Brooke Jarvis is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

“Obsession is inherently interesting. We want to know why somebody would care so much about something that it could direct their whole life. ... When people care about something a lot, what can be more interesting than that to understand what drives those powerful emotions? ... Part of why I do this work is that I am able to get temporarily obsessed with a lot of different things and then move on to the next thing that I'm temporarily obsessed with. ... There's always a new question that I want to follow.”

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