Emily Witt is a freelance writer and the author of Future Sex. “I think I had always thought that—maybe this is coming from a WASPy, protestant background—if I presented myself as overtly sexual in any way, it would be a huge turnoff. That they would see

Krista Tippett is the host of On Being and the author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living. “Good journalists in newsrooms hold themselves to primitive standards when they’re covering religious ideas and people. They’re sloppy

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.’ T

A.J. Daulerio is the former editor-in-chief of Gawker. “The choices they’ve given me are take back everything that you loved about Nick [Denton], Gawker, and your job, and we’ll give you your $1,000 back or your ability to make money. You can walk away f

Julia Turner is editor-in-chief of Slate. “That’s what we’ve been focused on: trying to double down on the stuff that feels distinctive and original. Because if you spend all your time on a social platform, and a bunch of media brands are optimizing all

Naomi Zeichner is editor-in-chief of The Fader. “Right now in rap there’s kind of a huge tired idea that kids are trying to kill their idols, and kids have no respect for history, and kids are making bastardized crazy music, and how dare they? I just don

Ben Taub is a contributing writer at The New Yorker. “I don’t think it’s my place to be cynical because I’ve observed some of the horrors of the Syrian War through these various materials, but it’s Syrians that are living them. It’s Syrians that are bein

Sarah Schweitzer is a former feature writer for the Boston Globe. “I just am drawn, I think, to the notion that we start out as these creatures that just want love and were programmed that way—to try to find it and to make our lives whole. We are, as hum

Rachel Monroe is a freelance writer based in Texas. “I will totally go emotionally deep with people. If I can find a subject who is into that then it will probably be a good story. Whether that person is a victim of a crime, or a committer of a crime, or

McKay Coppins is a senior political writer for Buzzfeed News and the author of The Wilderness: Deep Inside the Republican Party's Combative, Contentious, Chaotic Quest to Take Back the White House. “I am part of the problem. Not in the sense that it’s my

Gabriel Sherman is the national affairs editor at New York and the author of the New York Times best-seller The Loudest Voice in the Room: How the Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News—and Divided a Country. “There was a time when we got death

Jon Mooallem is the author of "American Hippopotamus," a story included in Love and Ruin, the new Atavist Magazine collection. Buy your copy today.

Ezra Klein the editor-in-chief of Vox. “I think that if any of these big players collapse, when their obits are written, it’ll be because they did too much. I’m not saying I think any of them in particular are doing too much. But I do think, when I look

Malcolm Gladwell is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new podcast is Revisionist History. “The amount of criticism you get is a constant function of the size of your audience. So if you think that, generously speaking, 80% of the people who read your

Ellis Jones is the editor-in-chief of VICE Magazine. “I’m just not an edgy person. You know what I mean? I think I am a nice person. I think VICE Magazine reflects the qualities that I want to have or think that I have or that my team has. The magazine w

David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. “I think it’s important — not just for me, but for the readers — that this thing exists at the highest possible level in 2016, in 2017, and on. That there’s a continuity to it. I know, because I’m not entire

Christian Miller, senior investigative reporter at ProPublica, and Ken Armstrong, staff writer at The Marshall Project, co-wrote the Pulitzer-winning article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape.” “I won’t forget this: when T. and I talked on the phone and

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. I

Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer for The New Yorker. "The Really Big One," her article about the rupturing of the Cascadia fault line, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize. “I can tell you in absolute sincerity: I didn't realize I was writing a scary story. Obvio

Shane Bauer, a senior reporter for Mother Jones, spent four months working undercover as a guard in a private prison. “The thing that I grappled with the most afterward was a feeling of shame about who I was as a guard and some of the things that I had d

Frank Rich, a former culture and political columnist for The New York Times, writes for New York and is the executive producer of Veep. “All audiences bite back. If you have an opinion—forget about whether it’s theater or politics. If it’s about sports,

Louisa Thomas, a former writer and editor at Grantland, is a New Yorker contributor and the author of Louisa. Her father Evan Thomas, a longtime writer for Newsweek and Time, is the author of several award-winning books, including last year's Being Nixon.

Nikole Hannah-Jones covers civil rights for The New York Times Magazine. “I don’t think there’s any beat you can cover in America that race is not intertwined with—environment, politics, business, housing, you name it. So, whatever beat you put me on, th

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 thes

Leah Finnegan, a former New York Times and Gawker editor, is the managing news editor at Genius. “After the Condé Nast article, Nick Denton decided Gawker needed to be 20% nicer, and I took a buyout because I was not 20% nicer.” Thanks to MailChimp, Aud