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3 AUG

Kiran Desai Reads "An Unashamed Proposal"

Kiran Desai reads her story “An Unashamed Proposal,” from the August 11, 2025, issue of the magazine. Desai is the author of the novels “Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard” and “The Inheritance of Loss,” which won the Booker Prize in 2006. A new novel, “The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” from which this story was adapted, will be published this fall. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

3 Aug

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57 min
1 DAY AGO

The New Yorker’s Head of Fact Checking on Our Post-Truth Era

Fergus McIntosh, the head research editor at The New Yorker, joins Tyler Foggatt to discuss how the magazine is approaching fact -checking in the second Trump era. They talk about how the spread of disinformation and deepfakes has changed the work of verifying facts; why Trump has been more aggressive, in his second term, about restricting the release of government data; and what makes his particular style of spreading falsehoods so difficult to counter. This week’s reading: “The Latest Phase in Trump’s War on Data,” by Fergus McIntosh “Inside the Chaos at the C.D.C.,” by Charles Bethea “Social Media Is Navigating Its Sectarian Phase,”by Kyle Chayka “Brazil Braces for a Verdict on Its Ex-President—and on Its Democracy,” by Jon Lee Anderson “Does Society Have Too Many Rules?,” by Joshua Rothman Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

1 day ago

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43 min
17 AUG

Miriam Toews Reads “Something Has Come to Light”

Miriam Toews reads her story “Something Has Come to Light,” from the August 25, 2025, issue of the magazine. Toews, a winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, is the author of eight novels, including “A Complicated Kindness,” “All My Puny Sorrows,” “Women Talking,” and “Fight Night.” A new memoir, “A Truce That Is Not Peace,” comes out this month. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

17 Aug

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19 min
4 SEPT

Our 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 becoming a must-have accessory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join the trend and unbox their very own Labubu before diving into the history of such fads. They draw a distinction between collecting and speculating, from the seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through to the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the nineteen-nineties and the far more recent rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. And they attempt to understand why this slightly unsettling children’s toy is now inspiring such intense reactions. “People were flooding my D.M.s, like, ‘This thing is the end of culture,’ ” Schwartz says. “This thing is not the end of culture. It’s a point on a line.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “The Monsters,” by Kasing Lung“Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak“What the Labubu Obsession Says About Us,” by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)“A Dubai Chocolate Theory of the Internet” (“Search Engine”)“IRL Brain Rot and the Lure of the Labubu,” by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker)“Little House on the Prairie,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder“Toy Story” (1995) New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

4 Sept

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46 min
4 DAYS AGO

Bryan Washington Reads "Voyagers!"

Bryan Washington reads his story “Voyagers!,” from the September 15, 2025, issue of the magazine. A winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize and the Young Lions Fiction Award, among others, Washington is the author of three books of fiction, including “Memorial” and “Family Meal.” A new novel, “Palaver,” will be published later this year. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

4 days ago

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57 min
29 AUG

Donald Trump’s War on Culture Is Not a Sideshow

The term “culture wars” is most often associated with issues of sexuality, race, religion, and gender. But, as recent months have made plain, when Donald Trump refers to the culture wars, he also means the arts. He fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Republicans want to rename for him. His Administration fired the national archivist and the Librarian of Congress, and pressured the director of the National Portrait Gallery to resign; it is reviewing the entire Smithsonian Institution, looking for what the President calls “improper ideology.” Some view these moves as low-hanging fruit for Trump, and a distraction from bad press about Jeffrey Epstein, the Putin meeting, and tariffs. But Adam Gopnik believes that interpretation is a misreading. The loyalty purge at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery is a key part of his agenda. “Pluralism is the key principle of a democratic culture,” Gopnik tells David Remnick. Could we be following the path of Stalinist Russia, where a head of state dictated reviews of concerts, Remnick asks? “I pray and believe that we are not. But that is certainly the direction in which one inevitably heads when the political boss takes over key cultural institutions, and dictates who’s acceptable and who is not.” Gopnik recalls saying after the election that “Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would be next.” “You would see them disappear,” he added. “Each time, we find a rationale for it or a rationale is offered. And it’s much easier for us to swallow the rationale than to face the reality.”

29 Aug

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32 min
1 SEPT

Victor Lodato Reads Denis Johnson

Victor Lodato joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden,” by Denis Johnson, which was published in The New Yorker in 2014. Lodato is a playwright and the author of the novels “Edgar and Lucy,” “Mathilda Savitch,” the winner of the PEN USA Award for fiction, and “Honey,” which came out in 2024. He has been publishing fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker since 2012. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

1 Sept

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1h 31m
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

21 Aug

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44 min
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

31 Jul

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47 min
27 JUL

Anne Enright Reads “The Bridge Stood Fast”

Anne Enright reads her story “The Bridge Stood Fast,” from the August 4, 2025, issue of the magazine. Enright has published eleven books of fiction, including the story collection “Yesterday’s Weather,” and the novels “The Gathering,” which won the Man Booker Prize, “Actress,” and “The Wren, The Wren.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

27 Jul

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52 min

Politics, culture, fiction, and more from The New Yorker.