Reggie Ugwu is an arts reporter for The New York Times. “I find that even though I talk to celebrities or popular artists, I’m not all that interested in celebrity. I’m pretty uninterested in celebrity. But I’m really interested in creativity.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @uugwuu Ugwu on Longform Ugwu's New York Times archive 10:00 The Quake (Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria • Frontline • Mar 2010) 12:00 "Inside The Playlist Factory" (Buzzfeed • Jul 2016) 12:00 stereogum.com 17:00 "A Song No One Remembered. A Podcast That’s Hard to Forget." (New York Times • Mar 2020) 18:00 "'Song Exploder' and the Inexhaustible Hustle of Hrishikesh Hirway" (New York Times • Nov 2020) 22:00 "Francis and the Lights, Pop Star Interrupted" (New York Times • Mar 2020) 27:00 "'Black Panther' Star Chadwick Boseman Dies of Cancer at 43" (New York Times • Aug 2020) 27:00 "Overlooked No More: Robert Johnson, Bluesman Whose Life Was a Riddle" (New York Times • Sept 2019) 28:00 "How Chadwick Boseman Embodies Black Male Dignity" (New York Times • Jan 2019) 30:00 "Why Are There So Few Black Directors in the Criterion Collection?" (Kyle Buchanan and Reggie Ugwu • New York Times • Aug 2020)

Stephanie McCrummen is a national enterprise reporter at The Washington Post. “I do have to psych myself up. There’s always something awkward about it and that never goes away. … No matter how long I do this job, that part of it doesn’t get any easier. It’s always a bit awkward and you’re always sort of humbled when someone actually is willing to talk to you. Then it can be kind of thrilling, once you’re in it, once you’re actually in the conversation. ... But the moment a few seconds before that is still—to this day, it’s sort of an act of will.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @mccrummenWaPo McCrummen on Longform McCrummen's Washington Post archive 08:00 "In Georgia, a Biden supporter realizes the power of her ballot" (Washington Post • Nov 2020) 12:00 "Miranda’s Rebellion" (Washington Post • Feb 2020) 28:00 "Judgment Days" (Washington Post • Jul 2018) 37:00 "Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32" (Washington Post • Nov 2017) 43:00 "A woman approached The Post with dramatic — and false — tale about Roy Moore. She appears to be part of undercover sting operation." (Shawn Boburg, Aaron C. Davis and Alice Crites • Washington Post • Nov 2017)

Olivia Nuzzi is the White House correspondent for New York.“I don’t think that, broadly speaking, this a group of redeemable people. … But I do think there is tremendous value, in this first draft of history, trying to understand why the fuck they are like this. … There is value in understanding why these people are like this because they are the reason why we are here in this situation. And I think it’s a [question] that historians will try to answer years from now. … I view my job as providing fodder for that.” Thanks to Mailchimp and SAIC for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:   @Olivianuzzi Nuzzi on Longform Nuzzi's archive at New York 13:00 "The Final Gasp of Donald Trump’s Presidency" (New York • Nov 2020) 24:00 "Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus Want You to Know They’re Actually Friends" (New York • Feb 2017) 25:00 "My Private Oval Office Press Conference With Trump, Pence, Pompeo, and Kelly" (New York • Oct 2018) 25:00 "How John Kelly Failed to Tame the West Wing" (New York • Dec 2018) 25:00 "The Chaotic, Desperate, Last-Minute Trump 2020 Reboot" (New York • Aug 2020) 36:00 "The Mystifying Triumph of Hope Hicks, Donald Trump’s Right-Hand Woman" (GQ • Jun 2016) 39:00 "An Anonymous Republican on Power vs. Contempt for Trump" (New York • Oct 2020) 56:00 "Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border" (Ginger Thompson • ProPublica • Jun 2018) 1:06:00 "Does Governor Andrew Cuomo Have His Nipples Pierced?" (New York • Apr 2020) 1:08:00 Nuzzi's archive at The Daily Beast 1:08:00 "The Entire Presidency Is a Superspreading Event" (New York • Oct 2020)  

