Afleveringen
-
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 its success. But it dominated at the box office and promptly revolutionized the way movies were promoted, distributed, and merchandised. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace how Spielberg inaugurated a new phenomenon in Hollywood: the blockbuster. He would tap his own playbook again and again with such hits as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” and “Jurassic Park,” all of which drew impressive audiences and profits. The hosts talk through his filmography, culminating in his new release, “Disclosure Day,” which both replicates and iterates on themes and techniques found in his earlier work. Though other directors may share his capacity for spectacle and action-packed set pieces, much of his appeal lies in his profound earnestness. “What Spielberg is so good at is bringing the human to the fore in these extreme, sci-fi circumstances,” Schwartz says. “And that’s what makes a great blockbuster.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Jaws” (1975)
“Disclosure Day” (2026)
“Minority Report” (2002)
“Oscar Wars,” by Michael Schulman
“What Went Wrong” ’s episode about “Jaws”
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)
“Jurassic Park” (1993)
“E.T.” (1982)
“Alf” (1986-90)
“Schindler’s List” (1993)
“One Battle After Another” (2025)
“American Journal,” by Robert Hayden
“Heart of the Beast” (2026)
“Sinners” (2025)
“Nope” (2022)
“Barbie” (2023)
“Obsession” (2026)
“Backrooms” (2026)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 is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. -
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, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider such childhood classics as E. B. White’s “Stuart Little” and C. S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series, as well as “The Sheep Detectives,” a recent entry in this canon that centers on a flock who learn poignant lessons about life and loss. Works of adult literature, too, have explored the animal-human bond. Our tendency to project onto animals translates to the real world in strange ways, with figures like Timmy the Whale and Punch the Monkey going viral on our social feeds even as our day-to-day lives are more detached from the natural world than ever before. But the distance between us can be instructive, too. “Reckoning with their similarity to us and also their total strangeness to us . . . that’s where works about animals really get me,” Schwartz says. “Not just as a direct transfer onto the human experience but also this other thing that really does enrich our lives: to be in contact with species that are not our own.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
Homer’s Odyssey
“Stone Fox,” by John Reynolds Gardiner
“The Mare,” by Mary Gaitskill
“The Sheep Detectives” (2026)
“Stuart Little,” by E. B. White
“Bambi” (1942)
“The Lion King” (1994)
C. S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” Series
“Tom and Jerry” (1940-67)
Aesop’s Fables
“Frederick,” by Leo Lionni
“ ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and the Whodunnit Renaissance” (The New Yorker)
“Zootopia” (2016)
“Why Earnestness Is Everywhere” (The New Yorker)
“Babe” (1995)
“Tiger King” (2020-21)
“Monkey Business in ‘Chimp Crazy,’ ” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
I am Bunny on TikTokNew 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 is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
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. Listeners’ questions run the gamut: a high-school economics teacher seeks films for his students which aren’t set in the world of finance; a caller from Iran looks for cultural works to help endure periods of extreme uncertainty; and two friends on the cusp of college graduation ask for recommendations to guide them in their next chapter. “Art is not a thing separate from our troubles or from our awareness of the insane contingencies of life,” Cunningham says. “It’s meant as a companion and a response to those. I think that’s shining through in some of these questions.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Sorry to Bother You” (2018)
“My Architect: A Son’s Journey” (2003)
“Les dites cariatides” (1984)
“Twenty Minutes in Manhattan,” by Michael Sorkin
The photography of Eugène Atget
The music of the Notorious B.I.G., Heavy D, Fat Joe, and Big Pun
“Sentimental Education,” by Gustave Flaubert
Václav Havel’s “Audience”
“The Best of Everything,” by Rona Jaffe
“How to Murder Your Life,” by Cat Marnell
“Becoming a Centenarian,” by Calvin Tomkins (The New Yorker)
“This Old Man,” by Roger Angell (The New Yorker)
“Tabula Rasa,” by John McPhee (The New Yorker)
“Kramer vs. Kramer” (1979)
“Divorcing,” by Susan Taubes
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels
“Ghost World,” by Daniel Clowes
“Frances Ha” (2012)
“Asparagus” (1979)
Roger Payne’s “Songs of the Humpback Whale”
“Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction,” by J. D. Salinger
The poetry of Sylvia Plath, particularly “Tulips”
Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America”
“I Will,” by the Beatles
“St. Judy’s Comet,” by Paul Simon
“Sail Away Ladies,” by OdettaNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 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.”
This episode originally aired on March 13, 2025.
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.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 dispute. Statistics on boys’ prospects are bleak, showing falling graduation rates, diminished employment opportunities, and dismal mental-health outcomes. Meanwhile, the manosphere has fanned the flames of these discontents. The question of what’s to be done is more pressing than ever. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider a new wave of texts that aims to diagnose men’s ills, and to offer a path forward. The men in these works fall, broadly, into two lanes: the damaged, sometimes violent types who are front and center in such series as Richard Gadd’s “Half Man,” and the softer, more emotionally attuned protagonists of shows like “Heated Rivalry” and “DTF St. Louis.” But this tidy schematic falls apart in real life—and, as looksmaxxers have taught us, obsessing over models of manhood may only compound the problem. “Usually, if I’m thinking about being a man, it is in a self-reproving or self-indicting way that is not helpful to the situation,” Cunningham says. “When you’re asking how to be a man, often the real answer is just how to be a person.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Half Man” (2026)
“Magnolia” (1999)
“Fight Club” (1999)
“Heated Rivalry” (2025—)
“‘Heated Rivalry,’ ‘Pillion,’ and the New Drama of the Closet” (The New Yorker)
“Adolescence” (2025)
“DTF St. Louis” (2026)
“The New Masculinity of ‘DTF St. Louis,’ ” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“Lord of the Flies” (2026)
“Lord of the Flies,” by William Golding
“Can Starting from Scratch Save ‘Vanderpump Rules’?” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
Clavicular’s appearance on “Impaulsive”
“Why So Many Guys Are Obsessed with Testosterone,” by Azeen Ghorayshi (The New York Times)
“Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere” (2026)
“The Pitt” (2025—)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 has repeatedly topped best-seller lists, and Rebecca Yarros’s 2025 title “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.”
This episode originally aired on February 13, 2025.
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 -
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 titan of the fashion world. The film, released in 2006, was adapted from a novel by the former Vogue staffer Lauren Weisberger, and it spun the glamour of the industry into a crowd-pleasing confection for the big screen. Two decades later, the atmosphere of its sequel is darker. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the reality-inflected elements of the new film, which finds Priestly and her team chasing clicks and catering to the whims of billionaires who might solve Runway’s financial woes. The question of billionaire influence was also present at this year’s Met Gala. The event’s lead sponsors were the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, who reportedly donated ten million dollars to become honorary co-chairs. Attendees paid a hundred thousand dollars just to get in the door. Why, the hosts ask, does the gala still matter to the average fashion enthusiast? “It’s the one time where, divorced from utility and other reasons, it’s O.K. to just look at fashion,” Cunningham says. “I tend to defend our opportunities to just look at things that provoke pleasure.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
The 2026 Met Gala
“The Devil Wears Prada” (2006)
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” (2026)
“Guys Are Wearing Slutty Little Reading Glasses Now” (GQ)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
“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 that audiences are still eager to celebrate the King of Pop. The movie also ends, pointedly, before the first in a series of allegations of child sexual abuse that have tainted Jackson’s reputation ever since. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and their fellow staff writer Kelefa Sanneh consider how the unprecedented highs and horrific lows of Jackson’s life and career have made him a prism for modern ideas about stardom and power. Sanneh’s recent Profile of Fuqua details the Jackson estate’s involvement in the production, which resulted in a sanitized portrait of a deeply complex figure. Other works have assessed Jackson’s legacy more critically: the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland” lays out, in granular detail, the claims of two of Jackson’s accusers. “It’s just such a dissonance, seeing these two texts in such close proximity,” Fry says. “The thing with ‘Michael’ is, it doesn’t separate the art from the artist. It separates the artist from the wrongdoing entirely.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Michael” (2026)
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”
Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous”
“The Action-Film Director Who’s Taking On Michael Jackson,” by Kelefa Sanneh (The New Yorker)
“Quiet on Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV” (2024)
“I’m Glad My Mom Died,” by Jennette McCurdy
“On Michael Jackson,” by Margo Jefferson
“Leaving Neverland” (2019)
Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall”
“Justin Bieber, Pop Music’s Fallen Angel, Rises Again at Coachella,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 aside in favor of an attitude that’s long been out of style: earnestness. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace this trend from the outer-space buddy comedy “Project Hail Mary” to the real-life Artemis II mission, whose crew has spoken movingly about Earth as a “lifeboat” in the middle of a vast, mysterious universe. The hosts also consider two buzzy new books—Lena Dunham’s “Famesick,” and “Transcription,” by Ben Lerner—which find their authors turning to earnestness in midlife, after precocious beginnings. In this era of political, economic, and environmental precarity, younger generations, too, have come to celebrate big feelings, rather than living in fear of seeming cringe. “We’ve just seen too much awful stuff, and it's impossible to ironize,” Cunningham says. “The only sane response to that is to kind of sober up and say, ‘All right, what resources do humans still have?’ ”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Project Hail Mary” (2026)
“The Pitt” (2025-)
“Love on the Spectrum” (2022-)
“Heated Rivalry” (2025-)
“Famesick,” by Lena Dunham
“Girls” (2012-17)
“Transcription,” by Ben Lerner
“Climbing Cringe Mountain With Gen Z” (The New York Times)
“Amos & Boris,” by William Steig
László Krasznahorkai’s Nobel Prize lectureNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how recent cultural offerings mirror this increasing dissatisfaction with matrimony. They discuss the new season of the Netflix anthology show “Beef,” which centers on two couples locked in a feud that gradually exposes the cracks in each relationship, and the A24 film “The Drama,” about a wedding that goes off the rails in spectacular fashion. They also consider real-life examples, including Lindy West’s recent memoir, “Adult Braces,” which has sparked a flurry of discourse about polyamory and open marriages. As such alternative ways of organizing our love lives enter the mainstream, the narrative around one of our oldest institutions is shifting, too. “I think we’re in a place where we’re trying to make marriage seem more like a positive choice, rather than an obvious obligation,” Schwartz says. “It’s a fascinating fiction that those who get married subscribe to, hoping that the fiction becomes true.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Beef” (2023-)
“The White Lotus” (2021-)
“The Drama” (2026)
“Strangers,” by Belle Burden
“A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides,” by Gisèle Pelicot
“Madame Bovary,” by Gustave Flaubert
“Parallel Lives,” by Phyllis Rose
“Adult Braces,” by Lindy WestNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 phenomenon. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the sordid satisfaction of watching a heist play out, both onscreen and off. They dive into the debacle at the Louvre, along with a range of fictional depictions, from the fantasy of hyper-competence in “Ocean’s Eleven” to the theft that goes woefully awry in Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind.” Part of the fun, it seems, lies in rooting for those who identify and exploit the blind spots of an institution. “Someone else, just like me, is seeing that everybody is an idiot. But, unlike me, they’re able to best those people in charge,” Fry says. “It’s an alternative morality—a morality of wits.”
This episode originally aired on November 13, 2025.
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“The Mastermind” (2025)
“Ocean’s Eleven” (2001)
Stella Webb’s impression of “the Louvre heist Creative Director”
Jake Schroeder’s “Ballad for the Louvre”
“Showing Up” (2022)
“The Italian Job” (1969)
“How to Beat the High Cost of Living” (1980)
“Drive” (2011)
“Le Cercle Rouge” (1970)
“This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist” (2021)
“Good Time” (2017)
“George Santos and the Art of the Scam” (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 befriends a coworker, Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), and the two sign up for a dating app that specializes in clandestine affairs. By the end of the first episode, Smernitch is dead. So begins a whodunnit set against the backdrop of suburban America and the discontents simmering beneath. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz survey how the setting has been used over the decades, from the films of Douglas Sirk and the stories of John Cheever in the nineteen-fifties and sixties to the fantasy of that era seen in 1985’s “Back to the Future.” Today, the locale is being assessed anew. Like “DTF,” the recent docuseries “Neighbors” strips the suburbs of their glamour, focussing instead on petty grievances and property disputes. “They are small stakes, but of course, everything that is quintessentially American—property, the right to violence, the right to protect land—are all intensely operative in this space,” Cunningham says. “And if something goes wrong, somebody pays for it.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“DTF St. Louis” (2026—)
“‘DTF St. Louis’ Peers Into the Suburban Male Psyche,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“The Swimmer,” by John Cheever (The New Yorker)
“Judy Blume: A Life,” by Mark Oppenheimer
“Wifey,” by Judy Blume
“Back to the Future” (1985)
“All That Heaven Allows” (1955)
“Desperate Housewives” (2004-2012)
“American Pie” (1999)
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1997-2003)
“Adventures in Babysitting” (1987)
“The Five-Forty-Eight,” by John Cheever (The New Yorker)
“Neighbors” (2026—)
“All Her Fault” (2025)
“Friendship” (2025)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 military service. Now, nearly four years later, the group has returned with a new record, “Arirang.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz delve into the album as well as the live-streamed concert and documentary that have accompanied its release, both on Netflix. “Arirang” is being framed as a return to the group’s Korean roots, albeit one that signifies a new, more mature era for its members, who are now in their late twenties and early thirties. The hosts consider BTS’s meticulously crafted image and its relationship to its devoted followers, known as ARMY. Intense fandom is nothing new—just ask the Beatles—but K-pop stans are particularly invested in the lives (and livelihoods) of their favorite idols, even paying for the chance to message them directly. “This further privatization of what we call parasociality,” Cunningham says, “if that can be monetized and organized, it really is the final frontier of the pop star.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
BTS’s “Arirang”
“BTS: The Return” (2026)
“KPop Demon Hunters” (2025)
Justin Bieber’s “Swag”
“The K-Pop King,” by Alex Barasch (The New Yorker)
The music video for BTS’s “Swim”
“Judy Blume: A Life,” by Mark Oppenheimer
The Beatles’ “Let It Be”New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
“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., Jr., and the style icon Carolyn Bessette. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the show re-creates the look and fashion of the era in granular detail while reducing the relationship itself to a generic fairy tale. Despite its many flaws, the show has been embraced with a zeal that reflects the enduring allure of the Kennedys—often said to be the closest thing America has to a royal family. The hosts consider why this political dynasty has so persisted in the popular imagination, discussing everything from the work of the paparazzo Ron Galella to Oliver Stone’s “JFK” and Pablo Larrain’s “Jackie,” two very different treatments of the aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. “Love Story” ’s focus on style underscores how much the family’s legacy lives in aesthetics, which risks obscuring some of the darker chapters of its history. “It does seem like we have ever more efficiently stripped the Kennedys and their image, and their style, from any notions of political power,” Cunningham says. “The look of something and the sort of moral thrust of something are not always one to one working in parallel.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Love Story” (2026–)
“Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy,” by Elizabeth Beller
“How Can ‘Love Story’ Get Away With This?,” by Daryl Hannah (The New York Times)
“American Prince: JFK Jr.” (2025)
“Seinfeld” (1989-98)
“Jackie” (2016)
“The Kennedy Imprisonment,” by Garry Wills
The photography of Ron Galella
“JFK” (1991)
“A Battle with My Blood,” by Tatiana Schlossberg (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 joined by their fellow staff writer Michael Schulman to take stock of Oscars season. They discuss the biggest races and consider whether the year’s Best Picture nominees—many of them both critical and commercial successes—might represent a return to the bygone era of “grownup movies.” At the center of all this pageantry is the host: a notoriously tricky role for even the most seasoned performers. Together, the critics revisit the highs and lows of Oscars hosting history, from the long tenure of Bob Hope to the golden age of Billy Crystal. These m.c.s’ success hinges on their ability to walk a fine line, embodying the celebratory spirit of the evening while also poking fun at its absurdity. “It’s about that insider-outsider aspect. You are the court jester,” Schwartz says. “Are you really wanting to be vizier to the king, or are you O.K. in that jester role?”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Oscar Wars,” by Michael Schulman
