Clarissa Ward is the chief international correspondent for CNN. Along with field producer Brent Swails and photojournalists William Bonnett and Scott McWhinnie, Ward won the 2022 George Polk Award for her real-time coverage of the rapid rise of the Taliban as U.S. forces withdrew from Afghanistan last summer.“I used to come back from war zones and feel completely disconnected from my life—disconnected from my friends, from my family. I would look down on people about the conversations they were having about silly things. I would feel kind of numb and miserable. And then I realized that if you want to be able to keep doing this work, you have to choose to embrace the privileges that you've been given. And you have to choose joy and choose love and be kind to yourself and have a glass of wine and go dancing or run up a mountain—whatever it is that does it for you, embrace it. That is part of the tax you pay for surviving these things: You've got to continue to love life.”This is the first in a week-long series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jackie MacMullan is an NBA journalist who has written for The Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated and ESPN. She hosts the podcast Icons Club for The Ringer.“[Athletes] think they don't need journalists—and they're wrong. And I tell them all this. I'm like, ‘I know you think you've got your own production company, but we can tell your story better than you can.' That's just the truth. No one tells their own story the best. It's the people around them that tell the story the best. And nobody wants a whitewashed version of you. They want warts and all. That's what makes you lovable. That's what makes you interesting. ... There are great journalists out there that can tell your story—and it might not be exactly the way you want it to be told, but it'll have weight and it'll have legacy to it.”Show notes: MacMullan's Sports Illustrated archive MacMullan's ESPN archive Jackie MacMullan says goodbye to Around the Horn 01:00 "Journalism Pioneer Jackie MacMullan, Former Globe Columnist, to Retire From ESPN" (Chad Finn • Boston Globe • Aug 2021) 18:00 Bird Watching: On Playing and Coaching the Game I Love (Larry Bird, Jackie MacMullan • Grand Central Publishing • 1999) 21:00 When the Game Was Ours (Larry Bird, Earvin Johnson, Jackie MacMullan • Houghton Mifflin Harcourt • 2009) 22:00 Shaq Uncut (Shaquille O’Neal, Jackie MacMullan • Grand Central Publishing • 2011) 24:00 Icons Club (The Ringer • 2022) 27:00 ESPN Daily (Pablo Torre • ESPN) 27:00 The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy (Bill Simmons • ESPN • 2010) 39:00 The Last Dance (Netflix • 2020) 49:00 "When Making the NBA Isn't a Cure-All: Mental Health and Black Athletes" (ESPN • Aug 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Human beings, we are the same, right? Like when you come out of the womb, you need to eat, you need to sleep, you need to pee, you need to shit, and when it comes to emotional needs, you need to feel loved. You need to feel there's compassion, you know? You need to feel significant and of value. And when it comes to like the feeling of significance and feeling valued, I think that's where we start to get into trouble because the same things that you hold of value, I may not in the same way. […] And so if I can engage you and recognize the perspective from which you come, and at least give you an entry level or a human level of respect from the beginning, then the departure point for our engagement is a proper one, as opposed to an antagonistic one.” @alzoslade VICE on Showtime Cheat on Apple Podcasts 15:00 "Moment of Truth: The Day Dr. Christine Blasey Ford Told Her Story About Brett Kavanaugh" (VICE News • Oct 2018 2019) 20:00 "Season 1, Episode 2: India Burning & Russia's Fight Factory" (VICE on Showtime • Apr 2020) 25:00 "Season 1, Episode 5: Quitting WeWork & Losing Ground & Italy's Darkest Hour" (VICE on Showtime • Apr 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chloé Cooper Jones is a philosopher and journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, The Verge, The Believer and many other publications. Her new book is Easy Beauty.”I literally didn't talk to anyone in my life about disability until I was, like, 30. Ever. Not my husband, not my friends, as little as possible to my own mother. I had this very bad idea that what I needed to do in every single social situation was wait until people could unsee my body…. And it was all in service of trying to be truly recognized or truly seen. And, of course, what was happening is I was involved in a complete act of self erasure because my body and my real self are related…. There is no real me without my physical self…. I did not think I was going to ever write about this, but once I started, it felt like I met myself for the first time.”Show notes: @CCooperJones chloecooperjones.com  Cooper Jones on Longform 00:00 Easy Beauty (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster • 2022) 01:00 "Fearing for His Life" (The Verge • Mar 2019) 02:00 "Contemplating Beauty in a Disabled Body" (New York Times Magazine • Mar 2022) 19:00 "Such Perfection" (The Believer • Jun 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maya Shankar is a cognitive scientist and the host of A Slight Change of Plans.”I am a type A person through and through. I love having the five-year plan and the ten-year plan, and mapping it all out. By nature, that's what I'm like. And I think the series of pivots that my life has naturally taken, or I've had to take, has kind of soured me on that whole way of thinking. […] Maybe it's also that I'm a more grateful person than I used to be. Like, I feel more gratitude, and so part of my orientation now is, well, how lucky am I that I even stumbled upon something?”Show notes: @drmayashankar mayashankar.com Apple Podcasts' Best of 2021 35:00 A Slight Change of Plans, "A Black Musician Takes on the KKK" (Pushkin Industries • May 2021) 38:00 A Slight Change of Plans, "Maya's Slight Change of Plans" (Pushkin Industries • Oct 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and critic whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine and many other publications. His new book is A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance.“I learn from hearing my elders tell stories. There’s an inherent knowing of yourself as a vessel for narration who also has to—is required to—hold the attention of others at all costs. And that’s essentially what I’m trying to do. The broader project of my writing is almost a constant pleading of: Don’t leave yet. Stay here with me for just a little bit longer.”Show notes: @NifMuhammad abdurraqib.com  Abdurraqib on Longform 02:00 A Little Devil in America (Random House • 2021) 09:00 Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung (Lester Bangs • Anchor • 1988) 10:00 The Crown Ain’t Worth Much (Button Poetry • 2016) 14:00 They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio • 2017) 20:00 Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (University of Texas Press • 2019) 25:00 Stakes Is High (De La Soul • Tommy Boy, Warner Brothers • 1996) 33:00 Black Movie (Danez Smith • Button Poetry • 2014) 37:00 Abdurraqib's MTV News archive 39:00 "Mo Salah Is Ready to Make the Whole World Smile" (Bleacher Report • Jun 2018) 44:00 Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games • 2010) 47:00 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo • 2017) 47:00 Elden Ring (Bandai Namco Entertainment • 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joshua Yaffa is a correspondent for The New Yorker, the author of Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia, and has been reporting from Ukraine for the last several weeks. His most recent article is "What the Russian Invasion Has Done to Ukraine."“I’m not at all a conflict reporter. I don't like it, though who would like being in these situations? But this is the story, right? If you cover this part of the world, if the war in 2014 felt like the tectonic plates of history were shifting, now they're just erupting, crashing. This is the asteroid-impact event for this part of the world with effects that will last similarly long going forward.”Show notes: @yaffaesque joshuayaffa.com Yaffa on Longform Longform Podcast #379: Joshua Yaffa Yaffa's New Yorker archive 03:00 "On the Road With Ukraine's Refugees" (Sabrina Tavernise • The Daily • Mar 2022) 7:00 "What the Russian Invasion Has Done to Ukraine" (New Yorker • Mar 2022) 12:00 "Ukraine's Unlikely New President, Promising a New Style of Politics, Gets a Taste of Trump's Swamp" (New Yorker • Oct 2019) 33:00 "In the Rubble of Kharkiv, Survivors Make Their Stand: ‘It’s a War, and It’s a Dirty War’" (Yaroslav Trofimov • Wall Street Journal • Mar 2022) 33:00 "A Russian airstrike kills 9 civilians in Mykolaiv" (Michael Schwirtz • New York Times • Mar 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Heather Havrilesky writes the Ask Polly and Ask Molly newsletters. Her latest book is Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage.“It’s not a good story when you're bullshitting people. I didn't want this book to feel like bullshit…. I wanted to show enough that you could feel reassured that it's normal to feel conflicted about your life and the people in it. It's normal to feel anxious about how much people love you. And it's normal to feel avoidant about how much people love you. It's normal to feel like a failure in the face of trying to stay with someone over the course of your entire life.”Show notes: @hhavrilesky  Havrilesky on Longform  Havrilesky on Longform Podcast Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage (Ecco • 2022) 1:00 "US author, 51, confesses she 'hates' her husband of 16 years in new memoir about what marriage is REALLY like - as she compares him to 'a pointy Lego brick underfoot' and 'a snoring heap of meat' (but they're not splitting up)" (Harriet Johnson • Daily Mail • Feb 2022) 01:00 "Woman Claims She “Hates” Husband In Memoir" (The View) 06:00 Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead Books • 2011) 06:00 What If This Were Enough? (Anchor • 2019) 06:00 Havrilesky's New York archive 06:00 askpolly.substack.com 06:00 askmolly.substack.com 11:00 "Heather Havrilesky Compares Her Husband to a Heap of Laundry" (Walter Kirn • New York Times • Feb 2022) 12:00 "Marriage Requires Amnesia" (New York Times • Dec 2021) 14:00 "Heather Havrilesky on hating her husband and her tell-all memoir, Foreverland" (Willy Somma • Times UK • Feb 2022) 15:00 "Wife calls marriage ‘insane,’ hates her husband: ‘Snoring heap of meat’" (Andrew Court • New York Post • Feb 2022) 27:00 How to Be a Person in the World (Anchor • 2017) 32:00 "Our ‘Mommy’ Problem" (New York Times • Nov 2014) 48:00 Havrilesky’s Twitter thread addressing The View (Mar 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Laura Shin is a journalist covering cryptocurrency and hosts the podcast Unchained. Her new book is The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze.“I was extremely well-acquainted with what the failings were with our traditional financial system. I was seeing through my other reporting how everything works now, and really understanding, whoa, this is not a good system. And then getting this education on what bitcoin is, I understood right away: wow, this is going to change the world.”Show notes: @laurashin laurashin.com 03:00 The Fintech 50 (Forbes) 16:00 The Breakdown Podcast (Nathaniel Whittemore • Coindesk) 29:00 "Exclusive: Austrian Programmer And Ex Crypto CEO Likely Stole $11 Billion Of Ether" (Forbes • Feb 2022) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tara Westover is the author of Educated.“I used to be so fearful. ... I was afraid of losing my family. Then, after I had lost them, I was afraid that I made the wrong decision. Then I wrote the book and I was afraid that was the wrong decision. Everything made me frightened back then, and I just—I don't have that feeling now.”Show notes: @tarawestover tarawestover.com 00:00 Educated (Random House • 2018) 09:00 "I Am Not Proof of the American Dream" (New York Times • Feb 2022) 21:00 A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan • Knopf • 2011) 35:00 Nobel Lecture (Kazuo Ishiguro • 2017) 36:00 The Body Keeps the Score (Bessel Van Der Kolk • Penguin • 2015) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices