The ‘Longform’ Podcast Told The Story Of An Industry
Wednesday morning, I saw a tweet from the Longform podcast: Jay Caspian Kang, a staff writer at The New Yorker, was the guest on for their 583rd episode. I perked up. Kang was one of the founding editors of Grantland, a site I came across when the only sportswriting I had previously read was match reports. Reading talented writers describe their experiences and perceptions while watching sports, rather than mechanically recap a game, made me realize I wanted to do the same thing for a career.
Naturally, I started the episode right away. The three co-hosts—Max Linsky, Evan Ratliff, and Aaron Lammer—started talking about how this was their third-to-last episode. At first I thought I had missed a previous announcement due to the unceremonious nature of the discussion. But no, this was the first indication. “It’s been a really long and really incredible run,” Linsky said. “But from my vantage point, it’s really simple. Sometimes, it’s time. And after 12 years, it’s time.”
I’m sad. The Longform podcast featured an interview with a nonfiction writer in each episode. The guests came from a variety of backgrounds and outlets, and one of the hosts would ask them questions about their work. Sometimes an episode would be a career retrospective, sometimes it would focus on a single piece that consumed the internet (like Michael Schulman's profile of Jeremy Strong in the New Yorker), but unfailingly a host would extract a fascinating new piece of information about the writer or their life.
