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This is the story of what happens when Evan Ratliff, co-host of Longform and a longtime tech journalist, makes a digital copy of himself, powered by AI, in order to understand how amazing and scary and utterly ridiculous the world is about to get.
In Episode 1, Evan clones his voice, hooks it up to ChatGPT and his phone line, and sends it off to tangle with customer service representatives.
New episodes drop on Tuesdays.
Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show.
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What would happen if you created a digital copy of yourself, powered by AI, and set it loose in the world? Over the past six months, Evan Ratliff has been trying to find out. He combined a clone of his voice, an AI chatbot, and a phone line—many phone lines, actually—into what are called “voice agents.” Then he sent them out… as himself. They talked to sources and colleagues (including his fellow Longform co-hosts), friends and family, scammers and spammers, other AI voice agents, and even therapists. The result is a story of what it feels like when you try to take control of the very technology that threatens to replace you.
New episodes drop on Tuesdays starting July 9.
Visit shellgame.co to find out more, subscribe, and support the show.
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John Jeremiah Sullivan is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and has written for Harper's, The New Yorker, and GQ. He is the author of Pulphead and the forthcoming The Prime Minister of Paradise: The True Story of a Lost American History.
“I love making pieces of writing and trying to find the right language to say what I mean. It's such a wonderful way of being alive in the world. I mean, your material is all around you. ... I'm lucky that it has stayed interesting for me. It hasn't faded. The challenges of writing, they still glow.”
Show notes:
Sullivan on Longform
Sullivan’s GQ archive
Sullivan’s New York Times Magazine archive
10:00 “Uhtceare” (Paris Review • May 2021)
28:00 Pulphead (FSG Originals • 2011)
30:00 The Best American Essays 2014 (Mariner Books • 2014)
30:00 “The Ill-Defined Plot” (New Yorker • Oct 2014)
50:00 “Man Called Fran” (Harper’s • Sept 2023)
50:00 “The Final Comeback of Axl Rose” (GQ • Aug 2006)
50:00 “Upon This Rock” (GQ • Jan 2004)
50:00 “Peyton’s Place” (GQ • Oct 2011)
50:00 “Leaving Reality” (GQ • Oct 2011)
54:00 “Pulp Fever” (Daniel Riley • GQ • Nov 2011)
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The hosts answer a few listener questions.
Evan’s picks for some podcasts to try:
Creative Nonfiction
Press Box
The Stacks Podcast:
Sunday Long Read
True Stories
Question Everything
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Ta-Nehisi Coates is an author and journalist. His next book is The Message.
“I don’t think we have the luxury as journalists of avoiding things because people might say bad things about us. I don’t even think we have the luxury of avoiding things because we might get fired. I don’t think we have the luxury of avoiding them because somebody might cancel some sort of public speech that we have. I then have to ask you, what are you in it for? Like, why did you come here? Did you come here just to make a living? Because there are many other things where you could make more money.”
Show notes:
ta-nehisicoates.com
Coates on Longform
Longform Podcast #7: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #97: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #168: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #225: Ta-Nehisi Coates
Longform Podcast #360: Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Jackson
Longform Podcast #408: Ta-Nehisi Coates
04:00 "Fear of a Black President" (The Atlantic • Sep 2012)
05:00 The Beautiful Struggle (One World • 2009)
12:00 "The Case for Reparations" (The Atlantic • Jun 2014)
13:00 Between the World and Me (One World • 2015)
36:00 "The Mask of Doom" (New Yorker • Sep 2009)
40:00 "How Tech Giants Cut Corners to Harvest Data for A.I." (Cade Metz, Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson and Nic Grant • New York Times • Apr 2024)
42:00 Shell Game (Evan Ratliff • 2024)
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Jay Caspian Kang is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a co-host of Time to Say Goodbye.
“At some point, you have to kick it out the door, and it’s never finished to the degree that you would finish a magazine piece. But it, in some ways, is more interesting because it is produced in a short amount of time, and it’s read as something that is not supposed to be complete. It’s just meant to provoke or to provide thought or whatever, to provide some sort of context on a certain issue or not. And I actually like that a lot better than the magazine writing. I respect the magazine writers—obviously, I was one—but for my disposition now, in my lifestyle, I actually enjoy having to produce this thing every week.”
