Sarah A. Topol is a writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. Her latest feature is ”Is Taiwan Next?”

”I think you never actually ask people head-on about what they've been through. You always ask people to just tell you what they want to tell you about anything that has happened to them…. This event that happened to you, it doesn't define you. It’s not why I'm here necessarily. Like, tell me about your childhood. Tell me about your life. Tell me about the things you think are important in your community. And by the time we get to the traumatic part, I hope they've seen enough of who I am and how I interview to feel comfortable telling me that they don't want to talk about certain things.”

Show notes:

• @satopol
• sarahatopol.com
• Topol on Longform
• 01:00 "Is Taiwan Next?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2021)
• 03:00 "The Schoolteacher and the Genocide" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2019)
• 03:00 "Trained to Kill: How Four Boy Soldiers Survived Boko Haram" (New York Times Magazine • Jun 2017)
• 03:00 "Her Uighur Parents Were Model Chinese Citizens. It Didn’t Matter." (New York Times Magazine • Jan 2020)
• 03:00 "He Played by the Rules of Putin’s Russia, Until He Didn’t: The Story of a Murder" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2019)
• 03:00 "Sons and Daughters" (Harper’s • Aug 2017)
• 03:00 "This is How You Start a War: Libya’s Frantic Fight for the Future" (GQ • Jun 2011)
• 12:00 "The Bears Who Came to Town and Would Not Go Away" (Outside • Jun 2016)
• 30:00 The Beach (Alex Garland • Riverhead • 1997)
• 37:00 "Tea and Kidnapping" (Atlantic • Oct 2012)

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