Max Chafkin is a features editor and reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek. His new book is The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power.“I think there's like a really good way to come up with story ideas where you basically just look for people who have given TED Talks and figure out what they're lying about. And there's also a tendency in the press to pump up these startups based on those stories…. It's worth taking a critical look at these stars of the moment. Because often there's not as much there as we think. And if you’re talking about Theranos or something, there's some potential to do harm—but also it means that maybe more worthwhile efforts are not getting the attention they deserve.”Show notes: @chafkin maxchafkin.com Chafkin on Longform Chafkin's Bloomberg Businessweek archive 02:00 "Anything Could Happen" (Inc. • Mar 2008) 09:00 "A Broken Place: The Spectacular Failure Of The Startup That Was Going To Change The World" (Fast Company • Apr 2014) 15:00 The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power (Penguin Press • 2021) 22:00 Conspiracy: A True Story of Power, Sex, and a Billionaire’s Secret Plot to Destroy a Media Empire (Portfolio • 2019) 25:00 "The Education of a Libertarian" (Peter Thiel • Cato Unbound • Apr 2009) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hannah Giorgis is a staff writer at The Atlantic. Her latest feature is "Most Hollywood Writers’ Rooms Look Nothing Like America.””In general, when we talk about representation, we talk about what we see on our screens. We're talking about actors, we're talking about who are the lead characters, what are the storylines that they're getting. And I'm always interested in that. But I'm really, really interested in power ... how it operates, and process.”Show notes: @hannahgiorgis hannahgiorgis.com 01:00 "Most Hollywood Writers’ Rooms Look Nothing Like America” (The Atlantic • Sep 2021) 05:00 "How the '90s Kinda World of Living Single Lives on Today" (The Atlantic • Aug 2018) 05:00 Longform Podcast #165: Jazmine Hughes 17:00 "Corporate America’s $50 Billion Promise" (Tracy Jan, Jena McGregor, Meghan Hoyer • Washington Post • Aug 2021) 23:00 "tattoo this article on my back." (Issa Rae • Twitter) 25:00 "One Of The World's Best Long Distance Runners Is Now Running For His Life" (Buzzfeed • Nov 2016) 27:00 "The Fleeting Promise of a Peaceful Ethiopia" (The Atlantic • Apr 2021) 36:00 "Episode 5: Young East African Girl (with Hannah Giorgis)" ( Tracy Clayton, Heben Nigatu • Another Round • Apr 2015) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lawrence Wright is an author, screenwriter, playwright, and a staff writer for The New Yorker.”There’s nothing more important about a person than their story. In a way, that’s who we are. And yet, memories fade and people die. So those stories disappear and the job of the journalist is to go out before that happens and accumulate the kinds of stories that are going to help us understand who we are, why we are, where we are right now in time, and try to thread those stories into a coherent narrative. In a way, you give it a kind of immortality. And that’s a big job. It’s a great privilege.”Show notes: @lawrence_wright 00:30 Longform Podcast #83: Lawrence Wright 01:00 God Save Texas: a Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State (Vintage Books • 2019) 01:00 The End of October (Penguin Random House • 2020) 05:30 "Back in Egypt" (The New Yorker • April 2002) 18:30 "The Plague Year" (The New Yorker • Jan 2021) 19:00 "Zawahiri at the Helm" (The New Yorker • June 2011) 35:00 Remembering Satan A Tragic Case of Recovered Memory (Penguin Random House • 1995) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering are documentary filmmakers. Their latest miniseries is Allen v. Farrow.”We're constantly looking for those moments that happen before the story is ever told. Or those moments where someone is deciding to tell a story or is going through a process that they think is private… We think there's something about getting the moment before the first moment that people normally see..Show notes: janedoefilms.com 00:00 Exit Scam (Aaron Lammer and Lane Brown • Treats Media • 2021) 00:00 70 over 70 (Max Linsky • Pineapple Street Studios • 2021) 00:00 The Mastermind: A True Story of Murder, Empire, and a New Kind of Crime Lord (Ratliff • Random House • 2020) 00:00 Allen v. Farrow (HBO Documentary Films • 2021) 01:00 The Hunting Ground (CNN Films, Radius • 2015) 01:00 The Invisible War (Cinedigm, Docurama Films • 2012) 01:00 On the Record (HBO Max Original • 2020) 04:00 Sick (Kirby Dick • 1997) 05:00 Derrida (Zeitgeist Films • 2002) 07:00 Private Practices: The Story of a Sex Surrogate (Kirby Dick • Zeitgeist Films • 1985) 26:00 Apropos of Nothing (Woody Allen • Skyhorse Publishing • 2020) 31:00 Twist of Faith (Kirby Dick • HBO • 2004) 51:00 Allen v. Farrow Podcast (HBO • 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roger Bennett is a co-host of Men In Blazers and the author of (Re)born in the USA: An Englishman's Love Letter to His Chosen Home.“So much of my work is about human tenacity. That value of perseverance, of driving onwards. I believe life is about darkness and happiness. I believe that nothing is given, you fight for everything. And how you operate in moments of doubt and darkness ultimately define you. So I talk a lot as a professional about tenacity. What I've never linked that to before was my own biography. What did surprise me when I read the book as not being about me, but just read it as a book, was how bloody tenacious I was in fleeting moments of real awfulness.”Show notes:@rogbennett23:30 "The Men in Blazers Show with John Stones and Alex Caruso" (The Men in Blazers Show • March 2021)29:30 Men in Blazers29:30 NHL Now29:30 Band of Brothers podcast29:30 HBO's Succession Podcast33:30 "Pat Maroon" (Men in Blazers on Ice) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang are reporters for the New York Times. They are coauthors of An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination.“There are two types of reporters. There are reporters who date and reporters who marry. I think both Cecilia and I are reporters who marry our sources and by that I mean they are lifelong sources. It’s not a relationship that you build quickly. It’s one where you have to really let them get to know you as a journalist, show them that you are always going to be honest and do what you say and protect their anonymity and that you’re not biased. I think some reporters make mistakes in that they try to curry favor with sources by writing things they think the sources will like and I think sources actually respect you more when you show them: no I am accurate and I am honest and I am objective and I’m actually going to check what you tell me so that I know it’s true and you know I am doing my homework on everything.”Show notes: @sheeraf @ceciliakangf 31:30 "Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis" (Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg and Jack Nicas • New York TImes • 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Julie K. Brown is an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald. Her new book is Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story.“No reporter wants to be a part of the story. ... But the one thing I know is that the authorities weren't going to do anything about this unless it stayed in the news and there was pressure. And I thought the only way to do pressure was to continue to write stories and to be in their face by going on TV. So I took advantage of the fact that I am sort of a part of this story in the hope that it would pressure authorities to do something about it.”Show notes @jkbjournalist 00:00 Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story (Dey Street Books • 2021) 01:00 "Perversion of Justice" (Miami Herald • Nov 2018) 10:00 "Cruel and Unusual" (Miami Herald • 2014) 10:00 "In Miami Gardens, Store Video Catches Cops in the Act" (Miami Herald • Nov 2013) 11:00 "Behind bars, a brutal and unexplained death" (Miami Herald • May 2014) 17:00 Series on women’s prison (Miami Herald • July 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Doree Shafrir is a co-host of the podcast Forever35, the former executive editor of Buzzfeed, and the author of the new memoir Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer.”Right now I can make my living from podcasting, but I don’t know what the advertising market for podcasts is going to look like in five years or even one year. The blog advertising market cratered. So one of the challenges of being my own ‘brand’ is that I always do have to think about, what is the next thing? Because in my experience in media, nothing is ever good for too long.” Thanks to Mailchimp and The London Review of Books for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @doree doree-shafrir.com Shafrir on Longform 02:00 Thanks for Waiting: The Joy (& Weirdness) of Being a Late Bloomer (Ballantine Books • 2021) 06:00 "The Hipster Grifter" (New York Observer • Apr 2009) 08:00 Shafrir's New York Observer archive 16:00 "Chuck Klosterman, the Author Photos" (Slate • Aug 2006) 24:00 Startup (Little, Brown and Company • 2017) 36:00 Shafrir's Buzzfeed archive 36:00 Rerun (Buzzfeed) 36:00 Matt and Doree’s Eggcellent Adventure (Matt Mira and Doree Shafrir) 37:00 Forever35 (Doree Shafrir and Kate Spencer) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jessica Bruder is a journalist and author of the book Nomadland.“I don’t do a hard sell. I’ll tell people what my MO is, but I don’t push people to talk with me. I want to go deep with people. I want to be able to have the time to just sit with them and to say, ‘start at the beginning.’ Sometimes going chronologically will just take you to these places that wouldn’t have come up if I’ve just done a very guided interview. So I hung out. I’m not relentless. I don’t wear people down. But I stick around. If people just want me to fuck off, I fuck off, and I talk to other people..” Thanks to Mailchimp and The London Review of Books for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: jessicabruder.com @jessbruder 01:00 Nomadland (W. W. Norton & Company • 2018) 11:30 Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man (Gallery Books • 2007) 13:00 "Snowball's Court Decision Set for Tomorrow" (The Oregonian • October 2007) 13:30 "Faith-healing Deaths " (The Oregonian • June 2009) 16:00 "Has Perky Jerky Lost Its Perk?" (New York Times • August 2011) 19:30 "Slump in construction industry creates a Sheetrock ghost town" (The Christian Science Monitor • June 2011) 21:30 "I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave" (Gabriel Mac • Mother Jones • March/April 2012) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices