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M. Gessen returns to our show with a true-crime story that takes place entirely within their own family. This story comes to us from the producers at Serial Productions—who invented the true-crime podcast more than a decade ago—and from The New York Times.

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• Act One: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about the surprising events that prompted them to begin reporting on their own family for their new podcast, The Idiot. They play the first episode of the series. (14 minutes)
• Act Two: Ira Glass and M Gessen continue to talk through the story of M’s cousin, Allen Gessen. They play more clips from the podcast, and we finally hear about the big, shocking thing that snapped their family apart. (20 minutes)
• Act Three: M Gessen tells Ira Glass about Allen’s trial, and we hear a recording of his conversation with the undercover agent. (21 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

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This is a special compilation devoted to a subject very close to my heart and currently consuming a large percentage of my waking hours: writing. Over the years, I’ve asked some of the writers I admire most questions like: How do you choose a project and stay with it? How do you begin when inspiration refuses to show up? How do you build a practice that reliably produces pages? And how do you keep going when you fear your pages are terrible? Listen in to some of my favorite authors answer these and other questions. Please enjoy this special compilation on the craft of writing.

This episode is brought to you by:

• ProLon science-backed Fasting Mimicking Diet that helps activate cellular renewal through fasting, while still eating nourishing meals
• AG1 all-in-one nutritional supplement

Timestamps:

00:00 — Introduction

01:52 — Elizabeth Gilbert: Choosing and committing to a project

06:25 — Anne Lamott: Shitty first drafts and taking it bird by bird

13:04 — Joyce Carol Oates: Don’t wait for inspiration

15:47 — Jerry Seinfeld: Building a writing system

26:27 — Mary Karr: Revision and throwing out 1,200 pages

35:08 — Brandon Sanderson: Consistency, word counts, and output

45:04 — Seth Godin: Fear of bad writing

Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of Eat, Pray, Love; Big Magic; and City of Girls. Her ten books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.

Anne Lamott is the author of 20 books, including Bird by Bird, Operating Instructions, and Help, Thanks, Wow, and co-author—with her husband Neal Allen—of Good Writing.

Joyce Carol Oates has written more than 70 books, including Blonde and We Were the Mulvaneys, and won the National Book Award for her novel them.

Jerry Seinfeld co-created and starred in the sitcom Seinfeld—which ran nine seasons and won 10 Emmys—and later created Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee and wrote Is This Anything? 

Mary Karr wrote the bestselling memoirs The Liars’ Club, Cherry, and Lit and her book on writing, The Art of Memoir. 

Brandon Sanderson created the Mistborn and Stormlight Archive series, completed Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and raised more than $41 million on Kickstarter for four secret novels. 

Seth Godin has written 21 bestsellers published in 40 languages—including Purple Cow, Linchpin, and The Practice—and a daily blog of more than 10,000 posts.

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