Matthieu Aikins is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine who has reported on Afghanistan since 2008. His new book is The Naked Don’t Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees.“I think at some point you just say, screw it. I'm gonna act like a human being and help my friend. That's the most important thing. You actually realize, yeah, now that we're in it together, the only thing that matters is both of us staying alive and staying safe and getting where we need to go. And whatever I have to do to do that, I'm going to do.”Show notes: @mattaikins maikins.com Aikins on Longform Longform Podcast #1: Matthieu Aikins 08:00 "The Master of Spin Boldak" (Harper's • Dec 2009) 38:00 Aikins on The Daily (New York Times • Sep 2021) 39:00 "Inside the Fall of Kabul" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Reed and Hamza Syed are co-hosts of the new podcast The Trojan Horse Affair.“I had lost all faith in the reporting that already happened on the subject matter. And that was my mentality with each source and each interviewer. I wanted the debate ended in the room because I didn't want commentary beyond it. I didn't want any kind of interpretation beyond it. I wanted the situation to be resolved there and then…. And without certain answers, I thought we weren't going to be able to speak about this matter in the way that I wanted to speak about it.” —Syed“I both desperately wanted to know the answer of who wrote the letter, but kind of understood that we probably weren't going to get it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And I thought that I had transmitted that to Hamza and that he understood that. But as time went on, I realized that he had not accepted that as the likely outcome. And this is what was actually so energizing to work with you, Hamza. You never let your hope and desire and hunger to get that answer ever get dimmed. Like, ever.” —ReedShow notes: @BriHReed @HamzaMSyed Reed on Longform Podcast 00:00 S-Town (Serial Productions • 2017)  01:00 The Trojan Horse Affair (Serial Productions • 2022)  21:56 "Trojan Horse Primary Barred Muslims from Easter Classes, Tribunal Hears" (Richard Adams • The Guardian • Dec 2015)  49:00 Serial: Season Three (Serial Productions • 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chuck Klosterman is a journalist and the author of eleven books, including his latest, The Nineties.”Selling out… was very much injected into the way I understood the world…. And I am now supposed to do all of these interviews and all of these podcasts promoting this book. And because it's a book about the nineties… it feels incredibly uncomfortable to me…. I think young people assume that selling out is only about money: that if you try to do something to make money, that means you're selling out, because the word ‘sell’ is in there. But that's not really how it was. I mean, what you were selling out was this idea of your integrity. And what your integrity was, was somehow not doing anything to make other people like you.”Show notes: @CKlosterman chuckklostermanauthor.com Klosterman on Longform 00:00 The Nineties (Penguin Press • 2022) 10:00 Capitalist Realism (Mark Fisher • Zer0 Books • 2009) 15:00 Klosterman's SPIN archive 29:00 Fargo Rock City (Scribner • 2001) 30:00 Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs (Scribner • 2003) 31:00 Killing Yourself to Live (Scribner • 2005) 57:00 "A 12th L.A. Lakers Title and Remembering Eddie Van Halen with Ryen Russillo and Chuck Klosterman" (The Bill Simmons Podcast • 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Khabat Abbas is an independent journalist and video producer from northeastern Syria, and the winner of the 2021 Kurt Schork News Fixer Award.”I can see from my experience that there is a gap between the editors, who are kind of elites in their luxury offices, and the amazing journalists who are in the field, who all sympathize with what they are seeing on the ground and want to cover [it], but they have to satisfy the editors. And this is how we end up having little gaps in the ways of covering in general. It's not a matter of like, they shaped it