The Sunday Long Read Podcast

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 article in the Journal of Black Studies focused particularly on obituaries, and the way they shape how civil rights leaders—and the entire movement—are remembered (or misremembered).

• McElroy's study, "You Must Remember This: Obituaries and the Civil Rights Movement"
• 2005: Rosa Parks, 92, Founding Symbol of Civil Rights Movement, Dies
• 2020: John Lewis, Towering Figure of Civil Rights Era, Dies at 80

The Art of Remembering is sponsored by our friends at Air Mail, the sophisticated digital weekly dispatch from Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley. SLR readers can get 40% off their first year subscription.

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 interesting thing I could ask you about x?’ It catches them off guard ... and they always come up with some suggested question that never would have occurred to me — because they know their own brain better than I could ever know it by asking them questions to get at it.”
Jacob and Charles discuss how every corporate job at Amazon is really the same, how longform and books allow a conversation around a subject to linger, and reporting style and tips for podcasts, print and books — including using LinkedIn to find sources and stories.
Charles can be found on Twitter @cduhigg and emailed at [email protected] (he promises to get back to anyone who reaches out).
[0:57] Is Amazon Unstoppable? (New Yorker, 10.10.19)
[1:09] Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property? (New Yorker, 10.15.18)
[9:52] The iEconomy (New York Times, 2012)
[10:41] Covering the Cops (New Yorker, 2.9.86)
[14:31] Amazon’s Next-Day Delivery Has Brought Chaos And Carnage To America’s Streets — But The World’s Biggest Retailer Has A System To Escape The Blame (BuzzFeed News, 8.31.19)
[14:32] His Mother Was Killed by a Van Making Amazon Deliveries. Here’s the Letter He Wrote to Jeff Bezos. (ProPublica, 9.5.19)
[14:40] Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe or Mislabeled Products (Wall Street Journal, 8.23.19)
[14:50] Jeff Bezos’s Master Plan (The Atlantic, 10.10.19)
[16:39] “On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane” (Little, Brown and Company, 2019)
[18:23] Emily Guendelsberger’s Twitter thread (10.18.19)
[23:01] “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” (Random House, 2012
[23:01] “Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business” (Random House, 2016)
[28:58] “How To!” Podcast (Slate, 2019)
[51:30] Zuckerberg: Standing For Voice and Free Expression (Washington Post, 10.17.19)

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, delivers memorable lines, and discusses some of her favorite obits with Don.

The Art of Remembering is sponsored by our friends at Air Mail, a weekly newsletter from former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and Alessandra Stanley, formerly of The New York Times.

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” other websites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy early on
[17:14] Asking readers for money
[19:00] Kurzgesagt
[23:55] On “The Story of Us”
[46:39] On echo chambers
[51:13] The possibility of writing about politics

"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. Tommy, a 23-year veteran of the Charlotte Observer, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and the host of his own podcast, has plenty of stories to tell and brings his trademark thoughtfulness to this week's episode. 18:00: Tommy's Jared Lorenzen story: http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/11382220/ex-nfl-qb-jared-lorenzen-lifelong-battle-weight 37:00: "Live Oak" by Jason Isbell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvZoQhHi65Q 48:00: "The Night of the Gun" by David Carr: https://www.amazon.com/Night-Gun-reporter-investigates-darkest/dp/1416541535 Links: Read an excerpt from Tommy's book: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/01/weight-loss-essay-tomlinson/579832/ Buy "The Elephant in the Room: One fat man's quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America": https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Elephant-in-the-Room/Tommy-Tomlinson/9781501111617 Read a Charlotte Observer Q&A with Tommy: https://www.charlotteobserver.com/entertainment/arts-culture/article223587620.html