Doree Shafrir is a co-host of the podcast Forever35, the former executive editor of Buzzfeed, and the author of the new memoir Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer.”Right now I can make my living from podcasting, but I don’t know what the advertising market for podcasts is going to look like in five years or even one year. The blog advertising market cratered. So one of the challenges of being my own ‘brand’ is that I always do have to think about, what is the next thing? Because in my experience in media, nothing is ever good for too long.” Thanks to Mailchimp and The London Review of Books for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @doree doree-shafrir.com Shafrir on Longform 02:00 Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer (Ballantine Books • 2021) 06:00 "The Hipster Grifter" (New York Observer • Apr 2009) 08:00 Shafrir's New York Observer archive 16:00 "Chuck Klosterman, the Author Photos" (Slate • Aug 2006) 24:00 Startup (Little, Brown and Company • 2017) 36:00 Shafrir's Buzzfeed archive 36:00 Rerun (Buzzfeed) 36:00 Matt and Doree’s Eggcellent Adventure (Matt Mira and Doree Shafrir) 37:00 Forever35 (Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer)

Jessica Bruder is a journalist and author of the book Nomadland.“I don’t do a hard sell. I’ll tell people what my MO is, but I don’t push people to talk with me. I want to go deep with people. I want to be able to have the time to just sit with them and to say, ‘start at the beginning.’ Sometimes going chronologically will just take you to these places that wouldn’t have come up if I’ve just done a very guided interview. So I hung out. I’m not relentless. I don’t wear people down. But I stick around. If people just want me to fuck off, I fuck off, and I talk to other people..” Thanks to Mailchimp and The London Review of Books for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: jessicabruder.com @jessbruder 01:00 Nomadland (W. W. Norton & Company • 2018) 11:30 Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man (Gallery Books • 2007) 13:00 "Snowball's Court Decision Set for Tomorrow" (The Oregonian • October 2007) 13:30 "Faith-healing Deaths " (The Oregonian • June 2009) 16:00 "Has Perky Jerky Lost Its Perk?" (New York Times • August 2011) 19:30 "Slump in construction industry creates a Sheetrock ghost town" (The Christian Science Monitor • June 2011) 21:30 "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" (Gabriel Mac • Mother Jones • March/April 2012)

Robert McKee is an author and screenwriting lecturer. His new book is Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen.”When I'm in conversation with others, I'm always aware—or sensitive, at least—to what they're really thinking and feeling. And writers must have that. They can't possibly create excellent nonfiction or fiction if they're not aware of what is going on inside of other people, really, even subconsciously, while they go about saying whatever they do consciously in the world. Because if you just recorded the surface, if you were just paying attention to the surface, you'd be missing the whole show.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @McKeeStory mckeestory.com Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting (Regan Books • 1997) Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen (Twelve • 2021)

Ashley C. Ford is the author of Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir.“For the first time I felt like I had so many more choices in my life than I originally thought I had. That was my first realization that I did not just have to react to the world, that I could be intentional in the world, and just curious about what came back to me.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @iSmashFizzle  ashleycford.net Fortune Favors the Bold podcast 5:00 "Roger Loves Chaz" (Roger Ebert • Sep 2012) 11:34 The Giver (Lois Lowry • Houghton Mifflin • 1993) 17:47 Ford's commencement speech at Ball State 26:09 Ford's archive at Buzzfeed 41:00 "Ashley C. Ford’s Debut Memoir ‘Somebody’s Daughter’ Finds Home at Flatiron" (Paperback Paris • 2018)

Aaron Lammer is a co-host of the Longform Podcast and the host of the podcast Exit Scam: The Death and Afterlife of Gerald Cotten.“Something I got from a number of reporters that I’ve interviewed on the Longform Podcast is letting the story guide you, and ultimately that led me to an ambiguous ending. Early on, I was like, the pinnacle achievement is to solve this case. But ultimately, I felt like an ambiguous ending was the most honest to what I actually experienced in reporting it.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: 00:30 Exit Scam Podcast 00:45 Francis and the Lights 04:30 CoinTalk™️ 04:45 Jay Caspian King on Longform 05:00 Episode #59: Flashbacks and Fake Beards, a Crypto 2018 Year in Review (CoinTalk • January 2019) 11:00 Stoner Podcast 44:00 Descript 53:00 Jean-Xavier de Lestrade on Longform

Megha Rajagopalan is a senior correspondent for Buzzfeed News. She won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the Xinjiang detention camps.“It’s not so much that I talk to [the Chinese government] to get information. It’s more that I talk to them to see how they think about things and what’s important to them and what’s their view of the world. … There are so many journalists that have been thrown out of China, so there’s very few people that are able to actually have those conversations. And in the U.S., there are these seismic decisions being made about China policy, and if you don’t talk to the people that run the country, it’s a problem.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @meghara Rajagopalan on Longform Rajagopalan's Buzzfeed News archive 21:00 "This Is What A 21st-Century Police State Really Looks Like" (Buzzfeed News • Oct 2017) 35:00 Rajagopalan’s Pulitzer-winning reporting with Alison Killing and Christo Buschek 41:00 "China Secretly Built A Vast New Infrastructure To Imprison Muslims (Part 1)" (Alison Killing, Christo Buschek, Megha Rajagopalan • Buzzfeed News • Aug 2020) 41:00 "What They Saw: Ex-Prisoners Detail The Horrors Of China's Detention Camps (Part 2)" (Alison Killing, Megha Rajagopalan • Buzzfeed News • Aug 2020) 41:00 "Inside a Xinjiang Detention Camp (Part 3)" (Alison Killing, Megha Rajagopalan • Buzzfeed News • Dec 2020) 41:00 "We Found The Factories Inside China’s Mass Internment Camps (Part 4)" (Alison Killing, Megha Rajagopalan • Buzzfeed News • Dec 2020)

Barrett Swanson is a contributing editor at Harper’s and the author of Lost in Summerland.“You just have to sit there for a long time. That lesson was indisputably crucial for me. Just being willing to talk to someone, even if the first half-hour or hour is unutterably boring, or it doesn’t seem pertinent. These little things, the deeper things, take a while to get at and they kind of burble to the surface at moments when you’re not totally expecting it to happen. So for me, it’s just making myself available for that moment to occur.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: Swanson on Longform 00:30 Lost in Summerland (Catapult • 2021) 00:30 "Lost in Summerland" (The Atavist • December 2019) 00:45 "The Anxiety of Influencers" (Harper’s • September 2020) 10:00 "The Solider and the Soil" (Orion Magazine • December 2017) 11:30 "Men at Work" (Harper’s • November 2019) 20:00 "Political Fictions: Unraveling America at a West Wing Fan Convention" (Paris Review • November 2018) 28:00 “Annie Radcliffe, You Are Loved,” (American Short Fiction Issue #56 • 2015)