Parul Sehgal is a book critic for The New York Times. “I write about books, I review books, but in a sense, to do my job at a newspaper also puts that pressure on a piece to say: why should you read or care about this? You’re trying to tweeze out what is newsworthy, what is interesting, what is vital about this book….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.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. parulsehgal.com @parul_sehgal Sehgal's archive at the New York Times [17:11] “Mothers of Invention: A Group of Authors Finds New Narrative Possibilities in Parenthood” (Bookforum • 2015) [17:20] “In Letters to the World, a New Wave of Memoirs Draws on the Intimate” (New York Times • 2019) [17:33] “#MeToo Is All Too Real. But to Better Understand it, Turn to Fiction.” (New York Times • 2019) [24:18] Longform Podcast #354: Jia Tolentino [41:39] “Peter Luger Used to Sizzle. Now It Sputters.” (New York Times • 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

James Verini is a contributing writer at The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. His new book is They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate. “War is mostly down time. War is mostly waiting around for something to happen.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, and "Couples Therapy" for sponsoring this week's episode. jamesverini.com Verini's archive on Longform Longform Podcast #147: James Verini [4:19] They Will Have to Die Now: Mosul and the Fall of the Caliphate (W.W. Norton • 2019) [12:12] “The Prosecutor and the President” (The New York Times Magazine • 2016) [37:11] Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lori Gottlieb is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her new book is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone. “Everything that I had done all coalesced into one thing. As a journalist i was helping people to tell their stories, as a therapist I could help people to edit their stories, to change their stories. I could be immersed in the human condition in both of these things.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Native, and Squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode. @LoriGottlieb1 lorigottlieb.com Gottlieb's archive at The Atlantic [2:57] Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed (Houghton Mifflin • 2019) [03:53] Lori Gottlieb's TED Talk: “How Changing Your Story Can Change Your Life”(2019) [9:46] “Slate Diary: Lori Gottlieb” (Slate • 1998) [11:35] “Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough” (The Atlantic • 2008) [11:36] Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough (E.P. Dutton • 2010) [15:51] Modern Romance (Aziz Ansari • Penguin • 2015) [19:44] “How to Land Your Kid in Therapy: Why the Obsession with our Kids’ Happiness May be Dooming them to Unhappy Adulthoods” (The Atlantic • 2011) [25:38] "Dear Therapist" column archive at The Atlantic [40:39] Couples Therapy (2019) [54:34] Guy Winch's TEDTalk: “Why We All Need to Practice Emotional First Aid”(2014) [55:08] “ABC Nabs ‘Maybe You Should Talk To Someone’ Therapist Drama From Maggie Friedman & Eva Longoria Based On Book” (Deadline • 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Leslie Jamison is the author of The Empathy Exams, The Recovering, and the novel The Gin Closet. Her new essay collection is Make It Scream, Make It Burn. “My writing is always basically asking: what does it feel like to be alive, and how do we ever try to understand what it feels like for anybody else to be alive? In that sense, on the intellectual level, I’m always going to keep chasing the same unanswerable things.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Mythology for sponsoring this week's episode. Apply to the University of Pittsburgh's Writing Program @lsjamison lesliejamison.com Jamison on Longform Longform Podcast #92: Leslie Jamison [05:19] ”52 Blue”(Atavist • 2014) [16:17] “In the Shadow of a Fairy Tale” (New York Times Magazine • 2017) [32:20] “A24 is Making Limited-Edition Books for Ex Machina, The Witch, and Moonlight”(The Verge • 2019) [33:33] The Empathy Exams (Graywolf Press • 2014) [33:54] The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath (Little, Brown • 2018) [51:46] “Giving Up the Ghost” (Harper's • 2015) [54:08] “Sim Life” (The Atlantic • 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Errol Morris is the director of The Thin Blue Line and The Fog of War. His latest film is American Dharma. “I don’t make films because it makes sense to make them. Probably if I thought carefully about whether they made sense, I would stop immediately. I make them because I have a need to do it. I have a need to think about stuff. Writing and filmmaking for me is a form of thinking. It’s an opportunity to think about something. And I enjoy it. I don’t know what I would do without filmmaking.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers and SAIC. @errolmorris errolmorris.com [05:37] American Dharma (2019) [11:30] The Fog of War (2003) [11:43] Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred. A Leutcher, Jr. (1999) [19:55] The Unknown Known (2013) [20:49] Twelve O'Clock High (1949) [23:31] The Searchers (1956) [37:38] The Thin Blue Line (1988) [38:13] Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (1997) [39:46] Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Nationalist Uprising (Penguin • 2017) [39:56] Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House (Henry Holt and Co. • 2018) [41:59] “Predilections” (New Yorker • 1988) [42:03] “The Friendly Executioner” (New Yorker • 1999) [44:01] Gates of Heaven (1978) [41:59] “Blood Spore” (Harper's • 2013) [46:24] Hamilton's Pharmacopeia Docuseries (Viceland • 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ashley Feinberg is a senior writer at Slate. She recently uncovered Mitt Romney's secret Twitter account. “The whole thing about politics is that they are basically creating this character, this mask, and that is who they are supposed to be. That is who they try to project to the world. We know that it’s not really them but we have no access to what they actually are. This is the closest we get to seeing what they’re doing when they think no one is watching. … This is the most unfiltered access to what they’re actually thinking.” @ashleyfeinberg ashleyfeinberg.com Feinberg's archive at Slate [03:55] “This Sure Looks Like Mitt Romney’s Secret Twitter Account (Update: It Is)” (Slate • 2019) [04:50] “The Liberation of Mitt Romney” (The Atlantic • 2019) [10:03] “This Is Almost Certainly James Comey's Twitter Account” (Gizmodo • 2017) [10:19] “'Let Justice Roll Down Like Waters.' James Comey Is Trolling Trump With Bible Verse” (Time • 2017) [13:24] “That Idiot on Your Hunting Message Board Might Be Donald Trump Jr.” (Deadspin • 2016) [34:22] “This Appears to Be Eric Trump's YouTube Playlist, And Now I'm Depressed” (Slate • 2019) [35:54] “Jack Dorsey Has No Clue What He Wants” (Huffington Post • 2019) [43:51] “Paying Dues: Today's Economy Makes Internships a Must” (San Antonio Current • 2011) [47:33] “Toys For Tight Schedules” (Wall Street Journal • 2013) [47:44] “Monopoly is Getting Rid of Jail. That's Some Bullshit.” (Gizmodo • 2013) [55:32] “Gawker and Hulk Hogan Reach $31 Million Settlement” (New York Times • 2016) [57:44] “How to Talk About Suicide on Father's Day” (Gawker • 2015) [57:44] “My Suicide Week” (Huffington Post • 2018) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Carvell Wallace is a podcast host and has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. He is the co-author, with Andre Iguodala, of The Sixth Man. “So much of my life experience coalesces into things that are useful… All those years that I was obsessing over this that or the other thing, all the weird stuff that I would do, all the weird things that happened to me, all the places I found myself in that I didn’t want to be in but were interesting - this is all part of what makes me the writer that I am today.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Native, and Villains for sponsoring this week's episode. @carvellwallace carvellwallace.com [02:15] Slate's Mom and Dad are Fighting Podcast [02:21] Season One of Closer Than They Appear Podcast [02:35] The Sixth Man: A Memoir (Blue Rider Press • 2019) [05:09] Episode One of Finding Fred [09:17] Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret (Bradbury Press • 1970) [09:35] Purple Rain (1984) [09:40] The Karate Kid (Scholastic • 1984) [10:24] “The Two Lives of Michael Jackson” (New Yorker • 2015) [27:55] “How to Parent on a Night Like This” (Huffington Post • 2014) [32:24] Wallace's Pitchfork archive [32:30] “On Kendrick Lamar and Black Humanity” (Pitchfork • 2015) [34:11] “Thelonious Monk: So Plain Only the Deaf Can Hear” (Pitchfork • 2016) [38:00] Wallace's MTV archive [40:09] “The Roots of Cowboy Music” (MTV • 2017) [46:01] “The Negro Motorist Green Book and Black America's Perpetual Search for a Home” (The Toast • 2016) [50:28] “Mahershala Ali Thinks We Can Still Make this Country Great” (GQ • 2017) [50:29] “Samuel L. Jackson Operates Like He Owns the Place. (He Does.)” (Esquire • 2019) [50:57] “Steph Curry and the Warriors' Astonishing Season” (New Yorker • 2016) [55:36] “The Spirit of Miles Bridges” (ESPN • 2017) [1:02:07] Why Me? (Closer Than They Appear • 2017) [1:04:54] Working (Pantheon • 1974) [1:06:36] “How Do We Measure the Value of a Life?” (MTV • 2016) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nicholas Quah founded and writes Hot Pod, a newsletter about the podcasting industry, and reviews podcasts for Vulture. “I think to some extent I’m in love with the concept of momentum. Sheer velocity. It’s painful. It’s punishing. Physically, I’m worse off for it. But I feel like if I stop moving, something will fall. Something will break. And I’m over. It’s a horrible feeling.” Thanks to Mailchimp, Pitt Writers, Audm, and Bayer for sponsoring this week's episode. @nwquah nicholasquah.com hotpodnews.com Quah's archive at Vulture [13:51] Business Insider Intelligence [17:26] Season One of Serial Podcast [17:26] Longform Podcast #327: Julie Snyder [30:56] Megaphone (formerly Panoply Media) [52:30] New York Post's We Hear Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Radhika Jones is the editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair and the editor of Women on Women. “There are a lot of people who still see the value of talking to someone, having a real conversation — about the things that they’re doing, the things that they’re caring about, the things that they’re afraid of, the things that are challenging — because in that conversation, they themselves will discover things that they didn’t realize. It obviously takes courage. It’s a payoff for the reader, certainly, but I think that there are subjects who understand that there is something there for them, too.” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @radhikajones [03:28] Vanity Fair's New Establishment Summit [08:45] “The Beautiful Power of Ta-Nehisi Coates” (Vanity Fair • 2019) [11:42] “Delta Nights” (New Yorker • 2000) [31:05] “Jonathan Franzen: Great American Novelist” (TIME • 2010) [39:50] George Magazine [40:37] Dominick Dunne's Vanity Fair archive [41:15] “The Often Perilous, Sometimes Lucrative, and Ever-Evolving Business of Being a YouTube Star in 2019” (Vanity Fair • 2019) [41:53] Vanity Fair's Women on Women (Penguin Press • 2019) [54:56] “Inside TheMaven's Plan To Turn Sports Illustrated Into A Rickety Content Mill” (Deadspin • 2019) [1:00:00] “You Won't Believe What Happened: The Wild, Disturbing Saga of Robert Kraft's Visit to a Strip Mall Sex Spa” (Vanity Fair • 2019) [1:00:45] “To Cheat and Lie in L.A.: How the College-Admissions Scandal Ensnared the Richest Families in Southern California” (Vanity Fair • 2019) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andrew Marantz is a staff writer at The New Yorker. His new book is Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation. “Some nonfiction can be reduced to a bulletpoint primer, but a good book is a good book. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, it should create a feeling, it should create a world, it should be a feeling that you want to live in and that tilts the way you see things. Isn’t that the point?” Thanks to Mailchimp and Pitt Writers for sponsoring this week's episode. @andrewmarantz andrewmarantz.com Marantz on Longform [01:34] Antisocial (Random House • 2019) [03:13] Marantz's Tour Schedule [11:54] Longform Podcast #193: Robin Marantz Henig [18:58] “A Rising Tide”(Harper's • 2011) [19:00] “My Summer at an Indian Call Center”(Mother Jones • 2011) [27:20] “How Silicon Valley Nails Silicon Valley”(New Yorker • 2016) [27:58] “Ready for Prime Time”(New Yorker • 2016) [28:03] “The Virologist”(New Yorker • 2014) [39:31] “Trolls For Trump”(New Yorker • 2016) [40:22] “A Voice of Hate in America's Heartland”(New York Times • 2017) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices