Longform

Episode 540: Heidi Blake

Jun 28, 2023

48:29

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Introduction

2min

The Assassination of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Ratchedam-Maktoum

3min

The Story of Latifah's Escape

3min

The Moral Trade-Off Between the British Government and the UAE

3min

Tracking Down Chauffeurs for the Sheikh Mohammed's Properties

6min

The Story of Latifah's Life in the Royal Family

3min

The Tifa's Disavowment of Statements

3min

The Importance of Cognitive Dissonance in Relationships

2min

The Role of Local Police Detectives in Russian Assassinations

3min

10.

The Jadedness of Investigating Russia's Assassinations

5min

11.

The Power of Outrage

3min

12.

The Importance of Telling the Truth

2min

13.

The Importance of Reporting on Corruption

3min

14.

The Inauspicious Time of Investigative Journalism

4min

15.

The Future of Journalism

2min

Heidi Blake is a writer for The New Yorker and the author of two books, From Russia with Blood: The Kremlin's Ruthless Assassination Program and Vladimir Putin's Secret War on the West and The Ugly Game: The Corruption of FIFA and the Qatari Plot to Buy the World Cup, with Jonathan Calvert. Her latest article is “The Fugitive Princess of Dubai.”

“I definitely feel as an investigative reporter that I feel very driven by my own capacity for shock and outrage and genuinely feeling like this is unbelievable. And that kind of makes me want to keep digging. And once I stop feeling that on any given topic, I lose interest. And so I’ve always been a generalist, and I just kind of rove from one topic to the next. I’m always finding myself in new territory where I know absolutely nothing about the thing I’m starting to dig into and have to try and play catch up and get my head around something new.”

Show notes: