Podcast appearances and mentions of David Remnick

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.

"Anything beats writing. Writing is tough," says John McPhee, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of more than thirty books of nonfiction.Hey CNFers, this is Episode 500 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. There are kilometer stones like 100, 200, 300, and 400, but this one, this is a milestone and it features the writer and journalist who made me want to write narrative nonfiction in the first place: John McPhee.John is a titan, a soft-spoken titan. He is the author of more than 30 books, including A Sense of Where You Are, Levels of the Game, his Pulitzer Prize-winning Annals of the Former World, and the book that made me want to write nonfiction: The Survival of the Bark Canoe. John is 94 years young, still lives in Princeton where he has taught an exclusive masterclass on factual storytelling, a class taken by the likes of David Remnick and the late Grant Wahl, I believe, among countless people who have gone on to write and report with distinction.He's been a staff writer for The New Yorker since the 1960s when William Shawn was the editor. Not long thereafter, he was offered a job to teach at his alma mater Princeton University and he famously edited students' submissions not unlike how Shawn edited him at The New Yorker. He's written about such wide ranging topics from basketball, to tennis, to bark canoes, to Alaska, to lacrosse, to oranges, to myriad topics in geology.John is synonymous with thinking through structure and coming up with unique structures for most of his stories, each one something of a fingerprint: no two are alike and the facts borne out from this intensive, slow reporting dictate the shape of the story he has locked into.His work is methodical and patient. He hangs out. He fills notebook after notebook, rarely uses a recorder, maybe only if there's someone speaking in such technical jargon that there's no way to keep pace. His career has been this wonderful balance of give and take: teach for most of the year and not write; then write and not teach. John is unassuming and gentle and an example of how you can do this work without bombast or pyro and still be riveting and sometimes downright hilarious.So we talk about: The influence of his high school English teacher Olive McKee Living room fighters Writing on spec The notebooks he's used for decades How a lack of confidences is an asset What a good editor does Writing as teaching How having a plan frees you to write The panic of having not written leads to productivity And how proud of his daughters he isParting shot on what it all means at 500 and maybe where I see the show going for the next 500.Order The Front RunnerNewsletter: Rage Against the AlgorithmWelcome to Pitch ClubShow notes: brendanomeara.com

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. Please help us improve New Yorker podcasts by filling out our listener survey: https://panel2058.na2.panelpulse.com/c/a/661hs4tSRdw2yB2dvjFyyw Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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.

New Yorker editor and the host of "The New Yorker Radio Hour" David Remnick joined NY1's Errol Louis to discuss the big mayoral win of Zohran Mamdani and look at why he strongly resonated with younger voters. Remnick also reflected on the challenges of covering President Donald Trump, the ongoing war in Ukraine, and his own remarkable tenure at The New Yorker and Netflix's upcoming documentary, "The New Yorker at 100."

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.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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.

JJ reacts to and critiques comedian Jon Stewart, who was recently interviewed by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, about the media and cultural influence of Joe Rogan, the rising suppression of political speech under the Trump administration, and the precarious future of Stewart's “The Daily Show”,  now under new ownership.Related episodes:Elon to Joe Rogan: Capitalist AI Will Bring Socialist Utopia https://youtu.be/RPWoDnk_q2EBrainiac Joe Rogan Terrified of Debating Gavin Newsom https://youtu.be/GBGhZtWvf_EJon Stewart's 2028 Hints are GOP's Worst NIGHTMARE https://youtu.be/f7jSDZYM-U8Referenced video:Will Paramount Cancel Jon Stewart? | The New Yorker Interview https://youtu.be/qJOdqLjNrf8

JJ reacts to and critiques comedian Jon Stewart, who was recently interviewed by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, about the media and cultural influence of Joe Rogan, the rising suppression of political speech under the Trump administration, and the precarious future of Stewart's “The Daily Show”,  now under new ownership.Related episodes:Elon to Joe Rogan: Capitalist AI Will Bring Socialist Utopia https://youtu.be/RPWoDnk_q2EBrainiac Joe Rogan Terrified of Debating Gavin Newsom https://youtu.be/GBGhZtWvf_EJon Stewart's 2028 Hints are GOP's Worst NIGHTMARE https://youtu.be/f7jSDZYM-U8Referenced video:Will Paramount Cancel Jon Stewart? | The New Yorker Interview https://youtu.be/qJOdqLjNrf8

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.

Beloved author Susan Orlean discusses her new book Joyride, a masterful memoir of finding her creative calling and purpose that invites us to approach life with wonder, curiosity, and an irrepressible sense of delight. Orlean is interviewed by journalist Chris Borrelli. This conversation originally took place October 24, 2025 and was recorded live at the American Writers Museum. We hope you enjoy entering the Mind of a Writer. AWM PODCAST NETWORK HUB More about Joyride: "The story of my life is the story of my stories," writes Susan Orlean in this extraordinary, era-defining memoir from one of the greatest practitioners of narrative nonfiction of our time. Joyride is a magic carpet ride through Orlean's life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, her curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular ten-year-old boy for a legendary profile ("The American Man Age Ten") to reporting on a woman who owns twenty-seven tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji. Not only does Orlean's account of a writing life offer a trove of indispensable gleanings for writers, it's also an essential and practical guide to embracing any creative path. She takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer's block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede—a Susan specialty. While Orlean has always written her way into other people's lives in order to understand the human experience, Joyride is her most personal book ever—a searching journey through finding her feet as a journalist, recovering from the excruciating collapse of her first marriage, falling head-over-heels in love again, becoming a mother while mourning the decline of her own mother, sojourning to Hollywood for films based on her work including Adaptation and Blue Crush, and confronting mortality. Joyride is also a time machine to a bygone era of journalism, from Orlean's bright start in the golden age of alt-weeklies to her career-making days working alongside icons such as Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, Anna Wintour, Sonny Mehta, and Jonathan Karp—forces who shaped the media industry as we know it today. Infused with Orlean's signature warmth and wit, Joyride is a must-read for anyone who hungers to start, build, and sustain a creative life. Orlean inspires us to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us. SUSAN ORLEAN has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. She is the New York Times bestselling author of seven books, including The Library Book, Rin Tin Tin, Saturday Night, and The Orchid Thief, which was made into the Academy Award–winning film Adaptation. She lives with her family and her animals in Los Angeles and may be reached at SusanOrlean.com and on Substack at SusanOrlean.Substack.com. CHRIS BORRELLI is a longtime features writer at the Chicago Tribune and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. His subjects have included endangered species and Godzilla and hand dryer technology and low-wage restaurant work and prop warehouses and accordion-shop owners and comedy writers and existential threat. He's a militant Rhode Islander and a Chicago resident.

Jon Stewart has been a leading figure in political comedy since before the turn of the millennium. But compared to his early years on Comedy Central's “The Daily Show”—when Stewart was merciless in his attacks on George W. Bush's Administration—these are much more challenging times for late-night comedians. Jimmy Kimmel nearly lost his job over a remark about MAGA supporters of Charlie Kirk, after the head of the F.C.C. threatened ABC. CBS recently announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's program. And Stewart now finds himself very near the hot seat: Comedy Central is controlled by David Ellison, the Trump-friendly C.E.O. of the recently merged Paramount Skydance. Stewart's contract comes up in December. “You're going to sign another one?” David Remnick asked him, in a live interview at The New Yorker Festival. “We're working on staying,” Stewart said. “You don't compromise on what you do. You do it till they tell you to leave. That's all you can do.”  Stewart, moreover, doesn't blame solely Donald Trump for recent attacks on the independence of the media, universities, and other institutions. “This is the hardest truth for us to get at, is that [these] institutions . . . have problems. They do. And, if we don't address those problems in a forthright way, then those institutions become vulnerable to this kind of assault. Credibility is not something that was just taken. It was also lost.” In fact, Stewart also directs his ire at “the Democratic Party, [which] thinks it's O.K. for their Senate to be an assisted-living facility.” “In the general-populace mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent. That's a broad-based, deep feeling. And that helps when someone comes along and goes, ‘The system is rigged,' and people go, ‘Yeah, it is rigged.' Now, he's a good diagnostician. I don't particularly care for his remedy.”This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26, 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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Jon Stewart has been a leading figure in political comedy since before the turn of the millennium. But compared to his early years on Comedy Central's “The Daily Show”—when Stewart was merciless in his attacks on George W. Bush's Administration—these are much more challenging times for late-night comedians. Jimmy Kimmel nearly lost his job over a remark about MAGA supporters of Charlie Kirk, after the head of the F.C.C. threatened ABC. CBS recently announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert's program. And Stewart now finds himself very near the hot seat: Comedy Central is controlled by David Ellison, the Trump-friendly C.E.O. of the recently merged Paramount Skydance. Stewart's contract comes up in December. “You're going to sign another one?” David Remnick asked him, in a live interview at The New Yorker Festival. “We're working on staying,” Stewart said. “You don't compromise on what you do. You do it till they tell you to leave. That's all you can do.”  Stewart, moreover, doesn't blame solely Donald Trump for recent attacks on the independence of the media, universities, and other institutions. “This is the hardest truth for us to get at, is that [these] institutions . . . have problems. They do. And, if we don't address those problems in a forthright way, then those institutions become vulnerable to this kind of assault. Credibility is not something that was just taken. It was also lost.” In fact, Stewart also directs his ire at “the Democratic Party, [which] thinks it's O.K. for their Senate to be an assisted-living facility.” “In the general-populace mind, government no longer serves the interests of the people it purports to represent. That's a broad-based, deep feeling. And that helps when someone comes along and goes, ‘The system is rigged,' and people go, ‘Yeah, it is rigged.' Now, he's a good diagnostician. I don't particularly care for his remedy.”This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 26, 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.

“Sometimes a term is so apt, its meaning so clear and so relevant to our circumstances, that it becomes more than just a useful buzzword and grows to define an entire moment,” the columnist Kyle Chayka writes, in a review of Cory Doctorow's book “Enshittification.” Doctorow, a prolific tech writer, is a co-founder of the tech blog Boing Boing, and an activist for online civil liberties with the Electronic Frontier Foundation—so he knows whereof he speaks. He argues that the phenomenon of tech platforms seemingly getting worse for users is not a matter of perception but a business strategy. For example, “the Google-D.O.J. antitrust trial last year surfaced all these memos about a fight about making Google Search worse,” Doctorow explains, in a conversation with Chayka. A Google executive had suggested that, instead of displaying perfectly prioritized results on the first search attempt, “what if we make it so that you got to search two or three times, and then, every time, we got to show you ads?” But, Doctorow argues, there is hope for a better future, if we can resist complacency; big internet platforms all depend on forms of “surveillance” of their users. “The coalition [against this] is so big, and it crosses so many political lines,” Doctorow says, “that if we could just make it illegal to spy on people, we could solve so many problems.”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.

Since Zadie Smith published her début novel, “White Teeth,” twenty-five years ago, she has been a bold and original voice in literature. But those who aren't familiar with Smith's work outside of fiction are missing out. As an essayist, in The New Yorker and other publications, Smith writes with great nuance about culture, technology, gentrification, politics; “There's really not a topic that wouldn't benefit from her insight,” David Remnick says. He spoke with Smith about her new collection of essays, “Dead and Alive.” “The one thing about talking about essays,” she notes, ruefully, “is you find yourself saying the same thing, but worse—without the commas.” One of the concerns in the book is the role of our devices, and social media in particular, in shaping our thoughts and our political discourse. “Everybody has a different emphasis on [Donald] Trump and what's going on. My emphasis has been on, to put it baldly, mind control. I think what's been interesting about the manipulations of a digital age is that it is absolutely natural and normal for people to be offended at the idea that they are being manipulated. None of us like to feel that way. And I think we wasted about—whatever it's been since the invention of the Iphone—trying to bat away that idea, calling it a moral panic, blaming each other, [and] talking about it as if it were an individual act of will.” In fact, she notes, “we are all being manipulated. Me, too. . . . Once we can all admit that, on the left and the right, then we can direct our attention to who's been doing this and to what advantage.” 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. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Since Zadie Smith published her début novel, “White Teeth,” twenty-five years ago, she has been a bold and original voice in literature. But those who aren't familiar with Smith's work outside of fiction are missing out. As an essayist, in The New Yorker and other publications, Smith writes with great nuance about culture, technology, gentrification, politics; “There's really not a topic that wouldn't benefit from her insight,” David Remnick says. He spoke with Smith about her new collection of essays, “Dead and Alive.” “The one thing about talking about essays,” she notes, ruefully, “is you find yourself saying the same thing, but worse—without the commas.” One of the concerns in the book is the role of our devices, and social media in particular, in shaping our thoughts and our political discourse. “Everybody has a different emphasis on [Donald] Trump and what's going on. My emphasis has been on, to put it baldly, mind control. I think what's been interesting about the manipulations of a digital age is that it is absolutely natural and normal for people to be offended at the idea that they are being manipulated. None of us like to feel that way. And I think we wasted about—whatever it's been since the invention of the Iphone—trying to bat away that idea, calling it a moral panic, blaming each other, [and] talking about it as if it were an individual act of will.” In fact, she notes, “we are all being manipulated. Me, too. . . . Once we can all admit that, on the left and the right, then we can direct our attention to who's been doing this and to what advantage.”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 Booker prize-winning author of Atonement and Saturday joins us for the launch of his audacious new novel — a genre-bending, time-traveling tour de force. For decades, Ian McEwan's novels have probed the depths of the human heart, creating unforgettable and utterly relatable characters of extraordinary moral complexity, caught in the crosscurrents of memory, history, and desire. His new novel, What We Can Know, begins at a dinner party in 2014 with the recitation of a love poem among friends and follows to 2119, in the wake of a catastrophic nuclear accident, as a lonely scholar and researcher chases the ghost of that poem. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the elusive poem's discovery, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a brutal crime that destroy his assumptions about the world he thought he knew. It is at once a love story and a literary detective story, reclaiming the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, imagining a future world where all is not quite lost. In a special reading and conversation with The New Yorker's editor David Remnick, hear McEwan discuss the genesis of the new novel, his creation of a new kind of speculative literary fiction, why we will never stop longing for the literature of the past even as we reach inexorably toward the future, and much more. The conversation will air on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

The swiftness and severity with which the Trump Administration has tried to impose its will on higher education came as a shock to many, not least university presidents and faculties from Harvard to U.C.L.A. But for conservatives this arena of cultural conflict has been a long time coming. The staff writer Emma Green has been speaking with influential figures in the current Administration as well as in the larger conservative movement about how they mapped out this battle for Donald Trump's return to power. “There's a recognition among the people that I interviewed,” Green tells David Remnick, “that the Administration cannot come in and script to universities: this is what you will teach and this is the degrees that you will offer, and just script it from top to bottom. First of all, that would be not legally possible. And it also, I think in some ways, violates core instincts that conservatives have around academic freedom, because a lot of these people have been on élite campuses and had the experience of being told that their views weren't acceptable.” Green also speaks with James Kvaal, an education official who served in both the Biden and Obama Administrations, and May Mailman, a conservative education-policy activist who worked in the Trump White House and coördinated its attacks against universities. “When you have federal grants, you do not need to be funding racism and racial hierarchies and violence and harassment,” Mailman told Green. “I think that line is: do what you wanna do, but we don't want to have to fund it.” Emma Green's “Inside the Trump Administration's Assault on Higher Education” was published on October 13, 2025.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The swiftness and severity with which the Trump Administration has tried to impose its will on higher education came as a shock to many, not least university presidents and faculties from Harvard to U.C.L.A. But for conservatives this arena of cultural conflict has been a long time coming. The staff writer Emma Green has been speaking with influential figures in the current Administration as well as in the larger conservative movement about how they mapped out this battle for Donald Trump's return to power. “There's a recognition among the people that I interviewed,” Green tells David Remnick, “that the Administration cannot come in and script to universities: this is what you will teach and this is the degrees that you will offer, and just script it from top to bottom. First of all, that would be not legally possible. And it also, I think in some ways, violates core instincts that conservatives have around academic freedom, because a lot of these people have been on élite campuses and had the experience of being told that their views weren't acceptable.” Green also speaks with James Kvaal, an education official who served in both the Biden and Obama Administrations, and May Mailman, a conservative education-policy activist who worked in the Trump White House and coördinated its attacks against universities. “When you have federal grants, you do not need to be funding racism and racial hierarchies and violence and harassment,” Mailman told Green. “I think that line is: do what you wanna do, but we don't want to have to fund it.” Emma Green's “Inside the Trump Administration's Assault on Higher Education” was published on October 13, 2025.

For decades, the United States backed efforts to achieve a two-state solution—in which Israel would exist side by side with the Palestinian state, with both states recognizing each other's claim to contested territory. The veteran negotiators Hussein Agha, representing Palestine, and Robert Malley, an American diplomat, played instrumental roles in that long effort, including the critical Camp David summit of 2000. But, in their new book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” they conclude that they were part of a charade. There was never any way that a two-state solution could satisfy either of the parties, Agha and Malley tell The New Yorker Radio Hour's David Remnick in an interview. “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it,” Malley notes bitterly. “At the end of that thirty-year-or-so period, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before the U.S. got so heavily invested.” The process, appealing to Western leaders and liberals in Israel, was geared to “find the kind of solutions that have a technical outcome, that are measurable, and that can be portrayed by lines on maps,” Agha says. “It completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. You can't be emotional. You have to be rational. You have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.” On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, talks about the latest national political news, and previews this year's New Yorker festival.

The federal government shutdown is now in its 15th day.On Today's Show:David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, talks about the latest national political news, including the latest on President Trump's 'autocratic' tendencies. 

Next month, New York City may elect as its next mayor a man who was pretty much unknown to the broader public a year ago. Zohran Mamdan, who is currently thirty-three years old and a member of the State Assembly, is a democratic socialist who won a primary upset against the current mayor, Eric Adams, and the former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was trying to stage a political comeback. Mamdani now leads the race by around twenty percentage points in most polls. His run for mayor is a remarkable story, but it has not been an easy one. His campaign message of affordability—his ads widely tout a rent freeze in the city—resonates with voters, but his call for further taxing the top one per cent of earners has concerned the state's governor, Kathy Hochul. In Congress, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have yet to even endorse him. “There are many people who will say housing is a human right, and yet it oftentimes seems as if it is relegated simply to the use of it as a slogan,” Mamdani tells David Remnick at his campaign headquarters, in midtown Manhattan. “It often comes back to whether you're willing to fight for these ideals that you hold.” Donald Trump, for his part, dubs Mamdani a Communist, and has threatened to withhold federal funds from New York if he's elected, calling such a vote “a rebellion.” An attack by the President “will be an inevitability,” Mamdani says, noting that the city's legal department is understaffed for what may be an epic battle to come. “This is an Administration that looks at the flourishing of city life wherever it may be across this country as a threat to their entire political agenda. And New York City looms large in their imagination.” Zohran Mamdani's campaign was chronicled by Eric Lach, a staff writer covering New York politics and life for The New Yorker. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Next month, New York City may elect as its next mayor a man who was pretty much unknown to the broader public a year ago. Zohran Mamdan, who is currently thirty-three years old and a member of the State Assembly, is a democratic socialist who won a primary upset against the current mayor, Eric Adams, and the former governor Andrew Cuomo, who was trying to stage a political comeback. Mamdani now leads the race by around twenty percentage points in most polls. His run for mayor is a remarkable story, but it has not been an easy one. His campaign message of affordability—his ads widely tout a rent freeze in the city—resonates with voters, but his call for further taxing the top one per cent of earners has concerned the state's governor, Kathy Hochul. In Congress, Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have yet to even endorse him. “There are many people who will say housing is a human right, and yet it oftentimes seems as if it is relegated simply to the use of it as a slogan,” Mamdani tells David Remnick at his campaign headquarters, in midtown Manhattan. “It often comes back to whether you're willing to fight for these ideals that you hold.” Donald Trump, for his part, dubs Mamdani a Communist, and has threatened to withhold federal funds from New York if he's elected, calling such a vote “a rebellion.” An attack by the President “will be an inevitability,” Mamdani says, noting that the city's legal department is understaffed for what may be an epic battle to come. “This is an Administration that looks at the flourishing of city life wherever it may be across this country as a threat to their entire political agenda. And New York City looms large in their imagination.” Zohran Mamdani's campaign was chronicled by Eric Lach, a staff writer covering New York politics and life for The New Yorker.

Robert P. George is not a passive observer of the proverbial culture wars; he's been a very active participant. As a Catholic legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton University, he was an influential opponent of Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage, receiving a Presidential medal from President George W. Bush. George decries the “decadence” of secular culture, and, in 2016, he co-wrote an op-ed declaring Donald Trump “manifestly unfit” to serve as President. Although George disagrees with the Administration's tactics to change universities' policies by punishment, he agrees with its contention that campuses have become hotbeds of leftism that stifle debate. He regards this not as a particular evil of the left but as “human nature”: “If conservatives had the kind of monopoly that liberals had,” George tells David Remnick, “I suspect we'd have the same situation, but just in reverse.” His recent book, “Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment,” tries to chart a course back toward civil, functioning debate in a polarized society. “I encourage my students to take courses from people who disagree with me, like Cornel West and Peter Singer,” the latter of whom is a controversial philosopher of ethics. “Cornel and I teach together for this same reason. Peter invites his students to take my courses. That's the way it should be.”  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Robert P. George is not a passive observer of the proverbial culture wars; he's been a very active participant. As a Catholic legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton University, he was an influential opponent of Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage, receiving a Presidential medal from President George W. Bush. George decries the “decadence” of secular culture, and, in 2016, he co-wrote an op-ed declaring Donald Trump “manifestly unfit” to serve as President. Although George disagrees with the Administration's tactics to change universities' policies by punishment, he agrees with its contention that campuses have become hotbeds of leftism that stifle debate. He regards this not as a particular evil of the left but as “human nature”: “If conservatives had the kind of monopoly that liberals had,” George tells David Remnick, “I suspect we'd have the same situation, but just in reverse.” His recent book, “Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth: Law and Morality in Our Cultural Moment,” tries to chart a course back toward civil, functioning debate in a polarized society. “I encourage my students to take courses from people who disagree with me, like Cornel West and Peter Singer,” the latter of whom is a controversial philosopher of ethics. “Cornel and I teach together for this same reason. Peter invites his students to take my courses. That's the way it should be.”

The author and podcaster Ezra Klein may be only forty-one years old, but he's been part of the political-culture conversation for a long time. He was a blogger, then a Washington Post columnist and editor, a co-founder of Vox, and is now a writer and podcast host for the New York Times. He's also the co-author of the recent best-selling book “Abundance”. Most recently, Klein has drawn the ire of progressives for a column he wrote about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in which he praised the late conservative activist for practicing politics “the right way.” He's also been making a case for how the Democrats can reëmerge from the political wilderness. But some of his other ideas have also invited their share of detractors. Klein tells David Remnick, “I try to take seriously questions that I don't love. I don't try to insist the world works the way I want it to work. I try to be honest with myself about the way it's working.” In response to criticism that his recent work has indicated a rightward shift in his thinking, Klein says, “One thing I've been saying about the big tent of the Democratic Party is the theory of having a big tent doesn't just mean moving to the right; it also means accepting in the left.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) weigh in as the U.S. barrels toward a potential government shutdown. Fmr. Sec. Jeh Johnson, Peggy Noonan and David Remnick join the roundtable. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The author and podcaster Ezra Klein may be only forty-one years old, but he's been part of the political-culture conversation for a long time. He was a blogger, then a Washington Post columnist and editor, a co-founder of Vox, and is now a writer and podcast host for the New York Times. He's also the co-author of the recent best-selling book “Abundance”. Most recently, Klein has drawn the ire of progressives for a column he wrote about the assassination of Charlie Kirk, in which he praised the late conservative activist for practicing politics “the right way.” He's also been making a case for how the Democrats can reëmerge from the political wilderness. But some of his other ideas have also invited their share of detractors. Klein tells David Remnick, “I try to take seriously questions that I don't love. I don't try to insist the world works the way I want it to work. I try to be honest with myself about the way it's working.” In response to criticism that his recent work has indicated a rightward shift in his thinking, Klein says, “One thing I've been saying about the big tent of the Democratic Party is the theory of having a big tent doesn't just mean moving to the right; it also means accepting in the left.”

Liana Finck is a cartoonist and an illustrator who has contributed to The New Yorker since 2015. She is the author of several books, including the graphic memoir “Passing for Human.” Like many of her forebears at the magazine, Finck has also published works for children, and her recent book, “Mixed Feelings,” explores the ways that emotions are often confusing—a truth for readers of any age. “Kids' books were my first experience of art. They're really why I do what I do,” she tells David Remnick. Finck discusses her time interning for Maira Kalman, and she shares three “deep cuts” from writers associated with The New Yorker: Kalman's own “What Pete Ate from A to Z”; William Steig's “C D B!”; and “Tell Me a Mitzi,” by Lore Segal, with illustrations by Harriet Pincus. 

“The Constitution gives the states the power to set the time, place, and manner of elections,” the election lawyer Marc Elias points out. “It gives the President no [such] power.” Yet, almost one year before the midterms, Donald Trump has called for a nationwide prohibition on mail-in voting, an option favored by Democrats, as well as restrictions on voting machines. The Justice Department has demanded sensitive voter information from at least thirty-four states so far, with little explanation as to how the information will be used. Will we have free and fair congressional elections in 2026? “I am very worried that we could have elections that do not reflect the desires and the voting preferences of everyone who wishes they could vote and have their vote tabulated accurately,” Elias tells David Remnick. “That may sound very lawyerly and very technical, but I think it would be a historic rollback.” Elias's firm fought and ultimately won almost every case that Trump and Republican allies brought against the 2020 election, and Elias continues to fight the latest round of incursions in court. And while he rues what he calls “re-gerrymandering” in Texas—designed to squeeze Texas's Democratic representatives out of Congress—Elias thinks states run by Democrats have no choice but to copy the tactic. “Before Gavin Newsom announced what he was doing, I came out publicly and said Democrats should gerrymander nine seats out of California, which would mean there'd be no Republicans left in the delegation. . . . At the end of the day, if there's no disincentive structure for Republicans to jump off this path, [then] it just continues.”  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and “The New Yorker” editor David Remnick reacts to the words of FCC chairman Brendan Carr, who said “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” in comments aimed at ABC regarding Jimmy Kimmel. His documentary, “The New Yorker at 100,” will premiere on Netflix on December 5th. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“The Constitution gives the states the power to set the time, place, and manner of elections,” the election lawyer Marc Elias points out. “It gives the President no [such] power.” Yet, almost one year before the midterms, Donald Trump has called for a nationwide prohibition on mail-in voting, an option favored by Democrats, as well as restrictions on voting machines. The Justice Department has demanded sensitive voter information from at least thirty-four states so far, with little explanation as to how the information will be used. Will we have free and fair congressional elections in 2026? “I am very worried that we could have elections that do not reflect the desires and the voting preferences of everyone who wishes they could vote and have their vote tabulated accurately,” Elias tells David Remnick. “That may sound very lawyerly and very technical, but I think it would be a historic rollback.” Elias's firm fought and ultimately won almost every case that Trump and Republican allies brought against the 2020 election, and Elias continues to fight the latest round of incursions in court. And while he rues what he calls “re-gerrymandering” in Texas—designed to squeeze Texas's Democratic representatives out of Congress—Elias thinks states run by Democrats have no choice but to copy the tactic. “Before Gavin Newsom announced what he was doing, I came out publicly and said Democrats should gerrymander nine seats out of California, which would mean there'd be no Republicans left in the delegation. . . . At the end of the day, if there's no disincentive structure for Republicans to jump off this path, [then] it just continues.” 

Kevin Young is the poetry editor for The New Yorker, and the author of many books of his own poetry. His newest work, “Night Watch,” focusses on death, while also drawing upon his wide view of history, from the end of slavery in the U.S. to Dante's seven-hundred-year-old poem “The Divine Comedy.” Young tells David Remnick that Dante actually played an outsized role in bringing “Night Watch” to life: “This is a book that, I think, without him, I would have kept in a drawer because the subjects were kind of dark that I was trying to contend with, and [Dante] gave a framework for me,” Young explains. “How do you write about [hell] and frame it as a journey rather than a morass?” 

For decades, the United States backed efforts to achieve a two-state solution—in which Israel would exist side by side with the Palestinian state, with both states recognizing each other's claim to contested territory. The veteran negotiators Hussein Agha, representing Palestine, and Robert Malley, an American diplomat, played instrumental roles in that long effort, including the critical Camp David summit of 2000. But, in their new book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” they conclude that they were part of a charade. There was never any way that a two-state solution could satisfy either of the parties, Agha and Malley tell David Remnick in an interview. “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it,” Malley notes bitterly. “At the end of that thirty-year-or-so period, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before the U.S. got so heavily invested.” The process, appealing to Western leaders and liberals in Israel, was geared to “find the kind of solutions that have a technical outcome, that are measurable, and that can be portrayed by lines on maps,” Agha says. “It completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. You can't be emotional. You have to be rational. You have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.” “What Killed the Two-State Solution?,” an excerpt from Agha and Malley's new book, was published in The New Yorker. New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

For decades, the United States backed efforts to achieve a two-state solution—in which Israel would exist side by side with the Palestinian state, with both states recognizing each other's claim to contested territory. The veteran negotiators Hussein Agha, representing Palestine, and Robert Malley, an American diplomat, played instrumental roles in that long effort, including the critical Camp David summit of 2000. But, in their new book, “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” they conclude that they were part of a charade. There was never any way that a two-state solution could satisfy either of the parties, Agha and Malley tell David Remnick in an interview. “A waste of time is almost a charitable way to look at it,” Malley notes bitterly. “At the end of that thirty-year-or-so period, the Israelis and Palestinians are in a worse situation than before the U.S. got so heavily invested.” The process, appealing to Western leaders and liberals in Israel, was geared to “find the kind of solutions that have a technical outcome, that are measurable, and that can be portrayed by lines on maps,” Agha says. “It completely discarded the issue of emotions and history. You can't be emotional. You have to be rational. You have to be cool. But rational and cool has nothing to do with the conflict.” “What Killed the Two-State Solution?,” an excerpt from Agha and Malley's new book, was published in The New Yorker.

Murray Kempton (1917-97) was one of the greatest American journalists of the twentieth century. His career extended across seven decades, during which he produced somewhere around 11,000 columns, essays, and pamphlets, nearly all of them marked by his distinctive dry wit, insight, and stylistic elegance. He wrote about government and politics but also the civil rights movement (of which he was one of the earliest and most incisive white chroniclers) and a range of subjects that included jazz, sports, the arts, religion, history, and philosophy. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in 1985 but was not widely known to readers outside of New York, where he wrote for newspapers including the New York Post, the World Telegram and Sun, and New York Newsday. But he was a hero and role model for many of the leading journalists of his era including Garry Wills, Joan Didion, David Remnick, Molly Ivins, Darryl Pinckney, and David Halberstam. And although he always identified with the political left, some of his greatest admirers included conservative journalists like William F. Buckley Jr. and George F. Will.Andrew Holter recently has brought to publication the first collection of Kempton's writings to appear since the 1990s. The anthology, entitled Going Around, offers a selection of Kempton that extends from his student journalism during the New Deal to his criticisms during the ‘80s and ‘90s of figures like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump (of whom he wrote that “Trump dresses his hatred up as though it were a peacock's feathers”). In this podcast discussion, Holter talks about how he became interested in Kempton's work, how Kempton's writings provide an overview of and window into American life in the twentieth century, and why he wanted to make Kempton's work available to a new generation of readers. He explains how his research led him to rediscover long out-of-print writings along with previously unpublished work (including Kempton's uncompleted memoirs). He also describes why Kempton's model of “going around” – beat reporting and direct interactions with people in the streets and in the community – is a necessary corrective to much received opinion and analysis today. 

Today on The Run Through we have a special bonus episode from our friends at the New Yorker Radio Hour! David Remnick sat down with Anna Wintour on the day of the big announcement that Chloe Malle is Vogue's Head of Editorial Content. “It felt like this was the right time,” Wintour says about Chloe's new position. With an unusual number of new creative directors in positions at major fashion houses, “It seemed like a good moment to bring in someone with a different perspective and a different generation who could look at things in a new way.” Wintour also shares stories from when she was first appointed editor-in-chief (in 1988), her first job in London, who she is watching politically and why fashion, especially now, is important. “Forgive me, David,” Wintour said “but how boring would it be if everybody was just wearing a dark suit and a white shirt all the time?”The Run-Through with Vogue is your go-to podcast where fashion meets culture. Hosted by Chloe Malle, Head of Editorial Content, Vogue U.S.; Chioma Nnadi, Head of British Vogue; and Nicole Phelps, Director of Vogue Runway, each episode features the latest fashion news and exclusive designer and celebrity interviews. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speculation, analysis, and commentary circulated all summer, after the announcement, in June, that Anna Wintour would step back from her role as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue. This changing of the guard is uniquely fraught, because Wintour's name has become nearly inextricable from the magazine, to a degree almost unknown today. And, as New York Fashion Week was set to begin, Wintour spoke with David Remnick about choosing her successor, the Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle. “It felt like this was the right time,” she says. With an unusual number of new creative directors in positions at major fashion houses, “It seemed like a good moment to bring in someone with a different perspective and a different generation who could look at things in a new way.” Wintour was appointed editor-in-chief in 1988, and generations of designers have come up under her famously acute and decisive judgments. She comes from a publishing family; her brother is a well-known journalist, and her father was the editor of the London Evening Standard. She credits him with steering her into a career in fashion, even suggesting that the teen-age Anna write down “editor of Vogue” as her career aspiration on a school form. “Working my first jobs in London, there [was] no money, there's no staff, there's no teams, so that you have to learn how to do everything,” Wintour says. “So, when I came to the States and there was a shoe editor and an underwear editor and a fabric editor, it was all so siloed. I felt very confident because I sort of knew how to do everything.” Wintour is also known for bringing politics to Vogue; she's a noted Democratic supporter and donor. “I've been impressed by Governor Newsom, I think he's certainly making a stand, and obviously I'm sure there'll be many other candidates that will emerge, hopefully soon.” But, in this political environment, Remnick asks, “How do you make a case that fashion is important?” Fashion, she replies, “is always important. It's a question of self-expression and a statement about yourself. . . . And, forgive me, David, but how boring would it be if everybody was just wearing a dark suit and a white shirt all the time?”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speculation, analysis, and commentary circulated all summer, after the announcement, in June, that Anna Wintour would step back from her role as the editor-in-chief of American Vogue. This changing of the guard is uniquely fraught, because Wintour's name has become nearly inextricable from the magazine, to a degree almost unknown today. And, as New York Fashion Week was set to begin, Wintour spoke with David Remnick about choosing her successor, the Vogue.com editor Chloe Malle. “It felt like this was the right time,” she says. With an unusual number of new creative directors in positions at major fashion houses, “It seemed like a good moment to bring in someone with a different perspective and a different generation who could look at things in a new way.” Wintour was appointed editor-in-chief in 1988, and generations of designers have come up under her famously acute and decisive judgments. She comes from a publishing family; her brother is a well-known journalist, and her father was the editor of the London Evening Standard. She credits him with steering her into a career in fashion, even suggesting that the teen-age Anna write down “editor of Vogue” as her career aspiration on a school form. “Working my first jobs in London, there [was] no money, there's no staff, there's no teams, so that you have to learn how to do everything,” Wintour says. “So, when I came to the States and there was a shoe editor and an underwear editor and a fabric editor, it was all so siloed. I felt very confident because I sort of knew how to do everything.” Wintour is also known for bringing politics to Vogue; she's a noted Democratic supporter and donor. “I've been impressed by Governor Newsom, I think he's certainly making a stand, and obviously I'm sure there'll be many other candidates that will emerge, hopefully soon.” But, in this political environment, Remnick asks, “How do you make a case that fashion is important?” Fashion, she replies, “is always important. It's a question of self-expression and a statement about yourself. . . . And, forgive me, David, but how boring would it be if everybody was just wearing a dark suit and a white shirt all the time?”

The term “culture wars” is most often associated with issues of sexuality, race, religion, and gender. But, as recent months have made plain, when Donald Trump refers to the culture wars, he also means the arts. He fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Republicans want to rename for him. His Administration fired the national archivist and the Librarian of Congress, and pressured the director of the National Portrait Gallery to resign; it is reviewing the entire Smithsonian Institution, looking for what the President calls “improper ideology.” Some view these moves as low-hanging fruit for Trump, and a distraction from bad press about Jeffrey Epstein, the Putin meeting, and tariffs. But Adam Gopnik believes that interpretation is a misreading. The loyalty purge at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery is a key part of his agenda. “Pluralism is the key principle of a democratic culture,” Gopnik tells David Remnick. Could we be following the path of Stalinist Russia, where a head of state dictated reviews of concerts, Remnick asks? “I pray and believe that we are not. But that is certainly the direction in which one inevitably heads when the political boss takes over key cultural institutions, and dictates who's acceptable and who is not.” Gopnik recalls saying after the election that “Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would be next.” “You would see them disappear,” he added. “Each time, we find a rationale for it or a rationale is offered. And it's much easier for us to swallow the rationale than to face the reality.” Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The term “culture wars” is most often associated with issues of sexuality, race, religion, and gender. But, as recent months have made plain, when Donald Trump refers to the culture wars, he also means the arts. He fired the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, which Republicans want to rename for him. His Administration fired the national archivist and the Librarian of Congress, and pressured the director of the National Portrait Gallery to resign; it is reviewing the entire Smithsonian Institution, looking for what the President calls “improper ideology.” Some view these moves as low-hanging fruit for Trump, and a distraction from bad press about Jeffrey Epstein, the Putin meeting, and tariffs. But Adam Gopnik believes that interpretation is a misreading. The loyalty purge at institutions such as the National Portrait Gallery is a key part of his agenda. “Pluralism is the key principle of a democratic culture,” Gopnik tells David Remnick. Could we be following the path of Stalinist Russia, where a head of state dictated reviews of concerts, Remnick asks? “I pray and believe that we are not. But that is certainly the direction in which one inevitably heads when the political boss takes over key cultural institutions, and dictates who's acceptable and who is not.” Gopnik recalls saying after the election that “Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert would be next.” “You would see them disappear,” he added. “Each time, we find a rationale for it or a rationale is offered. And it's much easier for us to swallow the rationale than to face the reality.”

Since the end of the Cold War, most Americans have taken U.S. military supremacy for granted. We can no longer afford to do so, according to reporting by the staff writer Dexter Filkins. China has developed advanced weapons that rival or surpass America's; and at the same time, drone warfare has fundamentally changed calculations of the battlefield. Ukraine's ability to hold off the massive Russian Army depends largely on a startup industry that has provided millions of drones—small, highly accurate, and as cheap as five hundred dollars each—to inflict enormous casualties on invading forces. In some other conflict, could the U.S. be in the position of Russia? “The nightmare scenario” at the Pentagon, Filkins tells David Remnick, is, “we've got an eighteen-billion-dollar aircraft carrier steaming its way toward the western Pacific, and [an enemy could] fire drones at these things, and they're highly, highly accurate, and they move at incredible speeds. . . . To give [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth credit, and the people around him . . . they say, ‘O.K., we get it. We're going to change the Pentagon procurement process,' ” spending less on aircraft carriers and more on small technology like drones. But “the Pentagon is so slow, and people have been talking about these things for years. . . . Nobody has been able to do it.”Read Filkins's “Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mohammed R. Mhawish was living in Gaza City during Israel's invasion, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack. He witnessed the invasion for months and reported on its devastating consequences for Al Jazeera, The Nation, and other outlets. After his home was targeted in an Israeli strike, which nearly killed him, he fled Gaza. In The New Yorker, he's written about mental-health workers who are trying to treat a deeply traumatized population, while themselves suffering from starvation, the loss of loved ones, their own injuries—and the constant, remorseless death toll around them. “They were telling me, ‘We cannot wait for the war to stop to start healing—or for ourselves to heal—to start healing others,'” Mhawish relates to David Remnick. “I understood they were trying to heal by helping others heal.”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Mohammed R. Mhawish was living in Gaza City during Israel's invasion, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack. He witnessed the invasion for months and reported on its devastating consequences for Al Jazeera, The Nation, and other outlets. After his home was targeted in an Israeli strike, which nearly killed him, he fled Gaza. In The New Yorker, [he's written](https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/treating-gazas-collective-trauma) about mental-health workers who are trying to treat a deeply traumatized population, while themselves suffering from starvation, the loss of loved ones, their own injuries—and the constant, remorseless death toll around them. “They were telling me, ‘We cannot wait for the war to stop to start healing—or for ourselves to heal—to start healing others,'” Mhawish relates to David Remnick. “I understood they were trying to heal by helping others heal.” 

Spike Lee and Denzel Washington first worked together on “Mo' Better Blues,” released in 1990. Washington starred as a trumpet player trying to make a living in jazz clubs; Lee, who directed the film, also played the musician's hapless manager. They later worked together on “Malcolm X” and other films, but it has been nearly twenty years since their last collaboration, the hugely successful “Inside Man.” So the new film “Highest 2 Lowest” is something of a reunion. “I've become a better director, working with Mr. Denzel Washington,” Lee tells David Remnick. “It's not about just what's on the script.  It has to be deeper than that.” “Highest 2 Lowest” is an adaptation of a 1963 movie by Akira Kurosawa, who has been a major influence on Lee. “The script came to me first,” Washington explains. “I hoped that Spike would be interested in it, so I called him up. He said, ‘Send it to me.' He read it. He said, ‘Let's make it,' and here we are.” Washington plays a music mogul targeted in a ransom plot; the feature is a crime drama with a message. “This film is about morals, and what someone will do and won't do,” Lee says. The audience “will ask themselves, ‘If you're in this situation, would you pay the ransom?' ”  

As Scott-Free August rolls on, Kara is joined by guest co-host David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, and host of The New Yorker Radio Hour. Kara and David discuss Trump's federal takeover of the D.C. police, and look ahead to the "feel-out" meeting with Putin in Alaska this week. Plus, redistricting fights spread across the country, Cuomo pulls some punches on Mamdani (with limited success), and Zuck's Palo Alto compound faces scrutiny. Watch this episode on the ⁠⁠Pivot YouTube channel⁠⁠. Follow us on Instagram and Threads at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcastofficial⁠⁠. Follow us on Bluesky at ⁠⁠@pivotpod.bsky.social⁠⁠ Follow us on TikTok at ⁠⁠@pivotpodcast⁠⁠. Send us your questions by calling us at 855-51-PIVOT, or at ⁠⁠nymag.com/pivot⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With seven decades in film and television, Clint Eastwood is undeniably a Hollywood institution. Emerging first as a star in Westerns, then as the embattled cop in the Dirty Harry films, the ninety-five-year-old filmmaker has directed forty features and appeared in more than sixty. The film critic Richard Brody just reviewed a new biography of Eastwood. “What fascinated me above all are the origins of Clint Eastwood-ness—the way he had an aura that preceded him before his career in movies.”  Brody joins David Remnick to pick three of the films that set Eastwood apart as an artist: “Play Misty for Me,” his 1971 directorial début; “Bird,” his bio-pic about Charlie Parker; and “Sully,” starring Tom Hanks as the heroic pilot Chesley Sullenberger.