People Want to Be Heard

What the report says

The New York Review of Books published a transcript from season four of the podcast "The Critic and Her Publics," in which Merve Emre interviews New Yorker staff writer Sarah Stillman for the series "The Art of the Interview." The Review says it is working with Lit Hub to release transcripts and recordings from the season, which focuses on how writers and journalists conduct interviews.

The piece presents Stillman as a highly recognized investigative reporter, noting her National Magazine Awards, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur fellowship. Emre and Stillman discuss Stillman’s path from student reporting to her current role directing Yale’s Investigative Reporting Lab, with emphasis on how she teaches students to combine persistence with care for sources.

Stillman recounts how a college project grew from a TV news item about a missing Florida girl into an investigation of Donna Joan Cook, a woman whose death led Stillman to examine policing, fines, mental health and confidential informant practices. She frames that experience as formative: instead of following only the most visible headline, she became interested in people pushed to the margins of major stories.

The interview also revisits Stillman’s reporting on foreign workers recruited to support the U.S. military presence in Iraq, including her New Yorker piece "The Invisible Army." She describes using an embed with a military police unit to reach a base, then learning that workers were unlikely to speak openly near employers. The transcript offers a window into the practical and ethical challenges of investigative interviewing, particularly when sources may face pressure, fear or exploitation.