Jenny Odell is a multidisciplinary artist and the author of How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.

“I’ve noticed that the times I’m extra susceptible to being on social media is when I am feeling personally insecure or when I’m dealing with existential dread. That within itself is not part of the attention economy - that’s just a human being having feelings and reacting to things. For me, it’s a question of like, ’What do I do with that?’ I can either feed it back into the attention economy and actually get more of it back - more anxiety or more existential dread - or I can go in this other direction and spend time alone or with people who care about the same things. Those are places where I can bring my feelings and they won’t destroy me.”

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

Terry Gross is the host and co-executive producer of Fresh Air.

“Part of my philosophy of life is that you have to live with a certain amount of delusion. And part of the delusion I live with is that maybe, from experience, I’m getting a little bit better. But then the other part of me, the more overpowering part of me, is the pessimistic part that says, ‘It’s going to be downhill from here.’ I try not to judge myself too much because I’m so self-judgmental that I don’t want to over-judge and get into too much of ‘Am I better than I was yesterday, or not?’”

Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Blue Apron for sponsoring this week's episode.

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!

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Jennifer Gonnerman is a contributing editor at New York and contributing writer for Mother Jones.

"How much do we really interact with people who are different from ourselves? We go to work, we go home, we go to a party—I feel like this is a fantastic opportunity to meet peope who are totally and completely different, from totally different worlds, backgrounds, interests, countries. It's almost like a passport to a different world with every story. Once you make that trip and go into someone's home and really listen to them, empathy is not that hard to come by."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode!

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George Quraishi is the co-founder and editor of Howler.

“We raised $69,001. And that paid for the first issue. I call it subsistence magazine making, because every issue pays for the next one.”

Thanks to this week's sponsors: TinyLetter, Squarespace, The Great Courses, and Aspiration.

In this special episode with Stephen Rodrick, contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and contributing editor at Men's Journal, Rodrick discusses his recent story "Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie."

"Publicists don't want to give you access because they're afraid of what you're going to see. But if you spend enough time with anybody, short of Mussolini or Ghengis Khan, they're going to humanize themselves. Because they're human beings, like you are. And they have whatever demented battles they're fighting, their version of crazy, but if you get to spend some time with them as flesh and blood, they're going to come across as flesh and blood in the story."

Thomas Morton is a writer and former correspondent for HBO's Vice News. He was at Vice from 2004-2019 and is a major character in Jill Abramson's Merchants of Truth.

“You have to go with your gut and I feel like that’s one of the most essential qualities in doing anything of the nature of what we did. Of making documentaries or reporting news or current events, you really have to have a good sense of intuition for who you’re dealing with, what they’re telling you, what you’re telling them, how you’re behaving. It’s all human interaction, you can’t govern that with hard and fast rules or with extremely set rules. Beyond the extreme ones there are always going to be murky areas. You have to be willing to accept that and work with those.”

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

Stephanie Clifford is an investigative journalist and novelist who has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many other publications. Her most recent article is "The Journalist and the Pharma Bro."

“I think your job as a journalist—particularly with people who are in vulnerable situations or people who are not used to press—is to explain what the fallout might be."

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Stephanie McCrummen is a national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post.

“I do have to psych myself up. There’s always something awkward about it and that never goes away. … No matter how long I do this job, that part of it doesn’t get any easier. It’s always a bit awkward and you’re always sort of humbled when someone actually is willing to talk to you. Then it can be kind of thrilling, once you’re in it, once you’re actually in the conversation. ... But the moment a few seconds before that is still—to this day, it’s sort of an act of will.”

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Jessica Lessin is founder and editor-in-chief of The Information.

“It's very, very hard to predict the winners. A lot of investors try to do this. And I think sometimes where the press gets in trouble is trying to make a call.… It's not always our job to say this thing is doomed or not. I think many journalists, unfortunately, are more interested in that than in understanding, What is this company trying to do?”

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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.

Emily Oster is an economist, professor, and author. Her new book is The Family Firm.

”[COVID] has been 18 months of being a person who is slightly more public, who is saying things that are somewhat more controversial, where people yell at me a lot. ... I do much less reading of the comments than I did early on because I found that eventually I just got mad and that's not a productive way to interact. And it affects how I think about what I write, and I would like what I write to be the things that I think are true, not the things I think will avoid people being angry.”

Kevin Kelly is a writer and a founding executive editor of Wired Magazine. He is the author of What Technology Wants, Out of Control and The Inevitable: Understanding the Twelve Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future.

“I always try to write about the future—and it became harder and harder because things would catch up so fast. If you read Out of Control now, I’ve heard that people say, ‘well, this is obvious.’ I have to tell you, it was dismissed as entirely pie-in-the-sky, wild-eyed craziness twenty-five years ago.”

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

Jeff Maysh is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles. His latest article is "How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions."

“I’ve always looked for stories with the theme of identity and identity theft. I’m very interested in people leading double lives. All of my stories are the same in a sense. Whether that’s a spy or a fake cheerleader or a bank robber or even a wrestler—someone is pretending to be someone they’re not, leading a double life. I find that really exciting. I’m drawn to characters who put on a disguise.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Read This Summer, Google Play, Pitt Writers, and Coin Talk for sponsoring this week's episode.

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.”

Allison P. Davis is a staff writer at The Cut and New York.

“I have no real advice other than don’t fuck it up and be afraid all the time. That’s the key to success. Don’t fuck it up. Be a little bit anxious all the time.”

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