Reeves Wiedeman is a reporter at New York and the author of the new book Billion Dollar Loser. “You get inside these companies and … you assume everything is running based on models and numbers and then you get inside and it’s just people. And sometimes they have MBAs and sometimes they don’t. … At the end of the day, whether you’re running a media company or an office space company, it’s all people making these decisions and they often do very strange, contradictory, and ultimately unsuccessful things.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @reeveswiedeman reeveswiedeman.net Wiedeman on Longform Wiedeman on Longform Podcast Wiedeman's archive at New York Magazine 01:00 "The Watcher" (New York • Nov 2018) 01:00 "What's Left of Condé Nast" (New York • Oct 2019) 01:00 "A Company Built on a Bluff" (New York • Jun 2018) 01:00 "The I in We" (New York • Jun 2019) 02:00 Billion Dollar Loser (Little Brown • 2020) 17:00 "Is Uber Evil, Or Just Doomed?" (New York • May 2017) 25:00 Cambridge Analytica coverage at The Guardian  

Latif Nasser co-hosts Radiolab. He also hosted The Other Latif and the Netflix documentary series Connected.“It’s so easy to hate everything and be cynical. There’s a kind of ease to that. It takes a lot more courage to go up in front of everybody and be like, This is awesome. I love this. That takes a lot of guts, I think.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:   @latifnasser 02:00 The Other Latif (WNYC Studios • 2020) 02:00 Connected (Netflix • 2020) 09:00 "Dust" from Connected (Netflix • 2020) 09:00 "Digits" from Connected (Netflix • 2020) 18:00 "A Clockwork Miracle" (Radiolab • 2012) 22:00 "Smile My Ass" (Radiolab • Oct 2015) 28:00 "The World’s Biggest Scavenger Hunt: A Guide To Finding Stories" (Transom • Nov 2018)  

Barton Gellman is a staff writer for The Atlantic. and was previously a Pulitzer-winning reporter at The Washington Post. His latest book is Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State and his latest essay is "The Election That Could Break America."“I have found that I have a talent for accidentally pissing people off. ... I’m interested most in accountability and the use and abuse of power. So naturally it’s going to annoy people sometimes. And sometimes they take it like grown-ups and sometimes less so.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @bartongellman bartongellman.com Gellman on Longform Dark Mirror (Penguin Press • 2020) 10:00 Gellman's early Washington Post archive 37:00 Gellman's Time archive 39:00 Gellman's NSA stories at The Washington Post 57:00 "The Election That Could Break America" (The Atlantic • Nov 2020)  

Latria Graham is a writer living in South Carolina. Her work has appeared in Outside, Garden & Gun, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Her latest essay is "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream." “My goal as a person—not just as a writer—is to be the adult that I needed when I was younger. That’s why I go and talk to college classes. That’s why I write some of these vulnerable things, to let people that are struggling know that they’re not on their own. … I have to be unmerciful to myself, I think, in order to do it. I really do try to dissect myself and my mistakes. And just kind of say, Here’s the full deck of my life. Take from it what you need. But I’m not holding out on you.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes: @LatriaGraham latriagraham.com 10:00 Going Hungry (Kate M. Taylor • Anchor • 2008) 32:00 "The Dark Knight Unmasked" (SB Nation • Jan 2016) 37:00 "We're Here. You Just Don't See Us." (Outside • May 2018) 37:00 "Out There, Nobody Can Hear You Scream" (Outside • Sept 2020) 48:00 "How an E-Bike Got Me Riding Again After 20 Years" (Bicycling • Jul 2018) 1:03:00 "A Dream Uprooted" (Garden & Gun • Apr/May 2020)

Nicholson Baker is the author of 18 books of fiction and nonfiction. He has written for The New Yorker, Harper’s, and many other publications. His latest book is Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act. "In the end, I don’t care how famous you get, how widely read you are during your lifetime. You’re going to be forgotten. And you’re going to have five or six fans in the end. It’s going to be your grandchildren or your great-grandchildren are going to say, Oh, yeah, he was big. … So I think the key is, write what you actually care about. Because in the end, you’re only doing this for yourself. … So maybe do your best stuff for yourself and for the three, four, five people who know in the coming century that you ever existed. That’s all you need to do." Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @nicholsonbaker8 nicholsonbaker.com The Mezzanine (Grove Press • 1988) Baseless (Penguin Press • 2020) 10:00 Human Smoke (Simon & Schuster • 2009) 10:00 "Wrong Answer" (Harper's • Sept 2013) 11:00 Room Temperature (Grove Press • 2010) 11:00 U and I (Random House • 2000) 11:00 The Fermata(2000) 12:00 "The Projector" (New Yorker • Mar 1994) 12:00 The Size of Thoughts (Vintage Contemporaries • 1996) 13:00 "The Author vs. the Library" (New Yorker • Oct 1996) 19:00 Double Fold (Vintage • 2002) 30:00 Lab 257 (Michael Carroll • Willam Morrow Paperbacks • 2005) 33:00 Longform Podcast #192: Seymour Hersh 33:00 The Killing of Osama Bin Laden (Seymour Hersh • Verso • 2017) 33:00 Longform Podcast #321: Nicholas Schmidle 33:00 "Getting Bin Laden" (Nicholas Schmidle • New Yorker • Aug 2011) 46:00 Baker's New Yorker archive    

Elizabeth Weil covers California and the climate for ProPublica. She has written for The New York Times Magazine, California Sunday, and more.“As a journalist you’re endlessly asking people to tell you really personal, really vulnerable stuff about their lives. And I feel like you have to be willing to be in that conversation too—or really think about why you’re not willing.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:  @lizweil elizabethweil.net Weil on Longform 03:00 "Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (For the Third Time)" (New York Times Magazine • Mar 2018) 04:00 "What the Photos of Wildfires and Smoke Don’t Show You" (ProPublica • Sept 2020) 08:00 "The Climate Crisis Is Happening Right Now. Just Look at California’s Weekend." (ProPublica • Sept 2020) 13:00 "The Lost Boys of Sudan; The Long, Long, Long Road to Fargo" (Sara Corbett • New York Times Magazine • April 2001) 17:00 Off the Sidelines (Kirsten Gillibrand • Penguin Random House • 2015) 20:00 "In the Ashes of Ghost Ship" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2018) 24:00 "Mary Cain Is Growing Up Fast" (New York Times Magazine • Mar 2015) 31:00 "Kamala Harris Takes Her Shot" (Atlantic • May 2019) 32:00 The Girl Who Smiled Beads (Clemantine Wamariya • Penguin Random House • 2019) 36:00 No Cheating, No Dying (Scribner • 2012) 36:00 They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus (Bantam • 2010) 39:00 "Married (Happily) With Issues" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2009) 42:00 "Raising a Teenage Daughter" (California Sunday Magazine • Nov 2017)  

Jiayang Fan is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her latest article is a "How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda.""I think considering the unusual shape of our lives—the lives of my mother and I—from bare subsistence to one of the richest enclaves in America … it made me think about what the value of existence is. ... It made me wonder, What should a person be? And how should a person be? And being a writer has been a lifelong quest to answer those questions." Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes   @JiayangFan Fan on Longform Fan at The New Yorker 02:00 "How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda" (New Yorker • Sept 2020) 09:00 "Hong Kong's Protest Movement and the Fight for the City's Soul" (New Yorker • Dec 2019) 40:00 "China's Selfie Obsession" (New Yorker • Dec 2017) 41:00 "China's Mistress-Dispellers" (New Yorker • June 2017) 43:00 "How E-Commerce is Transforming Rural China" (New Yorker • July 2018)  

Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, and playwright. She is the author of the new book, Just Us: An American Conversation.“I began to wonder, why am I maintaining civility around things that are actually very important to me? This might be the only chance I get to stand up for myself. As Claudia. As a Black person. As a Black woman. As an American citizen. So what am I waiting for? What am I preserving when the thing I am supposedly preserving is also the thing that is on some level killing me?” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: Rankine on Longform Just Us: An American Conversation (Graywolf Press • 2020) Citizen: An American Lyric (Graywolf Press • 2014) 4:00 "The Meaning of Serena Williams" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2015) 4:00 "I Wanted to Know What White Men Thought About Their Privilege. So I Asked." (New York Times Magazine • July 2019) 4:00 On Being: Claudia Rankine 43:00 "Black Newborns More Likely to Die When Looked After By White Doctors" (Rob Picheta • CNN • Aug 2020)  

Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. He served as guest editor for the September issue of Vanity Fair, titled "The Great Fire."“There’s this pressure to say something. Say something. The world’s burning, say something. But I try to stay where I’ve been or where I’ve tried to be in my career. ... Good things take time. You gotta let things cook. You can’t insta-bake something like this.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:   ta-nehisicoates.com Coates on Longform Longform Podcast #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #97: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #225: Ta-Nehisi Coates Longform Podcast #360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson 1:00 "The Great Fire: A Special Issue, Edited by Ta-Nehisi Coates" (Vanity Fair • September 2020) 1:15 "On Witnessing and Respair: A Personal Tragedy Followed by Pandemic" (Jesmyn Ward • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 1:15 "Blue Bloods: America's Brotherhood of Police Officers" (Eve L. Ewing • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 1:30 "The Abolition Movement" (Josie Duffy Rice • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 1:30 "College Football Players are Unpaid Stars on the Field – And Have No Power Off It" (Bomani Jones • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 1:45 "Amy Sherald on Making Breonna Taylor's Portrait" (Miles Pope • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 7:00 The Apollo and The Atlantic Present Black Panther in Conversation: Featuring Chadwick Boseman and Ta-Nehisi Coates 9:30 “He Was An Epic Firework Display”: Ryan Coogler on Chadwick Boseman 15:00 Longform Podcast #363: Radhika Jones 15:45 "'I Am Still Called by the God I Serve to Walk This Out' A conversation with Lucia McBath, mother of Jordan Davis" (The Atlantic • February 2014) 20:30 "Mississippi: A Poem, In Days" (Kiese Makeba Lamon • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 23:15 "The Life of Breonna Taylor Lived, in the Words of Her Mother" (Ta-Nehisi Coates • Photography by Latoya Ruby Frazier • Vanity Fair • September 2020) 26:00 Between the World and Me 27:45 "Viola Davis: “My Entire Life Has Been a Protest" (Sonia Saraiya • Vanity Fair • July/August 2020) 27:45 "Janelle Monáe: Artist in Residence" (Yohana Desta • Vanity Fair • May 2020) 27:45 "For the Love of Lupita Nyong’o" (Kimberly Drew • Vanity Fair • September 2019) 44:00 "I’m Still Reading Andrew Sullivan. But I Can’t Defend Him." (Ben Smith • New York Times • Aug 2020) 46:15 "Myths About Physical Racial Differences Were Used to Justify Slavery — and are Still Believed by Doctors Today." (Linda Villarosa • New York Times Magazine • August 2019)  

Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg are the co-authors of the new book I Got A Monster: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Corrupt Police Squad.“We really wanted to create some kind of leftist, anti-racist true crime story that we really haven’t seen. The conventions of the thriller often smuggle in all of this really right-wing, pro-police propaganda that all of our cops were raised on—the story of cops having to crash cars and break rules in order to get the bad guys. We wanted to take that and subvert it, using its methods to blow it up from the inside while also being rigorously reported.” Thanks to Mailchimp and The Jordan Harbinger Show for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @baynardwoods @notrivia 5:30 "Even After the Remaining Charges Were Dropped in Freddie Gray's Death, Mosby Received a Hero's Welcome in Sandtown While the FOP Countered SAO's Arguments" (Baynard Woods • Baltimore City Paper • August 2016) 7:00 "Freddie Gray: Judge Declares Mistrial in Case Against Baltimore Police Officer" (Baynard Woods • The Guardian • December 2015) 8:00 "What Happened to Tyree Woodson?" (Baynard Woods • Baltimore City Paper • May 2017) 8:15 "The Detective and the Rapper" (Baynard Woods • Baltimore City Paper • October 2014) 8:15 Longform Podcast #395: Wesley Lowery 18:00 The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal. (Evan Ratliff • Random House • 2019) 28:30 "A Documentary About Baltimore's Notorious Urban Dirt Bike Riders" (Baynard Woods • Baltimore City Paper • March 2013) 28:30 Coffin Point: The Strange Cases Of Ed Mc Teer, Witch Doctor Sheriff (Baynard Woods • River City Publishing • 2010)  

