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Latest Episodes:

How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills Mar 06, 2025

“The Pitt,” which recently began streaming on Max, spans a single shift in the life of a doctor at an underfunded Pittsburgh hospital where, in the course of fifteen gruelling hours, he and his team struggle to keep up with a seemingly endless stream of patients. The show has been praised by lay-viewers and health-care professionals alike for its human drama and its true-to-life portrayal of structural issues that are rarely seen onscreen. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz parse how “The Pitt” fits alongside beloved medical shows like “E.R.” and “Grey’s Anatomy.” While the new series upholds many of the tropes of the genre, it’s set apart by its emphasis on accuracy and on the daily struggles—and rewards—of laboring toward a collective goal. At the heart of “The Pitt” is a question that, in 2025, is top of mind for many of us: does the for-profit medical system actually allow for humane care? “Faith in these institutions has eroded,” Schwartz says. “At the low point of such faith and trust, what happens to build it back?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Pitt” (2025-)
“E.R.” (1994-2009)
“Grey’s Anatomy” (2005-)
“This Is Going to Hurt” (2022)
“House” (2004-12)
“The Bear” (2022–)
Doctor Mike’s YouTube channel
Steveoie’s YouTube channel

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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In “Severance,” the Gothic Double Lives On Feb 27, 2025

“Severance” is an office drama with a twist: the central characters have undergone a procedure to separate their work selves (“innies,” in the parlance of the show) from their home selves (“outies”). The Apple TV+ series is just the latest cultural offering to explore how the modern world asks us to compartmentalize our lives in increasingly drastic ways. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the trope of the “double” over time, from its nineteenth-century origins in such works as “Jane Eyre” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” to the “passing” novels of the nineteen-twenties and thirties. Today’s Oscar front-runners are rife with doubles, too, including those seen in the Demi Moore-led body-horror film “The Substance” and “The Apprentice,” in which a young Donald Trump fashions himself in the image of his mentor, Roy Cohn. At a time when technological advances and social platforms allow us to present—or to engineer—an optimized version of our lives, it’s no wonder our second selves are haunting us anew. “I think the double will always exist because of the hope for wholeness,” Cunningham says. “It's such a strong desire that the shadow of that whole self—the doppelgänger—will always be lurking at the edges of our imagination.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Severance” (2022—)
“The Substance” (2024)
“A Different Man” (2024)
“Frankenstein,” by Mary Shelley
“The Apprentice” (2024)
“Passing,” by Nella Larsen
Key and Peele’s sketch “Phone Call”
“Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Brontë
“Lisa and Lottie,” by Erich Kästner
William Shakespeare’s “As You Like It”
“The Uncanny,” by Sigmund Freud
Edmond Rostand’s “Cyrano de Bergerac”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine Feb 20, 2025

The first episode of “Saturday Night Live,” which aired in October of 1975, was a loose, scrappy affair. The sketches were experimental, almost absurdist, and the program was peppered with standup from the host, George Carlin, who freely addressed the hot-button issues of the day. “S.N.L.” turns fifty this year, and its anniversary has been marked by a slew of festivities, culminating in a three-hour special that aired this past weekend. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the show’s origins, the recurring bits and cast members who’ve defined it over time, and whether, half a century on, it’s still essential viewing. The anniversary special, which featured a star-studded guest list, celebrated an institution that, despite its countercultural roots, has become a finely tuned, star-making machine that plays to all fifty states. “This is what the show is about: getting famous people or soon-to-be famous people to play together in this sandbox,” Cunningham says. “The self-congratulation didn't play to me as a betrayal of the thing. No, this is a distillation of the thing.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Saturday Night Live” (1975–)
Sabrina Carpenter and Paul Simon’s cover of “Homeward Bound”
“SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” (2025)
“Fifty Weird Years of ‘Saturday Night Live,’ ” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live,” by Susan Morrison
“How ‘Saturday Night Live’ Breaks the Mold,” by Michael J. Arlen (The New Yorker)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers Feb 13, 2025

A few years back, novels classed as “romantasy”—a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”—might have seemed destined to attract only niche appeal. But since the pandemic, the genre has proved nothing short of a phenomenon. Sarah J. Maas’s “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series regularly tops best-seller lists, and last month, Rebecca Yarros’s “Onyx Storm” became the fastest-selling adult novel in decades. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by their fellow New Yorker staff writer Katy Waldman as they delve into the realm of romantasy themselves. Together, they consider some of the most popular entries in the genre, and discuss how monitoring readers’ reactions on BookTok, a literary corner of TikTok, allows writers to tailor their work to fans’ hyperspecific preferences. Often, these books are conceived and marketed with particular tropes in mind—but the key ingredient in nearly all of them is a sense of wish fulfillment. “The reason that I think they’re so powerful and they provide such solace to us is because they tell us, ‘You’re perfect. You’re always right. You have the hottest mate. You have the sickest powers,’ ” Waldman says. “I totally get it. I fall into those reveries, too. I think we all do.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Did a Best-Selling Romantasy Novelist Steal Another Writer’s Story?,” by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker)
“The Song of the Lioness,” by Tamora Pierce
“A Court of Thorns and Roses,” by Sarah J. Maas
“Ella Enchanted,” by Gail Carson Levine
“Fourth Wing,” by Rebecca Yarros
“Onyx Storm,” by Rebecca Yarros
“Crave,” by Tracy Wolff
“Working Girl” (1988)
“Game of Thrones” (2011-19)
“The Vampyre,” by John Polidori
“Dracula,” by Bram Stoker
“Outlander” (2014–)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles Feb 06, 2025

David Lynch, who died last month at seventy-eight, was a director of images—one whose distinctive sensibility and instinct for combining the grotesque and the mundane have influenced a generation of artists in his wake. Lynch conjured surreal, sometimes hellish dreamscapes populated by strange figures and supernatural forces lurking beneath wholesome American idylls. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz revisit Lynch’s landmark works and reflect on their resonance today. They discuss his 1986 film, “Blue Velvet”; the television series “Twin Peaks,” whose story and setting Lynch returned to throughout his career; and “Mulholland Drive,” his so-called “poisonous valentine to Hollywood.” Lynch’s stories often resist interpretation, and the director himself refused to ascribe any one meaning to his work. In a way, this openness to multiple readings is at the heart of his appeal. “Reality, too, offers many unsolvable puzzles,” Cunningham says. “The artist who says, ‘I trust that if I offer you this, you will come out with something—even if it’s not something that I programmed in advance’—that always gives me hope.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Eraserhead” (1977)
“Blue Velvet” (1986)
“Twin Peaks” (1990-91)
“Mulholland Drive” (2001)
“Dune” (1984)
“Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me” (1992)
“Twin Peaks: The Return” (2017)
“David Lynch Keeps His Head,” by David Foster Wallace (Premiere)
David Lynch’s P.S.A. for the New York Department of Sanitation
“Severance” (2022—)
“David Lynch’s Outsized Influence on Photography,” in Aperture
Comme des Garçons SS16
Prada AW13
David Lynch’s Weather Reports

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Splendor of Nature, Now Streaming Jan 30, 2025

In 1954, a young David Attenborough made his début as the star of a new nature show called “Zoo Quest.” The docuseries, which ran for nearly a decade on the BBC, was a sensation that set Attenborough down the path of his life’s work: exposing viewers to our planet’s most miraculous creatures and landscapes from the comfort of their living rooms. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace Attenborough’s filmography from “Zoo Quest” to his program, “Mammals,” a six-part series on BBC America narrated by the now- ninety-eight-year-old presenter. In the seventy years since “Zoo Quest” first aired, the genre it helped create has had to reckon with the effects of the climate crisis—and to figure out how to address such hot-button issues onscreen. By highlighting conservation efforts that have been successful, the best of these programs affirm our continued agency in the planet’s future. “One thing I got from ‘Mammals’ was not pure doom,” Schwartz says. “There are some options here. We have choices to make.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Mammals” (2024)
“Zoo Quest” (1954-63)
“Are We Changing Planet Earth?” (2006)
“The Snow Leopard,” by Peter Matthiessen
“My Octopus Teacher” (2020)
“Life on Our Planet” (2023)
“I Like to Get High at Night and Think About Whales,” by Samantha Irby

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode originally aired on July 11, 2024.

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The New Western Gold Rush Jan 16, 2025

Westward expansion has been mythologized onscreen for more than a century—and its depiction has always been entwined with the politics and anxieties of the era. In the 1939 film “Stagecoach,” John Wayne crystallized our image of the archetypal cowboy; decades later, he played another memorable frontiersman in “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” which questions how society is constructed. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the genre from these cinematic classics to its recent resurgence, marked by big-budget entries including “American Primeval,” which depicts nineteenth-century territorial conflicts in brutal, unsparing detail, and by the wild popularity of Taylor Sheridan’s “neo-Westerns,” which bring the time-honored form to the modern day. Sheridan’s series, namely “Yellowstone” and “Landman,” often center on a world-weary patriarch tasked with protecting land and property from outside forces waiting to seize it. Sometimes described as “red-state shows,” these works are deliberately slippery about their politics—but they pull in millions of viewers from across the ideological spectrum. What accounts for this success? “Whether or not we want to be living in a Western,” Schwartz says, “we very much still are.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Yellowstone” (2018–24)
“Landman” (2024—)
“Horizon: An American Epic” (2024)
“American Primeval” (2025—)
“Stagecoach” (1939)
“Dances with Wolves” (1990)
“Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman” (1993–98)
Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” series
“The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962)
“Shōgun” (2024)
“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948)
“Oppenheimer” (2023)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Elusive Promise of the First Person Jan 09, 2025

The first person is a narrative style as old as storytelling itself—one that, at its best, allows us to experience the world through another person’s eyes. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace how the technique has been used across mediums throughout history. They discuss the ways in which fiction writers have played with the unstable triangulation between author, reader, and narrator, as in Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and Bret Easton Ellis’s “American Psycho,” a book that adopts the perspective of a serial killer, and whose publication provoked public outcry. RaMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys”—an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel—is a bold new attempt to deploy the first person onscreen. The film points to a larger question about the bounds of narrative, and of selfhood: Can we ever truly occupy someone else’s point of view? “The answer, in large part, is no,” Cunningham says. “But that impossibility is, for me, the actual promise: not the promise of a final mind meld but a confrontation, a negotiation with the fact that our perspectives really are our own.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Nickel Boys” (2024)
“The Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead
“Lolita,” by Vladimir Nabokov
“Meet the Director Who Reinvented the Act of Seeing,” by Salamishah Tillet (The New York Times)
“Great Books Don’t Make Great Films, but ‘Nickel Boys’ Is a Glorious Exception,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
“Lady in the Lake” (1947)
“Dark Passage” (1947)
“Enter the Void” (2010)
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
Doom (1993)
“The Berlin Stories,” by Christopher Isherwood
“American Psycho,” by Bret Easton Ellis
“The Adventures of Augie March,” by Saul Bellow
“Why Did I Stop Loving My Cat When I Had a Baby?” by Anonymous (The Cut)
“Harmony and Dissonance: Orphism in Paris, 1910-1930” at the Guggenheim Museum

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms Dec 26, 2024

Margaret Talbot, writing in The New Yorker in 2005, recounted that when animators at Pixar got stuck on a project they’d file into a screening room to watch a film by Hayao Miyazaki. Best known for works like “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Princess Mononoke,” and “Spirited Away,” which received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, in 2002, he is considered by some to be the first true auteur of children’s entertainment. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the themes that have emerged across Miyazaki’s œuvre, from bittersweet depictions of late childhood to meditations on the attractions and dangers of technology. Miyazaki’s latest, “The Boy and the Heron,” is a semi-autobiographical story in which a young boy grieving his mother embarks on a quest through a magical realm as the Second World War rages in reality. The Japanese title, “How Do You Live?,” reveals the philosophical underpinnings of what may well be the filmmaker’s final work. “Wherever you are—whether it seems to be peaceful, whether things are scary—there’s something happening somewhere,” Cunningham says. “And you have to learn this as a child. There’s pain somewhere. And you have to learn how to live your life along multiple tracks.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989)
“My Neighbor Totoro” (1988)
“Old Enough!” (1991-present)
“Princess Mononoke” (1997)
“Spirited Away” (2001)
“The Boy and the Heron” (2023)
“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C. S. Lewis (1950)
“The Moomins series” by Tove Jansson (1945-70)
“The Wind Rises” (2013)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode originally aired on December 7, 2023.

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Critics at Large Live: The Year of the Flop Dec 19, 2024

This year, high-profile failures abounded. Take, for example, Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project “Megalopolis,” which cost a hundred and forty million dollars to make—and brought in less than ten per cent of that at the box office. And what was Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump but a fiasco of the highest order? On this episode of Critics at Large, recorded live at Condé Nast’s offices at One World Trade Center, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz pronounce 2024 “the year of the flop,” and draw on a range of recent examples—from the Yankees’ disappointing performance at the World Series to Katy Perry’s near-universally mocked music video for “Woman’s World”—to anatomize the phenomenon. What are the constituent parts of a flop, and what might these missteps reveal about the relationship between audiences and public figures today? The hosts also consider the surprising upsides to such categorical failures. “In some ways, always succeeding for an artist is a problem . . . because I think you retain fear,” Schwartz says. “If you can get through it, there really can be something on the other side.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

HBO’s “Industry” (2020–)
The 2024 World Series
The 2024 Election
“Megalopolis” (2024)
“Woman’s World,” by Katy Perry
“ ‘Woman’s World’ Track Review,” by Shaad D’Souza (Pitchfork)
“Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and the Unstable Hierarchy of Pop” (The New Yorker)
“Tarot, Tech, and Our Age of Magical Thinking” (The New Yorker)
“Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and the Benefits of Beef” (The New Yorker)
“Am I Racist?” (2024)
“Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1” (2024)
“Apocalypse Now” (1979)
“Madame Web” (2024)
“The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Fugees
“Moby-Dick,” by Herman Melville
“NYC Prep” (2009)
“Princesses: Long Island” (2013)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical? Dec 12, 2024

The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few and far between. Meanwhile, one of the biggest films of the season is Jon M. Chu’s earnest (and lengthy) adaptation of “Wicked,” the origin story of the Wicked Witch of the West that first premièred on the Great White Way nearly twenty years ago—and has been a smash hit ever since. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss why “Wicked” is resonating with audiences in 2024. They consider it alongside other recent movie musicals, such as “Emilia Pérez,” which centers on the transgender leader of a Mexican cartel, and Todd Phillips’s follow-up to “Joker,” the confounding “Joker: Folie à Deux.” Then they step back to trace the evolution of the musical, from the first shows to marry song and story in the nineteen-twenties to the seventies-era innovations of figures like Stephen Sondheim. Amid the massive commercial, technological, and aesthetic shifts of the last century, how has the form changed, and why has it endured? “People who don’t like musicals will often criticize their artificiality,” Schwartz says. “Some things in life are so heightened . . . yet they’re part of the real. Why not put them to music and have singing be part of it?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Wicked” (2024)
“The Animals That Made It All Worth It,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Ben Shapiro Reviews ‘Wicked’ ”
“Frozen” (2013)
“Emilia Pérez” (2024)
“Joker: Folie à Deux” (2024)
“ ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ Review: Make ’Em Laugh (and Yawn),” by Manohla Dargis (the New York Times)
“Hair” (1979)
“The Sound of Music” (1965)
“Anything Goes” (1934)
“Show Boat” (1927)
“Oklahoma” (1943)
“Mean Girls” (2017)
“Hamilton” (2015)
“Wicked” (2003)
“A Strange Loop” (2019)
“Teeth” (2024)
“Kimberly Akimbo” (2021)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome Dec 05, 2024

Artists owe a great debt to ancient Rome. Over the years, it’s provided a backdrop for countless films and novels, each of which has put forward its own vision of the Empire and what it stood for. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the latest entry in that canon, Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II,” which has drawn massive audiences and made hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office. The hosts also consider other texts that use the same setting, from the religious epic “Ben-Hur” to Sondheim’s farcical sword-and-sandal parody, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Recently, figures from across the political spectrum have leapt to lay claim to antiquity, even as new translations of Homer have underscored how little we really understand about these civilizations. “Make ancient Rome strange again. Take away the analogies,” Schwartz says. “Maybe that’s the appeal of the classics: to try to keep returning and understanding, even as we can’t help holding them up as a mirror.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Gladiator II” (2024)
“I, Claudius” (1976)
“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1966)
“The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)
“Monty Python’s Life of Brian” (1979)
“Cleopatra” (1963)
“Spartacus” (1960)
“Ben-Hur” (1959)
“Gladiator” (2000)
“The End of History and the Last Man,” by Francis Fukuyama
“I, Claudius,” by Robert Graves
“I Hate to Say This, But Men Deserve Better Than Gladiator II,” by Alison Wilmore (Vulture)
“On Creating a Usable Past,” by Van Wyck Brook (The Dial)
Emily Wilson’s translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right? Nov 21, 2024

In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of a group of L.A. teens. Screen recordings of the kids’ social-media use reveal how these platforms have reshaped their experience of the world in alarming ways. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the show paints a vivid, empathetic portrait of modern adolescence while also tapping into the long tradition of fretting about what the youths of the day are up to. The hosts consider moral panics throughout history, from the 1971 book “Go Ask Alice,” which was first marketed as the true story of a drug-addicted girl’s downfall in a bid to scare kids straight, to the hand-wringing that surrounded trends like rock and roll and the postwar comic-book craze. Anxieties around social-media use, by contrast, are warranted. Mounting research shows how screen time correlates with spikes in depression, loneliness, and suicide among teens. It’s a problem that has come to define all our lives, not just those of the youth. “This whole crust of society—people joining trade unions and other kinds of things, lodges and guilds, having hobbies,” Cunningham says, “that layer of society is shrinking. And parallel to our crusade against the ills of social media is, how do we rebuild that sector of society?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Social Studies” (2024)
“Into the Phones of Teens,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Generation Wealth” (2018)
Marilyn Manson
“Reviving Ophelia,” by Mary Pipher
“Go Ask Alice,” by Beatrice Sparks
“Forrest Gump” (1994)
“The Rules of Attraction,” by Bret Easton Ellis
“Less Than Zero,” by Bret Easton Ellis
“The Sorrows of Young Werther,” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Seduction of the Innocent,” by Fredric Wertham
“Has Social Media Fuelled a Teen-Suicide Crisis?,” by Andrew Solomon (The New Yorker)
“The Anxious Generation,” by Jonathan Haidt
“Bowling Alone,” by Robert D. Putnam

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Value—and Limits—of Seeking Comfort in Art Nov 14, 2024

One of the most fundamental features of art is its ability to meet us during times of distress. In the early days of the pandemic, many people turned to comfort reads and beloved films as a form of escapism; more recently, in the wake of the election, shows such as “The Great British Bake Off” have been offered up on group chats as a balm. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the value—and limits—of seeking solace in culture. Comfort art has flourished in recent years, as evidenced by the rise of genres such as“romantasy” and the “cozy thriller.” But where is the line between using art as a salve and tuning out at a moment when politics demands our engagement? “One of the purposes of the comfort we seek is to sustain us,” Schwartz says. “That’s what we all are going to need: sustenance to move forward.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Crown” (2016-2023)
“Sesame Street” (1969-)
“The Great British Bake Off” (2010-)
“In Tumultuous Times, Readers Turn to ‘Healing Fiction,’ ” by Alexandra Alter (The New York Times)
Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” (1950-2000)
“Uncut Gems” (2019)
“Somebody Somewhere” (2022-)
“3 Terrific Specials to Distract You from the News,” by Jason Zinoman (The New York Times)
“Tom Papa: Home Free” (2024)
“America, Don’t Succumb to Escapism,” by Kristen Ghodsee (The New Republic)
“Candide,” by Voltaire
Beth Stern’s Instagram
“Janet Planet” (2023)
Marvin Gaye’s “What's Going On”
Donny Hathaway’s “Extension of a Man”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Critics at Large Live: Julio Torres’s Dreamy Surrealism Oct 31, 2024

Since the comedian Julio Torres came to America from El Salvador, more than a decade ago, his fantastical style has made him a singular presence in the entertainment landscape. An early stint writing for “Saturday Night Live” yielded some of the show’s weirdest and most memorable sketches; soon after that, Torres’s work on the HBO series “Los Espookys,” which he co-wrote and starred in, cemented his status as a beloved odd-child of the comedy scene. In his most recent work, he’s applied his dreamy sensibility to very real bureaucratic nightmares. “Problemista,” his first feature film, draws on Torres’s own Kafkaesque experience navigating the U.S. immigration system; in his new HBO show, “Fantasmas,” the protagonist considers whether to acquire a document called a “proof of existence,” without which everyday tasks like renting an apartment are rendered impossible. In a live taping at The New Yorker Festival, the hosts of Critics at Large talk with Torres about his creative influences, and about using abstraction to put our most impenetrable systems into tangible terms. “Life today is so riddled with these man-made labyrinths that are life-or-death … there’s something very lonely about it,” Torres says. “These flourishes are there in service of the humanity.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Problemista” (2023)
“Fantasmas” (2024-)
“Los Espookys” (2019-22)
“I Want to Be a Vase,” by Julio Torres
“My Favorite Shapes” (2019)
“Saturday Night Live” (1975-)
“Julio Torres’s ‘Fantasmas’ Finds Truth in Fantasy,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1996)
“Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” (2003)
“The Substance” (2024)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Help, I Need a Critic! Oct 24, 2024

The art of advice-giving, championed over the years by such figures as Ann Landers and Cheryl Strayed, has lately undergone a transformation. As traditional columns have continued to proliferate, social-media platforms have created new venues for those seeking—and doling out—counsel, from the users of the popular subreddit “Am I the Asshole” to the countless “experts” who peddle their takes on Instagram and TikTok. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz try their hands at the trade, advising listeners on a variety of cultural conundrums. The hosts trace the form from early examples such as Advice for Living, the short-lived column written by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the late nineteen-fifties, through to the Internet age. The genre has long functioned as a forum for parsing the ethics of the era, and its enduring appeal might be explained by our inherent curiosity about the way others live. “There is a sort of plurality of approaches to life itself, which means that we are all passing into and out of other people’s moral universes,” Cunningham says. “I think it causes more trouble—causes more questions.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Witch Elm,” by Tana French

“Crime and Punishment,” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen

“Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney

“The Guest,” by Emma Cline

“I’m a Fan,” by Sheena Patel

“My Husband,” by Maud Ventura

“The Anthropologists,” by Ayşegül Savaş

“Small Rain,” by Garth Greenwell

“Brightness Falls,” by Jay McInerney

Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy

William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

“Ghost World,” by Dan Clowes

The Ethicist (The New York Times)