Have a question for the mailbag? Email the show or leave a voicemail at (929) 333-2908.
Show notes:
@jaycaspiankang
Kang on Longform
Kang on Longform Podcast (Oct 2021)
Kang on Longform Podcast (Aug 2017)
Kang on Longform Podcast (Apr 2013)
Kang’s New Yorker archive
06:00 Coin Talk
08:00 Tyler Austin Harper’s Atlantic archive
10:00 Serial
12:00 The Daily
20:00 “The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain Is Always the High” (The Morning News • Oct 2010)
28:00 James (Percival Everett • Doubleday • 2024)
34:00 “American Son” (ESPN • July 2024)
35:00 Kang’s VICE archive
42:00 “Mike Francesa Still Believes in the Power of Radio” (New York Times • Aug 2018)
43:00 Kang’s Grantland archive
43:00 Kang’s New York Times archive
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Joseph Cox is a cybersecurity journalist and co-founder of 404 Media. His new book is Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever.“In the not too distant future, I will be a very old man, and maybe I won't be able to spend all day talking to drug traffickers. I will be mentally and physically exhausted. So I will doggedly pursue the story right now while I can.”Show notes:@josephfcoxCox's 404 Media archiveCox's Vice archiveDark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever (PublicAffairs • 2024)08:00 "FBI’s Encrypted Phone Platform Infiltrated Hundreds of Criminal Syndicates; Result is Massive Worldwide Takedown" (U.S. Attorney’s Office, Southern District of California • Jun 2021)10:00 Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World (Bradley Hope and Tom Wright • Hachette • 2018)19:00 "Revealed: The Country that Secretly Wiretapped the World for the FBI" (404 Media • Sep 2023)38:00 "Follow The Bitcoins: How We Got Busted Buying Drugs on Silk Road’s Black Market" (Andy Greenberg • Forbes • Sep 2013)41:00 "Hundreds of Bounty Hunters Had Access to AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint Customer Location Data for Years" (Motherboard • Feb 2019)Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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Tavi Gevinson is a writer, actor, and the founder of Rookie. Her new zine is Fan Fiction.
“Stories are unstable, and memory is unstable, and identity is unstable. All of these things that I've tried to make permanent in writing, they're actually unstable. So even though it's tempting to go, Oh, that was fake, it's more like, No, it was just temporary.”
Show notes:
@tavitulle
tavigevinson.world
Gevinson on Longform
Gevinson on Longform Podcast
Gevinson’s Rookie archive
10:00 Operation Shylock (Philip Roth • Simon & Schuster • 1993)
10:00 Erasure (Percival Everett • Graywolf Press • 2011)
14:00 “Taylor Swift Has No Regrets” (Elle • June 2015)
20:00 I Love Dick (Chris Kraus • Semiotext(e) • 1997)
24:00 “Who Would Tavi Gevinson Be Without Instagram?” (New York • Sept 2019)
40:00 “Editor’s Letter” (Rookie • Nov 2018)
50:00 “The Special Panic of Singing Sondheim” (New Yorker • Dec 2021)
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Rachel Khong is a journalist and author whose latest novel is Real Americans.
“It's about the ways in which we miss each other as human beings and can't fully communicate what it is like to be ourselves. … And I think that's what makes it so interesting to me, to work on a novel and to spend so much time trying to get down on the page what it feels like to be a human being who's alive. … I think the effort itself is what human relationships are.”
Show notes:
rachelkhong.com
01:00 Real Americans (Knopf • 2024)
01:00 Goodbye, Vitamin (Picador • 2017)
01:00 Lucky Peach archive
01:00 "Would Limitlessness Make Us Better Writers?" (The Atlantic • Apr 2024)
01:00 "Dust to Dust" (Eater • May 2024)
05:00 "New Pornographers + Stars, 6/25 Prospect Park Summer Stage" (Village Voice • Jun 2005)
09:00 Same Bed Different Dreams (Ed Park • Random House • 2023)
12:00 "Inside My Days as a Content Bot" (Esquire • Apr 2024)
24:00 "The Rumpus Interview with Elizabeth Gilbert" (Rumpus • Oct 2012)
24:00 Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert • Riverhead • 2007)
24:00 Elizabeth Gilbert's GQ archive
54:00 "The Great Pacific Oyster Trail" (Eater • Jun 2017)
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Kelsey McKinney is a features writer and co-owner at Defector.com. She hosts the podcast Normal Gossip and is the author of the upcoming book You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip.
“I was always very interested in how you strategize a creative career. And I think that that is an unsexy thing to talk about, right? It's much sexier to be like, Oh, I love working on my sentence-level craft, which is not true for me. But I think that a lot of a creative career is understanding it is still a job, and then understanding how you make sure that within the container of the job you can do the work that you want to do. That is a really difficult balance to make. So if you can understand how people who have done it before you, you can copy them.”
Show notes:
@mckinneykelsey
kelseymckinney.com
McKinney on Longform
McKinney’s Defector archive
04:00 “Why Doesn’t Mrs. Dalloway Get a Day of Her Own?” (Slate • Jan 2000)
13:00 “Chris Evans: American Marvel” (Edith Zimmerman • GQ • July 2011)
23:00 McKinney’s Deadspin archive
31:00 God Spare the Girls (Harper Collins • 2022)
39:00 “Gossip Is Not a Sin” (New York Times • July 2021)
43:00 You Didn’t Hear This From Me (Viking • 2025)
58:00 “Learning To Play Piano When There Is No Recital” (Defector • Dec 2023)
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Lissa Soep is an audio producer, editor and author whose latest book is Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations That Never End.
“I am so keenly aware of how much my own voice is a product of editing relationships and co-producing relationships with other people's words. … I will forever feel indebted to those then young people who are now writers and educators and therapists. … I feel like my voice is sort of a product of that time.”
Show notes:
00:00 Other People’s Words: Friendship, Loss, and the Conversations that Never End (Spiegel & Grau • 2024)
00:00 YR Media
33:00 "Laurie Anderson Has a Message for Us Humans" (Sam Anderson • New York Times Magazine • Oct 2021)
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PJ Vogt is the host of Search Engine.
“One of our tests editorially is if we think we’ve got something good, but we haven’t started reporting or recording on it, I’ll just try asking the question at dinner and stuff. If it derails conversations, that’s a really good sign.”
Show notes:
@PJVogt
Vogt’s Substack
Vogt on Longform Podcast
03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Mar 2024)
03:00 “Why Are There So Many Illegal Weed Stores in New York City? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • April 2024)
03:00 “When Do You Know It’s Time to Stop Drinking?” (Search Engine • Jan 2024)
08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 1)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024)
08:00 “Why Are There So Many Chicken Bones on the Street? (Part 2)” (Search Engine • Jan 2024)
13:00 “Is There a Sane Way to Use the Internet?” (Search Engine • Oct 2023)
15:00 “How Do You Survive Fame?” (Search Engine • Feb 2024)
15:00 “The Tao of Rick Rubin” (New York Times • The Ezra Klein Show • Feb 2023)
15:00 “Rick Rubin Says Trust Your Gut, Not Your Audience” (Bari Weiss • The Free Press • Mar 2023)
16:00 “Rick Rubin, The Seclusive Zen Master” (Tim Ferriss • Jan 2023)
16:00 “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Gay Talese • Esquire • April 1966)
18:00 The Ezra Klein Show
18:00 Fresh Air
19:00 Crypto Island (Jigsaw Productions • 2022)
26:00 “Do Political Yard Signs Actually Do Anything?” (Search Engine • Apr 2024)
27:00 Reply All
35:00 “What’s Going on With Elon Musk?” (Search Engine • July 2023)
38:00 “What’s It Like to Go Blind? (Search Engine • July 2023)
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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 and Work in Fashion" (The Cut • Aug 2018)
09:00 The Devil Wears Prada (Fox 2000 Pictures • 2006)
29:00 David Haskell on Longform Podcast
31:00 "Should I Leave My Husband? The Lure of Divorce" (Emily Gould • The Cut • Feb 2024)
31:00 "The Day I Put $50,000 in a Shoe Box and Handed It to a Stranger" (Charlotte Cowles • The Cut • Feb 2024)
31:00 "Age Gap Relationships: The Case for Marrying an Older Man" (Grazie Sophia Christie • The Cut • Mar 2024)
50:00 "Is There Room for Fashion Criticism in a Racist Industry?" (The Cut • Aug 2021)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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)
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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)
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