The New Yorker Radio Hour

Jamie Raskin on the Facts of January 6th, and the Danger Ahead

<p><span>Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, serves on Congress’s Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the Capitol.  He spoke with David Remnick about the effort to demonstrate Donald Trump’s culpability in the insurrection in a way that would resonate with voters, and about Trump’s political future.  Trump is “guilty as sin, and everybody can see it,” Raskin says, and he is running low on patience for the Department of Justice to act.  “As a citizen, I would hope and expect to see action,” Raskin notes, given the committee’s findings. “But I try to be careful not to browbeat the Attorney General of the United States.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Jason Isbell on Songwriting While Sober

<p><span>Jason Isbell got into the music business early; he had a publishing deal when he was twenty-one. But he really came into his own as a songwriter around ten years ago, as he was getting sober from years of alcohol and drug use. His record “Southeastern,” which comes in the tradition of musicians like Guy Clark, swept the Americana Music Awards in 2014. Isbell spoke with </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/john-seabrook"><span>John Seabrook</span></a><span> at The New Yorker Festival in 2016, shortly after his record “Something More than Free” was released, and he played a live set of songs including “Different Days,” “How to Forget,” and “Speed Trap Town.”  </span></p> <p><i><span>This segment first aired December 30, 2016.</span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

New Mexico Is a “Safe Haven” for Abortion Between Texas and Arizona

<p><span>In New Mexico, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has declared the state a “reproductive safe haven” between Arizona to the west, and Texas to the east. Already, she says, New Mexico’s few abortion clinics are seeing an influx of patients from outside its borders. “When you are a safe-haven state,” she says, “you put real stress on [the] current provider system.” Lujan Grisham speaks with David Remnick about her executive order—issued days after the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs—to prevent the extradition of abortion providers, a request that she expects to see from Texas law enforcement. Dobbs puts states at odds over one of the contentious issues of our time. “They’ve invited states now to fight with each other, sue each other,” she says; this is “the most despicable and horrible aspect, frankly, of this particular decision.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Nerdwriter Conquers the Internet, Plus Kelefa Sanneh on Country Radio

<p><span>Evan Puschak, known on YouTube as the Nerdwriter, posts videos dissecting topics from Shakespeare and Tarkovsky to Superman; from Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump. The videos are complex; he may spend weeks editing image, sound, and written narration. He spoke with the Radio Hour’s </span><a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/people/ngofeen-mputubwele"><span>Ngofeen Mputubwele</span></a><span> about what drew him to the essay form, and how he’s found success online. “The essay is not a treatise. It’s not a term paper. It’s not something systematically covering everything about a subject,” Puschak says. “It is an inquiry. . . . The cool thing about the video essay is that you are seeing these people’s thoughts articulated with a whole new toolbox.” As much as he loves the video form, Puschak is crossing over into print next month with a book of essays titled “Escape Into Meaning.” Plus, the writer </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/kelefa-sanneh"><span>Kelefa Sanneh</span></a><span> highlights some notable tracks playing on country radio stations this summer.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Writer Dmitry Bykov on Putin’s Russia, the Land of the “Most Free Slaves”

<p><span>Until very recently, Dmitry Bykov was a huge presence on the Russian literary scene. He is a novelist, a poet, a biographer, and a critic. He was a frequent presence on Echo of Moscow, the liberal radio station that was closed after the invasion of Ukraine, and his blunt political commentary made him an enemy of the regime. Bykov was teaching in the United States, at the Institute for European Studies at Cornell University, when the invasion of Ukraine began, and because of his forthright opposition to it, he may not be able to return home as long as Putin remains in power. Bykov calls Putin’s dictatorship “the final stage of Russian decline.” He blames not only Putin himself but the Russian people for the failure of democracy to take root. “In Russia they have a ch</span><span>oice: to</span><span> change the country—change themselves—or to keep Putin. They prefer to keep Putin,” Bykov tells David Remnick. “They’re really ready to die, but not to change their mind.” Most Russians, he continues, seem content “to make Putin responsible for everything, exclaiming, ‘We didn’t know, we couldn’t prevent him.’ ”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Comedian Hannah Gadsby Renounces Comedy, and Patricia Marx Tries to Relax

<p><span>The comedian Hannah Gadsby has been touring this summer with a show called “Body of Work.” She came to wide attention in 2018, with the Netflix special “Nanette.” It was a full-length comedy show, and, at the same time, a carefully structured critique of standup comedy which argued that comedians have to distort personal experience for the sake of a joke, inflicting a kind of violence on themselves and their audiences. Gadsby recently published a memoir about her breakout moment called “Ten Steps to Nanette.” </span><i><span>The New Yorker’s</span></i> <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/emily-nussbaum"><span>Emily Nussbaum</span></a><span> talked with Gadsby back in 2018, when “Nanette” had just been released. Plus, Patricia Marx tries the trendy relaxation technique called flotation therapy—formerly known as a sensory deprivation tank. But relaxing, Marx found, is just too stressful, and her microphone was the only thing that found peace.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

What Precedents Would Clarence Thomas Overturn Next?

<p><span>Justice Clarence Thomas once was an outlier for his legal views. But Thomas is now the heart of the Court’s conservative bloc, and his concurring opinion in the recent abortion ruling calls out some other precedents the Court might overturn. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jeannie-suk"><span>Jeannie Suk Gersen</span></a><span> teaches constitutional law at Harvard Law School and clerked for former Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court; she has been covering the end of Roe v. Wade for </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span>, and she spoke with David Remnick about Thomas’s concurrence. It articulates a view more extreme than Justice Alito’s majority opinion, saying that other rights derived from privacy—such as contraception and same-sex intimacy—are not constitutional rights at all. “We have to remember he’s been saying it out loud for quite some time,” Suk Gersen says. “This is not a new thing from Justice Thomas. It’s just that we normally—over decades—didn’t pay that much attention to him, because he was alone in his dissents and concurrences.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Astrid Holleeder’s Crime Family

<p><span>All her life, Astrid Holleeder knew that her older brother Willem was involved in crime. But she was stunned when, in 1983, Willem and his best friend, Cornelius van Hout, were revealed to be the masterminds behind the audacious kidnapping of the beer magnate Alfred Heineken. It was the beginning of a successful career for Willem, known as Wim. After a stay in prison, he became a celebrity criminal; he had a newspaper column, appeared on talk shows, and took selfies with admirers in Amsterdam. He got rich off of his investments in the sex trade and other businesses, but kept them well hidden. But when van Hout was assassinated and other associates started turning up dead, Astrid suspected that her brother had committed the murders. She decided to wear a wire and gather the evidence to put him away. If that didn't work, Astrid tells staff writer </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/patrick-radden-keefe"><span>Patrick Radden Keefe</span></a><span>, she would have to kill Willem herself. After Astrid testified against him, Willem was convicted of multiple murders. Living in hiding, and travelling in disguise, she tells Keefe the story of her complicity and its consequences. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span>Keefe’s </span><i><span>New Yorker</span></i><span> story </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/08/06/how-a-notorious-gangster-was-exposed-by-his-own-sister"><span>about Astrid Holleeder</span></a><span> appears in his new collection, “Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks.”</span></p> <p><i><span>This segment originally aired August 3, 2018.</span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Jia Tolentino and Stephania Taladrid on the End of Roe v. Wade

<p><span>The Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dobbs case was not a surprise; given the draft opinion that was leaked in May, its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey was nearly a certainty. But the effects of the ruling have been rapid and chaotic. </span><span>In some states, abortions stopped overnight; in others, there’s profound confusion over what qualifies as a legally acceptable reason for having an abortion. </span><span>Far from settling the legal issue of abortion—by sending it back to the states—the Dobbs ruling opens an uncharted legal dimension where the health of a pregnant person is being pitted against the life of a fetus, with potentially fatal consequences. “Flat out, women will die in the course of ordinary pregnancy,” </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jia-tolentino"><span>Jia Tolentino</span></a><span> says, “because of physician fears about anything that might make them liable for felony changes of performing an abortion. It will make pregnancy significantly more dangerous for many, many people.” Tolentino and </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/stephania-taladrid"><span>Stephania Taladrid</span></a><span> have both reported extensively on abortion access, and they spoke this week with the </span><i><span>New Yorker </span></i><span>editor Tyler Foggatt. </span></p> <p><i><span>A longer version of this conversation appears on The New Yorker’s </span></i><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/politics-and-more"><i><span>Politics and More</span></i></a><i><span> podcast.  </span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Why Do Conservatives Love Hungary’s Viktor Orbán?

<p><span>When the </span><i><span>New Yorker </span></i><span>staff writer </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/andrew-marantz"><span>Andrew Marantz</span></a><span> first heard that the Conservative Political Action Conference, the flagship event of the American conservative movement, was holding a meeting in Hungary, he thought it might be a joke. “A lot of people have worried for a few years now that the Republican Party is becoming more ambivalent about certain bedrock norms of American democracy,” Marantz told David Remnick. “To openly state, ‘We’re going to this semi-authoritarian country’ . . .  I thought it was maybe a troll.” But C.P.A.C. Hungary was very real, and the event demonstrated an increasingly close relationship between American conservatives and authoritarians abroad. Viktor Orbán wins elections and claims a democratic mandate, but his legislative maneuvers and rewrites to the constitution have rendered political opposition increasingly powerless. Marantz finds the admiration for him by many in America unsettling. “I couldn’t really imagine a Putin-style takeover” of power in America, Marantz says; but “this kind of technical, legalistic Orbán model” seems all too plausible. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Alan Alda, Podcaster

<p><span>Alan Alda spent his early years in the burlesque theatres where his father, the actor Robert Alda, would perform. Those early years opened his eyes in more ways than one: “I was very aware of the naked women,” he told </span><i><span>The New Yorker’s</span></i><span> Michael Schulman, “but I was also aware of the comics.” Watching from the wings, Alda grew an appreciation for being funny, being creative, and being present. He put those skills to use for eleven years on “M*A*S*H” and in dozens of other performances on stage and screen—recently, as a divorce lawyer for Adam Driver’s character in “Marriage Story.” But it was only later in life that Alda realized his skills might be useful in another arena: science. Alda made it his crusade to help scientists communicate their ideas to a broad audience. “What occurred to me,” Alda told Schulman, “was that if we trained scientists starting from actually improvising, they would be able to relate to the audience the way they were relating to me.” He hosted a series of science programs and founded the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. He also started a podcast. On “Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda,” Alda interviews luminaries from the fields of science, politics, and entertainment, drawing on his training to make their specialist knowledge accessible to listeners. Interviewing, he thinks, isn’t unlike performing with a scene partner: “You have to relate to the other person,” says Alda. “You have to observe the other person. You have to be watching their face, their body and language” to determine what it is the guest “really means.” Plus, if you’re still looking for something for the kids to do this summer, have you considered Horse Camp? A comedy sketch by Emily Flake and Sarah Hutto.  </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Forget Dating Apps—the “Marriage Pact” Goes for the Long Haul

<p><span>A survey that started as a student project at Stanford University has become a popular dating and relationship tool on campuses across the country. Its goal is to delve deeper than the superficial information found on a typ</span><span>ical dating-app profile, connecting people based on deeply held values rather than looks or sports teams.  Most apps, says Liam MacGregor, who created the Marriage Pact with a fellow-student, </span><span>“were designed to solve really specific problems … if you want a short-term relationship. But because they’re the only tools out there, people have tried to use them to solve these other problems.”  </span><span>The Marriage Pact “set out to solve this very specific problem at the beginning: If you need a backup plan for a 50-year-long relationship, who’s right for that?” Would you put an elderly relative in a nursing home? Do you keep people as friends because they might be useful to you </span><span>later? Would you keep a gun in the house? More than 250,000 students across more than 75 campuses have taken the survey. The Radio Hour’s producer KalaLea talked to students at Princeton University, where the survey was being conducted, to find out what it was all about. </span></p> <p><span>Plus, perched high above the ice at Madison Square Garden, the organist Ray Castoldi has conducted the soundtrack of Rangers games and more for thirty years.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Dexter Filkins on the Rise of Ron DeSantis

<p><span>Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has shown himself uniquely skilled at attracting attention beyond the borders of his home state.  Just this month, DeSantis blocked state funds for the Tampa Bay Rays stadium after players voiced support for gun control in the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.  He’s also continuing a fight to punish the Disney Corporation for criticizing Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law.  An Ivy League-educated anti-élitist firebrand, he is willing to pick a fight with anyone—reporters, health officials, teachers, Mickey Mouse—to grab a headline. DeSantis “practically radiates ambition,” the staff writer Dexter Filkins tells David Remnick. “He sounds like Trump, except that he speaks in complete sentences. … He’s very good at staking out a position and pounding the table and saying, I’m not giving in to the liberals in the Northeast.” Yet despite having been anointed by Donald Trump in his primary election, DeSantis has refused to “kiss the ring,” and many see DeSantis as a possible opponent to Trump in a 2024 Republican primary. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Michael R. Jackson on “A Strange Loop,” His Black, Queer Coming-of-Age Musical

<p><span>Michael R. Jackson’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning musical “A Strange Loop” features a Black queer writer named Usher, who works as an usher, struggling to write a musical about a Black queer writer. Jackson’s work tackles the terror of the blank page alongside the terrors of the dating scene, and it speaks in frank and heartbreaking terms about Usher’s attempt to navigate gay life among Black and white partners. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/hilton-als"><span>Hilton Als</span></a><span> talked with Jackson about how he found inspiration in his own experience seeking identity and community. “I started writing the original monologue—building a sort of life raft for myself—to understand myself,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t until I got to a place of understanding that in my life I was caught up in a loop of self-hatred, that I could see what Usher’s problem was, and therefore what the structure of the piece was that would lead him out of that and into a better place.”</span></p> <p><span>“A Strange Loop” is playing now at the Lyceum Theatre, on Broadway. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Adrenaline Rush of Racing Drones

<p><a href="http://newyorker.com/contributors/ian-frazier"><span>Ian Frazier</span></a><span>, who has chronicled American life for </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span> for more than forty years, travelled to a house in Fort Collins, Colorado, where three roommates build, fly, and race drones. Jordan Temkin, Zachry Thayer, and Travis McIntyre were among the early professional drone racers in the sport, piloting the tiny devices through complex courses at upward of eighty miles an hour. Drones have had an enormous impact on military strategy, and the commercial applications seem limitless, but to these pilots drones exist in the strange overlap between pure adrenaline and big money that defines pro sports.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><i><span>This piece originally aired on February 9, 2018.</span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Regina Spektor on Her New Album, “Home, Before and After”

<p><span>Twenty years ago, Regina Spektor was yet another aspiring musician in New York, lugging around a backpack full of self-produced CDs, and playing at little clubs in the East Village—anywhere that had a piano. But anonymity in Spektor’s case didn’t last long.  She toured with the Strokes in 2003, and once she had a record deal, her ambitions grew outside indie music.  She moved into a pop vein, writing anthems about love and heartbreak, loneliness and death, belief and doubt.  Her 2006 album “Begin to Hope” went gold.  </span></p> <p><span>“Home, Before and After,” being released this month, is Spektor’s first new album in six years.  She sat down at a grand piano with </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/amanda-petrusich"><span>Amanda Petrusich</span></a><span>, who covers music for </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span>, playing songs from the record and talking about the role of imagination and playfulness in her songwriting and her vocals.  “I think that life pushes you—especially as an adult, and especially when you’re responsible for other little humans—to be present in this logistic[al] sort of way,” she says. “I try as much as possible to integrate fun, because I love fun. And I love beauty. And I love magic. … I will not have anybody take that away.”</span></p> <p><span>Spektor performed “Loveology,” “Becoming All Alone,” and the older “Aprѐs Moi,” accompanying herself on piano.  The podcast episode for this segment features a bonus track, “Spacetime Fairytale.” </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Masha Gessen on the Quiet in Kyiv

<p><span>Masha Gessen is reporting for </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span> on the war in Ukraine, which is now in its fourth month. They checked in with David Remnick from Kyiv, which seems almost normal, with “hipsters in cafés” and people riding electric scooters. But the scooters, Gessen noted, are popular because prices have skyrocketed and gasoline is unaffordable. All the talk, meanwhile, is of war crimes—of murder, rape, torture, and kidnapping. (The Russian government has denied involvement in any war crimes.) And outside the city, in the suburbs, Gessen finds “unimaginable destruction,” comparable to what they saw in Grozny, Chechnya, “after the second war—after they’d had nearly ten years of carpet bombing.” The scale of atrocities, Gessen says, makes any diplomatic compromise over territory impossible for Ukrainians to accept. Plus, the head of the largest flight attendants’ union talks with the staff writer Jennifer Gonnerman about leading her members through turbulent times, with organized labor making a comeback, while unruly passenger behavior is reaching new heights.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

“The Book of Queer,” and “Bob’s Burgers” Hits the Big Screen

<p><span>While working on his Ph.D., the historian Eric Cervini (whose book “The Deviant’s War” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) noticed the lack of popular histories on L.G.B.T.Q. issues. Researchers were publishing plenty of papers, but they were mostly in peer-reviewed journals and other academic outlets. His attempts to change that—first with his Instagram videos, and now with a series on Discovery+—bring to life key moments and figures in queer history, including the pharaoh Akhenaten and President Abraham Lincoln. “I would describe [the show] as a queer-history variety show,” Cervini told </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/michael-schulman"><span>Michael Schulman</span></a><span>. “The Book of Queer” is streaming on Discovery+, with new episodes each week in June. Plus,Loren Bouchard, the creator of “Bob’s Burgers,” resisted making a movie from his TV show—until now. He talked with </span><i><span>The New Yorker’s</span></i><span> Sarah Larson about the show’s surprising strain of optimism.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Remembering Roger Angell, and Fishing with Karen Chee

<p><span>Roger Angell, who died last week, at the age of 101, was inducted in 2014 into the Baseball Hall of Fame in recognition of his extraordinary accomplishment as a baseball writer. But in a career at </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span> that goes back to the Second World War, he wrote on practically every subject under the sun; he also served as fiction editor, taking the post once held by his mother, Katharine White.  Angell “did as much to distinguish </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span> as anyone in the magazine’s nearly century-long history,” David Remnick wrote </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/postscript/remembering-roger-angell-hall-of-famer"><span>in a remembrance</span></a><span> last week. “His prose and his editorial judgment left an imprint that’s hard to overstate.”  In 2015, Remnick sat down for a long interview with Angell about his career, and particularly his masterful late essays—collected in “This Old Man: All in Pieces”—on aging, loss, and finding new love. </span></p> <p><span>Plus, we join the comedian—a writer for “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and “Pachinko,” and a <i><span>New Yorker</span></i><span> contributor—on her favorite kind of outing: a fishing trip that doesn’t yield any fish.</span></span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

What Makes a Mass Shooter?

<p><span>In America, unthinkable violence has become routine.  In the wake of the Buffalo and Uvalde mass shootings, David Remnick speaks with the researchers Jillian Peterson and James Densley, whose book “The Violence Project” is the most in-depth study of mass shooters. Pro-gun politicians may continue to block any measures to reduce violence, but we can understand better a different side of the equation: what motivates these crimes. David Remnick speaks with two criminal-justice researchers who have studied mass killers, James Densley, of Metropolitan State University, and Jillian Peterson, of Hamline University. They point out that mass shootings have risen alongside deaths of despair, including overdoses and suicide.  “The perpetrator goes in with no escape plan,” Peterson points out.  “What we can learn from suicide prevention can teach us how to prevent some of these mass shootings.  We haven’t connected these two things.”  Remnick is also joined by </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/keeanga-yamahtta-taylor"><span>Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor</span></a><span>, who wrote about the Buffalo attack for </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span>; and we hear from a 70-year-old resident of Uvalde, Texas, about the aftermath of the killings in a tight-knit community. </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Florence and the Machine, Live at The New Yorker Festival

<p><span>Across five studio albums, Florence and the Machine has explored genres from pop to punk and soul; the band’s most recent record, “Dance Fever,” just came out. Florence Welch, the group’s singer and main songwriter, is by turns introspective and theatrical, poetic and confessional. She sat down with </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/john-seabrook"><span>John Seabrook </span></a><span>at The New Yorker Festival in 2019 to reflect on her band’s rapid rise to stardom. She also spoke about her turn toward sobriety after years of heavy drinking. “The first year that I stopped, I felt like I’d really lost a big part of who I was and how I understood myself,” she says. “What I understood is that that was rock and roll, and, if you couldn’t go the hardest, you were letting rock and roll down.” But eventually getting sober let her connect more deeply with fans and with the music. “To be conscious and to be present and to really feel what’s going on—even though it’s painful, it feels like much more a truly reborn spirit of rock and roll,” she says.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Attack on Gender-Affirming Medical Care

<p><span>Across the United States, conservative politicians are leading a backlash against L.G.B.T.Q. identity, framing legal restrictions as protection of children. Several states have introduced laws to ban medical treatments known as gender-affirming care—including hormones and puberty blockers—prescribed to adolescents. Major medical organizations have approved the treatments, but </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/rachel-monroe"><span>Rachel Monroe</span></a><span>, who has been following efforts to ban gender-affirming care in Texas, found that doctors wouldn’t speak out about the political furor because the resulting attention could endanger themselves, their clinics, and their patients. One specialist, however, was willing to go on the record: Dr. Gina Sequeira, a co-director of the Gender Clinic at Seattle Children’s. “I was growing so frustrated seeing the narrative around gender-affirming care provision for youth so full of misinformation and so full of blatant falsehoods that I couldn't in good conscience continue to stay quiet,” Sequeira told her. Doctors cite a body of data that gender-affirming care reduces the risk of suicide, which is high among trans youth. Sequeira’s Seattle clinic has been fielding calls from Texas families looking to relocate if the proposed ban in Texas prevents their children from accessing care. “</span><span>If we were to stop care, I would be afraid that our child wouldn’t survive,” the mother of a trans girl told Monroe. “There’s no question that she’s not safe to herself.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Comedian Megan Stalter on Finding Inspiration in American Absurdity

<p><span>Before the pandemic, Megan Stalter was an unknown comedian, trying to catch a lucky break at clubs in New York City. But with the arrival of COVID-19, social media became her only outlet, and she quickly found an audience with her short-form, D.I.Y. character videos,  portraying the “breadth of American idiocy,” as </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/michael-schulman"><span>Michael Schulman</span></a><span> puts it, with such accuracy and heart that it’s hard to turn away. After her rise to Internet fame—she was dubbed the “queen of quarantine”—Stalter was offered the part of Kayla, the overprivileged and clueless assistant, on HBO’s hit series “Hacks.”  It was her first acting job.  Plus, Helen Rosner joins the chef Andy Baraghani in his home kitchen for a lesson on cauliflower ragu. Baraghani, best known for his YouTube cooking videos for </span><i><span>Bon Appetit</span></i><span>, is out with a new cookbook called “The Cook You Want to Be.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Battle After Roe v. Wade

<p><span>Assuming that Justice Samuel Alito’s final opinion in the Mississippi abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization gets majority support, there will be profound social, political, and health-care implications across the United States.   </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/margaret-talbot"><span>Margaret Talbot</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/peter-slevin"><span>Peter Slevin</span></a><span> and </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jia-tolentino"><span>Jia Tolentino</span></a><span> assess the world after Roe.  Opponents will surely not stop by leaving abortion at the state level but will try to ban it under federal law.  Tolentino discusses fetal personhood, the legal concept that a fertilized egg is entitled to full legal rights, which severely compromises the bodily autonomy of a pregnant woman.  There is already speculation that access to birth control and same-sex marriage could be challenged. “If people feel panicked about all those things, I wouldn’t invalidate that,” Tolentino says. But focussing on the immediate post-Roe future, she says, presents enough to worry about. “This is a universe of panic on its own.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Stephanie Hsu on “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

<p><span>“Everything Everywhere All At Once”</span> <span>is in a genre all its own—you could call it sci-fi-martial-arts-family-drama.  Stephanie Hsu plays both Joy, an angsty teen-ager struggling with her immigrant mother, and Jobu, an omnipotent, interdimensional supervillain.  “The relationship between Evelyn and Joy in its simplest terms is very fraught,” Hsu tells </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jia-tolentino"><span>Jia Tolentino</span></a><span>.  “It’s the story of a relationship of a daughter who’s a lesbian who is deeply longing for her mother’s acceptance … but they keep chasing each other around in the universe and they can just never find one another. Until of course they launch into the multiverse and become nemeses.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

The Last Abortion Clinic in Mississippi; and a Look at White Empathy

<p><span>Last week, a draft opinion was leaked which suggests that a majority of Supreme Court Justices are ready to overturn the precedents of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey—the decisions that have guaranteed a right to abortion at the federal level.  The case in question is Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which Mississippi officials seek to close the state’s last remaining abortion clinic under a law that bans performing an abortion after the fifteenth week of pregnancy—a point well before the time of fetal viability.  In November, </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/rachel-monroe"><span>Rachel Monroe</span></a><span> visited the Jackson abortion clinic, speaking to its director, Shannon Brewer; a physician who asked to remain anonymous, describing the risks to abortion providers; and a patient, who had driven all night from Texas, where she was not able to obtain an abortion. “Somebody else is telling me what I should do with my body, and it’s not right,” she said. “It’s my body. It’s my decision. It’s my choice. It’s my life. It’s my soul, if it’s going to Hell.” </span><em><span>Produced with assistance from Ezekiel Bandy and Kim Green.</span></em><span> </span><em><span>This segment originally aired November 19, 2021.  </span></em></p> <p><em><span>Plus, the staff writer Alexis Okeowo talks with the producer Ngofeen Mputubwele about why the Ukrainian refugee crisis seems both familiar and startlingly different from conflicts in other parts of the world. </span></em></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Rickie Lee Jones’s Life on the Road

<p><span>Rickie Lee Jones emerged into the pop world fully formed; her début album was nominated for five Grammys, in 1980, and she won for Best New Artist. One of the songs on that record was “The Last Chance Texaco,” and Jones has made that the title of her recent memoir. The song evokes a service station on a long stretch of highway, and Jones’s book reflects on her almost obsessive need to travel and uproot herself at almost any cost. “All I wanted to do was leave” from a very young age, she says. “When I talk about it from here, it seems like it was so horribly dangerous.” She adds, “Suddenly I’ll [say], ‘I think I’ll go to Big Sur,’ and I’m in a car, going. But the chaos and trouble that brings to a life!” The producer Scott Carrier, who hosts the podcast “Home of the Brave,” interviewed Jones near her home in New Orleans.</span></p> <p><i><span>This story originally aired April 9, 2021.</span></i></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

A Ukrainian Diplomat on the Future of Russian Aggression

<p><span>As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters a third month, prospects of ending the conflict are still nowhere in sight, and there seems to be no end to the destruction that Vladimir Putin is willing to inflict. Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, tells David Remnick that he expects Russia to continue escalating its attack leading up to May 9th, a day of military celebration in Russia commemorating the German surrender in the Second World War. “They will escalate attacks by missiles from the sky to terrorize Ukraine in general,” he predicts, “and to make the government more susceptible to surrender.” </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span>In contrast to President Volodymyr Zelensky—who was a political rookie when he took office, in 2019—Kyslytsya has spent his career in Ukraine’s foreign service. In the years after the Soviet breakup, he says, Ukraine wanted to both placate its neighbor and ally itself with Western institutions. This created a “cognitive dissonance,” he says, that prevented Ukraine from recognizing the extent of Russian aggression. Having watched as diplomacy failed, Kyslytsya still has to separate his work from the personal toll of Russia’s invasion on his family and friends. “I try not to engage emotionally because if I engage emotionally too much, I am not operational,” he says. “And if I am not operational . . . I’m of very little use for my government.”</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Viola Davis on Playing Michelle Obama, and Finding Her Voice as an Actor

<p><span>The Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis traces her career in Hollywood back to a single moment of inspiration from her childhood: watching Cicely Tyson star in the 1974 movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” “I saw excellence and craft, and I saw transformation,” Davis tells David Remnick. “And more importantly, what it planted in me is that seed of—literally—I am not defined by the boundaries of my life.” In a new memoir, “Finding Me,” Davis writes of a difficult upbringing in Rhode Island, marked by poverty and an abusive father. She pursued her dream of attending the prestigious Juilliard School, but felt alienated by a white-focussed approach that left little room for her background or identity. She talks with Remnick about how she grew past these early challenges, the lingering impostor syndrome that many successful people experience, and how she prepared to play Michelle Obama in the series “The First Lady.” </span><span>Plus, the cartoonist Liana Finck, a regular presence in</span><em><span><span> </span>The New Yorker</span></em><span>, explains how a ride on the Long Island Rail Road gets her creative ideas flowing; she can work among people without anyone talking to her.</span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>

Ronan Farrow on the Threat of Modern Spyware

<p><span>Ronan Farrow has published an </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/25/how-democracies-spy-on-their-citizens"><span>investigation</span></a><span> into a software called Pegasus and its maker, NSO Group. Pegasus is one of the most invasive spywares known; it allows users—including law-enforcement officials or government authorities—to hack into a target’s smartphone, gaining access to photos, messages, and the feeds from a camera or microphone. NSO markets Pegasus as a tool to catch terrorists and other violent criminals, but once a surveillance tool is on the market it can be very difficult to control. Farrow finds that Pegasus is being used to suppress political opposition in democratic nations, including Spain. The largest known cluster of Pegasus attacks has targeted people in Catalonia who support the independence movement, which the Spanish government views as a threat. “This is not just an information-gathering tool,” Farrow tells David Remnick; “It’s an intimidation tactic, and it works.” </span></p><br/> <p>Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See <a href="https://pcm.adswizz.com">pcm.adswizz.com</a> for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.</p>