Sarah Stillman

speaker

394 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 28 Jul

Sarah Stillman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Critic and Her Publics · Sarah Stillman · 28 Jul 2026 podcast

They said they didn't want to talk.

And then they explained why I would treat that as off the record.

But in the context of people who have

perpetrated serious harms against others and who are in positions of public office, who I call to ask to talk and then who explained to me for half an hour why they can't talk to me.

I did this piece about, as you mentioned, civil asset forfeiture and this wild police department in Tenaha, Texas, where they were pulling over almost every driver of color who passed through, checking if they had cash in the car, and then often threatening even to send those people's kids into foster care if they didn't let them seize the cash and sign it away.

And in that case, the officer who had been leading that ring, who was being sued at the time, gave me a 30-minute explanation of why he couldn't talk to me.

That included how he'd gotten messages from God about how he had to seize their money.

And so I wound up using that in the piece.

And yeah, I think I've had plenty of difficult interviews with those types.

Yeah.

And I will say, I think a really important thing to say is that I almost never go into it thinking of it in the reductive way I just presented, which is like the other side, quote unquote.

I find most of the time people are complex actors who are not like inherently deeply malicious.

And I'm actually really interested in what did motivate someone who was part of a system that was engaged in, for instance, profiteering.

And I've had

some really fruitful and interesting and surprising interviews I think a huge key is to not make assumptions and I hate reporting that feels like you know when you can read something and it feels like someone had a pre-existing equation and they just went in and like grabbed the quotes they needed for their confirmation of the thing they went out to investigate like that's not interesting and so

I'm not faking it and just saying like, oh, make sure to get the quote from the other side.

I think I actually am most of the time genuinely interested in what animates all of the actors in a piece.

And I try to read the drafts before they are published, imagining and projecting my imagination into the minds of the different figures involved, including the folks who may be accused of something serious.

And at The New Yorker, we also just we have a no surprises policy of like we call people in the fact checking process.

And I really love that because often I'll learn really rich things.

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