The staff writer Jon Lee Anderson has reported from Cuba for many years, and recently wrote about the deteriorating economic conditions on the island. His newest piece for the magazine dives into the potential outcomes of Donald Trump’s desire to pursue regime change. Anderson explores the economic impact of the United States blocking Venezuelan oil from reaching Cuba, which could be a death knell for the Communist government. Anderson and David Remnick discuss the current negotiations between the two countries, Marco Rubio’s strategy, and what cards the Cuban government might still hold. “They’re going to go into this,” Anderson suggests, “like maybe a canny poker player.”

Plus, the historian Ada Ferrer won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2022 book, “Cuba: An American History,” and she has one of the clearest views of the long and vexed relationship between the island and its giant neighbor. Ferrer left Cuba as an infant, coming to the United States with her mother in 1963 when Fidel Castro’s regime was arguably at its peak. David Remnick talks with Ferrer about the impact of U.S. sanctions, the economic collapse of Cuba, and what Donald Trump’s threat of a “takeover” means to the Cuban people and to Cuban Americans in the U.S. 

Further reading: 

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

Chloé Zhao became only the second woman to win an Oscar for Best Director, for 2020’s “Nomadland,” and she is nominated once again for “Hamnet,” starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. Based on Maggie O’Farrell’s novel of the same name, the film follows a young William Shakespeare and his wife, and their grief at the loss of their only son. “Hamnet” is also nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, and five other awards.  Speaking with Michael Schulman, Zhao talked about the origins of “Hamnet,” the centrality of nature imagery in her work, and how the I.P. in a Marvel film is not so different from adapting a literary novel.  

This segment originally aired on December 5, 2025.

Further reading:

“Chloé Zhao Has Looked into the Void,” by Michael Schulman

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

In the book “The Anxious Generation,” Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at New York University, argues that social-media platforms are detrimental to youths’ well-being, and that society needs to treat them as literally addictive. It has spent nearly a hundred weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, and has helped galvanize a movement seeking limits to social media in legislatures, in school districts, and in the courts. David Remnick speaks with Haidt about an Australian law to verify the age of social-media users, the first of its kind in the world, and about lawsuits in California that are aiming to pin liability for harms on social-media companies themselves. 

Further reading: 

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

When the Oscar nominations were announced this year, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” set a record. It received sixteen nominations, the most for any film ever. The fact that it’s, in part, a vampire movie, made by a director who’s not yet forty, makes that feat all the more remarkable. Coogler—who previously directed “Creed” and “Black Panther”—sat down with the New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb to discuss the recurrent themes of history, faith, and race in his work, and how he refracted them through the lens of horror in “Sinners.”

This segment originally aired on April 11, 2025.

Further reading: 

“Ryan Coogler’s Road to ‘Sinners,’ ” by Jelani Cobb

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

As Iran’s retaliation hit American allies throughout the Middle East this week, David Remnick was joined by two New Yorker writers with decades of experience reporting from the region. Robin Wright has reported from Iran extensively, and she met with Ali Khamenei before he became the Supreme Leader of Iran; Dexter Filkins covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he has been reporting on the Pentagon and military readiness. Filkins and Wright discuss the possibilities for future leadership in Iran; the Administration’s chaotic statements in regard to its goals and time frame; and the economic impact of the war, which is already being felt around the globe. 

Further reading:

“What Ayatollah Ali Khamenei Meant to Iran, and What Comes Next,” by Robin Wright

"How Marco Rubio Went from “Little Marco” to Trump’s Foreign-Policy Enabler,” by Dexter Filkins

“The Forever War,” by Dexter Filkins

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

David Remnick sits down with Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the creators of a show he loves, “Industry,” which is currently airing its fourth season. The show is centered on the financial and personal dramas of junior employees at a fictional London investment bank. Down and Kay are old friends who both did unsuccessful stints in banking. “Before we could formulate our own identities, we allowed the institution to make them for us,” Down tells Remnick. But, having left finance for television, he says, “I still feel like I want to make money. . . .  I’m never content with my career. The reason our show feels like it’s constantly changing and vibrating with electricity is because me and Konrad are, in terms of our careers. And, you know, we want to be successful. We were finance bros in the first instance.”

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

As Donald Trump and his Administration threaten to attack Iran, their motivations remain unclear. Does the President want to force Iran to make a nuclear deal, to replace the one that he scrapped in his first term, or is he really seeking regime change? To understand how this all might play out, David Remnick speaks with Karim Sadjadpour, a policy analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who writes about the Middle East for Foreign Affairs and other publications. Citing the disastrous precedents in Afghanistan and Iraq, Sadjadpour notes, “the last two decades has proven that we don’t have the ability to dictate . . . who comes to power the day after a military attack.”

Plus, After protests over the economy erupted across Iran late last year, reports emerged that the regime was killing protesters. Donald Trump threatened to intervene, but did not. Estimates vary widely, but some note that thirty thousand people or more may have been killed. Now, as the U.S. sends a huge military force to the Gulf, Iranians are waiting for war—and many in the country are in the shocking position of hoping for conflict, if it will end the Ayatollah’s government. The reporter Cora Engelbrecht has been recording her conversations with sources on the ground about what that could mean. Their voices were altered or overdubbed for our story, to protect them from reprisal.

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have had a major impact in their short time on the market—currently, one in eight Americans say that they have been on GLP-1 drugs. As tens of millions of people take these medications, anecdotal evidence has emerged that they have a positive effect on alcohol abuse and drug addiction. Researchers are starting to run trials of the drugs for these purposes, and some speculate that GLP-1 drugs could even affect addiction behaviors such as gambling and online shopping. The physician and New Yorker medical correspondent Dhruv Khullar spoke with scientists and patients. “Over the course of my reporting,” he tells David Remnick, “I became more and more bullish on the idea that these are actually going to be really important molecules for the treatment of addiction.”

Dhruv Khullar’s “Can Ozempic Cure Addiction?” was published on February 9th.

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

Hosting the Academy Awards ceremony is a notoriously tricky gig, but Conan O’Brien nailed it in 2025, and he will return for this year’s event. Since leaving late-night television, in 2021, O’Brien has been busy: his hit podcast “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” commands perhaps a larger audience than he had on late night; he launched the travel series “Conan O’Brien Must Go”; and he’s played a therapist in the 2025 film “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.” O’Brien talks with David Remnick about the things that have gone wrong at the Oscars; why he won’t get too “sentimental” about the gradual collapse of late night; and his shock at the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, who had been at O’Brien’s house on the night they were killed. 

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

Every year, ahead of Oscar night, the film critic Richard Brody joins the New Yorker Radio Hour to discuss his picks for the year’s best films. David Remnick sits down with Brody and the staff writer Alexandra Schwartz to discuss the movies that didn’t get enough credit, the ones that got too much, and the lesser-known gems among the year’s releases.

New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.