Dear Sugar (The Rumpus)

“The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Lisa Frankenstein” (2024)

“The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James

“Carrie,” by Stephen King

“Little Labors,” by Rivka Galchen

“Matrescence,” by Lucy Jones

“The Mother Artist,” by Catherine Ricketts

“Acts of Creation,” by Hettie Judah

r/AmItheAsshole

Advice for Living (Ebony Magazine)

New episodes drop every Thursda… Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

A Controversial Trump Bio-pic and the Villains We Make Oct 10, 2024

“The Apprentice,” a new film directed by Ali Abbasi, depicts the rise of a young Donald Trump under the wing of the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn. The film is, in many ways, an origin story for a man who has overtaken contemporary politics. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the movie and other works that explore Trump’s and Cohn’s psychologies, from duelling family memoirs to documentaries. The sheer number of such texts raises the question: Why are we so interested in the backstories of people who have done wrong, and what do we stand to gain (or lose) by humanizing them? “Do we want to see our villains, our absolute villains—people who have caused much harm to the world—as weak little boys who’ve undergone trauma and have had their reasons for becoming the monsters they later turn into?” Fry asks. “Or do we not?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Apprentice” (2024)
“Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir,” by Mary Trump
“All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way,” by Fred C. Trump III
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?” (2019)
“Roy Cohn and the Making of a Winner-Take-All America,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Angels in America” (2003)
“Joker” (2019)
“Wicked” (2024)
“Ratched” (2020)
“Elephant” (2003)
“Cruella” (2021)
“The Sopranos” (1991-2007)
“Mad Men” (2007-15)
The “Harry Potter” novels, by J. K. Rowling
“Paradise Lost,” by John Milton
“Be Ready When the Luck Happens,” by Ina Garten

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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“The Substance” and the New Horror of the Modified Body Oct 03, 2024

In “The Substance,” a darkly satirical horror movie directed by Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore plays an aging Hollywood actress who strikes a tech-infused Faustian bargain to unleash a younger, “more perfect” version of herself. Gruesome side effects ensue. Fargeat’s film plays on the fact that female aging is often seen as its own brand of horror—and that we’ve devised increasingly extreme methods of combating it. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “The Substance” and “A Different Man,” another new release that questions our culture’s obsession with perfecting our physical forms. In recent years, the smorgasbord of products and procedures promising to enhance our bodies and preserve our youth has only grown; social media has us looking at ourselves more than ever before. No wonder, then, that horror as a genre has been increasingly preoccupied with our uneasy relationship to our own exteriors. “We are embodied. It is a struggle. It is beautiful. It’s something to wrestle with forever. Just as you think that you’ve caught up to your current embodiment, something changes,” Schwartz says. “And so how do we make our peace with it?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“A Clockwork Orange” (1971)
“The Substance” (2024)
“A Different Man” (2024)
“Psycho” (1960)
“The Ren & Stimpy Show” (1991-96)
“The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison
“Passing,” by Nella Larsen
“The Power of Positive Thinking,” by Norman Vincent Peale
“Titane” (2021)
“The Age of Instagram Face,” by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Fate of the Finance Bro Sep 26, 2024

From classic eighties films like “Wall Street” to Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel “American Psycho,” the world of finance has long provided a seductive backdrop for meditations on wealth and power. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the many portrayals of this élite realm, and how its image has evolved over time. Where earlier texts glorified Wall Street types as roguish heroes, the Great Recession ushered in more critical fare, seeking to explain the inner workings of a system that benefitted the few at the expense of the many. In 2024, as TikTokkers and personal essayists search for “a man in finance,” things seem to be shifting again. HBO’s “Industry,” now in its third season, depicts a cadre of young investment bankers clawing their way to the top of a soulless meritocracy—and may even engender some sympathy for the new finance bro. Why are audiences and creators alike so easily seduced by these stories even after the disillusionment of the Occupy Wall Street era? “We're talking about something—money—that is fun, and that we all on some level do want,” Cunningham says. “It’s always going to make us feel.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Industry” (2020—)

“Wall Street” (1987)

“You don’t have to look for a ‘man in finance.’ He’s everywhere,” by Rachel Tashjian (The Washington Post)

Joel Sternfeld’s “Summer Interns, Wall Street, New York”

“American Psycho” (2000)

“American Psycho,” by Bret Easton Ellis

“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2010)

“The Big Short” (2015)

“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)

“Margin Call” (2011)

“The Case for Marrying an Older Man,” by Grazie Sophia Christie (The Cut)

“My Year of Finance Boys,” by Daniel Lefferts (The Paris Review)

“Ways and Means,” by Daniel Lefferts

“Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Sally Rooney’s Beautiful Deceptions Sep 19, 2024

Almost immediately after the publication of Sally Rooney’s “Normal People,” in 2018, Rooney-mania hit a fever pitch. Her work struck a cord among a generation of readers who responded to evocative descriptions of young people’s lives and relationships. Before long, Rooney had—somewhat reluctantly—been dubbed “the first great millennial author.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “Intermezzo,” Rooney’s hotly anticipated fourth novel, which explores the dynamic between two brothers grieving the death of their father. The book is a sadder, more mature read than Rooney’s fans may have come to expect, but it retains her characteristic flair for making consciousness itself into a bingeable experience. “That is the great achievement of the realist novel for me,” Fry says. “The fact that Rooney is making this enjoyable for a new generation—amazing. Maybe it’s a conservative impulse, but there’s something reassuring for me about that.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Conversations with Friends,” by Sally Rooney
“Normal People,” by Sally Rooney
“Beautiful World, Where Are You,” by Sally Rooney
“Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney
“Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
“Normal Novels,” by Becca Rothfeld (The Point)
“The Corrections,” by Jonathan Franzen
“My Struggle,” by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Neapolitan novels, by Elena Ferrante
“Sally Rooney on the Hell of Fame,” by Emma Brockes (The Guardian)
“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce
The Harry Potter novels, by J. K. Rowling
“Why Bother?” by Jonathan Franzen (Harper’s Magazine)
“Middlemarch,” by George Eliot
“Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Was Abraham Lincoln Gay . . . And Should We Care? Sep 12, 2024

The writer Carl Sandburg, in his 1926 biography of Abraham Lincoln, made a provocative claim—that the President’s relationship with the Kentucky state representative Joshua Speed held “streaks of lavender.” The insinuation fuelled a debate that has continued ever since: Was Lincoln gay? On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss a new documentary that tries to settle the question. “Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” is part of a growing body of work that looks at the past through the lens of identity—a process that can reveal hidden truths or involve a deliberate departure from the facts. The hosts consider other distinctly modern takes on U.S. history, including the farcical Broadway sensation “Oh, Mary!,” which depicts Mary Todd Lincoln as a failed cabaret star and her husband as a neurotic closet case, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit “Hamilton,” which reimagines the Founding Fathers as people of color. In the end, the way we locate ourselves in the past is inextricable from the culture wars of today. “It is a political necessity for every generation to be, like, No, this is what the past was like,” Cunningham says. “It points to a struggle that we’re having right now to redefine, What is America?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” (2024)
“Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years & The War Years,” by Carl Sandburg
Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!”
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton”
“The Celluloid Closet” (1995)
“Hidden Figures” (2016)
“I’m Coming Out,” by Diana Ross

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Trap of the Trad Wife Sep 05, 2024

This summer, scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-traditional roles in marriage and home-making—and, in doing so, garnering millions of followers. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss standout practitioners of the “trad” life style, including the twenty-two-year-old Nara Smith, who makes cereal and toothpaste from scratch, and Hannah Neeleman, who, posting under the handle @ballerinafarm, presents a life caring for eight children in rural Utah as a bucolic fantasy. The hosts also discuss “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a new reality-television show on Hulu about a group of Mormon influencers engulfed in scandal, whose notions of female empowerment read as a quaint reversal of the trad-wife trend. A common defense of a life style that some would call regressive is that it’s a personal choice, devoid of political meaning. But this gloss is complicated by societal changes such as the erosion of women’s rights in America and skyrocketing child-care costs. “In American society, the way choice works has everything to do with child-care options, financial options,” Schwartz says. “When you talk about the idea of choice, are we just talking about false choices?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

@ballerinafarm
@gwenthemilkmaid
@naraazizasmith
“How Lucky Blue and Nara Aziza Smith Made Viral Internet Fame From Scratch,” by Carrie Battan (GQ)“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (2024)
@esteecwilliams“Mad Men” (2007-15)
The Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Wilder Women,” by Judith Thurman (The New Yorker)
“Meet the Queen of the “Trad Wives” (and Her Eight Children),” by Megan Agnew (The Times of London)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Tarot, Tech, and Our Age of Magical Thinking Aug 29, 2024

Until recently, tarot, astrology, and spiritualism—practices often shorthanded simply as woo-woo—were the stuff of dusty psychic parlors and seventies nostalgia. But today, mysticism has permeated mainstream culture. In the third and final installment of the Critics at Large interview series, Vinson Cunningham talks with Jennifer Wilson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, about this new age of magical thinking. They discuss how “woo” has seeped into our everyday lives through apps such as Co-Star, and how recent TV shows and novels have embraced supernatural themes. With the rise of cryptocurrency and sports betting, speculation about the future has become a fundamental part of our economy, too. “Maybe people would feel less uncertainty that pushes them to consult with astrology and tarot-card readers if there were more security in the present,” Wilson says. “In so many ways, this is a problem we’ve created.” And a bonus: Vinson gets a tarot reading of his own.
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Curse” (2023)
@astropoets
“True Detective” (2014-)
“This Is Me . . . Now: A Love Story” (2024)
“The White Lotus” (2021-)
“Long Island Compromise,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
“ ‘The Curse’ and the Magical Thinking of the Speculative Economy,” by Jennifer Wilson
“Look Into My Eyes” (2024)
“Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World,” by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Irresistible Myth of Las Vegas Aug 22, 2024

Cities have always been romanticized, but few of them have embraced—or actively engineered—their reputations as thoroughly as Las Vegas. On the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Alexandra Schwartz talks with her fellow staff writer Nick Paumgarten about how the desert town first branded itself as an entertainment capital, and how that image has been reified in pop culture ever since. The two consider seminal Vegas texts, from Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” to the bro comedy “The Hangover,” and Paumgarten reflects on his recent pilgrimage to see Dead & Company, the latest iteration of the Grateful Dead, during the band’s residency at the Sphere. In theory, a Vegas residency should be a career high—but the expectations around them can also leave an artist trapped in amber. It’s a danger that applies to places as much as people. “How do you reinvent yourself when you’ve achieved this cultural-icon status?” Schwartz asks. “In some ways, I wonder if that’s also a question for the city itself.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Reckoning with the Dead at the Sphere,” by Nick Paumgarten (The New Yorker)
“Swingers” (1996)
“Double or Quits,” by Dave Hickey (Frieze)
“Learning from Las Vegas,” by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown
“Viva Las Vegas” (1964)
“Leaving Las Vegas” (1995)
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” by Hunter S. Thompson
“The Hangover” (2009)
“Viva Las Vegas: Elvis Returns to the Stage,” by Ellen Willis (The New Yorker)
“Elvis” (2022)
“Hacks” (2021—)
“Sex and the City” (1998-2004)
“Friends” (1994-2004)
“Seinfeld” (1989-1998)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Charli XCX, Chappell Roan, and the Unstable Hierarchy of Pop Aug 15, 2024

“ ‘BRAT’ summer”—so named for the Charli XCX album that’s become the soundtrack of Kamala Harris’s Presidential run—has given pop fans much to discuss, from Charli’s own flirtation with mainstream stardom to the meteoric rise of Chappell Roan. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Kelefa Sanneh about the state of the music landscape. The two consider the breakout successes of the moment—including “Espresso,” the Sabrina Carpenter song that launched a thousand memes—and the catastrophic failures, namely Katy Perry’s new single, “Woman’s World.” These highs and lows speak to the nature of the genre, in which artists can be cast aside as quickly as they were embraced. “Pop music, in particular, tends to be quite cutthroat,” Sanneh says. “If it’s not working, it’s flopping. And when it’s time for people to jump off the bandwagon, people jump off.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“BRAT,” by Charli XCX
“Woman’s World,” by Katy Perry
“ ‘Woman’s World’ Track Review,” by Shaad D’Souza (Pitchfork)
“Mean girls,” by Charli XCX
“Good Luck, Babe!,” by Chappell Roan
“I Kissed a Girl,” by Katy Perry
“SOUR,” by Olivia Rodrigo
“emails i can’t send,” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Espresso,” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Please Please Please,” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Not Like Us,” by Kendrick Lamar
“The Night We Met,” by Lord Huron

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Why We Want What Tom Ripley Has Aug 08, 2024

In her 1955 novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Patricia Highsmith introduced readers to the figure of Tom Ripley, an antihero who covets the good life, and achieves it—by stealing it from someone else. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the long tail of Highsmith’s work, which has been revived in adaptations like René Clément’s 1960 classic, “Purple Noon”; the definitive 1999 film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law; and this year’s Netflix series, “Ripley,” which casts its protagonist as a lonely middle-aged con man. In all three versions, Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy acquaintance of Ripley’s, becomes his obsession and eventually his victim. The story resonates today in part because we’re all in the habit of observing—and coveting—the life styles of the rich and famous. Social media gives users endless opportunities to study how others live, such as the places they go, the meals they consume, and the objects they possess. “One of the reasons that the character of Ripley is forever sympathetic is the yearning and striving to be something other than himself, following an example that’s set out to him,” Fry says. “For him, it’s someone like Dickie. For us, it might be someone online.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” by Patricia Highsmith

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999)

“Purple Noon” (1960)

“Ripley” (2024)

“Saltburn” (2023)

“The White Lotus” (2021—)

This episode originally aired on April 4, 2024. New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Kamala Harris Vibe Shift Aug 01, 2024

The announcement of Kamala Harris’s Presidential run has set off one of the most pronounced vibe shifts in recent memory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz make sense of the torrent of memes; the “unholy, immediate alliance” between the Harris campaign and the British pop artist Charli XCX’s album “BRAT”; and the endless comparisons to Armando Iannucci’s political satire “Veep.” This chaotic but mostly cheerful embrace of Harris’s candidacy stands in contrast to the national mood even a few days prior, when a pervasive sense of doom was dominant. How might we reconcile this moment of boosterism with the very real, long-term reasons for despair? “It’s really no use being a fan, because you tie yourself to something you have no control over,” Cunningham says. “Recenter your ideas of the future in things that you can feel and touch. I think that that is the imaginative problem of our time, especially when it comes to doom or not doom.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Dirty Dancing” (1987)
“BRAT,” by Charli XCX
“Veep” (2012-19)
“I Created ‘Veep.’ The Real-Life Version Isn’t So Funny,” by Armando Iannucci (The New York Times)
“Should We Go Extinct?: A Philosophical Dilemma for Our Unbearable Times,” by Todd May
“The Case for Being Unburdened by What Has Been,” by Rebecca Traister (New York Magazine)
“Are We Doomed? Here’s How to Think About It,” by Rivka Galchen (The New Yorker)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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From Vanity Fair’s “Dynasty”: Can Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood Dream Last? Jul 25, 2024

Critics at Large is off this week. In the meantime, enjoy a recent episode from Vanity Fair’s “Dynasty,” hosted by the executive editor Claire Howorth, along with the correspondents Katie Nicholl and Erin Vanderhoof. It’s been four years since Meghan Markle and Prince Harry walked away from their royal roles, sparking an endless stream of media attention and second-guessing from tabloids in the U.K. In the time since, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been carving out a semi-royal path in the court of Montecito, California. They’ve struck big-ticket Hollywood deals worth millions of dollars. Is their newfound celebrity status sustainable?

To discover more from “Dynasty” and other Vanity Fair podcasts, visit vanityfair.com/podcasts.

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Alice Munro’s Fall from Grace Jul 18, 2024

In an essay published earlier this month, Andrea Skinner, the daughter of the lauded writer Alice Munro, detailed the sexual abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin. The piece goes on to describe how, even after Skinner told her of the abuse, years later, Munro chose to stay with him until his death, in 2013. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the revelations, which have raised familiar questions about what to do when beloved artists are found to have done unforgivable things. They’re joined by fellow staff writer Jiayang Fan, an avid reader of Munro’s work who’s been grappling with the news in real time. Together they revisit the 1993 story “Vandals,” which contains unsettling parallels to the scenario that played out in the Munro home. Have the years since the #MeToo movement given us more nuanced ways of addressing these flare-ups than full-out cancellation? “It’s not a moral loosening that I’m sensing,” Schwartz says. “It’s more of a sense of, Maybe I don’t want to throw out the work altogether—but I do need to wrestle.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“My Stepfather Sexually Abused Me When I Was a Child. My Mother, Alice Munro, Chose to Stay with Him,” by Andrea Skinner (The Toronto Star)

“Vandals,” by Alice Munro (The New Yorker)

“How My Mother and I Became Chinese Propaganda,” by Jiayang Fan (The New Yorker)

“The Love Album: Off the Grid,” by Diddy

“Ignition (Remix),” by R. Kelly

“Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma,” by Claire Dederer

“Manhattan” (1979)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Changing World of Nature Documentaries Jul 11, 2024

In 1954, a young David Attenborough made his début as the star of a new nature show called “Zoo Quest.” The docuseries, which ran for nearly a decade on the BBC, was a sensation that set Attenborough down the path of his life’s work: exposing viewers to our planet’s most miraculous creatures and landscapes from the comfort of their living rooms. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace Attenborough’s filmography from “Zoo Quest” to his newest program, “Mammals,” a six-part series on BBC America narrated by the now- ninety-eight-year-old presenter. In the seventy years since “Zoo Quest” first aired, the genre it helped create has had to reckon with the effects of the climate crisis—and to figure out how to address such hot-button issues onscreen. By highlighting conservation efforts that have been successful, the best of these programs affirm our continued agency in the planet’s future. “One thing I got from ‘Mammals’ was not pure doom,” Schwartz says. “There are some options here. We have choices to make.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

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From The New Yorker Radio Hour: Emily Nussbaum on the Beginnings of Reality TV Jul 04, 2024

Reality television has generally got a bad rap, but Emily Nussbaum—who received a Pulitzer Prize, in 2016, for her work as The New Yorker’s TV critic—sees that the genre has its own history and craft. Nussbaum’s new book “Cue the Sun!” is a history of reality TV, and roughly half the book covers the era before “Survivor,” which is often considered the starting point of the genre. She picks three formative examples from the Before Time to discuss with David Remnick: “Candid Camera,” “An American Family,” and “Cops.” She’s not trying to get you to like reality TV, but rather, she says, “I'm trying to get you to understand it.”

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Summer Obsessions Jun 27, 2024

There’s arguably no better time for falling down a cultural rabbit hole than the languid, transitory summer months. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the season allows us to foster a particular relationship with a work of art—whether it’s the soundtrack to a summer fling or a book that helps make sense of a new locale. Listeners divulge the texts that have consumed them over the years, and the hosts share their own formative obsessions, recalling how Brandy’s 1998 album, “Never Say Never,” defined a first experience at camp, and how a love of Jim Morrison’s music resulted in a teen-age pilgrimage to see his grave in Paris. But how do we square our past obsessions with our tastes and identities today? “Whatever we quote, whatever we make reference to, on so many levels is who we are,” Cunningham says. “It seems, to me, so precious.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Heathers” (1988)
“Pump Up the Volume” (1990)
The poetry of Sergei Yesenin
The poetry of Alexander Pushkin
GoldenEye 007 (1997)
“Elvis” (2022)
“Jailhouse Rock” (1957)
“Pride & Prejudice” (2005)
The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena Ferrante
“Ramble On,” by Led Zeppelin
“Never Say Never,” by Brandy
“The Boy Is Mine,” by Brandy and Monica
“The End,” by The Doors
“The Last Waltz” (1978)
“The Witches of Eastwick,” by John Updike
“Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand
“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003)
“Postcards from the Edge” (1990)
“Rent” (1996)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Therapy Episode Jun 20, 2024

In recent years, as our culture has embraced therapy more widely, depictions of the practice have proliferated on screen. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the archetype from the silent, scribbling analysts of Woody Allen’s œuvre and the iconic Dr. Melfi of “The Sopranos” to newer portrayals in shows such as “Shrinking,” on Apple TV+, and Showtime’s “Couples Therapy,” now in its fourth season. The star of “Couples Therapy” is Orna Guralnik, whose sessions with real-life couples show how these tools can lead to breakthroughs—or, in some cases, enable bad behavior. Since the series débuted, mental-health awareness has only grown, and the rise of therapists on social media has put psychoanalytic language and constructs into the hands of a much broader audience. Is the therapy boom making us better? “There’s a way in which jargon or concepts when boiled down can be used to categorize both ourselves and others,” says Schwartz. “Maybe what I’m asking for is a reinvigoration of the idea of therapy—not to close down meaning, but to open up meaning.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“The Sopranos” (1999-2007)
“Couples Therapy” (2019-)
“The Therapist Remaking Our Love Lives on TV,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“The Rise of Therapy-Speak,” by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker)
“Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist” (1995-2002)
“The Critic” (1994-95)
“Annie Hall” (1977)
“The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” by Parul Seghal (The New Yorker)
“Shrinking” (2023-)
“Ted Lasso” (2020-23)
The Cut’s Overanalyzed series
“21 Ways to Break Up with Your Therapist,” by Alyssa Shelasky (The Cut)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Is Travel Broken? Jun 13, 2024

It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular vacation spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Social media pushes hoards to places unable to withstand the traffic, while the rise of “last-chance” travel—the rush to see melting glaciers or deteriorating coral reefs before they’re gone forever—has turned the precarity of these destinations into a selling point. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore the question of why we travel. They trace the rich history of travel narratives, from the memoirs of Marco Polo and nineteenth-century accounts of the Grand Tour to shows like Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” and HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Why are we compelled to pack a bag and set off, given the growing number of reasons not to do so? “One thing that’s really important for me as a traveller is the experience of being foreign,” Schwartz says. “I’m starting to realize that there are places I may never go, and this has actually made other people’s accounts of them, in the deeper sense, more important.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The New Tourist,” by Paige McClanahan

The “Lonely Planet” guidebooks

“The Travels of Marco Polo,” by Rustichello da Pisa

“Of Travel,” by Francis Bacon

“The Innocents Abroad,” by Mark Twain

“Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Travels through France and Italy,” by Tobias Smollett

“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (2013-18)

“The White Lotus” (2021—)

“Conan O’Brien Must Go” (2024)

“It Just Got Easier to Visit a Vanishing Glacier. Is That a Good Thing?,” by Paige McClanahan (The New York Times)

