Podcast appearances and mentions of alissa wilkinson

Ep. 321: Alissa Wilkinson on Cannes 2025: Un Simple Accident, Pillion, Eleanor the Great, The Plague, Spike Lee Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. I'm back at the Cannes Film Festival to talk about the highlights with another all-star cast of guests. This episode I sat down with Alissa Wilkinson, a New York Times movie critic who also has a new book out, We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. We spoke about the return of Jafar Panahi, in person, to Cannes, with his latest, Un Simple Accident (aka It Was Just an Accident), and three debut features: Eleanor the Great (Scarlett Johansson), Pillion (Harry Lighton), and The Plague (Charlie Polinger). Plus a few words on Spike Lee's latest, Highest 2 Lowest. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

In the new book “We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine,” “New York Times” Film Critic Alissa Wilkinson, examines Didion's influence through the lens of American mythmaking.

On this week's episode, I'm joined by New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson to discuss her new book about Joan Didion, We Tell Ourselves Stories. I mentioned the book in a newsletter a couple of weeks back, but I wanted to focus on the ways in which the political world has borrowed showbiz's penchant for image calibration, from the ways in which issues are decided upon to the means by which politicians decide which voters to target. Didion, of course, was a natural observer of these shifts, having spent years in Hollywood before becoming one of the nation's most interesting political observers. If you enjoyed this episode, I hope you both pick up a copy of Alissa's book and share this with friends!

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Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a podcast about book writing and publishing. Make sure you subscribe to the companion Substack: https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcomeToday's guest Alissa Wilkinson wrote her book Salty during the first year of the pandemic, which left its mark on both the process and the content. Alissa tells us about how Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women and her first book came to be and a little bit about her current Joan Didion-related project. We also talked about how book writing fits in amid her daily journalism grind, her unique publishing path from academic to more traditional, and more in today's episode. Follow Alissa on Instagram @alissawilkinson.The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns: https://writingworkshops.com/products/land-big-bylines-by-writing-for-columns-zoom-seminarThe Multi-Passionate Writer's Life: https://writingworkshops.com/products/the-multi-passionate-writers-life-zoom-seminar-with-courtney-kocakHow to Build a “Platform” for Writers Who Shudder at the Thought: https://writingworkshops.com/products/how-to-build-a-platform-for-writers-who-shudder-at-the-thought-zoom-seminarPodcasting for Writers: How to Start, Sustain & Grow Your Podcast: https://writingworkshops.com/products/podcasting-for-writers-how-to-start-sustain-grow-your-podcast-4-week-zoom-workshop

New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson discusses her new book, "We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine," which explores the California author's prescient understanding of how entertainment would colonize American political life. Wilkinson examines Didion's work through the lens of a Hollywood insider and cultural critic, revealing how she anticipated our drift toward manufactured realities and endless performance — from Ronald Reagan's performative presidency to modern reality television-style governance.

