Shows / Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Critics at Large is a weekly culture podcast from The New Yorker. Every Thursday, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss current obsessions, classic texts they’re revisiting with fresh eyes, and trends that are emerging across books, television, film, and more. The show runs the gamut of the arts and pop culture, with lively, surprising conversations about everything from Salman Rushdie to “The Real Housewives.” Through rigorous analysis and…
Episodes
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Critics at Large Live: “I Need a Critic!”
On this episode of Critics at Large, recorded live at the twenty-seventh annual New Yorker Festival, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz bring…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
“You Can See Everything” and the Nathan Fielder Effect
Nathan Fielder’s onscreen persona—flat, literal-minded, and seemingly baffled by ordinary social behavior—has made him one of our most distinctive cultural…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
“The Social Reckoning” Shows How It All Went Wrong
In 2010, Time magazine’s Person of the Year was not a world leader or entertainment icon but Mark Zuckerberg, the twenty-six-year-old creator of Facebook. That…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Tom Cruise-a-Palooza
Tom Cruise is often said to be the last of a dwindling breed: the true movie star. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
What Survival Stories Tell Us (and Should We Listen?)
On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the perennial appeal of survival stories. They trace the…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Introducing: “The Journey,” from In the Dark
“The Journey,” a five-part audio investigation by Ava Kofman, unravels the mystery of how Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, a wealthy Los Angeles couple, obtained…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
That Back-to-School Feeling
As the school year resumes, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the work—and pleasure—of teaching and learning, reflect on their own…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Remembering Dolly Parton
Upon news of Dolly Parton’s death last week, flags across the country were lowered to half-mast. A petition circulated to rename the Nashville airport in her…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
What is Gen Z Afraid Of?
In May, two low-budget movies from début filmmakers opened in theatres and quickly made box-office history. “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which together have…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Critics’ Cult Classics: Emily Nussbaum on “Slings & Arrows”
During her tenure as The New Yorker’s television critic, Emily Nussbaum famously railed against ranking the year’s best shows; she once wrote a piece entitled…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers
In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Critics’ Cult Classics: Hanif Abdurraqib on Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”
When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
The Golden Age of the American Idiot
The new game show “Nation’s Dumbest,” flips the classic “Jeopardy!” script on its head. The format: twelve famous-ish contestants are peppered with basic logic…
- Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Who Owns the Odyssey?
In its nearly three-thousand-year history, the Odyssey has undergone as many twists and turns as its protagonist does on his journey home to Ithaca. Its…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerAn American Playlist
This week, to commemorate two hundred and fifty years of the American experiment, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz present an American…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerFrom The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game
Critics at Large will be back next week. In the meantime, you can hear Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry on a recent episode of The New Yorker’s Political Scene…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerSteven Spielberg’s Blockbusters
When “Jaws” hit theatres in 1975, no one—neither the studio executives involved nor the film’s twenty-six-year-old director, Steven Spielberg—was betting on…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy We Cling to the Animal Kingdom
Since the days of Aesop, stories about animals have been used to explore distinctly human values, virtues, and vices. On this episode of Critics at Large…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerI Need a Critic: June, 2026, Edition
This week, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz kick off the summer months with a new installment of the Critics at Large advice series…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerOur Modern Glut of Choice
For many of us, daily life is defined by a near-constant stream of decisions, from what to buy on Amazon to what to watch on Netflix. On this episode of…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhere Do Men Go from Here?
The phrase “toxic masculinity,” deployed ad nauseum over the past decade, now borders on cliché, but the fact that men are in some kind of crisis feels beyond…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHow Romantasy Seduces Its Readers
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Met Gala, “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” and the State of Style
In the original “The Devil Wears Prada,” a hapless Andrea Sachs stumbles into the office of Miranda Priestly, the exacting editor of Runway magazine and a…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhat “Michael” Tries to Show—or Hide
“Michael”—a new film, directed by Antoine Fuqua, charting Michael Jackson’s rise to fame—just had the best opening weekend in the history of bio-pics, proving…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy Earnestness is Everywhere
Cynicism is widely considered a defining quality of our conspiracy-addled, irony-poisoned age. But audiences and creatives alike now seem ready to cast it…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Beef,” “The Drama,” and the New Marriage Plot
In 2019, marriage rates in the United States hit their lowest point in a hundred and forty years. They still haven’t rebounded. On this episode of Critics at…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Guilty Pleasure of the Heist
Last fall, a group of masked men broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and made off with some of France’s crown jewels. The stunt swiftly became an online…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“DTF St. Louis” and the New Story of the Suburbs
In the new HBO miniseries “DTF St. Louis,” Jason Bateman plays a weatherman living with his wife and kids in a sleepy town just outside of St. Louis. He…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Soft Power of BTS
The K-pop group BTS—by many metrics, the most popular band of all time—had a meteoric ascent before its members were called away by mandatory South Korean…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Love Story” and Why We Cling to the Kennedy Myth
“Love Story,” an FX series produced by Ryan Murphy, drops audiences straight into the lives of one of the most talked-about couples of the nineties: J.F.K…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Hall of Fame—and of Shame—of Oscars Hosts
On this episode of Critics at Large, with the ninety-eighth Academy Awards just around the corner, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCritics at Large Live: “Wuthering Heights” and Its Afterlives
When Emily Brontë published “Wuthering Heights,” in 1847, critics were baffled, alarmed, and mostly unimpressed. James Lorimer, writing in the North British…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Truth of Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison was many things in her lifetime—Nobel laureate, renowned author, Princeton professor, and generous mentor to young writers. Her appeal translated…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCharli XCX Misses the Moment
Once the fervor around Charli XCX’s 2024 album “brat” had cooled, the singer was approached to make a documentary about the tour—a practice that’s been…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Heated Rivalry,” “Pillion,” and the New Drama of the Closet
“Heated Rivalry,” a low-budget Canadian series that began streaming on HBO Max late last year, quickly made the leap from unexpected word-of-mouth success to…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerI Need a Critic: One-Hundredth-Episode Edition
Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz celebrate the one-hundredth episode of Critics at Large with a special installment of the podcast’s advice…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy Football Matters
Someone looking to understand America might do well to study the nation’s embrace of football. N.F.L. games regularly outperform anything else on television…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerDo We Need Saints?
In “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a new film directed by Mona Fastvold, Amanda Seyfried plays the founder and leader of the Shaker movement—a woman believed by…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerOur Romance with Jane Austen
Though Jane Austen went largely unrecognized in her own lifetime—four of her six novels were published anonymously, and the other two only after her death—her…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Year of the Broken Mirror
Many of this year’s most talked-about releases were, in some sense, diagnostic: from Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Wake Up Dead Man” and the Whodunnit Renaissance
We all know the formula: it begins with a dead body, and quickly introduces a motley crew of outlandish characters, each with a motive for murder. The…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerDoes “Hamlet” Need a Backstory?
Since it was penned more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” has been in production nearly continuously, and has been adapted in many ways. On…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerAfter “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerIn “Pluribus,” Utopia Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Vince Gilligan’s new show, “Pluribus,” opens with an unconventional apocalypse. A benevolent alien hive mind descends on Earth, commandeering the bodies of all…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Guilty Pleasure of the Heist
On October 19th, a group of masked men broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and made off with some of France’s crown jewels. Suspects are now in custody…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCritics at Large Live: Padma Lakshmi’s Expansive Taste
Padma Lakshmi is unquestionably a woman of taste. As a host of the beloved food-competition series “Top Chef” and the star of the culinary docuseries “Taste…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy Horror Still Haunts Us
Horror movies are big business: this year, they’ve accounted for more ticket sales in the U.S. than comedies and dramas combined, bringing in over a billion…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerIn the Dark: Blood Relatives, Episode 1
On August 7, 1985, five family members were shot dead in their English country manor, Whitehouse Farm. It looked like an open-and-shut case. But the New Yorker…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerArt in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Generative A.I., once an uncanny novelty, is now being used to create not only images and videos but entire “artists.” Its boosters claim that the technology…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerI Need a Critic: October, 2025, Edition
In the latest installment of the Critics at Large advice series, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz answer listeners’ questions about a range…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHow the Trad Wife Took Over
Scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” has hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-traditional roles in…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerOne Paul Thomas Anderson Film After Another
Over the course of his three-decade career, the director Paul Thomas Anderson has dramatized the nineteen-seventies porn industry (“Boogie Nights”), the…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhat's Cooking?
In contemporary cookbooks—and in the burgeoning realm of online cooking content—there’s often a life style on display alongside the recipes. Samin Nosrat is a…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“The Paper,” “The Lowdown,” and the Drama of Journalism
In the past twenty years, more than a third of all American newspapers have shuttered; trust in media institutions is now at a historic low. And yet we’re…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy We're All In on Gambling
Last week, it was announced that Polymarket—a site where you can bet on basically anything, from the likelihood of a government shutdown to the winner of New…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerOur Fads, Ourselves
Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—is only just…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHow to Watch a Movie
In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twentieth…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerLes Américains à Paris
Nineteenth-century Americans regarded Paris as a libertine paradise: a smorgasbord of food and fashion, of night life and sex. Today, the pull toward France…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHow Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City
On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compelling enough…