Peter Shamshiri is a lawyer and co-host of the podcast 5-4.

“Because of the nature of law, I think a lot of journalists find it hard to take a position—or to sort of tip their hand about what they actually believe—because so much of the discourse around how law should operate is about neutrality and the general perspective that the law is non-partisan, non-ideological. I think the result is media coverage that is particularly lacking in those regards. And that's where we swoop in.”

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, and playwright. She is the author of the new book, Just Us: An American Conversation.

“I began to wonder, why am I maintaining civility around things that are actually very important to me? This might be the only chance I get to stand up for myself. As Claudia. As a Black person. As a Black woman. As an American citizen. So what am I waiting for? What am I preserving when the thing I am supposedly preserving is also the thing that is on some level killing me?”

Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode.

Lori Hinnant is a reporter for the Associated Press. Along with videojournalist Mstyslav Chernov, photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, and video producer Vasilisa Stepanenko, she won the George Polk Award for war reporting for covering the siege of Mariupol.

“It’s really easy when you see raw footage flash by on the television to just see it as war as hell and this is very abstract. These are people with lives that were utterly ruined and they want to tell their stories. I mean, we’re not talking to people who don’t want to talk to us. And when you find out what happened the day their lives were changed, it really changes it.”

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

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of The Skies Belong to Us.

"It was this big review in The New York Times and I was terrified that it was going to say something awful about the book or about me as a writer. And my son said to me — he's 5, I should say — "If it's bad, you won't die." That's a good point, you know? So I always think of that when I pick up a new review and take that risk of someone slamming something that I've genuinely poured my heart and soul into. You'll live to fight another day."

Thanks to TinyLetter and the The Literary Reportage concentration at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute for sponsoring this week's episode.

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Vanessa Grigoriadis is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and New York.

On the art of the celebrity interview: "People are smart. Particularly these people. They're sitting there thinking, 'When is she going to drop that question?' They know what you're doing. So the way I think about it is: let's have an actual, genuine, human, interesting conversation. ... [Journalists] have all sorts of schemes of what they think works for them. My scheme is no scheme."

Thanks to this week's sponsors, TinyLetter and Audible!

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Rachel Syme has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Grantland, and more.

“You have this sense that you’re bonding, but at the same time you're also going to betray them. Because if you hear this quote that they say or you see it in a mannerism, you write it in your notebook and you think ‘I got it.’”

Thanks to TinyLetter, The Great Courses, MarketingProfs, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode.

Kevin Roose, a writer at New York, has contributed to The New York Times, GQ and Esquire. His latest book is Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street's Post-Crash Recruits.

"Google will give you away. I feel like one undercover book is all you get these days before the jig is up. ... Unless, like Barbara Ehrenreich, you legally change your name. I was not quite prepared to go that far."

Thanks to TinyLetter for sponsoring this week's episode.

Tim Ferriss is the author of The Four-Hour Workweek and The Four-Hour Body.

“If you have a fitness magazine, you can’t just write one issue, ‘Here are the rules!’ ... My job, conversely, is to make myself obsolete. The last thing I want to be is a guru, someone people come to for answers. I want to be the person people come to for better questions.”

Thanks to TinyLetter and The Great Courses for sponsoring this week's episode.

Anna Holmes, the founding editor of Jezebel, writes for The New York Times and is the editorial director of Fusion.

“I think that Jezebel contributed to what I now call ‘outrage culture,’ but outrage culture has no sense of humor. We had a hell of a sense of humor, that's where it splits off. ... The fact that people who are incredibly intelligent and have interesting things to say aren't given the room to work out their arguments or thoughts because someone will take offense is depressing to me.”

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

Mac McClelland is a human rights reporter for Mother Jones.

"There's a lot of strength and resiliance even in the worst stories ever. I mean, you do get bogged down by how much evil so many people are willing to perpetrate in the world. But I guess the little beam of sunshine that you're looking for, that hits me in the face in the morning, is just the character and intergrity of the people who are involved. "

Margalit Fox is a senior obituary writer for The New York Times.

"You do get emotionally involved with people, even though as a journalist you're not supposed to. But as a human being, how can you not? Particularly people who had difficult, tragic, poignant lives. But there are also people that you just wish you had known. And, of course, the painful irony is that you're only getting to know them by virtue of the fact that it's too late."

Thanks to this week's sponsor, TinyLetter!

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Zeke Faux is an investigative reporter for Bloomberg. His new book is Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall.

“I have a rule of thumb, which is that if somebody did one scam, they probably did another scam. If they did one scam in the past and now they have a new thing, odds are good it’s also a scam. That’s not always true, but that was definitely borne out sometimes in crypto-world.”

A look back at some of our favorite moments from the first 99.

Thanks to our sponsors, TinyLetter and Squarespace.

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.

Jack Hitt contributes to Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and This American Life.

“I’ve always lived more or less unemployed in these markets, and happily so. I think being unemployed keeps you a little more sharp in terms of looking for stories. It never gets any easier. That motivation and that desperation, whatever you want to call that, is still very much behind many of the conversations I have all day long trying to find those threads, those strings, that are going to pull together and turn into something.”

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