Podcasts about new yorker radio hour

The curator Thelma Golden is a major presence in New York City's cultural life, having mounted era-defining exhibitions such as “Black Male” and “Freestyle” early on in her career. Golden is the Ford Foundation director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, an institution, founded in 1968, that is dedicated to contemporary artists of the African diaspora. But, for a significant portion of her tenure, this singular institution has been closed to the public. Golden led the initiative to create a new, purpose-built home—requiring the demolition of an old building and reconstruction on the same site. To mark its reopening, David Remnick tours the new space with Golden, discussing some key works and the museum's mission. He notes that this triumphant moment for the Studio Museum comes during a time of broad attacks on cultural institutions, particularly on expressions of identity politics. “I take a lot of inspiration from our founders, who opened up in a complicated moment,” Golden reflects. “My own career began in the midst of the culture wars of [the nineteen-nineties]. Understanding museums as a place that should be, can be, must be where we engage deeply in ideas. In this moment, that has to offer some hope as we consider a future.”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

When President Donald Trump began his tariff rollout, the business world predicted that his unprecedented attempt to reshape the economy would lead to a major recession, if Trump went through with it all. But the markets stabilized and, in recent months, have continued to surge. That has some people worried about an even bigger threat: that overinvestment in artificial intelligence is creating a bubble. Andrew Ross Sorkin, one of today's preëminent financial journalists, is well versed in what's happening; his début book, “Too Big to Fail,” was an account of the 2008 financial crash, and this year he released “1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History—and How It Shattered a Nation.” He tells David Remnick that the concern lies in the massive borrowing to build the infrastructure for a future A.I. economy, without the sufficient revenue, currently, to pay off the loans. “If I learned anything from covering 1929, [and] covering 2008, it is leverage,” Sorkin says, “people borrowing to make all of this happen. And right now we are beginning to see a remarkable period of borrowing to make the economics of A.I. work.” Sorkin is the co-anchor of “Squawk Box” on CNBC, and he also founded the New York Times' business section, DealBook.New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

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

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

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.

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.

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. 

The filmmaker John Carpenter has a whole shelf of cult classics: “They Live,” “The Thing,” “Escape from New York,” “Halloween,” and so many more. And while he hasn't directed a new movie in more than a decade, Carpenter has continued working in the film industry, composing scores for other directors (Bong Joon Ho recently approached him about a horror movie). He has also released albums of cinematic music—no film required—often working with his son, Cody Carpenter, and the musician Daniel Davies, his godson. The New Yorker Radio Hour producer Adam Howard talks with Carpenter ahead of the launch of his new small tour, just in time for Halloween, and they discuss the unusual shift he made from directing to composing. “It's a transition from pain to joy. Directing movies is very, very stressful,” Carpenter explains. “Playing music in front of a live audience—it's joy. It's just joy.” Carpenter suggests three inspirational scores from film history: Bebe and Louis Barron's electronic music for “Forbidden Planet”; Bernard Herrmann work on Hitchcock's “Vertigo”; and Hans Zimmer's music for “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.”

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

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

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

Malcolm D. Purkey Born to Cockney Jewish immigrant parents who were entertainers, Malcolm Purkey  is an actor, director, playwright, influential drama lecturer, and theatre administrator.  He holds a BA and Honours from University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, an MA in Theatre Studies from the State University New York,  is a Fulbright Scholar and  he is a Graduate of the British Film School. His career and contribution to theatre is monumental. It started in the mad bohemian world of Adam Leslie. While still a student he designed and developed The Box and The Nunnery Theatres for Wits and then managed the influential Workshop 71. He surrounded himself with a group of artistic academic friends who met in a house in Junction Avenue, Parktown.  They formed the Junction Avenue Theatre Company that created politically conscious plays that had an influence on theatre in South Africa.Malcolm took a post lecturing drama at Wits (University of Witwatersrand) becoming Head of Department and an associate Professor. He was asked to assist the Market Theatre through a diffiult period and  turned it around. Malcolm has been a force in the theatre community and has had an enormous impact on hundreds of students. Elizabeth Howard, Producer and Host of the Short Fuse Podcast Elizabeth Howard is the producer and host of the Short Fuse Podcast, conversations with artists, writers, musicians, and others whose art reveals our communities through their lens and stirs us to seek change. Her articles related to communication and marketing have appeared in European Communications, Investor Relations, Law Firm Marketing & Profit Report, Communication World, The Strategist, and the New York Law Journal, among others.  Her books include Queen Anne's Lace and Wild Blackberry Pie, (Thornwillow Press, 2011), A Day with Bonefish Joe (David Godine, 2015) and Ned O'Gorman:  A Glance Back (Easton Studio Press, 2016). She leads reading groups at the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn, New York.  @elizh24 on InstagramThe Arts Fuse The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication's over 70 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. There is a robust readership for arts coverage that believes that culture matters.The goal of The Arts Fuse is to treat the arts seriously, to write about them in the same way that other publications cover politics, sports, and business — with professionalism, thoughtfulness, and considerable attitude. The magazine's motto, from Jonathan Swift, sums up our editorial stance: “Use the point of your pen … not the feather.” The Arts Fuse has published over 7,000 articles and receives 60,000+ visits a month. This year they are celebrating their 5th birthday, a milestone for a small, independent magazine dedicated to covering the arts.Why The Arts Fuse? Its birth was a reaction to the declining arts coverage in newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. When the number of news pages shrink in the mainstream media, attention is paid. But the continual whittling down of arts coverage has been passed over in silence. Editor-in-Chief Bill Marx started the magazine to preserve the craft of professional arts criticism online, while also looking at new and innovative ways to evolve the cultural conversation and bring together critics, readers, and artists.Serious criticism, by talking about the strengths, weaknesses, and contributions of the arts, plays an indispensable role in the cultural ecology. Smaller, newer organizations need a response. When they are ignored as they are by the mainstream media, they fail to gain an audience. And without an audience, they fold, further weakening the entire ecosystem.Assist The Arts Fuse in their  mission: to keep arts and culture hale and hearty through dialogue rather than marketing.SUBSCRIBE to the weekly e-newsletterLIKE The Arts Fuse on Facebook, FOLLOW  on TwitterHELP  The Arts Fuse thrive by providing underwriting for the magazine. Even better — make a tax deductible donation. 

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

From the attempt to end birthright citizenship to the gutting of congressionally authorized agencies, the Trump Administration has created an enormous number of legal controversies. The Radio Hour asked for listeners' questions about President Trump and the courts. To answer them, David Remnick speaks with two regular contributors: Ruth Marcus, who writes about legal issues and the Supreme Court, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, who teaches constitutional law at Harvard Law School. While the writers disagree on some significant questions—such as the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Trump v. CASA, which struck down the use of nationwide injunctions—both acknowledge the unprecedented nature of some of the questions from listeners. “They never taught you these things in law school, because he's pushing on areas of the law that are not normally pushed on,” Marcus tells Remnick.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

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, talks about his recent trip from Israel, as the country celebrates the recent victory over Iran and confronts the world's condemnation of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza."Israel's Zones of Denial" (The New Yorker, July 28, 2025)

Israel celebrates its apparent military victory over Iran. How does that square with the humanitarian conditions in Gaza?On Today's Show:David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, talks about his recent trip to Israel as the country navigates the complicated geopolitics of the region, and the changing landscape of international support.  

Cory Booker on the politics of fear, the politics of hope, and how to split the difference. SOURCES:Cory Booker, senior United States Senator from New Jersey. RESOURCES:"'When Are More Americans Going to Speak Up?'" by The New Yorker Radio Hour (2025)."Cory Booker's Marathon Floor Speech," (2025)."Facebook Knows Instagram Is Toxic for Teen Girls, Company Documents Show," by Georgia Wells, Jeff Horwitz, and Deepa Seetharaman (Wall Street Journal, 2021)."Tucked Into the Tax Bill, a Plan to Help Distressed America," by Jim Tankersley (New York Times, 2018).United: Thoughts on Finding Common Ground and Advancing the Common Good, by Cory Booker (2017)."But What Did Cory Booker Actually Accomplish in Newark?" by J.B. Wogan (Governing, 2013). EXTRAS:"Ten Myths About the U.S. Tax System," by Freakonomics Radio (2025)."The United States of Cory Booker," by Freakonomics Radio (2016).

In 2024, Harvard University offered a course on Taylor Swift. It was popular, to say the least. That course was taught by a professor and literary critic named Stephanie Burt. In The New Yorker, Burt has written seriously about comics and science fiction, but she's also considered great poets such as Seamus Heaney and Mary Oliver. Now, Burt has put together an anthology titled, “Super Gay Poems.” It's a collection of L.G.B.T.Q. poetry, whose contents begin after the Stonewall uprising, in 1969. When describing the collection, Burt tells the New Yorker Radio Hour producer Jeffrey Masters, “ There are poems where we read it and we say, Wow, that's me. And there are poems where we read it and we say, Wow, I didn't know that can happen; that's not me; that's new to me; that's different. And there are poems where we read them and we just say, That's beautiful. That is elegant. That is funny. That is sexy. That is hot. That is so sad that I don't know why I like it, but I do. And I like making those experiences available to readers.”

The ayatollahs who have ruled Iran since 1979 have long promised to destroy the Jewish state, and had even set a deadline for it. While arming proxies to fight Israel—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen, and more—Iran is believed to have sought to develop nuclear weapons for itself. “The big question about Iran was always: how significant is its apocalyptic theology?” Yossi Klein Halevi explains to David Remnick. “How central is that end-times vision to the Iranian regime? And is there a possibility that the regime would see a nuclear weapon as the way of furthering their messianic vision?” Halevi is a journalist and senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and he co-hosts the podcast “For Heaven's Sake.” He is a fierce critic of Benjamin Netanyahu, saying, “I have no doubt that he is capable of starting a war for his own political needs.” And yet Netanyahu was right to strike Iran, no matter the consequences, Halevi asserts. “The Israeli perspective is not . . . the American war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's our own experience.”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As we observe Memorial Day, enjoy some of our favorite recent conversations from the centennial series:Katherine Sharp Landdeck, professor of history and director of Pioneers Oral History Project at Texas Woman's University and the author of The Women with Silver Wings: The Inspiring True Story of the Women Airforce Service Pilots of World War II (Crown, 2020), talks about American women in the military over the last century.David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, talks about another centenarian, The New Yorker, which published its first issue on February 21, 1925.Phil Brown, University Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Health Science at Northeastern University, founder and president of the Catskills Institute and the author of several books, including Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat's Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area (Temple University Press, 1998), takes us through the last 100 years in The Catskills -- the hotels, the camps and the people.Sam Barzilay, creative director & co-founder of Photoville, looks at the history of street photography, from the invention of the Leica hand-held 35mm camera which made capturing "the decisive moment" possible, to the challenges presented by AI and smartphone technology of today. These interviews were lightly edited for time and clarity; the original web versions are available here:100 Years of 100 Things: Women in the Military (Apr 30, 2025)100 Years of 100 Things: The New Yorker Magazine (Jan 31, 2025)100 Years of 100 Things: Catskills Hotels (Aug 14, 2024)100 Years of 100 Things: Street Photography (Apr 22, 2025)

When Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate seat in Michigan last fall, she was one of only four Democratic senators to claim victory in a state that voted for Donald Trump. It made other Democrats take note: since then, the Party has turned to her as someone who can bridge the red state–blue state divide. In March, Slotkin delivered the Democrats' rebuttal to Trump's speech before Congress, and she's been making headlines for criticizing her own party's attempts to rein in the President and the Republican Party. She thinks Democrats need to start projecting “alpha energy,” that identity politics “needs to go the way of the dodo,” and that Democrats should drop the word “oligarchy” from their vocabulary entirely. Slotkin prides herself on her bipartisanship, and she believes that Democrats must use old-school collegial collaboration in Congress. And, as different Democratic leaders have appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour in the past few months, discussing what the next four years might have in store, Slotkin tells David Remnick about a different path forward. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

We’ve been doing these shows where we don’t book any guests, where we fill the hour with your calls. And your calls have been interesting and surprising and amusing. This hour, the conversation winds around to Colin’s constant laughter (or not) and his nearly life-threatening reaction to Weekend Update on last week’s SNL, The Kennedy Center Honors, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s proposed autism database, Elissa Slotkin on The New Yorker Radio Hour, the 60 Minutes piece on fraud, Cicero’s Catalinarian orations … Anything. (Seemingly) everything. These shows are fun for us, and they seem to be fun for you, too. So we did another one. You can now watch our calls shows on Connecticut Public’s YouTube. Subscribe and get notified when we go live. Or join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter. The Colin McEnroe Show is available as a podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, TuneIn, Listen Notes, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe and never miss an episode! Subscribe to The Noseletter, an email compendium of merriment, secrets, and ancient wisdom brought to you by The Colin McEnroe Show. Colin McEnroe, Megan Fitzgerald, and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show.Support the show: http://www.wnpr.org/donateSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Elissa Slotkin narrowly won her Senate seat in Michigan last fall, she was one of only four Democratic senators to claim victory in a state that voted for Donald Trump. It made other Democrats take note: since then, the Party has turned to her as someone who can bridge the red state–blue state divide. In March, Slotkin delivered the Democrats' rebuttal to Trump's speech before Congress, and she's been making headlines for criticizing her own party's attempts to rein in the President and the Republican Party. She thinks Democrats need to start projecting “alpha energy,” that identity politics “needs to go the way of the dodo,” and that Democrats should drop the word “oligarchy” from their vocabulary entirely.Slotkin prides herself on her bipartisanship, and she believes that Democrats must use old-school collegial collaboration in Congress. And, as different Democratic leaders have appeared on The New Yorker Radio Hour in the past few months, discussing what the next four years might have in store, Slotkin tells David Remnick about a different path forward.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, offers his assessment of the first 100 days of President Trump's second term, and the opposition that is beginning to form.

After 100 days of Trump's second term, questions have arisen about birthright citizenship, the arrests of judges and deportations without due process.On Today's Show:David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, offers his assessment of Trump's second term so far, and the opposition that is beginning to form.

Since 1998, David Remnick has been the editor of The New Yorker and has written hundreds of pieces for the magazine, including reporting from Russia, the Middle East, and Europe and Profiles of Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Katharine Graham, Mike Tyson, Bruce Springsteen and more. He also hosts the magazine's national radio program and podcast, “The New Yorker Radio Hour.” He joins live at the On Air Fest to talk about his legendary life and career. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the past few years, the comedian Nikki Glaser has breathed new life into the well-worn comedic form of the roast. Last year, she performed a roast of the football legend Tom Brady for a Netflix special, to much acclaim—with Conan O'Brien opining that “no one is going to do a better roast set than that.” Glaser has been on a hot streak since then, hosting the Golden Globes in January and touring the country with a new show. But rising to the top of the comedy world, Glaser tells David Remnick, hasn't settled her insecurities, or her impostor syndrome. “It just never goes away— that feeling of not being worthy, or being thought of as less than,” Glaser says. It's why, as Remnick notes, she insists on leading her set with a joke right out of the gate. “Part of it is I just know that people think women aren't as funny, so I have to prove it right away . . . and then, ‘Can we all just relax and you can trust me?' ”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

Elon Musk, who's chainsawing the federal government, is not merely a chaos agent, as he is sometimes described. Jill Lepore, the best-selling author of “These Truths” and other books, says that Musk is animated by obsessions and a sense of mission he acquired through reading, and misreading, science fiction. “When he keeps saying, you know, ‘We're at a fork in the road. The future of human civilization depends on this election,' he means SpaceX,” she tells David Remnick. “He means . . . ‘I need to take these rockets to colonize Mars and that's only going to happen through Trump.' ” The massive-scale reduction in social services he is enacting through DOGE, Lepore thinks, is tied to this objective. “Although there may be billions of [people] suffering here on planet Earth today, those are miniscule compared to the calculation of the needs of the billions of humans that will one day ever live if we can gain escape velocity from planet Earth. . . . That is, in fact, the math that lies behind DOGE.” Lepore's BBC radio series on the SpaceX C.E.O. is called “X-Man: The Elon Musk Origin Story.” Plus, an organizer of the grassroots anti-Musk effort TeslaTakedown speaks with the Radio Hour about how she got involved, and the risks  involved in doing so. that poses. “It's a scary place we all find ourselves in,” Patty Hoyt tells the New Yorker Radio Hour producer Adam Howard. “And I won't stop. But I am afraid.”

This week we're bringing you an interview from our friends at the New Yorker Radio Hour. It's a conversation between host David Remnick and Democratic congressman Chris Murphy. Murphy is the junior senator from Connecticut and a vehement critic of leaders in his party who've taken a “business as usual” approach in dealing with the Trump administration. He opposed Chuck Schumer's negotiation to pass the Republican budget and keep the government running and Murphy advocated for the democrats to skip the president's joint address to congress en masse. He believes that his party has a winning formula if they stick to a populist anti-big-money agenda and he despairs that some in his party aren't responding appropriately to what he sees as a crisis. 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.

The microchip maker Nvidia is a Silicon Valley colossus. After years as a runner-up to Intel and Qualcomm, Nvidia has all but cornered the market on the parallel processors essential for artificial-intelligence programs like ChatGPT. “Nvidia was there at the beginning of A.I.,” the tech journalist Stephen Witt tells David Remnick. “They really kind of made these systems work for the first time. We think of A.I. as a software revolution, something called neural nets, but A.I. is also a hardware revolution.” In The New Yorker, Stephen Witt profiled Jensen Huang, Nvidia's brilliant and idiosyncratic co-founder and C.E.O. His new book is “The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip.” Until recently, Nvidia was the most valuable company in the world, but its stock price has been volatile, posting the largest single-day loss in history in January. But the company's story is only partially a business story; it's also one about global superpowers, and who will decide the future. If China takes military action against Taiwan, as it has indicated it might, the move could wrest control of the manufacturing of Nvidia microchips from a Taiwanese firm, which is now investing in a massive production facility in the U.S. “Maybe what's happening,” Witt speculates, is that “this kind of labor advantage that Asia had over the United States for a long time, maybe in the age of robots that labor advantage is going to go away. And then it doesn't matter where we put the factory. The only thing that matters is, you know, is there enough power to supply it?” Plus, the staff writer Joshua Rothman has long been fascinated with A.I.—he even interviewed its “godfather,” Geoffrey Hinton, for The New Yorker Radio Hour. But Rothman has become increasingly concerned about a lack of public and political debate over A.I.—and about how thoroughly it may transform our lives. “Often, if you talk to people who are really close to the technology, the timelines they quote for really reaching transformative levels of intelligence are, like, shockingly soon,” he tells Remnick. “If we're worried about the incompetence of government, on whatever side of that you situate yourself, we should worry about automated government. For example, an A.I. decides the length of a sentence in a criminal conviction, or an A.I. decides whether you qualify for Medicaid. Basically, we'll have less of a say in how things go and computers will have more of a say.” Rothman's essay “Are We Taking A.I. Seriously Enough?” appears in his weekly column, Open Questions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The microchip maker Nvidia is a Silicon Valley colossus. After years as a runner-up to Intel and Qualcomm, Nvidia has all but cornered the market on the parallel processors essential for artificial-intelligence programs like ChatGPT. “Nvidia was there at the beginning of A.I.,” the tech journalist Stephen Witt tells David Remnick. “They really kind of made these systems work for the first time. We think of A.I. as a software revolution, something called neural nets, but A.I. is also a hardware revolution.” In The New Yorker, Stephen Witt profiled Jensen Huang, Nvidia's brilliant and idiosyncratic co-founder and C.E.O. His new book is “The Thinking Machine: Jensen Huang, Nvidia, and the World's Most Coveted Microchip.” Until recently, Nvidia was the most valuable company in the world, but its stock price has been volatile, posting the largest single-day loss in history in January. But the company's story is only partially a business story; it's also one about global superpowers, and who will decide the future. If China takes military action against Taiwan, as it has indicated it might, the move could wrest control of the manufacturing of Nvidia microchips from a Taiwanese firm, which is now investing in a massive production facility in the U.S. “Maybe what's happening,” Witt speculates, is that “this kind of labor advantage that Asia had over the United States for a long time, maybe in the age of robots that labor advantage is going to go away. And then it doesn't matter where we put the factory. The only thing that matters is, you know, is there enough power to supply it?” Plus, the staff writer Joshua Rothman has long been fascinated with A.I.—he even interviewed its “godfather,” Geoffrey Hinton, for The New Yorker Radio Hour. But Rothman has become increasingly concerned about a lack of public and political debate over A.I.—and about how thoroughly it may transform our lives. “Often, if you talk to people who are really close to the technology, the timelines they quote for really reaching transformative levels of intelligence are, like, shockingly soon,” he tells Remnick. “If we're worried about the incompetence of government, on whatever side of that you situate yourself, we should worry about automated government. For example, an A.I. decides the length of a sentence in a criminal conviction, or an A.I. decides whether you qualify for Medicaid. Basically, we'll have less of a say in how things go and computers will have more of a say.”Rothman's essay “Are We Taking A.I. Seriously Enough?” appears in his weekly column, Open Questions.

Few observers are more insightful than the critic William Deresiewicz at identifying the changing landscape of American culture. In my latest conversation with Deresiewicz, best known for his book Excellent Sheep, we explore how young American men are increasingly drawn to right-wing politics while feeling socially devalued and alienated by progressive rhetoric. Deresiewicz critiques universities for embracing a censorious left-wing ideology that has become intellectually stagnant. He contrasts this with the creative ferment happening on the right, while at the same time rejecting Trump's authoritarian tactics against universities. Deresiewicz argues that art has lost its cultural significance as consumption has become disposable, and notes that a new counter-elite is attempting to destroy the established liberal elite rather than join its exclusive club.Here are the 5 KEEN ON AMERICA takeaways in our conversation with Deresiewicz: * Young men, particularly those without elite educations, are increasingly drawn to right-wing politics partly due to economic changes, dating app dynamics, and what Deresiewicz perceives as dismissive rhetoric from the progressive left.* Universities have embraced a "far left progressive ideology" that has been repeatedly rejected by voters even in traditionally liberal areas, yet Deresiewicz condemns Trump's authoritarian tactics against these institutions.* The political left has become intellectually stagnant, with creative energy now more visible on the right, while progressive spaces have become censorious and intolerant of debate.* Art has lost its cultural significance as streaming platforms and internet culture have turned creative works into disposable "content," diminishing both audience engagement and artistic seriousness.* A new counter-elite (represented by figures like Trump and Musk) isn't seeking admission to established power structures but rather aims to destroy them entirely, representing a significant shift in elite dynamics.William Deresiewicz is an award-winning essayist and critic, a frequent speaker at colleges, high schools, and other venues, and the author of five books including the New York Times bestseller Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life. His most recent book is The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society. His current project is a historically informed memoir about being Jewish. Bill has published over 300 essays and reviews. He has won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, and a Sydney Award; he is also a three-time National Magazine Award nominee. His work, which has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper's, The London Review of Books, and many other publications, has been translated into 19 languages and included in over 40 college readers and other anthologies. Bill taught English at Yale and Columbia before becoming a full-time writer. He has appeared on The Colbert Report, Here & Now, The New Yorker Radio Hour, and many other outlets and has held visiting positions at Bard, Scripps, and Claremont McKenna Colleges as well as at American Jewish University and the University of San Diego. His previous books are The Death of the Artist: How Creators are Struggling to Survive in the Age of Billionaires and Big Tech, A Jane Austen Education, and Jane Austen and the Romantic Poets. Bill is a member of the board (directorial, editorial, or advisory) of The Matthew Strother Center for the Examined Life, a retreat and study program in Catskill, NY; The Metropolitan Review, a new literary journal; Tivnu: Building Justice, which runs a Jewish service-learning gap year and other programs in Portland, OR; the Prohuman Foundation, which promotes the ideals of individual identity and shared humanity; Circle, a group coaching and purpose-finding program for college and graduate students; and Clio's, a selectively curated, chronologically organized bookstore in Oakland.Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting the daily KEEN ON show, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy interview series. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.Keen On America is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe

Alice Munro, a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, was perhaps the most acclaimed short-story writer of our time. After her death, last year, her youngest daughter, Andrea Skinner, revealed that Munro's partner, Gerald Fremlin, had sexually abused her starting when she was nine years old. The abuse was known in the family, but, even after Fremlin was convicted, Munro stood by him, at the expense of her relationship with her daughter. In this episode, the New Yorker staff writer Rachel Aviv joins the magazine's editor, David Remnick, to talk about how and why a writer known for such astonishing powers of empathy could betray her own child, and how Munro touched on this family trauma in fiction. “Her writing makes you think about art at what expense,” Aviv tells Remnick. “That's probably a question that is relevant for many artists, but Alice Munro makes it visible on the page. It felt so literal—like trading your daughter for art.”Follow The New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As our centennial series continues, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour, talks about another centenarian, The New Yorker, which published its first issue on February 21, 1925. 

Introducing Julianne Moore at the New Yorker Festival, in October, the staff writer Michael Schulman recited “only a partial list” of the directors Moore has worked with, including Robert Altman, Louis Malle, Todd Haynes, Paul Thomas Anderson, Lisa Cholodenko, Steven Spielberg, the Coen brothers, and many more legends. It seems almost obvious that Moore co-stars (alongside Tilda Swinton) in Pedro Almodóvar's first feature in English, “The Room Next Door,” which comes out in December. Moore has a particular knack with unremarkable characters. “I don't know that I seek out things in the domestic space, but I do think I'm really drawn to ordinary lives,” she tells Schulman. “I've never been, like, I'm going to play an astronaut next. . . . A lot of these stories [are] domestic stories—well, that's the biggest story of our lives, right? How do we live? Who do we love? . . . Those are the things that we all know about.”New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Follow the show wherever you get your podcasts.

In 1979, as Christmas approached, the United States Embassy in Tehran held more than fifty American hostages, who had been seized when revolutionaries stormed the embassy. No one from the U.S. had been able to have contact with them. The Reverend M. William Howard, Jr., was the president of the National Council of Churches at the time, and when he received a telegram from the Revolutionary Council, inviting him to perform Christmas services for the hostages, he jumped at the opportunity. In America, “we had a public that was quite riled up,” Reverend Howard reminds his son, The New Yorker Radio Hour's Adam Howard. “Who knows what might have resulted if this issue were not somehow addressed? . . . Might there be an American invasion, an attempt to rescue the hostages in a militaristic way?” Reverend Howard was aware that the gesture had some propaganda value to the Iranian militants, but he saw a chance to lower the tension. Accompanied by another Protestant minister and a Catholic bishop, Howard entered front-page headlines, travelling to Tehran and into the embassy. He gave the captives updates on the N.F.L. playoffs, and they prayed. It was a surreal experience to say the least. “It was in the Iranian hostage crisis that I understood how alone we are, and how powerless we are when other people take control,” Reverend Howard says. “And really it's in that setting that one can develop faith.”This segment originally aired on December 15, 2023.

Willem Dafoe has one of the most distinctive faces and most distinctive voices in movies, deployed to great effect in blockbuster genre movies as well as smaller indie darlings; he's played everyone from Jesus Christ to the Green Goblin. His most recent project is the highly anticipated “Nosferatu,” which opens Christmas Day. Robert Eggers's film is a remake, more than a century later, of one of the oldest existing vampire movies, and Dafoe plays a vampire-hunting professor.  After “Twilight” and hundreds of other vampire stories, “Nosferatu” aims “to make him scary again,” Dafoe told The New Yorker Radio Hour's Adam Howard. It's his third collaboration with the director, after “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.” “When you do a Robert Eggers movie,” he says, “there's a wealth of detail and it's rooted in history. … So you enter it and the world works on you. And I love that.”

The Washington roundtable is joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, to discuss how Donald Trump, a convicted felon and sexual abuser, won both the Electoral College and the popular vote—a first for a Republican President since 2004. Democrats lost almost every swing state, even as abortion-rights ballot measures found favor in some conservative states. On this crossover episode with The New Yorker Radio Hour, they discuss Kamala Harris's campaign, Trump's overtly authoritarian rhetoric, and the American electorate's rightward trajectory. This week's reading: “Donald Trump's Revenge,” by Susan B. Glasser “2016 and 2024,” by Jelani Cobb “How Donald Trump, the Leader of White Grievance, Gained Among Hispanic Voters,” by Kelefa Sanneh “The Reckoning of the Democratic Party,” by Jay Caspian Kang “How America Embraced Gender War,” by Jia Tolentino “Donald Trump's Second Term Is Joe Biden's Real Legacy,” by Isaac Chotiner To discover more podcasts from The New Yorker, visit newyorker.com/podcasts. To send in feedback on this episode, write to themail@newyorker.com with “The Political Scene” in the subject line.

Since the war in Ukraine began, the historian Timothy Snyder has made several trips to Ukraine, and it was there that he wrote parts of his newest book, “On Freedom.” The author of “Bloodlands” and “On Tyranny,” Snyder spoke in Ukrainian with soldiers, farmers, journalists, and politicians, including President Volodymyr Zelensky.  He talks with David Remnick about the Ukrainian conviction that they can win the war, and the historical trends that support that conviction.  But the thrust of Snyder's new book is to apply what he learned from them to larger principles that apply to our own country.  In areas taken back from Russian control, Ukrainians would tell Snyder they were “de-occupied,” rather than liberated; “freedom,” he writes, “is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good.”“If you think that freedom is just negative,” Snyder told David Remnick, “if you think that freedom is just an absence of [evil] things, I think you then argue yourself into a position where given the absence, stuff is going to work out. … The market is going to deliver you freedom, or the founding fathers … something else is going to deliver you freedom. And that of course is wrong. It's an essentially authoritarian conviction. Because if anyone's going to deliver you freedom, it's going to be you, in some way.”  Share your thoughts on The New Yorker Radio Hour. As a token of our appreciation, you will be eligible to enter a prize drawing up to $1,000 after you complete the survey.https://selfserve.decipherinc.com/survey/selfserve/222b/76152?pin=1&uBRANDLINK=4&uCHANNELLINK=2

The political strategist Sarah Longwell has dedicated the last seven years to understanding why so many Republicans find Donald Trump irresistible, and how they might be persuaded to vote for someone else. Longwell is a lifelong Republican who became a leader of the Never Trump wing of the G.O.P., and her communications firm, Longwell Partners, has been running weekly focus groups including swing-state voters, undecided voters, and discontented Trump supporters. These are the people who might determine the winner of the 2024 election. “I think that Donald Trump has done more damage to himself with a lot of these people who held their nose and voted for him the second time; [after] January 6th, a lot of them are going to leave it blank,” Longwell told David Remnick. “At the end of the day, what this election will come down to is the Republicans who get there on Kamala Harris, and the ones who just refuse to get there on Trump.” Longwell publishes the political news site the Bulwark, and was also the first female national board chair of the Log Cabin Republicans, which represents L.G.B.T.Q. conservatives. Share your thoughts on The New Yorker Radio Hour. As a token of our appreciation, you will be eligible to enter a prize drawing up to $1,000 after you complete the survey.https://selfserve.decipherinc.com/survey/selfserve/222b/76152?pin=1&uBRANDLINK=4&uCHANNELLINK=2

Lake Street Dive recorded their first album with money that their bassist won in a songwriting contest. They built a following the old-fashioned way, touring small venues for years and building a loyal following of fans—including David Remnick—who thought of them as an under-the-radar secret. Almost twenty years later, the band finds themselves onstage at Madison Square Garden. “My main inspiration for playing M.S.G. is Billy Joel,” the bassist Bridget Kearney said. “It feels like the club when he's playing there, because he's so comfortable there. . . . Like, ‘Welcome to my monthly gig, here again at Madison Square Garden.' It won't be quite like that for us . . . but I'd love it if we could in some ways make it feel intimate, make it feel like it's a gigantic dive bar.”They joined David Remnick in the studio at WNYC to perform “Good Together”and “Set Sail (Prometheus & Eros),” from their new album, and “Shame, Shame, Shame,” an older song about a Donald Trump-like “big man” who doesn't “know how to be a good man.” Share your thoughts on The New Yorker Radio Hour. As a token of our appreciation, you will be eligible to enter a prize drawing up to $1,000 after you complete the survey.https://selfserve.decipherinc.com/survey/selfserve/222b/76152?pin=1&uBRANDLINK=4&uCHANNELLINK=2