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The New Yorker Radio Hour — Games & Hobbies
The New Yorker Radio Hour

Profiles, storytelling and insightful conversations, hosted by David Remnick.

Copyright: © WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Latest Episodes:

Glenn Close Doesn’t Play Evil (with One Exception) May 08, 2018

Show notes

Last year, Glenn Close was on Broadway as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” reprising a role she had originally played in 1993. Since 1974, when she made her début on Broadway, she has won three Tony Awards and three Emmys, and has been nominated six times for an Oscar. Like Desmond, many of Glenn Close’s characters could be described as “difficult”: sometimes scary and possibly insane, but, above all, just complicated. But Close bridles at the notion that any of them—even Alex Forrest, the unhinged lover she played unforgettably in “Fatal Attraction”— villains. “I don’t think of them as evil,” Close said to The New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman, at the New Yorker Festival in 2017. “The only evil character I’ve ever played was Cruella!”

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Robert Caro on the Fall of New York May 04, 2018

Show notes

In a career spanning more than forty years, the biographer Robert Caro has written about only two subjects. But they’re very big subjects: Robert Moses, the city planner who brought much of New York under his control without holding elected office, in “The Power Broker”; and President Johnson, in “The Years of Lyndon Johnson,” of which Caro has completed four of a projected five volumes. More than life histories, these books are studies of power, and of how two masters of politics bent democracy to their wills.

Caro, who started out as a newspaper reporter, is a completist. When he was writing about Johnson’s oath of office after the assassination of President Kennedy, Caro referred to a famous news photograph that showed twenty-six people in the room—and interviewed every person still living.. And when Caro realized he had forgotten the photographer, he interviewed him, too. This truly prodigious research is complemented by the elegance of Caro’s prose, which commands rhythm, mood, and sense of place in a way that resembles the work of a novelist. When he appeared at the New Yorker Festival, in 2017, Caro was interviewed by one of the great novelists working today, Ireland’s Colm Tóibín.

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Apocalypse Prepping, on a Budget May 01, 2018

Show notes

Inspired by “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” by The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, Patricia Marx gets herself ready for the apocalypse. The only problem: Marx is a writer, not a Silicon Valley mogul. She isn’t super-rich, or even regular-rich. Apocalypse prep on a budget, Marx discovers, is a whole other ball game. Plus: “I’m a Proud Nuclear-Missile Owner”—written by Teddy Wayne, and performed by Nick Offerman—takes the right to bear arms to a whole other level.

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ICE Comes to a Small Town in Tennessee Apr 27, 2018

Show notes

This week, a reporter looks at a rural town where the largest immigration raid in a decade has ripped apart a community; Ronan Farrow talks about his reporting on Harvey Weinstein, which just won the Pulitzer Prize; and Jeffrey Toobin speaks with a romance novelist-turned-state lawmaker who hopes to become the governor of Georgia. She would be the first black woman to lead any state in the nation.

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Andrew Sean Greer’s “It’s a Summer Day” Apr 24, 2018

Show notes

Last week, Andrew Andrew Sean Greer's novel "Less" won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. "Less" about a novelist in mid-life named Arthur Less, and his attempt to avoid the wedding of a younger ex-boyfriend by accepting invitations to literary events in other countries. In 2017, The New Yorker published an excerpt from the book with the title “It’s a Summer Day.” Greer read from the excerpt on the New Yorker’s podcast The Writer’s Voice, which features a short story from the magazine read by the author every week.

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James Comey Makes His Case to America Apr 20, 2018

Show notes

In a long career in law enforcement, the former F.B.I. Director James Comey aimed to be above politics, but in the 2016 election he stepped directly into it. In his book, “A Higher Loyalty,” Comey makes the case to America that he handled the F.B.I. investigations into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails and Donald Trump’s campaign correctly, regardless of the consequences. Even after being fired by President Trump, the former F.B.I Director says he doesn’t dislike the President; he tells David Remnick that what he feels is more akin to sympathy. Trump “has an emptiness inside of him, and a hunger for affirmation, that I’ve never seen in an adult,” Comey says. “He lacks external reference points. Instead of making hard decisions by calling upon a religious tradition, or logic, or tradition or history, it’s all, ‘what will fill this hole?’ ” As a result, Comey says, “The President poses significant threats to the rule of law,” and he chides Congressional Republicans for going along with the President’s aberrations. “What,” he rhetorically asks Mitch McConnell and others, “are you going to tell your grandchildren?” Nevertheless, Comey remains hopeful about the resilience of American institutions. “There isn’t a ‘deep state,’ [but] there is a deep culture,” he believes. “It is [about] the rule of law and doing it the right way,” and it serves as “a ballast” during political turmoil. David Remnick’s interview with James Comey was taped live at New York’s Town Hall on April 19, 2018.

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A Trans Woman Finds Her True Face Through Surgery Apr 17, 2018

Show notes

The staff writer Rebecca Mead recently observed the seven-hour surgery of woman she calls Abby. (To protect her privacy, Abby’s real name was not used, and her voice has been altered in the audio of our story.) Abby, who is trans, had undergone hormone therapy, but her strong facial features still led people to refer to her as male, which caused her severe emotional pain. She decided to undergo a reconstructive procedure called facial feminization surgery, in which a specialist would break and reshape her bones. Mead spoke with Abby before and after the surgery about what it would mean for the world to see her as she sees herself. Plus: The poet Ada Limón moved to Kentucky and fell in love with horses all over again.

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Pope Francis the Disruptor Apr 13, 2018

Show notes

As a conservative columnist at the New York Times, Ross Douthat fills the post once held by no less a figure than William Kristol. A devout Catholic, Douthat opposes the progressive direction in which Pope Francis is leading the Church—to prioritize caring for poor people and migrants over opposing abortion and the culture of sexual revolution—even though he acknowledges to David Remnick that this puts him at odds with the Church’s emphasis on mercy. In his new book, “To Change the Church: Pope Francis of the Future of Catholicism,” Douthat provocatively compares Francis to Donald Trump, painting him as a disruptive figure who is determined to bring change fast and damn the consequences. Plus: a lawyer and former baseball player explains why a new federal law targets the wages of minor league players.

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Frank Oz on Miss Piggy’s Secret Backstory and Jim Henson’s Legacy Apr 10, 2018

Show notes

Frank Oz was a teenager when he started working with Jim Henson, the puppeteer and filmmaker behind the Muppets. Oz went on to create characters like Bert, Cookie Monster, Miss Piggy, and Yoda from “Star Wars.”

Michael Schulman is a contributor to The New Yorker and the magazine’s foremost authority on all things Muppet. He takes a trip uptown, to Frank Oz’s home in Manhattan, and talks with Oz about his most iconic characters, moving on after the death of Jim Henson, and what’s missing from today’s Muppets. Plus, The New Yorker’s Naomi Fry recommends three things not to miss on the Internet.

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Emma González at Home, and a Crown Prince Abroad Apr 06, 2018

Show notes

Emma González is a survivor of the Parkland attack, and a leader of the #NeverAgain movement. She talks with David Remnick about the ways her life has changed since the shooting, and why activism comes naturally to the teens spearheading the new push for gun control. And Dexter Filkins talks with David Remnick about the dynamic Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia—a young, energetic reformer who is forging close ties with the Trump White House.

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