Critics at Large | The New Yorker

In the past twenty years, more than a third of all American newspapers have shuttered; trust in media institutions is now at a historic low. And yet we’re still drawn to depictions of reporters onscreen. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss two recent entries into the genre: “The Paper,” a workplace comedy from Greg Daniels and Michael Koman set at a failing local newspaper, and “The Lowdown,” a crime noir from Sterlin Harjo about a freelancer and self-styled “truthstorian.” They compare these new works with earlier examples to illuminate how the practice—and perception—of journalism has changed. In classics such as “All the President’s Men,” Fry notes, “The airing of the facts via the news, via this character of the journalist, makes us feel like it’s gonna be O.K. Like, the truth is out!” Today, she says, “I’m not sure we treat newsmaking the same way.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The Paper” (2025–)“The Lowdown” (2025–)“All the President’s Men” (1976)“The China Syndrome” (1979)“Citizen Kane” (1941)“The Gilded Age” (2022–)“The Office” (2005–13)“‘The Paper’ Is Old News,” by Inkoo Kang (The New Yorker)Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter“Spotlight” (2015)“Succession” (2018–23)“My Undesirable Friends” (2025)404 MediaNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last week, it was announced that Polymarket—a site where you can bet on basically anything, from the likelihood of a government shutdown to the winner of New York City’s mayoral race—will be allowed to operate in the U.S. The decision was the culmination of a broader trend: since 2018, some thirty-nine states have legalized sports betting, and the rise of online gambling has made the practice a part of daily life. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how platforms like Polymarket and DraftKings have changed our relationship to what we’re wagering on. They also examine the way games of chance have been depicted in literature and film—and our enduring susceptibility, in art and otherwise, to the promise of a hot streak. “Gambling is a way for the individual to test themselves,” Schwartz says. “It comes back to this fundamental question everyone has about themselves, which is: do I got it, or don’t I?”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Shayne Coplan’s Big Bet Is Paying Off,” by Jen Wieczner (New York Magazine)“Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse,” by Jay Caspian Kang (The New Yorker)“Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot“The Noble Hustle,” by Colson Whitehead“Rounders” (1998)“War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy“The Sopranos” (1999–2007)“Uncut Gems” (2019)“The Big Short” (2015)“To Catch a Thief” (1955)“Casino Royale” (2006)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—is only just becoming a must-have accessory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join the trend and unbox their very own Labubu before diving into the history of such fads. They draw a distinction between collecting and speculating, from the seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through to the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the nineteen-nineties and the far more recent rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. And they attempt to understand why this slightly unsettling children’s toy is now inspiring such intense reactions. “People were flooding my D.M.s, like, ‘This thing is the end of culture,’ ” Schwartz says. “This thing is not the end of culture. It’s a point on a line.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The Monsters,” by Kasing Lung“Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak“What the Labubu Obsession Says About Us,” by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)“A Dubai Chocolate Theory of the Internet” (“Search Engine”)“IRL Brain Rot and the Lure of the Labubu,” by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker)“Little House on the Prairie,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder“Toy Story” (1995)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, a group of young French critics issued a cri du coeur that gave rise to the figure of the auteur: visionary filmmakers ranging from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. In the final installment of this year’s Critics at Large interview series, Vinson Cunningham talks with fellow staff writer Richard Brody about the origins of auteur theory, and about the lengths to which directors have gone for artistic freedom in the decades since. They take Spike Lee’s body of work as a case study, considering his new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” and how his filmmaking sensibility reflects his singular view of the world. “Style is a funny thing in movies,” Brody says. “If it’s any good, it’s not inseparable from substance. It is substance.