The New Yorker Radio Hour

Jia Tolentino on the Rise and Fall of the Internet


Listen Later

Jia Tolentino writes for The New Yorker about an extremely wide range of topics, but a central concern is what it has meant to her to have grown up alongside the Internet. In her new, best-selling collection of essays, “Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion,” she traces how the digital world has evolved and shaped our minds. Tolentino tells Remnick that, in the early, freer days of the Web, the Internet felt like “a neighborhood you could walk through, and just go into these houses decorated with all of these things you’d never seen before—and then you could leave.” Tolentino remains a very popular and influential figure online, but she has concerns about how the digital world has developed. Now that profit-seeking social-media giants dominate the landscape, there is fierce competition for our attention spans and the constant demand for people to perform their identities, all of which she finds “corrosive.” For Tolentino, writing—which takes “uncertainty and agony and work and devotion, and sustained attention”—is an antidote to that corrosion, and almost a kind of spiritual practice. “The fact of having time to think about something in private before it becomes public still feels like a real miracle to me.”Plus, David Remnick talks with two of the creators—one Israeli, one Palestinian—of HBO’s “Our Boys.” The ten-part series examines the forces that led to a crime that was shocking even by the standards of a country that is used to terror: the torture and murder of a Palestinian teen-ager, Mohammed Abu Khdeir, by Israeli right-wing extremists. “Our Boys” is a brutally truthful depiction of the effects of hate crime.  

...more
View all episodesView all episodes
Download on the App Store

The New Yorker Radio HourBy WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

  • 4.2
  • 4.2
  • 4.2
  • 4.2
  • 4.2

4.2

5,495 ratings


More shows like The New Yorker Radio Hour

View all
On the Media by WNYC Studios

On the Media

9,110 Listeners

The Book Review by The New York Times

The Book Review

3,853 Listeners

This American Life by This American Life

This American Life

90,637 Listeners

Fresh Air by NPR

Fresh Air

38,151 Listeners

The New Yorker: Fiction by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker: Fiction

3,313 Listeners

The Political Scene | The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The Political Scene | The New Yorker

3,921 Listeners

The New Yorker: Poetry by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker: Poetry

500 Listeners

The Gray Area with Sean Illing by Vox

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

10,688 Listeners

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker by WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

The New Yorker: The Writer's Voice - New Fiction from The New Yorker

2,094 Listeners

In The Dark by The New Yorker

In The Dark

27,508 Listeners

The Daily by The New York Times

The Daily

111,441 Listeners

Radio Atlantic by The Atlantic

Radio Atlantic

2,306 Listeners

Stay Tuned with Preet by Preet Bharara

Stay Tuned with Preet

32,392 Listeners

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat by New York Times Opinion

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

6,739 Listeners

The Ezra Klein Show by New York Times Opinion

The Ezra Klein Show

15,216 Listeners

The Interview by The New York Times

The Interview

1,452 Listeners

Critics at Large | The New Yorker by The New Yorker

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

579 Listeners