Tavi Gevinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of Rookie.

"I just want our readers to know that they are already smart enough and cool enough."

Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Atavist Books.

Brooke Gladstone is the host of On the Media.

“I’ve learned so much about how easy it is to redefine reality in this era of billions of filter bubbles. How easy it is to cast doubt on what is undeniably true. And I think that that’s what frightens me the most. I actually think that’s what frightens most people the most. How do we make sure that we all live in the same world? Or do we?”

Thanks to MailChimp, Texture, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago for sponsoring this week's episode.

Theo Baker is the investigations editor at The Stanford Daily. The first college student ever to win a George Polk Award, Baker received a special recognition for uncovering allegations that pioneering research co-authored by Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, a renowned neuroscientist, was supported in part by manipulated imagery.

“It’s useful to intellectualize it because when you actually get going, this is something that keeps me up at night. … It’s the last thing I think about when I go to sleep, and the first thing on my mind when I wake up.”

This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism.

Donovan X. Ramsey is a journalist and author of the new book When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era.

“I've only ever wanted to write about Black people—and that includes the elements of our lives that are difficult. I’ve always prided myself on being able to metabolize that information and not really be harmed by it. And this book really taught me that writing and processing is not just something that you do in your head. That the information does go through you as you're trying to make sense of it. And it's not happening to you, right? It's not like a direct form of PTSD that you have, but you do experience some trauma when you open up your imagination in that way.”

Joseph Cox is a cybersecurity journalist and co-founder of 404 Media. His new book is Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever.

“In the not too distant future, I will be a very old man, and maybe I won't be able to spend all day talking to drug traffickers. I will be mentally and physically exhausted. So I will doggedly pursue the story right now while I can.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic. His latest book, Between the World and Me, just won the National Book Award.

“When I first came to New York, I couldn't see any of this. I felt like a complete washout. I was in my little apartment, eating donuts and playing video games. The only thing I was doing good with my life was being a father and a husband. That was it. David [Carr] was a big shot. And he would call me in, just out of the blue, to have lunch. I was so low at that point. ... He said, ​I think you're a great bet. ... He was remembering people who had invested in him when he was low. That more than anything is why I'm sad he's not here for all of this. Because it's for him. It's to say to him, ​you were right​.”

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Thanks to MailChimp, Casper, Squarespace, MasterClass, and "The Message" for sponsoring this week's episode.

Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, and the novel The Gin Closet. Her new essay collection is Make It Scream, Make It Burn.

“My writing is always basically asking: what does it feel like to be alive, and how do we ever try to understand what it feels like for anybody else to be alive? In that sense, on the intellectual level, I’m always going to keep chasing the same unanswerable things.”

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

Cord Jefferson is the West Coast editor at Gawker.

"I consider myself to be a sincere human being. And I think that the way the internet carries itself, the way the internet has dialogues, is often insincere. That concerns me. I don't ever want to lose my sincerity. I don't ever want to lose my ability to feel emotional about things that I write about. I don't ever want to have a distance from everything that I write. I think that can be a danger of writing too much for the internet, that you develop this elitist distance from everything. That nothing really matters, you know?"

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