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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.

Please help us improve New Yorker podcasts by filling out our listener survey: https://panel2058.na2.panelpulse.com/c/a/661hs4tSRdw2yB2dvjFyyw

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, Jon M. Chu’s earnest (and lengthy) two-part adaptation of “Wicked”—an origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West that first premièred on the Great White Way over twenty years ago—has struck a chord with today’s audiences. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “Wicked” before stepping back to trace the evolution of the musical form, 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?”

This episode originally aired on December 12, 2024.

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)
“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.

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. 

Please help us improve New Yorker podcasts by filling out our listener survey: https://panel2058.na2.panelpulse.com/c/a/661hs4tSRdw2yB2dvjFyyw

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

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

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 a curmudgeonly writer named Carol Sturka. Though the world that the “joined” are building seems ideal—no more crime, efficient resource distribution, an end to discrimination—it doesn’t leave much room for Carol’s messy humanity. Is it worth it? On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “Pluribus” and other perfect societies imagined and enacted by artists and thinkers, from Thomas More’s 1516 satire, “Utopia,” to the Shaker movement and beyond. They reflect on why these experiments have rarely held up to scrutiny or benefitted more than a select few, and why we keep coming back to them anyway. “I’m not the most optimistic person,” Fry says. “But if you’re stuck in pessimistic, dystopic thinking, are you foreclosing on greater promise or greater potential of imagination?” 

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Pluribus” (2025–)
“Breaking Bad” (2008-13)
“Better Call Saul” (2015-22)
“The X-Files” (1993-2002)
“The Giver,” by Lois Lowry
“Utopia,” by Thomas More
“Les Guérillères,” by Monique Wittig 
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)
“The Testament of Ann Lee” (2025)
“The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins
“Utopia for Realists,” by Rutger Bregman
“Ragtime” (1996)

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 “Pluribus,” Utopia Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be

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 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 new film, “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.”

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

The Guilty Pleasure of the Heist

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 conveying—and critiquing—flavors and aromas for an audience. Before that, she was a fashion writer and model, cultivating her own sense of what’s worth wearing and seeing. And she isn’t done evolving: she’s recently begun performing standup comedy, an art form with a notoriously steep learning curve. In a live taping at The New Yorker Festival, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz talk with Lakshmi about the difference between discernment and pickiness, how travel has expanded her taste, and her approach to rendering judgement on TV. “I see my job as helping,” Lakshmi says. “I see my job as being the person in the kitchen who’s saying, ‘Does this need a little salt?’ ”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Top Chef” (2006—)
“Taste the Nation” (2020-23)
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” (2009—)
“American Idol” (2002—)
“Project Runway” (2004—)
“Padma’s All American,” by Padma Lakshmi
“Padma Lakshmi Walks Into a Bar,” by Helen Rosner (The New Yorker)
“Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (The New Yorker)
Dijon’s “Baby”
“Frankenstein” (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

Critics at Large Live: Padma Lakshmi’s Expansive Taste

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 hunger for cheap thrills and slasher flicks; artists have been using horror to explore deep-seated communal and personal anxieties for centuries. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz, along with the New Yorker culture editor Alex Barasch, use three contemporary entries—“The Babadook,” “Saint Maud,” and “Weapons”—to illustrate the inventive filmmaking and sharp social commentary that have become hallmarks of modern horror. “In the past, the horror would be something external that’s disrupting a previously idyllic town or life. Now there's a lot more of: the bad thing has already happened to you,” Barasch says. “You already have a trauma at the beginning of the film—or even before the film begins—and then that is eating you from the inside, or trying to kill you, and you have to grapple with that.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Babadook” (2014)
“Rosemary’s Baby” (1968)
“Scream with Me,” by Eleanor Johnson
“Hereditary” (2018)
“The Substance” (2024)
“Saint Maud” (2020)
The “Saw” franchise (2004—)
“The Exorcist” (1973)
“The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” by Parul Sehgal (The New Yorker)
“Weapons” (2025)
“Barbarian” (2022) 
“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974)
“Get Out” (2017)
“Alien” (1979)
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
“Talk to Me” (2022)

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

Why Horror Still Haunts Us

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 this story is as it seems. 

New Yorker subscribers get early, ad-free access to “Blood Relatives.” In Apple Podcasts, tap the link at the top of the feed to subscribe or link an existing subscription. Or visit newyorker.com/dark to subscribe and listen in the New Yorker app. 

In the Dark has merch! Buy specially designed hats, T-shirts, and totes for yourself or a loved one at store.newyorker.com. 

