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Critics at Large | The New Yorker

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.

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
31hr 58min
Thumbnail for "Is “The Golden Bachelor” Too Good to Be True?".
Is “The Golden Bachelor” Too Good to Be True?
Thumbnail for "From Vanity Fair’s “Dynasty”: Can Harry and Meghan’s Hollywood Dream Last?".
Thumbnail for "Alice Munro’s Fall from Grace".
Thumbnail for "The Changing World of Nature Documentaries".
Thumbnail for "From The New Yorker Radio Hour: Emily Nussbaum on the Beginnings of Reality TV".
Thumbnail for "Summer Obsessions".
Thumbnail for "The Therapy Episode".
Thumbnail for "Is Travel Broken?".
Thumbnail for "The Many Faces of the Hit Man".
Thumbnail for "The Rising Tide of Slowness".
Thumbnail for "The New Midlife Crisis".
Thumbnail for "Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and the Benefits of Beef".
Thumbnail for "Our Collective Obsession with True Crime".
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Thumbnail for "How Usher, Beyoncé, and Taylor Swift Build Their Own Legacies".
Thumbnail for "The Painful Pleasure of “Wretched Love”".
Thumbnail for "Why We Can’t Quit the Mean Girl".
Thumbnail for "From In the Dark: The Runaway Princesses".
Thumbnail for "What Is the Comic For?".
Thumbnail for "The Case for Criticism".
Thumbnail for "Can Slowness Save Us?".
Thumbnail for "Portraits of the Artist".
Thumbnail for "From The New Yorker Radio Hour: a Conversation with Dolly Parton".
Thumbnail for "The Year of the Doll".
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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?
Thumbnail for "Hayao Miyazaki’s Magical Realms".
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.
Thumbnail for "The Past, Present, and Future of the Period Drama".
“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?
Thumbnail for "Samantha Irby Knows How to Be Funny".
Samantha Irby Knows How to Be Funny
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Why We Dine Out (or Don’t)
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Britney Spears Tells Her Horror Story
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Martin Scorsese’s America
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Are Straight Couples O.K.?
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Spies, Sex, and John le Carré
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Taylor Swift Is Everywhere All at Once
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The Myth-Making of Elon Musk
Thumbnail for "What Is Cringecore, and Why Is It Everywhere?".
What Is Cringecore, and Why Is It Everywhere?
Thumbnail for "Introducing: Critics at Large".
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.”

Is “The Golden Bachelor” Too Good to Be True?

Thumbnail for "Is “The Golden Bachelor” Too Good to Be True?".
November 16, 202343min 42sec

Reality television is all about artifice, and contestants on “The Bachelor” often seem more interested in becoming influencers than in finding a spouse—but “The Golden Bachelor,” a new spinoff starring a seventy-two-year-old widower named Gerry, has been hailed for its surprising sincerity. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the show eschews—and, at times, reinforces—the tropes that have polarized viewers of the ABC franchise, and what a genre known for its phoniness can reveal about actual human emotions and experiences. The hosts consider other depictions of sex and romance at this stage of life, including Philip Roth’s memorable rendering of an older man’s libido in “The Dying Animal” and HBO’s “And Just Like That . . . ,” a rare look at older women’s erotic prospects. Then, they take a step back to examine how series like “The Bachelor” have shaped our conception of love stories writ large. “The Golden Bachelor” ’s insistence on the vitality of its contestants can feel like a step forward, but what does it mean that the show is so fixated on what Schwartz calls “a second teen-agerdom”? “The boomers set a model for what it is to be young that persists for all the generations that have followed,” she says. “Now here they are again, saying, ‘We’re here; yes, we’re older; and we want to get old in our own way.’ ”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.