“Marty Supreme” (2025)
“Sinners (2025)
“The Secret Agent” (2025)
“One Battle After Another” (2025)
“‘Come to Brazil?’ The Oscars Just Might,” by Michael Schulman (The New Yorker)
“Sentimental Value” (2025)
“The Mastermind” (2025)
“Peter Hujar’s Day” (2025)
Billy Crystal’s opening monologue for the 1990 Oscars
Chris Rock’s opening monologue for the 2005 Oscars
Ricky Gervais’s opening monologue for the 2020 Golden Globes
Nikki Glaser’s opening monologue for the 2026 Golden GlobesNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
When Emily Brontë published “Wuthering Heights,” in 1847, critics were baffled, alarmed, and mostly unimpressed. James Lorimer, writing in the North British Review, promised that the novel would “never be generally read.” Nearly two centuries later, it’s regarded as one of the great works of English literature. In a live taping of Critics at Large at the 92nd Street Y, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the staying power of the original text and the countless adaptations it’s inspired, from the 1939 film featuring Laurence Olivier to Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version. The most recent attempt comes from the director Emerald Fennell, whose new “Wuthering Heights,” starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, reads as a romantic fever dream. The movie has been polarizing in part for the way it excises some of the weirder and wilder aspects of its source material. But what’s discarded—or emphasized—can also be revealing. “It’s an audacious proposition to adapt a great novel … I don’t think it needs to be faithful, necessarily,” Fry says. “The adaptation itself becomes a portrait of the time in which it’s made.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Wuthering Heights,” by Emily Brontë
Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights”
Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” (2026)
“Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ Never Plumbs the Depths,” by Justin Chang (The New Yorker)
“Barbie” (2023)
“Saltburn” (2023)
“Promising Young Woman” (2020)
“Jane Eyre,” by Charlotte Brontë
“The Communist Manifesto,” by Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx (1848)
Peter Kosminsky’s “Wuthering Heights” (1992)
William Wyler’s “Wuthering Heights” (1939)
Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights” (2011)
“All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren
“I Love L.A.” (2025–)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
Toni Morrison was many things in her lifetime—Nobel laureate, renowned author, Princeton professor, and generous mentor to young writers. Her appeal translated seamlessly to the internet, where old interview clips still bubble up regularly on social media, reminding us of her sharp wit and commanding presence. But, as Namwali Serpell argues in a new book of essays, “On Morrison,” this undeniable star persona risks eclipsing the genius—and complexity—of the eleven novels she wrote. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz dive back into these works to rediscover the writer as she was on the page. The hosts discuss Morrison’s début novel, “The Bluest Eye”; “Beloved,” which is widely regarded as her masterpiece; and “Jazz,” the experimental 1992 novel believed to be her personal favorite. Throughout her career, she insisted on writing flawed, dynamic characters rather than paragons of virtue. “The Morrison project is to put Black life, and particularly the lives of Black women, at the very center of literature—but to do it in a way that’s true to character and to human experience,” Schwartz says. “The people she’s writing about are damaged, are greedy, are jealous, are sad . . . and also are generous, and loving, and hurt and trying to heal.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“On Morrison,” by Namwali Serpell
“Toni Morrison, the Teacher,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“The Bluest Eye,” by Toni Morrison
“Song of Solomon,” by Toni Morrison
“Toni Morrison and the Ghosts in the House,” by Hilton Als (The New Yorker)
“Jazz,” by Toni Morrison
“Beloved,” by Toni Morrison
“Sula,” by Toni Morrison
“Black Writers in Praise of Toni Morrison” (The New York Times)
“The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War,” by Jesse McCarthy
Monuments at MOCA and the Brick
“Language as Liberation,” by Toni MorrisonNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 embraced by the likes of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. But Charli, who has built her brand in opposition to mainstream expectations, instead released “The Moment,” a tongue-in-cheek satire about the pressures stars face to milk career highs like “brat summer” for all they’re worth. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider “The Moment” alongside both the sanitized documentaries it mocks and other artists’ attempts to subvert the form. Many of these projects promise genuine insight into their subjects, but what they actually show is the increasingly delicate balancing act of “authentic” celebrity. “It is really hard to both reveal and conceal at the same time,” Fry says. “To invite the fan in—but not in a way that feels unsafe, or that could get you cancelled, or could make you sell less, or could make you unloved.”
