Episode 455: Lawrence Wright

Jason Motlagh, a journalist and filmmaker, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and the founder of Blackbeard Films. He won the Polk's Sydney Schanberg Prize for “This Will End in Blood and Ashes,” an account of the collapse of order in Haiti. “Once you've gotten used to this kind of metabolism, it can be hard to walk away from it. Ordinary life can be a little flat sometimes. And so that's always kind of built in. I accept that. I think I've just tried to be more honest about like, [am I taking this risk] because I need a bump my life? Or do you really believe in what you're doing? And I feel like I really do need to believe in the purpose of the story. There has to be some motivation greater than myself." This is the last in a series of conversations with winners of this year's George Polk Awards in Journalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Howey is a freelance journalist who won the Polk Award for Justice Reporting after exposing a deceptive police tactic widely used in California. He began the project, which was eventually published by the Los Angeles Times and Reveal, as a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. “It’s one thing to hear about this tactic and hear about parents being questioned in this way. It’s another thing entirely to hear the change in a parent’s voice when they realize for the past 20 minutes they’ve been speaking ill of a relative who’s actually been dead the entire time, and to hear that wave of grief and sometimes that feeling of betrayal that cropped up in their voice and how the way that they spoke to the officers afterwards changed.” This is the fourth 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

Meribah Knight is a reporter with Nashville Public Radio. She won the Polk Award for Podcasting for “The Kids of Rutherford County,” produced with ProPublica and Serial, which revealed a shocking approach to juvenile discipline in one Tennessee county. “Where does it leave me? It leaves me with a searing anger that is going to propel me to the next thing. But we’ve made some real improvement. And that’s worth celebrating. That’s worth recognizing and saying, This work matters, people are paying attention.” This is the third 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

Jesse Coburn is an investigative reporter at Streetsblog. He won the Polk Award for Local Reporting for "Ghost Tags," his series on the black market for temporary license plates. “You can imagine this having never become a problem, because it’s so weird. What a weird scam. I’m going to print and sell tens of thousands of paper license plates. But someone figured it out. And then a lot more people followed. It just exploded.” This is the second 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

Amel Guettatfi and Julia Steers won this year's George Polk Award for Television Reporting for “Inside Wagner,” their Vice News investigation of Russian mercenaries on the Ukraine front and in the Central African Republic.  “One of the best takeaways I got from seven or eight years at Vice is that it’s not enough for something to be important when you’re figuring out how to make a story. It’s the intersection of important and interesting. And that has taught me that people will watch anything, anywhere, as long as it’s interesting. Nobody owes us their time. The onus is on us to explain things in an interesting, compelling way. I’m hoping that a landscape opens up somewhere else that sees that and understands that can be done anywhere in the world.” 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

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker. His novel, published in March 2024, is Great Expectations. “I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.” Show notes: @vcunningham vinson.nyc Cunningham on Longform Cunningham's New Yorker archive 04:00 "’The Suit’ at BAM" (Brooklyn Paper • Jan 2013) 04:00 "Label Maker: Edward Buchanan" (Nylon Guys • Mar 2015) 09:00 circlejerk.live 11:00 Jeremy O. Harris’ plays 11:00 "How Are Audiences Adapting to the Age of Virtual Theatre?" (New Yorker • Oct 2020) 18:00 "The Season of Russell Westbrook and a New Era in N.B.A. Fandom" (New Yorker • Apr 2017) 25:00 Cunningham's McSweeney’s archive 25:00 "The Flies in Kehinde Wiley’s Milk" (The Awl • Jun 2015) 25:00 "Can Black Art Ever Escape the Politics of Race?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2015) 25:00 "How Chris Jackson is Building a Black Literary Movement" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2016) 27:00 "Stephon Marbury Has His Own Story to Tell" (New Yorker • Apr 2020) 28:00 "The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers" (New Yorker • Jan 2018) 29:00 WTF with Marc Maron 32:00 "Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life into Comedy" (New Yorker • May 2019) 36:00 Redd Foxx party albums 38:00 Alexandra Schwartz’ New Yorker archive 41:00 Simon Parkin on Longform 41:00 Adrian Chen on Longform 42:00 "The Many Lives of Steven Yeun" (Jay Caspian Kang • New York Times Magazine • Feb 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Megan Kimble is the former executive editor of The Texas Observer and has written for The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and The Guardian. Her new book is City Limits: Infrastructure, Inequality, and the Future of America’s Highways. “I have never lived in a city that was not wrapped in highways. It’s hard for me to imagine anything else. And I think that’s true for a lot of people today. ... [But] we have known since the origins of the interstate highways program that building highways through cities doesn’t fix traffic. And yet we keep doing it. To me, that really fueled a lot of the book. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” Show notes: @megankimble megankimble.com Kimble on Longform Kimble’s Texas Observer archive 11:00 Kimble’s Austin Monthly archive 13:00 “Austin’s Not-So-Fair Housing Market” (Austin Monthly • Sept 2018) 49:00 “The Road Home” (Texas Observer • July 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Zach Harris is a journalist whose latest article for Rolling Stone is "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling." “I'm not like a staff writer who has … status and access. But if I come up with something fun that you've never heard of that might connect to the larger culture, then it kind of hits a nerve and a sweet spot for me. Someone like a pro skateboarder or a pro bowler, you guys have never heard of. And so being able to present a person and a culture and a world to a wider audience, I think suits me well and has been really a fun way to do profiles.” Show notes: 00:00 "Meet the Gen Z Hothead Burning Up Pro Bowling" (Rolling Stone • Jan 2024) 01:00 "The Most Amazing Bowling Story Ever" (Michael J. Mooney • D Magazine • Jan 2000) 02:00 Longform's bowling archive 13:00 Harris’s Vice archive 26:00 Thrasher Magazine 28:00 Harris’s High Times archive 29:00 amandachicagolewis.com 31:00 Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World (Malcolm Harris • Little, Brown and Company • 2023) 33:00 firstwefeast.com 36:00 "Pandora’s Bag: Rap Snacks Are Proof that Time Is a Flat Circle" (Vice • Jun 2012) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rozina Ali is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the winner of the 2023 National Magazine Award for Reporting. Her latest article is “Raised in the West Bank, Shot in Vermont.” “I think it’s very, very important to speak to people as people. To speak to sources—even if you have the juiciest story—to really give them the grace. I think everyone deserves it, especially people who are going through such a difficult time.” Show notes: @rozina_ali rozina-ali.com Ali’s New York Times archive 16:00 “The Erasure of Islam from the Poetry of Rumi” (New Yorker • Jan 2017) 17:00 “The ‘Herald Square Bomber’ Who Wasn’t” (New York Times Magazine • April 2021) 25:00 “Marijuana Comes to Coalinga” (The Nation • Nov 2018) 29:00 “‘How Did This Man Think He Had the Right to Adopt This Baby?’” (New York Times Magazine • Nov 2022) 43:00 “The Afghan Women Left Behind” (New Yorker • Aug 2022) 46:00 “What Rashida Tlaib Represents” (New York Times Magazine • March 2022) 61:00 “The ISIS Beat” (The Drift • April 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Derek Thompson is a staff writer for The Atlantic and host of the podcast Plain English. “I am an inveterate dilettante. I lose interest in subjects all the time. Because what I find interesting about my job is the invitation to solve mysteries. And once you solve one, two, three mysteries in a space, then the meta-mystery of that space begins to dim. And all these other subjects—that's the new unlit space that needs the flashlight. And that's the part of the job that I love the most: that there are so many dark corners in the world. And I've just got this flashlight, and I can just shine it wherever the hell I want.” Show notes: @DKThomp Thompson's Atlantic archive 00:00 Hit Makers: How to Succeed in an Age of Distraction (Penguin • 2018) 00:00 Plain English with Derek Thompson (The Ringer) 05:00 "Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 18:00 "The Americans Who Need Chaos" (The Atlantic • Feb 2024) 23:00 "America’s Loneliness Epidemic Comes for the Restaurant" (The Atlantic • Mar 2024) 35:00 "Stop Trying to Ask 'Smart Questions'" (The Atlantic • Jan 2023) 39:00 "The Future of Everything With Derek Thompson" (The Bill Simmons Podcast • Feb 2024) 40:00 "What Many Economists (and I) Got Wrong About This Economy" (Plain English • Mar 2024) 43:00 "How Hollywood’s Hit Formula Flopped—and What Could Come Next" (Plain English • Mar 2024) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices