Over the last few years, Texas Monthly has had a booming success on the big and small screen, turning impeccable stories into films and TV series. In an interview with The Sunday Long Read’s Jacob Feldman, Texas Monthly’s Executive Producer for TV, films and podcasts, Megan Creydt, explains how it all happened. Show notes : Lawrence Wright’s Texas …

A self-described “Star War Kid” and “nerd,” Marc Bernardin left journalism a few years ago to follow his dream: becoming a television writer. Bernardin explains to host Jacob Feldman why nerd culture took over entertainment, and what it was like making the jump from magazine newsroom to Hollywood writers’ room. Marc Bernardin is a writer, director,…

In a span of only three years, two of Jessica Pressler’s New York Magazine stories ended up on screen, a journey that involved a playdate with Julia Stiles in Queens. In an interview with Don Van Natta Jr., Pressler recounts her experience writing the original stories and the oddness of seeing herself played in a film twice. Jessica Pressler is a c…

Edith Zimmerman rocketed to media stardom early in her career. Her editing of the influential and hilarious website The Hairpin got her a place on Forbes’ 30 under 30—at only twenty-eight, she was a “much sought after writer,” noted the magazine. Zimmerman hasn’t lost an ounce of her humor in the years since, but she has slowly rediscovered herself…

Award-winning radio reporter Matt Shearer is making Boston’s WBZ station—and by extension, local journalism—cool again. The thirty-six-year-old TikTok star’s success has breathed new life into the industry. In a wide-ranging conversation with host Jacob Feldman, Shearer shares his path to social media stardom. In the third episode of “Take a Joke,”…

Dina Gusovsky was an award-winning investigative reporter before she put that career aside to pursue comedy in 2016, joining Late Night with Seth Meyers. Not because she wanted to move away from the news, but the opposite—she saw comedians doing deeper dives than journalists. In the second episode of “Take a Joke,” an SLR series on the mixing of hu…

Welcome to the first episode of Take a Joke, a Sunday Long Read podcast series on the captivating world of humor. Our first guest, Maureen Dowd, has been thorn in the side of American politicians for decades. In her conversation with host Don Van Natta Jr., she explains where her sense of humor comes from and how the subjects of her stories have ta…

Welcome back to The Art of Remembering, a Sunday Long Read podcast series on the fascinating world of obituaries. Our fourth guest is magazine writer and author Garrett Graff. In early 2023, the prolific journalist was tasked with one of the toughest assignments of his career: writing the obituary of his friend, New York Times editor and reporter B…

Welcome back to The Art of Remembering, a Sunday Long Read podcast series on the fascinating world of obituaries. Our third guest, James Hagerty, is the only fulltime obituary writer at The Wall Street Journal, where he has worked for nearly 40 years. He's also written a book, Yours Truly, on the value of telling your own story. He and Don discuss …

Welcome back to The Art of Remembering, a Sunday Long Read podcast series on the fascinating world of obituaries. Our second guest, Kathleen McElroy, is currently a journalism professor at The University of Texas at Austin after spending nearly 30 years in the industry, including serving as Associate Managing Editor at The New York Times. Her 2013 …

Welcome to the first episode of The Art of Remembering, a Sunday Long Read podcast series on the fascinating world of obituaries. Our first guest, Margalit Fox, is a long-time obituaries writer whose brilliant articles still grace the pages of The New York Times five years after her retirement. Margalit dissects the ins and outs of the work, delive…

Welcome back to the long-dormant Sunday Long Read podcast! We're reviving our audio presence with a discussion between Don and Emily Kaplan, who wrote a piece copublished this week by the SLR and Pipe Wrench Magazine. It's about Mormons, Mexico, and the malleable nature of truth (among many other things). You can find it on sundaylongread.com and p…

Tim Urban is a popular blogger and the co-founder of “Wait But Why,” a site that discusses a wide variety of topics including picking the right career path, SpaceX rockets, and love. His most recent mammoth work is “The Story of Us,” a re-tracing of how we got to this political moment. [1:06] The origins of “Wait But Why” [8:39] “Outqualitying” oth…

Caity Weaver is a favorite of the Sunday Long Read, appearing in multiple newsletters every year, always giving us thoughtful, clever, and enjoyable stories to read. This week, the New York Times features writer joins Jacob to talk about how she interviews celebrities, to outline how she interacts with editors, and to perform a real-time dive into …

There are few couples like Deborah and James Fallows, who have spent more than half a decade talking to people and visiting communities across America to produce "Our Towns," a New York Times bestseller, published last year, and an online series for The Atlantic. They're some of the smartest, most diligent people reporting on the state of the count…

Charles Duhigg is a 2013 Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, the author of The Power of Habit, and a magazine writer who most recently published an in-depth look at Amazon's world-eating growth for The New Yorker. “The first question I might ask is, ‘I’m really sorry, I don’t know enough to know what question to ask you. What do you think is the most …

"I kind of think of myself as a nature writer disguised as a food writer. Because food is a great way to write about plants and animals because everyone has a built-in interest, " Rowan Jacobsen is an award-winning author who writes about food, sustainability, and the environment. Jacob and Rowan discuss how the latter delved into the world of food…

"If you don’t want to tell me something it makes me very interested in what it is.” Jessica Pressler is a staff writer at New York magazine and joins Jacob this week to talk interesting stories, screen adaptations, and empathy. Her article "The Hustlers at Scores," is the basis for the new movie "Hustlers," and Jessica discusses the unique experien…

Jessica Contrera covers a wide range of topics as a narrative reporter for the Washington Post and in this week's podcast she chats with Don about her happiest (and saddest) stories, taking care of her mental health while covering traumatic events, and the positive influence a good editor has on a young reporter. Jessica has been featured several t…

The best-selling author, GQ correspondent, and National Magazine Award Finalist is the latest guest on The Sunday Long Read Podcast. Laskas discusses her books and articles including To Obama: With Love, Joy, Anger, and Hope, her New York Times Magazine article "The Mailroom", and her GQ article "Game Brain" which inspired the movie "Concussion." […

Will Leitch founded Deadspin nearly 14 years ago. Since 2008, Leitch has written and worked outside of the site, most recently as a contributing editor at New York Magazine, a national correspondent for MLB, and the host of “The Will Leitch Show” on Sports Illustrated TV. “…During the years I actively ran [Deadspin] — now more than a decade in the …

Anne Helen Petersen, although she's a superb culture writer for BuzzFeed News, still gets a little nauseous at the prospect of talking to people for her stories. She talks about that and more with Jacob on this week's episode, where they touch on reporting attire, Beto O'Rourke, and Anne's viral story on burnout. Anne was an academic before becomin…

Gideon Lewis-Kraus is a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine, a contributing writer at WIRED, and a contributing editor at Harper’s. He’s the author of a travel memoir called A Sense of Direction, and he teaches nonfiction in the Graduate Writing Program at Columbia. Here, he talks with Jacob about ideal story length (100 pages, anyone?)…

"The clock doesn't run out until the very end," says Tommy Tomlinson, author of the new book "The Elephant in the Room: One fat man's quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America." Tommy talks about his book, his weight, and more with Don on this week's episode, which ranges from questions about emotional intelligence to the speed of Herschel Walker. …

If you worked in media in New York in the mid 2000s, you read the Fishbowl on MediaBistro. Our podcast guest today is the writer of that indispensable, gossipy blog, Rachel Sklar. We’ll track her unconventional path from Mediabistro to Mediaite and Huffington Post, and on to co-found The Li.st, a network and visibility platform for professional wom…

Fresh off his guest-editing turn, BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief Ben Smith chatted with Don about how the term "Ben Smith-ing" came into being, why he moved from Politico to BuzzFeed, and the thought process behind publishing the controversial Trump-Russia dossier. They also discussed the journalism industry more broadly, from the blogging heyday to…

“It seemed like everyone knew what to think but me.” Elaina Plott landed not one but two stories in the Sunday Long Read newsletter last week. The first was a cover story for Pacific Standard magazine about the residents of Tangier Island, Virginia, and their unique relationship with God, Trump, and climate change, which scientists say is likely to…

“There are two ways I view toughness and the virtue of it.” BuzzFeed News reporter Albert Samaha has a new book out about a young football team in a changing inner city. But clearly it’s about so much more than that, too. As for what he thinks will happen to America’s most popular sport, Samaha says, “Part of the question is what replaces it.” He a…

Maria Bustillos is the current editor in chief of Popula, an alternative news and culture magazine that recently launched on the blockchain-based Civil platform. In this week's episode, Don and Maria walk through one of Popula's first pieces published, her 20,000-word interview with the late Anthony Bourdain — “he spent two and a half hours with me…

Jo Piazza is a journalist, podcaster, author of fiction and nonfiction books, and writer of personal essays. Her latest book – her eighth – is a novel called Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win, and it’s a fascinating look at what it takes for a woman to run for national office. She talks with Don about how she learned to be a good reporter covering celeb…

Through a mixture of humorous tales and handy insights, Uproxx editor-in-chief Brett Michael Dykes explains to Don how he turned a few viral posts on a personal blog into a series of jobs in digital media. He also discusses the book that inspired him to write, where he gets his best thinking done, as well as why he goes by The Cajun Boy online.…

Glynnis MacNicol wisely says about writing that "not telling the truth leads to bad writing." She's spot on about that and quite a few other things in her new book, "No One Tells You This," which she discusses with Don on this week's episode. The two talk about her 40th birthday, solo travel, and how Glynnis once ended up eating steak for breakfast…

A reporter's reporter, Sy Hersh characterizes his work this way: "I'm constantly walking into editors’ offices and throwing a dead rat full of lice on their desk. Maybe he’s still alive and moving.” Hear his unfiltered thoughts on his career and journalism, and check out Hersh's memoir, Reporter. Subscribe to the podcast here if you haven't already…

Amy Chozick moved to New York after college with nothing but a set of clips from her college newspaper and now, 17 years later, is The New York Times bestselling author of the campaign memoir "Chasing Hillary." In this week's episode, Don (the co-author of a 2007 Clinton book with Jeff Gerth) chats with Amy, a Times reporter, about Hillary Clinton,…

Steve Almond says of writing: “The idea is that you are trying to show the reader somebody whose life is in disequilibrium and who is struggling with some universal bewilderment.” His newest book, Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to our Country, is out now. It’s his tenth. He has also published more than 150 short stories and is the co-host…

Where is Rachel Syme's favorite people-watching perch in New York City? What would her ideal beat be? One of our favorite profile writers—and a soon-to-be author—discusses those topics and many, many more on this week's podcast. She also explains the "tricky, transactional nature of profile writing," how she thinks of interviews as first dates, and…

DVN: How many writers are you mentoring right now? SS: I think like 600. Don and Shea discuss how he first resorted to writing, how comments got him a job, how he found his unique voice, and the first compliment Bill Simmons gave him. From the first to graduate high school in his family to a New York Times bestseller, Serrano's story—just like his …

"What kind of globalization should we want? There are lots of different versions of it, and we have a particular version that at this moment is pissing off a lot of people—but it doesn't have to be that way." Atossa has spent most of her journalism career investigating issues of globalism, from how global elites act at a level above states to how t…

"I'm not that special," Washington Post national arts reporter Geoff Edgers says. "All I do is call a million people." That's how he's written unforgettable profiles on every star from Lionel Richie to David Letterman. Edgers shares his process with Don, discusses what he looks for in a potential profile subject, and tells his Bill Murray story. Th…

After writing the Oral History of Inside Sports for The Sunday Long Read, and as he launches a new journalism archive project debuting today, Alex catches up with Don—who calls Alex "America's Curator Laureate." As for his new website, thestacksreader.com, Alex said: "I just want to have a destination where things that would ordinarily have been di…

"We're all a product of our path to the current moment, and my path is a little bit different," Michael says. He has worked his way up from covering exurban news to writing about the President for POLITICO. And he says that journey, which included stories about a dead sheepand a woman who disappeared inside her own home, helps him today. "My path w…

Washington Post columnist and four-time NYT best-selling author Sally Jenkins recounts the advice Billie Jean King gave her about dealing with sexism; shares her opinion of Lance Armstrong, Joe Paterno, and Roger Goodell; and explains why journalism is a civil religion. She and Don also discuss several pieces of advice for young writers.…

Longtime friends Don and Scott discuss how Price started going by S.L., the changes they've seen in American newsrooms, and how writing requires being both the god and dog of your story. They also go personal, discussing Scott's prescient student newspaper profile of Michael Jordan when they were both students at the University of North Carolina, t…

Kevin Van Valkenburg is a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com, where he writes primarily about football and golf. Prior to joining ESPN, he spent 11 years at the Baltimore Sun. In 2015, he was the T. Anthony Pollner Distinguished Professor at the University of Montana, where he taught a class on storytelling. He and Don discuss his star…

Seth Wickersham and Wright Thompson both write for ESPN The Magazine and have been discussing stories since their time together at the University of Missouri (they discussed several while guest editing The Sunday Long Read in September). Don chatted with them about how they developed their confidence, the stories that got away, and what they'd like…

Souad Mekhennet is a national security correspondent for The Washington Post and the author of the national best-selling, "I Was Told To Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad." Last month, she was named the 2017 recipient of the Daniel Pearl Award. In this conversation with her friend and former colleague, Don Van Natta Jr., Mekhennet de…

In the middle of his Twitter hiatus, two-time National Magazine Award winner Chris Jones (left) chats with Don Van Natta Jr. Jones shares behind-the-scenes details from his favorite stories—including profiles of Roger Ebert and Teller. He also explains why he's just now learning to cook and how he managed to expense both poker losses and marijuana.…

It was about time The Sunday Long Read Podcast caught up with Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who extended her lead in list appearances this week. It's a longer episode, but equally jam-packed with stories and tips—and make sure to stick around for the first-ever lightning round!

Christopher Goffard, now at The Los Angeles Times, is an experienced journalist of over 20 years. Most recently, he's the reporter, writer and voice of Dirty John, a captivating series told via print and chart-topping podcast. Christopher tells Jacob why he assigns his journalism students stories of everyday people, the way he first learned about "…

Award-winning author Ana Menendez is called “a triple-threat” by Don in our 4thSunday Long Read podcast—she’s been a reporter, a columnist and is now a full-time fiction writer (and, last week, Ana was guest-curator of the SLR). In their 40-minute conversation, Don and Ana discuss their shared early days at The Miami Herald and the inspiration and …