Episode 507: Rachel Aviv

Longform

Rachel Aviv is a staff writer for The New Yorker. Her new book is Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us.

“I used to feel that if I knew everything, that was a good sign. And I've become more aware that if you know everything you want to argue, that's not such a good sign…. Do I have a genuine question? Is there something I’m trying to figure out? Then the story is worth telling. But if I don’t really have a question or if my question is already answered, then maybe that should give you pause.”

Show notes:

• @rachelaviv
• Aviv on Longform
• Aviv on Longform Podcast
• Aviv's New Yorker archive
• 05:00 Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (Farrar, Straus and Giroux • 2022)
• 03:00 "How An Ivy League School Turned Against A Student" (New Yorker • Mar 2022)
• 11:00 "Anorexia, The Impossible Subject" (Alice Gregory • New Yorker • Dec 2013)
• 12:00 "The Trauma of Facing Deportation" (New Yorker • Mar 2017)
• 28:00 The Warmth of Other Suns (Isabel Wilkerson • Vintage • 2011)

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