“Heated Rivalry,” a low-budget Canadian series that began streaming on HBO Max late last year, quickly made the leap from unexpected word-of-mouth success to full-blown cultural phenomenon. The show, which follows a pair of professional hockey players who fall for each other, has been name-checked by everyone from the N.H.L. commissioner to Zohran Mamdani; its two young leads, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, just served as Olympic torch-bearers. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz unpack “Heated Rivalry” ’s appeal, considering its embrace of earnestness and its place in a broader lineage of stories about gay love. The way the protagonists are forced to hide their relationship recalls dramas set in earlier eras, from E. M. Forster’s “Maurice” to Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain”—but the function of the closet in art is ever-evolving. The hosts also discuss “Pillion,” a new film starring Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling, which features parents who are supportive of their son’s gayness but in the dark about his life as a sub. “It’s interesting, these contemporary stories where gay relationships are, in the larger culture, totally accepted—and that there are sort of closets within closets,” Cunningham says. “There’s a deeper place that others cannot go.”

See Critics at Large live: the hosts will be discussing “Wuthering Heights” onstage at the 92nd Street Y on February 19th. Both in-person and streaming tickets are available. Buy now »

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Heated Rivalry” (2025–)
“Pillion” (2026)
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels
Esther Perel’s response to “Heated Rivalry”
The novels of Sally Rooney
“The Delicious Anticipation–and, Yes, Release—of ‘Heated Rivalry,’ ” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Maurice,” by E. M. Forster
“Brokeback Mountain” (2005)
“The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith
“Carol” (2015)
“My Own Private Idaho” (1991)
“The Swimming-Pool Library,” by Alan Hollinghurst
“The Loves of My Life,” by Edmund White
“I Love L.A.” (2025–)

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz celebrate the one-hundredth episode of Critics at Large with a special installment of the podcast’s advice series. Together, they counsel callers on everything from turning non-readers into bibliophiles to the art of curating the ideal road-trip playlist. They’re joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who shares some cultural dilemmas of his own. Finally, the hosts turn the tables and ask for guidance from their listeners.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Billie Holiday’s “Body and Soul”
Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde”
Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”
The music of Laufey
“I Regret Almost Everything,” by Keith McNally
“The Palm House,” by Gwendoline Riley
“Task” (2025—)
“Die, My Love” (2025)
“Carol” (2015)
“The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith
“Surface Matters,” by Naomi Fry (The New Republic)
Geese’s “Getting Killed”
“What Went Wrong”
Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy
“The Ambassadors,” by Henry James
“Marty Supreme” (2025)
“Why Football Matters” (The New Yorker)

See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Someone looking to understand America might do well to study the nation’s embrace of football. N.F.L. games regularly outperform anything else on television, and, in 2025, some hundred and twenty-seven million viewers tuned into the Super Bowl—more than ever before. As this year’s championship approaches, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by their fellow New Yorker writer Louisa Thomas to unpack the sport’s allure, which has persisted despite increasingly dire evidence of the danger it poses to players’ health. Together, they discuss football’s origins as a “war game,” how fictional depictions have contributed to its mythos, and the state of play today. “A very compelling reason for football’s popularity is that it's not only a simulation of war,” Thomas says. “It’s a simulation of community.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Friday Night Lights” (2006–11)
“The West Wing” (1999–2006)
“Football,” by Chuck Klosterman
“The End of the NFL’s Concussion Crisis,” by Reeves Wiedeman (New York magazine)

See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In “The Testament of Ann Lee,” a new film directed by Mona Fastvold, Amanda Seyfried plays the founder and leader of the Shaker movement—a woman believed by her followers to be the second coming of Christ. Fastvold uses song and dance to convey the fervor that Mother Ann shares with her acolytes. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how such depictions of religious devotion might land with modern viewers. They trace this theme from Martin Scorsese’s docuseries “The Saints” to “Lux,” a recent album in which Rosalía mines the divine for musical inspiration. These stories, many of them centuries old, might seem out of step with modern concerns. But we’re still borrowing their iconography—and anointing saints of our own—today. “The bracing and sort of terrifying thing about them is precisely that they are human beings,” Cunningham says. “What they say to us is, ‘If you had the juice, you could do it, too.’ ” 

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Marty Supreme” (2025)
“The Testament of Ann Lee” (2025)
“Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints” (2024—)
Rosalia’s “Lux”
“Conclave” (2024)
Michelangelo’s “The Temptation of Saint Anthony”
“The Flowers of Saint Francis” (1950)
Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”
“The bizarre rise of ‘convent dressing,’ ” by Eleanor Dye (The Daily Mail)
“What Kind of New World Is Being Born?,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“Patricia Lockwood Goes Viral,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)

See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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.”

This episode originally aired on June 12, 2025. 

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” Supercut

See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many of this year’s most talked-about releases were, in some sense, diagnostic: from Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” films offered up assessments of the nation’s ills. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss these and other reflections of American life, which arrive at a time when reality itself feels more nebulous than ever. Then, the hosts consider the “broken mirror” of A.I., and how the second Trump Administration’s effort to erase unflattering chapters of U.S. history has further muddied the distinction between fact and fiction. Despite these dark developments, the art that’s emerged from this moment, much of it focussed on activists and renegades seeking change, also functions as a warning against stasis. Cunningham says, of the cultural shift: “This fixation on democracy on the ground—whether it’s violent or not, whether it’s misguided or not—I hope describes a yearning for more action. A move away from the mirror, and out into the streets.” 

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Sinners” (2025)
“Fruitvale Station” (2013)
“ ‘Sinners’ Is a Virtuosic Fusion of Historical Realism and Horror,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
“Eddington” (2025)
“ ‘Eddington’ and the American Berserk” (The New Yorker)
“Gimme Shelter” (1970)
“One Battle After Another” (2025)
“One Paul Thomas Anderson Film After Another” (The New Yorker)
“Bugonia” (2025)
“Art in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” (The New Yorker)
“Our Fads, Ourselves” (The New Yorker)

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We all know the formula: it begins with a dead body, and quickly introduces a motley crew of outlandish characters, each with a motive for murder. The whodunnit genre has been a cultural fixture since the days of Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie—the latter of whom has been outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. Recently, though, the murder mystery has achieved a new level of saturation, with streaming services offering up a seemingly endless supply of glossy thrillers. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how these new entries are updating the classic form. “Wake Up Dead Man,” the latest of Rian Johnson’s “Knives Out” movies, slyly incorporates social commentary, while shows like “Search Party” and “Only Murders in the Building” poke fun at the figure of the citizen sleuth. In our era of conspiracy theories and vigilante actors, there’s also a dark side to the archetype. “This desire to be the hero and to follow the logical trails and take things into your own hands—it's very appealing, if you do it right,” Schwartz says. “It’s great if you catch the right guy. If you don’t, and you catch the wrong one, the entire foundation of society crumbles.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Knives Out” (2019)
“Glass Onion” (2022)
“Wake Up Dead Man” (2025)
“Big Little Lies” (2017-)
“The White Lotus” (2021-)
“And Then There Were None,” by Agatha Christie
“Rian Johnson Is an Agatha Christie for the Netflix Age,” by Anna Russell (The New Yorker)
“The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side: A Miss Marple Mystery,” by Agatha Christie
“Only Murders in the Building” (2021-)
“Nicole Kidman Gives Us What We Want in the Silly, Soapy ‘Perfect Couple,’ ” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“The Residence” (2025)
“The Adventure of the Speckled Band,” by Arthur Conan Doyle
“Search Party” (2016-22)
“The Hound of the Baskervilles,” by Arthur Conan Doyle
The “Encyclopedia Brown” books
“Clue” (1985)