Joan Didion famously chronicled California's culture and mythology in works like “Slouching Towards Bethlehem” and “The White Album.” And it's Didion's relationship with Hollywood in particular that New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson explores in “We Tell Ourselves Stories,” her new analysis of the California writer. “The movies,” Wilkinson writes, “shaped us — shaped her — to believe life would follow a genre and an arc, with rising action, climax and resolution. It would make narrative sense. The reality is quite different.” We talk to Wilkinson about how Didion saw an American political landscape that was molding itself after the movies — and came to value story over substance. Guest: Alissa Wilkinson, movie critic, New York Times Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joan Didion opened The White Album (1979) with what would become an iconic line: “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Today this phrase is deployed inspirationally, printed on T-shirts and posters, and used as a battle cry for artists and writers. But Didion had something much less rosy in mind: our tendency to manufacture delusions to ward away our anxieties whenever society seems to be spinning off its axis. And nowhere was this collective hallucination more effectively crafted than in Hollywood. Alissa Wilkinson examines Joan Didion's influence through the lens of American myth-making. As a young girl, Didion was infatuated with John Wayne and his on-screen bravado, and was fascinated by her California pioneer ancestry and the infamous Donner Party. The mythos that preoccupied her early years continued to influence her work as a magazine writer and film critic in New York, offering glimmers of the many stories Didion told herself that would eventually unravel. Wilkinson traces Didion's journey from New York to her arrival in Hollywood as a screenwriter at the twilight of the old studio system. Didion became embroiled in the glitz and glamor of the Los Angeles elite, where she acutely observed―and denounced―how the nation's fears and dreams were sensationalized on screen. Meanwhile, she paid the bills writing movie scripts like A Star Is Born, while her books propelled her to personal fame. Join us to hear Wilkinson dissect the cinematic motifs and machinations that informed Didion's writing, detail Hollywood's addictive grasp on the American imagination, and delve into Didion's legacy, whose impact will be felt for generations. Organizer: George Hammond   A Humanities Member-led Forum program. Forums at the Club are organized and run by volunteer programmers who are members of The Commonwealth Club, and they cover a diverse range of topics. Learn more about our Forums. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By Walt HickeyDouble feature today!Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.This week, I spoke to Alissa Wilkinson who is out with the brand new book, We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine.I'm a huge fan of Alissa, she's a phenomenal critic and I thought this topic — what happens when one of the most important American literary figures heads out to Hollywood to work on the most important American medium — is super fascinating. It's a really wonderful book and if you're a longtime Joan Didion fan or simply a future Joan Didion fan, it's a look at a really transformative era of Hollywood and should be a fun read regardless.Alissa can be found at the New York Times, and the book is available wherever books are sold.This interview has been condensed and edited. All right, Alissa, thank you so much for coming on.Yeah, thanks for having me. It's good to be back, wherever we are.Yes, you are the author of We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. It's a really exciting book. It's a really exciting approach, for a Joan Didion biography and placing her in the current of American mainstream culture for a few years. I guess just backing out, what got you interested in Joan Didion to begin with? When did you first get into her work?Joan Didion and I did not become acquainted, metaphorically, until after I got out of college. I studied Tech and IT in college, and thus didn't read any books, because they don't make you read books in school, or they didn't when I was there. I moved to New York right afterward. I was riding the subway. There were all these ads for this book called The Year of Magical Thinking. It was the year 2005, the book had just come out. The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion's National Book Award-winning memoir about the year after her husband died, suddenly of a heart attack in '03. It's sort of a meditation on grief, but it's not really what that sounds like. If people haven't read it's very Didion. You know, it's not sentimental, it's constantly examining the narratives that she's telling herself about grief.So I just saw these ads on the walls. I was like, what is this book that everybody seems to be reading? I just bought it and read it. And it just so happened that it was right after my father, who was 46 at the time, was diagnosed with a very aggressive leukemia, and then died shortly thereafter, which was shocking, obviously. The closer I get to that age, it feels even more shocking that he was so young. I didn't have any idea how to process that emotion or experience. The book was unexpectedly helpful. But it also introduced me to a writer who I'd never read before, who felt like she was looking at things from a different angle than everyone else.Of course, she had a couple more books come out after that. But I don't remember this distinctly, but probably what happened is I went to some bookstore, The Strand or something, and bought The White Album and Slouching Towards Bethlehem off the front table as everyone does because those books have just been there for decades.From that, I learned more, starting to understand how writing could work. I didn't realize how form and content could interact that way. Over the years, I would review a book by her or about her for one publication or another. Then when I was in graduate school, getting my MFA in nonfiction, I wrote a bit about her because I was going through a moment of not being sure if my husband and I were going to stay in New York or we were going to move to California. They sort of obligate you to go through a goodbye to all that phase if you are contemplating that — her famous essay about leaving New York. And then, we did stay in New York City. But ultimately, that's 20 years of history.Then in 2020, I was having a conversation (that was quite-early pandemic) with my agent about possible books I might write. I had outlined a bunch of books to her. Then she was like, “These all sound like great ideas. But I've always wanted to rep a book on Joan Didion. So I just wanted to put that bug in your ear.” I was like, “Oh, okay. That seems like something I should probably do.”It took a while to find an angle, which wound up being Didion in Hollywood. This is mostly because I realized that a lot of people don't really know her as a Hollywood figure, even though she's a pretty major Hollywood figure for a period of time. The more of her work I read, the more I realized that her work is fruitfully understood as the work of a woman who was profoundly influenced by (and later thinking in terms of Hollywood metaphors) whether she was writing about California or American politics or even grief.So that's the long-winded way of saying I wasn't, you know, acquainted with her work until adulthood, but then it became something that became a guiding light for me as a writer.That's really fascinating. I love it. Because again I think a lot of attention on Didion has been paid since her passing. But this book is really exciting because you came at it from looking at the work as it relates to Hollywood. What was Didion's experience in Hollywood? What would people have seen from it, but also, what is her place there?The directly Hollywood parts of her life start when she's in her 30s. She and her husband — John Gregory Dunn, also a writer and her screenwriting partner — moved from New York City, where they had met and gotten married, to Los Angeles. John's brother, Nick Dunn later became one of the most important early true crime writers at Vanity Fair, believe it or not. But at the time, he was working as a TV producer. He and his wife were there. So they moved to Los Angeles. It was sort of a moment where, you know, it's all well and good to be a journalist and a novelist. If you want to support yourself, Hollywood is where it's at.So they get there at a moment when the business is shifting from these big-budget movies — the Golden Age — to the new Hollywood, where everything is sort of gritty and small and countercultural. That's the moment they arrive. They worked in Hollywood. I mean, they worked literally in Hollywood for many years after that. And then in Hollywood even when they moved back to New York in the '80s as screenwriters still.People sometimes don't realize that they wrote a bunch of produced screenplays. The earliest was The Panic in Needle Park. Obviously, they adapted Didion's novel Play It As It Lays. There are several others, but one that a lot of people don't realize they wrote was the version of A Star is Born that stars Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. It was their idea to shift the Star is Born template from Hollywood entities to rock stars. That was their idea. Of course, when Bradley Cooper made his version, he iterated on that. So their work was as screenwriters but also as figures in the Hollywood scene because they were literary people at the same time that they were screenwriters. They knew all the actors, and they knew all the producers and the executives.John actually wrote, I think, two of the best books ever written on Hollywood decades apart. One called The Studio, where he just roamed around on the Fox backlot. For a year for reasons he couldn't understand, he got access. That was right when the catastrophe that was Dr. Doolittle was coming out. So you get to hear the inside of the studio. Then later, he wrote a book called Monster, which is about their like eight-year long attempt to get their film Up Close and Personal made, which eventually they did. It's a really good look at what the normal Hollywood experience was at the time: which is like: you come up with an idea, but it will only vaguely resemble the final product once all the studios get done with it.So it's, it's really, that's all very interesting. They're threaded through the history of Hollywood in that period. On top of it for the book (I realized as I was working on it) that a lot of Didion's early life is influenced by especially her obsession with John Wayne and also with the bigger mythology of California and the West, a lot of which she sees as framed through Hollywood Westerns.Then in the '80s, she pivoted to political reporting for a long while. If you read her political writing, it is very, very, very much about Hollywood logic seeping into American political culture. There's an essay called “Inside Baseball” about the Dukakis campaign that appears in Political Fictions, her book that was published on September 11, 2001. In that book, she writes about how these political campaigns are directed and set up like a production for the cameras and how that was becoming not just the campaign, but the presidency itself. Of course, she had no use for Ronald Reagan, and everything she writes about him is very damning. But a lot of it was because she saw him as the embodiment of Hollywood logic entering the political sphere and felt like these are two separate things and they need to not be going together.So all of that appeared to me as I was reading. You know, once you see it, you can't unsee it. It just made sense for me to write about it. On top of it, she was still alive when I was writing the proposal and shopping it around. So she actually died two months after we sold the book to my publisher. It meant I was extra grateful for this angle because I knew there'd be a lot more books on her, but I wanted to come at it from an angle that I hadn't seen before. So many people have written about her in Hollywood before, but not quite through this lens.Yeah. What were some things that you discovered in the course of your research? Obviously, she's such an interesting figure, but she's also lived so very publicly that I'm just super interested to find out what are some of the things that you learned? It can be about her, but it can also be the Hollywood system as a whole.Yeah. I mean, I didn't interview her for obvious reasons.Understandable, entirely understandable.Pretty much everyone in her life also is gone with the exception really of Griffin Dunn, who is her nephew, John's nephew, the actor. But other than that, it felt like I needed to look at it through a critical lens. So it meant examining a lot of texts. A lot of Didion's magazine work (which was a huge part of her life) is published in the books that people read like Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album and all the other books. What was interesting to me was discovering (I mean, not “discovering” because other people have read it) that there is some work that's not published and it's mostly her criticism.Most of that criticism was published in the late '50s and the early '60s when she was living in New York City, working at Vogue and trying to make it in the literary scene that was New York at that time, which was a very unique place. I mean, she was writing criticism and essays for both, you know, like National Review and The Nation at the same time, which was just hard to conceive of today. It was something you'd do back then. Yeah, wild stuff.A lot of that criticism was never collected into books. The most interesting is that she'd been working at Vogue for a long time in various positions, but she wound up getting added to the film critic column at Vogue in, '62, I want to say, although I might have that date slightly off. She basically alternated weeks with another critic for a few years, writing that until she started writing in movies proper. It's never a great idea to be a critic and a screenwriter at the same time.Her criticism is fascinating. So briefly, for instance, she shared that column with Pauline Kael. Pauline Kael became well known after she wrote about Bonnie and Clyde. This was prior to that. This is several years prior to that. They also hated each other for a long time afterward, which is funny, because, in some ways, their style is very different but their persona is actually very similar. So I wonder about that.But in any case, even when she wasn't sharing the column with Pauline Kael, it was a literal column in a magazine. So it's like one column of text, she can say barely anything. She was always a bit of a contrarian, but she was actively not interested in the things that were occupying New York critics at the time. Things like the Auteur Theory, what was happening in France, the downtown scene and the Shirley Clark's of the world. She had no use for it. At some point, she accuses Billy Wilder of having really no sense of humor, which is very funny.When you read her criticism, you see a person who is very invested in a classical notion of Hollywood as a place that shows us fantasies that we can indulge in for a while. She talks in her very first column about how she doesn't really need movies to be masterpieces, she just wants them to have moments. When she says moments, she means big swelling things that happen in a movie that make her feel things.It's so opposite, I think, to most people's view of Didion. Most people associate her with this snobbish elitism or something, which I don't think is untrue when we're talking about literature. But for her, the movies were like entertainment, and entering that business was a choice to enter that world. She wasn't attempting to elevate the discourse or something.I just think that's fascinating. She also has some great insights there. But as a film critic, I find myself disagreeing with most of her reviews. But I think that doesn't matter. It was more interesting to see how she conceived of the movies. There is a moment later on, in another piece that I don't think has been republished anywhere from the New York Review of Books, where she writes about the movies of Woody Allen. She hates them. It's right at the point where he's making like Manhattan and Annie Hall, like the good stuff. She just has no use for them. It's one of the funniest pieces. I won't spoil the ending because it's hilarious, and it's in the book.That writing was of huge interest to me and hasn't been republished in books. I was very grateful to get access to it, in part because it is in the archives — the electronic archives of the New York Public Library. But at the time, the library was closed. So I had to call the library and have a librarian get on Zoom with me for like an hour and a half to figure out how I could get in the proverbial back door of the library to get access while the library wasn't open.That's magnificent. That's such a cool way to go to the archives because some stuff just hasn't been published. If it wasn't digitized, then it's not digitized. That's incredible.Yeah, it's there, but you can barely print them off because they're in PDFs. They're like scanned images that are super high res, so the printer just dies when you try to print them. It's all very fascinating. I hope it gets republished at some point because I think there's enough interest in her work that it's fascinating to see this other aspect of her taste and her persona.It's really interesting that she seems to have wanted to meet the medium where it is, right? She wasn't trying to literary-up Hollywood. I mean, LA can be a bit of a friction. It's not exactly a literary town in the way that some East Coast metropolises can be. It is interesting that she was enamored by the movies. Do you want to speak about what things were like for her when she moved out?Yeah, it is funny because, at the same time, the first two movies that they wrote and produced are The Panic in Needle Park, which is probably the most new Hollywood movie you can imagine. It's about addicts at Needle Park, which is actually right where the 72nd Street subway stop is on the Upper West Side. If people have been there, it's hard to imagine. But that was apparently where they all sat around, and there were a lot of needles. It's apparently the first movie supposedly where someone shoots up live on camera.So it was the '70s. That's amazing.Yes, and it launched Al Pacino's film career! Yeah, it's wild. You watch it and you're just like, “How is this coming from the woman who's about all this arty farty stuff in the movies.” And Play It As It Lays has a very similar, almost avant-garde vibe to it. It's very, very interesting. You see it later on in the work that they made.A key thing to remember about them (and something I didn't realize before I started researching the book)was that Didion and Dunn were novelists who worked in journalism because everybody did. They wrote movies, according to them (you can only go off of what they said. A lot of it is John writing these jaunty articles. He's a very funny writer) because “we had tuition and a mortgage. This is how you pay for it.”This comes up later on, they needed to keep their WGA insurance because John had heart trouble. The best way to have health insurance was to remain in the Writers Guild. Remaining in the Writers Guild means you had to have a certain amount of work produced through union means. They were big union supporters. For them this was not, this was very strictly not an auteurist undertaking. This was not like, “Oh, I'm gonna go write these amazing screenplays that give my concept of the world to the audience.” It's not like Bonnie and Clyding going on here. It's very like, “We wrote these based on some stories that we thought would be cool.”I like that a lot. Like the idea that A Star is Born was like a pot boiler. That's really delightful.Completely. It was totally taken away from them by Streisand and John Peters at some point. But they were like, “Yeah, I mean, you know, it happens. We still got paid.”Yeah, if it can happen to Superman, it can happen to you.It happens to everybody, you know, don't get too precious about it. The important thing is did your novel come out and was it supported by its publisher?So just tracing some of their arcs in Hollywood. Obviously, Didion's one of the most influential writers of her generation, there's a very rich literary tradition. Where do we see her footprint, her imprint in Hollywood? What are some of the ways that we can see her register in Hollywood, or reverberate outside of it?In the business itself, I don't know that she was influential directly. What we see is on the outside of it. So a lot of people were friends. She was like a famous hostess, famous hostess. The New York Public Library archives are set to open at the end of March, of Didion and Dunn's work, which was like completely incidental to my publication date. I just got lucky. There's a bunch of screenplays in there that they worked on that weren't produced. There's also her cookbooks, and I'm very excited to go through those and see that. So you might meet somebody there.Her account of what the vibe was when the Manson murders occurred, which is published in her essay The White Album, is still the one people talk about, even though there are a lot of different ways to come at it. That's how we think about the Manson murders: through her lens. Later on, when she's not writing directly about Hollywood anymore (and not really writing in Hollywood as much) but instead is writing about the headlines, about news events, about sensationalism in the news, she becomes a great media critic. We start to see her taking the things that she learned (having been around Hollywood people, having been on movie sets, having seen how the sausage is made) and she starts writing about politics. In that age, it is Hollywood's logic that you perform for the TV. We have the debates suddenly becoming televised, the conventions becoming televised, we start to see candidates who seem specifically groomed to win because they look good on TV. They're starting to win and rule the day.She writes about Newt Gingrich. Of course, Gingrich was the first politician to figure out how to harness C-SPAN to his own ends — the fact that there were TV cameras on the congressional floor. So she's writing about all of this stuff at a time when you can see other people writing about it. I mean, Neil Postman famously writes about it. But the way Didion does it is always very pegged to reviewing somebody's book, or she's thinking about a particular event, or she's been on the campaign plane or something like that. Like she's been on the inside, but with an outsider's eye.That also crops up in, for instance, her essays. “Sentimental Journeys” is one of her most famous ones. That one's about the case of the Central Park Five, and the jogger who was murdered. Of course, now, we're many decades out from that, and the convictions were vacated. We know about coerced confessions. Also Donald Trump arrives in the middle of that whole thing.But she's actually not interested in the guilt or innocence question, because a lot of people were writing about that. She's interested in how the city of New York and the nation perform themselves for themselves, seeing themselves through the long lens of a movie and telling themselves stories about themselves. You see this over and over in her writing, no matter what she's writing about. I think once she moved away from writing about the business so much, she became very interested in how Hollywood logic had taken over American public life writ large.That's fascinating. Like, again, she spends time in the industry, then basically she can only see it through that lens. Of course, Michael Dukakis in a tank is trying to be a set piece, of course in front of the Berlin Wall, you're finally doing set decoration rather than doing it outside of a brick wall somewhere. You mentioned the New York thing in Performing New York. I have lived in the city for over a decade now. The dumbest thing is when the mayor gets to wear the silly jacket whenever there's a snowstorm that says “Mr. Mayor.” It's all an act in so many ways. I guess that political choreography had to come from somewhere, and it seems like she was documenting a lot of that initial rise.Yeah, I think she really saw it. The question I would ask her, if I could, is how cognizant she was that she kept doing that. As someone who's written for a long time, you don't always recognize that you have the one thing you write about all the time. Other people then bring it up to you and you're like, “Oh, I guess you're right.” Even when you move into her grief memoir phase, which is how I think about the last few original works that she published, she uses movie logic constantly in those.I mean, The Year of Magical Thinking is a cyclical book, she goes over the same events over and over. But if you actually look at the language she's using, she talks about running the tape back, she talks about the edit, she talks about all these things as if she's running her own life through how a movie would tell a story. Maybe she knew very deliberately. She's not a person who does things just haphazardly, but it has the feeling of being so baked into her psyche at this point that she would never even think of trying to escape it.Fascinating.Yeah, that idea that you don't know what you are potentially doing, I've thought about that. I don't know what mine is. But either way. It's such a cool way to look at it. On a certain level, she pretty much succeeded at that, though, right? I think that when people think about Joan Didion, they think about a life that freshens up a movie, right? Like, it workedVery much, yeah. I'm gonna be really curious to see what happens over the next 10 years or so. I've been thinking about figures like Sylvia Plath or women with larger-than-life iconography and reputation and how there's a constant need to relook at their legacies and reinvent and rethink and reimagine them. There's a lot in the life of Didion that I think remains to be explored. I'm really curious to see where people go with it, especially with the opening of these archives and new personal information making its way into the world.Yeah, even just your ability to break some of those stories that have been locked away in archives out sounds like a really exciting addition to the scholarship. Just backing out a little bit, we live in a moment in which the relationship between pop culture and political life is fairly directly intertwined. Setting aside the steel-plated elephant in the room, you and I are friendly because we bonded over this idea that movies really are consequential. Coming out of this book and coming out of reporting on it, what are some of the relevances for today in particular?Yeah, I mean, a lot more than I thought, I guess, five years ago. I started work on the book at the end of Trump One, and it's coming out at the beginning of Trump Two, and there was this period in the middle of a slightly different vibe. But even then I watch TikTok or whatever. You see people talk about “main character energy” or the “vibe shift” or all of romanticizing your life. I would have loved to read a Didion essay on the way that young people sort of view themselves through the logic of the screens they have lived on and the way that has shaped America for a long time.I should confirm this, I don't think she wrote about Obama, or if she did, it was only a little bit. So her political writing ends in George W. Bush's era. I think there's one piece on Obama, and then she's writing about other things. It's just interesting to think about how her ideas of what has happened to political culture in America have seeped into the present day.I think the Hollywood logic, the cinematic logic has given way to reality TV logic. That's very much the logic of the Trump world, right? Still performing for cameras, but the cameras have shifted. The way that we want things from the cameras has shifted, too. Reality TV is a lot about creating moments of drama where they may or may not actually exist and bombarding you with them. I think that's a lot of what we see and what we feel now. I have to imagine she would think about it that way.There is one interesting essay that I feel has only recently been talked about. It's at the beginning of my book, too. It was in a documentary, and Gia Tolentino wrote about it recently. It's this essay she wrote in 2000 about Martha Stewart and about Martha Stewart's website. It feels like the 2000s was like, “What is this website thing? Why are people so into it?” But really, it's an essay about parasocial relationships that people develop (with women in particular) who they invent stories around and how those stories correspond to greater American archetypes. It's a really interesting essay, not least because I think it's an essay also about people's parasocial relationships with Joan Didion.So the rise of her celebrity in the 21st century, where people know who she is and carry around a tote bag, but don't really know what they're getting themselves into is very interesting to me. I think it is also something she thought about quite a bit, while also consciously courting it.Yeah, I mean, that makes a ton of sense. For someone who was so adept at using cinematic language to describe her own life with every living being having a camera directly next to them at all times. It seems like we are very much living in a world that she had at least put a lot of thought into, even if the technology wasn't around for her to specifically address it.Yes, completely.On that note, where can folks find the book? Where can folks find you? What's the elevator pitch for why they ought to check this out? Joan Didion superfan or just rather novice?Exactly! I think this book is not just for the fans, let me put it that way. Certainly, I think anyone who considers themselves a Didion fan will have a lot to enjoy here. The stuff you didn't know, hadn't read or just a new way to think through her cultural impact. But also, this is really a book that's as much for people who are just interested in thinking about the world we live in today a little critically. It's certainly a biography of American political culture as much as it is of Didion. There's a great deal of Hollywood history in there as well. Thinking about that sweep of the American century and change is what the book is doing. It's very, very, very informed by what I do in my day job as a movie critic at The New York Times. Thinking about what movies mean, what do they tell us about ourselves? I think this is what this book does. I have been told it's very fun to read. So I'm happy about that. It's not ponderous at all, which is good. It's also not that long.It comes out March 11th from Live Right, which is a Norton imprint. There will be an audiobook at the end of May that I am reading, which I'm excited about. And I'll be on tour for a large amount of March on the East Coast. Then in California, there's a virtual date, and there's a good chance I'll be popping up elsewhere all year, too. Those updates will be on my social feeds, which are all @alissawilkinson on whatever platform except X, which is fine because I don't really post there anymore.Alyssa, thank you so much for coming on.Thank you so much.Edited by Crystal Wang.If you have anything you'd like to see in this Sunday special, shoot me an email. Comment below! Thanks for reading, and thanks so much for supporting Numlock.Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber! Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.numlock.com/subscribe

Alissa Wilkinson joins Jeff to talk about her new book, We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. Subscribe to First Edition via RSS, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. For episode extras, subscribe to the First Edition Substack. This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission. Discussed in this episode: We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine by Alissa Wilkinson Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dave and Alonso welcome New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson to discuss her fascinating new book about author Joan Didion, her encounters with Hollywood, and her understanding of how show-business became the dominant language of the 20th century and beyond. We Tell Ourselves Stories is on sale now. Join our club, won't you?

Alissa Wilkinson: Gibson (3 ounces gin, 1/2 ounce dry vermouth, onion)Film Critic for the New York Times, Alissa gives her take on the Oscars, shares some insider info on Siskel and Ebert, discusses the beginning and end of the Golden Age of TV along with some of her favorites from the era, reflects on Joan Dideon's admiration for John Wayne and Barry Goldwater along with her surprising takes on their present day closest equivalents, and identifies why 9-11 was a before-and-after moment for American filmmaking.

This conversation with Alissa Wilkinson is a fascinating exploration of how the stories we tell ourselves - through Hollywood, through politics, through the media - shape the very fabric of our culture and our history. Wilkinson's work on the iconic writer Joan Didion provides a powerful lens to examine how the narratives we construct, often unconsciously, can profoundly influence the way we see the world and the decisions we make as individuals and as a society. What's so compelling about this discussion is the way it peels back the layers on these deeply ingrained stories - the myths of the American West, the heroic narratives of World War II, the celebrity-driven politics of the Reagan era. Wilkinson shows how these cultural touchstones don't just reflect our values, but actively shape them, often in ways that obscure uncomfortable truths or justify harmful actions. In an age where the very notion of objective reality is under assault, this conversation reminds us of the vital importance of interrogating the stories we tell ourselves. Because the stories we choose to believe - whether about our national identity, our political leaders, or our own personal histories - have real consequences. They determine how we see the world, how we make decisions, and ultimately, the kind of future we create for ourselves. So I encourage you to listen closely, to wrestle with the questions Wilkinson raises about the power of narrative, and to consider how the stories you've internalized might be shaping your own understanding of the world. It's a conversation that gets to the heart of what it means to be human in a complex, ever-shifting cultural landscape. Alissa Wilkinson is a movie critic at the New York Times and the author of "We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine," which will be published by Liveright on March 11, 2025.Alissa's Book:We Tell Ourselves StoriesAlissa's Recommendations:PredatorsZodiac Killer Project Subscribe to Our Substack: Shifting CultureConnect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.usGo to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Threads, Bluesky or YouTubeConsider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link belowEmail jjohnson@allnations.us, so we can get your creative project off the ground! Faith That Challenges. Conversations that Matter. Laughs included. Subscribe Now!Breaking down faith, culture & big questions - a mix of humor with real spiritual growth. Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the show

In this heartfelt episode, Phil and Emily dive into the tender world of A Walk to Remember, the 2002 teen romance that left a lasting imprint on early-2000s cinema. Joined by film critic Alissa Wilkinson from Vox, the trio explores the movie's emotional journey—from its understated charm and iconic performances by Mandy Moore and Shane West to its poignant themes of love, loss, and transformation.Together, they unpack how this beloved classic not only captured the spirit of a generation but also redefined what a teen romance could be. Whether you're reminiscing about your first love or discovering the film for the first time, join us for an intimate conversation that proves A Walk to Remember is truly timeless.Follow Alissa Wilkinson on Twitter: @alissawilkinsonTune in now and relive the magic of early-2000s romance! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Ep. 292: Alissa Wilkinson on Sundance 2025: Predators, Zodiac Killer Project, Life After, Middletown Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For the latest Sundance 2025 podcast, I spoke with New York Times movie critic Alissa Wilkinson about some highlights in this year's edition. We ended up talking about key documentaries: Predators (directed by David Osit), Middletown (Jesse Moss and Amanda McBaine), Life After (Reid Davenport), and Zodiac Killer Project (Charlie Shackleton). We also chat about the current climate for documentaries and how they go out into the world. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

We are excited to welcome Alissa Wilkinson back to the show. Alissa is an author and staff film critic for the New York Times. It has been a few years since we had her on the show to talk about the 2019 Greta Gerwig adaptation of Little Women and since then she's written two wonderful books, the most recent being We Tell Ourselves Stories: Joan Didion and the American Dream Machine. We talk Joan Didion, John Wayne, old Hollywood, growing up in fundamentalism, the subversive spirituality of Martin Scorsese, what Jackass has to say (or show) about male friendship, and much more! If you enjoy the episode, please be sure to share it with a friend or two! Jackass Article Pre-Order We Tell Ourselves Stories *Pre-order from your local bookseller if possible! Shoutouts: Frederick Wiseman films (Available on Kanopy) How to Do Nothing A Different Man The Apprentice Follow Alissa Website Instagram BlueSky Follow Us ⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Philip's Letterboxd⁠⁠⁠⁠ Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us: Email: thesubstancepod@gmail.com DM on Instagram Support Us: Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod

Hello cult leaders and self-loathing playwrights and all the ships at sea and welcome to A Very Good Year. As you probably know by now we are retiring this show and coming back in 2025 with a whole new show, Guide for the Film Fanatic, this Sunday! The show is based on a film-by-film run through of Danny Peary's seminal 1986 book of the same name, where one of our fabulous guests picks a film and we dive in. In the meantime we're revisiting some of our favorite guests and favorite movies by decade. This week we're looking back at the 1990s, objectively a great decade for movies and a very formative one for many of our guests (and hosts).In this episode we've got Mac Welch, David Simms, Keith Phipps, John Early, Karen Han, Hunter Harris, Alissa Wilkinson, Roxana Hadadi, Daniel Waters, Kristen Meinzer, Siddhant Adlakha, Allison Herman, Abby Olcese, Noel Murray, and Emily St. James.Enjoy! For show notes - including where to stream this week's movies, links to referenced media, and more - subscribe on Buttondown at https://buttondown.email/AVeryGoodYear. https://plus.acast.com/s/a-very-good-year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Alissa Wilkinson, movie critic at The New York Times, and Stephen Petrus, director of Public History Programs at LaGuardia and Wagner Archives and co-author of the book Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival (2015), discuss the new Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, and reflect on the singer's legacy as portrayed through film. 

In what has become an annual tradition, we welcome back our good friend, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson, to look back at the movie year we just finished — without the benefit of hindsight! Hear Alissa and Mike geek out about “Eno,” our conversation on the first-person camera of “Nickel Boys,” everyone falling for “Anora,” and more.   For show notes - including where to stream this week's movies, links to referenced media, and more - subscribe on Buttondown at https://buttondown.email/AVeryGoodYear. https://plus.acast.com/s/a-very-good-year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Twenty years ago on Christmas Day, Wes Anderson released his fourth feature film into the world. The star-studded Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was not as an immediate hit as some of Anderson's other films but it's one that has aged incredibly well. Bill Murray leads a cast of phenomenal actors such as Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, Anjelica Huston, and many others as the titular Steve Zissou on a quest for both revenge against the rare (and possibly fictional) shark that killed his partner and best friend, and his long lost dignity and relevance as an oceanographer and documentarian. As funny as it is, the movie also is about a man struggling against his mortality and seeking to repair his legacy. It's charming, exciting, funny, and deeply heartfelt. Whether you revisit this as an old favorite or are coming to it for the first time, we hope you enjoy! We are also thrilled to welcome Dan McCoy (The Flop House podcast, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) to discuss the film with us. Dan is a veteran writer, comedian, podcaster, and movie watcher and it was a wonderful time having him on to talk about one of his favorite films. Follow/Listen to The Flop House Substantive Cinema Episode List If you're newer to the show be sure to check out our library of 150+ episodes with folks like Filmspotting's Josh Larsen, artist Stephanie Stalvey, Jemar Tisby, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson, Propaganda, actor/director John Carroll Lynch, Kaitlyn Schiess (The Holy Post), and our old pal Slim (Letterboxd & 70mm Podcast). Shoutouts: The Burial Continental Drifter by Kathy MacLeod The Last Stop in Yuma County Hundreds of Beavers Dan: Letterboxd BlueSky Website Follow Us ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Philip's Letterboxd⁠⁠ Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us: Email: thesubstancepod@gmail.com DM on Instagram Support Us: Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thesubstancepod/support

Hey there, and Merry almost Christmas! This week we've got a wonderful conversation about faith and art that covers the width and breadth of global, historical Christianity as well as the importance of one's personal spiritual practices. Our guest today is Rev. Ben Lansing who is a professional comic strip artist by vocation as well as running the Our Church Speaks Instagram account. Ben's passion for art, history, and his faith were very encouraging to me, especially as he seems to approach it all with curiosity and humility. Please enjoy and share it with a friend! Buy Our Church Speaks If you enjoyed the film or our discussion we'd love for you to send us an email or voice note. And if you have any suggestions of movies, topics, or guests for future shows, please send those our way as well! Be sure to check out our library of 150+ episodes with folks like Filmspotting's Josh Larsen, artist Stephanie Stalvey, Jemar Tisby, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson, Propaganda, actor/director John Carroll Lynch, Kaitlyn Schiess, and Robert P. Jones. Shoutouts: Lost to the West by Lars Brownworth How Africa Shaped the Christian Mind by Thomas C. Oden Truth Unites podcast (Gavin Ortlund) Ancient Faith Radio podcasts The Classic Anglican Podcast The Substance! Bob Dylan Follow Us ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Philip's Letterboxd⁠⁠ Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us: Email: thesubstancepod@gmail.com DM on Instagram Support Us: Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thesubstancepod/support

Endlich meldet sich Framing zurück aus der etwas lang geratenen Sommerpause. In dieser 15. regulären Ausgabe lädt Till Kadritzke zum Mainstream-Plausch – und fragt seine Gäste Hannah Pilarczyk, Dunja Bialas und Thomas Willmann erstmal, was das überhaupt ist. Ausführlich besprechen wir Edward Bergers Bestseller-Verfilmung Konklave und Steve McQueens Apple-Produktion Blitz, außerdem berichten Dunja und Till von zwei Festivalfilmen, die sie beim Internationalen Filmfest Mannheim-Heidelberg und beim DOK Leipzig gesehen haben. Unter unseren letzten Hinweisen tummeln sich dieses Mal nicht nur Kinotermine, sondern auch Games, Zeitschriften und Hörbücher. KORREKTUR: Die erwähnte Filmkritik zu Blitz aus der New York Times stammt von Alissa Wilkinson, nicht von Melissa Anderson. Abonniert unseren Podcast in euren Podcatchern und lasst uns gern eine Bewertung da. Unterstützen könnt ihr uns bei ⁠⁠Steady⁠⁠ Auch über Feedback und Vorschläge freuen wir uns: ⁠podcast@critic.de⁠ Und so geht es durch die Folge:(00:00:00) Begrüßung und die Mainstream-Frage(00:05:20) Konklave(00:25:11) Festival-Berichte aus Mannheim und Leipzig(00:30:34) Blitz(00:52:27) Letzte Hinweise Wo die Filme sehen?Konklave läuft seit dem 21. November 2024 im Kino, Blitz lässt sich auf Apple+ streamen. Dea Kulumbegashvilis April ist im Rahmen des 14 Films Around the World Festivals in Berlin, Köln und Nürnberg zu sehen. Für Aysun Bademsoys Spielerinnen gibt es noch keinen Starttermin. Material zu KonklaveConclave und die Meme Culture (NY Times) Material zu BlitzBarbara Schweizerhof über Blitz (Die Presse)"How ‘Blitz' Recreates War-Torn London" (NY Times)Alissa Wilkinson on Blitz (NY Times)Interview mit Steve McQueen von Hannah Pilarczyk (Der Spiegel) Letzte HinweiseSerie The Franchise auf SkyComputerspiel MiniaturesWerner Herzog im Filmmuseum München am 6. (Werner-Herzog-Filmpreisträger Allen Sunshine), 7. (Kurzfilme) und 8. (Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht) DezemberZeitschrift Berlin Review – neueste Printausgabe Reader 2Hannah Pilarczyk stellt Dea Kulumbegashvilis April am 3. Dezember 2024 in der Berliner Kulturbrauerei vorHörbuch Der eiserne Marquis von Thomas Willmann Follow UsFolgt Till Kadritzke auf⁠⁠ ⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠,⁠⁠ ⁠X⁠⁠⁠ und⁠⁠ ⁠Bluesky⁠⁠Lest Hannah Pilarczyk beim ⁠⁠Spiegel⁠Lest die Bücher von Thomas Willmann (Das finstere Tal und Der eiserne Marquis) und seine Kritiken beim Münchner Merkur

Four weeks in a row, can you believe it?! This week we are back with a Substantive Cinema pick that we've been excited for for quite some time, Walter Hill's underrated masterpiece Southern Comfort. The movie follows a squad of National Guardsmen doing exercises in the Louisiana swamps. After some painfully avoidable events, the men become hunted and are on the run for their lives against an enemy of their own making in a place that, while actually being part of their own homeland, they find entirely foreign. On the one hand, the film is a perfectly thrilling and taut entertainment. However, it's also a substantive look at White male entitlement, American exceptionalism, militarism, race relations, and more. If you enjoyed the film or our discussion we'd love for you to send us an email or voice note. And if you have any suggestions of movies, topics, or guests for future shows, please send those our way as well! Listen to Mitchell's previous Substantive Cinema appearance Mitchell's Walter Hill Interview WH Filmography Ranked Mitchell on Letterboxd Purchase the Vinegar Syndrome 4K Streaming options for Southern Comfort List of Substantive Cinema movies If you're newer to the show be sure to check out our library of 150+ episodes with folks like Filmspotting's Josh Larsen, artist Stephanie Stalvey, Jemar Tisby, New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson, Propaganda, actor/director John Carroll Lynch, and our old pal Slim (Letterboxd & 70mm Podcast). Shoutouts: Witness in the City (Radiance Films) Troy article (Paste) Ethan & Maya Hawke interview Follow Us ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠Twitter⁠ ⁠Philip's Letterboxd⁠ Share Your Questions/Suggestions/Feedback With Us: Email: thesubstancepod@gmail.com DM on Instagram Support Us: Support the show with an individual donation on CashApp to $TheSubstancePod or become a monthly Patreon supporter at patreon.com/TheSubstancePod --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thesubstancepod/support

Today NY Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson joins us to share her journey from freelancer, to teacher, to full time critic. It's inspiring! Follow Alissa on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/alissawilkinson/?hl=en Check out Alissa's website https://www.alissawilkinson.com/ For our panel on Best of Movies 2024 So Far https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsUGj9RUh04 Get our awesome Female Film Critics Speak Out logo at our merch store for all kinds of designs for mugs, masks, shirts and more https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hallmarkies?ref_id=8581 For all our Female Film Critics panels https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7wz447AgL4y6x38rcvZNfRlfYQUgWpDP Check out the Online Association of Female Film Critics https://oaffc.com/ Check out Cherry Picks https://www.thecherrypicks.com Please support my content on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Listen to Hallmarkies Podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmarkies-podcast/id1296728288 Follow Rachel's Reviews on Itunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rachels-reviews/id1278536301?mt=2 Follow Rachel's Reviews at https://rachelsreviews.net Follow Rachel on twitter https://twitter.com/rachel_reviews Follow Rachel on facebook https://www.facebook.com/smilingldsgirlreviews/ Find the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Check out Hallmarkies Twitter at https://twitter.com/HallmarkiesPod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today NY Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson joins us to share her journey from freelancer, to teacher, to full time critic. It's inspiring! Follow Alissa on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/alissawilkinson/?hl=en Check out Alissa's website https://www.alissawilkinson.com/ For our panel on Best of Movies 2024 So Far https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsUGj9RUh04 Get our awesome Female Film Critics Speak Out logo at our merch store for all kinds of designs for mugs, masks, shirts and more https://www.teepublic.com/stores/hallmarkies?ref_id=8581 For all our Female Film Critics panels https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7wz447AgL4y6x38rcvZNfRlfYQUgWpDP Check out the Online Association of Female Film Critics https://oaffc.com/ Check out Cherry Picks https://www.thecherrypicks.com Please support my content on patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Listen to Hallmarkies Podcast at https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hallmarkies-podcast/id1296728288 Follow Rachel's Reviews on Itunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rachels-reviews/id1278536301?mt=2 Follow Rachel's Reviews at https://rachelsreviews.net Follow Rachel on twitter https://twitter.com/rachel_reviews Follow Rachel on facebook https://www.facebook.com/smilingldsgirlreviews/ Find the patreon at https://www.patreon.com/hallmarkies Check out Hallmarkies Twitter at https://twitter.com/HallmarkiesPod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ep. 274: Alissa Wilkinson on NYFF: Suburban Fury, My Undesirable Friends, Wang Bing, 7 Walks with Mark Brown, Nickel Boys Redux Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. In the concluding week of the 62nd New York Film Festival, I sat down with Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times to hear her initial thoughts on a few titles. Two were world premieres: Suburban Fury (directed by Robinson Devor) and My Undesirable Friends: Part 1—Last Air in Moscow (Julia Loktev). The other titles include Wang Bing's Youth Trilogy (Spring, Hard Times, and Homecoming), 7 Walks with Mark Brown (Vincent Barré, Pierre Creton), and Nickel Boys (RaMell Ross). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

We'd love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. Take the survey here or at wbur.org/survey. In Kamala Harris' second high-profile national interview since becoming the Democratic nominee for president, she took questions from members of the National Association of Black Journalists. Politico's Eugene Daniels was one of the interviewers. He joins us. Then, in his new book "Hope For Cynics," Jamil Zaki tackles cynicism and how its rise might be eroding society. Zaki joins us. And, 25 years ago, Neo took the "red pill" and learned the true nature of his reality. New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson explains why "The Matrix" is more relevant than ever.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Do you have a TV show you hate-watch? As streaming platforms and their algorithms collect more data on the types of shows we like to watch, they feed us shows that are so close to something we've loved in the past, but something about them is off. What starts as an earnest TV show tune-in becomes a show you can't stop complaining about at happy hour. As New York Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson writes, “you can only hate-watch a show that you theoretically should have loved.” We'll talk with Wilkinson about how a hate-watch is different from a guilty pleasure, why we participate in this weird cultural phenomenon, and we hear from you: What are you hate-watching? Guests: Alissa Wilkinson, movie critic, New York Times

Life & Faith producer, Allan Dowthwaite, takes over the studio to mark 500 episodes of amazing conversations.Allan Dowthwaite, CPX's media director, normally runs the recording studio for the team. But in this special episode, marking twelve-and-a-half years of the podcast, he's commandeered the mic as your personal guide to Life & Faith's greatest conversations, organised into the following categories for your listening pleasure.Links are included to any episode you want to listen to in full.The cultural waters in which we swim, featuring Sydney Morning Herald Economics Editor Ross Gittins, political scientist Dale Kuehne, New York Times film writer Alissa Wilkinson, cultural critic Andy Crouch, and author Tim Winton.How Christianity explains our world, featuring cold case detective Jim Warner Wallace, author Marilynne Robinson, author Francis Spufford, and historian Tom Holland.Surprising stories, featuring Oxford mathematician John Lennox, Alex Gaffikin, who wintered on Antarctica for two years, Johnnie Walker, beloved authority on the Camino de Santiago, and the late scholar of African-American religion, Albert J. Raboteau.Indigenous Australians, featuring Yorta Yorta man William Cooper, Torres Strait Islander leader and pastor Gabriel Bani, and Aunty Maureen Atkinson, member of the Stolen Generation.Changing one's mind about faith, featuring ABC Religion & Ethics editor Scott Stephens and author Susannah McFarlane.Ordinary people, extraordinary acts, featuring Australian nurse Valerie...

Ep. 244: Cannes 2024 with Alissa Wilkinson: Furiosa, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, The Invasion, Ghost Trail, Ernest Cole Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw, with your host, Nicolas Rapold. The 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival is officially underway, and it's easy to miss films in the scrum of first few days. So I spoke with Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times about, yes, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, but also Ghost Trail (directed by Jonathan Millet) in Critics' Week, On Becoming a Guinea Fowl (Rungano Nyoni) in Un Certain Regard, Sergei Loznitsa's wartime Ukraine documentary The Invasion, and Ernest Cole: Lost and Found, Raoul Peck's look at the photographer and South African exile. Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Every spring the New Directors/New Films festival at Film at Lincoln Center and MoMA puts on an exciting showcase of movies by the best emerging filmmakers around the world. It's always a reliable sign of the trends to come and the talents to look out for—past editions have featured early films by Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, Kelly Reichardt, and others. Over the past few years, Film Comment has established our own annual tradition of previewing the best movies in the New Directors/New Films lineup with local critics. This time around, FC editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute were joined by Vadim Rizov (Filmmaker Magazine) and Alissa Wilkinson (The New York Times) for a rundown of some of the gems in the 2023 edition, including including A Good Place, Dreaming & Dying, The Day I Met You, Explanation for Everything, and more.

Frank Herbert's epic novel “Dune” and its successors have been entrenched in the science fiction and fantasy canon for almost six decades, a rite of passage for proudly nerdy readers across the generations. But “Dune” is experiencing a broader cultural resurgence at the moment thanks to Denis Villeneuve's recent film adaptations starring Timothée Chalamet. (Part 2 is in theaters now.)This week on the podcast, Gilbert Cruz talks to The Times's critic Alissa Wilkinson, who covers movies, culture and religion, about Herbert's novel, Villeneuve's films and the enduring hold of Fremen lore on the audience's imagination.“There's a couple things that I think are really unsettling in ‘Dune,'” Wilkinson says. “One is, the vision of Frank Herbert was, I believe, to basically write a book that questioned authoritarians and hero mythology genuinely, across the board. Any kind of a hero figure he is proposing will always have things and people come up alongside that hero figure that distort their influence. Even if they intend well, if they're benevolent, there's still all of this really awful stuff that comes along with it. So Paul is a messiah figure — we believe he wants good things for most of the book — and then he turns on a dime or it feels like he might be turning on a dime. You can never quite tell where anyone stands in this book. And I think that is unsettling, especially because so many of the other kinds of things that we watch — the superhero movies, “Star Wars,” whatever — there's a clear-cut good and evil fight going on. Good and evil don't really exist in ‘Dune.'”We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@nytimes.com.

The New York Times's film critic Alissa Wilkinson has a theory about movies: They're all about relationships. No matter how big the action, the suspense and tension we experience when watching a film is often really about the feelings between the characters.But romantic relationships often fall back on old tropes, like the long-suffering wife of an ex-cop who can't resist that one last, risky case. (We all know her; she leaves teary voice messages urging him to be safe.) Some of this year's Oscar-nominated films give us fresher portraits of love. Alissa and our host, Anna Martin, discuss the relationships that defy convention or easy definition, and push us to reconsider how we think about human connection, in three of those movies: “Poor Things,” “Maestro” and “Past Lives.”

We all have different opinions on dining alone. Some people relish the experience. Others would rather eat a bowl of bees than feel vulnerable at a table for one. . .perhaps thinking to themselves - are people judging me?  This hour, producer Katrice Claudio reflects on solo dining and how it can actually be a way to connect — with yourself, and others. Katrice talks with writer Alissa Wilkinson. She's a movie critic for The New York Times, and the author of the book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women. A year ago, Alissa wrote an article for Vox called “The Glories of Dining Out Alone.” Alissa explains some of the history of dining alone, the stigma people may still feel, and takeaways for solo-diners. . . so you might feel a little more confident if taking yourself out to dinner is part of your self-care. Katrice also talks with local bartender Anna Konya about her experiences observing and interacting with lots of solo diners grabbing a meal at the bar. Plus, get to know the New York City photographer behind the book, Dining Alone: In the Company of Solitude. Aside from its portraits of solo-diners, the book is an interesting visual history of restaurants spanning 35 years. GUESTS: Alissa Wilkinson: Writer and a movie critic for The New York Times. She's the author of the book, Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women, and she wrote an article for Vox called “The Glories of Dining Out Alone.” Anna Konya: Writer, experienced bartender and cultural commentator. Find Anna's writing at Daily Nutmeg (@theflowingcup) Nancy Scherl: Fine art photographer. Her book is Dining Alone: In the Company of Solitude, (published by Daylight Books). This show was produced by Robyn Doyon-Aitken, Meg Dalton, Katrice Claudio, Tagan Engel, Stephanie Stender, Meg Fitzgerald, and Sabrina Herrera. Join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and email: seasoned@ctpublic.org. Seasoned is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode.Support the show: https://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ep. 220: Sundance 2024: Alissa Wilkinson on Look Into My Eyes, Girls State, A.I. Docs, Will & Harper, Coup d'Etat Welcome to The Last Thing I Saw with your host, Nicolas Rapold. For my latest episode on the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, I welcome returning guest Alissa Wilkinson of The New York Times. Films discussed include: Look Into My Eyes (directed by Lana Wilson), Girls State (directed by Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss), a couple of docs about artificial intelligence (Eternal You and Love Machina), Will & Harper (directed by Josh Greenbaum and co-starring Will Ferrell), and Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Johan Grimonprez). Please support the production of this podcast by signing up at: rapold.substack.com Photo by Steve Snodgrass

Every January, Film Comment editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute like to take stock of holiday multiplex offerings with an episode they call "New Year, New Releases." For the 2024 edition, they invited FC podcast veteran Alissa Wilkinson, staff critic at the New York Times, and first-time guest Robert Daniels, an editor at RogerEbert.com. They started off this year's haul with a pair of sports movies about bad dads and the perils of masculinity: The Iron Claw, directed by Sean Durkin, about the Von Erich family of pro-wrestlers; and Ferrari, by Michael Mann, about Enzo Ferrari, and his F1 racing ambitions. Then they discussed the new book-to-movie-to-stage-to-movie adaptation, The Color Purple, and The Book of Clarence, a befuddling Jesus comedy starring Lakeith Stanfield.

Since she last joined us to talk about 2005 back in September, Alissa Wilkinson nabbed a new gig: she's now a movie critic for the New York Times. So she joins us to talk about that transition and the films of the year that just ended – our favorites of ‘23, for starters, as well as some of the (mostly heartening) trends we've seen in moviemaking and moviegoing this year. Become a member for Bonus Episodes, personal stories of working in the industry, and yes - EVEN MORE MOVIES. https://plus.acast.com/s/a-very-good-year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The holidays are here but we're cursed with more streaming news for you! Find out the exciting new bundle of the week! Experience deja vu with the news of Showtime's confusing rebranding! And you'll never guess where Disney's synergy is headed next! Plus we review the first two episodes of Nathan Fielder's The Curse. (You might not want to listen to that part with the kids…) ———

Guest host Alissa Wilkinson speaks with Walt Hickey about his new book, You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything. They discuss how entertainment affects the physical and mental states of viewers — from blood coagulation during horror movie screenings to an increase in Dalmatian adoptions after 101 Dalmatians was released in theaters — and why our responses to what we watch are worth celebrating. Host: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), senior culture writer, Vox Guest: Walt Hickey, (@walterhickey) author, You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything References:  You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything by Walt Hickey (Workman Publishing Company, 2023) “How to Use Math to Crush Your Friends at Monopoly Like You've Never Done Before” by Walt Hickey (Business Insider, Jun. 2013) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

 Show NotesSalty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary WomenCreative non-fiction and “essays” as a genre“I guess what I was trying to do was come up with ways into the lives of these women who I find interesting. That would also be compelling to someone who had never heard of them.”Dinner partyHannah Arendt and her cocktail partiesA subversive feast among friendsArguing in order to find out what you thinkThinking as a conversation with the selfLove in the specificity of relationshipAmor mundi—love of the world“Loving the world means working on two specific tasks. The first is to doggedly, insist on seeing the world just as it is with its disappointments and horrors and committing to it all the same. The second is to encounter people in the world and embrace their alterity, or difference.”Arendt's “banality of evil”The importance of letter-writing for sharing the self and inhabiting a years-long friendshipEdna Lewis, Freetown, Virginia, and “The Taste of Southern Cooking”Farm-to-table cooking used to be out of economic necessity, not a hip or high fine dining experienceEdna Lewis's Southern identity: "Lewis defines Southern as the experience of an emancipated people and their descendants, a cultural and culinary heritage to be proud of a distinctly American culture. And as she offers definitions, readers are reminded, she's refusing to be defined by anyone but herself.”“What Is Southern?” Gourmet Magazine—reclaiming Southern cooking for Black SouthernersThe Los Padres National Forest Supper ClubBabette's Feast (1987)The menu from Babette's FeastThe place of joy and pleasure in a flourishing spiritual lifeRobert Farrar Capon, The Supper of the LambFood and recognition“Learning how to taste”“Every dinner party is an act of hope.”About Alissa WilkinsonAlissa Wilkinson is a Brooklyn-based critic, journalist, and author. She is a senior correspondent and critic at Vox.com, writing about film, TV, and culture. She is currently writing We Tell Ourselves Stories, a cultural history of American myth-making in Hollywood through the life and work of Joan Didion, which will be published by Liveright.She's contributed essays, features, and criticism to a wide variety of publications, including Rolling Stone, Vulture, Bon Appetit, Eater, RogerEbert.com, Pacific Standard, The Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Books & Culture, Christianity Today, and others. I'm a member of the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the Writers Guild of America, East, and was an inaugural writing fellow with the Sundance Institute's Art of Nonfiction initiative. She's served on juries at the Sundance Film Festival, DOC NYC, Sheffield Doc/Fest, the Hamptons International Film Festival, and others, and selection committees for groups including the Gotham Awards and the Sundance Documentary Film Program.In June 2022, her book Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women was published by Broadleaf Books. In 2016, her book How to Survive the Apocalypse: Zombies, Cylons, and Politics at the End of the World was released, co-written with Robert Joustra.I frequently pop up as a commentator and guest host on radio, TV, and podcasts. Some recent appearances include CBS News; PBS Newshour; CNN International Newsroom; BBC America's Talking Movies; NPR's Morning Edition, All Things Considered, On Point, and 1A; HBO's Allen v. Farrow; AMC's James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction; WNYC's The Takeaway; ABC's Religion & Ethics and The Drum; CBC Eyeopener, Vox's Today, Explained and The Gray Area; and many more. For 14 years, until the college ceased offering classes in 2023, she was also an associate professor of English and humanities at The King's College in New York City, and taught courses in criticism, cinema studies, literature, and cultural theory. She earned an M.F.A in creative nonfiction from Seattle Pacific University, an M.A. in humanities and social thought from New York University, and a B.S. in information technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.You can read my most up-to-date work on my Vox author page, or subscribe to my mostly-weekly newsletter. Production NotesThis podcast featured Alissa WilkinsonEdited and Produced by Evan RosaHosted by Evan RosaProduction Assistance by Liz Vukovic, Macie Bridge, and Kaylen YunA Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School https://faith.yale.edu/aboutSupport For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: https://faith.yale.edu/give 

Alissa Wilkinson - senior correspondent and critic at Vox - was just out of college in 2005 and, when the year began, she had not yet decided to devote her life to film criticism. But this was the year that she made that decision, so she joins us this week to discuss the movies that opened her eyes as a moviegoer and a critic. (This episode is sponsored by the New York Film Festival.) Become a member for Bonus Episodes, personal stories of working in the industry, and yes - EVEN MORE MOVIES. https://plus.acast.com/s/a-very-good-year. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Remember when everyone freaked the f*** out about that French movie on Netflix? No? Well everybody, let us introduce you to: Cuties. In this episode, Hannah and Maia discuss Maïmouna Doucouré's quaint 2020 coming-of-age film and the all out moral panic that it spawned on the internet - which culminated in a real life obscenity lawsuit against Netflix. Discussions include: the thin line between depiction and endorsement, America's many moral triggers and paradoxical attitude towards sex, the weaponizing of children as a political tool, the cultural consequences of Jeffrey Epstein, and Netflix… actually... defending… art?  Support the Patreon and get juicy bonus content!: https://www.patreon.com/rehashpodcast Intro and outro song by our talent friend Ian Mills: ⁠https://linktr.ee/ianmillsmusic Sources: Caira Conner, “Watching the Outrage Over Cuties as a Survivor of P*dophilia” The Atlantic (2020). Maria Cramer, “Netflix Is Charged in Texas With Promoting Lewdness in ‘Cuties'” The New York Times (2020). Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 20 (1994). Zack Sharf, “‘Cuties' Director Speaks Out Amid Backlash Film Sexualizes Children, Netflix Stands by It” Indie Wire (2020). Alissa Wilkinson and Aja Romano, How Cuties, a French movie on Netflix, became part of America's culture war” Vox (2020).

This episode explores how the arts can help us transcend some of the worries in contemporary society, from polarization and entrenched tribalism, to our massive decline in public trust, to informational rabbit holes, to other discouraging and sometimes heartbreaking news. How do stories help us renew?     This conversation was originally featured at Faith Angle West 2023 in Seattle, WA. and the full-length talk is linked below. Alissa Wilkinson has covered film and culture since 2016 for Vox, and she been a prolific film critic since a decade prior. Brad Winters – who speaks immediately following Alissa – is a writer, producer, and showrunner who helped direct and oversee TV dramas including “Oz” (where he started his career as a writer), “Boss,” “The Americans,” “The Sinner,” and “Berlin Station.” So we'll hear Alissa's reflections about how faith and Hollywood relate to one another, followed by Brad's take as an on-set practitioner—about how he's tried to stay true.     Guests Alissa Wilkinson  Bradford Winters    Additional Resources "Storytelling and Hollywood," full Faith Angle West 2023 session  "Jesus Is Calling...on Netflix's 'Beef'" in Christianity Today  "Lessons from a Barbenheimer Summer," by Alissa Wilkinson 

The actors are officially on strike. Vox senior correspondent and critic Alissa Wilkinson breaks down what SAG-AFTRA is afta, and the New Yorker's Michael Schulman explains how one of Netflix's first original shows was an early warning sign. This episode was produced by Amanda Lewellyn, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As we reach our 600th episode, John and Craig welcome back writer and director Christopher McQuarrie (Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Top Gun: Maverick, The Usual Suspects) to continue their decades-long argument on the future of the movies and the forces that power the entertainment industry. Together they lead a wide-ranging debate on the corporate lure of AI, cultivating movie stars, the bad habits writers have to unlearn, the importance of making genre movies, feeding the Hollywood machine, and the false division between art and entertainment. In our bonus segment for premium members, John, Craig and Chris discuss the best way to watch movies and the ideal exhibition of sound and picture. Links: Chris McQuarrie on IMDb and Instagram The looming threat of AI to Hollywood, and why it should matter to you by Alissa Wilkinson for Vox Anker 3-in-1 Cube with MagSafe Signal GoodRx Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt! Check out the Inneresting Newsletter Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription! Craig Mazin on Instagram John August on Twitter John on Instagram John on Mastodon Outro by Nico Mansy (send us yours!) Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Email us at ask@johnaugust.com You can download the episode here.  

Guest host Alissa Wilkinson talks with Dorothy Fortenberry, a co-showrunner, executive producer, and writer on Extrapolations, the new star-studded anthology series on Apple TV+ that imagines the ravages of climate change deeper and deeper into the future. Alissa and Dorothy discuss the challenges of making film and television about the climate crisis, the role that religion plays on the show and in addressing the emotional responses to climate change in our lives, and how climate change can rob us not only of our future — but of our past. Host: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), senior culture writer, Vox Guest: Dorothy Fortenberry (@Dorothy410berry), writer/executive producer, Extrapolations on Apple TV+ References:  Extrapolations on Apple TV+ "Laudato Si': On Care for our Common Home," encyclical of Pope Francis (May 24, 2015) "A Review: The Lotus Paradox at Warehouse Theatre" (Jan. 31, 2022) "Latin Mass, women priests, celibacy? Climate change will make all the church's arguments pointless" by Dorothy Fortenberry (America; Oct. 27, 2021)   Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest host Alissa Wilkinson talks with Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman about her new book, The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar. Dr. Coleman is the Vice President & Associate Provost for Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer at Northwestern University, where she is a Professor of Communication Studies. Together, they discuss the tropes in Black horror, and how inequity in Hollywood has shaped the attitudes of a nation toward Black people. Host: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), senior culture writer, Vox Guest: Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman (@MeansColeman), co-author of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar, Vice President & Associate Provost for Diversity & Inclusion, Professor of Communication Studies References:  The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar by Robin R. Means Coleman and Mark H. Harris (Simon & Schuster, 2023) Horror Noire: A History Of Black Horror  (Xavier Burgin, 2021)   Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Movie trailers are misleading audiences. Vox's Alissa Wilkinson says you should stop watching them. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Efim Shapiro, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Guest host Alissa Wilkinson talks with Katelyn Beaty, author of the new book Celebrities for Jesus, about how the dynamics of fame, influence, and new media are changing our experience of religious faith. They discuss how celebrities like Billy Graham set the tone for a lionization of celebrity in the Evangelical Church, why faith leaders cultivate distance from their congregations and build influencer-style social media presences, and share their thoughts on the future of the Church in our perhaps increasingly celebrity-obsessed culture. Host: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), senior culture writer, Vox Guest: Katelyn Beaty (@KatelynBeaty), author References:  Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church by Katelyn Beaty (Brazos; 2022) "Inside Hillsong, the Church of Choice for Justin Bieber and Kevin Durant" by Taffy Brodesser-Akner (GQ; Dec. 17, 2015) "After Columbine, martyrdom became a powerful fantasy for Christian teenagers" by Alissa Wilkinson (Vox; Apr. 17, 2019)   Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Senior Producer: Katelyn Bogucki Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vox's Alissa Wilkinson talks with Wall Street Journal reporter Erich Schwartzel about Red Carpet, his new book detailing the myriad ways that Hollywood movies are affected by China. They discuss how Chinese markets are essential for the budgetary math of big blockbusters, the role of the Chinese Communist Party's censors play in shaping the content of American films, and what this complicated global relationship might for Hollywood's future — and the future of movies in general. Host: Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie), film critic and senior culture reporter, Vox Guests: Erich Schwartzel (@erichschwartzel), reporter, The Wall Street Journal; author References:  Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy by Erich Schwartzel (Penguin; 2022) Enjoyed this episode? Rate Vox Conversations ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of Vox Conversations by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. Support Vox Conversations by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by:  Producer: Erikk Geannikis Editor: Amy Drozdowska Engineer: Patrick Boyd Deputy Editorial Director, Vox Talk: Amber Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices