Episodes

  • “The Studio” Pokes Fun at Hollywood’s Existential Struggle

    “The Studio” Pokes Fun at Hollywood’s Existential Struggle

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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 episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore how moviemaking and the business behind it have been depicted over the decades, from Lillian Ross’s classic 1952 work of reportage, “Picture,” to Robert Altman’s pitch-black 1992 satire “The Player.” In “The Studio,” a new Apple TV+ series, Seth Rogen plays a hapless exec who’s convinced that art-house filmmaking and commercial success can go hand in hand. At a moment when theatregoing is on the decline and the industry is hyper-focussed on existing I.P., that sentiment feels more naïve than realistic. And yet the show’s affection for the golden age of cinema is infectious—and perhaps even cause for optimism. “Early auteurs were people who knew Hollywood and could marshal its resources toward the benefit of their vision,” Cunningham says. “I wonder if now is the time for people who are seasoned in the way of Hollywood to really think about how it can be angled toward making art.”

    Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

    “The Studio” (2025–)
    “Veep” (2012-19)
    “The Player” (1992)
    “The Pat Hobby Stories,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
    “Picture,” by Lillian Ross
    “Why Los Angeles Is Becoming a Production Graveyard,” by Winston Cho (The Hollywood Reporter)
    The New Yorker’s Oscars Live Blog

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

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • Gossip, Then and Now

    Gossip, Then and Now

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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 practitioners; it can protect against very real threats, as in the case of certain pre-#MeToo whisper networks, or tip over into the realm of conspiracy. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the role gossip has played in society over the centuries. They discuss Kelsey McKinney’s new book on the topic, “You Didn’t Hear This from Me,” which Schwartz recently reviewed in The New Yorker, and consider instructive cultural examples—from the Old Testament to “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” Today, many celebrities have embraced being talked about as a badge of honor, even as new technologies allow questionable assertions about anyone—famous or otherwise—to spread more freely and quickly than ever before. “Just being in public makes you potentially fodder for gossip,” Schwartz says. “I do worry about a world in which privacy is compromised for everybody.”

    Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

    “You Didn’t Hear This from Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip,” by Kelsey McKinney
    “Is Gossip Good for Us?,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
    “A Lover’s Discourse,” by Roland Barthes
    “Grease” (1978)
    “The House of Mirth,” by Edith Wharton
    “The Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton
    “Moses, Man of the Mountain,” by Zora Neale Hurston
    “Emma,” by Jane Austen
    “Gossip Girl” (2007-12)
    “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” (2010—)

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

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  • Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang

    Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with technical equipment. But Rogan quickly proved adept at the kind of casual, nonconfrontational interviews that have made the show such an enormous success in 2025: it regularly tops podcast charts and features hours-long conversations with the most powerful figures in politics. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by fellow staff writer Andrew Marantz to discuss where Rogan’s podcast sits within a growing new-media ecosystem that hinges on parasociality. Marantz recently profiled the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who spends hours online every day addressing a viewership of tens or hundreds of thousands, to whom he issues leftist takes on the news in real time—alongside a healthy dose of gym content. Figures like Rogan and Piker, both of whom have won the loyalty of young men, stand to shape not only the views of their audiences but the art of politics itself. “Being able to hang in a kind of unscripted way. . . I think it just becomes more and more essential,” says Marantz. “There turns out to be a huge voting bloc of people who will, No. 1, vibe with you, and, No. 2, think about what you’re saying.”

    Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

    Joe Rogan’s November, 2024 interview with Theo Von
    Joe Rogan’s February, 2025 interview with Elon Musk
    “The Battle for the Bros,” by Andrew Marantz (The New Yorker)
    Hasan Piker’s Twitch channel
    “This Is Gavin Newsom”

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

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • Critics at Large Live: The Right to Get It Wrong

    Critics at Large Live: The Right to Get It Wrong

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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 imagination, good taste, or ingenuity.” The use of color was “eye-straining,” the dialogue was unbelievable, and the movie as a whole was “a stinkeroo.” This take might shock today’s audiences, but Maloney is far from the only critic to go so pointedly against the popular view. In a special live show celebrating The New Yorker’s centenary, the hosts of Critics at Large discuss this and other examples drawn from the magazine’s archives, including Dorothy Parker’s 1928 takedown of “Winnie-the-Pooh” and Pauline Kael’s assessment of Al Pacino as “a lump” at the center of “Scarface.” These pieces reveal something essential about the role of criticism and the value of thinking through a work’s artistic merits (or lack thereof) on the page. “I felt all these feelings while reading Terrence Rafferty tearing to shreds ‘When Harry Met Sally
,’ ” Alexandra Schwartz says. “But it made the movie come alive for me again, to have to dispute it with the critic.”

    Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

    “Lies, Lies, and More Lies,” by Terrence Rafferty (The New Yorker)
    “Bitches and Witches,” by John Lahr (The New Yorker)
    “Don’t Shoot the Book-Reviewer; He’s Doing the Best He Can,” by Clifton Fadiman (The New Yorker)
    “The Feminine Mystique,” by Pauline Kael (The New Yorker)
    “The Wizard of Hollywood,” by Russell Maloney (The New Yorker)
    “The Fake Force of Tony Montana,” by Pauline Kael (The New Yorker)
    “Renoir’s Problem Nudes,” by Peter Schjeldahl (The New Yorker)
    “Humans of New York and the Cavalier Consumption of Others,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
    “The Great Sadness of Ben Affleck,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
    “President Killers and Princess Diana Find Musical Immortality,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
    “Obscure Objects of Desire: On Jeffrey Eugenides,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The Nation)
    “Reading ‘The House at Pooh Corner,’ ” by Dorothy Parker (The New Yorker)

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

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • Our Modern Glut of Choice

    Our Modern Glut of Choice

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how we came to see endless selection as a fundamental right. The hosts discuss “The Age of Choice,” a new book by the historian Sophia Rosenfeld, which traces how our fixation with the freedom to choose has evolved over the centuries. Today, an abundance of choice in one sphere often masks a lack of choice in others—and, with so much focus on individual rather than collective decision-making, the glut of options can contribute to a profound sense of alienation. “When all you do is choose, choose, choose, what you do is end up by yourself,” Cunningham says. “Putting yourself with people seems to be one of the salves.”

    Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

    “Could Anyone Keep Track of This Year’s Microtrends?” by Danielle Cohen (The Cut)
    “The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life,” by Sophia Rosenfeld
    “The Federalist Papers,” by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay
    “What Does It Take to Quit Shopping? Mute, Delete and Unsubscribe,” by Jordyn Holman and Aimee Ortiz (The New York Times)

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

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills

    How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    “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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • In “Severance,” the Gothic Double Lives On

    In “Severance,” the Gothic Double Lives On

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    “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 doppelgĂ€nger—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 BrontĂ«
    “Lisa and Lottie,” by Erich KĂ€stner
    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine

    The Staying Power of the “S.N.L.” Machine

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers

    How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles

    David Lynch’s Unsolvable Puzzles

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • The Splendor of Nature, Now Streaming

    The Splendor of Nature, Now Streaming

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    In 1954, a young David Attenborough made his dĂ©but 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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • The New Western Gold Rush

    The New Western Gold Rush

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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)
    “Shƍgun” (2024)
    “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948)
    “Oppenheimer” (2023)

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

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • The Elusive Promise of the First Person

    The Elusive Promise of the First Person

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms

    Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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 Ɠuvre, 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

    Critics at Large Live: The Year of the Flop

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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 CondĂ© 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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?

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

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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 premiĂšred 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 PĂ©rez,” which centers on the transgender leader of a Mexican cartel, and Todd Phillips’s follow-up to “Joker,” the confounding “Joker: Folie Ă  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 PĂ©rez” (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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • The Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome

    The Modern-Day Fight for Ancient Rome

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?

    Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • The Value—and Limits—of Seeking Comfort in Art

    The Value—and Limits—of Seeking Comfort in Art

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
  • Critics at Large Live: Julio Torres’s Dreamy Surrealism

    Critics at Large Live: Julio Torres’s Dreamy Surrealism

    · Critics at Large | The New Yorker

    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.

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
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