Episode 38: Charles Duhigg

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)