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In the Dark: Blood Relatives, Episode 1

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 use cases we’ve seen thus far—and the money being poured into these projects—tell a different story. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the output of Timbaland’s A.I. rapper TaTa Taktumi and the synthetic actress Tilly Norwood. They also look back at movies and television that imagined what our age of A.I. would look like, from “2001: A Space Odyssey” onward. “A.I. has been a source of fascination, of terror, of appeal,” Schwartz says. “It’s the human id in virtual form—at least in human-made art.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

TaTa Taktumi’s “Glitch x Pulse”
Cardi B’s “Am I the Drama?”
“Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE” (2024)
“Dear Tilly Norwood,” by Betty Gilpin (The Hollywood Reporter)
Tilly Norwood’s Instagram account
“Holly Herndon’s Infinite Art,” by Anna Wiener (The New Yorker)
“2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968)
“The Morning Show” (2019—)
“Simone” (2002)
“Blade Runner” (1982)
“Ex Machina” (2014)
“The Man Who Sells Unsellable New York Apartments,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” by Walter Benjamin
“The Death of the Author,” by Roland Barthes

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

Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

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 fictional worlds; others look for help with their own creative practices. Plus, the actor Morgan Spector (best known as Mr. Russell on “The Gilded Age”) calls in to ask the critics about poetry. “As always after we do this kind of show, my faith in humankind is restored,” Fry says. “Our listeners want to connect—they want to grow. They’re looking to pass through life not just on autopilot but to look to culture for meaning.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Ethan Hawke: Give yourself permission to be creative” (TED)
The poetry of Diane Seuss
“Lilacs,” by Rainer Diana Hamilton
“The Wire” (2002-8)
“The Americans” (2013-18)
“Billy Joel: And So It Goes” (2025)
“The Good Wife” (2009-16)
“30 Rock” (2006-13)
“How a Billionaire Owner Brought Turmoil and Trouble to Sotheby’s,” by Sam Knight (The New Yorker)
“Lupin” (2021—)
“The First Wives Club” (1996)
“A Quick Killing in Art,” by Phoebe Hoban
“Where Have All My Deep Male Friendships Gone?” by Sam Graham-Felsen (the New York Times Magazine)
Aaron Karo and Matt Ritter’s “Man of the Year”
“The Archers” (1951—)
“How to Cook a Wolf,” by M. F. K. Fisher
“Home Cooking,” by Laurie Colwin
“Fresh Air with Terry Gross”
“What Was Paul Gauguin Looking For?,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“Wild Thing,” by Sue Prideaux
“Mr. Turner” (2014)
“Topsy-Turvy” (1999)
“The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing,” by Adam Moss
Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Watch Me Work”

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 that 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

I Need a Critic: October, 2025, Edition

Scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” has hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-traditional roles in marriage and home-making—and, in doing so, garnering millions of followers. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss standout practitioners of the “trad” life style, including Nara Smith, who makes cereal and toothpaste from scratch, and Hannah Neeleman, who, posting under the handle @ballerinafarm, presents a life caring for eight children in rural Utah as a bucolic fantasy. The hosts also discuss “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a reality-television show on Hulu about a group of Mormon influencers engulfed in scandal, whose notions of female empowerment read as a quaint reversal of the trad-wife trend. A common defense of a life style that some would call regressive is that it’s a personal choice, devoid of political meaning. But this gloss is complicated by societal changes such as the erosion of women’s rights in America and skyrocketing child-care costs. “In American society, the way choice works has everything to do with child-care options, financial options,” Schwartz says. “When you talk about the idea of choice, are we just talking about false choices?” 

This episode originally aired on Sept. 5, 2024. 

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

@ballerinafarm
@gwenthemilkmaid
@naraazizasmith
“How Lucky Blue and Nara Aziza Smith Made Viral Internet Fame From Scratch,” by Carrie Battan (GQ)
“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (2024–)
@esteecwilliams
“Mad Men” (2007-15)
The Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Wilder Women,” by Judith Thurman (The New Yorker)
“Meet the Queen of the “Trad Wives” (and Her Eight Children),” by Megan Agnew (The Times of London) 

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

How the Trad Wife Took Over

Over the course of his three-decade career, the director Paul Thomas Anderson has dramatized the nineteen-seventies porn industry (“Boogie Nights”), the Californian oil boom (“There Will Be Blood”), and a mid-century London fashion house (“Phantom Thread”). Now he’s trained his gaze on present-day America. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss Anderson’s latest: the sprawling, surprisingly political blockbuster “One Battle After Another.” They contextualize the new work within his œuvre—and debate what his portrayal of militant left-wing activists and the white-supremacist right has to say about the state of the nation. “I think our present reality has far outstripped most depictions of it,” Schwartz says. “Slipping it into this kind of caper—is that delivering us to somewhere that gets people to think or to look or to feel?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“One Battle After Another” (2025)
“Vineland,” by Thomas Pynchon
“Inherent Vice” (2014)
“Boogie Nights” (1997)
“The Master” (2012)
“Punch-Drunk Love” (2002)
“There Will Be Blood” (2007)
“Phantom Thread” (2017)
“ ‘Eddington’ and the American Berserk” (The New Yorker)
Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”

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

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

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