The New Yorker Radio Hour

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>

“We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and a Short History of Movies about the Internet

<p><span>The Internet can be a scary place in real life, and far more so in Jane Schoenbrun’s film “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair,” which premièred at the Sundance Film Festival last year and is being released in theatres and streaming. It’s a horror movie centered on a lonely and bored teen-age girl named Casey, who spends most of her time being online and trying to figure out who she is. She undertakes a ritual that she’s read about—the so-called World’s Fair Challenge—which is said to cause unknown and possibly dire changes. “Everyone wants to know, ‘Do you think the Internet is good or the Internet is bad?’ ” Schoenbrun told the Radio Hour’s </span><a href="https://www.wnyc.org/people/alex-barron/"><span>Alex Barron</span></a><span>. “That’s like asking, ‘Do you think that people are good or bad?’ There’s not a simple answer.” They spoke about the forty-year history of movies depicting the online world. </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>

Jennifer Egan on the Literary Pleasures of the Concept Album

<p><span>Jennifer Egan’s new novel, “The Candy House,” one of the most anticipated books of the year, has just been published. It is related—not a sequel exactly, but something like a sibling—to her Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” from 2010. That earlier book was largely about the music business, and Egan, a passionate music fan, has described its unusual structure as having been inspired by the concept albums of her youth. “The very nature of a concept album is that it tells one big story in small pieces that sound very different from each other and that sort of collide,” she tells David Remnick. “</span><span>I thought, How would I do that narratively? I ask myself that all the time.” We asked Egan to speak about three concept albums that influenced her, and she picked </span><span>The Who’s “Quadrophenia,” about a disaffected, working-class mod in the nineteen-sixties; Patti Smith’s “Horses”; and Eminem’s “Recovery.”  </span><span>Plus, a story about two young boys, obsessed with basketball cards, who schemed to get a rare triptych card from a third friend. Decades later, their ill-gotten prize might be worth a lot of money—but whose money is it? The staff writer Charles Bethea looks at the grown-up consequences of a childhood prank.</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>

Anita Hill and Jane Mayer on Ketanji Brown Jackson, and the State of the Supreme Court

<p><span>Ketanji Brown Jackson has been voted in as a Supreme Court Justice—the first Black woman to serve in that role. But, to reach this milestone, Jackson has faced enormous hurdles at every turn, including confirmation hearings that featured blatant political grandstanding and barely disguised race-baiting. Nominations have become so partisan that, on both the left and the right, the Court itself is commonly viewed as merely a tool of the party that picked its members, and several polls report a decline in public confidence in the Court. “The real political end” of the attacks on Brown Jackson, Hill believes, “is to denigrate her personally, honestly, but also to really reduce the validity of any opinions that she ultimately writes. Even though . . . many of her opinions will be dissenting opinions, dissenting opinions can carry a lot of weight.” Meanwhile, Justice Clarence Thomas’s decision not to recuse himself from cases related to the January 6th insurrection, even after it came to light that his wife Ginni Thomas actively sought to influence Trump Administration officials to try to overturn the Presidential election, also undercuts the court’s impartiality. It seems that the reputation and independence of the Court is in serious trouble. </span></p> <p><span>Anita Hill, a professor of social policy, law, and women’s studies at Brandeis University, spoke with David Remnick about the Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings, along with the staff writer </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/jane-mayer"><span>Jane Mayer</span></a><span>, who is </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/31/is-ginni-thomas-a-threat-to-the-supreme-court"><span>reporting on the Ginni Thomas controversy</span></a><span>. (Hill, who testified in the 1991 Thomas nomination hearings, has declined to speak about his stance on recusal.) </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 Missing Boater

<p><span>Dick Conant spent years of his life crisscrossing America by canoe, like a Mark Twain character. On land, he worked a variety of jobs and was often homeless, but paddling on a river, he was king. By chance, on a voyage which began near the Canadian border, on his way to Florida, Conant met Ben McGrath, a <em>New Yorker</em> staff writer, outside McGrath’s home on the Hudson River. McGrath’s </span><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/14/the-wayfarer">piece</a><span> about Conant appeared in the December 14, 2015, issue of </span><em>The New Yorker</em><span> this week; here, he tells the story of a troubled man who found refuge in adventure.</span></p> <p><span>Ben McGrath’s book about Conant, “Riverman: An American Odyssey,” will be published in April. </span></p> <p><em><span>Originally aired December 11, 2015.</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>

Investigating January 6th

<p><span>With a judge declaring that Donald Trump “more likely than not” committed a felony in his attempt to overturn the Presidential election, the congressional committee investigating January 6th is racing to finish its work before the looming midterm elections. Amy Davidson Sorkin and the legal scholar Jeannie Suk Gersen talk with David Remnick about the law and the politics of holding Trump accountable. And the music writer Sheldon Pearce shares three artists that didn’t get their due in the Grammy nominations. </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>

Connor Ratliff Talks with Sarah Larson, Plus Chef Bryant Terry

<p><span>An aspiring actor named Connor Ratliff thought he had it made when he got a small part on the 2001 miniseries “Band of Brothers,” in an episode directed by Hollywood legend Tom Hanks. The day before shooting his scene, Ratliff was unceremoniously fired by Hanks, who said the rookie had “dead eyes.” It was a life-altering disappointment for Ratliff. He told </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/sarah-larson"><span>Sarah Larson</span></a><span> how he came to launch the podcast “Dead Eyes,” which explores failure as a universal part of life—in show business and beyond. When Ratliff was able to land Tom Hanks as a guest on the show, fans thought their interview would bring “Dead Eyes” to a close. But Ratliff has other ideas. Plus, <span>Helen Rosner talks with the cookbook author and food-justice activist Bryant Terry about uplifting diverse traditions in Black cooking and reclaiming veganism from white hipsters.</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>

Jill Lepore on Parents’ Rights and the Culture War

<p><span>A wave of book bannings sweeping the country, along with conservative fury over titles like “Antiracist Baby,” seems like a backlash against the heightened racial consciousness of the post-George Floyd era. The historian and staff writer Jill Lepore sees these conflicts as the continuation of an old dynamic. She relates today’s “anti-anti-racism” movement to the anti-evolution campaign of the nineteen-twenties, which included the prosecution of a Tennessee teacher for teaching Darwin’s theory in a high-school class. Lepore tells David Remnick that what links these battles over biology and history is the argument that parents have the right to determine their children’s education in public schools. </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>

Returning to the Office . . . While Black

<p><span>“</span><span>Coming back to work is partially about surveillance and micromanagement,” Keisha, a podcasting executive, says. “Everybody feels it, but people of color feel it in a different way.” For workers who have been remote for the better part of two years, returning to the office is undeniably complicated. For some Black workers who didn’t feel at ease in majority-white offices to begin with, the complications are even greater. Racial microaggressions abound, and, for some, the stress of excessive visibility that comes with being a minority never goes away. “I would love to be ‘feet on the couch relaxed,’ like some of my colleagues in the past,” Keisha says, but “I don’t know if I could allow myself that.” As an entrepreneur named James put it, “Black folks aren’t really allowed to have bad days.” </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span>The Radio Hour’s KalaLea talks with four Black professionals and compares their experience to that of Robert Churchwell, a Black reporter hired by the Nashville </span><i><span>Banner</span></i><span> in 1950. Churchwell was excluded from the white newsroom and worked from home for five years.  </span></p> <p> </p> <p><i><span>Audio from an interview with Robert Churchwell comes from the Civil Rights Oral History Project, Special Collections, Nashville Public Library.</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>

Radio Ukraine

<p><span>Kraina FM</span><span> is a radio station that broadcasts in Kyiv and more than twenty other cities, playing Ukrainian-language rock and pop. When Russia invaded Ukraine, it took on the mantle of “the station of national resistance,” airing news bulletins and logistical information like requests for supplies. The radio hosts began adding jokes about the invading Russians, and advice from a psychologist about talking to children about the war; a writer told fairy tales on air to occupy those kids during the stressful nights of wartime. The station staff has dispersed, with Bogdan Bolkhovetsky, the general manager, and Roman Davydov, the program director, holed up in a town in the Carpathians, keeping production moving over unreliable Internet and communicating with listeners by text. They don’t know how many of their broadcasting stations are still functioning, and their tower in Kyiv could be destroyed at any time. But “we are not doing anything heroic,” Bolkhovetsky told Nicolas Niarchos, who visited their makeshift studio. “We are still in a lot of luck, having what we have right now. Thousands of people were not so lucky as we are. . . . We’re just doing what we can under these unusual circumstances.” Plus, we present the 2022 Brody Awards—the critic Richard Brody’s assessment of the best performances and the best films of the year. </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>

Jane Campion on “The Power of the Dog”

<p><span>Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog” opens like a classic Western: cattle are herded across the sweeping plains of Montana, with imposing mountains in the distance. But the plot of the film, based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, isn’t exactly a Western. It’s a family drama about two brothers who share in the ranching business but couldn’t be more different, and what happens when one of them brings his new wife and her teen-age son to live on the ranch. “</span><span>The Power of the Dog” is nominated for twelve Academy Awards, the most of any film this year, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor</span><span>. Campion talks with David Remnick about Benedict Cumberbatch’s starring performance; her experience working with Harvey Weinstein, and how #MeToo has changed the film industry; and why she’d really like to direct a comedy. Plus, Caetano Veloso, a living giant of Brazilian music, was recently profiled for<span> </span><em><span>The New Yorker</span></em><span><span> </span>by Jonathan Blitzer. The staff writer picks some key tracks from Veloso’s vast catalogue that illuminate his long career.</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>

Stephen Kotkin: Don’t Blame the West for Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

<p><span>It’s impossible to understand the destruction and death that Vladimir Putin is unleashing in Ukraine without understanding his most basic conviction: that the breakup of the Soviet empire was a catastrophe from which Russia has yet to recover. Some experts, including </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine"><span>John Mearsheimer</span></a><span>, have blamed </span><span>NATO</span><span> expansion for the invasion of Ukraine, arguing that it has provoked Vladimir Putin to defend his sphere of influence. Stephen Kotkin, a professor of history and international affairs at Princeton University, and a research scholar at the Hoover Institution, respectfully disagrees. Putin’s aggression is “n</span><span>ot some kind of deviation from the historical pattern,” he tells David Remnick. Russia in the nineteenth century looked much as it does today, he says. “It had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West.” Kotkin describes how and why the Putin regime has evolved toward despotism, and he speculates that the strategic blunders in invading Ukraine likely resulted from the biases of authoritarian rulers like Putin, and the lack of good information available to them. </span><span>Kotkin is the author of an authoritative biography of Joseph Stalin, two volumes of which have been published; a third is in the making. </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>

Pauline Kael on “The Godfather”

<p><span>As </span><i><span>The New Yorker’s</span></i><span> film critic from 1968 to around 1991, the influential Pauline Kael gave voice to her visceral reactions: she wrote as a moviegoer, not a cineaste. Fifty years ago, in the March 10, 1972, issue, she </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1972/03/18/alchemy-pauline-kael"><span>wrote</span></a><span> about a new film by the hot-shot young director Francis Ford Coppola. “If ever there was a great example of how the best popular movies come out of a merger of commerce and art,” Kael wrote, “ ‘The Godfather’ is it.” She noted that Coppola took Mario Puzo’s potboiler of a novel, and the familiar outline of the gangster melodrama, and imbued them with “a new tragic realism,” which reflected a darker view of Americanism in the Watergate era. </span></p> <p><span>Edie Falco performs an excerpted version of Kael’s review. </span></p> <p><span>Some of Pauline Kael’s best work for </span><i><span>The New Yorker</span></i><span> is collected in “The Age of Movies,” published by the Library of America.</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 and Joshua Yaffa on the Escalation of Violence in Ukraine

<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/joshua-yaffa"><span>Joshua Yaffa</span></a><span> is a Moscow correspondent for </span><em><span>The New Yorker</span></em><span>, but he has been travelling throughout the war zone in Ukraine for weeks, reporting on the Russian invasion. </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/masha-gessen"><span>Masha Gessen</span></a><span>, who has lived in and reported from Russia in the past, returned to Moscow to write about the Russian people’s response to the invasion. Yaffa and Gessen spoke with David Remnick on March 3rd about the week’s escalation of violence, and what Putin’s goal might be.</span></p> <p><span>Plus, David Remnick speaks with<span> </span><span>Igor Novikov, an Internet researcher and entrepreneur who served as an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Novikov explains how Zelensky’s background as an actor and a comedian has given him an advantage in the West’s “attention economy.” Ukraine “will only survive if people pay attention,” Novikov notes, and must “make sure people understand who the perpetrator and who the victim is in this situation.”</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>