The Grantland Q&A: Errol Morris
“Some of the best lines — and I’ve been lucky to hear really nutso lines over the years — are not in response to any kind of question. It’s in response to, ‘I don’t know.’”
Interview
The Best of "What It's Like"
A few of our favorites from Science of Us’s ongoing interview series about unusual conditions and relationships.
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What It's Like to Date Your Dad
Consensual incest between fathers and their daughters remains the least reported and perhaps the most taboo sort of relationship. Here’s the story of one girl, now 18, who plans to marry her father.
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What It’s Like to Be a 58-Year-Old Virgin
Social and cultural norms attach a lot of stigma to a first sexual experience, meaning that honest discussions about being a virgin rarely happen. Here, a 58-year-old man describes living as a virgin for almost 60 years.
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What It's Like to Slowly Lose Your Eyesight
Retinitis pigmentosa is a group of eye diseases that cause retinal degeneration. The condition usually first manifests as a loss of night vision, followed by diminished periphery eyesight and, eventually, blindness. It’s slow-moving, so an early diagnosis can mean years of uncertainty.
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What It’s Like to Have a Micropenis
Heterosexual men who have penises less than three inches long share common strands of despair: a scarring first sexual encounter; paralyzing fears of intimacy; confusing ideas of normality gained from porn; resentment toward women; and desperate attempts to enlarge using painful pumps, expensive pills, or alternative medicine (none of which work).
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What It's Like to Date a Horse
Zoophiles—those attracted to animals—can form deep, loving, and very nurturing relationships with their animal partners.
This Is the Story of a Happy Reader
A trip to Nashville to interview the writer Ann Patchett.
An Interview with Dan Savage
Talking with the most read—and most controversial—sex columnnist today.
"I Love Getting Into as Much Weird Shit as Possible"
An interview with Stevie Wonder.
Stephen King: The Rolling Stone Interview
The author on why he belives in God (“It makes things better”), the perils of writing high (“Annie Wilkes is cocaine, she was my number-one fan”) and what he thinks of other writers (“Hemingway sucks, basically”).
Interview: Johnny Depp
“I have a big cock in my living room.”
Interview: Bill Hader
“I did a few days on Franco’s As I Lay Dying, and the vibe on the set was very heavy and serious. The only thing I can equate it to is tripping with a bunch of your friends.”
Playboy Interview: Robin Williams
“If you take the chance, sometimes you’ll find something so magnificent that it was worth dying for, and sometimes you’ll find nothing and have a horrible night. To go deeper with it, that’s the most interesting challenge.”
John Hersey: The Art of Fiction No. 92
“My mother kept scrapbooks of everything any of her children did all their lives, and among my scrapbooks are newspapers that I wrote on the typewriter at the age of six, The Hersey Family News, with ads offering my older brothers for various kinds of hard labor at very low wages.”
Nadine Gordimer: The Art of Fiction No. 77
“I come to America, I go to England, I go to France…nobody’s at risk. They’re afraid of getting cancer, losing a lover, losing their jobs, being insecure. … It’s only in my own country that I find people who voluntarily choose to put everything at risk—in their personal life.”
Q&A With Larry Lessig On Why You Should Have Faith In Silicon Valley
The Harvard Law professsor on billionaires, politics and Uber.
Geoff Dyer: The Art of Nonfiction No. 6
“If I’m writing a thing based on something that happened, it often starts to become fun for me when I see there’s an opportunity to make myself look even more of a jerk than I am in real life.”
From the Longform archive: George Orwell, Maya Angelou, Haruki Murakami and 25 more writers on writing.
“Almost Never Have I Been Considered Funny.”
An interview with Peter Matthiessen.
The Creative Mastermind
An interview with Curtis Mayfield.
Maya Angelou: The Art of Fiction No. 119
“But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs—anybody can have that—I mean in truth. That’s what I write. What it really is like. I’m just telling a very simple story.”
Lorrie Moore: The Art of Fiction No. 167
“A story is a kind of biopsy of human life.”
"It seems to me that I am more to the left than you, Mr. Stalin."
An interview with Joseph Stalin.
Blow Up the Box
An interview with Barry Diller about Aereo and the past, present and future of TV.
Previously: Vanessa Grigoriadis on the Longform Podcast.
The Bill Watterson Interview
A conversation with the author of Calvin and Hobbes.
What's Wrong With Sentimentality?
Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams, on crying in movie theaters, “attention whores” and David Foster Wallace.
A Q&A With A Vacuum Cleaner Salesman
How do you sell a $3000 vacuum?
Hey Mama
A son interviews his mother about language and love in the South.
Playboy Interview: Gawker's Nick Denton
PLAYBOY: Is it possible you set a lower value on privacy than most people do?
DENTON: I don't think people give a fuck, actually.
Interview: Philip Glass
“When society becomes unhinged, the arts get really good.”