“The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere,” by Ed Caesar (The New Yorker)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Many Faces of the Hit Man Jun 06, 2024

“Hit Man,” a new film directed by Richard Linklater, is not, in fact, about a hit man. The movie follows Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), a mild-mannered philosophy professor who assists law enforcement in sting operations by posing as a contract killer—and playing on the expectations stoked by Hollywood. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the history of the archetype, from the 1942 noir “This Gun for Hire” to Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and the “John Wick” franchise, and explore why audiences have so enthusiastically embraced a figure that, contrary to the media’s depiction, is basically nonexistent in real life. “It’s a fantasy of what would happen if our rage was optimized, much like our sleep and our work day and our workouts,” says Fry. “And if it comes with a side of wearing a suit that looks great—even better.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Collateral” (2004)
“Pulp Fiction” (1994)
“No Country for Old Men” (2007)
“Hit Man” (2024)
“Dazed and Confused” (1993)
“Hit Men Are Easy to Find in the Movies. Real Life Is Another Story,” by Jessie McKinley (The New York Times)
“This Gun for Hire” (1942)
“Le Samouraï” (1967)
“The Killer” (2023)
“Aggro Dr1ft” (2024)
“John Wick” (2014)
“Barry” (2018-23)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Rising Tide of Slowness May 30, 2024

In recent years, in the realms of self-improvement literature, Instagram influencers, and wellness gurus, an idea has taken hold: that in a non-stop world, the act of slowing down offers a path to better living. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the rise of “slowness culture”—from Carl Honoré’s 2004 manifesto to pandemic-era trends of mass resignations and so-called quiet quitting. The hosts discuss the work of Jenny Odell, whose books “How to Do Nothing” and “Saving Time” frame reclaiming one’s time as a life-style choice with radical roots and revolutionary political potential. But how much does an individual’s commitment to leisure pay off on the level of the collective? Is too much being laid at the feet of slowness? “For me, it’s about reclaiming an aspect of humanness, just the experience of not having to make the most with everything we have all the time,” Schwartz says. “There can be a degree of self-defeating critique where you say, ‘Oh, well, this is only accessible to the privileged few.’ And I think the better framing is, how can more people access that kind of sitting with humanness?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” by Anne Helen Petersen (BuzzFeed)
“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” by Jenny Odell
“Improving Ourselves to Death,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed,” by Carl Honoré
“The Sabbath,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture,” by Jenny Odell
“Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto,” by Kohei Saito
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode originally aired on January 11, 2024.

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The New Midlife Crisis May 23, 2024

From John Cheever’s 1964 short story “The Swimmer” to Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling 2006 memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” our culture has long grappled with what it means to enter middle age. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz examine depictions of that tipping point—and of the crises that often come with it. In the mid-twentieth century (and, depending on your reading of Dante and Balzac, long before that), the phenomenon was largely the purview of men, but massive societal shifts, beginning with the women’s rights movement, have yielded a new archetype. The hosts discuss how novels like Miranda July’s “All Fours” and Dana Spiotta’s “Wayward” have updated the genre for the modern age. “I think the crisis of midlife,” Schwartz says, “is just the crisis of life, period. You invent it for yourself.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Miranda July Turns the Lights On,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“All Fours,” by Miranda July
“Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005)
“Inferno,” by Dante Alighieri
“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf
“Cousin Bette,” by Honoré de Balzac
“The Swimmer,” by John Cheever (The New Yorker)
“The Swimmer” (1968)
“The Women’s Room,” by Marilyn French
“Wifey,” by Judy Blume
“This Isn’t What Millennial Middle Age Was Supposed to Look Like,” by Jessica Grose (The New York Times)
“Wayward,” by Dana Spiotta
“Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert
“Eat, Pray, Love” (2010)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and the Benefits of Beef May 16, 2024

The rap superstars Drake and Kendrick Lamar have been on a collision course for a decade, trading periodic diss tracks to assert their superiority—but earlier this month the long-simmering beef erupted into a showdown that said as much about the artists as it did about the art. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz examine how the back-and-forth devolved from a litigation of craft into a series of ad-hominem attacks alleging everything from cultural appropriation to pedophilia. They discuss the way rivalries function in the creative world, fuelling new work and compelling audiences to pay closer attention to it than ever before. The hosts also consider other feuds of note, from a nineteenth-century debate over Shakespearean actors that ended in violence to the writer Renata Adler’s blistering takedown of the film critic Pauline Kael in The New York Review of Books. Why do so many of these schisms revolve around fundamental questions of authenticity and belonging? And, once they start to spiral, is there any going back? “Conflict can be productive emotionally and also artistically,” Schwartz says. “But this is not a place that we can permanently reside.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“DAMN.,” by Kendrick Lamar
“To Pimp a Butterfly,” by Kendrick Lamar
“Control,” by Big Sean featuring Kendrick Lamar and Jay Electronica
“First Person Shooter,” by Drake featuring J. Cole
“Like That,” by Future, Metro Boomin, and Kendrick Lamar
“Push Ups,” by Drake
“Taylor Made Freestyle,” by Drake
“Back to Back,” by Drake
“euphoria,” by Kendrick Lamar
“6:16 in LA,” by Kendrick Lamar
“meet the grahams,” by Kendrick Lamar
“Not Like Us,” by Kendrick Lamar
“THE HEART PART 6,” by Drake
“Stormy Daniels’s American Dream,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“The Perils of Pauline,” by Renata Adler (The New York Review of Books)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Our Collective Obsession with True Crime May 09, 2024

Over the past several years, true crime’s hold on the culture has tightened into a vice grip, with new titles flooding podcast charts and streaming platforms on a daily basis. This week on Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz take stock of the phenomenon, first by speaking with fans of the genre to understand its appeal. Then, onstage at the 2024 Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, they continue the discussion with The New Yorker’s Patrick Radden Keefe, whose books “Empire of Pain” and “Say Nothing” are exemplars of the form. The panel considers Keefe’s recent piece, “The Oligarch’s Son,” which illuminates the journalistic challenges of reporting on sordid events—not least the difficulty of managing the emotions and expectations of victims’ families. As its appeal has skyrocketed, true crime has come under greater scrutiny. The most successful entries bypass lurid details and shed light on the society in which these transgressions occur. But “the price you have to pay in sociology, in anthropology, in enriching our understanding of something beyond the crime itself—it’s fairly high,” Keefe says. “You have to remember that this is a real story about real people. They’re alive. They’re out there.”

This episode was recorded on May 4, 2024 at the Cascade PBS Ideas Festival, in Seattle, Washington.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“UK True Crime Podcast”
“My Favorite Murder”
“Empire of Pain,” by Patrick Radden Keefe
“Say Nothing,” by Patrick Radden Keefe
“Paradise Lost,” by John Milton
“A Loaded Gun,” by Patrick Radden Keefe (The New Yorker)
“The Oligarch’s Son,” by Patrick Radden Keefe (The New Yorker)
“Capote” (2005)
“In Cold Blood,” by Truman Capote (The New Yorker)
“The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” (2015, 2024)
“Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders,” by Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi
“Law & Order” (1990–)
“Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” (2022)
“The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story” (2016)
“O.J.: Made in America” (2016)
“Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery,” by Robert Kolker

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Why the Sports Movie Always Wins May 02, 2024

From “Raging Bull” to “A League of Their Own,” films about athletes have commanded the attention of even the most sports-skeptical viewers. The pleasure of watching the protagonist undergo a test of body and spirit, proving their worth to society and to themselves—often with a training montage thrown in for good measure—is undeniable. Luca Guadagnino’s steamy new tennis film, “Challengers,” applies this formula in a different context, mining familiar themes like rivalry and camaraderie for their erotic potential. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how recent entries like “Challengers” and last year’s Zac Efron-led wrestling drama, “The Iron Claw,” reflect a more contemporary view of masculinity than their predecessors do. The hosts also assemble their “hall of fame” of sports films, including Spike Lee’s “He Got Game,” the nineties classic “Cool Runnings,” and the rom-com “Love & Basketball.” They argue that the genre, at its best, offers auteurs the chance to embrace their instincts. “For our most stylish filmmakers, I would just lay down the gauntlet. If you want to express to us your personal vision, do a sports movie,” Cunningham says. “Because we’ll know what you care about: visually, sensually—we will know.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Challengers” (2024)
“The Iron Claw” (2023)
“Rocky IV” (1985)
“Black Swan” (2010)
“A League of Their Own” (1992)
“Cool Runnings” (1993)
“Raging Bull” (1980)
“He Got Game” (1998)
“Love & Basketball” (2000)
“A League of Their Own” (2022—)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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“Civil War” ’s Unsettling Images Apr 18, 2024

“Civil War,” Alex Garland’s divisive new action flick, borrows iconography—and actual footage—from the America of today as set dressing for a hypothetical, fractured future. Though we know that the President is in his third term, and that Texas and California have formed an unlikely alliance against him, very little is said about the politics that brought us to this point. Garland’s true interest lies not with the cause of the carnage but with the journalists compelled to document it. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz debate whether the film glamorizes violence, or whether it’s an indictment of the way audiences have become inured to it through repeated exposure. The hosts consider Susan Sontag’s “On Photography,” which assesses the impact of the craft, and “War Is Beautiful,” a compendium that explores how photojournalists have historically aestheticized and glorified unthinkable acts. From the video of George Floyd’s killing to photos of Alan Kurdi, the young Syrian refugee found lying dead on a Turkish beach, images of atrocities have galvanized movements and commanded international attention. But what does it mean to bear witness in the age of social media, with daily, appalling updates from conflict zones at our fingertips? “I think all of us are struggling with what to make of this complete overabundance,” Schwartz says. “On the other hand, we’re certainly aware of horror. It’s impossible to ignore.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Civil War” (2024)
“Ex Machina” (2014)
“Natural Born Killers” (1994)
“The Doom Generation” (1995)
“War Is Beautiful,” by David Shields
“On Photography,” by Susan Sontag
“Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” (2017)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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“Curb Your Enthusiasm” and the Art of the Finale Apr 11, 2024

Since the turn of the millennium, HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has slyly satirized the ins and outs of social interaction. The series—which follows a fictionalized version of its creator and star, Larry David, as he gets into petty disputes with anyone and everyone who crosses his path—aired its last episode on Sunday, marking the end of a twelve-season run. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the show’s “weirdly moving” conclusion as well as its over-all legacy. Then they consider other notable TV endings: some divisive (“Sex and the City”), some critically acclaimed (“Succession”), some infamously rage-inspiring (“Game of Thrones”). What are the moral and narrative stakes of a finale, and why do we subject these episodes—which represent only a tiny fraction of the work as a whole—to such crushing analytic pressure? “This idea of an ending ruining the show is alien to me,” Cunningham says. “I won’t contest that endings are different—distinct. Are they better? I don’t know.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Curb Your Enthusiasm” (2000-24)

“Seinfeld” (1989-98)

“Sex and the City” (1998-2004)

“Succession” (2018-23)

“The Hills” (2006-10)

“Game of Thrones” (2011-19)

“Breaking Bad” (2008-13)

“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott

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Why We Want What Tom Ripley Has Apr 04, 2024