in this way. The problem, I think, it’s bigger. How this industry is working, how this industry is deciding what they should cover.”Show notes: @khabat_abas Kurt Schork Awards in International Journalism 34:00 "'Belief Allows Us to Move Forward,' Said One Female Soldier in Battle Against ISIS" (ABC News • July 2017) 40:00 "The Former 'Caliphate Capital' Is Haunted by Fears of an ISIS Comeback" (Washington Post • May 2020) 43:00 "How ISIS Women and Their Children Are Being Left Stranded in the Desert" (Washington Post • Dec 2019) 43:00 "ISIS at a Crossroads" (Washington Post • Dec 2019) 43:00 "After the ISIS Caliphate: Thousands of Islamic State Fighters Captured in Syria Face Uncertain Fate" (Washington Post • Dec 2019) 51:00 "'This Is Ethnic Cleansing': A Dispatch from Kurdish Syria" (New York Review of Books • Oct 2019) 51:00 "For Kurds on the Syrian Front Line There’s No Ceasefire" (The Daily Beast • Nov 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michael Schulman is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He recently profiled Jeremy Strong of Succession.”There's an interesting moment that's part of this job where you’ve spent a lot of time with someone and it often feels very personal and very intimate. And then when you go to write the piece, you have to sort of take a breath and say to yourself, Okay, I'm not writing this for this person. I'm writing this for the reader.”Show notes: @MJSchulman michael-schulman.com Schulman on Longform Schulman's New Yorker archive 01:00 "On ‘Succession,’ Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke" (New Yorker • Dec 2021) 03:00 Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep (Harper • 2016) 09:00 "Wendy Williams Dishes the Dirt" (New Yorker • May 2021) 35:00 "Adam Driver, the Original Man" (New Yorker • Oct 2019) 37:00 "A Defense of Jeremy Strong (and All the Strivers With No Chill)" (Elizabeth Spiers • New York Times • Jan 2022) 44:00 "Bridget Everett is Larger than Life" (New Yorker • Jan 2022) 45:00 "The Otherworldly Comedy of Julio Torres" (New Yorker • Dec 2020) 47:00 "Bo Burnham’s Age of Anxiety" (New Yorker • Jun 2018) 47:00 "Troye Sivan’s Coming of Age" (New Yorker • Jun 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sarah Marshall is a writer and hosts the podcast You're Wrong About.”I love it when people tell me that listening to the way I talk about these people in the stories that we tell, and just about the world generally, has made them practice empathy more. I almost feel like I have preserved this a-little-bit-past version of myself, because I've been on this journey throughout the pandemic of becoming pretty cynical, and then deciding cynicism is a luxury and that it feels better, ultimately, to try to believe in people.”Show notes: remembersarahmarshall.com Marshall on Longform You're Wrong About 05:00 "Your 2012 Baby Name Guide: Puritan Edition" (The Hairpin • Jan 2012) 08:00 "Remote Control" (The Believer • Jan 2014) 12:00 "The End of Evil" (The Believer • Feb 2018) 17:00 "Talking Tammy Faye Bakker w. Jessica Chastain" (You're Wrong About • Jan 2022) 46:00 "The O.J. Simpson Trial: The DeLorean Detour" (You're Wrong About • Feb 2021) 47:00 "The O.J. Simpson Trial: Kato Kaelin Part 1" (You're Wrong About • Dec 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Abe Streep is a journalist and contributing editor for Outside. His new book is Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana.”The way journalists talk about, ‘Did you get the story?’—that's not how I see this. That would be extractive in this setting, I think. If someone shares something personal with me, that is a serious matter. It's a gift and you’ve got to treat it with great respect.”Show notes: @abestreep abestreep.com  Streep on Longform 03:00 "What the Arlee Warriors Were Playing For" (New York Times Magazine • Apr 2018) 03:00 Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana (Celadon Books • 2021) 09:00 "The Legends of Last Place" (The Atavist • Apr 2013) 24:00 Custer Died for Your Sins (Vine Deloria • University of Oklahoma Press • 1988) 34:00 Friday Night Lights (H.G. Bissinger • Da Capo • 1990) 34:00 The Last Shot: City Streets, Basketball Dreams (Darcy Frey • Houghton Mifflin • 1994) 35:00 Counting Coup: A True Story of Basketball and Honor on the Little Big Horn (Larry Colton • Grand Central • 2001) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Connie Walker is an investigative reporter and podcast host. Her latest show is Stolen: The Search for Jermain.