Sam’s Interviews and Stories
C-SPAN BookTV interviewed me on its two-hour show, In Depth. And later on its Washington Journal show.
Hear the long talk I had with Marc Maron on his WTF podcast in 2016 about Dreamland …and again with Marc in August, 2022 about The Least of Us
The Atlantic excerpted the meth story from The Least of Us in its November 2021 issue. And New York Magazine ran a piece on opioids and The Least of Us. LA Magazine ran this interview with me as well about the meth and homelessness side of The Least of Us.
Christianity Today ran a thoughtful review of The Least of Us by Emily Belz. Same with The Plough, reviewed by Joseph Keegin.
Watch my January 2018 testimony before the U.S. Senate‘s committee on Health,Education, Labor and Pensions — chaired by Sen. Lamar Alexander.
NPR’s Morning Edition, with host Renee Montagne, ran this interview about Dreamland. Rachel Martin interviewed me for the show several years later about The Least of Us. In fact, I’ve done numerous interviews and a few stories for NPR, including one with Terry Gross of Fresh Air. Listen to them all here. But if you have to listen to just one, here’s my story about opera in Tijuana, with Franc Contreras at the controls.
I’ve done several interviews through the years on the PBS NewsHour. Watch them here.
Some Podcasts …
A delightful chat w/ my wife, Sheila Tully, for her podcast, Our Modern Emotional Lives
Wonderful chat w/ the Lincoln Project podcast, Pt 1 & Pt 2
And another w/ the great journalist Peter Bergen on In the Room
Listen to my conversations with Dr. Drew about Dreamland and about The Least of Us.
Listen to my interview with Madeleine Brand on KCRW in LA. And with Mina Kim on KQED in San Francisco.
I’ve spoken twice with Russ Roberts on the EconTalk podcast: listen to the first chat here and the second here.
I had a different kind of chat with Dave on the Dopey Nation podcast and with Dr. Aaron Weiner on his show, Let’s Talk.
An interview on Reason TV about Mexican immigration and my second book, Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream.
Read an interview in the March, 2015 edition of The Writer magazine on long-form storytelling.
An interview with Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns podcast about my piece in The Free Press on Hazard, KY’s economic rebirth.
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Stories
Read The Atlantic’s excerpt of The Least of Us regarding the methamphetamine coming out of Mexico and its connection to homelessness, mental illness and tent encampments
For Los Angeles Magazine, my story of Arlene Rodriguez, a real estate agent who ended up as shot caller of Florencia 13, one of the largest street gangs in Southern California, before she had to flee.
This story for Politico about how border walls helped Tijuana’s economy grow more self-reliant.
NPR’s Weekend Edition ran this report on high school teachers and their students in South Webster, Ohio, a small town in Appalachia, which used Dreamland as a way of understanding what drugs had done to their community.
A NY Times op-ed piece about a jail in Kentucky that has transformed a pod into a full-time rehab unit – and that jail may be a great place to find new drug treatment capacity.
A KCRW (89.9FM) radio story about deportees in a Tijuana flophouse. A shorter radio story for KCRW about the arrival of large numbers of Haitians in Tijuana, traveling up from Brazil, looking for asylum in the U.S.
A National Geographic story about Cd Juarez’s emergence from a nightmare of murder, extortion and kidnaping by investing in local infrastructure and institutions. An example for the rest of Mexico.
A Los Angeles Magazine story of three immigrants – a Zapotec Indian from the highlands of Oaxaca, a Korean, and an Armenian – who separately helped shape modern L.A.
A front-page column in the New York Times Sunday Review about the opiate epidemic and the Xalisco Boys.
A column in the LA Times on how Southern California parks have been liberated from gang dominance, to the benefit of working-class families. And an interview on KPCC’s Take Two on the topic.
A New York Times column about South Gate and the southeast LA County cities, and Mexican ranchero assimilation.
Washington Post book reviews:
The Acid Test a novel by Mexican crime writer Elmer Mendoza.
The Hamlet Fire by historian Bryant Simon.
A Foreign Policy magazine piece arguing that Donald Trump may be just what Mexico needs.
An LA Times story on the centuries-old system of local Indian governance in Oaxaca, Mexico — usos y costumbres — that once served to unify villages, but now pits townsfolk against migrants, who are forced to do unpaid jobs back home or risk losing rights, land and property.
A radio story, plus blogposts and photos, on Tijuana’s art scene and a small corridor of defunct souvenir shops that helped reactivate it. Ran on NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and on To The Point, on KCRW (89.9FM in L.A.), which produced the report.
