Last week, it was announced that Polymarket—a site where you can bet on basically anything, from the likelihood of a government shutdown to the winner of New York City’s mayoral race—will be allowed to operate in the U.S. The decision was the culmination of a broader trend: since 2018, some thirty-nine states have legalized sports betting, and the rise of online gambling has made the practice a part of daily life. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how platforms like Polymarket and DraftKings have changed our relationship to what we’re wagering on. They also examine the way games of chance have been depicted in literature and film—and our enduring susceptibility, in art and otherwise, to the promise of a hot streak. “Gambling is a way for the individual to test themselves,” Schwartz says. “It comes back to this fundamental question everyone has about themselves, which is: do I got it, or don’t I?”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Shayne Coplan’s Big Bet Is Paying Off,” by Jen Wieczner (New York Magazine)“Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse,” by Jay Caspian Kang (The New Yorker)“Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot“The Noble Hustle,” by Colson Whitehead“Rounders” (1998)“War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy“The Sopranos” (1999–2007)“Uncut Gems” (2019)“The Big Short” (2015)“To Catch a Thief” (1955)“Casino Royale” (2006)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
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44:59
Our Fads, Ourselves
Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—is only just becoming a must-have accessory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join the trend and unbox their very own Labubu before diving into the history of such fads. They draw a distinction between collecting and speculating, from the seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through to the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the nineteen-nineties and the far more recent rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. And they attempt to understand why this slightly unsettling children’s toy is now inspiring such intense reactions. “People were flooding my D.M.s, like, ‘This thing is the end of culture,’ ” Schwartz says. “This thing is not the end of culture. It’s a point on a line.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The Monsters,” by Kasing Lung“Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak“What the Labubu Obsession Says About Us,” by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)“A Dubai Chocolate Theory of the Internet” (“Search Engine”)“IRL Brain Rot and the Lure of the Labubu,” by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker)“Little House on the Prairie,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder“Toy Story” (1995)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
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46:28
How to Watch a Movie
In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, a group of young French critics issued a cri du coeur that gave rise to the figure of the auteur: visionary filmmakers ranging from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. In the final installment of this year’s Critics at Large interview series, Vinson Cunningham talks with fellow staff writer Richard Brody about the origins of auteur theory, and about the lengths to which directors have gone for artistic freedom in the decades since. They take Spike Lee’s body of work as a case study, considering his new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” and how his filmmaking sensibility reflects his singular view of the world. “Style is a funny thing in movies,” Brody says. “If it’s any good, it’s not inseparable from substance. It is substance.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The 400 Blows” (1959)“Breathless” (1960)“Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” by Andrew Sarris (Film Culture)“Circles and Squares,” by Pauline Kael (Film Quarterly)“Martin Scorsese on Making ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ ” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)“Spike Lee Comes Home,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” (2014)“Red Hook Summer” (2012)“A Great Film Reveals Itself in Five Minutes,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Highest 2 Lowest” (2025)“ ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Marks a Conservative Pivot for Spike Lee,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)“Do the Right Thing” (1989)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
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44:09
Les Américains à Paris
Nineteenth-century Americans regarded Paris as a libertine paradise: a smorgasbord of food and fashion, of night life and sex. Today, the pull toward France endures, though the precise nature of its appeal has shifted. On the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Alexandra Schwartz talks with the staff writer Lauren Collins about her work as The New Yorker’s woman on the ground in France and the long lineage of Francophilic Americans—from Edith Wharton to James Baldwin and, yes, even “Emily.” The two consider how French femininity has been marketed to American women and how modern influencers transmit an incomplete picture of Paris. “Yes, it’s romantic, and, yes, it’s picturesque, but it’s also a big, loud, dirty, profane, complicated city that evolves and changes like everywhere else,” Collins says. “There’s a lot of misbegotten essentializing that happens when Americans start talking about France.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Ces restaurants qui gonflent l’addition des touristes américains,” by Mathieu Hennequin (Le Parisien)“Can Emmanuel Macron Stem the Populist Tide?,” by Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)“The Unlikely Rise of French Tacos,” by Lauren Collins (The New Yorker)“Dearest Edith,” by Janet Flanner (The New Yorker)“The Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton“Go Tell It on the Mountain,” by James Baldwin“Giovanni’s Room,” by James Baldwin“The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” by James Baldwin (The New York Times)“Emily in Paris” (2020–)“Sex and the City” (1998–2004)“French Women Don’t Get Fat,” by Mireille Guiliano“Bringing Up Bébé,” by Pamela DruckermanNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
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45:56
How Zohran Mamdani Became the Main Character of New York City
On paper, a thirty-three-year-old socialist would seem an unlikely contender for mayor of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani’s campaign proved compelling enough to make him the front-runner to lead the largest city in America. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Eric Lach about the surprising protagonist of this year’s mayoral race. Together, they contextualize Mamdani’s persona within a long history of New York characters, from Batman to Bill de Blasio, and consider the hold these narratives have on observers within the city and beyond. “The history of New York City mayors is not a litany of successes and heroes. It’s mostly fuck-ups and rogues,” Lach says. “Often, it’s this tug-of-war between the machine and the reformer.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:Zohran Mamdani’s “Uganda Miss Me! (But I’ll Be Back Soon)”“Gangs of New York” (2002)“The Gangs of New York,” by Herbert Asbury“Low Life,” by Lucy Sante“Serpico” (1973)“The Dark Knight” (2008)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
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Critics at Large is a weekly culture podcast from The New Yorker. Every Thursday, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss current obsessions, classic texts they’re revisiting with fresh eyes, and trends that are emerging across books, television, film, and more. The show runs the gamut of the arts and pop culture, with lively, surprising conversations about everything from Salman Rushdie to “The Real Housewives.” Through rigorous analysis and behind-the-scenes insights into The New Yorker’s reporting, the magazine’s critics help listeners make sense of our moment—and how we got here.
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