David Grann is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

"You don't always know all the answers. I think that's what kinda makes life interesting. The thing that makes these stories real, while they are in some ways unfathomable, [is that] there's an uneasiness of certitude. Because there are things that are not always known, there are elements of doubt, and that can be very haunting ... In some of the stories, you get as close as you can to all you know—and then there are parts that elude you."

Ed Yong is the author of I Contain Multitudes and a science writer at The Atlantic. His most recent article is "How the Pandemic Will End."

“Normally when I write things that are about a pressing societal issue, those pieces feel like they’re about things that need to get solved in timeframes of, say, months or years. ... But now I’m writing pieces that are affecting people’s choices and lives, and hopefully the direction of the entire country, on an hourly basis. The changes I hope to see, I hope to see immediately. Like right now. And that does create a massive sense of urgency, a sense of pressing, incredibly high stakes. And it’s a burden.”

Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

Joshuah Bearman is the co-founder of Epic Magazine and a freelance writer. His latest story is "Coronado High."

"People who know me well will realize that parts of this story are actually about me. … It's about loss of innocence and getting to a certain point in your life where you realize the excitement of youth is over. Life at a certain point gets complicated and there are consequences and things get hard. These are people who dealt with those consequences in a way that I never did — they had to go to prison or destroy their friends lives — but that's what I liked about this story. It's a true crime story, but it became universal when I realized that there is this emotional experience that these characters go through that anybody can relate to."

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

Helen Rosner is a food correspondent at The New Yorker.

“I believe the things that are really important to me are structure over all and—forgive me, I’ve said this on other podcasts before—if I were going to get a tattoo this is what I would get a tattoo of is that it doesn’t matter what you say, it only matters what they hear. It’s my job to make sure the gulf between those two things is as narrow as possible and there’s as little ambiguity between what I say and what you hear. It’s never easy, but it’s certainly easier in the realm of arguable objectivity. To create emotion in a reader requires a huge amount of really thoughtful work on the part of the writer in a way that forces you as a writer to remove yourself from the emotion you’re creating in the reader. If I to set you up for sadness, I have to create emotional stakes. I have to create investment in whoever I’m talking about or whatever the story’s about. The craft of making stakes and setting up a potential downfall, a potential loss, whatever it may be I think is not something you can do well if you’re feeling the feeling you’re trying to create in the reader.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, and You Can't Make This Up for sponsoring this week's episode. Also: very rare, very exclusive Longform Podcast t-shirts are still available!

Jeffrey Gettleman is the East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times and the author of Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival.

“I’m not an adventure-seeking adrenaline junky. I like to explore new worlds, but I’m not one of these chain-smoking, hard-drinking, partying types that just wants thrills all the time. And unfortunately that’s an aspect of the job. And as I get older and I’ve been through more and more, the question gets louder. Which is: Why do you keep doing this? Because you feel like you only have so many points, and eventually the points are going to run out.”

Thanks to MailChimp, V by Viacom, 2U, and Kindle for sponsoring this week's episode.

Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Political Gabfest. Her latest book is Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration.

“I'm pretty convinced that if everybody went to criminal court we would not have courts that are dysfunctional the way our courts are. Because what you see every day is a lot of dysfunction and disrespect. It’s kind of deadening. Most people—especially most middle and upper-class people in this country—don’t know anything about the system. They haven’t experienced it first-hand and they prefer not to think about it. It’s very stigmatized. A lot of what I do is just bear witness.’”

Thanks to MailChimp, The Great Courses Plus, and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

Patrick Radden Keefe is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

"I tend not to like really prescriptive writing, and as often as not what I want to do is kind of get in and find the stories and the narratives almost as a delivery mechanism to just get people to sit up and think about it. Honestly, the areas that I'm interested in are so obscure, often, that the thing that I want is for people just to understand and care a little bit more than they did before."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

Dan Rather is a journalist, author, and the former anchor of CBS Evening News.

”I knew that being named to succeed Walter Cronkite would put me in a position of inhaling—every day—a kind of NASA-grade rocket fuel for the ego. And that could be dangerous…. In the end, when the red light goes on, it's just you. You're by yourself.… And the longer you're in that role, the more difficult it is to stay true to yourself and to remember who you are and who you want to be.”

Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.

Alex Mar has written for The Believer, Wired, and New York. She is the author of Witches of America and the director of the documentary American Mystic.

“I really do believe that all of us run on some kind of desire for meaning. And if someone is an atheist and they don’t subscribe to an organized system, it doesn’t mean that they don’t crave something. Maybe it’s their job. Or maybe it’s the way that they raise their children with a certain kind of intense focus. Or something else. As humans, we are built to crave meaning, right? For me, that was something that I wanted to explore about myself.”

Thanks to MailChimp, On the Media, The TED Interview,and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode.

Rukmini Callimachi covers ISIS for The New York Times. Part 2 of this episode is available here.

“Nine out of 10 Americans said they were aware of James Foley's execution. That's a huge win for ISIS. That's what they want. I think they've realized that journalists are the crème de la crème as far as targets. And that's a really scary thing for our profession.”

Thanks to TinyLetter and Lynda for sponsoring this week's episode. If you would like to support the show, please leave a review on iTunes.

Hannah Giorgis is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her latest feature is "Most Hollywood Writers’ Rooms Look Nothing Like America.”

”In general, when we talk about representation, we talk about what we see on our screens. We're talking about actors, we're talking about who are the lead characters, what are the storylines that they're getting. And I'm always interested in that. But I'm really, really interested in power ... how it operates, and process.”

Rozina Ali is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the winner of the 2023 National Magazine Award for Reporting. Her latest article is “Raised in the West Bank, Shot in Vermont.”

“I think it’s very, very important to speak to people as people. To speak to sources—even if you have the juiciest story—to really give them the grace. I think everyone deserves it, especially people who are going through such a difficult time.”

Jessica Pressler writes for New York, Elle and GQ.

“I really like hustlers, stories about someone who comes out of nowhere and tries to do it for themselves. Those people are just easy to like. Even when they're sort of terrible, they're easy to like.”

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

Nicholas Schmidle is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His latest article is "Virgin Galactic's Rocket Man."

“I think there’s a lot more pressure that I’ve put on myself to make sure that the next [article] is better than the last one. To make sure there are sourcing standards and expectations I have for myself now that I might not have had earlier. I’m putting even more priority on building long-term relationships in which I trust an individual. ... I feel like the pieces coming in are tighter in terms of sourcing, but story selection becomes a lot more difficult. You want to do a different story.”

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