Critics at Large | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
150 episodes
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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“You Can See Everything” and the Nathan Fielder Effect
Nathan Fielder’s onscreen persona—flat, literal-minded, and seemingly baffled by ordinary social behavior—has made him one of our most distinctive cultural figures. On his Comedy Central series “Nathan for You,” his…
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“The Social Reckoning” Shows How It All Went Wrong
In 2010, Time magazine’s Person of the Year was not a world leader or entertainment icon but Mark Zuckerberg, the twenty-six-year-old creator of Facebook. That same year, Zuckerberg got the Hollywood treatment in the…
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Tom Cruise-a-Palooza
Tom Cruise is often said to be the last of a dwindling breed: the true movie star. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the performances that have earned…
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What Survival Stories Tell Us (and Should We Listen?)
On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the perennial appeal of survival stories. They trace the theme of man versus nature from early novels like Daniel…
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Introducing: “The Journey,” from In the Dark
“The Journey,” a five-part audio investigation by Ava Kofman, unravels the mystery of how Guojun Xuan and Silvia Zhang, a wealthy Los Angeles couple, obtained dozens of children through nearly as many surrogates—and…
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That Back-to-School Feeling
As the school year resumes, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the work—and pleasure—of teaching and learning, reflect on their own experiences in the classroom, and counsel listeners on…
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Remembering Dolly Parton
Upon news of Dolly Parton’s death last week, flags across the country were lowered to half-mast. A petition circulated to rename the Nashville airport in her honor, and social media read like a greatest-hits reel of…
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What is Gen Z Afraid Of?
In May, two low-budget movies from début filmmakers opened in theatres and quickly made box-office history. “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which together have grossed nearly a billion dollars, defied conventional…
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Critics’ Cult Classics: Emily Nussbaum on “Slings & Arrows”
During her tenure as The New Yorker’s television critic, Emily Nussbaum famously railed against ranking the year’s best shows; she once wrote a piece entitled “I Hate Top Ten Lists.” But naming her favorite series of…
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Critics’ Cult Classics: Hannah Goldfield on the Food World’s Secret Tastemakers
In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation applies in the…
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Critics’ Cult Classics: Hanif Abdurraqib on Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”
When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to resurfacing beloved cult…
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The Irony and the Ecstasy of Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”—both of which were awarded…
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The Golden Age of the American Idiot
The new game show “Nation’s Dumbest,” flips the classic “Jeopardy!” script on its head. The format: twelve famous-ish contestants are peppered with basic logic and trivia questions. The twist is that those who perform…
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Who Owns the Odyssey?
In its nearly three-thousand-year history, the Odyssey has undergone as many twists and turns as its protagonist does on his journey home to Ithaca. Its origins as oral poetry suggest countless revisions before it was…
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An American Playlist
This week, to commemorate two hundred and fifty years of the American experiment, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz present an American playlist. On this special episode, the hosts hear from…
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From The Political Scene: The Politics of the Big Game
Critics at Large will be back next week. In the meantime, you can hear Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry on a recent episode of The New Yorker’s Political Scene, hosted by Tyler Foggatt, where they consider several…
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Steven Spielberg’s Blockbusters
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…
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Why We Cling to the Animal Kingdom
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…
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I Need a Critic: June, 2026, Edition
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…
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Our Modern Glut of Choice
For many of us, daily life is defined by a near-constant stream of decisions, from what to buy on Amazon to what to watch on Netflix. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra…
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Where Do Men Go from Here?
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…
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How Romantasy Seduces Its Readers
A few years back, novels classed as “romantasy”—a portmanteau of “romance” and “fantasy”—might have seemed destined to attract only niche appeal. But since the pandemic, the genre has proved nothing short of a…
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The Met Gala, “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” and the State of Style
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…
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What “Michael” Tries to Show—or Hide
“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…
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Why Earnestness is Everywhere
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:…
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“Beef,” “The Drama,” and the New Marriage Plot
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…
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The Guilty Pleasure of the Heist
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…
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“DTF St. Louis” and the New Story of the Suburbs
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…
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The Soft Power of BTS
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…
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“Love Story” and Why We Cling to the Kennedy Myth
“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…
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The Hall of Fame—and of Shame—of Oscars Hosts
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…
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Critics at Large Live: “Wuthering Heights” and Its Afterlives
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…
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The Truth of Toni Morrison
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…
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Charli XCX Misses the Moment
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…
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“Heated Rivalry,” “Pillion,” and the New Drama of the Closet
“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…
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I Need a Critic: One-Hundredth-Episode Edition
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…
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Why Football Matters
Someone looking to understand America might do well to study the nation’s embrace of football. N.F.L. games regularly outperform anything else on television, and, in 2025, some hundred and twenty-seven million viewers…
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Do We Need Saints?
In “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a new film directed by Mona Fastvold, Amanda Seyfried plays the founder and leader of the Shaker movement—a woman believed by her followers to be the second coming of Christ. Fastvold…
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Our Romance with Jane Austen
Though Jane Austen went largely unrecognized in her own lifetime—four of her six novels were published anonymously, and the other two only after her death—her name is now synonymous with the period romance. On this…
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The Year of the Broken Mirror
Many of this year’s most talked-about releases were, in some sense, diagnostic: from Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” films offered up assessments of the nation’s ills. On…
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“Wake Up Dead Man” and the Whodunnit Renaissance
We all know the formula: it begins with a dead body, and quickly introduces a motley crew of outlandish characters, each with a motive for murder. The whodunnit genre has been a cultural fixture since the days of…
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Does “Hamlet” Need a Backstory?
Since it was penned more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” has been in production nearly continuously, and has been adapted in many ways. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi…
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After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few and far between. Meanwhile, Jon M. Chu’s earnest (and lengthy) two-part…
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In “Pluribus,” Utopia Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
Vince Gilligan’s new show, “Pluribus,” opens with an unconventional apocalypse. A benevolent alien hive mind descends on Earth, commandeering the bodies of all but a handful of people who appear to be immune, including…
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The Guilty Pleasure of the Heist
On October 19th, a group of masked men broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and made off with some of France’s crown jewels. Suspects are now in custody, but the online fervor is still going strong. On this episode…
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Critics at Large Live: Padma Lakshmi’s Expansive Taste
Padma Lakshmi is unquestionably a woman of taste. As a host of the beloved food-competition series “Top Chef” and the star of the culinary docuseries “Taste the Nation,” she’s spent nearly two decades artfully…
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Why Horror Still Haunts Us
Horror movies are big business: this year, they’ve accounted for more ticket sales in the U.S. than comedies and dramas combined, bringing in over a billion dollars at the box office. And the phenomenon goes beyond a…
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In the Dark: Blood Relatives, Episode 1
On August 7, 1985, five family members were shot dead in their English country manor, Whitehouse Farm. It looked like an open-and-shut case. But the New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake finds that almost nothing about…
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Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Generative A.I., once an uncanny novelty, is now being used to create not only images and videos but entire “artists.” Its boosters claim that the technology is merely a tool to facilitate human creativity; the major…
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I Need a Critic: October, 2025, Edition
In the latest installment of the Critics at Large advice series, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz answer listeners’ questions about a range of conundrums. Some seek to immerse themselves in…
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