Vanessa Grigoriadis writes for Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times Magazine. Her new book is Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power, and Consent on Campus. “I’m a controversial writer. I’ve never shied away from controversy. I’ve only really

Dr. Jelani Cobb is a New Yorker staff writer and the author of three books, including The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress. He teaches journalism at Columbia University. “Ralph Wiley — the sports writer, late Ralph Wiley — told

PJ Vogt is the co-host of Reply All. “Every radio story is broken. Everything is missing some piece it’s supposed to have. Everything has some weird interview that didn’t go the way you thought it was going to go, or you thought you had an answer but you

Alex Goldman is the co-host of Reply All. “I am not the authority on the internet. I’m not an expert on particularly anything, except stuff that I like.” Thanks to MailChimp, Squarespace, and Blinkist for sponsoring this week's episode. @AGoldmund Gol

Hillary Clinton is the former Democratic nominee for president. Her new book is What Happened. “I hugged a lot of people after [my concession speech] was over. A lot of people cried … and then it was done. So Bill and I went out and got in the back of th

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is an essayist. Her latest piece is “A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof.” “I remember feeling like ‘you’re playing chess with evil, and you gotta win.’ Because this is the most terrible thing I’d ever seen. And I w

Ellen Barry is the former New York Times bureau chief for South Asia. “Every time you leave a beat—and this is something that I think as foreign correspondents we rarely communicate to our readers—you’re walking away from a story which has really been yo

Kate Fagan is a columnist and feature writer for ESPN. Her latest book is What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen. “When I was professionally closeted, I was kind of bitter. I didn’t have a ton of empathy. And I

Jay Caspian Kang is a writer at large at The New York Times Magazine and a correspondent for Vice News Tonight. “I make a pretty provocative argument about how Asian American identity doesn’t really exist—how it’s basically just an academic idea, and it’

David Gessner is the author of ten books. His latest is Ultimate Glory: Frisbee, Obsession, and My Wild Youth. “The ambition got in my way at first. Because I wanted my stuff to be great, and it froze me up. But later on it was really helpful. I’m startl

Matthew Klam is a journalist and fiction writer. His new novel is Who Is Rich?. “The New Yorker had hyped me with this “20 Under 40” thing…and when the tenth anniversary of that list [came], somebody wrote an article about it. And they found everybody in

Maggie Haberman covers the White House for The New York Times. “If I start thinking about it, then I’m not going to be able to just keep doing my job. I'm being as honest as I can — I try not to think about it. If you’re flying a plane and you think abou

Steven Levy writes for Wired, where he is the editor of Backchannel. “It’s about people. Travis Kalanick’s foibles aren’t because he’s a technology executive. It’s because he’s Travis Kalanick. That’s the way he is. There is a certain strain in Silicon V

Mark Bowden is a journalist and the author of 13 books, including Black Hawk Down and his latest, Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam. “My goal is never to condemn someone that I’m writing about. It’s always to understand them. And t

Brian Reed, a senior producer at This American Life, is the host of S-Town. “It’s a story about the remarkableness of what could be called an unremarkable life.” Thanks to MailChimp, Babbel, and Squarespace for sponsoring this episode. @brihreed Reed'

Ginger Thompson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning senior reporter at ProPublica. Her most recent article is "How the U.S. Triggered a Massacre in Mexico." “How many times have I written the phrase ‘a town that was controlled by drug traffickers?' I had no idea

Patricia Lockwood is a poet and essayist. Her new book is Priestdaddy: A Memoir. “[Prose writing is] strange to me as a poet. I’m like, ‘Well I guess I’ll tell you just what happened then.’ But the humor has to be there as well. Because in my family hous

John Grisham is the author of 38 books, including his latest novel, Camino Island. “A Time to Kill didn’t sell. It just didn’t sell. There was never any talk of going back for a second printing. No talk of paper back. No foreign deal. It was a flop. And

Erin Lee Carr is a documentary filmmaker and writer. Her new film is Mommy Dead and Dearest. “I feel like I’ve always had the story down—that’s not been really difficult for me. So the difficult thing, I think, for me, has always been access. Can I get t

Ariel Levy, a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of The Rules Do Not Apply. “I don’t believe in ‘would this’ and ‘would that.’ There’s no ‘everything happens for a reason.’ Everything happens, and then you just fucking deal. I mean we could play that

Jeffrey Gettleman is the East Africa Bureau Chief for the New York Times and the author of Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival. “I’m not an adventure-seeking adrenaline junky. I like to explore new worlds, but I’m not one of these chain-

Rafe Bartholomew is the former features editor at Grantland and the author of Two and Two: McSorley’s, My Dad, and Me. “I never saw it as something negative because [my dad] comes out, to me, at the end, extremely heroic. … He becomes this dad who I idol

Nick Bilton is a special correspondent for Vanity Fair and the author of American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road. “I’ve been covering tech for a long, long time. And the thing I’ve always tried to do is cover the

Samin Nosrat is a food writer, educator, and chef. Her new book is Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking. “I kind of couldn’t exist as just a cook or a writer. I kind of need to be both. Because they fulfill these two totally diff

Sarah Menkedick is a freelance writer and the founder of Vela. Her upcoming book is Homing Instincts: Early Motherhood on a Midwestern Farm. “I’d been rejected a ton of times—I had that 400-page thing that never became a book. So there were plenty of epi