James Fallows, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, and Deborah Fallows, a linguist and writer, are the co-authors of Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey into the Heart of America.

“The credo of reporting—you know, what you don’t know till you show it—that’s my 'this-I-believe.' That’s the reason I’ve stayed in this line of work for this many decades because there’s nothing more fascinating that you can do but to serially satisfy your curiosity about things. What’s it like on an aircraft carrier? What’s it like in a Chinese coalmine? What’s it like in a giant data center in Wyoming? What is it like in all of these things? And journalism gives you a structural excuse to go do those.”

Thanks to MailChimp, MUBI, Best Self Journal, and Thermacell for sponsoring this week's episode. Also: Longform Podcast t-shirts are now available!

Wesley Yang writes for New York and other publications.

“If a person remains true to some part of their experience, no matter what it is, and they present it in full candor, there’s value to that. People will recognize it. Once I knew that was true, I knew I could do this.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Home Chef, and Trunk Club for sponsoring this week's episode.

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

"People don't really care about issues so much as they care about the stories and the characters that bring those issues to life. ... A story needs an engine or something to propel you forward and it can't just be a collection of like, 'Oh hmm, this was interesting over here and this was interesting over there.' Realizing that helped me sit down with all my stuff on trafficking and labor abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan and say 'What are the five craziest things that I found here and how could I weave them together in a way that would actually have some forward motion?'"

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

Sarah Ellison is a special correspondent at Vanity Fair and the author of War at the Wall Street Journal.

“There’s no lack of stories. ... There’s always an element where you’re going to be parachuting into something that someone has likely written about, to some degree. You can’t shy away from going into something that’s a crowded field.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Quip, and BarkBox for sponsoring this week's episode.

Daisy Alioto is a journalist and the CEO of Dirt Media.

“I don't think I was ever super precious about my writing, but if I was, I'm zero percent precious about it now. Every time I write for Dirt, it saves the company money. ... Nothing will make you sit down and write 800 words in 20 minutes than just needing to get it done. And that is a change that I've seen in myself. I would encourage everyone to be less precious about their writing.”

Nancy Jo Sales writes for Vanity Fair and is the author of The Bling Ring.

"I'm a mom now, so my life's a little different. I can't do certain things that I used to do, and I won't, because they're dangerous or ridiculous or keep me out till five in the morning or whatever. But back in those days, I didn't even have a pet. This was everything I did. This was my whole life, this passion to find out these things, and do these things, and see these things, and have these adventures and be able to report about this street life that rarely gets talked about. I just didn't really have a lot of boundaries in those days. I don't think I had any, really. And if you really throw yourself into something, you can get a great story. You can also not have a life of your own."

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

Jia Tolentino is the deputy editor of Jezebel.

“Insult itself is an opportunity. I’m glad to be a woman, and I’m glad not to be white. I think it’s made me tougher. I’ve never been able to assume comfort or power. I’m just glad. I’m glad, especially as you watch the great white male woke freak-out meltdown that’s happening right now, I’m glad that it’s good to come from below.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Home Chef for sponsoring this week's episode.

Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and author of the new book Why We Swim.

“I am a self-motivated person. I really don’t like being told what to do. I’ve thought about this many times over the last 16 years that I’ve been a full-time freelancer... even though I thought my dream was to always and forever be living in New York, working in publishing, working at a magazine, being an editor, writing. When I was an editor, I kind of hated it. I just didn’t like being chained to a desk.”

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

Don Van Natta Jr., a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner, writes for ESPN and is the author of several books, including Wonder Girl.

"The nature of the kind of work I do as an investigative reporter, every story you do is going to get attacked and the tires are going to get kicked. It’s going to get scrutinized down to every phrase and down to every letter. You have to have multiple sources for key facts on this type of story. We set out to get that and we got it."

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

Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize winner, has written for Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and more. He is the author of several books, including Friday Night Lights.

"It’s quiet. And I really felt I needed that quiet. People say, 'Well anger was your edge, and agitation was your edge, and that’s going to hurt your writing.' I don’t know, maybe. It may be that in order to live a happier life you become a shittier writer. I don't know. But I just couldn't live in that fashion anymore, I just couldn't. It would've destroyed my marriage. It was destroying me."

Thanks to this week's sponsors. Apply for the TinyLetter Writers Residency by September 26. And nominate your favorite soccer article for a chance to win a free Xbox One and EA SPORTS FIFA 15.

Pablo Torre is a senior writer at ESPN the Magazine and frequently appears on Around the Horn, PTI, and other ESPN shows.

“Most of my friends are not sports fans. My parents aren't. Brother and sister — no. So I just want to make things that they want to read. That's the big litmus test for me in deciding if a story is worth investing my time into: Is somebody who doesn’t give a shit about sports gonna be interested in this?”

Thanks to MailChimp, Johnson & Johnson, FreshBooks, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.

Luke Dittrich is a contributing editor at Esquire. His new book is Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets.

“As soon as I told [my mom] that I got my first book deal for this story about Patient H.M., her first words were, ‘Oh no.’ That was sort of her gut reaction to it because, I think, she knew at a certain level that I was going to be dredging up very painful stories. And I think at that point even she didn’t know the depth of the pain that some of the stories that I was going to find were going to lay out there.”

Thanks to MailChimp, EA SPORTS FIFA 17, Squarespace, Wunder, and Audible for sponsoring this week's episode.

Sam Fragoso is a writer, filmmaker, and the host of the podcast Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso.

“We have an hour together. We may not have another. We're here for a brief moment and then, you know, we die. And I want this thing to be as good as it can be. If if it's anything less than that, I'm just not interested. … And that, to me, is why you keep doing it: because that feeling when you really feel like you've put someone's life on the record in a way that is beautiful and painful and idiosyncratic and triumphant… when it goes well, it's like I lost 20 pounds. I am never a nicer or happier person than immediately after a taping. I'm kind of goofy and silly and delirious and grateful to be doing this. Like, so fucking grateful.”

Jenna Wortham is a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a co-host of Still Processing.

“I feel like I’m still writing to let my 10-year-old self know it’s okay to be you. It’s okay to be a chubby androgynous weirdo. You know what I mean? Like this weird black kid. It’s okay. There are others like you.”

Thanks to MailChimp, Mubi, "Food: A Cultural Culinary History," and "Tales" for sponsoring this week's episode.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and founder of the nonprofit Freedom Reads. His New York Times Magazine article "Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out" won the National Magazine Award. His new podcast is Almost There.

“I felt like I had to own becoming something and intuitively understood that if I didn't lay claim to desiring to be something, that it would be too many other forces that would be pulling on me to dictate that I become something else. … When you say you're a writer, if you know nothing else, then you know that you read. You pay attention to the world. … And prison became the metaphor by which I understood the world and poetry became the medium by which I understood what it meant to write about the world and what it meant to take seriously the responsibility to write about the world that I knew.”

Lori Gottlieb is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her new book is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

“Everything that I had done all coalesced into one thing. As a journalist i was helping people to tell their stories, as a therapist I could help people to edit their stories, to change their stories. I could be immersed in the human condition in both of these things.”

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

Nitasha Tiku is a senior writer at Wired.

“I’ve always been an incredibly nosy person—not nosy, curious. Curious about the world. It just gives you a license to ask any question, and hopefully if you have a willing editor, the freedom to see something fascinating and pursue it. It was just a natural fit from there. But that also means I don’t have the machismo, ‘breaking news’ sort of a thing. I feel like I can try on different hats, wherever I am.”

Thanks to MailChimp and Credible.com for sponsoring this week's episode.