Chris Heath, winner of the 2013 National Magazine Award for Reporting, is a staff writer at GQ.

"I present myself as someone who is going to be rigorous and honest. And if you can engage in the way I'm asking you to engage, then I hope that you will recognize yourself in a more truthful way in this story than you usually do. And maybe even, with a bit of luck, more than you ever have before. That's what I bring. That's my offer."

Thanks to TinyLetter and the The Literary Reportage concentration at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute for sponsoring this week's episode.

Show notes:

1. Heath's GQ archive
2. [15:25] "The Crazy True Story of the Zanesville Zoo Escape" (GQ • March 2012)
3. [27:40] "Graduation Day" (GQ • July 2011)
4. [40:00] "Ricky Gervais's GQ Interview: The Comedy Issue" (GQ • May 2013)

Jonathan Abrams covers the NBA for Grantland.

"Players know that with the stories I do I'm not trying to burn anybody. I'm trying to tell a story for what it's worth and be honest to that person. ...That's one of my main goals, that you know why this person is [a certain] way when they step on the court. You know why Monta Ellis is going to keep shooting the ball. You know why Zach Randolph is such a gritty player. What these guys have gone through growing up, it materializes in their game."

Thanks to this week's sponsor, TinyLetter!

Show notes and links:

1. @Jpdabrams
2. Abrams's Grantland archive
3. [3:30] "Loose Cannons: Ricky Davis and Lance Stephenson" (Grantland • Apr 2013)
4. [10:45] "The Devil and Stephen Jackson" (Grantland • June 2012)
5. [13:00] "The Two Lives of Zach Randolph" (Grantland • Nov 2012)
6. [14:45] "The Music in Royce White's Head" (Grantland • June 2012)
7. [14:45] "The Professional: Chauncey Billups" (Grantland • Dec 2012)
8. [15:00] "The Miseducation of J.R. Smith" (Grantland • Sep 2012)
9. [23:30] Longform Podcast #35: Jay Caspian Kang
10. [25:30] Grantland Quarterly
11. [31:00] "The Malice at the Palace" (Grantland • Feb 2012)

Margalit Fox is a senior obituary writer for The New York Times.

"You do get emotionally involved with people, even though as a journalist you're not supposed to. But as a human being, how can you not? Particularly people who had difficult, tragic, poignant lives. But there are also people that you just wish you had known. And, of course, the painful irony is that you're only getting to know them by virtue of the fact that it's too late."

Thanks to this week's sponsor, TinyLetter!

Show notes and links:

1. @margalitfox
2. The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (HarperCollins • 2013)
3. Fox's New York Times archive
4. [4:15] "Lennart Meri, 76, of Estonia, Dies; President, Filmmaker, Writer" (New York Times • Mar 2006)
5. [4:20] "Samuel Alderson, Crash-Test Dummy Inventor, Dies at 90" (New York Times • Feb 2005)
6. [4:25] "Fred Morrison, Creator of a Popular Flying Plate, Dies at 90" (New York Times • Feb 2010)
7. [4:15] "André Cassagnes, Etch A Sketch Inventor, Is Dead at 86" (New York Times • Feb 2013)
8. [4:15] "John Houghtaling, Inventor of Magic Fingers Vibrating Bed, Dies at 92" (New York Times • June 2009)
9. [9:45] "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (Esquire • Apr 1966)
10. [14:15] "Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83" (New York Times • May 2012)
11. [17:15] Alden Whitman Is Dead at 76; Made an Art of Times Obituaries (New York Times • Sep 1990)
12. [22:15] "Nguyen Chi Thien, Whose Poems Spoke Truth to Power, From a Cell, Dies at 73" (New York Times • Oct 2012)
13. [23:30] "Sy Wexler, Maker of Ubiquitous Classroom Films, Dies at 88" (New York Times • Mar 2005)
14. [24:30] "Leslie Buck, Designer of Iconic Coffee Cup, Dies at 87" (New York Times • Apr 2010)
15. [39:00] "Alice E. Kober, 43; Lost to History No More" (New York Times • May 2013)
16. [40:45] "John Fairfax, Who Rowed Across Oceans, Dies at 74" (New York Times • Feb 2012)

Mat Honan is a senior writer at Wired.

"[The tech] industry—especially as it relates to a lot the silly apps and the silly websites and the silly shit that we put up with—is ridiculous. It's just such a hype fest, people living off of jargon and nonsense. There are entire conferences devoted to nonsense! ... I like to skewer that stuff, because I don't want to feel responsible for it. I don't want to feel like I'm making someone go out and buy some piece of shit they don't need."

Thanks to this week's sponsor, TinyLetter!

Show notes and links:

1. @mat
2. honan.net
3. [0:30] Pop-Up Magazine
4. [2:00] "How Apple and Amazon Security Flaws Led to My Epic Hacking" (Wired • Aug 2012)
5. [6:00] "Yes, I Was Hacked. Hard." (Honan's Tumblr)
6. [17:15] "Liveblog: Get the Latest Updates From Google I/O 2013" (Wired • May 2013)
7. [17:30] "Welcome to Google Island" (Wired • May 2013)
8. [18:30] "Fever Dream of a Guilt-Ridden Gadget Reporter" (Gizmodo • Jan 2012)
9. [27:30] @RUSirius
10. [29:15] "I Am Here: One Man's Experiment With the Location-Aware Lifestyle" (Wired • Jan 2009)
11. [31:30] "Stock and Flow" (Robin Sloan • Snarkmarket • Jan 2010)

Jonathan Shainin is senior editor at The Caravan in Delhi.

"Working in an environment that's foreign, where you have to kind of think through a lot of things from the ground up ... I find it to be really stimulating to have to interrogate the assumptions that you have as an editor about what's interesting and what's not interesting, what's a good story and what's a bad story, what's the story that's been done a million times already. When you get out of a place that is your place, you have to kind of think through some things in a fresh way. And that can be really productive."

Thanks to this week's sponsor, TinyLetter!

Show notes and links:

1. @jonathanshainin
2. The Caravan
3. The Caravan on Longform
4. [8:00] The National
5. [13:00] India: A Million Mutinies Now (V.S. Naipul • 1991) [pdf]
6. [23:45] "Burger Queen" A profile of April Bloomfield.
   (Lauren Collins • New Yorker • Nov 2010)
7. [29:00] "Falling Man"A profile of Manmohan Singh.
   (Vinod K Jose • The Caravan • Oct 2011)
8. [29:00] "The Confidence Man" The crumbled cricket empire of Lalit Modi.
   (Samanth Subramanian • The Caravan • Mar 2011)
9. [40:30] Behind the Beautiful Forevers (Katherine Boo • 2012)
10. [41:00] "Notes from the Undercity" Review of Behind the Beautiful Forevers.
    (Jonathan Shainin • Bookforum • Feb 2012)
11. [49:30] "The Departed" The return home of Kashmir's disillusioned militants.
    (Mehboob Jeelani • The Caravan • Sep 2012)

Vanessa Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and New York.

On the art of the celebrity interview: "People are smart. Particularly these people. They're sitting there thinking, 'When is she going to drop that question?' They know what you're doing. So the way I think about it is: let's have an actual, genuine, human, interesting conversation. ... [Journalists] have all sorts of schemes of what they think works for them. My scheme is no scheme."

Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Audible!

Show notes and links:

1. vanessagrigoriadis.com
2. @thevanessag
3. Grigoriadis on Longform
4. [4:00] "Why Is Nancy Pelosi Always Smiling?" (New York • Nov 2009)
5. [13:00] "Can Shakira Conquer the World?" (Rolling Stone • Oct 2009) [pdf]
6. [16:30] "Travels in the New Psychedelic Bazaar" (New York • Apr 2013)
7. [23:30] "New York's Power-Girl Publicists" (New York • Dec 1998)
8. [38:00] "The Adventures of Super Boy" (Rolling Stone • Mar 2011)
9. [40:45] "Everybody Sucks: Gawker and the Rage of the Creative Underclass" (New York • Oct 2007)
10. [43:30] "The Tragedy of Britney Spears" (Rolling Stone • Feb 2008)

Natasha Vargas-Cooper has written for GQ, Spin and BuzzFeed.

"Writing is the worst part of this gig for me. I hate sitting down and writing; it's being with my worst self. … But then, when it's over, it's the best. I have no greater joy than reading what I've published—with the exception of some editors who have fucked up my shit."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Show notes and links:

1. natashavc.com
2. @natashavc
3. Vargas-Cooper on Longform
4. [2:30] "Jesse James Hollywood: On Trial" (The Awl • May-July 2009)
5. [11:00] Mad Men Unbuttoned (2010)
6. [18:30] "The Day-Care Threat" (Brad Schrade, Jeremy Olson and Glenn Howatt • Minneapolis Star Tribune)
7. [19:30] "When A 10-Year-Old Kills His Nazi Father, Who's To Blame?" (BuzzFeed • Feb 2012)
8. [34:00] "Hard Core" (The Atlantic • Jan 2011)
9. [40:45] Into Thin Air (Jon Krakauer • 1999)
10. [41:30] "Bath Salts: Deep in the Heart of America's New Drug Nightmare" (Spin • July 2012)
11. [42:30] "The Lyman Family’s Holy Siege of America" (David Felton • Rolling Stone • Dec 1971)

Ted Conover is the author of five books and the recent Harper's article "The Way of All Flesh."

"My identity is a rubber band. It can stretch that way and it can stretch this way. When I get home it goes mostly back into the shape it's been, but not completely. And it's that not completely that is interesting and makes me who I am."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Show notes and links:

1. tedconover.com
2. Personal Archive
3. [1:00] "The Way of All Flesh" (Harper's • April 2013) (sub. required)
4. [3:30] "Power Steer" (Michael Pollan • New York Times Magazine • March 2002)
5. [15:00] Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders with America's Illegal Migrants (1987)
6. [33:30] "Enter the Chicken" (Burkhard Bilger • Harper's • March 1999)
7. [34:00] Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000)
8. [36:15] The Routes of Man: Travels in the Paved World (2011)
9. [42:30] "A Snitch's Dilemma" (New York Times Magazine • July 2012)
10. [49:00] Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America's Hoboes (1984)

Ann Friedman is a writer, editor and co-founder of Tomorrow.

"The notion of kissing up is super weird to me. You should always be kissing down and sideways, to the people who are going to be working alongside you and coming up behind you. I'm really aware of my impending irrelevance. ... I'm waiting for that day when I'm in dire need of work and 65 years old—because none of us are retiring, obviously—and I don't understand how to write on Google Glass or whatever we're composing on then. I want there to be some journalist who remembers when I got on the phone with her in 2013 and helped her negotiate for her first salary and throws me a fucking bone. I think about that moment a lot."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Show notes and links:

1. annfriedman.com
2. @annfriedman
3. Personal Archive
4. [5:45] Pie Charts Archive (The Hairpin)
5. [7:15] #realtalk Column (CJR)
6. [15:00] "The Ann Friedman Weekly"
7. [22:00] "Minimum Rage" (Nona Willis Aronowitz • GOOD • March 2012)
8. [23:00] "What Women Want" A profile of James Deen (Amanda Hess • GOOD • Nov 2011)
9. [34:45] Tomorrow
10. [39:00] Tomorrow Budget Breakdown
11. [43:00] 2013 National Magazine Awards Finalists

Patrick Symmes is a foreign correspondent and contributor to Outside and Harper's.

"They rolled us up like a cheap carpet. We were locked in a room for 14 hours. And for the first six hours that was okay. Everything was nice; there was coffee. But then the nightshift came on. You could hear gunshots in the street, and these guys were scared. And they were thugs. And they were thugs with a mission: to get rid of every foreigner who might witness what was happening."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Show notes and links:

1. patricksymmes.com
2. @patricksymmes
3. Symmes's Outside archive
4. Symmes's Harper's archive
5. [2:30] Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevara Legend (2000)
6. [7:00] The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile (2008)
7. [21:45] "Taking the Measure of Castro, Ounce by Ounce" (Harper's • Jan 1996) (subscription required)
8. [22:00] "Ten Thousand Revolutions" (Harper's • June 1997) (subscription required)
9. [23:00] "The Generals in Their Labyrinth" (Outside • July 2008)
10. [24:30] "Miraculous Fishing" (Harper's • Dec 2000) (subscription required)
11. [35:00] "Sand Storm" (Outside • May 2011)
12. [39:00] "The Beautiful Game" (Outside • Oct 2012)
13. [42:00] Among the Thugs (Bill Buford • 1993)
14. [49:30] "A Wild Country Grows in South Sudan" (Outside • May 2013)

Jay Caspian Kang is a writer and editor at Grantland.

"That's one of the things I've been learning: sometimes if you just sit there, they forget that you're there, so they forget to get rid of you. I'm very quiet and I try not to ask them a lot of questions. ... Generally I just observe. I feel like because I'm a fiction writer, the story will tell itself through the narrative of the person's movement through their daily life."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Show notes and links:

1. @jaycaspiankang
2. [2:00] "Online Poker's Big Winner" (New York Times Magazine • 2011)
3. [4:30] The Dead Do Not Improve (2012)
4. [8:00] "The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High" (The Morning News • 2010)
5. [11:30] "Immigrant Misappropriations: The Importance of Ichiro" (Grantland • 2011)
6. [15:00] "The White Album" A profile of Royce White (Chuck Klosterman • Grantland • 2012)
7. [21:00] Bill Simmons's Grantland archive

Molly Young is a freelance writer for GQ and New York.

"Writing a celebrity profile puts you in a position that no human being wants to be in: you are speaking with somebody, you know that they're lying to you, and you know that they know that they're lying to you. That's just the most humiliating position—it violates any human instinct for maintaining dignity."

Thanks toTinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Show notes and links:

1. @magicmolly
2. Personal site
3. [3:30] Warby Parker
4. [9:00] "How Did Susan Miller Become the Go-To Astrologer for the New York Fashion Set?" (New York • 2013)
5. [14:15] From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (E.L. Konigsburg • 1967)
6. [16:45] "Kickstart My Heart" (n+1 • 2008)
7. [22:45] "Leading Mannequins" (GQ • 2012)
8. [31:30] "Sweatpants in Paradise" (The Believer • 2010)