In her 1955 novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Patricia Highsmith introduced readers to the figure of Tom Ripley, an antihero who covets the good life, and achieves it—by stealing it from someone else. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the long tail of Highsmith’s work, which has been revived in adaptations like René Clément’s 1960 classic, “Purple Noon”; the definitive 1999 film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law; and a new Netflix series, “Ripley,” which casts its protagonist as a lonely middle-aged con man. In all three versions, Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy acquaintance of Ripley’s, becomes his obsession and eventually his victim. The story resonates today in part because we’re all in the habit of observing—and coveting—the life styles of the rich and famous. Social media gives users endless opportunities to study how others live, such as the places they go, the meals they consume, and the objects they possess. “One of the reasons that the character of Ripley is forever sympathetic is the yearning and striving to be something other than himself, following an example that’s set out to him,” Fry says. “For him, it’s someone like Dickie. For us, it might be someone online.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” by Patricia Highsmith
“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999)
“Purple Noon” (1960)
“Ripley” (2024)
“Saltburn” (2023)
“The White Lotus” (2021—)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Kate Middleton and the Internet’s Communal Fictions Mar 28, 2024

News of Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis arrived after months of speculation regarding the royal’s whereabouts. Had the Princess of Wales, who had not been seen in public since Christmas Day, absconded to a faraway hideout? Was trouble at home—an affair, perhaps—keeping her out of the public eye? What truths hid behind the obviously doctored family photograph? #WhereisKateMiddleton trended as the online world offered up a set of elaborate hypotheses increasingly untethered from reality. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how a particular brand of “fan fiction” has enveloped the Royal Family, and how, like the #FreeBritney movement, the episode illustrates how conspiracy thinking has become a regular facet of online life. The hosts discuss “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” an essay by the historian Richard Hofstadter, from 1964, that traces conspiratorial thought across history, as well as Naomi Klein’s 2023 book “Doppelganger.” How, then, should we navigate a world in which it’s more and more difficult to separate fact from fiction? Some antidotes may lie in the fictions themselves. “The rest of us who are not as conspiratorial in bent could spend more time looking at those conspiracies,” Cunningham says. “To understand what a troubling number of our fellows believe is a kind of tonic action.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Don’t Blame ‘Stupid People on the Internet’ for Palace’s Princess Kate Lies,” by Will Bunch (the Philadelphia Inquirer)
“Doppelganger,” by Naomi Klein
“The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” by Richard Hofstadter (Harper’s Magazine)
“The Parallax View” (1974)
“Cutter’s Way” (1981)
“Reddit’s I.P.O. Is a Content Moderation Success Story,” by Kevin Roose (the New York Times)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Is Science Fiction the New Realism? Mar 21, 2024

Science fiction has historically been considered a niche genre, one in which far-flung scenarios play out on distant planets. Today, though, such plots are at the center of our media landscape. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz anatomize the appeal of recent entries, from Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” movies to Netflix’s new adaptation of “The Three-Body Problem,” the best-selling novel by Liu Cixin. The hosts are joined by Josh Rothman, an editor and writer at The New Yorker, who makes the case for science fiction as an extension of the realist novel, tracing the way films like “The Matrix” and “Contagion” have shed new light on modern life. The boundaries between science fiction and reality are increasingly blurred: tech founders like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have cited classic sci-fi texts as inspiration, and terms like “red-pilling” have found their way into our political vernacular. “I find the future that we’re all moving into to be quite scary and sort of unthinkable,” Rothman says. “Science fiction is the literary genre that addresses this problem. It helps make the future into something you can imagine.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Dune: Part Two” (2024)
“3 Body Problem” (2024)
“The Martian Chronicles,” by Ray Bradbury
“Dune” (2021)
“Dune,” by Frank Herbert
“Star Trek” (1966-1969)
“2001: A Space Odyssey,” by Arthur C. Clarke
“Dune” (1984)
“Can Science Fiction Wake Us Up to Our Climate Reality?” by Joshua Rothman (The New Yorker)
“The Matrix” (1999)
“Contagion” (2011)
“The Future,” by Naomi Alderman
“Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” by Evan Osnos (The New Yorker)
“The Three-Body Problem,” by Liu Cixin
“Liu Cixin’s War of the Worlds,” by Jiayang Fan (The New Yorker)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The New Coming-of-Age Story Mar 14, 2024

For centuries, the bildungsroman, or novel of education, has offered a window into a formative period of life—and, by extension, into the historical moment in which it’s set. Vinson Cunningham sent the draft of “Great Expectations,” a book loosely based on his experience on Barack Obama’s first Presidential campaign, to publishers on January 6, 2021. Shortly after he hit Send, he watched rioters break into the Capitol building. “For me, it was, like, cycle complete,” he says. The age of optimism ushered in by Obama was over. “We are off to another thing.” Cunningham’s novel is part of a tradition that stretches back to the eighteen-hundreds: coming-of-age plots that chart their protagonists’ entry into adulthood. On this episode of Critics at Large, Cunningham and his fellow staff writers, Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz, discuss how “Great Expectations” fits in the genre as a whole. They consider it alongside classic texts, like Gustave Flaubert’s 1869 novel “Sentimental Education,” and other, more recent entries, such as Carrie Sun’s 2024 memoir, “Private Equity,” and reflect on what such stories have to say about power, disillusionment, and our shifting relationships to institutions. “I think, if the bildungsroman has any new valence today, it is that the antagonist is not parents, it’s not religion, it’s not upbringing—these personal facets that you usually have to escape to come of age,” Cunningham says. “It’s the superstructure. It’s finance with a capital ‘F.’ It’s government with a capital ‘G.’ ”

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Why We Love an Office Drama Mar 07, 2024

The office has long been a fixture in pop culture—but, in 2024, amid the rise of remote work and the resurgence of organized labor, the way we relate to our jobs is in flux. The stories we tell about them are changing, too. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss Adelle Waldman’s new novel “Help Wanted,” which delves into the lives of retail workers at a big-box store in upstate New York. They’re joined by The New Yorker’s Katy Waldman, who lays out the trajectory of the office novel, from tales of postwar alienation to Gen X meditations on selling out and millennial accounts of the gig economy. Then, the hosts consider how this shift is showing up across other mediums. Though some white-collar employees can now comfortably work from home, the office remains an object of fascination. “The workplace is within us,” says Fry. “There will always be shit-talking about co-workers, about bosses—the materials for narrative will always be there.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Working Girl” (1988)

“Office Space” (1999)

“The West Wing” (1999-2006)

“Help Wanted,” by Adelle Waldman

“The Pale King,” by David Foster Wallace

“Personal Days,” by Ed Park

“Then We Came to the End,” by Joshua Ferris

“The New Me,” by Halle Butler

“The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.,” by Adelle Waldman

“The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair

“Severance,” by Ling Ma

“Temporary,” by Hilary Leichter

“Severance” (2022—)

“The Vanity Fair Diaries” (2017)

“Doubt: A Parable,” by John Patrick Shanley

Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5”

“Mad Men” (2007-15)

“Industry” (2020—)

“Norma Rae” (1979)

“30 Rock” (2006-13)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Politics of the Oscar Race Feb 29, 2024

The campaign for an Oscar is just that: a campaign. In the weeks and months leading up to the ninety-sixth Academy Awards, actors and directors have been hard at work reminding voters and the public alike of their worthiness, P.R. agencies have churned out “for your consideration” ads, and studios have poured millions of dollars into efforts to help their films emerge victorious on Hollywood’s biggest night. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the state of the race, from the front-runners to the snubs and the season’s unlikely “villain.” The hosts are joined by The New Yorker’s Michael Schulman, the author of “Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears,” who describes how Harvey Weinstein permanently changed the landscape in the nineties by treating campaigns as “guerrilla warfare.” Today, much of the process happens behind closed doors. If the game is rigged, why do we care about the outcome? “Even though we know that there is a mechanism behind these things, a glow does attach itself to people who win,” Cunningham says. “We are still very much suckers for the glamour of merit.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears,” by Michael Schulman

“Oppenheimer” (2023)

“Barbie” (2023)

“May December” (2023)

“Poor Things” (2023)

“The Zone of Interest” (2023)

“Nyad” (2023)

“Maestro” (2023)

“Shakespeare in Love” (1998)

“Saving Private Ryan” (1998)

“Can You Really Want an Oscar Too Much?” by Michael Schulman (The New Yorker)

“Anatomy of a Fall” (2023)

“Titanic” (1997)

“Ferrari” (2023)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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How Usher, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift Build Their Own Legacies Feb 15, 2024

At this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, Usher Raymond sang through decades of hits while twirling on roller skates, making a case for himself as one of the great R. & B. artists of our time. The performance illuminates a key aspect of modern pop stardom: the fashioning of one’s legacy in real time. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how musicians’ images take shape independent of their music. They consider “Bob Marley: One Love,” a new bio-pic made with the support of the Marley estate that deliberately smooths the rough edges of the singer’s life. Today’s performers take a more active role in their own reputation management, using high-profile appearances to stake a claim or reinforce their persona. At this year’s Grammy Awards, the question of legacy came to the fore when Jay-Z took issue with the fact that his wife, Beyoncé, has never won the coveted Album of the Year award. But the most indelible moments from the ceremony involved songs from decades prior—a reminder that the music itself is often more enduring than any formal accolade. “Rather than legacy in corporate terms or in institutional terms,” says Fry, there’s also “the legacy of the heart.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Bob Marley: One Love” (2024)

“Both Sides Now” by Joni Mitchell, as performed at the 2024 Grammys

“If I Ain't Got You” by Alicia Keys

Luke Combs’s cover of “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman

Twins react to “In the Air Tonight” by Phil Collins

“Walk the Line” (2005)

“You Make Me Wanna . . .” by Usher

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Painful Pleasure of “Wretched Love” Feb 08, 2024

As much as contemporary audiences relish a happily ever after, some of the greatest romances of all time are ones that have turned out badly. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider stories of “wretched love”—love that’s star-crossed, unfulfilled, or somehow doomed by the taboos of the day. First, they react to listeners’ favorite examples, from Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” to “The Notebook” to the Joni Mitchell song “The Last Time I Saw Richard.” Then, the hosts discuss their own picks: the poet Frank Bidart’s collection “Desire”; James Baldwin’s novel “Giovanni’s Room”; and “A Girl’s Story,” by the Nobel Prize-winner Annie Ernaux. Why do we—and centuries’ worth of artists—gravitate toward tales of thwarted desire? Perhaps it’s because these moments unlock something that stays with us long after the sting of heartbreak has faded. “When you widen the lens, life goes on,” Schwartz says. Nevertheless, “there is a need for all of us to return to that moment because that was part of what made you who you were.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Annie Ernaux Turns Memory Into Art,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)

“Anna Karenina,” by Leo Tolstoy

“Conversations with Friends,” by Sally Rooney

“Desire,” by Frank Bidart

“Eugene Onegin” (1879)

“Giovanni’s Room,” by James Baldwin

“A Girl’s Story,” by Annie Ernaux

“Sense and Sensibility,” by Jane Austen

“Sense and Sensibility” (1995)

“Sylvia,” by Leonard Michaels

Joni Mitchell’s “The Last Time I Saw Richard”

“The Notebook” (2004)

“Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë

“Wuthering Heights” (1939)

Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Why We Can’t Quit the Mean Girl Feb 01, 2024

If some of us have managed to avoid mean girls in life, we’ve had no such luck in art. The “mean girl”—a picture of idealized femininity who usually heads up a like-minded clique—has appeared in films like “Clueless,” “Heathers,” and, of course, the 2004 classic “Mean Girls,” written by Tina Fey. Recently, the mean girl has received a makeover. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss texts that have breathed new life into the trope, beginning with Ryan Murphy’s “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans,” which dramatizes the schism between the writer Truman Capote and the group of New York City socialites he called his “swans.” The hosts trace the figure of the mean girl through culture, from the character of Regina George—who returns in the 2024 movie-musical reboot of “Mean Girls,” albeit a little less mean than before—to the cast of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.” Today, the archetype is ripe for projection, appropriation, and maybe even for sympathy. “The hope and the fear looking at these mean girls is imagining how great their lives must be,” Fry says. “But I think concurrently we would be happy to learn that, in fact, it’s lonely at the top.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Allure of the Mean Friend,” on “This American Life”
“Carrie” (1976)
“Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot
“Euphoria” (2019—)
“Feud: Capote vs. The Swans” (2024)
“Gossip Girl” (2007-2012)
“Heathers” (1988)
“La Côte Basque, 1965,” by Truman Capote (Esquire)
“Mean Girls” (2004)
“Mean Girls” (2024)
“101 Dalmatians” (1961)
“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” (2020—)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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From In the Dark: The Runaway Princesses Jan 30, 2024

The wives and daughters of Dubai’s ruler live in unbelievable luxury. So why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed’s family keep trying to run away? The New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake joins In the Dark’s Madeleine Baran to tell the story of the royal women who risked everything to flee the brutality of one of the world’s most powerful men. In four episodes, drawing on thousands of pages of secret correspondence and never-before-heard audio recordings, “The Runaway Princesses” takes listeners behind palace walls, revealing a story of astonishing courage and cruelty.

“The Runaway Princesses” is a four-part narrative series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. To keep listening, follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts or via this link https://link.chtbl.com/itd_f

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What Is the Comic For? Jan 25, 2024

Dave Chappelle’s new Netflix special, “The Dreamer,” has drawn criticism for its targeting of trans and disabled people–the latest in a string of controversies, and of increasingly self-referential sets. His and other standup comics’ growing fixation with cancel culture raises a pressing question: What is the role of the comic today? In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace how comedians have positioned themselves in relation to their audiences over time, from the proto-standup acts of the vaudeville era to the political humor of the legendary George Carlin, who paved the way for the success of Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show.” Where Chappelle and Ricky Gervais are doubling down in the face of backlash, comedians like Jacqueline Novak and John Mulaney are finding new ways to expose societal fault lines in order to bring the crowd to a place of cohesion. But in the era of the culture wars, do we want to be challenged, or affirmed? “Whatever comedy is now, needs willing and predetermined audiences—people that are there to pay attention to a certain kind of thing,” Cunningham says. “If what we want is a kind of shattering of whatever mythologies surround us, maybe it’s not the best for that.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Dave Chappelle: The Dreamer” (2023)
“Ricky Gervais: Armageddon” (2023)
“Chappelle’s Show” (2003-06)
“Jacqueline Novak: Get on Your Knees” (2024)
“Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars,” by Kliph Nesteroff
“I Love Lucy” (1951-57)
“George Carlin’s American Dream” (2022)
“The Daily Show” (1996-)
“Comedy Book: How Comedy Conquered Culture–and the Magic That Makes It Work,” by Jesse David Fox
“John Mulaney: Baby J” (2023)
“The Anxious Precision of Jacqueline Novak’s Comedy,” by Carrie Battan (The New Yorker) “Jenny Slate: Stage Fright” (2019) “Chris Rock: Bigger & Blacker” (1999)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Case for Criticism Jan 18, 2024

In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz turn their attention to the art—and purpose—of criticism itself. First, they revisit the work of Joan Acocella, a legendary practitioner of the craft who wrote for The New Yorker until her death, at age seventy-eight, earlier this month, applying her distinctive humor and evocative style to such diverse subjects as Mikhail Baryshnikov, the acclaimed dancer and choreographer, and the Wife of Bath, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales.” Then the hosts reflect on their own formative influences and the role a critic can play in the life of a reader. The rise of apps like Goodreads and Letterboxd has proved to be a double-edged sword, democratizing criticism while also playing into the more toxic elements of fandom. In an era of “critical populism,” what do the professionals have to offer? “Criticism is often considered a kind of gatekeeping,” Schwartz says. “It really also can be the opposite. It can be a giving of access. And that to me dignifies the whole endeavor.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Thank Goodness for Joan Acocella,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)

“The Soloist,” by Joan Acocella (The New Yorker)

“The Marrying Kind,” by Joan Acocella (The New Yorker)

“Art as Technique,” by Viktor Shklovsky

“Black Talk on the Move,” by Darryl Pinckney (The New York Review of Books)

“Busted in New York and Other Essays,” by Darryl Pinckney

“One Reason Theatre Is in Crisis: The Slow Death of Criticism,” by Jason Zinoman (American Theatre)

“Let’s Rescue Book Lovers from this Online Hellscape,” by Maris Kreizman (The New York Times)

“‘The O.C.’: Land of The Brooding Teen,” by Tom Shales (The Washington Post)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Can Slowness Save Us? Jan 11, 2024

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” by Anne Helen Petersen (BuzzFeed)
“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” by Jenny Odell
“Improving Ourselves to Death,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed,” by Carl Honoré
“The Sabbath,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel
“Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture,” by Jenny Odell
“Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto,” by … Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Portraits of the Artist Jan 04, 2024

Hollywood’s obsession with stories about creative types has resulted in familiar tropes—namely that of the tortured artist, whose fanatical devotion to his craft makes him an enigma to those around him—and story formulae like the bio-pic, which runs through the beats of its subject’s career like a Wikipedia entry. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how some of the year’s buzziest films subvert our expectations of art about artists. “Maestro” is “a fantasia on Leonard Bernstein themes” that focusses on the toll that the legendary composer’s charisma exacts on those around him. “May December,” directed by Todd Haynes, is “a dark satire on certain tendencies in method acting.” And Cord Jefferson’s début feature, “American Fiction,” pairs a critique of the publishing industry’s hollow nods toward “diversity” with a quiet family drama. The hosts also consider other, more deliberately unglamorous depictions, such as that found in Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up.” The movie, which follows a sculptor struggling to make ends meet, raises the question of a much rarer archetype. “It seems to me a figure that can take more plumbing,” Cunningham says. “I want to see what that new figure, the everyday artist, can unfold to us about what it means to have a life in art.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Adaptation” (2002)
“American Fiction” (2023)
“A Conversation with My Father,” by Grace Paley
“Just Kids,” by Patti Smith
“Maestro” (2023)
“May December” (2023)
“My Struggle,” by Karl Ove Knausgaard
“New York Stories” (1989)
“Showing Up” (2023)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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From The New Yorker Radio Hour: a Conversation with Dolly Parton Dec 28, 2023

After six decades as an icon in country music, it’s hard to imagine Dolly Parton had anything to prove. But when she was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, in 2022, she admitted to feeling uneasy. A result of that feeling is “Rockstar,” the 77-year-old’s first foray into rock music. “I wanted the rock people to be proud of me, let’s put it that way,” Parton tells the contributor Emily Lordi. “I wanted them to say, ‘Did you hear Dolly’s rock album? Man, she killed it.’ ” For this album, which is largely comprised of covers of classic rock songs like “Freebird” along with originals like the title track, Parton channeled the likes of Joan Jett and Melissa Etheridge (who also both appear on the album). She didn’t want to make a countryfied rock album, but even at a full roar, her voice is unmistakable Dolly. “It’s a voice you know when you hear it, whether you like it or not,” Parton says. The artist is known for avoiding comment on political subjects, but she describes the volatile state of the culture in her song “World on Fire.” “The only way I know how to fight back is to write songs to say how I feel,” Parton says. “It’s just me trying to throw some light on some dark subjects these days.”

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The Year of the Doll Dec 21, 2023

In the highest-grossing movie of 2023, Barbie, a literal doll, leaves the comforts of Barbieland and ventures into real-world Los Angeles, where she discovers the myriad difficulties of modern womanhood. This arc from cosseted naïveté to feminist awakening is a narrative throughline that connects some of the biggest cultural products of the year. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how 2023 became “the year of the doll,” tracing the trope from “Barbie” to Yorgos Lanthimos’s film “Poor Things,” whose protagonist finds self-determination through sexual agency, and beyond. In Sofia Coppola’s “Priscilla,” a teen-age Priscilla Beaulieu lives under the thumb of Elvis at Graceland before finally breaking free, while in Emma Cline’s novel “The Guest,” the doll figure must fend for herself after the trappings of luxury fall away, revealing the precarity of her circumstances. The hosts explore how ideas about whiteness, beauty, and women’s bodily autonomy inform these works, and how the shock of political backsliding might explain why these stories struck a chord with audiences. “Most of us believed that the work of Roe v. Wade was done,” Cunningham says. “If that is a message that we could all grasp—that a step forward is not a permanent thing—I think that would be a positive thing.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Barbie” (2023)
“M3GAN” (2023)
“Poor Things” (2023)
“Priscilla” (2023)
“The Guest,” by Emma Cline
“The House of Mirth,” by Edith Wharton

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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George Santos and the Art of the Scam Dec 14, 2023

In the weeks since George Santos was expelled from Congress, his story has been funnelled straight into the entertainment pipeline, from a memorable sketch on “Saturday Night Live” and reports of a film in the works at HBO to his own exploits on Cameo, where he’s charging five hundred dollars apiece for personalized video messages. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz assess why Santos’s story resonates with audiences, and the enduring appeal of the scammer narrative, from Herman Melville’s “The Confidence-Man” to Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man.” Scammers embody—and exploit—a central tenet of the American Dream: the promise of a brighter future awaiting those audacious enough to reach for it. But their stories can also expose the weaknesses at the heart of our institutions. Why, then, do we keep coming back for more? “The level of enjoyment that we gain from these depictions of scams doesn’t mean that the critique isn’t there,” Fry says. “It’s almost like we as audiences are also begging, ‘Please make this fun for us.’ ”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Every Day’s a Holiday” (1937)
“Inventing Anna” (2022)
“Telemarketers” (2023)
“The Confidence-Man,” by Herman Melville
“The Dropout” (2022)
“The Fabulist,” by Mark Chiusano
“The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley” (2019)
“The Music Man” (1957)
“The Postman Always Rings Twice” (1946)
The “Simpsons” episode “Marge vs. the Monorail” (1993)
“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)
“Trafficked With Mariana van Zeller” (2020 – present)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms Dec 07, 2023

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Kiki’s Delivery Service” (1989)

“My Neighbor Totoro” (1988)

“Old Enough!” (1991-present)

“Princess Mononoke” (1997)

“Spirited Away” (2001)

“The Boy and the Heron” (2023)

“The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C. S. Lewis (1950)

“The Moomins series” by Tove Jansson (1945-70)

“The Wind Rises” (2013)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Past, Present, and Future of the Period Drama Nov 30, 2023

From Merchant Ivory’s classic adaptations of E. M. Forster novels to the BBC’s beloved rendition of Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” the greatest period dramas are the ones that succeed in translating the emotional experience of another era for a modern audience. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss their personal favorites—namely Greta Gerwig’s take on “Little Women” and Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” which chronicles the star-crossed love affair between the poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne—and how the genre is changing. Often, the pleasure of these stories lies in their rigorous depictions of the mores and customs of the past. But recent hit series, including “Dickinson,” “Bridgerton,” and “The Great,” have adopted a marked ahistoricism, evident in the dialogue, soundtracks, and the treatments of race and sexuality. The hosts consider how “The Buccaneers,” on Apple TV+, departs from the Edith Wharton novel on which it’s based by skipping over the sociopolitical details that form the backbone of Wharton’s story. Do contemporary flourishes accentuate the appeal of the genre, or dilute it? “The strangeness of the past is precisely what makes it amazing when we find out that it is relatable to us,” Cunningham says. “If you make everything relatable, you’ve eliminated the thrill of discovery.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“A Room with a View” (1985)

“Bridgerton” (2020-22)

“Bright Star” (2009)

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000)

“Dickinson” (2019-21)

“Hamlet” (2000)

“Howards End” (film, 1992; miniseries, 2017)

“Little Women” (2019)

“Mansfield Park,” by Jane Austen (film, 1999)

“Marie Antoinette” (2006)

“Memoirs of a Geisha,” by Arthur Golden (film, 2005)

“Napoleon” (2023)

“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen (miniseries, 1995; film, 2005)

“The Buccaneers,” by Edith Wharton (series, 2023)

“The Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton

“The Great” (series, 2020-23)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Samantha Irby Knows How to Be Funny Nov 21, 2023

Samantha Irby’s latest essay collection, “Quietly Hostile,” cemented her place as one of the great professionally funny people working today. Her books and her writing for such TV shows as “Shrill” and “Tuca & Bertie” are distinguished by a no-holds-barred, raunchy, often scatological brand of humor and a willingness to poke fun at just about anything—including herself. In a live taping of Critics at Large at this year’s New Yorker Festival, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz sat down with Irby to unpack her approach. They discussed humor as a coping mechanism; her work on the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That . . .,” and the ensuing backlash; and how the Internet has transformed the comedy landscape. “What people enjoy is so varied,” Irby says. “The future is you finding very specific things that delight you, and having them readily available.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Is “The Golden Bachelor” Too Good to Be True? Nov 16, 2023

Reality television is all about artifice, and contestants on “The Bachelor” often seem more interested in becoming influencers than in finding a spouse—but “The Golden Bachelor,” a new spinoff starring a seventy-two-year-old widower named Gerry, has been hailed for its surprising sincerity. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the show eschews—and, at times, reinforces—the tropes that have polarized viewers of the ABC franchise, and what a genre known for its phoniness can reveal about actual human emotions and experiences. The hosts consider other depictions of sex and romance at this stage of life, including Philip Roth’s memorable rendering of an older man’s libido in “The Dying Animal” and HBO’s “And Just Like That . . . ,” a rare look at older women’s erotic prospects. Then, they take a step back to examine how series like “The Bachelor” have shaped our conception of love stories writ large. “The Golden Bachelor” ’s insistence on the vitality of its contestants can feel like a step forward, but what does it mean that the show is so fixated on what Schwartz calls “a second teen-agerdom”? “The boomers set a model for what it is to be young that persists for all the generations that have followed,” she says. “Now here they are again, saying, ‘We’re here; yes, we’re older; and we want to get old in our own way.’ ”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Why We Dine Out (or Don’t) Nov 09, 2023

In the years since the pandemic began, the experience of dining out has been utterly transformed. Coveted tables now disappear seconds after they’re released, and influencers dictate what’s in demand—or even what’s on the menu. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz make sense of our new culinary landscape. The hosts are joined by Hannah Goldfield, who covers restaurants and food culture for The New Yorker. Together, they consider how TikTok is changing the way we eat, and how the rise of Resy has introduced a sense of scarcity and competition into the reservation game. Then, the critics discuss “Menus-Plaisirs - Les Troisgros,” a new Frederick Wiseman documentary about a Michelin-starred French restaurant that offers a very different, behind-the-scenes view of the labor and creativity that goes into fine dining. These examples raise the question of how to balance art with the experience that informs and surrounds it. One answer is found in venues that sidestep the hype, and that remind us of why we dine out in the first place. “I don’t need to feel this grand drama of struggle and triumph,” Schwartz says. “I simply want to feel welcomed.”

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Britney Spears Tells Her Horror Story Nov 02, 2023

The celebrity memoir has long been a place for public figures to set the record straight on the story of their lives. By any measure, Britney Spears’s life, as detailed in her new book, “The Woman in Me,” is rich material. The pop star rose to fame in the early two-thousands, and, after enduring a series of mental-health crises, was placed in a conservatorship through which her father controlled almost every aspect of her day-to-day existence. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the “horror story” that emerges in the memoir as the teen-aged Spears is betrayed by everyone around her: a family intent on profiting off her talent; a young Justin Timberlake, who used his romance with Spears as a stepping stone for his own career; a ravenous media that both sexualized and shamed her. The hosts consider how “The Woman in Me” fits within the broader canon of celebrity memoirs, citing the producer Julia Phillips’s “burn-it-all-down” best-seller, “You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again,” and the late Matthew Perry’s 2022 meditation on his struggles with addiction, “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing.” Ultimately, these stories are just one facet of a broader narrative—and a kind of performance in their own right. “Once you submit to being a celebrity, your music, and how you appear in magazines, and what you produce as a memoir all contribute to this one big text,” Cunningham says. “It’s this grand synthesis, and, in the end, the text is Britney herself.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Martin Scorsese’s America Oct 26, 2023

Throughout his career, Martin Scorsese has traced crime, greed, and corruption across American life. In his new film, he turns his gaze to the violence of whiteness. Set in nineteen-twenties Oklahoma, “Killers of the Flower Moon” tells the story of a series of murders targeting the people of the Osage Nation, perpetrated by white settlers in pursuit of the community’s oil wealth. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the trajectory of Scorsese’s style, from the “whirling limbs” and “short, sharp cuts” of films like “Goodfellas” to the elegiac restraint of more recent works like “The Irishman.” They’re joined by The New Yorker’s David Grann, the author of the 2017 book that formed the basis for Scorsese’s film, who describes how he first came upon the story and how members of the Osage community became involved in—and responded to—the adaptation. Then the hosts consider the multilayered coda of the film, which raises increasingly pressing questions about representation and ownership. “Killers of the Flower Moon” recounts the atrocities committed against the Osage, but it’s also an indictment of racialized evil writ large. “The trauma of this experience of course belongs most intimately to the Osage people,” Cunningham says. “But the proclivities that gave rise to it, the sensibilities that survive in our culture today—that’s something that every person that has anything to do with the United States needs to engage with.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Are Straight Couples O.K.? Oct 19, 2023

Throughout film history, heterosexual relationships have served as a battleground for questions of sex, power, and equality. From the 1949 screwball comedy “Adam’s Rib,” in which a husband and wife’s careers become a source of conflict, to the 1979 legal drama “Kramer vs. Kramer,” which reflected new cultural attitudes about divorce, fictional couples have long been tasked with working through the biggest social issues of the day. In the wake of the #MeToo movement, a different dynamic has emerged onscreen—one in which the woman holds the reins of the relationship. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss two new films in which traditional gender roles are flipped: Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall,” which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and “Fair Play,” the début feature from the director Chloe Domont, now streaming on Netflix. The hosts consider the rise of the “good bad man”: a well-intentioned partner whose feminist politics collapse when real power is at stake. “This is a moment when people say they want equality, and they may even feel that they want equality,” Schwartz says. “But there is some kind of cultural consensus that men are not really able to do it, because they keep getting slammed in movies like this.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Spies, Sex, and John le Carré Oct 12, 2023

In 1963, a British spy writing under the pen name John le Carré published a novel that shot to the top of best-seller lists worldwide. After the success of “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” le Carré became known as the king of the modern spy thriller, and his gritty, political books helped define the genre until his death, in 2020. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz dive deep into the le Carré œuvre, delighting in the “glorious confusion” of works like “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” “The Constant Gardener,” and “A Perfect Spy.” They also discuss le Carré’s life in light of two retrospectives out this month: “The Pigeon Tunnel,” an Errol Morris documentary on Apple TV+; and “The Secret Life of John le Carré,” an addendum to Adam Sisman’s definitive biography that exposes decades of affairs in which the novelist ran women like agents. With these details as a jumping-off point, the hosts explore the themes of intimacy and romance across the spy genre, including the Martini-soaked romps of Ian Fleming’s James Bond and the FX show “The Americans,” where romance functions as a metaphor for spycraft. “One question I’m asking is, Why are sex and love so much part of the archetype of the spy?” Schwartz says. “When you’re pretending and playing at being so many different things, love is usually one place where the truth must out.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Taylor Swift Is Everywhere All at Once Oct 05, 2023

Taylor Swift has long been the subject of adoration, scrutiny, and debate—but it wasn’t until this summer, as the Eras Tour filled football stadiums and TikTok feeds alike, that she achieved complete domination over popular culture. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz make sense of how Swift has managed to harness our collective attention in the midst of a fractured cultural landscape. They are joined by their fellow-critic Amanda Petrusich, who wrote about the Eras Tour earlier this year. “When she would address the crowd, it almost felt like I was getting hypnotized,” says Petrusich. She talks about what she calls Swift’s ‘you guys’ energy—the chatty, intimate tone Swift uses to address her fans. Together, the critics discuss the ins and outs of Swiftie fandom, the way that Swift herself savvily turns online censure into content, and whether the success of the Eras Tour—alongside recent maximalist collective events like Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour and Barbenheimer—marks a new golden age of the mainstream.

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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The Myth-Making of Elon Musk Sep 28, 2023

Elon Musk’s presence in our lives is inescapable: his cars roam our streets, his satellites orbit our skies, and his purchase of X—formerly known as Twitter—has reshaped the social-media landscape. The staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss a recent biography of Musk, by Walter Isaacson, tracing the familiar archetype of the genius tech founder from the nineteenth-century robber baron to “Batman” ’s Bruce Wayne. The critics examine how, in recent years, the idea of the unimpeachable Silicon Valley founder has lost its sheen. Narratives such as the 2022 series “WeCrashed”tell the story of startup founders who make lofty promises, only to watch their empires crumble when those promises are shown to be empty. “It dovetails for me with the disillusionment of millennials,” Fry says, pointing to the dark mood that the 2007-08 financial crisis and the 2016 election brought to the country. “There’s no longer this blind belief that the tech founder is a genius who should be wholly admired with no reservations.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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What Is Cringecore, and Why Is It Everywhere? Sep 28, 2023

In the inaugural episode of The New Yorker’s new culture podcast, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz make sense of an emerging trend in the world of television: a new genre of cringe comedy that collapses the gap between reality and artifice in ways that make the viewer deeply uncomfortable. “As a shorthand, I’ve just simply started calling it ‘cringecore,’ ” Schwartz says, referring to shows such as Nathan Fielder’s “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal,” and the docuseries “How To with John Wilson.” What defines these projects, and what draws viewers to them? One theory: at a time when so many of our preferences, relationships, and experiences are mediated by algorithm, these shows reflect a deep skepticism of reality itself. “I feel that reality in our culture is like the last undiscovered tribe of the Amazon,” Schwartz says. “We’ll never make contact with it again.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Introducing: Critics at Large Sep 21, 2023

On Critics at Large, a new weekly culture podcast from The New Yorker, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss current obsessions, classic texts, and trends that are emerging across books, film, television, pop culture, and more. The show will offer lively, surprising conversations about such topics as how comedy is evolving in the TikTok era, why Greek mythology is making a comeback, and what the great-man theory of history has to do with Elon Musk. Join The New Yorker’s critics for analysis of the cultural moment and behind-the-scenes insights into the publication’s reporting on the arts. New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

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Critics at Large | The New Yorker

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