Meet Mike Sager —A Legend of Longform Journalism

He's been called "the beat poet of American Journalism." And when you listen to this episode you’ll understand why.

As a novelist and contributor to such pubs as Rolling Stone, GQ, Esquire, and Playboy for 40-plus years, Mike Sager has lived hard and written harder. He's penned stories about everything and everyone from crack gangs in LA to Aryan Nation troopers in Idaho.

But Sager is perhaps best known for his true crime masterpiece, 'The Devil and John Holmes,' which inspired one of my absolute favorite movies Boogie Nights.

In this expansive interview, Sager shares his long, strange journey from a copy boy at the Washington Post to the editor and publisher of The Sager Group, a consortium of multi-media artists and writers.

He shares valuable writing and life lessons (to Sager they’re one in the same), including:

• The importance of reading your writing out loud

• Why you should transcribe all your interviews

• Finding the good in even the most repulsive characters

• Louder, faster, funnier