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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:

Tina Brown on Vanity Fair, the Eighties, and Harvey Weinstein Nov 10, 2017

Show notes

Tina Brown is a legend in New York publishing. She was barely thirty years old when she was recruited from London to take over a foundering Vanity Fair. Take over she did, becoming one of the power centers of New York culture by bringing together the intellectual world and the celebrity world of entertainment. She later brought enormous change to The New Yorker (including, for the first time, photographs); she launched Talk magazine with Harvey Weinstein; and she helped launch the Daily Beast. Her new book, “The Vanity Fair Diaries, 1983-1992” is a kind of coming-of-age story about a pre-Internet era of unruffled ambition, unlimited budgets, big shoulders, big hair, and fabulous parties. Tina Brown tells David Remnick that her experience with Weinstein, as unpleasant as it was—she found the mogul “bullying [and] duplicitous,” profane and erratic—did not prepare her for the revelations of brutality and intimidation that have been published in The New Yorker and elsewhere. The experience has shaken her. “I have friends who’ve been accused of things who I want instinctively to defend, but I’ve held back,” Brown says. “Because I don’t know what’s coming next. The truth is, you realize you don’t really know anybody.” Plus, the cartoonist Emily Flake on the joys of Rudy’s Bar, where the combo of a shot and a beer costs five bucks. The sense of history and ritual, and the troubles confessed across generations, remind her of church—but at church, Flake points out, “they’re not going to let you sit around for six hours and drink.”

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Voter Fraud: A Threat to Democracy, or a Myth? Nov 07, 2017

Show notes

Donald Trump memorably claimed, without a shred of evidence, that millions of votes cast by undocumented immigrants had given Hillary Clinton the popular vote in the 2016 election. More circumspect conservatives argue that voter fraud is a real problem requiring more stringent checks on voting—which their opponents see as thinly disguised voter suppression. Here, three views on voter fraud: a Kansas lawyer who defended a woman charged with fraud; the columnist John Fund, who argues that voter fraud may exist widely, whether we see it or not; and Lorraine Minnite, a political-science professor who researched the topic exhaustively, and who tells the staff writer Jelani Cobb that purposeful fraud in the electoral system essentially does not exist.

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Jeffrey Toobin on “The Most Important Supreme Court Case in Decades” Nov 03, 2017

Show notes

Jeffrey Toobin tells David Remnick that, despite the mounting indictments against members of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign, Trump is almost certainly safe from impeachment. Republican House members, Toobin says, have no incentive to moderate their support of the President—despite his low national poll numbers—because the only competition these representatives face is from the right flank of their own party. Gerrymandering, assisted by the latest computer modelling, has allowed the party in power in each state to lock itself into a nearly unassailable majority of votes. The Supreme Court could conceivably change that in a redistricting case called Gill v. Whitford, which Toobin has written about; he tells David Remnick that it is “the most important Supreme Court case in decades.” Hinging on the swing vote of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Court will decide whether it can act as a check on gerrymandering, or whether a functioning two-party system can fade into history.

Plus, the fiction writer George Saunders talks about the inspiration for his recent novel, which is set on one very dark night in the soul of Abraham Lincoln.

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“Slut: The Play,” an Empowering Story for Young Women Oct 31, 2017

Show notes

In “Slut: The Play,” Katie Cappiello captures the trauma of sexual assault, based on the stories of teen-agers in her theatre company. (Hilton Als wrote about the play for the magazine.) A member of the cast, Mary Miller, tells David Remnick that the play inspired her to tell her own story for the first time outside a therapist’s office. Cappiello, the artistic director of the Arts Effect NYC, asks, “Who better to speak this truth than those who face it day in and day out?” In a conversation with Remnick, she explains what she’s learned from working with teen-age boys on a play about sexual aggression and violence.

Also, Ian Frazier visits the farm of the future, in an industrial building in New Jersey; Siri has some special instructions for when you’ve had a few too many to navigate safely.

These segments originally aired on March 4, 2016, and January 13, 2017.

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How OxyContin Was Sold to the Masses Oct 27, 2017

Show notes

When OxyContin came on the market, in 1995, physicians were understandably wary of the addictive potential of a powerful new opioid. As Patrick Radden Keefe reports, the manufacturer, Purdue Pharma, aggressively marketed OxyContin to physicians, claiming that the drug’s delayed-release mechanism could limit the risk of addiction. Instead, OxyContin led to many new addictions, and many addicted patients eventually sought street drugs like heroin. Steven May started at Purdue Pharma as a sales rep in 1999, and years later went on to allege fraud against Purdue as a participant in a whistle-blower lawsuit (which was dismissed on procedural grounds). May tells Keefe that he was trained to market the drug as one “to start with and to stay with,” despite seeing early on its addictive potential.

Purdue Pharma is a privately held company controlled by members of the Sackler family, who have a net worth of thirteen billion dollars. The Sacklers have donated handsomely to cancer research, medical schools, art museums, and universities. But Keefe tells David Remnick that the Sacklers have donated “nothing for the opioid crisis. Nothing for addiction treatment. If there is any sense in that family that they bear any moral culpability for where we are today, they’re not acting on it.”

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Riz Ahmed Gets the Job Done Oct 24, 2017

Show notes

The British writer, activist, and rapper Riz Ahmed has had a very public life since leaving drama school to star in “The Road to Guantánamo.” He won an Emmy for playing the lead in “The Night Of,” appeared in the Star Wars film “Rogue One,” and played Hannah Horvath’s baby daddy on “Girls.” He has continued his music career as Riz MC and was featured on the song “Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)” from “The Hamilton Mixtape.” Riz has been an outspoken activist for immigrants in the U.S. and Britain, and, at this year’s New Yorker Festival, he spoke to Alexis Okeowo about how his past has shaped who he is and steered his career choices. Ahmed’s work is often political, but he resents the category of political art, which he sees as a way to marginalize viewpoints that the mainstream views with suspicion.

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Chelsea Manning on Life After Prison Oct 20, 2017

Show notes

In 2010, the Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, sent nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand classified military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks. The leak earned Manning a thirty-five-year prison sentence, which was commuted by President Obama to seven years.

Less than five months out of prison, she sat down with The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar at the 2017 New Yorker Festival. Manning discussed her tumultuous upbringing, including her months living as a homeless teen in Chicago; her highly public gender transition; and her treatment in military prison. She also described the quick decision that led her to send the documents to WikiLeaks. Having seen “All the President’s Men,” Manning had originally intended to send the documents to the Washington Post or The New York Times, but, at the time, she said, the newspapers struggled to provide her with the security protocols she insisted on. Only WikiLeaks offered the necessary level of security, and she took the chance. “I was running out of time,” she told MacFarquhar. “They just had the tools available, they knew how to use them. That’s all it boiled down to. I had to go back to Iraq.”

Though the trial is behind her, Manning maintains a fierce conviction that her leak posed no threat to U.S. soldiers or local sources in Iraq or Afghanistan, a fact disputed by the government and many N.G.O.s disputed by many, including leading human-rights groups. Her disclosures profoundly embarrassed the government, made WikiLeaks a household name, and, by some accounts, served as a catalyst for the Arab Spring. But Manning hopes to be done with the leaks, and to spend the next phase of her life as an advocate for trans people.

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My Mother’s Career at “Playboy,” and the Politics of N.F.L. Protest Oct 17, 2017

Show notes

The death last month of Hugh Hefner reopened a conversation about the “Playboy” founder and the world he created. Hefner said that his magazine’s pictures of naked or near-naked women were an empowering blow against puritanism; his critics argued that they normalized the degradation of women. Janice Moses was just nineteen and in desperate need of a job when she started in the magazine’s photo department, eventually rising to become a photo editor. Empowered as a professional woman, she became increasingly uncomfortable with the content, especially as “Playboy” began competing with more explicit rivals such as “Hustler.” After Hefner died, Janice’s daughter, Michele Moses—a member of the The New Yorker’s editorial staff—had a few questions about her mother’s years making centerfolds.

Also: The New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb talks with Bill Rhoden, a writer-at-large for ESPN’s “Undefeated,” about the fifty-year history of black athletes embracing politics on the field. Is it time, they ask, to retire “The Star-Spangled Banner” from football?

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St. Vincent’s Seduction Oct 13, 2017

Show notes

Annie Clark, known as St. Vincent, launched her career as a guitar virtuoso—a real shredder—in indie rock, playing alongside artists like Sufjan Stevens. As a bandleader, she’s moved away from the explosive solos, telling David Remnick, “There’s a certain amount of guitar playing that is about pride, that isn’t about the song. . . . I’m not that interested in guitar being a means of poorly covered-up pride.” Her songs are dense, challenging, and not always easy, but catchy and seductive. Remnick caught up with Clark before the launch of her new album, “MASSEDUCTION.” They talked about the clarity of purpose she needed in order to “clear a path” to write the “glamorously sad songs” she’s become known for.

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Roz Chast and Patricia Marx, Ukelele Superstars; Jennifer Egan on Cops and Robbers Oct 10, 2017

Show notes

Patricia Marx is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, and Roz Chast is a celebrated cartoonist. Chast’s book “Can’t We Please Talk About Something More Pleasant,” about dealing with her aging parents, was a best-seller in 2014, winning awards that don’t usually go to books of cartoons. But something you don’t know about Chast and Marx is that they played in a band. As the Daily Pukeleles, they claim, they influenced some of the biggest names in music in the sixties and beyond. But they were always a little too far ahead of the curve for the mainstream. For the first time ever, Patricia Marx and Roz Chast tell their story. Plus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jennifer Egan talks with David Remnick about cops and mobsters, and the torture of writing a novel.

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