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The New Yorker Radio Hour

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WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Profiles, storytelling and insightful conversations, hosted by David Remnick.

#150

Judi Dench on Bond and Shakespeare

Probably far more people have now seen Judi Dench as M—the intelligence chief who’s the boss of James Bond—than anything she’s done in Shakespeare. With that unmistakably rich voice, she played royalty in “Mrs. Brown” and in “Shakespeare in Love.” But it is in Shakespeare’s plays, onstage, that Dench made her home as an actor, performing nearly all the major female roles in a stage career of some 60 years. It’s not just that the language is beautiful, she thinks; Shakespeare “understood about every single emotion that any of us might feel at any time.” Dench has distilled that body of knowledge into a book called “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent,” a collaboration with the actor Brendan O’Hea that delves into each role in each production she performed in. Having trained as a stage designer, Dench decided to “have a go” at acting, and made her début at a young age as Ophelia at one of the most prestigious theatres in Britain. She talks with David Remnick about what’s hard—and not hard—in performing Shakespeare, and why she considers M in James Bond just as challenging. ... Read more

23 Apr 2024

21 MINS

21:01

23 Apr 2024

#149

Jonathan Haidt on the Plague of Anxiety Affecting Young People

Both anecdotally and in research, anxiety and depression among young people—often associated with self-harm—have risen sharply over the last decade. There seems little doubt that Gen Z is suffering in real ways. But there is not a consensus on the cause or causes, nor how to address them. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt believes that enough evidence has accumulated to convict a suspect. Smartphones and social media, Haidt says, have caused a “great rewiring” in those born after 1995. The argument has hit a nerve: his new book, “The Anxious Generation,” was No. 1 on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. Speaking with David Remnick, Haidt is quick to differentiate social-media apps—with their constant stream of notifications, and their emphasis on performance—from technology writ large; mental health was not affected, he says, for millennials, who grew up earlier in the evolution of the Internet. Haidt, who earlier wrote about an excessive emphasis on safety in the book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” feels that our priorities when it comes to child safety are exactly wrong. “We’re overprotecting in [the real world], and I’m saying, lighten up, let your kids out! And we’re underprotecting in another, and I’m saying, don’t let your kids spend nine hours a day on the Internet talking with strange men. It’s just not a good idea.” To social scientists who have asserted that the evidence Haidt marshals does not prove a causative link between social media and depression, “I keep asking for alternative theories,” he says. “You don’t think it’s the smartphones and social media—what is it? … You can give me whatever theory you want about trends in American society, but nobody can explain why it happened so suddenly in 2012 and 2013—not just here but in Canada, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Northern Europe. I’m waiting,” he adds sarcastically, “for someone to find a chemical.” The good news, Haidt says, is there are achievable ways to limit the harm. Note: In his conversation with David Remnick, Jonathan Haidt misstated some information about a working paper that studies unhappiness across nations. The authors are David G. Blanchflower, Alex Bryson, and Xiaowei Xu, and it includes data on thirty-four countries. ... Read more

19 Apr 2024

30 MINS

30:03

19 Apr 2024

#148

Maya Hawke on the Fear of “Missing Out,” and Jen Silverman on “There’s Going to Be Trouble”

At a band rehearsal in Brooklyn, [Rachel Syme] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/rachel-syme) talks to Maya Hawke about switching gears between acting and music. In “Stranger Things,” Hawke plays Robin Buckley, a band geek who cracks a Russian code in her spare time; she also recently appeared in films including “ [Asteroid City] (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/26/asteroid-city-movie-review-maggie-moores) ” and “ [Maestro] (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/27/maestro-movie-review) .” “When I’m acting, I inhabit the character that I’m playing,” Hawke says, whereas when fronting a band, “I feel like I’m me… But sometimes I have to screw my courage to the sticking place, and that’s a bit of a character. It’s me, [but] willing to stand up onstage.” Hawke discusses the inspiration for her single “Missing Out”: a visit to her brother at college, where she came to terms with some of her own choices. Plus, the playwright and novelist Jen Silverman, whose new book “ [There’s Going to Be Trouble] (https://www.amazon.com/Theres-Going-Be-Trouble-Novel/dp/0593448359) ” deals with the excitement and uncertainty of getting caught up in a protest. ... Read more

16 Apr 2024

31 MINS

31:36

16 Apr 2024

#147

How a Republican and a Democrat Carved out Exemptions to Texas’s Abortion Ban

Texas has multiple abortion laws, with both criminal and civil penalties for providers. They contain language that may allow for exceptions to save the life or “major bodily function” of a pregnant patient, but many doctors have been reluctant to even try interpreting these laws; at least one pregnant woman has been denied cancer treatment. The reporter Stephania Taladrid tells David Remnick about how [two lawmakers worked together] (https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/the-fight-to-restore-abortion-rights-in-texas) in a rare bipartisan effort to clarify the limited medical circumstances in which abortion is allowed. “If lawmakers created specific exemptions,” Taladrid explains, “then doctors who got sued could show that the treatment that they had offered their patients was compliant with the language of the law.” Taladrid spoke with the state representatives Ann Johnson, a Democrat, and Bryan Hughes, a conservative Republican, about their unlikely collaboration. Johnson told her that she put together a list of thirteen conditions that might qualify for a special exemption, but only two of them—premature ruptures and ectopic pregnancy—were cited in the final bill. Still, the unusual bipartisan action is cause for hope among reproductive-rights advocates that some of the extreme climate around abortion bans may be lessening. ... Read more

12 Apr 2024

19 MINS

19:08

12 Apr 2024

#146

The Film Critic Justin Chang on What to See in 2024

The New Yorker’s newest staff member, Justin Chang, shares three films that he’s excited to see released in 2024: “Janet Planet,” the début feature film directed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker; “Blitz,” a wartime drama by Steve McQueen, the director of “12 Years a Slave”; and “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the widely anticipated new entry in George Miller’s Mad Max series—which, at forty-five years years old, predates Justin Chang. ... Read more

08 Apr 2024

13 MINS

13:42

08 Apr 2024

#145

The Attack on Black History, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jelani Cobb

Across much of the country, Republican officials are reaching into K-12 classrooms and universities alike to exert control over what can be taught. In Florida, Texas, and many other states, laws now restrict teaching historical facts about race and racism. Book challenges and bans are surging. Public universities are seeing political meddling in the tenure process. Advocates of these measures say, in effect, that education must emphasize only the positive aspects of American history. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times Magazine reporter who developed the 1619 Project, and Jelani Cobb, the dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, talk with David Remnick about the changing climate for intellectual freedom. “I just think it’s rich,” Hannah-Jones says, “that the people who say they are opposing indoctrination are in fact saying that curricula must be patriotic.” She adds, “You don’t ban books, you don’t ban curriculum, you don’t ban the teaching of ideas, just to do it. You do it to control what we are able to understand and think about and imagine for our society.” ... Read more

05 Apr 2024

36 MINS

36:35

05 Apr 2024

#144

Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, on Cultivating the Black Roots of Country Music

By the standards of any musician, Rhiannon Giddens has taken a twisting and complex path. She was trained as an operatic soprano at the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and then fell almost by chance into the study of American folk music and took up the banjo. With like-minded musicians, she founded the influential Carolina Chocolate Drops, which focussed on reviving the repertoire of [Black Southern string bands] (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/20/rhiannon-giddens-and-what-folk-music-means) . Giddens plays on Beyoncé’s new country album, which boldly asserts the Black presence in country music. But her view of Black music is unbounded by genre: “There’s been Black people singing opera and writing classical music forever.” Giddens shared a Pulitzer Prize for the opera “Omar” in 2023, and as a solo artist, she has moved through the Black diaspora and beyond it. David Remnick talked with Giddens when her album “There Is No Other,” recorded in Dublin, had just come out, and she performed in the studio with her collaborator, Francesco Turrisi. This segment originally aired May 3, 2019. ... Read more

02 Apr 2024

15 MINS

15:31

02 Apr 2024

#143

Alicia Keys Returns to Her Roots with Her New Musical, “Hell’s Kitchen”

Alicia Keys’ new musical is opening on Broadway about a ten-minute walk from where she grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. She describes the New York City neighborhood in the eighties as a “place where anyone who didn’t belong anywhere accumulated.” She tells David Remnick, “There was this unique balance between that grime and the potential of Broadway” just steps away. “Hell’s Kitchen” is the name of the musical that incorporates her songs to tell a story about a teen-ager named Ali who is growing up and finding her love of music, and it is even set in the apartment building where Keys was raised. Yet she is adamant that the show is not autobiographical, “because a lot of people think ‘autobiographical’ and they think quite literally.” Keys, who was offered a recording contract at 14, was called the top R&B artist of the millennium by a recording-industry group, and with Jay-Z, she’s responsible for the New York City anthem of our time: “Empire State of Mind.” In casting the role of Ali, a young woman very much like herself, Keys was looking for a “triple-threat” performer who also had “the energy of a true New Yorker … That’s the hardest part, because you can’t teach that.” ... Read more

29 Mar 2024

34 MINS

34:29

29 Mar 2024

#142

Percival Everett and the Reinvention of Mark Twain’s Jim

In a new novel, Percival Everett offers a radically different perspective on the classic story “ [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] (https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Huckleberry-Finn-Mark-Twain/dp/0486280616) .” Everett tells the story of Jim, who is escaping slavery; he calls his book “ [James] (https://www.amazon.com/James-Novel-Percival-Everett/dp/0385550367) .” “My Jim—he’s not simple,” Everett tells [Julian Lucas] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/julian-lucas) . “The Jim that’s represented in Huck Finn is simple.” Everett, whose 2001 novel “ [Erasure] (https://www.amazon.com/Erasure-Novel-Percival-Everett/dp/1555975992) ” was adapted as the Oscar-winning film “American Fiction,” restores Jim’s inner life as a father surviving enslavement, and forced to play along with the pranks of two white boys. But like other Black authors, including Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed, Everett considers Twain’s original a central American text grappling with slavery. “I imagine myself in a conversation with Twain doing this. And one of the things I think he and I would both agree on is that he doesn’t write Jim’s story because he’s not capable of writing Jim’s story—any more than I’m capable of writing Huck’s story.” ... Read more

26 Mar 2024

19 MINS

19:55

26 Mar 2024

#141

Trump’s Authoritarian Pronouncements Recall a Dark History

In 2016, before most people imagined that Donald Trump would become a serious contender for the Presidency, the New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik [wrote about] (https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/going-there-with-donald-trump) what he later called the “F-word”: fascism. He saw Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric not as a new force in America but as a throwback to a specific historical precedent in nineteen-thirties Europe. In the years since, Trump has called for “terminating” articles of the Constitution, has celebrated the January 6th insurrectionists as political martyrs, and has called his enemies animals, vermin, and “not people,” and demonstrated countless other examples of authoritarian behavior. In a new [essay] (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/25/takeover-hitlers-final-rise-to-power-timothy-w-ryback-book-review) , Gopnik reviews a book by the historian Timothy W. Ryback, and considers Adolf Hitler’s unlikely ascent in the early nineteen-thirties. He finds alarming analogies with this moment in the U.S. In both Trump and Hitler, “The allegiance to the fascist leader is purely charismatic,” Gopnik says. In both men, he sees “someone whose power lies in his shamelessness,” and whose prime motivation is a sense of humiliation at the hands of those described as élites. “It wasn’t that the great majority of Germans were suddenly lit aflame by a nihilist appetite for apocalyptic transformation,” Gopnik notes. “They [were] voting to protect what they perceive as their interest from their enemies. Often those enemies are largely imaginary.” ... Read more

22 Mar 2024

29 MINS

29:49

22 Mar 2024

#140

March Madness 2024: College Basketball at a Crossroads

As this year’s annual March Madness tournament kicks off, there’s a sense of malaise around men’s college basketball. The advent of the transfer portal is partly to blame, and the trend of top talents departing for the N.B.A. after just one year of college play. “There hasn’t been that kind of charismatic superstar like Zion Williamson at Duke,” [Louisa Thomas] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/louisa-thomas) tells David Remnick, “the big school and the big player, which is the perfect match.” But women’s college basketball is another story. Last year, superstars like Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark helped the sport reach its highest ratings ever for a final. Clark, in particular, with a penchant for nearly forty-foot throws that almost defies belief, has become such a source of fascination for fans that Remnick compares her to LeBron James. “The question is whether or not she can carry that attention with her” into the W.N.B.A. and to the league’s benefit, Thomas wonders, and if “she can leave some of that attention behind. To what extent is this a unique phenomenon around a unique player?” ... Read more

19 Mar 2024

15 MINS

15:28

19 Mar 2024

#139

Judith Butler Can’t “Take Credit or Blame” for Gender Furor

A legal assault on trans rights by conservative groups and the Republican Party is escalating, the journalist Erin Reed reports, with nearly five hundred bills introduced across the country so far this year. Reed spoke with the Radio Hour about the tactics being employed. But long before gender theory became a principal target of the right, it existed principally in academic circles. And one of the leading thinkers in the field was the philosopher Judith Butler. In “Gender Trouble” (from 1990) and in other works, Butler popularized ideas about gender as a social construct, a “performance,” a matter of learned behavior. Those ideas proved highly influential for a younger generation, and Butler became the target of traditionalists who abhorred them. A protest at which Butler was burned in effigy, depicted as a witch, inspired their new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” It covers the backlash to trans rights in which conservatives from the Vatican to Vladimir Putin create a “phantasm” of gender as a destructive force. “Obviously, nobody who is thinking about gender . . . is saying you can’t be a mother, that you can’t be a father, or we’re not using those words anymore,” they tell David Remnick. “Or we’re going to take your sex away.” They also discuss Butler’s identification as nonbinary after many years of identifying as a woman. “The younger generation gave me ‘they,’ ” as Butler puts it. “At the end of ‘Gender Trouble,’ in 1990, I said, ‘Why do we restrict ourselves to thinking there are only men and women?’ . . . This generation has come along with the idea of being nonbinary. Never occurred to me. Then I thought, Of course I am. What else would I be? . . . I just feel gratitude to the younger generation, they gave me something wonderful. That takes a certain humility.” ... Read more

15 Mar 2024

34 MINS

34:53

15 Mar 2024

#138

In “Great Expectations,” Vinson Cunningham Watches Barack Obama’s Rise Up Close

Like most Americans, [Vinson Cunningham] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/vinson-cunningham) first became aware of Barack Obama in 2004, when he gave a breakout speech at the Democratic National Convention. “Very good posture, that guy,” Cunningham noted. “We hang our faith on objects, on people, based on the signs that they put out,” Cunningham tells David Remnick. “And that’s certainly been a factor in my own life. The rapid and urgent search for patterns.” Although Cunningham aspired to be a writer, he got swept up in this historic campaign, working on Obama’s longshot 2008 run for the Presidency, and later worked in his White House. Cunningham’s adventures on the trail inspire his first novel, “Great Expectations,” an autobiographical coming-of-age story about where and how we seek inspiration. Cunningham recalls that Obama was seen as the “fulfillment” of so many hopes and dreams for people like himself. Now he wishes the former President were playing a larger role. “I will admit that it has been dispiriting,” in Obama’s post-Presidential life, “to see him making movies and being on Jet Skis as the world burns. … more like a movie star than someone whose great hope is to change the world.” ... Read more

12 Mar 2024

19 MINS

19:35

12 Mar 2024

#137

Bradley Cooper Contends for Best Actor in “Maestro”

“Maestro,” about the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as Best Actor for Bradley Cooper—who is not only the film’s star but its director and co-writer. Cooper’s movie focusses less on Bernstein’s musical triumphs, as a dominant figure in classical music for decades, than on his extremely complicated personal life. Bernstein was married to the actress Felicia Montealegre, played in the film by Carey Mulligan, but lived as a proudly nonmonogamous bisexual. “I had no desire to make a bio-pic,” Cooper tells David Remnick, of a man whose life is so well documented. Despite his track record as a box-office draw and critical success, Cooper endured a string of rejections from major studios when he shopped around a movie about classical music, shot largely on black-and-white film. Academy nominations aside, for Cooper, the experience of getting to play Bernstein and actually conducting the London Symphony Orchestra—“the scariest thing I’ve ever done, hands down,” he tells David Remnick—was reward enough: he had been practicing conducting an orchestra since his early childhood. The segment originally broadcast on November 24, 2023. ... Read more

08 Mar 2024

30 MINS

30:33

08 Mar 2024

#136

What Biden Is Thinking About the 2024 Election

Despite hand-wringing among Democrats about Joe Biden’s age and his discouraging poll numbers, the President’s campaign for reëlection displays an “ostentatious level of serenity,” [Evan Osnos] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/evan-osnos) says about the election. “This is a matter of great personal importance to Joe Biden. He feels almost, viscerally, this contempt for Trump and for what Trump did to the country,” Osnos tells David Remnick, after a rare private interview at the White House. “And let’s remember, he didn’t just try to steal this election—from Biden’s perspective—he tried to steal it from him.” Although Biden once referred to himself as a “bridge” President, he told Osnos that he had never considered stepping aside after one term. His gait has slowed, but Osnos found the President quick to jab at his questions and at “you guys” in the media, whom he blames for naysaying his campaign. But alongside complacent media coverage, threats to the President’s reëlection are many. The war in Gaza has alienated many voters from Biden, especially in Arab American communities, and it resonates even more widely. “When Houthi rebels started firing rockets at ships in the Red Sea,” Osnos points out, “it had an immediate effect on global shipping, to the point that it could have, and could yet still, push inflation back up. . . . I know this is the worst cliché in journalism, but this election has an element that is beyond anything we’ve ever really dealt with before.” ... Read more

02 Mar 2024

22 MINS

22:26

02 Mar 2024

#135

Kara Swisher on Tech Billionaires: “I Don’t Think They Like People”

Kara Swisher landed on the tech beat as a young reporter at the Washington Post decades ago. She would stare at the teletype machine at the entrance and wonder why this antique sat there when it could already be supplanted by a computer. She eventually foretold the threat that posed to her own business—print journalism—by the rise of free online media; today, she is still raising alarms about how A.I. companies make use of the entire contents of the Internet. “Pay me for my stuff!” she says. “You can’t walk into my store and take all my Snickers bars and say it’s for fair use.” She is disappointed in government leaders who have failed to regulate businesses and protect users’ privacy. Although she remains awed by the innovation produced by American tech businesses, Swisher is no longer “naïve” about their motives. She also witnessed a generation of innovators grow megalomaniacal. The tech moguls claim they “know better; you’re wrong. You’ve done it wrong. The media’s done it wrong. The government’s done it wrong. . . . When they have lives full of mistakes! They just paper them over.” Once on good terms with Elon Musk, Swisher believes money has been deleterious to his mental health. “I don’t know what happened to him. I’m not his mama, and I’m not a psychiatrist. But I think as he got richer and richer—there are always enablers around people that make them think they hung the moon.” ... Read more

01 Mar 2024

27 MINS

27:35

01 Mar 2024

#134

Lily Gladstone on Holding the Door Open for More Native Actors in Hollywood. Plus, the Brody Awards

Lily Gladstone had been in several films, but unknown to most moviegoers, when she got a call for Martin Scorsese’s period drama “Killers of a Flower Moon.” The role was challenging. She plays the historical Mollie Burkhart, an Osage woman married to a white man, Ernest (played in the film by Leonardo DiCaprio), who perpetrates a series of murders of Osage people in a scheme to secure lucrative oil rights. Ernest may be poisoning her with a cocktail that includes morphine, and some of the dialogue is in Osage, a language that Gladstone—raised on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana—had to learn. Gladstone is the first Native person nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role, and is aware of the historical weight the nomination carries. “We’re kicking the door in,” she says. “When you’re kicking the door in, you should just kind of put your foot in the door and stand there,” she adds. “Kicking the door and running through it means it’s going to shut behind you.” Plus, our film critic Richard Brody returns with his annual movie honors: the Brody Awards. An awards show exclusively for The New Yorker Radio Hour, he’ll be handing out imaginary trophies—and trash-talking Oscar favorites like “Oppenheimer”—alongside the staff writer Alexandra Schwartz. ... Read more

27 Feb 2024

34 MINS

34:46

27 Feb 2024

#133

Ty Cobb on Trump, Putin, and the Death of Alexey Navalny

Ty Cobb represented the Trump White House during the height of the Mueller-Russia probe, so he has a unique insight into the former President’s admiration for all things Putin, and his refusal to condemn the dissident Alexey Navalny’s death in prison. Trump’s response, bizarrely, was to compare his own legal troubles to Navalny’s political persecution and likely murder. Yet Cobb still feels certain that Russia has nothing concrete on Trump, which was the question of the Mueller investigation. Rather, Putin “has what Trump wants,” he tells David Remnick, “total control and adulation and riding the horse with his shirt off.” His quest to secure that power, seemingly by any means necessary, has made Trump “the greatest threat to democracy we’ve ever seen.” Cobb has been following Trump’s myriad of criminal cases closely, and he has concluded that only the January 6th case concerning Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power has the potential to derail his political career. If a trial decision is not reached before the November election, and Trump were to win again, he can order the Justice Department to dismiss the case, and “it will be as though it never existed.” ... Read more

23 Feb 2024

14 MINS

14:46

23 Feb 2024

#132

For Brontez Purnell, “Memoir Is Fiction—I Don’t Care What Anyone Says”

Brontez Purnell is a Renaissance man. He’s a musician, a dancer, a filmmaker, and the author of a number of books. His latest is “ [Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt] (https://www.amazon.com/Ten-Bridges-Ive-Burnt-Memoir/dp/0374612692) ,” a departure from the traditional memoir form. It's written in verse and playfully embellishes the truth throughout. “Memoir is fiction—I don’t care what anyone says,” Purnell tells The New Yorker Radio Hour’s Jeffrey Masters. “You [or] I could both write down our lives as true as we know it. But the second our mom reads it, or one of our siblings reads it, or anybody else peripherally in the book, they can easily say, ‘What are you talking about? That never happened like that.’ ” Purnell, who came of age in the underground punk scene in Oakland, California, during the early two-thousands, is no stranger to hard knocks, but that doesn’t mean he needs to divulge everything. “If you write about your life, you have to protect the wicked; namely, yourself,” he says. “So there is this game of pulling and punching.” ... Read more

20 Feb 2024

18 MINS

18:25

20 Feb 2024

#131

“Pod Save America” ’s Jon Lovett on Trump: “The Threat of Jail Time Sharpens the Mind”

Jon Lovett had been deep inside politics, as a speechwriter in the Obama Administration, before he joined his colleagues Tommy Vietor and Jon Favreau to launch Crooked Media, a liberal answer to the burgeoning ecosystem of right-wing news platforms. “There was too much media that treated people like cynical observers,” Lovett tells David Remnick, “and not enough that treated them like frustrated participants.” Crooked Media has gathered millions of politically engaged listeners—“nerds,” Lovett calls them—to “Pod Save America,” “Lovett or Leave It,” and other podcasts. But Lovett is more worried about voters who no longer get a steady stream of reliable political coverage at all, as local news outlets wither and platforms like Facebook downplay the sharing of news. “The vast majority of people do not know about Joe Biden’s accomplishments,” he says. “When they say to a pollster that this is not someone they view as being up to the job, they’re not . . . understanding how he performed in the job so far.” Lovett shares the widespread concerns about Biden’s apparent aging, but notes that his performance remains effective, whereas, “in Trump, the reverse: he is more energetic—I think the threat of federal jail time sharpens the mind!—but by all accounts is emotionally, psychologically, and mentally not up to the job.” ... Read more

16 Feb 2024

31 MINS

31:28

16 Feb 2024

#130

Jacqueline Novak Is Giving Audiences “Everything She’s Got”

The comedian Jacqueline Novak wasn’t well known before her Netflix début “Get on Your Knees.” The show was a big swing in her career, an ambitious attempt to establish her singular voice, and it worked. A fast-paced and raucous examination of her personal journey with oral sex, Novak tosses out so many tangents—philosophical, psychological, anatomical, linguistic—that you’re liable to miss many of her allusions. Novak knows that her hectic delivery is an acquired taste. “We’ve got to get through this, because I’ve got a lot to say,” she tells David Remnick. Although she relentlessly probes the power dynamics between men and women, she doesn’t “want to come out here and say ‘male fragility.’ I’m really not trying to do that. But it happens, sort of.” The show could make a lot of people uncomfortable, but she’s not worried about cancellation, as many male comedians have been. “Choosing to make art of any kind is sort of this self-appointment. No one’s asking you to do it. So it’s sort of weird for me to get into a mind-set as though you're owed any comfort.” ... Read more

13 Feb 2024

19 MINS

19:54

13 Feb 2024

#129

Can Memes Swing the 2024 Election? Plus, Michelle Zauner on “Crying in H Mart”

In a Presidential race with two leading candidates who are broadly unpopular, any small perceived edge can make a tremendous difference. According to [Clare Malone] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/clare-malone) , more and more people will have their judgments formed by memes—visual jokes about the candidates floating on social media. Republican memes capitalize on widespread discomfort with President Biden’s age, by highlighting his stumbles, verbal or otherwise. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is a master of turning bad press to his advantage: he propagated his own mug shot on social media, feeding his outlaw image. Malone says that conservatives also have a leg up here because their beliefs suit the medium. “The right wing can ‘go there’—they can say the thing everyone thinks, but doesn’t actually say out loud.” Now the partisan fight on social media has roped in a relatively innocent bystander, Taylor Swift. The pop star, who has endorsed Biden in the past, and her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, have been labeled a “psy op” by right-wingers online. “My theory about American politics, especially in the past decade, is basically none of it’s really policy,” Malone argues. “It’s all political pheromones.” Plus, Michelle Zauner, the front woman for the indie band Japanese Breakfast, talks about her memoir, “ [Crying in H Mart] (https://www.amazon.com/Crying-Mart-Memoir-Michelle-Zauner/dp/0525657746) ,” with The New Yorker’s Hua Hsu, author of “ [Stay True] (https://www.amazon.com/Stay-True-Memoir-Hua-Hsu/dp/0385547773) .” ... Read more

09 Feb 2024

30 MINS

30:05

09 Feb 2024

#128

Sheila Heti Talks with Parul Sehgal About “Alphabetical Diaries”

The writer Sheila Heti is known for unusual approaches, but her latest work is decidedly experimental. Heti “is one of the most interesting novelists working today,” according to The New Yorker critic [Parul Sehgal] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/parul-sehgal) . “She is ruthlessly contemporary. By which I mean, she’s not interested in writing a novel as a nostalgic exercise. She’s constantly trying to figure out new places fiction can go. New ways that we’re using language, new ways that our minds are evolving.” To write her new book, “ [Alphabetical Diaries] (https://www.amazon.com/Alphabetical-Diaries-Sheila-Heti/dp/0374610789) ,” Heti combed through a decade’s worth of her own diaries, then alphabetized the sentences; in the first chapter, every sentence in the narrative begins with the letter “A,” and so on. “It’s fun to find writing that shouldn’t be in a novel, and to figure out, can it do the same things that we want writing in novels to do,” she shares, “which is [to] move us, and tell us something new about the world and about ourselves.” In other words, she’s not interested in experimentalism for its own sake. “I always want to write a straight realist novel,” she says. “Something proper, like the books that I love most. . . . It doesn’t happen, because I think I don’t notice the same things that those writers I love notice. I’m impatient with certain things that they were patient with.” ... Read more

06 Feb 2024

15 MINS

15:29

06 Feb 2024

#127

Jonathan Blitzer on the Battle over Immigration; and Olivia Rodrigo Talks with David Remnick

In the shadow of another election year, Democrats and Republicans are at a bitter crossroads over immigration, as the system becomes increasingly unmanageable. With as many as twelve thousand migrants arriving at the border per day, and resistance to asylum seekers growing—even among Democrats—the Biden Administration is in a political bind. “You have a global moment of mass migration converging on the border at a time when resources are down. Congress is refusing to give the president the money that he needs for basic operations—it’s a perfect storm,” The New Yorker’s [Jonathan Blitzer] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jonathan-blitzer) tells David Remnick. Blitzer has covered immigration for years, and his new book, “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” takes a long and deep look at U.S. policy and the forces that drive migrants to undertake enormous risks. According to Blitzer, both sides are obscuring the actual problem. “There’s always been an assumption that the case for immigration makes itself—that the moral high ground makes sense to everyone, that we should be welcoming, that people showing up in need obviously should seek protection,” Blitzer says. “I don’t think defenders of immigration have squared the high ideals with some of the practical realities. And sadly the border, which is a tiny sliver of what the immigration system is as a whole, ends up dominating the conversation.” Plus, the pop singer and songwriter Olivia Rodrigo’s rise to fame has been meteoric. She talks with David Remnick about her models for songwriting, dealing with social media as a young celebrity, and how it feels to be branded the voice of Generation Z. ... Read more

02 Feb 2024

55 MINS

55:17

02 Feb 2024

#126

From In the Dark: The Runaway Princesses

The wives and daughters of Dubai’s ruler live in unbelievable luxury. So why do the women in Sheikh Mohammed’s family keep trying to run away? The New Yorker staff writer Heidi Blake joins In the Dark’s Madeleine Baran to tell the story of the royal women who risked everything to flee the brutality of one of the world’s most powerful men. In four episodes, drawing on thousands of pages of secret correspondence and never-before-heard audio recordings, “The Runaway Princesses” takes listeners behind palace walls, revealing a story of astonishing courage and cruelty. "The Runaway Princesses" is a four-part narrative series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Listen here: [https://link.chtbl.com/itd_f] (https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/PcLRCYEn1QhA4YW8t0TeFD?domain=link.chtbl.com) ... Read more

31 Jan 2024

14 MINS

14:18

31 Jan 2024

#125

For Journalists, “Gaza Is Unprecedented,” and Deadly

Journalism has often been a dangerous business, and many reporters have lost their lives reporting the news from conflict zones. But the rules that have, at least to a degree, protected the safety and freedom of journalists are being violated around the world, nowhere more so than in Gaza. “Gaza is unprecedented,” Jodie Ginsberg, the president of the Committee to Protect Journalists, says. “It is unprecedented for the intensity of the killings, the number of journalists killed in such a short space of time. Part of that is to do with the size of Gaza, the density. The fact that there is nowhere to go that’s safe.” Eighty-three journalists, most of them Palestinian, have been killed in the recent fighting, and the Israel Defense Forces has been accused of targeting journalists deliberately. “Since October 7th, we’ve seen a number of cases in which journalists are killed when clearly wearing press insignia,” Ginsberg notes, “for example the Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah.” Ginsberg also discusses with David Remnick the decline in press freedom and safety around the world, including Donald Trump’s insults and threats to journalists, whom he has labelled “enemies of the state.” ... Read more

29 Jan 2024

23 MINS

23:28

29 Jan 2024

#124

The Oscar Nominee Cord Jefferson on Why Race Is so “Fertile” for Comedy

The writer and director Cord Jefferson has struck gold with his first feature film, “American Fiction.” Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay for Jefferson, the film is winning praise for portraying a broader spectrum of the Black experience than most Hollywood movies. It’s based on the 2001 novel “Erasure,” by Percival Everett, a satire of the literary world. And Jefferson, who began his career as a journalist before branching out into entertainment, has long seen up close how rigid attitudes about what constitutes “Blackness” can be. “Three months before I found ‘Erasure,’ I got a note back on a script from an executive” on another script, Jefferson tells his friend [Jelani Cobb] (https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jelani-cobb) , “that said, ‘We want you to make this character blacker.’ ” (He demanded that the note be explained in person, and it was quickly dropped.) Jefferson hopes that his film sheds some light on what he calls the “absurdity” of race as a construct. He finds race “a fertile target for laughter. … On the one hand, race is not real and insignificant and [on the other hand] very real and incredibly important. Sometimes life or death depends on race. And to me that inherent tension and absurdity is perfect for comedy.” ... Read more

26 Jan 2024

26 MINS

26:36

26 Jan 2024

#123

Pramila Jayapal: Biden’s “Coalition Has Fractured”

Pramila Jayapal, a Democratic representative and leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has been sounding the alarm about President Joe Biden’s reëlection prospects. She fears that the fragile coalition that won him the White House in 2020 – which included suburban swing voters, people of color, and younger, progressive-leaning constituents – is “fractured” over issues like immigration, and his support for Israel’s war in Gaza. Gaza in particular “is just a very difficult issue because we don’t all operate from the same facts,” Jayapal tells David Remnick. “It is probably the most complex issue I have had to deal with in Congress. And I certainly didn’t come to Congress to deal with this issue.” But Jayapal sees a longer-term problem facing the Democratic Party. “The problem I think with a lot of my own party is we are very late to populist ideas,” she says. “The two biggest things people talk to me about are housing and childcare. They saw that we had control of the House, the Senate, and the White House—and we didn’t get that done. And I can explain till the cows come home about the filibuster . . . but what people feel is the reality.” Of the political struggle that accompanied President Biden’s Build Back Better plan, she thinks, “a road or a bridge is extremely important, but if people can’t get out of the house, or they don’t have a house, then it’s not going to matter.” ... Read more

23 Jan 2024

30 MINS

30:21

23 Jan 2024

#122

E. Jean Carroll on Trump Defamation Cases: “Money Is Precious to Him”

After winning the Iowa caucuses by a historic margin, Donald Trump made his way to a courtroom in New York, where a jury was selected in a second defamation trial involving E. Jean Carroll. In May, 2023, after a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse, David Remnick spoke with Carroll and her attorney Roberta Kaplan. Trump continues to attack Carroll on social media, even during the ongoing court proceedings to determine damages. “I don’t think he can help himself, honestly,” Kaplan tells Remick. “I don’t think he has enough development in the frontal lobe of his brain to do that.” Plus, to mark the copyright expiration on the classic Mickey Mouse, we’ve resurrected a 1931 Profile of Walt Disney from The New Yorker archives, which has some prescient things to say about the iconic character and its creator. The interview with E. Jean Carroll and Roberta Kaplan first aired in May, 2023. ... Read more

19 Jan 2024

20 MINS

20:13

19 Jan 2024

#121

Danielle Brooks Comes Full Circle in “The Color Purple”

“I think of ‘The Color Purple’ as the epic of our time,” Doreen St. Félix said in a conversation with the actress Danielle Brooks. While St. Félix admits, “I wasn’t convinced that we needed necessarily to have a new envisioning of the story—which has been a novel, which has been a film, which has been a musical twice over”—she finds that Blitz Bazawule’s film, which opened at the end of 2023, is different from its stage and screen predecessors in significant ways, reflecting the concerns of its millennial cast and director. The actress Danielle Brooks has played a critical role in the work’s transition back to film. In 2016, the “Orange Is the New Black” star was Tony-nominated for her performance as the no-nonsense Sofia, and she is now earning strong Oscar buzz playing Sofia on film. The transition from stage to film dramatically changed her performance. “Being actually in Georgia, feeling the hot Georgia sun, being on plantations, actually holding a ten-pound baby and having to be careful with that child,” Brooks tells St. Félix, “opens up the world. Now I feel like I was painting with an endless amount of color.” Sofia was the role first portrayed onscreen by Oprah Winfrey, in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 version, and Winfrey is a producer of the new film. “Huge shoes to fill,” Brooks says, of Winfrey. “But I feel like she really allowed me to be the cobbler of my own shoe.” ... Read more

16 Jan 2024

28 MINS

28:21

16 Jan 2024

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#150

Judi Dench on Bond and Shakespeare

#149

Jonathan Haidt on the Plague of Anxiety Affecting Young People

#148

Maya Hawke on the Fear of “Missing Out,” and Jen Silverman on “There’s Going to Be Trouble”

#147

How a Republican and a Democrat Carved out Exemptions to Texas’s Abortion Ban

#146

The Film Critic Justin Chang on What to See in 2024

#145

The Attack on Black History, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jelani Cobb

#144

Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, on Cultivating the Black Roots of Country Music

#143

Alicia Keys Returns to Her Roots with Her New Musical, “Hell’s Kitchen”

#142

Percival Everett and the Reinvention of Mark Twain’s Jim

#141

Trump’s Authoritarian Pronouncements Recall a Dark History

#140

March Madness 2024: College Basketball at a Crossroads

#139

Judith Butler Can’t “Take Credit or Blame” for Gender Furor

#138

In “Great Expectations,” Vinson Cunningham Watches Barack Obama’s Rise Up Close

#137

Bradley Cooper Contends for Best Actor in “Maestro”

#136

What Biden Is Thinking About the 2024 Election

#135

Kara Swisher on Tech Billionaires: “I Don’t Think They Like People”

#134

Lily Gladstone on Holding the Door Open for More Native Actors in Hollywood. Plus, the Brody Awards

#133

Ty Cobb on Trump, Putin, and the Death of Alexey Navalny

#132

For Brontez Purnell, “Memoir Is Fiction—I Don’t Care What Anyone Says”

#131

“Pod Save America” ’s Jon Lovett on Trump: “The Threat of Jail Time Sharpens the Mind”

#130

Jacqueline Novak Is Giving Audiences “Everything She’s Got”

#129

Can Memes Swing the 2024 Election? Plus, Michelle Zauner on “Crying in H Mart”

#128

Sheila Heti Talks with Parul Sehgal About “Alphabetical Diaries”

#127

Jonathan Blitzer on the Battle over Immigration; and Olivia Rodrigo Talks with David Remnick

#126

From In the Dark: The Runaway Princesses

#125

For Journalists, “Gaza Is Unprecedented,” and Deadly

#124

The Oscar Nominee Cord Jefferson on Why Race Is so “Fertile” for Comedy

#123

Pramila Jayapal: Biden’s “Coalition Has Fractured”

#122

E. Jean Carroll on Trump Defamation Cases: “Money Is Precious to Him”

#121

Danielle Brooks Comes Full Circle in “The Color Purple”