Jon Ronson, a contributor to This American Life, The Guardian and GQ, is the author of six books, including The Men Who Stare at Goats. His latest is Lost at Sea: The Jon Ronson Mysteries.

"The older you get, you realize that no uncomfortable fact makes your story worse. Contradictions are great. What's bad, what to me is the worst journalistic sin, is ridiculous polemicism. ... To me, the contradictions, the story not turning out the way you want—you have to be a twig in the tidal wave of the story."

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Jon Mooallem is a journalist, author, and host of The Walking Podcast. His latest book is This is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City, A Voice That Held It Together.

“There is this impulse that we have, this very clearly documented impulse that people everywhere have, to help. It sounds tacky, but when the bottom drops out, when ordinary life is overturned and there’s this upheaval or this disruption—if it’s a natural disaster or even something like this, that there’s ... in the book I call it a ‘civic immune response.’ People do spontaneously help each other, they work together, they collaborate. This whole idea that society falls apart and everyone descends into madness and violence is just not true. And we know that. We have science that shows it.”

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Jon Mooallem is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and author of an upcoming book on people and wild animals.

"If I just kind of assume it's going to work out one way or another, it can be a real fun adventure to find the path from here to there. You know, hopefully just as you do more, that excitement starts to outweigh the horror of messing up."

Jon Favreau, former chief speechwriter for President Obama, is a columnist at The Ringer and co-host of Keepin’ It 1600.

“And then Obama comes over to my desk with the speech, and he has a few edits. And he’s like, ‘I just want to go through some of these edits and make sure you’re ok with this. I did this for this reason. Are you ok with that?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, buddy. You’re Barack Obama.’”

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Jon Caramanica is a music critic at The New York Times.

“I like to interview people very early in their careers or very late in their careers. I think vulnerability and willingness to be vulnerable is at a peak in those two parts. Young enough not to know better, old enough not to give a damn. … The story I want to tell is—how are you this person, and then you became this? Then at the end, let’s look back on these things and let’s paint the art together. But in the middle when your primary obsession is how do I protect my role? How do I keep my spot? How do I keep the throne? I’m not as interested in that personally as a journalist or as a critic. ”

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Jon Mooallem, a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine, is the author of Wild Ones and American Hippopotamus, the latest story from The Atavist.

"I'm terrible at writing nut graphs. I never know why people should keep reading. That's the menace of my professional existence, trying to figure that out. Because often you have to explain that to an editor before you even start, and I may not even know while I'm writing what the bigger point is."

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