The New Yorker Radio Hour

Anna Wintour graces the cover of Vogue's May issue alongside her theatrical double: Meryl Streep in the role of Miranda Priestly, from “The Devil Wears Prada,” whose much-anticipated sequel comes out on May 1st. Wintour and David Remnick spoke last fall on the day that a sea change took place at Vogue: it was announced that Chloe Malle would take over the editorial direction of the American edition of the publication. They discussed her storied career; her decision to wear Prada to the premiére of “The Devil Wears Prada”; and how Remnick might up his fashion game: “Forgive me, David, but how boring would it be if everybody was just wearing a dark suit and a white shirt all the time?” This segment originally aired on September 5, 2025.   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.

At the end of February, OpenAI's C.E.O., Sam Altman, made headlines by swiftly cutting a deal with the Pentagon for his company to replace Anthropic, which had balked at the Trump Administration's bid to use its A.I. technology to power autonomous weapons and aid in mass surveillance. Days earlier, Altman had publicly supported Anthropic's position in the dispute. Altman's rise to power and his founding of OpenAI were predicated on placing safety above other concerns in developing artificial general intelligence. Why did he change his stance on such a fundamental issue? The New Yorker writers Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz spoke with Altman multiple times and interviewed more than a hundred people for their investigation into the leader of one of the most powerful companies in the world, comparing Altman to J. Robert Oppenheimer. Although there is no smoking gun in Altman's hand, the writers find that persistent allegations about his conduct underscore the danger of entrusting him to wield such vast power over the future.    Further reading: "Sam Altman May Control Our Future—Can He Be Trusted?,” by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz “The Dangerous Paradox of A.I. Abundance,” by John Cassidy “The A.I. Bubble Is Coming for Your Browser,” by Kyle Chayka   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.

The New Yorker staff writer Louisa Thomas, who writes the Sporting Scene column, talks with David Remnick about the biggest basketball stories this season: how LeBron James embraced a new late-career persona as a great supporting player for the Los Angeles Lakers; the coaching genius of the Celtics' Joe Mazzulla; and the ongoing scandal over teams deliberately tanking games to secure better prospects in the N.B.A. draft.  Further reading:  “How Much Is a Home Team Worth?,” by Louisa Thomas “LeBron James Is Making His Last Great Adjustment,” by Louisa Thomas   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 2021, when Olga Rudenko and other journalists launched the English-language news outlet the Kyiv Independent, they were committed to making a publication that wouldn't face political pressure from an owner. A few months later, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and the Independent began reporting breaking news from the front lines, and conducting investigations of the Ukrainian government. David Remnick talks with Rudenko, the Independent's editor-in-chief, about the challenges of reporting in wartime; President Volodymyr Zelensky's pushback on independent journalism; how Iran and Russia have been providing military aid to one another; and why Ukraine cannot accept the peace deal with Russia that Donald Trump is insisting that it take. Further reading:  “The Assault on Ukraine's Power Grid,” by Michael Holtz “What Are Putin's Ultimate Demands for Peace in Ukraine?,” by Joshua Yaffa “Ukraine Has ‘Irrefutable Evidence' of Russia Providing Intelligence to Iran, Zelensky Says,” by Asami Terajima, of the Kyiv Independent “China, Iran Help Russia Prop Up Economy in Occupied Ukrainian Territories, Report Says,” by Yuliia Taradiuk, of the Kyiv Independent “Ukraine Heads to US with Drone Proposal Trump Dismissed Before War with Iran,” by Tim Zadorozhnyy, of the Kyiv Independent “We Interviewed Iran's Envoy to Ukraine and It Was Absolutely Wild,” by Polina Moroziuk, of the Kyiv Independent   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.

Thousands of federal prosecutors have been fired or have resigned from their roles since Pam Bondi took over as Attorney General. She has made no secret of weaponizing the Justice Department to pursue Donald Trump's vendettas. One of those prosecutors is Troy Edwards, who quit a senior national-security position in the Eastern District of Virginia. As an assistant U.S. attorney in DC, Edwardshad won convictions against members of the Oath Keepers for January 6th-related offenses. Edwards is also the son-in-law of the former F.B.I. director James Comey, and, when the Justice Department indicted Comey on grounds widely seen as flimsy, Edwards knew he had reached his red line. (The charges were quickly dismissed, though without prejudice.) The New Yorker's legal correspondent Ruth Marcus talks with Edwards about his decision to leave, how he broke it to his family, and why he thinks other prosecutors should not follow his lead.  Further reading:  “Pam Bondi's Contempt for Congress,” by Ruth Marcus “The Flimsy, Dangerous Indictment of James Comey,” by Ruth Marcus “Pam Bondi's Power Play,” by Ruth Marcus   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.

The new play “Giant,” on Broadway, dramatizes the scandal around Roald Dahl, the beloved children's-book author who, in the nineteen-eighties, began making antisemitic statements and invoking stereotypes about Jewish influence. John Lithgow portrays Dahl as he faces off against his American publisher, who presses him to retract his statements. The events that the show focusses on took place more than forty years ago, but they couldn't be more relevant today, as antisemitism surges during a war in the Middle East. Lithgow joins David Remnick to discuss the question of whether to separate the art from the artist—and about his own hesitation regarding his role as the wizard Dumbledore in HBO's new “Harry Potter” series, because of J. K. Rowling's history of anti-trans statements.    Further reading:  “‘Giant' Takes on Roald Dahl and his Antisemitism,” by John Lahr   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.

Julio Torres got his big break as a writer on “Saturday Night Live,” and went on to make the cult favorites “Los Espookys” and “Fantasmas” for HBO. He also wrote and directed the film “Problemista,” about a toy designer facing deportation. There's a particular kind of surrealism to Torres's humor; “I just don't think his mind works quite like anyone else's,” the staff writer Michael Schulman says, comparing Torres to “a guest lecturer at an art school . . . laying out his very particular way of seeing the world.” They met in New York to discuss the unique, synesthetic ideas about color which Torres describes in a new HBO special, “Color Theories,” and to check out a few hues at a nearby dollar store.   Thanks to Home in Heven and Third Avenue Dollar and More.     Further reading: “The Otherworldly Comedy of Julio Torres,” by Michael Shulman   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.

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:  “Have Cubans Fled One Authoritarian State for Another?,” by Jon Lee Anderson “What's Behind Trump's New World Disorder?,” by Daniel Immerwahr   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:  “World Happiness Report 2026,” featuring a contribution from Jonathan Haidt and other researchers  “Mountains of Evidence,” by Jonathan Haidt 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.

In January, the Justice Department released over three million documents, including many redacted e-mails, related to Jeffrey Epstein. “Should we share the Julie Brown text with Alan [Dershowitz],” Epstein wrote in one note to a lawyer. “She is going to start trouble. Asking for victims etc.” Brown's reporting on Epstein for the Miami Herald, and her revelations about the federal plea deal he received, had an enormous impact on public perception of Epstein and his ties to Trump. Brown joins David Remnick to discuss the latest tranche of redacted e-mails, which show, as she reported, that Trump knew about his friend's crimes far earlier than he has admitted. Brown and Remnick also talk about Epstein's relationship with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and why she does not believe that Epstein died by suicide. 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.

Jenin Younes rose to prominence on the right by defending medical professionals like Jay Bhattacharya who claimed that they were being censored over opposition to vaccination and masking mandates. Younes worked for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a group described as libertarian, and appeared at events with the Federalist Society. As the political winds have shifted, she says that the Trump Administration's attacks on free speech are worse than anything that she saw during the Biden Administration. Younes is currently the national legal director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. David Remnick speaks with her about her unlikely trajectory and about how her commitment to free speech—regardless of which side of the aisle the issue arises from—has left her in a uniquely lonely political position. 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.

Ben Shapiro, the host of his eponymous podcast and the co-founder of the conservative website the Daily Wire, has lambasted the left and the Democratic Party for decades. Recently, though, Shapiro has taken to criticizing some of the loudest voices in the MAGA universe, including Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. The rift is over the acceptance and promulgation of conspiracy theories and, in particular, the normalization of antisemitism. Shapiro discusses the Epstein files and what they show—and do not show—about the powerful people connected to Jeffrey Epstein. The belief in conspiracies of the élite reflects “people's desire to abdicate control over their own lives,” Shapiro tells David Remnick. They discuss Shapiro's adherence to the conservative value of personal responsibility, and how he squares that with MAGA and its champions.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.

The staff writers Emily Witt and Ruby Cramer discuss the situation in Minneapolis, a city effectively under siege by militaristic federal agents. “This is a city where there's a police force of about six hundred officers [compared] to three thousand federal agents,” Witt points out. Cramer shares her interview with Mayor Jacob Frey, who talks about how Minneapolis was just beginning to recover from the trauma of George Floyd's murder and its aftermath, and with the police chief Brian O'Hara, who critiques the lack of discipline he sees from immigration-enforcement officers. Witt shares her interviews with two U.S. citizens who were detained after following an ICE vehicle; one describes an interrogation in which he was encouraged to identify protest organizers and undocumented people, in exchange for favors from immigration authorities. Ruby Cramer's “The Mayor of an Occupied City” was published on January 23rd. Emily Witt's “The Battle for Minneapolis” was published on January 25th. 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.

Last October, Bari Weiss—best-known as a contrarian opinion writer who launched the right-leaning Free Press—was appointed the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Donald Trump has called her new regime “the greatest thing that's happened in a long time to a free and open and good press.” The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone wrote about Weiss's hostile takeover of CBS for the January 26, 2026, issue of the magazine. In a conversation with David Remnick, Malone discusses her reporting on Weiss: how resigning from the New York Times launched Weiss to prominence as a crusader against what she has characterized as woke groupthink; how Weiss gained the support of Silicon Valley titans who had their own political grievances; and the headlines about Weiss's rocky beginning as head of a news network, including the on-air travails of her new anchor, Tony Dokoupil.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.

Tucker Carlson has long been a standard-bearer for far-right views, such as the racist conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement.” He recently did a chatty interview with the white supremacist Nick Fuentes, an admirer of Hitler. And yet, Carlson started out as a respected, well-connected, albeit contrarian, political journalist. Jason Zengerle, who recently joined The New Yorker as a staff writer, talks with David Remnick about his new book, “Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind.” They trace how Carlson's sense of personal resentment toward the establishment grew; how launching his own website radicalized his politics in the years before MAGA; and his political ambitions as a potential heir to Donald Trump. “I think, if Tucker Carlson concludes that J. D. Vance can't get elected President, maybe he has to do it himself,” Zengerle says. “So much of politics now is just being a media figure and being an entertainer. And Tucker does those things very well. . . . I think our politics are at a place where that really doesn't seem as outrageous as it would have even just a couple years ago.” 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.

Danny Funt has been reporting on the gambling boom for The New Yorker, which has generated startling recent headlines, including the arrest of a former N.B.A. coach and the indictment of two M.L.B. pitchers—not to mention the Polymarket user who won four hundred thousand dollars wagering on the seizure of Nicolás Maduro. The legalization of sports gambling, combined with the accessibility of betting apps, has made gambling so pervasive that children in elementary school are routinely placing bets, Funt tells David Remnick. Funt's new book is “Everybody Loses: The Tumultuous Rise of American Sports Gambling.” 

Before becoming a podcaster, Jennifer Welch had a successful career as an interior designer and co-starred in a reality show on Bravo. But, since 2022, she and Angie Sullivan, her co-host on the podcast “I've Had It,” have gained millions of fans as a sounding board for left-leaning political frustrations. These aren't only concerns about MAGA but also about the Democratic establishment that she views as captive to a corporate agenda. Welch talks with David Remnick about her contentious interviews with Cory Booker and Rahm Emanuel, her belief in “dark woke,” and how a white Oklahoma woman in her fifties emerged as one of the most provocative voices on today's left.  

Prenups have gone from a tool of the ultra-wealthy, carrying a whiff of scandal, to a more widespread request for aspirational young couples with few assets. Wilson spoke with celebrity divorce attorney Laura Wasser, and found that generations who grew up in the era of universal no-fault divorce “just don't trust marriage” as their elders did; “they want it in writing,” and they have developed apps that make it easy. Clauses calling for nondisparagement on social media are a common feature. But the boom in prenups, Wilson tells David Remnick, has led to couples trying to negotiate even intimate issues such as frequency of sex and body-mass index. Jennifer Wilson's “Why Millennials Love Prenups” appeared in the December 29, 2025 & January 5, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.

U.S. intervention in other countries, whether overt or covert, is by no means new, and Daniel Immerwahr notes that the open embrace of expansionism by the President and associates such as Stephen Miller goes back to the nineteenth century. Immerwahr is a professor at Northwestern University and the author of the 2019 best-seller “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” He discusses Trump's disdain for international law; tensions between the U.S. and Russia and China; and the historical link between imperialism and appeals to masculine pride.

Since she reëmerged as a star in the 2024 film “The Substance,” Demi Moore has been very busy. She has a major role in the current season of Taylor Sheridan's “Landman” series, and she has two highly anticipated films coming out this year: a science-fiction film directed by Boots Riley, and “Strange Arrivals,” alongside Colman Domingo, about a couple who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. She sat down at The New Yorker Festival in the fall with the staff writer Jia Tolentino to discuss her varied career and how she has dealt with the pressures of the industry.This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 25, 2025. 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.

For roughly half a century, the singer Rubén Blades has been spreading the gospel of salsa music to every corner of the globe. “You could say that Blades did for salsa what Bob Marley did for reggae,” says The New Yorker's Graciela Mochkofsky. “He brought it into the global consciousness.” This year, Blades's record “Fotografías” is up for a Grammy Award; should he win, it would be his thirteenth. Blades once ran for President of Panama and later served in the country's cabinet; he's also notable for bringing social commentary to the dance floor, from his earliest work to the recent “Inmigrantes,” a song about the impact of the climate crisis on refugees. And yet, he tells Mochkovsky, songwriters should beware of political messages. “Political songs are propaganda by definition. If you start singing about political ideology, you're not an artist—you're doing propaganda, basically. I try to be as close to a newspaper [reporter] as I can.”This segment originally aired on October 6, 2023.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.

Thirty years ago, David Remnick published “The Devil Problem,” a Profile of the religion scholar Elaine Pagels—a scholar of early Christianity who had also, improbably, become a best-selling author with “The Gnostic Gospels,” from 1979. Pagels's latest book, “Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus,” is a summation of her lifetime of research on Christianity, as it takes on some of the central historical controversies of Christianity, including the stories of immaculate conception and the resurrection. She tells Remnick how she found and lost faith in the evangelical movement, but retained a lifelong interest in religion. “I have a sense that what we think of as the invisible world,” she feels, “has deep realities to it that are quite unfathomable.”This segment originally aired on March 28, 2025.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.

Across the country, data centers that run A.I. programs are being constructed at a record pace. A large percentage of them use chips built by the tech colossus Nvidia. The company has nearly cornered the market on the hardware that runs much of A.I., and has been named the most valuable company in the world, by market capitalization. But Nvidia's is not just a business story; it's a story about the geopolitical and technological competition between the United States and China, about what the future will look like. In April, David Remnick spoke with Stephen Witt, who writes about technology for The New Yorker, about how Nvidia came to dominate the market, and about its co-founder and C.E.O., Jensen Huang.  Witt's book “The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip” came out this year.   This segment originally aired on April 4, 2025.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.

The Republican Susan Collins has held one of Maine's Senate seats for nearly thirty years, and Democrats, in trying to take it away from her, have a lot at stake. Graham Platner, a combat veteran, political activist, and small-business owner who has never served in office, seemed to check many boxes for a progressive upstart. Platner, who says he and his wife earn sixty thousand dollars a year, has spoken passionately about affordability, and has called universal health care a  “moral imperative.” He seemed like a rising star, but then some of his past comments online directed against police, L.G.B.T.Q. people, sexual-assault survivors, Black people, and rural whites surfaced. A photo was published of a tattoo that he got in the Marines, which resembles a Nazi symbol, though Platner says he didn't realize it. He apologized, but will Democrats embrace him, despite ugly views in his past? “As uncomfortable as it is, and personally unenjoyable, to have to talk about stupid things I said on the internet,” he told David Remnick, “it also allows me to publicly model something I think is really important. . . . You can change your language, change the way you think about stuff.” In fact, he frames his candidacy in a way that might appeal to disappointed Trump voters: “You should be able to be proud of the fact that you can turn into a different kind of person. You can think about the world in a different way.”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.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi's most recent collection, “The New Economy,” was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry this year, and one of their poems was included in “A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker,” an anthology volume published this year on the occasion of the publication's hundredth anniversary. The magazine's poetry editor, Kevin Young, spoke with Calvocoressi about their creative process, how poetry can help with grief, and the inspirations behind their work. This segment mentions suicide and suicidal thoughts. If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 or chat at 988Lifeline.org.

In the course of his long career, Leon Panetta was a lieutenant in the Army, a congressman from California, Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff, Barack Obama's director of the C.I.A., and later, his Secretary of Defense. David Remnick talks with Panetta about the current Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, the legality of the ongoing Navy strikes targeting civilian boats off the coast of Venezuela, and the problem with using the military as “the President's personal toy.”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.

This year marked a hundred years since the birth of The New Yorker, and a documentary about the magazine's past and present, “The New Yorker at 100,” is now streaming on Netflix. The director is the Academy Award winner Marshall Curry, and Judd Apatow served as an executive producer. They sat down to talk about the process behind the film with Jelani Cobb, a longtime staff writer for the magazine and the dean of the Columbia Journalism School. The trio discussed how they approached depicting a century of journalism history on film, their own relationships to The New Yorker, and what makes David Remnick so hard to interview. This interview took place at the 2025 New Yorker Festival.  

Chloé Zhao was the second woman to ever win an Oscar for Best Director, for her 2020 film “Nomadland.” After taking a wide turn to create the Marvel supernatural epic “Eternals,” Zhao has taken another intriguing change of direction with “Hamnet,” based on Maggie O'Farrell's novel about how William Shakespeare coped with the death of his only son. In conversation with the New Yorker staff writer Michael Schulman, Zhao discusses the role that nature plays in her filmmaking, from the American West to the forests of Britain; the process of adapting manga to film; and how neurodivergence informs her creative process.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 a California congressman, Adam Schiff was the lead manager during the first impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump. He later served on the January 6th committee. Trump has castigated him as “Shifty Schiff” and demanded that the Justice Department investigate him. In a conversation with David Remnick, Schiff discusses the current inquiry into his mortgage by federal authorities; the Supreme Court's primary role in enabling this Administration; and why he thinks the rule of law in America is “hanging by a thread.” Unlike some Democrats, Schiff is not sanguine that the release of the Epstein files will damage Trump politically. “If there are ruinous things in the files . . . Bondi and company will make sure they never reach the public eye,” Schiff says. But also, “I think he's almost impervious to dirt.”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.

The filmmaker Noah Baumbach can recall when he may have fallen out of love with his craft. He was shooting “White Noise,” based on Don DeLillo's novel, “on a deserted highway in Ohio at 4 A.M. with a rain machine.”  “Oh, God, I don't know that I like doing this,” he recalls thinking. “Am I doing this”—making movies—“only because I do it?” He channelled that angst into his new film “Jay Kelly,” a Hollywood comedy of manners starring George Clooney as a very famous movie star who suddenly wonders whether it was all worth it, and why people keep offering him cheesecake. In October, Baumbach spoke with The New Yorker's articles editor, Susan Morrison, at The New Yorker Festival about working with his wife, Greta Gerwig, on “Barbie,” and why the first lines of his movies can tell you everything.  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 his latest novel, Ian McEwan imagines a future world after a century's worth of disasters. The good news in “What We Can Know” is that humanity still exists, which McEwan calls “nuanced optimism.” He and David Remnick discuss the tradition of the big-themed social novel, which has gone out of literary fashion—“rather too many novels,” McEwan theorizes, hide “their poor prose behind a character.” But is the realist novel, Remnick wonders, “up to the job” of describing today's digital life? It remains “our best instrument of understanding who we are, of representing the flow of thought and feeling, and of representing the fine print of what happens between individuals,” McEwan responds. “We have not yet found a compelling replacement.” And yet he does not care to moralize: “the pursuit has also got to be of pleasure.” McEwan spoke with David Remnick at a public event organized by the 92nd Street Y in New York.  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.

Only thirty per cent of the American public identifies with the MAGA movement, according to a recent NBC poll, but that coalition remains intensely loyal to Donald Trump in the face of scandals and authoritarian measures. Defections seem rare and come with the risk of reprisal, even from the President himself. Rich Logis is trying to make them less rare with his advocacy organization, Leaving MAGA. The nonprofit's  website features testimonials from former adherents, and offers advice for how friends and family can reconnect after ruptures over politics. Logis himself had been a true believer: he worked on Trump's campaign, wrote articles, released a podcast, and called Democrats “the most dangerous group in the history of our Republic, foreign or domestic—more than Islamic supremacists, more than the Nazis.” He didn't view MAGA as reactionary, but “very progressive and forward facing.” But somewhere along the way, Logis hung up his red hat. “Even today, talking about my past, the feelings are conjured—those feelings of being welcomed and feeling like you're part of something, and the exhilaration that comes from that,” he tells the New Yorker Radio Hour's Adam Howard. Logis emphasizes that leaving MAGA is difficult because, as much as it's a political ideology, it's also an identity that meets emotional needs. “I think that there's a lot of trauma within the MAGA base, whether it's political or economic. . . . I'm not qualified to make any kind of diagnosis. I'm not a therapist or a clinician, but there's a lot of pain within MAGA. And I think that a better question [instead] of asking ‘What's wrong with you?' is ‘What happened to you?' ” 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.

Both major parties are experiencing a crisis of leadership in Washington. President Trump's flip-flopping on the Epstein files acknowledges that, on this issue, at least, he has lost control of MAGA. For the Democrats, the collapse of their consensus on the government shutdown deepens a sense that the current leadership is ineffective. For all the talk of unity, the Party is profoundly divided on what message to convey to voters. “Some people argue that we should just—no matter what Donald Trump does or says—just always come back to the economy and prices,” Senator Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, tells David Remnick. “And, of course, we should be very focussed on the economy and prices and rising health-care costs, as we have been. But to suggest that we should look the other way in the face of all these other outrages is, I think, a mistake, because I think the American people are tiring of Donald Trump. I think the polls indicate that.” Van Hollen is trying to pave a path between his party's left and the establishment. He's used the word “spineless” to describe colleagues in Congress who refused to endorse Zohran Mamdani in his mayoral campaign, but he has not called for Chuck Schumer to step down from leadership, as others have. Van Hollen wants “to be very much part of the debate as to where the Democratic Party goes.” Would that extend, Remnick wonders, to running for President? “My goal at this moment really is to stiffen the spine of the Democratic Party. But that means not just resistance to Trump. It also means taking on very powerful special interests that I think have had too much sway in both the Republican Party for sure, but also in the Democratic Party.” Remnick replies, “I've heard firmer nos in my time.”  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.

The curator Thelma Golden is a major presence in New York City's cultural life, having mounted era-defining exhibitions such as “Black Male” and “Freestyle” early on in her career. Golden is the Ford Foundation director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, an institution, founded in 1968, that is dedicated to contemporary artists of the African diaspora. But, for a significant portion of her tenure, this singular institution has been closed to the public. Golden led the initiative to create a new, purpose-built home—requiring the demolition of an old building and reconstruction on the same site. To mark its reopening, David Remnick tours the new space with Golden, discussing some key works and the museum's mission. He notes that this triumphant moment for the Studio Museum comes during a time of broad attacks on cultural institutions, particularly on expressions of identity politics. “I take a lot of inspiration from our founders, who opened up in a complicated moment,” Golden reflects. “My own career began in the midst of the culture wars of [the nineteen-nineties]. Understanding museums as a place that should be, can be, must be where we engage deeply in ideas. In this moment, that has to offer some hope as we consider a future.”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 President Donald Trump began his tariff rollout, the business world predicted that his unprecedented attempt to reshape the economy would lead to a major recession, if Trump went through with it all. But the markets stabilized and, in recent months, have continued to surge. That has some people worried about an even bigger threat: that overinvestment in artificial intelligence is creating a bubble. Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of today's preëminent financial journalists, is well versed in what's happening; his début book, “Too Big to Fail,” was an account of the 2008 financial crash, and this year he released “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation.” He tells David Remnick that the concern lies in the massive borrowing to build the infrastructure for a future A.I. economy, without the sufficient revenue, currently, to pay off the loans. “If I learned anything from covering 1929, [and] covering 2008, it is leverage,” Sorkin says, “people borrowing to make all of this happen. And right now we are beginning to see a remarkable period of borrowing to make the economics of A.I. work.” Sorkin is the co-anchor of “Squawk Box” on CNBC, and he also founded the New York Times' business section, DealBook.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.

Patti Smith's album “Horses” came out fifty years ago, on November 10, 1975, launching her to stardom almost overnight. An anniversary reissue came out this year, to rapturous reviews. Yet being a rock star was never Smith's intention: she was a published poet before “Horses” came out, and had also written a play with Sam Shepard. Music was an afterthought, as she tells it, a way to make her poetry readings pop. “I didn't want to be boring,” she tells David Remnick. In recent years, it may finally be that more people know Smith as a writer than as a musician. Her memoir “Just Kids,” about her friendship with the late photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, won a National Book Award. “M Train” reflected on her withdrawal from music as she raised a family. In her newest memoir, “Bread of Angels,” Smith writes intimately about the loss of her husband, her brother, and close friends; she also shares a startling revelation about her family and past. It's a book that was challenging for her and took her years to write. “I write profusely—fiction, fairy tales, all kinds of things that aren't even published—without a care,” she says. “Writing a memoir, bringing other people into it, one has to really be prudent, and search themselves and make sure that they're presenting the right picture.” 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.

Few Democratic officials have been more outspoken in opposition to the Trump Administration than J. B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. He seems almost to relish antagonizing Trump, who has suggested Pritzker should be in jail. Meanwhile, ICE and Border Patrol have targeted Chicago, and elsewhere in Illinois, with immigration sweeps more aggressive than what Los Angeles experienced earlier this year; they refused to pause the raids even on Halloween. The President has called Chicago a “hell hole,” but, in Pritzker's view, immigration sweeps do nothing to reduce crime. “He's literally taking F.B.I., D.E.A., and A.T.F.—which we work with all the time—he's taking them out of their departments and moving them over to ICE, and they're not . . .  helping us catch bad guys,” Pritzker says in an interview with the reporter Peter Slevin. “He's creating mayhem on the ground because you know what he wants? He wants troops on the ground in American cities, and the only way he can get that done is by proving that there's some sort of insurrection or revolution or rebellion.” And yet, as Slevin tells David Remnick, a governor's power to resist the federal government depends largely on the courts. Thus far, “the district courts have acted quite favorably toward the plaintiffs in various lawsuits against these actions by the federal government.”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.

The New Yorker contributing writer Heidi Blake has been investigating a new story for the Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast In the Dark. This season is about one of the most notorious crimes in modern British history: the Whitehouse Farm murders, in which five members of a family were killed at a rural estate in England in the mid-nineteen-eighties. Jeremy Bamber—brother, uncle, and son to the victims—was convicted of the crimes. Decades later, Blake got a tip that led her to interview key figures in the case and scour hundreds of thousands of evidence files. What she found brings the official story of the case into question, and challenges the very foundations of the U.K.'s legal system. This is Episode 1 of Blood Relatives. You can hear more episodes and subscribe to In the Dark here.  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.