A story for Pacific Standard Magazine on the decline of gangs in Los Angeles, choosen by Daily Beast as one of the best longreads of the week, which was very nice of them. And an interview on the topic with Larry Mantle, host of Air Talk on KPCC, 89.3FM.
A commentary in the New York Times about the resurgence of the border town of Tijuana after years of drug violence.
A story on Tijuana’s new deportees for National Geographic online.
How the Hamburger Hamlet restaurant chain helped create a kitchen dynasty of Zapotec Indians in Los Angeles. The piece revolves around Marcelino Martinez, who came to work for the chain in 1970 and remains there still.
The story of the Cambodian Donut King, Ted Ngoy, who opened America to thousands of refugees from the Killing Fields by opening doughnut shops across Southern California, then lost them all to his one weakness, and wound up homeless.
The emergence of innovation and experimentation among Mexican banda tuba players. LA — tuba capital of the world, who knew? Then a follow up story about a rash of tuba thefts at LA-area high schools, due largely to banda’s popularity. And, finally, an interview with Madeleine Brand on KPCC about tubas, tuba thefts and more – with a performance by Jesse “El Chikilin” Tucker.
A 2003 documentary for Frontline World about coffee growers in Mexico and Guatemala.And an interview about making the documentary.
More Podcasts
I found Casey Dwyer’s questions to be very thoughtful on the Awareness to Action podcast. And had an equally great time speaking with Kate Wolf and Medaya Ocher on the LA Review of Books Radio Hour.
I spoke, too, with Brock Malcolm of the Healthy Harrison Podcast, from Harrison County, West Virginia, where the town of Clarksburg is located.
I spoke to Daniel Ford, of the Writer’s Bone, twice, once for Dreamland, and in 2021 for The Least of Us
Some reviews and other stuff …
NPR book reviewer Nancy Pearl talks about Dreamland.
Amazon.com’s blog, Omivoracious, ran this interview about Dreamland, after choosing it one of the Best Books of the Month for April.
Reviews for Dreamland from Salon.com – Christian Science Monitor.
Here’s what Gustavo Arellano had to say about True Tales from Another Mexico and Antonio’s Gun and Delfino’s Dream on NPR’s All Things Considered.
An interview on KPCC’s Take Two, on the arrest of Mexican drug lord El Chapo Guzman. And on PBS’s NewHour on the same topic.
More Stories
The death of club owner Emilio Franco, whose El Farallon Club in Lynwood, near Los Angeles, was a center of the narcocorrido scene for many years.
This story for National Public Radio is about the emergence of a vibrant opera scene in Tijuana.
Here’s a story for KPCC, 89.3FM, on Sgt. Dwight Waldo, expert on tagger graffiti and a guerrilla musician.
An LA Times story about workers who unionized a car wash in Santa Monica, believed the first to do so in Southern California, if not also the country.
Five LA Times stories on the NorCal pot world:
Indoor-grown marijuana allowed the “kids of hippies and rednecks to get rich.”
A deputy sheriff patrols the world of weed.
An anonymous pot-fiction writer tells the stories of the pot underground.
The strange saga of the community known as “Buddhaville” in SoHum. …
And a story about Fort Bragg, and the violence in the mountains of Mendocino County, after the killing of the town’s beloved city councilman.
The story of Jose Bonilla, obsessed with building a Mexican village – Asi Es Mi Tierra – in a valley near Santa Barbara, using only rocks, oil pipe.
The LA Times story of what happens when a poor immigrant with six kids doses herself with fertility drugs and has quadruplets.
An LAT Magazine story about Los Tigres del Norte, the greatest binational pop band and the best chroniclers of Mexican immigrants’ experience in the USA. Plus, the band that showed me another part of Mexico and America. Many thanks, guys!
A story about guitarist Ry Cooder and the Buena Vista Social Club album for the San Francisco Examiner from 1997.
Dr. Fresh, an Indian immigrant, built a dental empire in Buena Park, then became his brand and the guru of flossing.
Why are the cities southeast of L.A. so weakly governed? An LA Times story finds the origins of the Bell salary scandal in a little-noticed policing contract in the neighboring city of Maywood.
Foreign Policy magazine story on Mexico’s drug war.
The Heroin Road: A three-day LA Times series about the small Mexican town of Xalisco, where men emigrate to sell heroin and have pushed the drug across the US. Day 1 — Day 2 — Day 3.
St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church in LA, moribund and empty, revived when a priest turned it over to saints from Salvadora, Nigeria, Oaxaca, and Guatemala.
A gang shotcaller testifies against his former homies. The first story, which ran two years earlier, told of how his family and relatives from a small town in Mexico made Drew Streeet the scariest two blocks in L.A. And for the LA Weekly, this story on the shotcaller’s sentencing.