Pablo Torre is a senior writer at ESPN the Magazine and frequently appears on Around the Horn, PTI, and other ESPN shows. “Most of my friends are not sports fans. My parents aren't. Brother and sister — no. So I just want to make things that they want to

Robin Marantz Henig, the author of nine books, writes about science and medicine for The New York Times Magazine. “I have my moments of thinking, ‘Well, why is this still so hard? Why do I still have to prove myself after all this time?’ If I were in a d

Seymour Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of The Killing of Osama Bin Laden. “The government had denied everything we said. We just asked them and they said, ‘Oh no, not true, not true.’ That’s just—it’s all pro forma. You ask t

Kelly McEvers, a former war correspondent, hosts NPR's All Things Considered and the podcast Embedded. “Listeners want you to be real, a real person. Somebody who stumbles and fails sometimes. I think the more human you are, the more people can then rela

Evan Ratliff, a co-host of the Longform Podcast, discusses"The Mastermind,” his new 7-part serialized story in The Atavist Magazine. “On several occasions [sources] didn’t want to go into the details of how they were identified. They were just like, ‘My

Susie Cagle is a journalist and illustrator. “I don’t really know what it was that made me not quit. I still kind of wonder that. There have been many times over the last couple of years even, as things are taking off in my career, things are going well,

Maciej Ceglowski is the founder of Pinboard. He writes at Idle Words. “My natural contrarianism makes me want to see if I can do something long-term in an industry where everything either changes until it's unrecognizable or gets sold or collapses. I lik

Nate Silver is the founder of FiveThirtyEight and the author of The Signal and the Noise. “I know in a perfectly rational world, if you make an 80/20 prediction, people should know that not only will this prediction not be right all the time, but you did

Elizabeth Gilbert has written for Spin, GQ, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the author of several books, including Eat, Pray, Love. “I call it the platinum rule. The golden rule is do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but the platin

Gabriel Snyder is the editor-in-chief of The New Republic. “I had a new job, I was new to the place, and I came to it with a great deal of respect but didn’t feel like I had any special claim to it. But in that moment I realized that there were all of th

Ben Smith is the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed. “I do think as a reporter in general, most of what we deal in is ephemera. And I love that. I mean that’s the business, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, I think that’s a plus and s

Daniel Alarcón, a novelist and the co-founder of Radio Ambulante, has written for Harper's, California Sunday, and the New York Times Magazine. “I’m a writer. I’ve written a bunch of books, and I care a lot about my sentences and my prose and all that. B

Jia Tolentino is the deputy editor of Jezebel. “Insult itself is an opportunity. I’m glad to be a woman, and I’m glad not to be white. I think it’s made me tougher. I’ve never been able to assume comfort or power. I’m just glad. I’m glad, especially as y

Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly advice column for New York and is the author of the upcoming How to Be a Person in the World. “I don’t give a shit if I succeed or fail or what I do next, I just want to do things that are strange and not sound bit

Wesley Yang writes for New York and other publications. “If a person remains true to some part of their experience, no matter what it is, and they present it in full candor, there’s value to that. People will recognize it. Once I knew that was true, I kn

Mishka Shubaly is the author of I Swear I’ll Make It Up to You and several best-selling Kindle Singles. “I remember thinking when I was shipwrecked in the Bahamas, ‘I’m going to fucking die here. I’m 24 years old, I’m going to die, and no one will miss m

Heben Nigatu and Tracy Clayton host Another Round. “I’m just trying to follow my curiosities. You know how kids always ask the best questions because they haven’t lost the will to live? I’m just desperately trying to keep that childish curiosity about th

Michael J. Mooney is a staff writer at D Magazine and the author of The Life and Legend of Chris Kyle. “There are some elements of crime stories that are so absurd that it’s funny, and so working on the “How Not to Get Away With Murder” story, it was act

Alex Perry, based in England, has covered Africa and Asia for Newsweek and Time. His most recent book is The Rift: A New Africa Breaks Free. “I got a call from one of my editors in 2003 or 2004, and he said something like, ‘You realize someone has died i

Grant Wahl is senior writer at Sports Illustrated and the author of The Beckham Experiment. “I said to Balotelli, ‘I know you’re into President Obama. There’s a decent chance that he might read this story.’ He kind of perked up. I don’t think I was delib

Brooke Gladstone is the co-host of On the Media and the author of The Influencing Machine. “I'm not going to get any richer or more famous than I am right now. This is it, this is fine — it's better than I ever expected. I don't have anything to risk any

Venkatesh Rao is the founder of Ribbonfarm and the author of Breaking Smart. “I would say I was blind and deaf and did not know anything about how the world worked until I was about 25. It took until almost 35 before I actually cut loose from the script.

Doug McGray is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of California Sunday and Pop-Up. “Your life ends up being made up of the things you remember. You forget most of it, but the things that you remember become your life. And if you can make something that s

Kliph Nesteroff writes for WFMU's Beware of the Blog. His book, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy, was released in November. “Well, comedy always becomes stale. Whether it’s offensive or not offensive, it has

Adrian Chen is a freelance journalist who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Wired. His latest article is "Unfollow," about a former member of the Westboro Baptist Church. “Twitter and social media get such a bad rep for bei