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The 400 Blows” (1959)“Breathless” (1960)“Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” by Andrew Sarris (Film Culture)“Circles and Squares,” by Pauline Kael (Film Quarterly)“Martin Scorsese on Making ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ ” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)“Spike Lee Comes Home,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” (2014)“Red Hook Summer” (2012)“A Great Film Reveals Itself in Five Minutes,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Highest 2 Lowest” (2025)“ ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Marks a Conservative Pivot for Spike Lee,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Do the Right Thing” (1989)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Nineteenth-century Americans regarded Paris as a libertine paradise: a smorgasbord of food and fashion, of night life and sex. Today, the pull toward France endures, though the precise nature of its appeal has shifted. On the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Alexandra Schwartz talks with the staff writer Lauren Collins about her work as The New Yorker’s woman on the ground in France and the long lineage of Francophilic Americans—from Edith Wharton to James Baldwin and, yes, even “Emily.” The two consider how French femininity has been marketed to American women and how modern influencers transmit an incomplete picture of Paris. “Yes, it’s romantic, and, yes, it’s picturesque, but it’s also a big, loud, dirty, profane, complicated city that evolves and changes like everywhere else,” Collins says. “There’s a lot of misbegotten essentializing that happens when Americans start talking about France.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Ces restaurants qui gonflent l’addition des touristes américains,” by Mathieu Hennequin (Le Parisien)“Can Emmanuel Macron Stem the Populist Tide?,” by Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)“The Unlikely Rise of French Tacos,” by Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)“Dearest Edith,” by Janet Flanner (The New Yorker)“The Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton“Go Tell It on the Mountain,” by James Baldwin“Giovanni’s Room,” by James Baldwin“The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” by James Baldwin (The New York Times)“Emily in Paris” (2020–)“Sex and the City” (1998–2004)“French Women Don’t Get Fat,” by Mireille Guiliano“Bringing Up Bébé,” by Pamela DruckermanNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compelling enough to make him the front-runner to lead the largest city in America. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Eric Lach about the surprising protagonist of this year’s mayoral race. Together, they contextualize Mamdani’s persona within a long history of New York characters, from Batman to Bill de Blasio, and consider the hold these narratives have on observers within the city and beyond. “The history of New York City mayors is not a litany of successes and heroes. It’s mostly fuck-ups and rogues,” Lach says. “Often, it’s this tug-of-war between the machine and the reformer.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:Zohran Mamdani’s “Uganda Miss Me! (But I’ll Be Back Soon)”“Gangs of New York” (2002)“The Gangs of New York,” by Herbert Asbury“Low Life,” by Lucy Sante“Serpico” (1973)“The Dark Knight” (2008)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Two weeks ago, when Paramount cancelled “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” insiders in Hollywood and Washington alike deemed the move suspicious: Colbert had just called his parent company’s payout to Trump a “big fat bribe” on air. Paramount, for its part, claims that the decision was purely financial—Colbert’s show is losing forty million dollars a year. But both the political and economic explanations reveal how the landscape of late night has changed since Johnny Carson’s day. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider Colbert’s body of work and the state of the genre more generally, from the so-called late-night wars of the nineties through to the modern challenge of making comedy in a country where nothing feels funny anymore. “Late-night hosting is an art, but it’s also business. So, if your job is to get as many eyeballs on you as is humanly possible, what do you do?” Schwartz says. “It’s not easy to have fun with the news, as it is. And if you are having fun with it, something may very well be wrong.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Strangers with Candy” (1999–2000)“The Daily Show” (1996–)“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (2015–26)“The Staying Power of the ‘S.N.L.’ Machine” (The New Yorker)“Lessons from ‘Sesame Street’ ” (The New Yorker)“The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” (1962–92)“David Letterman’s Revolutionary Comedy,” by Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker)“The Colbert Rapport,” by Emily Nussbaum (The New Yorker)“Carpool Karaoke” (2017–23)“What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s ‘Late Show’ Means,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)“After Midnight” (2024–25)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Ari Aster’s wildly divisive new movie “Eddington” drops audiences back into the chaos of May, 2020: a moment when the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, the rise in conspiracy theories, and political strife shattered something in our society. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz situate “Eddington” in the lineage of “the indigenous American berserk,” a phrase coined by Philip Roth in his 1997 novel “American Pastoral.” They consider an array of works that have tried to depict moments of social rupture throughout the country’s history—and debate whether the exercise is ultimately a futile one. “I think when you’re dealing with the realm of the American berserk, the big risk is getting the bends,” Schwartz says. “You're trying to describe a warping. So how do you not get warped in the process?”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Eddington” (2025)“Writing American Fiction,” by Philip Roth (Commentary)“Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s)“American Pastoral,” by Philip Roth“Natural Born Killers” (1994)“Benito Cereno,” by Herman Melville“The Bonfire of the Vanities,” by Tom Wolfe“Apocalypse Now” (1979)“Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse” (1991)“War Movies: What Are They Good For?” (The New Yorker)“Sorry to Bother You” (2018)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Audiences have been bemoaning the death of the romantic comedy for years, but the genre persists—albeit often in a different form from the screwballs of the nineteen-forties or the “chick flicks” of the eighties and nineties. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss their all-time favorite rom-coms and two new projects marketed as contemporary successors to the greats: Celine Song’s “Materialists” and Lena Dunham’s “Too Much.” Do these depictions of modern love—or at least the search for it—evoke the same breathless feeling as the classics do? “I wonder if the crisis in rom-coms has to do with a crisis in how adult women want to be or want to see themselves,” Schwartz says. “I think both of these projects are basically trying to speak to the fact that everyone's ideals are in question.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Sex, Love, and the State of the Rom-Com” (The New Yorker)“Materialists” (2025)“Too Much” (2025)“Working Girl” (1988)“You’ve Got Mail” (1998)“When Harry Met Sally” (1989)“Love & Basketball” (2000)“The Best Man” (1999)“Our Romance with Jane Austen” (The New Yorker)“Girls” (2012-17)“Adam’s Rib” (1949)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular vacation spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Social media pushes hoards to places unable to withstand the traffic, while the rise of “last-chance” travel—the rush to see melting glaciers or deteriorating coral reefs before they’re gone forever—has turned the precarity of these destinations into a selling point. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore the question of why we travel. They trace the rich history of travel narratives, from the memoirs of Marco Polo and nineteenth-century accounts of the Grand Tour to shows like Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” and HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Why are we compelled to pack a bag and set off, given the growing number of reasons not to do so? “One thing that’s really important for me as a traveller is the experience of being foreign,” Schwartz says. “I’m starting to realize that there are places I may never go, and this has actually made other people’s accounts of them, in the deeper sense, more important.”This episode originally aired on June 13, 2024. Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The New Tourist,” by Paige McClanahanThe “Lonely Planet” guidebooks“The Travels of Marco Polo,” by Rustichello da Pisa“Of Travel,” by Francis Bacon“The Innocents Abroad,” by Mark Twain“Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson“Travels through France and Italy,” by Tobias Smollett“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (2013-18)“The White Lotus” (2021—)“Conan O’Brien Must Go” (2024)“It Just Got Easier to Visit a Vanishing Glacier. Is That a Good Thing?,” by Paige McClanahan (The New York Times)“The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere,” by Ed Caesar (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The word “diva” comes from the world of opera, where divinely talented singers have enraptured audiences for centuries. But preternatural gifts often go hand in hand with bad behavior—as in the case of Patti LuPone, the blunt Broadway dame whose remarks about fellow-actresses in a recent New Yorker Profile quickly became a source of scandal. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and guest host Michael Schulman examine the figure of the diva, from Miss Piggy to Maria Callas, and consider whether our culture still rewards such  personalities. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop being drawn to larger-than-life characters with messy, larger-than-life personal lives,” Schulman says. “There is a line that people can cross—but it’s constantly shifting.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“On ‘Succession,’ Jeremy Strong Doesn’t Get the Joke,” by Michael Schulman (The New Yorker)“Patti LuPone Is Done with Broadway—and Almost Everything Else,” by Michael Schulman (The New Yorker)“The Politics of the Oscar Race” (The New Yorker)“Evita” (1978)“Gypsy” (1959)“Company” (1970)“How Maria Callas Lost her Voice,” by Will Crutchfield (The New Yorker)“Liz & Dick” (2012)“The Muppets Take Manhattan” (1984)“The Problem With Ryan Murphy’s Wannabe Divas,” by Logan Scherer (The Atlantic)“Aretha Franklin’s American Soul,” by David Remnick (The New Yorker)“Feud: Bette and Joan” (2017)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Yiyun Li’s “Things in Nature Merely Grow” is a bracingly candid memoir of profound loss: one written in the wake of her son James’s death by suicide, seven years after her older son Vincent died in the same way. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss Li’s book, which reads alternately like a work of philosophy, a piece of narrative criticism, and a devastating account of difficult facts. The hosts also consider other texts, from the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson and Tim Dlugos to a recent crop of standup-comedy specials about grief, and ask what such art can offer us in our current moment of turmoil. “Li is here as a kind of messenger, I think, to describe one of the farthest points of human experience,” Schwartz says. “This book is, in that way, sublime: words fail and fail and fail, but still they do something.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Things in Nature Merely Grow,” by Yiyun Li“Where Reasons End,” by Yiyun Li“‘My Sadness Is Not a Burden’: Author Yiyun Li on the Suicide of Both Her Sons,” by Sophie McBain (the Guardian)“The Year of Magical Thinking,” by Joan Didion“How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir,” by Molly Jong-FastJohn Cale and Lou Reed’s “Songs for Drella”“Marc Maron: From Bleak to Dark” (2023)“Sarah Silverman: PostMortem” (2025)“Rachel Bloom: Death, Let Me Do My Special” (2024)“Rachel Bloom Has a Funny Song About Death,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“In Memoriam A. H. H.,” by Alfred Lord TennysonThe AIDS Memorial Quilt@theaidsmemorial on Instagram“G-9,” by Tim Dlugos New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Though Jane Austen went largely unrecognized in her own lifetime—four of her six novels were published anonymously, and the other two only after her death—her name is now synonymous with the period romance. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz choose their personal favorites from her œuvre—“Emma,” “Persuasion,” and “Mansfield Park”—and attempt to get to the heart of her appeal. Then they look at how Austen herself has been characterized by readers and critics. We know relatively little about Austen as a person, but that hasn’t stopped us from trying to understand her psyche. It’s a difficult task in part because of the double-edged quality to her writing: Austen, although renowned for her love stories, is also a keen satirist of the Regency society in which these relationships play out. “I think irony is so key, but also sincerity,” Schwartz says. “These books are about total realism and total fantasy meeting in a way that is endlessly alluring.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen“Persuasion,” by Jane Austen“Emma,” by Jane Austen“Mansfield Park,” by Jane Austen“Sense and Sensibility,” by Jane Austen“Northanger Abbey,” by Jane Austen“Virginia Woolf on Jane Austen” (The New Republic)Emily Nussbaum on “Breaking Bad” and the “Bad Fan” (The New Yorker)“How to Misread Jane Austen,” by Louis Menand (The New Yorker)“Miss Austen” (2025—)“Pride and Prejudice” (2005)Scenes Through Time’s “Mr. Darcy Yearning for 10 Minutes” SupercutNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

“Succession” creator Jesse Armstrong’s latest work, a ripped-from-the-headlines sendup of tech billionaires called “Mountainhead,” is arguably an extension of his over-all project: making the ultra-wealthy look fallible, unglamorous, and often flat-out amoral. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the new movie draws on the tech oligarchs we’ve come to know in real life, and consider the special place that the über-rich have held in the American imagination since the days of Edith Wharton and Upton Sinclair. How has the rise of such figures as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg changed our conception? And, as they’ve become more present in our daily lives—and more cartoonishly powerful—is it even possible to satirize them? “I think now that job is more important and also harder to do for artists,” says Schwartz, “simply because the culture is so enraptured with wealth."Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Mountainhead” (2025)“Succession” (2018-23)“Oil!,” by Upton Sinclair“There Will Be Blood” (2007)“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” (1984-95)“Three Faces of American Capitalism: Buffett, Musk, and Trump,” by John Cassidy (The New Yorker)“Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker, and the Art of the Hang” (The New Yorker)“On the Campaign Trail, Elon Musk Juggled Drugs and Family Drama,” by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey (The New York Times)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

 “Sesame Street,” which first aired on PBS in 1969, was born of a progressive idea: that children from all socioeconomic backgrounds should have access to free, high-quality, expressly educational entertainment. In the years since, the show has become essential viewing for generations of kids around the world. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the program’s radical origins and the way it has evolved—for better or for worse—over the decades. What do the changes in “Sesame Street” ’s tone and content reveal about how parenting itself has changed? “The way that a children’s program proceeds does give us a hint as to the kinds of people that a society is producing,” Cunningham says. “And childhood is not the same as it was when we were kids.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Sesame Street” (1969–)“Rechov Sumsum” (1983–)“How We Got to Sesame Street,” by Jill Lepore (The New Yorker)“Cookie, Oscar, Grover, Herry, Ernie, and Company,” by Renata Adler (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There’s arguably no better time for falling down a cultural rabbit hole than the languid, transitory summer months. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the season allows us to foster a particular relationship with a work of art—whether it’s the soundtrack to a summer fling or a book that helps make sense of a new locale. Listeners divulge the texts that have consumed them over the years, and the hosts share their own formative obsessions, recalling how Brandy’s 1998 album, “Never Say Never,” defined a first experience at camp, and how a love of Jim Morrison’s music resulted in a teen-age pilgrimage to see his grave in Paris. But how do we square our past obsessions with our tastes and identities today? “Whatever we quote, whatever we make reference to, on so many levels is who we are,” Cunningham says. “It seems, to me, so precious.”This episode originally aired on June 27, 2024. Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Heathers” (1988)“Pump Up the Volume” (1990)The poetry of Sergei YeseninThe poetry of Alexander PushkinGoldenEye 007 (1997)“Elvis” (2022)“Jailhouse Rock” (1957)“Pride & Prejudice” (2005)The Neapolitan Novels, by Elena Ferrante“Ramble On,” by Led Zeppelin“Never Say Never,” by Brandy“The Boy Is Mine,” by Brandy and Monica“The End,” by The Doors“The Last Waltz” (1978)“The Witches of Eastwick,” by John Updike“Atlas Shrugged,” by Ayn Rand“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl” (2003)“Postcards from the Edge” (1990)“Rent” (1996)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the weeks since Pope Francis’s passing, the internet has been flooded by papal memes, election analysis, and even close readings of the newly appointed Pope Leo XIV’s own posts. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider why the moment has so captivated Catholics and nonbelievers alike. They discuss the online response and hear from the writer Paul Elie, who’s been covering the event on the ground at the Vatican for The New Yorker. Then the hosts consider how recent cultural offerings, from last year’s “Conclave” to the HBO series “The Young Pope,” depict the power and pageantry of the Church, with varying degrees of reverence. Leo XIV’s first address as Pope began with a message of peace—an act that may have contributed to the flurry of interest and excitement around him. “The signs are hopeful,” Cunningham says. “And reasons to hope attract attention.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Francis, the TV Pope, Takes His Final Journey,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)“White smoke, Black pope?,” by Nate Tinner Williams (The National Catholic Reporter)“The First American Pope,” by Paul Elie (The New Yorker)“Brideshead Revisited,” by Evelyn Waugh“Conclave” (2024)“Angels & Demons” (2009)“The Young Pope” (2016)“The Two Popes” (2019)Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum”New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In a new installment of the Critics at Large advice hotline, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz field calls from listeners on a variety of cultural dilemmas, and offer recommendations for what ails them. Callers’ concerns run the gamut from the lighthearted to the existential; several seek works to help ease the sting of the state of the world. “I can’t say that we will solve those deeper issues,” Cunningham says. “But to share art with somebody is to offer them a companion.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:The New York Issue of The New Yorker (May 12 & 19, 2025)“Birds of America,” by Lorrie Moore“Eighth Grade” (2018)“Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson“Danny, the Champion of the World,” by Roald Dahl“Midnight Diner” (2016-19)“Sentimental Education,” by Gustave Flaubert“Middlemarch,” by George Eliot“My Life in Middlemarch,” by Rebecca Mead“How the Method Made Acting Modern,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts”“First Reformed” (2017)“Better Things” (2016-22)“The Functionally Dysfunctional Matriarchy of ‘Better Things,’ ” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“Odes,” by Sharon OldsTJ Douglas’s “Dying”Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”“Peppa Pig” (2004—)Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid”Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean Blue”Caetano Veloso’s “Ofertório”Crosby, Stills & Nash’s début albumNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The vampire has long been a way to explore the shadow side of society, and “Sinners,” Ryan Coogler’s new blockbuster set in the Jim Crow-era South, is no exception. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss what “Sinners,” which fuses historical realism with monster-movie-style horror, illuminates about America in 2025. They trace the archetype from such nineteenth-century texts as “The Vampyre” and “Dracula” to the “Twilight” moment of the aughts, when Edward Cullen, an ethical bloodsucker committed to abstinence, turned the vampire from a predatory outsider into a Y.A. heartthrob. What do he and his ilk have to say today? “The vampire is the one who can unsettle our notions, and maybe give us new notions,” Cunningham says. “The vampire comes in and asks, ‘But have you considered this?’ ” Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Sinners” (2025)“Black Panther” (2018)“The Vampyre,” by John Polidori“In the Blood,” by Joan Acocella (The New Yorker)“Dracula,” by Bram Stoker“Dracula” (1931)“Love at First Bite” (1979)“The Lost Boys” (1987)“True Blood” (2008–14)“Twilight” (2008)“What We Do in the Shadows” (2019–24)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For nearly as long as we’ve been waging war, we’ve sought ways to chronicle it. “Warfare,” a new movie co-directed by the filmmaker Alex Garland and the former Navy SEAL Ray Mendoza, takes an unorthodox approach, recreating a disastrous real-life mission in Iraq according to Mendoza’s own memories and those of the soldiers who fought alongside him. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how “Warfare” ’s visceral account brings us closer to a certain kind of truth, while also creating a space into which viewers can project their own ideologies. The hosts consider how artists have historically portrayed conflict and its aftermath—referencing Virginia Woolf’s depiction of a shell-shocked soldier in “Mrs. Dalloway” and Vietnam-era classics such as “Apocalypse Now” and “Full Metal Jacket”—and how “Warfare,” with its emphasis on firsthand experience, marks a departure from much of what came before. “That personal tinge to me seems to be characteristic of the age,” Cunningham says. “Part of the emotional appeal is, This happened, and I’m telling you. It’s not diaristic—but it is testimonial.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Warfare” (2025)“Apocalypse Now” (1979)“Full Metal Jacket” (1987)“Beau Travail” (1999)“Saving Private Ryan” (1998)“The Hurt Locker” (2008)“Zero Dark Thirty” (2012)“Barry” (2018–23)“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf“In Flanders Fields,” by John McCraeNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices