Lindsay Peoples is the editor-in-chief of The Cut. “You see so many incredible people make one mistake and lose their job or they speak out about something and then the next day something blows up. And so I do think that I often feel like I have to be so careful. And that's hard to do because I'm just naturally curious and I want to know and I want to find and explore and do the things. But I'm aware that … people think I'm too young. I'm too Black. I'm aware of all those things and I'm still going to try.” Show notes: 01:00 "Everywhere and Nowhere: What It’s Really Like to Be Black ..read more

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 ..read more

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, a ..read more

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 w ..read more

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. Vi ..read more

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 "’Th ..read more

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 real ..read more

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 ..read more

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”&nb ..read more

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 ..read more