“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.

 “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.

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 Yesenin

The poetry of Alexander Pushkin

GoldenEye 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.

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.

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 Olds
TJ 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 album

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

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.

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 McCrae

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

The tension between art and commerce is a tale as old as time, and perhaps the most dramatic clashes in recent history have played out in Hollywood. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore how moviemaking and the business behind it have been depicted over the decades, from Lillian Ross’s classic 1952 work of reportage, “Picture,” to Robert Altman’s pitch-black 1992 satire “The Player.” In “The Studio,” a new Apple TV+ series, Seth Rogen plays a hapless exec who’s convinced that art-house filmmaking and commercial success can go hand in hand. At a moment when theatregoing is on the decline and the industry is hyper-focussed on existing I.P., that sentiment feels more naïve than realistic. And yet the show’s affection for the golden age of cinema is infectious—and perhaps even cause for optimism. “Early auteurs were people who knew Hollywood and could marshal its resources toward the benefit of their vision,” Cunningham says. “I wonder if now is the time for people who are seasoned in the way of Hollywood to really think about how it can be angled toward making art.” 

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Studio” (2025–)
“Veep” (2012-19)
“The Player” (1992)
“The Pat Hobby Stories,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Picture,” by Lillian Ross
“Why Los Angeles Is Becoming a Production Graveyard,” by Winston Cho (The Hollywood Reporter)
The New Yorker’s Oscars Live Blog

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

Gossip, an essential human pastime, is full of contradictions. It has the potential to be as destructive to its subjects as it is titillating to its practitioners; it can protect against very real threats, as in the case of certain pre-#MeToo whisper networks, or tip over into the realm of conspiracy. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the role gossip has played in society over the centuries. They discuss Kelsey McKinney’s new book on the topic, “You Didn’t Hear This from Me,” which Schwartz recently reviewed in The New Yorker, and consider instructive cultural examples—from the Old Testament to “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” Today, many celebrities have embraced being talked about as a badge of honor, even as new technologies allow questionable assertions about anyone—famous or otherwise—to spread more freely and quickly than ever before. “Just being in public makes you potentially fodder for gossip,” Schwartz says. “I do worry about a world in which privacy is compromised for everybody.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“You Didn’t Hear This from Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip,” by Kelsey McKinney
“Is Gossip Good for Us?,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)
“A Lover’s Discourse,” by Roland Barthes
“Grease” (1978)
“The House of Mirth,” by Edith Wharton
“The Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton
“Moses, Man of the Mountain,” by Zora Neale Hurston
“Emma,” by Jane Austen
“Gossip Girl” (2007-12)
“The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” (2010—)

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

The first episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” released in 2009, consisted mostly of its host smoking weed, cracking jokes, and futzing with technical equipment. But Rogan quickly proved adept at the kind of casual, nonconfrontational interviews that have made the show such an enormous success in 2025: it regularly tops podcast charts and features hours-long conversations with the most powerful figures in politics. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by fellow staff writer Andrew Marantz to discuss where Rogan’s podcast sits within a growing new-media ecosystem that hinges on parasociality. Marantz recently profiled the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who spends hours online every day addressing a viewership of tens or hundreds of thousands, to whom he issues leftist takes on the news in real time—alongside a healthy dose of gym content. Figures like Rogan and Piker, both of whom have won the loyalty of young men, stand to shape not only the views of their audiences but the art of politics itself. “Being able to hang in a kind of unscripted way. . . I think it just becomes more and more essential,” says Marantz. “There turns out to be a huge voting bloc of people who will, No. 1, vibe with you, and, No. 2, think about what you’re saying.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Joe Rogan’s November, 2024 interview with Theo Von
Joe Rogan’s February, 2025 interview with Elon Musk
“The Battle for the Bros,” by Andrew Marantz (The New Yorker)
Hasan Piker’s Twitch channel
“This Is Gavin Newsom”

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