Ross Andersen is the deputy editor of Aeon Magazine.

“One of the things that’s been really refreshing in dealing with scientists—as opposed to say politicians or most business people—is that scientists are wonderfully candid, they’ll talk shit on their colleagues. They’re just firing on all cylinders all the time because they traffic in ideas, and that’s what’s important to them.”

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Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah has written for The Believer, The LA Review of Books, Transition and The Paris Review. "If He Hollers Let Him Go," her essay on Dave Chappelle, was a 2014 National Magazine Award finalist.

"So the stakes are high. I’m not just writing this to write. I’m writing because I think there’s something I need to say. And there’s something that needs to be said. ... What I hope is that a young kid or an older person will see that you have choices, that you don't have to accept what people hand to you. That you have control."

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Olivia Nuzzi is the White House correspondent for New York.

“I don’t think that, broadly speaking, this a group of redeemable people. … But I do think there is tremendous value, in this first draft of history, trying to understand why the fuck they are like this. … There is value in understanding why these people are like this because they are the reason why we are here in this situation. And I think it’s a [question] that historians will try to answer years from now. … I view my job as providing fodder for that.”

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Ben Austen is a journalist and the author of High-Risers: Cabrini-Green and the Fate of American Public Housing. Khalil Gibran Muhammad is the Ford Foundation Professor of History, Race and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Together they host the podcast Some of My Best Friends Are.

”We're not pretending to have all the answers, but we are attempting to say, ‘this is a real issue and it can't be covered up by simply ignoring it.’ And if you can see it for what it is and all of its full dimensions, you have a better shot at bringing people along to get the work done to fix it.”

Matthieu Aikins, on the eve of a move to Kabul. Aikins is a correspondent for GQ, Harper's and Wired.

"There's no real objective framework for deciding what the value of your life is, versus the value of a story ... Especially when you go to places where people are getting killed for the silliest reasons, and a life is worth so little, you realize you don't necessarily have to value yourself as this, like, precious commodity that can't be risked in any way. And that's just a personal choice, and it's actually a very selfish one, because obviously, if you have loved ones, you're affecting them by making that choice. In any case, it's just a different headspace that you inhabit."

Kiese Laymon is the author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Heavy: An American Memoir.

“It’s ironic to me that my mom was the woman who taught me how to read. She was the black woman who taught me how to read and write. And everything I wrote outside of my house I was taught not to write to my mama. I just think that’s where we are as black writers and black creators in this country. Literally because most of our teachers are white. Principals are white. The standards are white. But I wanted to flip this on its head and I wanted to write this book to the person who taught me how to read and write. And, yeah, we got some dysfunctional, fucked-up shit going on. But we also have some abundant love shit going on, too.”

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Dean Baquet is executive editor of The New York Times.

"I always tried to question what is the difference between what is truly tradition and core, and what is merely habit. A lot of stuff we think are core, are just habits. The way we write newspaper stories, that’s not core, that’s habit. I think that’s the most important part about leading a place that’s going through dramatic change and even generational change. You’ve got to say, here’s what’s not going to change. This is core. This is who we are. Everything else is sort of up for grabs."

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Yudhijit Bhattacharjee is a contributing writer for National Geographic and the New York Times Magazine. His new podcast is Chameleon: Scam Likely.

“I want a crumpled piece of paper where there are enough ridges and valleys and lines for me to be able to navigate, and they have to be authentic. And then of course the best stories among them will have surprise and intrigue, and things that are completely unexpected happen somewhere along the way. But it's hard to anticipate all of that. You still have to have a little bit of faith.”

Carvell Wallace is a podcast host and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-author, with Andre Iguodala, of The Sixth Man.

“So much of my life experience coalesces into things that are useful… All those years that I was obsessing over this that or the other thing, all the weird stuff that I would do, all the weird things that happened to me, all the places I found myself in that I didn’t want to be in but were interesting - this is all part of what makes me the writer that I am today.”

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