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 me something when I was 25 or so, and he was so right. He said I should never fall in love with anything I’ve written. … The second thing he told me was, ‘You won’t get there overnight, and believe me, you don’t want to.’ I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t get it when he told me that. I was like — why would I not want to get there overnight? Now I’m like: Thank God I didn’t get there overnight. Because there’s so much writing I would have to explain.”
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Cobb on Longform
[00:00] Stoner
[01:30] Cobb’s Archive at The New Yorker
[03:30] "The Life and Death of Jamaica High School" (New Yorker • Aug 2015)
[07:45] Cobb’s Archive at Washington City Paper
[09:40] Longform Podcast #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
[09:40] Longform Podcast #97: Ta-Nehisi Coates
[09:40] Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates
[10:00] Joel Dias-Porter’s Archive at The Poetry Foundation
[10:05] Kenneth Carroll’s Archive at The Poetry Foundation
[10:10] Elvis Presley Is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem (Brian Gilmore • Third World Press • 1983)
[11:30] Marion Barry archive at Washington City Paper
[21:05] The Progressive
[21:10] The Crisis
[23:20] "My Daughter Once Removed" (Chicken Soup for the Soul • 2008)
[23:40] The Devil & Dave Chappelle & Other Essays (Basic Books • 2007)
[27:31] "Policing the Police" (Frontline • June 2016)
[41:00] "The Ambivalent Legacy of Brown v. Board" (New Yorker • May 2014)
[41:30] "The Matter of Black Lives" (New Yorker • Mar 2016)
[41:30] "What I Saw in Ferguson" (New Yorker • Aug 2014)
[44:40] The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress (Walker Books • 2010)
[48:50] Trump’s speech in Arizona (CNN • Aug 2017)
[57:00] Birth of a Nation (Epoch Producing Co • 1915)
[53:50] "Podcast #168: Jelani Cobb, The Half-Life of Freedom" (NYPL Podcast • June 2017)
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