“For so long, there has been this kind of history of journalists coming in and taking stories from Indigenous communities. And that kind of extractive, transactional kind of journalism really causes a lot of harm. And so much of our work is trying to undo and address that. There is a way to be a storyteller and help amplify and give people agency in their stories.”Show notes: @connie_walker Walker's CBC News archive 00:00 Missing & Murdered (CBC News) 04:00 "The Injustice to Pamela George Continues Long After Her Murder" (Heather Mallick • Toronto Star • Jan 2020) 08:00 Street Cents (CBC) 12:00 "Alicia Ross: Everyone’s Daughter" (Catherine McDonald • Global News • Apr 2020) 14:00 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 19:00 8th Fire, Ep. 1: "Indigenous in the City" (CBC • 2012) 19:00 8th Fire, Ep. 2: "It’s Time" (CBC • 2012) 19:00 8th Fire, Ep. 3: "Whose Land Is It Anyway?" (CBC • 2012) 19:00 8th Fire, Ep. 4: "At the Crossroads" (CBC • 2012) 22:00 "Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women: A National Operational Overview" (Royal Canadian Mounted Police • 2014) 24:00 "Missing and Murdered: The Life and Mysterious Death of Leah Anderson" (CBC News • Mar 2015) 26:00 Serial 27:00 "Amber Tuccaro's Unsolved Murder: Do You Recognize This Voice?" (Marnie Luke and Connie Walker • CBC News • Jun 2015) 27:00 "Unresolved: Patricia Carpenter" (Holly Moore • CBC News • Jun 2016) 27:00 Missing & Murdered Season 1: Who Killed Alberta Williams? (Connie Walker and Marnie Luke • CBC News) 27:00 Missing & Murdered Season 2: Finding Cleo (Connie Walker and Marnie Luke • CBC News) 35:00 Ochberg Fellowship 37:00 "Duncan McCue on Reporting in Indigenous Communities" (Ryerson Today • Apr 2018) 37:00 Reporting in Indigenous Communities Guide (Duncan McCue) 39:00 Stolen (Gimlet • 2021) 39:00 "Jermain Charlo Missing Two Years on Tuesday" (Seaborn Larson • Missoulian • Jun 2020) 44:00 "Monday's Montanan: Lauren Small Rodriguez Helps Native Trafficking Survivors" (Patrick Reilly • Missoulian • Feb 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Parul Sehgal, a former a book critic for The New York Times, is now a staff writer at The New Yorker.“My job is I think to be honest with the reader and to keep surfacing new ways for me and for other people to think about books. New vocabularies of pleasure and disgust.”Show notes: parulsehgal.com @parul_sehgal Sehgal's New York Times archive “Mothers of Invention: A Group of Authors Finds New Narrative Possibilities in Parenthood” (Bookforum • 2015) “In Letters to the World, a New Wave of Memoirs Draws on the Intimate” (New York Times • 2019) “#MeToo Is All Too Real. But to Better Understand it, Turn to Fiction.” (New York Times • 2019) Jia Tolentino on Longform “Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters.” (Pete Wells • New York Times • 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

George Saunders is the author of eleven books. His latest is A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life.”I really have so much affection for being alive. I really enjoy it. And yet, I’m a little negative minded in a lot of ways too, like I really think things tend to be fucked up. ... To get that on the page—to sufficiently praise the loveliness of the world without being a sap, and also lacerate the world for being so goddamn mean—to do those in the same story would be a great aspiration. And I haven’t gotten there yet.”Show notes: georgesaundersbooks.com Saunders on Longform Saunders on the Longform Podcast (Jan 2014) Saunders' Story Club newsletter 16:00 "First Thohts on Reviision" (Story Club • Dec 2021) 28:00 "The Great Divider" (GQ • Jan 2007) 48:00 "Sea Oak" (New Yorker • Dec 1998) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices