Critics at Large | The New Yorker

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 behind-the-scenes insights into The New Yorker’s reporting, the magazine’s critics help listeners make sense of our moment—and how we got here.

  1. 21 AUG

    How 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 century, a group of young French critics issued a cri du coeur that gave rise to the figure of the auteur: visionary filmmakers ranging from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. In the final installment of this year’s Critics at Large interview series, Vinson Cunningham talks with fellow staff writer Richard Brody about the origins of auteur theory, and about the lengths to which directors have gone for artistic freedom in the decades since. They take Spike Lee’s body of work as a case study, considering his new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” and how his filmmaking sensibility reflects his singular view of the world. “Style is a funny thing in movies,” Brody says. “If it’s any good, it’s not inseparable from substance. It is substance.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “The 400 Blows” (1959)“Breathless” (1960)“Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” by Andrew Sarris (Film Culture)“Circles and Squares,” by Pauline Kael (Film Quarterly)“Martin Scorsese on Making ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ ” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)“Spike Lee Comes Home,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” (2014)“Red Hook Summer” (2012)“A Great Film Reveals Itself in Five Minutes,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Highest 2 Lowest” (2025)“ ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Marks a Conservative Pivot for Spike Lee,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Do the Right Thing” (1989) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    44 min

  2. 14 AUG

    Les 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 endures, though the precise nature of its appeal has shifted. On the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Alexandra Schwartz talks with the staff writer Lauren Collins about her work as The New Yorker’s woman on the ground in France and the long lineage of Francophilic Americans—from Edith Wharton to James Baldwin and, yes, even “Emily.” The two consider how French femininity has been marketed to American women and how modern influencers transmit an incomplete picture of Paris. “Yes, it’s romantic, and, yes, it’s picturesque, but it’s also a big, loud, dirty, profane, complicated city that evolves and changes like everywhere else,” Collins says. “There’s a lot of misbegotten essentializing that happens when Americans start talking about France.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Ces restaurants qui gonflent l’addition des touristes américains,” by Mathieu Hennequin (Le Parisien)“Can Emmanuel Macron Stem the Populist Tide?,” by Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)“The Unlikely Rise of French Tacos,” by Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)“Dearest Edith,” by Janet Flanner (The New Yorker)“The Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton“Go Tell It on the Mountain,” by James Baldwin“Giovanni’s Room,” by James Baldwin“The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” by James Baldwin (The New York Times)“Emily in Paris” (2020–)“Sex and the City” (1998–2004)“French Women Don’t Get Fat,” by Mireille Guiliano“Bringing Up Bébé,” by Pamela Druckerman New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    46 min

  3. 7 AUG

    How 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 to make him the front-runner to lead the largest city in America. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Eric Lach about the surprising protagonist of this year’s mayoral race. Together, they contextualize Mamdani’s persona within a long history of New York characters, from Batman to Bill de Blasio, and consider the hold these narratives have on observers within the city and beyond. “The history of New York City mayors is not a litany of successes and heroes. It’s mostly fuck-ups and rogues,” Lach says. “Often, it’s this tug-of-war between the machine and the reformer.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: Zohran Mamdani’s “Uganda Miss Me! (But I’ll Be Back Soon)”“Gangs of New York” (2002)“The Gangs of New York,” by Herbert Asbury“Low Life,” by Lucy Sante“Serpico” (1973)“The Dark Knight” (2008) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    47 min

  4. 31 JUL

    Late 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 had just called his parent company’s payout to Trump a “big fat bribe” on air. Paramount, for its part, claims that the decision was purely financial—Colbert’s show is losing forty million dollars a year. But both the political and economic explanations reveal how the landscape of late night has changed since Johnny Carson’s day. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider Colbert’s body of work and the state of the genre more generally, from the so-called late-night wars of the nineties through to the modern challenge of making comedy in a country where nothing feels funny anymore. “Late-night hosting is an art, but it’s also business. So, if your job is to get as many eyeballs on you as is humanly possible, what do you do?” Schwartz says. “It’s not easy to have fun with the news, as it is. And if you are having fun with it, something may very well be wrong.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Strangers with Candy” (1999–2000)“The Daily Show” (1996–)“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (2015–26)“The Staying Power of the ‘S.N.L.’ Machine” (The New Yorker)“Lessons from ‘Sesame Street’ ” (The New Yorker)“The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (1962–92)“David Letterman’s Revolutionary Comedy,” by Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker)“The Colbert Rapport,” by Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker)“Carpool Karaoke” (2017–23)“What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Means,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)“After Midnight” (2024–25) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    47 min

  5. 17 JUL

    “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 murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, the rise in conspiracy theories, and political strife shattered something in our society. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz situate “Eddington” in the lineage of “the indigenous American berserk,” a phrase coined by Philip Roth in his 1997 novel “American Pastoral.” They consider an array of works that have tried to depict moments of social rupture throughout the country’s history—and debate whether the exercise is ultimately a futile one. “I think when you’re dealing with the realm of the American berserk, the big risk is getting the bends,” Schwartz says. “You're trying to describe a warping. So how do you not get warped in the process?” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Eddington” (2025)“Writing American Fiction,” by Philip Roth (Commentary)“Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s)“American Pastoral,” by Philip Roth“Natural Born Killers” (1994)“Benito Cereno,” by Herman Melville“The Bonfire of the Vanities,” by Tom Wolfe“Apocalypse Now” (1979)“Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse” (1991)“War Movies: What Are They Good For?” (The New Yorker)“Sorry to Bother You” (2018) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    49 min

  6. 10 JUL

    “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 nineteen-forties or the “chick flicks” of the eighties and nineties. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss their all-time favorite rom-coms and two new projects marketed as contemporary successors to the greats: Celine Song’s “Materialists” and Lena Dunham’s “Too Much.” Do these depictions of modern love—or at least the search for it—evoke the same breathless feeling as the classics do? “I wonder if the crisis in rom-coms has to do with a crisis in how adult women want to be or want to see themselves,” Schwartz says. “I think both of these projects are basically trying to speak to the fact that everyone's ideals are in question.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Sex, Love, and the State of the Rom-Com” (The New Yorker) “Materialists” (2025) “Too Much” (2025) “Working Girl” (1988) “You’ve Got Mail” (1998) “When Harry Met Sally” (1989) “Love & Basketball” (2000) “The Best Man” (1999) “Our Romance with Jane Austen” (The New Yorker) “Girls” (2012-17) “Adam’s Rib” (1949) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    50 min

  7. 3 JUL

    Why 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 spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Social media pushes hoards to places unable to withstand the traffic, while the rise of “last-chance” travel—the rush to see melting glaciers or deteriorating coral reefs before they’re gone forever—has turned the precarity of these destinations into a selling point. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore the question of why we travel. They trace the rich history of travel narratives, from the memoirs of Marco Polo and nineteenth-century accounts of the Grand Tour to shows like Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” and HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Why are we compelled to pack a bag and set off, given the growing number of reasons not to do so? “One thing that’s really important for me as a traveller is the experience of being foreign,” Schwartz says. “I’m starting to realize that there are places I may never go, and this has actually made other people’s accounts of them, in the deeper sense, more important.” This episode originally aired on June 13, 2024.  Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “The New Tourist,” by Paige McClanahan The “Lonely Planet” guidebooks “The Travels of Marco Polo,” by Rustichello da Pisa “Of Travel,” by Francis Bacon “The Innocents Abroad,” by Mark Twain “Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson “Travels through France and Italy,” by Tobias Smollett “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (2013-18) “The White Lotus” (2021—) “Conan O’Brien Must Go” (2024) “It Just Got Easier to Visit a Vanishing Glacier. Is That a Good Thing?,” by Paige McClanahan (The New York Times) “The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere,” by Ed Caesar (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

    47 min

  8. 26 JUN

    The 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 in hand with bad behavior—as in the case of Patti LuPone, the blunt Broadway dame whose remarks about fellow-actresses in a recent New Yorker Profile quickly became a source of scandal. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and guest host Michael Schulman examine the figure of the diva, from Miss Piggy to Maria Callas, and consider whether our culture still rewards such  personalities. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop being drawn to larger-than-life characters with messy, larger-than-life personal lives,” Schulman says. “There is a line that people can cross—but it’s constantly shifting.”  Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “On ‘Succession,’ Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke,” by Michael Schulman (The New Yorker)“Patti LuPone Is Done with Broadway—and Almost Everything Else,” by Michael Schulman (The New Yorker)“The Politics of the Oscar Race” (The New Yorker)“Evita” (1978)“Gypsy” (1959)“Company” (1970)“How Maria Callas Lost her Voice,” by Will Crutchfield (The New Yorker)“Liz & Dick” (2012)“The Muppets Take Manhattan” (1984)“The Problem With Ryan Murphy’s Wannabe Divas,” by Logan Scherer (The Atlantic)“Aretha Franklin’s American Soul,” by David Remnick (The New Yorker)“Feud: Bette and Joan” (2017) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    49 min
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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 behind-the-scenes insights into The New Yorker’s reporting, the magazine’s critics help listeners make sense of our moment—and how we got here.

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