Tessie Castillo, a journalist covering criminal justice reform, and George Wilkerson, a prisoner on death row in North Carolina, are two of the co-authors of Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row. “I want other people to see what I see, which is that the men on death row are human beings. They’re incredibly intelligent and insightful and they have so many redemptive qualities...I don’t think I could really convey that as well as if they get their own voice out there. So I wanted this book to be a platform for them and for their voices.” –Tessie Castillo “For me, writing was like a form of conversation with myself or with my past, like therapy. So I just chose these periods in my life that I didn’t really understand and that were really powerful and impactful to me, and I just sat down and started writing to understand them and make peace with them.” –George Wilkerson Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. @TessietheWriter Castillo's archive [06:15] "A Second Chance" (Slate • May 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dean Baquet is executive editor of The New York Times. "I always tried to question what is the difference between what is truly tradition and core, and what is merely habit. A lot of stuff we think are core, are just habits. The way we write newspaper stories, that’s not core, that’s habit. I think that’s the most important part about leading a place that’s going through dramatic change and even generational change. You’ve got to say, here’s what’s not going to change. This is core. This is who we are. Everything else is sort of up for grabs." Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Baquet’s archive at The New York Times [03:15] "Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops" (The New York Times • June 2020) [03:30] "A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists" (The New York Times • June 2020) [10:00] The Trust: The Private and Powerful Family Behind The New York Times (Jones, Tifft • Little, Brown • 1999) [29:45] Dean Baquet’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize [55:15] “Still Processing: The Day After” (The New York Times • November 2016) [1:09:15] Longform Podcast #254: Maggie Haberman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jacqueline Charles is the Caribbean correspondent at the .Miami Herald Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the newsletterCoronavirus News for Black Folks. "There are things that you see that if you start taking it in, you’re never going to stop and you’re not going to be able to do your job…I have family in all of these countries and when disaster strikes, you can’t help everyone. But what you hope is that with your pen, with your voice, with your recording of history…somebody somewhere will feel compelled to do something. So that’s what keeps me going." MailchimpApple BooksThanks to and for sponsoring this week's episode. @Jacquiecharles Charles’s archive at Miami Herald [58:45] "Flowers and Calls for Unity Mark Haiti’s 10th Anniversary Quake Commemoration" (Miami Herald • January 2020) [1:03:30] "Journalist Jacqueline Charles, Child of the Caribbean" (South Florida Times • July 2011) [1:03:30] “NABJ Names Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles Journalist of the Year” (National Association of Black Journalists • 2011) [1:04:15] Patrick Farrell’s 2009 Pulitzer Prize Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kierna Mayo is the showrunner and head writer for the Lena Horne Prize for Artists Creating Social Impact. She is the former editor-in-chief of Ebony and Honey Magazine, which she co-founded at age 27. Guest host Patrice Peck is a freelance journalist and writes the Coronavirus News for Black Folks newsletter. Her most recent article is "Black Journalists Are Exhausted," an op-ed published in The New York Times. “Advocacy is not a bad word. Telling the truth about a particular slice of life is what my career has been. That slice of life started about young people who were partaking in hip hop culture. Most of them were of color, most of them were poor. So that was a perspective. If you begin to tell the stories of those people at that time, that begins to have an advocacy feel and taste and touch. Not even with a consciousness to it. Because this is a lost voice. This is a lost point of view. It is not in the mainstream. It is not being centered. No one is telling it. So the mere act of shedding light journalistically in places where there has been no light before is advocacy. Sorry, journalists. Sorry, all you impartial, fair-and-balanced folks.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. @kiernamayo kierna-mayo.format.com @speakpatrice Coronavirus News for Black Folks [3:00]"'Ebony Magazine' Explores 'The Cosby Show's' Tainted Legacy" (All Things Considered • Oct 2015) [4:30] "Black Journalists Are Exhausted" (Patrice Peck • New York Times • Jun 2020) [10:00] Jamilah Lemieux [48:00] "Does America Love Black People?" (Ebony • Jul 2015) [48:45] Amy DuBois Barnett [54:00] Damon Young [54:00] Michael Arceneaux [54:00] Zerlina Maxwell [54:00] Longform Podcast #395: Wesley Lowery [1:16:45] cassiuslife.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wesley Lowery is a correspondent for “60 in 6” from 60 Minutes. He is the author of They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement and won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for "Fatal Force," a Washington Post project covering fatal shootings by police officers. “The police are not, in and of themselves, objective observers of things. They are political and government entities who are the literal characters in the story. They are describing the actions of people who are protesting them. They have incentives.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. @WesleyLowery Longform Podcast #222: Wesley Lowery In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrest" (Washington Post • Aug 2014) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Philip Montgomery is a photojournalist. “The photographers that I grew up on all sort of had their moment… I sort of had, in this weird way, this feeling of envy that they had their moment with this story that was all-encompassing. Looking at it now, this is the story of my time, and it’s a little more than I perhaps bargained for.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @philip_nyc philipmontgomery.com [04:23] "The Epicenter: A Week Inside New York’s Public Hospitals." (New York Times Magazine • April 2020) [24:55] "How Do You Maintain Dignity for the Dead in a Pandemic?" (New York Times Magazine • May 2020) [34:05] War Photographer (2001) [24:55] "Is Stop and Frisk Worth It?" (The Atlantic • April 2014) [48:28] "The Longest Night" (2014) [24:55] "Flash Points" (New Yorker • Aug 2015) [53:24] "‘We’ve Upped the Ante.’ Why Nancy Pelosi Is Going All in Against Trump" (Time • Jan 2020) [53:28] "Jeff Sessions Is Winning for Donald Trump. If Only He Can Keep His Job" (Time • March 2018) [53:30] "De Niro and Pacino Have Always Connected. Just Rarely Onscreen." (New York Times • Oct 2019) [54:00] "The Year's Great Performers Dancing in a Series of Short Films" (New York Times Magazine • Dec 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Isaac Chotiner conducts interviews for The New Yorker. “People like to talk. They like to be asked questions, generally. In the space that I’m doing most interviews, which is politics or politics-adjacent, people have strong views and like to express them. It may be just as simple as that.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @IChotiner Chotiner on Longform Chotiner's New Yorker archive [08:03] "V.S. Naipaul on the Arab Spring, Authors He Loathes, and the Books He will Never Write" (The New Republic • Dec 2012) [25:16] Talk (New York Times Magazine) [28:30] He Was a Science Star. Then He Promoted a Questionable Cure for Covid-19." (New York Times Magazine • May 2020) [29:24] "What We Know About Masks and the New Coronavirus" (New Yorker • April 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David Haskell is the editor-in-chief of New York Magazine. “Fingers crossed, knock on wood, we've got time here. You can't ever take that for granted, but I think it's fair to indulge a long-term perspective. More than fair, actually — I think it's part of the job, for me at least, to be plotting and dreaming years out. And to be fashioning the magazine toward that long-term vision as gingerly as I can without it breaking.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Squarespace, and Literati for sponsoring this week's episode. @DavidGHaskell davidhaskell.us Kings County Distillery [13:29] "Rich Corona, Poor Corona: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Thrives" (New York Magazine • April 2020) [15:00] I Was Caroline Calloway (Natalie Beach • The Cut) [30:10] "What is College Without the Campus?" (New York Magazine • May 2020) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cheryl Strayed is the author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things. Her new podcast is Sugar Calling. “I think that we have this limited idea of what ambition is. All through my twenties, you wouldn’t necessarily have looked at me and been like, ‘she’s ambitious.’ I mean, I was working as a waitress. I was goofing around and doing all kinds of things. But I was always writing. And I was always really sure and clear and serious about my writing. My ambition was this secret thing within me that I dedicated myself to.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @CherylStrayed cherylstrayed.com Longform Podcast #144: Cheryl Strayed Strayed on Longform [07:12] Sugar Calling [23:21] Transparent Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bonnie Tsui is a journalist and author of the new book Why We Swim. “I am a self-motivated person. I really don’t like being told what to do. I’ve thought about this many times over the last 16 years that I’ve been a full-time freelancer... even though I thought my dream was to always and forever be living in New York, working in publishing, working at a magazine, being an editor, writing. When I was an editor, I kind of hated it. I just didn’t like being chained to a desk.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @bonnietsui bonnietsui.com [02:34] Why We Swim (Algonquin • 2020) [03:50] American Chinatown: A People's History of Five Neighborhoods (Tsui • Free Press • 2009) [11:02] The Deep (2012) [28:25] "With His Absence, My Artist Father Taught Me the Art of Vanishing" (Catapult • Feb 2019) [42:11] "After Fires, Napa and Sonoma Tourism Industry Is Getting Back on Its Feet" (New York Times • Oct 2017) [45:04] "Child Care: What — and Who — It Takes to Raise a Family" (California Sunday • July 2019) [49:38] "The Break: Female Big-Wave Surfers Prepare to Compete on Mavericks’s 50-Foot Waves for the First Time" (California Sunday • Aug 2018) [50:46] "Meet the Women Who Are Changing What it Means to be a Mom and a Professional Athlete" (Sports Illustrated • Dec 2019) [54:03] "You Are Doing Something Important When You Aren’t Doing Anything" (New York Times • June 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices