The New Yorker Radio Hour

The writer talks with David Remnick about writing the lives of the undocumented, in journalism and in fiction. Her previous work, a memoir, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

CNN’s data guru Harry Enten says that, unless the race shifts significantly, Donald Trump will win. And the pollster Ann Selzer explains how the polls know what they know.

Three masters talk about the craft of investigative journalism, and how the bad guy makes the story tick.

A former Presidential candidate, Castro tells David Remnick why Democratic leaders concerned about President Biden’s age were afraid to challenge the establishment and run against him.

The singer and band leader talks with John Seabrook about finding her voice as a songwriter, and her struggles with alcohol. Welch plays two songs live with Florence and the Machine.

The legendary historian and biographer explains how, from a background in daily journalism, he came to write one of the most revered nonfiction books of the twentieth century.

David Remnick asked listeners for their questions about the Presidential election, and a crack team of The New Yorker’s political writers came together to answer them.

Once a beacon for progressives, the senator has put the left at a distance and moved past centrist Democrats with his unconditional support of Israel’s conduct during the war in Gaza.

The staff writer picks three pioneering entries to the genre. “If you hate reality television,” she says, “I'm trying to talk to you.”

The actor and director, whose film “Horizon: An American Saga” has been in the making for decades, thinks of the Western as America’s Shakespeare.

The co-host of “How Did This Get Made?” enlightens David Remnick on the art of terrible film. Plus, the New Yorker film critic Justin Chang praises Coppola’s divisive “Megalopolis.”

Rory Stewart, a former Conservative Party Member of Parliament, explains the upcoming U.K. elections, the “catastrophic” Brexit, and the soul-crushing sham of a life in politics.

Eric Smokes and David Warren were convicted as teen-agers. Even after serving their sentences, the “Times Square Two” argued their innocence. It took decades for prosecutors to agree.

The Democratic senator and Baptist pastor, who preaches from the same pulpit in Atlanta as Martin Luther King, Jr., did, says that Trumpism has exacerbated a “spiritual crisis.”

A track star’s gender transition in the nineteen-thirties, and the response of Olympic officials, foreshadowed today’s culture-war battles over gender and sports.

Though rooted in the jazz tradition, the singer's interests and repertoire reach across eras, languages, and continents.

Glazer’s new movie, “Babes,” delves into the absurd, paradoxical, graphic realities of pregnancy and parenthood.

Lawsuits and the labor movement come to reality TV, by way of the Netflix hit.

While the filmmaker, writer, and artist was writing her new book, “All Fours,” the character she created was influencing her own life.

David Remnick asks R.F.K., Jr., where his run for President and his beliefs are coming from.

In lobbying Congress to force the sale of TikTok, a Palantir executive called it a national-security threat—a digital Trojan horse controlled by the Chinese government.

A tech journalist sees Silicon Valley making policy—and lawmakers refusing to regulate social media. Plus, salmon in the dishwasher, and other highlights of culinary TikTok.

For Democrats and Republicans, it’s time to pay attention to R.F.K., Jr. Three writers discuss his possible impact on the election.

Not since the Vietnam War has a protest movement reached college campuses with such fury. We look at the reverberations at one school, Harvard University.

Amid threats, Georgia’s secretary of state describes how he convinces Republican voters that elections are fair.

The comedian could have retired decades ago, but he continues to hone his craft onstage, and at age seventy he’s directed his first feature film, “Unfrosted.”

The acclaimed actor talks with David Remnick about her new book, and a lifetime of performing Shakespeare.

The evidence implicating social-media apps, the social psychologist says, is not another moral panic over technology. “Actually, this time is different,” he insists. “Here’s why."

The popular actor and songwriter speaks with Rachel Syme about not going to college—the subject of her new single. And a novelist discusses the excitement and uncertainty of protests.

Rare across-the-aisle coöperation in Austin aims to protect the lives of some women who need abortions—and protect their doctors from prosecution.

The New Yorker’s new critic on three films he’s excited about this year.

Why are so many states restricting what schools can teach about racism? Two leading journalist-historians discuss the efforts to ban or rewrite the teaching of Black history.

The singer, banjo player, music scholar, and opera composer talks with David Remnick about the legacy of Black string music—and how not to be limited by genre.

In her musical opening on Broadway, Keys tells a story very much like her own life, using her own hit songs—but don’t call it autobiographical.

The author creates a new inner life for a “Huckleberry Finn” character.

Adam Gopnik considers how Hitler came to power, and what it tells us about the 2024 election.

The staff writer Louisa Thomas talks with the former sportswriter David Remnick about why men’s college basketball suffers a state of malaise, while the women’s game is electrifying.

The philosopher popularized new ideas about gender—and has been burned in effigy. They talk with David Remnick about “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” Plus, Erin Reed on anti-trans legislation.

The journalist’s autobiographical novel reflects his time working on Barack’s Obama’s campaign, and in his White House. Has the former President lived up to his expectations?

The writer-director tells David Remnick that conducting an actual orchestra, in the role of Leonard Bernstein, was “the scariest thing I’ve ever done, hands down.”

The staff writer Evan Osnos went to the White House for a rare, frank talk with the President about his reëlection battle. Can he persuade voters that his accomplishments outweigh his age?

One of the most influential Silicon Valley reporters chronicles the rise of an industry, and moguls like Elon Musk, in “Burn Book.”

“The Killers of the Flower Moon” star reflects on the challenges faced by Native actors. Plus, New Yorker film critic Richard Brody’s unique awards for the best of 2023.

The former Trump White House attorney is sounding the alarm on the consequences of ignoring the ex-President’s rhetoric on Russia, and his actions on January 6th.

The author of “Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt” and other books talks with Jeffrey Masters about his journey from go-go boy to Renaissance man.

The co-host of the popular show explains how the withering of the media and the threat of political violence are warping the Presidential campaign, and what Biden’s team needs to do.

In her Netflix special, the comedian uses an act of oral sex as a springboard for a rapid-fire rant about the human condition, along with human anatomy.

The author of the influential novel “How Should a Person Be?” culled decades of material from her own journals to take a radical approach to her new book.

As the border crisis escalates, the President is changing his rhetoric on immigration. Plus, Olivia Rodrigo embraces being the voice of Gen Z.

An excerpt from “The Runaway Princesses,” a miniseries based on Heidi Blake’s reporting on Dubai’s royal family, and the women who risked their lives to escape it.

The president of the Committee to Protect Journalists discusses whether Israel is targeting Palestinian reporters, and looks at threats to the safety of journalists around the world.

“American Fiction,” nominated for five Academy Awards, satirizes the literary world, and upends Hollywood conventions about Blackness.

The chair of the powerful Congressional Progressive Caucus looks at whether Joe Biden can put the Democratic Party back together again in time to achieve victory in the 2024 election.

David Remnick talks to the writer about her successful lawsuit against Donald Trump. Plus, a Profile of Walt Disney from the archives, as Mickey Mouse enters the public domain.

In a new film, the actress is attracting Oscar buzz for a role first made famous by Oprah Winfrey almost forty years ago.

Whether he wins as expected or somehow underperforms, Donald Trump has upended the Republican primary without participating in a single debate and barely campaigning on the ground.

On the other side of the microphone, the host of The New Yorker Radio Hour sits for a lengthy interview about his reporting in Israel, his recent book, “Holding the Note,” and more.

The celebrated filmmaker is back with a challenging new movie intended to provoke a political response.

The Wisconsin-based Nation reporter was not at the Capitol when it was attacked. That hasn’t stopped Donald Trump’s attorneys from holding him responsible.

Clark’s collection, a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry, is a meditation on language and communication.

The last major overhaul of the immigration system was in 1986. Changing conditions and a political impasse have created a state of chaos that the Biden Administration can no longer deny.

From “Barbie” to “Priscilla,” narratives about cloistered women contending with a new political reality have dominated the cultural landscape. Why do these stories hit so hard?

After nearly half a century, the singer-songwriter has cemented his status as a rock-and-roll legend. But, true to form, he hasn’t rested on his laurels.

In 1979, a minister received a telegram from Iranian militants who had taken hostages in the American embassy, inviting him to perform Christmas services. Two days later, he was inside.

A Palestinian writer is detained by Israeli forces while he tries to flee Gaza with his family. Plus, a story of Christmas at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The singer-songwriter reflects on her sexuality, playing country music for Democrats, and how Kim Kardashian and Kanye West inadvertently influenced her most recent album.

Once a top Republican, Cheney is calling out her former colleagues in Congress—including Speaker Mike Johnson—for “enabling” a would-be dictator.

Jelani Cobb, Jill Lepore and Evan Osnos on the precarious state of American democracy and why—yet again—we risk losing it in the upcoming Presidential election.

When Dolly Parton was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, she decided to prove that she belonged there.

Bradley Cooper tells David Remnick that he has spent his life preparing for a role like the iconic conductor Leonard Bernstein—and it shows.

The so-called godfather of A.I. believes we need to put constraints on the technology so it won’t free itself from human control. But he’s not sure whether that’s possible.

Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt talks about antisemitism “from all ends of the political spectrum, and in between.” It threatens not only Jews, she says, but the stability of democracies.

The new film from the director of “Promising Young Woman” isn’t just a class satire—we are all affected by our love of wealth, beauty, and power.

The Federal Trade Commission is suing the company. Lina Khan, the chair of the F.T.C., tells David Remnick that Amazon exploits its position as a monopoly to invisibly drive up costs.

The New Yorker Radio Hour host joins Gladstone for a conversation about the war between Israel and Hamas, and its substantial human costs.

Kai Wright leads a roundtable discussion about the attempts to reform policing in the wake of Black Lives Matter and whether those efforts have had a positive impact.

The killing of an unarmed teenager turned a mother into an activist. Plus, poet Nicole Sealey on erasing the Ferguson Report to find a lyric within a tragedy.

A close look at one of the most influential architects of the conservative judicial movement.

David Remnick hears from two sources about how Israelis and Palestinians feel about the October 7th attacks, and what the future may hold for the region.

The Red Scare, though focussed on Communists, also targeted gay government employees, who were fired by the thousands. A TV series based on the Thomas Mallon novel tells their story.

The iconic filmmaker tells David Remnick how he got his start, how to direct Denzel Washington, and when he wants to retire. Plus, Louisa Thomas on the new N.B.A. season.

When an outrageous yet charismatic candidate for president promises to kill suspected criminals, reporter Patricia Evangelista says, we should listen: it may not be just a talking point.

The German filmmaking legend says the New York Times is simply “dazed and confused” when it comes to the veracity of his new memoir.

Rubén Blades recounts his unpredictable journey from a record-company mailroom to the top of the salsa charts.

The self-described “recovering politician” Al Gore explains the stakes and the clear and present solution to our ongoing climate crisis.

In a preview of The New Yorker’s new culture podcast, three critics—Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz—dissect the biography of the tech founder.

Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine, David Remnick has talked with Stephen Kotkin, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who is deeply informed on U.S.-Russia relations, and a biographer of Stalin. With the Ukrainian counter-offensive proceeding very slowly, Kotkin says that Ukraine is unlikely to “win the peace” on the battlefield; an armistice on Zelensky’s terms—although they may be morally correct—would require the defeat of Russia itself. Realistically, he thinks, Ukraine must come to accept some loss of territory in exchange for security guarantees. And, without heavy political pressure from the U.S., Kotkin tells David Remnick, no amount of military aid would be sufficient. “We took regime change off the table,” Kotkin notes regretfully. “That’s so much bigger than the F-16s or the tanks or the long-range missiles because that’s the variable . . . . When he’s scared that his regime could go down, he’ll cut and run. And if he’s not scared about his regime, he'll do the sanctions busting. He’ll do everything he’s doing because it’s with impunity.” Share your thoughts on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast.

Being called the voice of a generation might seem a little off to someone born after the millennium. But Olivia Rodrigo’s songs clearly hit home for Gen Z. She turned twenty this year, and has already been one of the biggest stars since 2021, when “Drivers License” became the No. 1 song on the planet. She won three Grammy Awards that year, including Best New Artist. One of her first public performances was on “Saturday Night Live.” Rodrigo’s second album, “Guts,” came out this month, and she remains proud to channel the frustrations of young people. “My favorite songs to sing are the really angry ones,” she told David Remnick. “Especially on tour, I’ll look out at the audience and sometimes see these very young girls, seven or eight, screaming these angry songs, so hyped and so enraged . . . . That’s not something you see on the street, but it’s just so cool that people get to express all those emotions through music.”  Rodrigo talked with David Remnick about the lineage of singer-songwriters like Carole King, and dealing with social media as a young celebrity. Share your thoughts on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast.

The daughter of eccentric aristocrats marries a Wall Street tycoon of dubious ethics during the Roaring Twenties. That sounds like a plot that F. Scott Fitzgerald might have written, or Edith Wharton. But “Trust,” by the writer Hernan Diaz, is very much of our time. The novel is told by four people in four different formats, which offer conflicting accounts of the couple’s life, the tycoon Andrew Bevel’s misdeeds, and his role in the crash of 1929. And though a book like “The Great Gatsby” tends to skirt around the question of how the rich make their money, Hernan Diaz puts that question at the heart of “Trust.” “What I was interested in, and this is why I chose finance capital, I wanted a realm of pure abstraction,” he tells David Remnick. Diaz was nearly unknown when “Trust,” his second novel, won the Pulitzer Prize this year.

Twenty years after her breakout on “American Idol,” Kelly Clarkson released an album called “Chemistry” that deals with the long arc of a relationship and her recent divorce. She sat down to talk with Hanif Abdurraqib, a music writer passionate about the craft of songwriting. “This literally was written in real time,” Clarkson reflects. “That was me being indecisive. Man, I have kids. Do I want to do this? Can I try again?” But writing about divorce as one of the best-known celebrities in America is very different from a young artist’s heartbreak anthem. “It’s easy to hide in metaphors when it’s not the biggest thing that’s ever happened,” she says. “Everyone’s going to know. Unfortunately my life is very public, especially in the rough times.”  Plus, Robert Samuels, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer on politics and race, shares his secret indulgence: watching classic figure-skating routines on YouTube.

For twenty-some years, Naomi Klein has been a leading thinker on the left. She’s especially known for the idea of disaster capitalism: an analysis that the forces of big business will exploit any severe disruption to take over more space in our lives. She was often confused with another prominent political writer, Naomi Wolf—once a feminist on the left who has, in recent years, embraced conspiracy theories on the right and is now on good terms with Steve Bannon. Klein’s new book, “Doppelganger,” starts with this simple case of mistaken identity and broadens into an analysis of our political moment, which she describes as “uncanny” in the psychological sense. “Freud described the uncanny as that species of frightening that changes what was once familiar to something unfamiliar,” she tells the staff writer Jia Tolentino. “It’s that weirdness of ‘I think I know what this is, but it’s not what I think.’ ” Klein argues that the left and the right have become doppelgangers of one another—and that denialism regarding climate change has widened to any number of topics, including the claim that Joe Biden is dead and is being played by an actor. “Whenever you don’t like reality, you can just say that it’s not real,” she says.

About 1.2 million people in the United States experience homelessness in a given year—you could nearly fill the city of Dallas with the unhoused. But there are proven solutions. For the chronically homeless, a key strategy is supportive housing—providing not only a stable apartment, but also services like psychiatric and medical care on-site. The New Yorker contributor Jennifer Egan spent the past year following several individuals as they transitioned into a new supportive-housing building in Brooklyn. She found that this housing model works and argues that it could be scaled up nationally for less than the cost of emergency services for the homeless. But “no one,” Egan notes ruefully, “wants to see that line item in their budget.” Plus, Joe Garcia, an inmate serving a life sentence for murder in California’s High Desert State Prison, reads from his essay “Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison,” recently published by The New Yorker.

At the end of this month, after more than two decades, Netflix is phasing out its DVD-rental business. While that may not come as a surprise given the predominance of streaming platforms, it’s a great loss to cinephiles, according to the New Yorker’s Richard Brody. Streaming services routinely drop titles from circulation, and amazing films may be lost to moviegoers. “Physical media is what protects us from being at the mercy of streaming services for our movies and our music,” Brody says. “It’s like a library at home.” Brody gives the producer Adam Howard a peek into his own personal stash of films, and picks a few DVDs of films he would take with him in a fire: Godard’s “King Lear” (“the greatest film ever made – literally”); “Chameleon Street,” by Wendell B. Harris, Jr.; “Stranded” and “The Plastic Dome of Norma Jean,” by Juleen Compton; and a box set of five films by John Cassavetes.

David Grann is a staff writer for The New Yorker and the author of two nonfiction books that topped the best-seller list this summer: “The Wager” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” from 2017, which Martin Scorsese has adapted into a film opening in October. Grann is among the most lauded nonfiction writers at The New Yorker; David Remnick says that “his urge to find unique stories and tell them with rigor and style is rare to the vanishing point.” Grann talks with Remnick about his beginnings as a writer, and about his almost obsessive research and writing process. “The trick is how can you tell a true story using these literary techniques and remain completely factually based,” Grann says. “What I realized as I did this more is that you are an excavator. You aren’t imagining the story—you are excavating the story.” Grann recounts travelling in rough seas to the desolate site of the eighteenth-century shipwreck at the heart of “The Wager,” his most recent book, so that he could convey the sailors’ despair more accurately. That book is also being made into a film by Scorcese. “It’s a learning curve because I’ve never been in the world of Hollywood,” Grann says. “You’re a historical resource. … Once they asked me, ‘What was the lighting in the room?’ I thought about it for a long time. That’s something I would not need to know, writing a book.” But Grann is glad to be in the hands of an expert, and keep his distance from the process. “I’m not actually interested in making a film,” he admits. “I’m really interested in these stories, and so I love that somebody else with their own vision and intellect is going to draw on these stories and add to our understanding of whatever this work is.”

Henry Worsley was a husband, father, and an officer of an élite British commando unit; also a tapestry weaver, amateur boxer, photographer, and collector of rare books, maps, and fossils. But his true obsession was exploration. Worsley revered the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and he had led a 2009 expedition to the South Pole. But Worsley planned an even greater challenge. At fifty-five, he set out to trek alone to ski from one side of the Antarctic continent to the other, hauling more than three hundred pounds of gear and posting an audio diary by satellite phone. The New Yorker staff writer David Grann wrote about Worsley’s quest, and spoke with his widow, Joanna Worsley, about the painful choice she made to support her husband in a mortally dangerous endeavor. This segment originally aired March 2, 2018.

David Souter is one of the most private, low-profile Justices ever to have served on the Supreme Court. He rarely gave interviews or speeches. Yet his tenure was anything but low profile. Deemed a “home run” nominee by the George H. W. Bush Administration, Souter refused to answer questions during his confirmation hearing about pressing issues—most critically, about abortion rights and Roe v. Wade, which Republicans were seeking to overturn. He was confirmed overwhelmingly. Then, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey and other decisions, he defied the expectations of the Party that had nominated him. Why? This episode, produced by WNYC Studios’ “More Perfect” and hosted by Julia Longoria, explains how “No More Souters” became a rallying cry for Republicans and how Souter’s tenure on the bench inspired a backlash that would change the Court forever. You can listen to more episodes of “More Perfect” here.

The Korey Stringer Institute at the University of Connecticut was named after an N.F.L. player who died of exertional heatstroke. The lab’s main research subjects have been athletes, members of the military, and laborers. But, with climate change, even mild exertion under extreme heat will affect more and more of us; in many parts of the United States, a heat wave and power outage could cause a substantial number of fatalities. Dhruv Khullar, a New Yorker contributor and practicing physician, visited the Stringer Institute to undergo a heat test—walking uphill for ninety minutes in a hundred-and-four-degree temperature—to better understand what’s happening. “I just feel puffy everywhere,” Khullar sighed. “You’d have to cut my finger off just to get my wedding ring off.” By the end of the test, Khullar spoke of cramps, dizziness, and a headache. He discussed the dangers of heatstroke with Douglas Casa, the lab’s head (who himself nearly died of it as a young athlete). “Climate change has taken this into the everyday world for the everyday American citizen. You don’t have to be a laborer working for twelve hours, you don’t have to be a soldier in training,” Casa tells him. “This is making it affect so many people even just during daily living.” Although the treatment for heat-related illness is straightforward, Casa says that implementation of simple measures remains challenging—and there is much we need to do to better prepare for the global rise in temperature.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is an unlikely literary star. A botanist by training—a specialist in moss—she spent much of her career at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry. But, when she was well established in her academic work, having “done the things you need to do to get tenure,” she launched into a different kind of writing; her new style sought to bridge the divide between Western science and Indigenous teachings she had learned, as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, about the connections between people, the land, plants, and animals. The result was “Braiding Sweetgrass,” a series of essays about the natural world and our relationship to it. The book was published by Milkweed Editions, a small literary press, and it grew only by word of mouth. Several years later, it landed on the Times best-seller list, and has remained there for more than three years; fans have described reading the essays as a spiritual experience. Kimmerer herself was recently recognized with a MacArthur Fellowship. Parul Sehgal, who writes about literature for The New Yorker, went to visit Kimmerer on the land she writes about so movingly, to talk about the book’s origin and its impact on its tenth anniversary. “I wanted to see what would happen if you imbue science with values,” Kimmerer told her. She is an environmentalist, but not an activist per se; her ambition for her work is actually larger. “So much of the environmental movement to me is grounded in fear,” she explains. “And we have a lot to be afraid about—let’s not ignore that—but what I really wanted to do was to help people really love the land again. Because I think that’s why we are where we are: that we haven’t loved the land enough.”