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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 YorkerLate Night's Last Laugh
Two weeks ago, when Paramount cancelled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” insiders in Hollywood and Washington alike deemed the move suspicious: Colbert…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Eddington” and the American Berserk
Ari Aster’s wildly divisive new movie “Eddington” drops audiences back into the chaos of May, 2020: a moment when the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Materialists,” “Too Much,” and the Modern Rom-Com
Audiences have been bemoaning the death of the romantic comedy for years, but the genre persists—albeit often in a different form from the screwballs of the…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy We Travel
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Diva Is Dead, Long Live the Diva
The word “diva” comes from the world of opera, where divinely talented singers have enraptured audiences for centuries. But preternatural gifts often go hand…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy We Turn Grief Into Art
Yiyun Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow” is a bracingly candid memoir of profound loss: one written in the wake of her son James’s death by suicide, seven…
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 Yorker“Mountainhead” and the Age of the Pathetic Billionaire
“Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong’s latest work, a ripped-from-the-headlines sendup of tech billionaires called “Mountainhead,” is arguably an extension of…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerLessons from “Sesame Street”
“Sesame Street,” which first aired on PBS in 1969, was born of a progressive idea: that children from all socioeconomic backgrounds should have access to free…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Season for Obsessions
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Grand Spectacle of Pope Week
In the weeks since Pope Francis’s passing, the internet has been flooded by papal memes, election analysis, and even close readings of the newly appointed Pope…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerI Need a Critic: May 2025 Edition
In a new installment of the Critics at Large advice hotline, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz field calls from listeners on a variety of…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHow “Sinners” Revives the Vampire
The vampire has long been a way to explore the shadow side of society, and “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s new blockbuster set in the Jim Crow-era South, is no…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWar Movies: What Are They Good For?
For nearly as long as we’ve been waging war, we’ve sought ways to chronicle it. “Warfare,” a new movie co-directed by the filmmaker Alex Garland and the former…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“The Studio” Pokes Fun at Hollywood’s Existential Struggle
The tension between art and commerce is a tale as old as time, and perhaps the most dramatic clashes in recent history have played out in Hollywood. On this…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerGossip, Then and Now
Gossip, an essential human pastime, is full of contradictions. It has the potential to be as destructive to its subjects as it is titillating to its…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerJoe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang
The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with technical…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCritics at Large Live: The Right to Get It Wrong
In 1939, reviewing the beloved M-G-M classic “The Wizard of Oz” for The New Yorker, the critic Russell Maloney declared that the film held “no trace of…
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 YorkerHow “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills
“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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerIn “Severance,” the Gothic Double Lives On
“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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine
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…
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 YorkerDavid Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Splendor of Nature, Now Streaming
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe New Western Gold Rush
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Elusive Promise of the First Person
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCritics at Large Live: The Year of the Flop
This year, high-profile failures abounded. Take, for example, Francis Ford Coppola’s passion project “Megalopolis,” which cost a hundred and forty million…
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 YorkerThe Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWill Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Value—and Limits—of Seeking Comfort in Art
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCritics at Large Live: Julio Torres’s Dreamy Surrealism
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerHelp, I Need a Critic!
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerA Controversial Trump Bio-pic and the Villains We Make
“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…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“The Substance” and the New Horror of the Modified Body
In “The Substance,” a darkly satirical horror movie directed by Coralie Fargeat, Demi Moore plays an aging Hollywood actress who strikes a tech-infused…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Fate of the Finance Bro
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerSally Rooney’s Beautiful Deceptions
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWas Abraham Lincoln Gay . . . And Should We Care?
The writer Carl Sandburg, in his 1926 biography of Abraham Lincoln, made a provocative claim—that the President’s relationship with the Kentucky state…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Trap of the Trad Wife
This summer, scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-traditional…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerTarot, Tech, and Our Age of Magical Thinking
Until recently, tarot, astrology, and spiritualism—practices often shorthanded simply as woo-woo—were the stuff of dusty psychic parlors and seventies…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Irresistible Myth of Las Vegas
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerCharli XCX, Chappell Roan, and the Unstable Hierarchy of Pop
“ ‘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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy We Want What Tom Ripley Has
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Kamala Harris Vibe Shift
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerFrom Vanity Fair’s “Dynasty”: Can Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood Dream Last?
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerAlice Munro’s Fall from Grace
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Changing World of Nature Documentaries
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerFrom The New Yorker Radio Hour: Emily Nussbaum on the Beginnings of Reality TV
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerSummer Obsessions
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Therapy Episode
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerIs Travel Broken?
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Many Faces of the Hit Man
“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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe Rising Tide of Slowness
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerThe New Midlife Crisis
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerKendrick Lamar, Drake, and the Benefits of Beef
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerOur Collective Obsession with True Crime
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…
Critics at Large | The New YorkerWhy the Sports Movie Always Wins
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…
Critics at Large | The New Yorker“Civil War” ’s Unsettling Images
“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…