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since it was penned more than four hundred years ago, Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” has been in production nearly continuously, and has been adapted in many ways. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider why this story of a brooding young prince has continued to speak to audiences throughout the centuries. They discuss the new film “Hamnet,” directed by Chloé Zhao, which recasts the writing of “Hamlet” as Shakespeare’s response to the death of his child; Tom Stoppard’s absurdist play “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”; Michael Almereyda’s 2000 “Hamlet,” which presents the protagonist as a melancholy film student home from college; and other adaptations. What accounts for this story’s hold over audiences, centuries after it was written? “I think it endures because every generation has its version of the incomprehensible,” Cunningham says. “It’s not just death—it’s politics, it’s society. Everybody has to deal with their own version of ‘This does not make sense and yet it is.’ ”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Hamnet” (2025)
“Hamnet,” by Maggie O’Farrell
“Hamlet,” by William Shakespeare
Kenneth Branagh’s “Hamlet” (1996)
Michael Almereyda’s “Hamlet” (2000)
“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” (1990)
John Gielgud’s “Hamlet” (1964)
Robert Icke’s “Hamlet” (2017, 2022)
“Every Generation Gets the Shakespeare It Deserves” by Drew Lichtenberg (The New York Times)
“Hamlet and His Problems" by T. S. Eliot

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few and far between. Meanwhile, Jon M. Chu’s earnest (and lengthy) two-part adaptation of “Wicked”—an origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West that first premièred on the Great White Way over twenty years ago—has struck a chord with today’s audiences. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “Wicked” before stepping back to trace the evolution of the musical form, from the first shows to marry song and story in the nineteen-twenties to the seventies-era innovations of figures like Stephen Sondheim. Amid the massive commercial, technological, and aesthetic shifts of the last century, how has the form changed, and why has it endured? “People who don’t like musicals will often criticize their artificiality,” Schwartz says. “Some things in life are so heightened . . . yet they’re part of the real. Why not put them to music and have singing be part of it?”

This episode originally aired on December 12, 2024.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Wicked” (2024)
“The Animals That Made It All Worth It,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Ben Shapiro Reviews ‘Wicked’ ”
“Frozen” (2013)
“Hair” (1979)
“The Sound of Music” (1965)
“Anything Goes” (1934)
“Show Boat” (1927)
“Oklahoma” (1943)
“Mean Girls” (2017)
“Hamilton” (2015)
“Wicked” (2003)
“A Strange Loop” (2019)
“Teeth” (2024)
“Kimberly Akimbo” (2021)

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vince Gilligan’s new show, “Pluribus,” opens with an unconventional apocalypse. A benevolent alien hive mind descends on Earth, commandeering the bodies of all but a handful of people who appear to be immune, including a curmudgeonly writer named Carol Sturka. Though the world that the “joined” are building seems ideal—no more crime, efficient resource distribution, an end to discrimination—it doesn’t leave much room for Carol’s messy humanity. Is it worth it? On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “Pluribus” and other perfect societies imagined and enacted by artists and thinkers, from Thomas More’s 1516 satire, “Utopia,” to the Shaker movement and beyond. They reflect on why these experiments have rarely held up to scrutiny or benefitted more than a select few, and why we keep coming back to them anyway. “I’m not the most optimistic person,” Fry says. “But if you’re stuck in pessimistic, dystopic thinking, are you foreclosing on greater promise or greater potential of imagination?” 

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Pluribus” (2025–)
“Breaking Bad” (2008-13)
“Better Call Saul” (2015-22)
“The X-Files” (1993-2002)
“The Giver,” by Lois Lowry
“Utopia,” by Thomas More
“Les Guérillères,” by Monique Wittig
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)
“The Testament of Ann Lee” (2025)
“The Hunger Games,” by Suzanne Collins
“Utopia for Realists,” by Rutger Bregman
“Ragtime” (1996)

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

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices