The New Society | culture from the New Statesman

Despite KPop Demon Hunters becoming Netflix’s most-watched film in history and dominating music charts for months, it’s also the kind of cultural phenomenon many people might never have encountered.The animated musical feature has been cleaning up at awards season and this weekend it could pick up two Oscars.In this episode of the New Society, we discuss how the film became a global hit and the rise of K-pop and fandom culture. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you’ve ever taken a random walk around the block to push your step count to 10,000… rushed through a lesson on Duolingo to keep your streak alive… or checked a post one more time to see if the likes have ticked up - you’ll know the quiet power of the score.Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen thinks modern life is increasingly organised around scores, rankings, targets, dashboards, and that these numbers don’t just track what we value. They quietly replace it. In his new book, The Score, he asks a simple question: how did we all end up playing someone else’s game, and how do we stop? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2014, Helen Macdonald published H is for Hawk - a book that arrived, at least on the surface, as a memoir about grief: the death of their father, and Macdonald's decision to train and live with a goshawk in the aftermath.It was nature writing, literary biography, cultural history, and a deeply personal account of what happens when someone steps sideways out of ordinary life and into something more feral. Readers found their own stories in it about parenthood, identity, politics, and the uneasy relationship between the human world and the wild.More than a decade on, that story has taken another form.You can read more from Helen Macdonald here Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For one of the most famous historians in Britain, conquering the past is not enough.This month, alongside co-host Tabitha Syrett, Dominic Sandbrook is launching a new podcast - this time shifting his focus from history to literature.Tanjil Rashid sat down with Sandbrook to talk about this new venture, what he’s reading (he insists it’s a balanced diet) and why reading still matters, not just to us as individuals, but to the health of society itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Wuthering Heights is a story that has been told and retold, adapted and reinterpreted so many times since publication in 1847.Every generation seems to rediscover Emily Brontë’s ever-enduring novel, and every generation seems convinced it finally understands it.Now, it’s British filmmaker Emerald Fennell’s turn. And once again, we’re left asking: is this a love story, a ghost story, a story of obsession, or something stranger that refuses to settle into any single interpretation?Tanjil Rashid is joined by Lucasta Miller. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A new documentary, Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision, offers a rare glimpse into the deeper ideas shaping King Charles’s view of the world. Known for decades as an environmental campaigner, the King has often spoken about the need for “harmony” between humanity, nature and the environment - but what does he really mean by that?Tanjil Rashid is joined by historian Mark Sedgwick. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirty years ago, David Foster Wallace published Infinite Jest - a novel so sprawling, so formally strange, and so unnervingly prescient that it has never quite stopped happening. Set in a near-future North America obsessed with pleasure, entertainment, and escape, the book asked a question that feels even sharper today than it did in 1996: what happens when a culture confuses happiness with anaesthesia?Tanjil Rashid is joined by DT Max and Jonathan Derbyshire to discuss why the novel still matters, and what it can tell us about the world we’ve built since. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Over 100 million people around the world have downloaded AI companion apps. Friends, therapists, lovers ... mediums - for some, their closest connection in this life is a chatbot.How did we get here?Catharine Hughes is joined by James Muldoon, sociologist and author of Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A professional sumo tournament in London in October 2025 offered more than sporting spectacle. It became a lens through which to view Japan’s growing cultural pull in the West, a society where ancient ritual, hierarchy and Shinto belief coexist with hyper-modern life. Tanjil Rashid is joined by historian Christopher Harding to explore how Japan balances tradition and modernity, and why that balance is proving increasingly compelling to Western audiences. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born into a Muslim family in Bombay, India, in 1947, two months before the country’s partition, educated in the UK and now resident in New York, Salman Rushdie is a writer of multiple, interconnected worlds. At the heart of his work – ever since he won the 1982 Booker Prize with Midnight’s Children – has been some kind of history: the world’s, his own, or both at once. The latest chapter in the history of Rushdie’s life sees the now 78-year-old writer – and survivor of a near-fatal assassination attempt – turn his mind to ageing and dying. That is the unifying thread running through the narratives in his 26th book, the short story collection The Eleventh Hour. He sat down with the New Statesman's culture editor, Tanjil Rashid, late last year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The youngest winner of the Booker Prize fell silent for nearly 20 years. Now she's back with a new novel.--With only her second novel The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai won the 2006 Booker Prize, the leading literary prize in the global Anglosphere, becoming - at the time - the youngest person ever to do so. She was thirty-five. Then: silence. 19 years of it, before another novel emerged - this year. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.Desai joins Tanjil Rashid on The New Society to discuss her latest novel, and why it was 19 years in the making. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The experimental novelist on finding God, being "a misfit" and her return to writing.--Nicola Barker is "has broken the mould so many times it's almost beyond repair".She's a post-punk literary anarchist who writes from the peripheries of the UK.Her experiments with narrative form have won her many plaudits, including the Goldsmith's Prize for literary fiction, which the New Statesman partners with.Barker joins Tanjil Rashid on the New Statesman culture podcast to discuss her latest novel, Tony Interrupter: a comedy about art, virality, chaos, and the surprising impact of freak events in Kent. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cinephiles are revisiting Whit Stillman's 90's movies. Tanjil Rashid meets Stillman to find out why.--Whit Stillman is something of a cult film director. He rose to prominence in 1990 with his debut film Metropolitan, which became the first in the so-called “Doomed. Bourgeois. In love” trilogy: Barcelona came out in 1994 and The Last Days of Disco in 1998. Set among America’s so-called “Preppy” class, the films are comedies of manners in the tradition of Jane Austen, exploring the transitional phase of youth and a certain American identity.The films are now having something of a revival. Stillman joins the New Statesman's culture editor Tanjil Rashid. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.