Q&A With Your Queue: John Patrick Pullen

Here we are with another imaginary coffee meetup with someone in the podcasting world. This week, we're chatting with John Patrick, founding editor of Long Lead, which produces the podcast Long Shadow. Any season of Long Shadow is my favorite, and honestly, some of the best examples of good journalism in the present day.

You can read my review of The Rise of the American Far Right or Breaking The Internet. (Or both, read both).

I hope you enjoy this Q&A and find something inspiring in it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Who are you?

I’m John Patrick Pullen, founding editor of the award-winning journalism studio Long Lead, which works with independent writers, reporters, photographers, and designers to publish immersive and pioneering editorial features. A former editor and writer for both TIME and Fortune, I’ve covered technology, business, politics, entertainment, breaking news, and more for more than 20 years. During that time, journalism has faced big headwinds and appeared rudderless. Long Lead is here to champion and platform the kind of deeply reported work that our industry has used to change the world.

Q: What podcast(s) do you work on?

Long Shadow: Breaking the Internet, a podcast Long Lead has been producing for four seasons with the historian, journalist and author Garrett Graff. Each season, we take a major issue in America to explain how the country got to where it is today. This season we’re telling the story of how the web, a tool with the power to fuel democracy, became a weapon aimed at the very heart of it.

Q: What was the first podcast you listened to?

I don’t want to sound too hipster with this answer, but I listened to This American Life before it was a podcast! It was in 2000, and I was a very bored recent college grad working in textbook/e-book production. At the time, TAL’s episodes were saved to the web and available to listen to via their website, so I binged it while I worked. Listening to early TAL episodes featuring Jay Allison, Scott Carrier, and Mike Birbiglia was hugely influential to me as a journalist today.

At the end of 2026 I'm definitely making a list of "what podcasts were most frequently "first podcasts""

Q: What is the most interesting podcast you have listened to?

A: I’ve got a strange, one-sided, rivalry going with Dan Taberski, who doesn’t even know who I am. On the one hand, his podcasts are some of my favorites — Missing Richard Simmons, really captured me — but on the other, his topics collide with a lot of what we’ve covered on Long Shadow: Y2K and 9/11 for example. But Hysterical answers this question perfectly, because it begins as a story about one narrow topic and turns into something completely different — something broad and universal — by its end. Hysterical is both journalism and art, and that’s what we aspire to produce at Long Lead. Everyone should listen to it… but you have to listen to the end!

From Keelin: Hysterial is one of the "best podcasts" that I absolutely agree with - and this sums up why so well, it's like this guy here is a professional writer with 20+ years of experience on me...

Q: What is your favorite escape-pod?

A: Early WTF With Marc Maron was a salve during a very hard period of my life, and Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend got me through the pandemic. I’d go on runs listening to Conan and his crew, and it was just a delight. I feel silly running and laughing, but that’s their goal, so mission accomplished! Like Taberski, Conan also doesn’t know who I am, but I consider him a friend.

From Keelin: This is my shameless plug for Conan O'Brien's wife's podcast Significant Others because I love it so much.

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