See Critics at Large live: the hosts will be discussing “Wuthering Heights” onstage at the 92nd Street Y on February 19th. Both in-person and streaming tickets are available. Buy now »
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
Charli XCX’s “brat”
“The Moment” (2026)
“Homecoming: A Film by Beyoncé” (2019)
“Gaga: Five Foot Two” (2017)
“A Hard Day’s Night” (1964)
“Spice World” (1997)
“Taylor Swift: The End of an Era” (2025)
“Sean Combs: The Reckoning” (2025)
“Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” (2023)
“Gimme Shelter” (1970)
“Madonna: Truth or Dare” (1991)
“I’m Still Here” (2010)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
“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 full-blown cultural phenomenon. The show, which follows a pair of professional hockey players who fall for each other, has been name-checked by everyone from the N.H.L. commissioner to Zohran Mamdani; its two young leads, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, just served as Olympic torch-bearers. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz unpack “Heated Rivalry” ’s appeal, considering its embrace of earnestness and its place in a broader lineage of stories about gay love. The way the protagonists are forced to hide their relationship recalls dramas set in earlier eras, from E. M. Forster’s “Maurice” to Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain”—but the function of the closet in art is ever-evolving. The hosts also discuss “Pillion,” a new film starring Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling, which features parents who are supportive of their son’s gayness but in the dark about his life as a sub. “It’s interesting, these contemporary stories where gay relationships are, in the larger culture, totally accepted—and that there are sort of closets within closets,” Cunningham says. “There’s a deeper place that others cannot go.”
See Critics at Large live: the hosts will be discussing “Wuthering Heights” onstage at the 92nd Street Y on February 19th. Both in-person and streaming tickets are available. Buy now »
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Heated Rivalry” (2025–)
“Pillion” (2026)
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels
Esther Perel’s response to “Heated Rivalry”
The novels of Sally Rooney
“The Delicious Anticipation–and, Yes, Release—of ‘Heated Rivalry,’ ” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Maurice,” by E. M. Forster
“Brokeback Mountain” (2005)
“The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith
“Carol” (2015)
“My Own Private Idaho” (1991)
“The Swimming-Pool Library,” by Alan Hollinghurst
“The Loves of My Life,” by Edmund White
“I Love L.A.” (2025–)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices -
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 series. Together, they counsel callers on everything from turning non-readers into bibliophiles to the art of curating the ideal road-trip playlist. They’re joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who shares some cultural dilemmas of his own. Finally, the hosts turn the tables and ask for guidance from their listeners.
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
Billie Holiday’s “Body and Soul”
Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde”
Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”
The music of Laufey
“I Regret Almost Everything,” by Keith McNally
“The Palm House,” by Gwendoline Riley
“Task” (2025—)
“Die, My Love” (2025)
“Carol” (2015)
“The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith
“Surface Matters,” by Naomi Fry (The New Republic)
Geese’s “Getting Killed”
“What Went Wrong”
Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy
“The Ambassadors,” by Henry James
“Marty Supreme” (2025)
“Why Football Matters” (The New Yorker)See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices - Laat meer zien