Andrea Valdez is the editor-in-chief of The 19th*.“You know how sometimes you hear a song and you think, Gosh, it feels like that song has always existed and an artist just plucked it out of the air and played it and now it’s a part of our musical canon? I really hope that The 19th* is a news organization where it feels like it has always been, should have always been, and will always be there.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show Notes @andreamvaldez 00:30 The 19th* 1:30 Valdez's archive at Texas Monthly 17:50 Valdez's archive at Wired 25:15 Valdez's archive at The Texas Observer 32:00 "America’s First Female Recession" (Chabeli Carrazana • The 19th* • July 2020) 32:00 "Black Female Voters Say They Want What They’re Owed: Power" (Errin Haines • The 19th* • July 2020) 33:00 "Kamala Harris Applauds Biden’s “Audacity to Choose a Black Woman to Be His Running Mate”" (Shefali Luthra • The 19th* • August 2020) 37:45 "Breonna Taylor’s Death Looms Over Kentucky’s Primary Election (Errin Haines • The 19th* • June 2020) 41:00 "The Newsroom Where Politics Is Not About Men" (Angelina Chapin • The Cut • Aug 2020)  

Jason Parham is a senior writer at Wired.“I think of myself some days as a critic. Some days I think of myself as a journalist. But I essentially mostly think of myself as an essayist, somebody who is trying to bridge those two traditions. My approach to writing now is kind of simple…I’m always writing about things I like and want to hear about.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:   @nonlinearnotes jasonparham.com 00:45 "TikTok and the Evolution of Digital Blackface" (Wired • Aug 2020) 1:00 Spook 1:45 Evan (@henrylittleboots) on TikTok 18:30  "The Reality of Dating White Women When You're Black" (Ernest Baker • Gawker • Jun 2014) 21:30 "Gawker Media's Responsibility to Diversity" (Jan 2015) 24:00 Gawker Cuts Seven Staffers as It Goes All Politics (Peter Sterne • Politico • Nov 2015) 29:15 Longform Podcast #335: Kiese Laymon (Peter Sterne • Politico • Nov 2015) 30:00 "And Lo, With Russell Westbrook, Humanity Outpaced Science" (Wired • June 2017) 30:00 "How Oprah’s Network Finally Found Its Voice" (Wired • June 2018) 39:15 Longform Podcast #157: Margo Jefferson 39:15 "Ripping Off Black Music" (Harper’s • January 1973) 43:00 "Why I (Still) Love Tech: In Defense of a Difficult Industry" (Wired • May 2019) 44:15 "When Influencers Switch Platforms—and Bare It All" (Wired • August 2019)  

Jenny Kleeman is a journalist, broadcaster and the author of the new book Sex Robots and Vegan Meat: Adventures at the Frontier of Birth, Food, Sex, and Death.“It’s better to cover one thing in a really illuminating way than to try and explore every single aspect of a topic in a really superficial way. So if there’s one thing that particularly interests you or fascinates you, if there’s just one question you want to ask, do as much research as you can on that one question and you’ll end up with a much more illuminating interview than something that is a precis of their entire field. Because anyone can do that.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:   Mailchimp's By the Books @jennykleeman jennykleeman.com 13:15 "The Race to Build the World's First Sex Robot" (The Guardian • April 2017) 15:00 "The Murderers Next Door" (The Guardian • October 2014) 21:00 "The YouTube Star Who Fought Back Against Revenge Porn—and Won" (The Guardian • January 2018) 32:15 The Immaculate Deception Podcast 34:00 BBC Hotspot 36:00 HBO: Vice News Tonight  

Seyward Darby is the editor-in-chief of The Atavist Magazine and the author of Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism.“The most enlightening thing I learned in working on this book ultimately was that when we think of hate we think of animosity. Hate means I do not like someone or I do not like something. I deplore it. I despise it. But hate as a movement is actually a lot more like any social movement where it’s providing something to its supporters, members, acolytes that they were seeking but didn’t necessarily know where they were going to find it. So it could be camaraderie, it could be power, it could be purpose, in some cases it could be money. There’s something terrifyingly mundane about that.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes:   The Mastermind Chronicles of Now @seywarddarby seywarddarby.com 3:15 "White Supremacy Was Her World. And Then She Left." (New York Times • 2020) 8:00 A Voice of Hate in America’s Heartland (New York Times • 2017) 8:45 The Rise of the Valkyries (Harpers • 2017) 20:00 Longform Podcast #362: Andrew Marantz 30:15 The History of White People (Nell Irvin Painter • W. W. Norton & Company • 2011) 32:45 Longform Podcast #395: Wesley Lowery 43:15 Duke Lacrosse Case 50:00 The Duke Lacrosse Scandal and the Birth of the Alt-Right (New York Magazine • 2017)  

Raquel Willis, the former executive editor of Out, is an activist, journalist, and writer. Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the Coronavirus News for Black Folks newsletter.“To my peers, I would just say that we have to rethink our idea of leadership. Rethink our idea of storytelling. As the media, we shouldn’t be seeing ourselves as the owners and the gatekeepers of people’s stories. We actually need to be democratizing this experience—sharing the tools of storytelling with other folks. Folks are hungry to tell their own stories and may not always have the tools.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @RaquelWillis_ raquelwillis.com 00:30 "Self-Care for Black Journalists" (Patrice Peck • New York Times • Jul 2020) 00:45 Transgender Law Center 00:45 Out 01:00 Ms. Foundation for Women 13:00 National Association of Black Journalists 16:45 "Trans Women Are Women. This Isn’t a Debate." (The Root • Mar 2017) 19:00 "I Was Born a Boy" (Janet Mock • The Root • Mar 2017) 19:30 Orange is the New Black 26:30 HowStuffWorks 27:15 Transgender Teen's Death Sparks Outcry From Advocates (Eliana Dockterman • Time • Dec 2014) 28:00 I"Man Sentenced to 12 Years in Beating Death of Transgender Woman" (James C. McKinley Jr. • New York Times • Apr 2016) 38:15 Jack Jones Literary Arts 39:30 "Our March Cover Stars: The Mothers and Daughters of the Movement" (Out • February 2019) 40:30 BYP100 41:00 "Introducing the Out100 Trans Obituaries Project" (Out • November 2019) 41:15 "Layleen Cubilette-Polanco Died in the System, but Her Fight Lives On" (Out • November 2019) 45:30 ”Overlooked" (New York Times)

An episode featuring Ashley C. Ford from "The Books That Changed Us," a new, short-run podcast hosted by Aaron and Max where authors discuss the books that made them who they are. The 10-episode series is part of Mailchimp's By The Books, a summer-long virtual literary festival curated by last week's Longform guests, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman.

Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman are co-hosts of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend and co-authors of the new book Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close.“People telling you about their lives is a real privilege and honor. No one owes you to tell you their story. Sometimes in the world of people who write or people who make media there is just this expectation that everything is on the table, especially if you’re two women who make media, that we’re supposed to just share our pain and everything that’s going on in our lives but that’s not fair and it’s not true and I think the larger project of this book is really sharing these stories in service of having an honest dialogue about how other people are doing friendship.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @aminatou @annfriedman bigfriendship.com annfriedman.com Longform Podcast #37: Ann Friedman 2:00 Mailchimp Presents: By The Books 19:00 Shine Theory 1:08:15 Carrie Frye

Maria Konnikova is a journalist, professional poker player, and author of the new book The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win.

Tessie Castillo, a journalist covering criminal justice reform, and George Wilkerson, a prisoner on death row in North Carolina, are two of the co-authors Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row.

Dean Baquet is executive editor of The New York Times.

Jacqueline Charles is the Caribbean correspondent at the Miami Herald. Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the Coronavirus News for Black Folks newsletter.

Kierna Mayo is the showrunner and head writer for the Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact. She is the former editor-in-chief of Ebony and Honey Magazine, which she co-founded at age 27. Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist an