Washington Post. Prior to joining the Post, he worked at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida and at the Valley News in New Hampshire.

For a follow-up on JJ, one year later, check out John's follow-up story from August 2016: 
Telling JJ: A year after learning she has HIV, an 11-year-old has a breakthrough    

On this episode, I talk with Amanda Petrusich, author of “Fear of the light: why we need darkness.”  The story appeared in the Guardian in August 2016.  It explores the cultural impact of our increasing inability to see the night sky.  It asks questions about what it means when generations of people live in places where they can’t see the stars.

Amanda Petrusich is a contributing writer for Pitchfork and a contributing editor at The Oxford American.  Her music and culture writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Spin, and BuzzFeed. She is also the author of three books about music, including her latest work, “Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records”

 

Related links:

Audio version of the Guardian article:
"Fear of the Light" (Audio longreads podcast, 29:01)

Longer, original version of Amanda's article:
"Night Moves" — VQR, July 5, 2016

 

On this episode, I talk with Sean Flynn, author of “The Tamir Rice Story: How to Make a Police Shooting Disappear” The story appeared in GQ Magazine in July. The story looks at the aftermath of the tragic shooting of Tamir Rice in Cleveland on November 22, 2014, and how the system failed to hold police accountable for his death.

Sean Flynn is writer for GQ. He has also written for Boston Magazine, the Boston Herald, and Parade.

 

Up next week: Fear of the Light by Amanda Petrusich, about how it is increasingly hard for most of us to see the night sky.

This week, we look at “13, Right Now,” written by Jessica Contrera for The Washington Post in May 2016.

“13, Right Now” explores how teenagers use social media and the mobile web, focusing one 13-year-old girl who lives in the suburbs of Washington D.C. It’s part of a series of stories in the Post — “The Screen Age” — which focuses on kids today who “have never known a world without smartphones and social media… what it means to grow up in an era where learning, flirting and hanging out all happens on screens.”

Jessica Contrera is a staff writer at the Washington Post.

 

Another must-read by Jessica Contrera:
And everyone saw it

More stories from the “Screen Age” series in the Washington Post:
Who are these kids?
The disconnected

On this episode, I talk with Clive Thompson, author of “The Minecraft Generation,” which appeared in the New York Times Magazine. It explores the phenomenon of the third-best-­selling video game in history — a game that has more than 100 million registered players. Thompson looks at the cultural, intellectual, and psychological meaning of Minecraft’s popularity. He and I talk about how he approached the task of understanding and explaining the massive impact of this game on millions of children.

Clive Thompson is a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired. He is also the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.