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.
Condé Nast 2023
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.
Condé Nast 2023
96hr 54min
Samantha Irby Knows How to Be Funny
he ex-congressman has already pivoted from politics to pop culture—and become the latest beneficiary of America’s enduring fascination with con artists. Are we the ones being duped?
The Japanese filmmaker behind “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away” is renowned for stories about resourceful children navigating surreal, often perilous circumstances. In “The Boy and the Heron,” the eighty-two-year-old makes a rare return to his own youth.
“The Buccaneers,” a new television series based on the Edith Wharton novel of the same name, is the latest in a string of shows to mix a historical setting and a distinctly modern sensibility. Are the updates revelatory, or pandering?
Is “The Golden Bachelor” Too Good to Be True?
Why We Dine Out (or Don’t)
Britney Spears Tells Her Horror Story
Martin Scorsese’s America
Are Straight Couples O.K.?
Spies, Sex, and John le Carré
Taylor Swift Is Everywhere All at Once
The Myth-Making of Elon Musk
What Is Cringecore, and Why Is It Everywhere?
On a new culture podcast, The New Yorker’s critics take on some of the defining texts of our era, from Rushdie to “The Real Housewives.”
Samantha Irby Knows How to Be Funny
November 21, 202341min 1sec
Samantha Irby’s latest essay collection, “Quietly Hostile,” cemented her place as one of the great professionally funny people working today. Her books and her writing for such TV shows as “Shrill” and “Tuca & Bertie” are distinguished by a no-holds-barred, raunchy, often scatological brand of humor and a willingness to poke fun at just about anything—including herself. In a live taping of Critics at Large at this year’s New Yorker Festival, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz sat down with Irby to unpack her approach. They discussed humor as a coping mechanism; her work on the “Sex and the City” reboot, “And Just Like That . . .,” and the ensuing backlash; and how the Internet has transformed the comedy landscape. “What people enjoy is so varied,” Irby says. “The future is you finding very specific things that delight you, and having them readily available.”
