Gary Smith, a four-time National Magazine Award winner, retired last month after 32 years at Sports Illustrated.

"We were on the Santa Monica Freeway, Ali's driving 70 miles an hour and his eyes are drifting asleep—the medication for Parkinson's would do that to him. I'm thinking, 'Oh, crap.' We're weaving between lanes, cars are honking, and I'm wondering in the passenger seat, 'Should I grab the wheel from the greatest champ of all-time?' The writer in me wants to let it go, let the crash happen just so I get a scene for the story. But the human in me was just getting scared as hell."

Thanks to TinyLetter and EA SPORTS FIFA WORLD CUP for sponsoring this week's episode.

Joshua Topolsky is editor-in-chief of The Verge.

"Sometimes you tell stories that people don't know they need to read yet. You have to keep telling those kinds of stories, and eventually people will wake up to them. Of course we look at traffic. But the main thing is, are we doing good work? At the end of the week or the end of the day, do I think, that was awesome, I'm really glad we wrote that?"

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

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Zoë Schiffer is the managing editor for Platformer. Her new book is Extremely Hardcore: Inside Elon Musk’s Twitter.

“Being the person where it's a fireable offense to leak to you … is kind of a badge of honor.”

Melissa del Bosque is an investigative journalist covering the U.S.-Mexico border.

“What I really want people to know is the context within which this traumatic event is happening. It doesn’t have to happen. It’s happening because certain people made certain decisions. Or they made a decision to do nothing. … There are laws, there are policies on the books that are either being ignored or could be changed.”

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Jason Motlagh, a journalist and filmmaker, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the founder of Blackbeard Films. He won the Polk's Sydney Schanberg Prize for “This Will End in Blood and Ashes,” an account of the collapse of order in Haiti.

“Once you've gotten used to this kind of metabolism, it can be hard to walk away from it. Ordinary life can be a little flat sometimes. And so that's always kind of built in. I accept that. I think I've just tried to be more honest about like, [am I taking this risk] because I need a bump my life? Or do you really believe in what you're doing? And I feel like I really do need to believe in the purpose of the story. There has to be some motivation greater than myself."

This is the last in a series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.

Krista Tippett is the host of On Being and the author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living.

“Good journalists in newsrooms hold themselves to primitive standards when they’re covering religious ideas and people. They’re sloppy and simplistic in a way that they would never be with a political or economic person or idea. I mean they get facts wrong. They generalize. Because they don’t take it seriously, and they don’t know how to take it seriously.”

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Ian Urbina, an investigative reporter for The New York Times, just published "The Outlaw Ocean," a four-part series on crime in international waters.

“It is a tribe. It has its norms, its language, and its jealousies. I approached it almost as a foreign country that happened to be disparate, almost a nomadic or exiled population. And one that has extremely strict hierarchies—you know when you’re on a ship that the captain is God.”

Thanks to TinyLetter and Casper for sponsoring this week's episode.

Nikole Hannah-Jones covers civil rights for The New York Times Magazine.

“I don’t think there’s any beat you can cover in America that race is not intertwined with—environment, politics, business, housing, you name it. So, whatever beat you put me on, this is what I was going to cover because I think it’s just intrinsic. If you’re not being blind to what’s on your beat, then it’s part of the beat.”

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Mike Issac covers Silicon Valley for The New York Times. He is the author of Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber.

“People try to use journalists all the time. Your job as a journalist is to figure out who’s using you, why they’re using you, and whether you can do something legitimately without playing into one side or another.”

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

Lena Dunham, the creator and star of HBO's Girls, is the co-founder of Lenny and the author of Not That Kind of Girl. A special episode hosted by Longform Podcast editor Jenna Weiss-Berman.

“Writing across mediums can be a really healthy way to utilize your energy and stay productive while not feeling entrapped. But at the end of the day, the time when I feel like life is most just, like, flying by and I don't even know what's happening to me is when I'm writing prose. It's such an intimate relationship that you're having. When you're writing a script, you're making a blueprint for something that doesn't exist yet. But when you're writing prose, the thing exists immediately. And that's really satisfying. It's the best place to go for my deepest and most in-the-now concerns.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Prudential, Casper, and The Great Courses for sponsoring this week's episode.