Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Cynicism is widely considered a defining quality of our conspiracy-addled, irony-poisoned age. But audiences and creatives alike now seem ready to cast it aside in favor of an attitude that’s long been out of style: earnestness. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace this trend from the outer-space buddy comedy “Project Hail Mary” to the real-life Artemis II mission, whose crew has spoken movingly about Earth as a “lifeboat” in the middle of a vast, mysterious universe. The hosts also consider two buzzy new books—Lena Dunham’s “Famesick,” and “Transcription,” by Ben Lerner—which find their authors turning to earnestness in midlife, after precocious beginnings. In this era of political, economic, and environmental precarity, younger generations, too, have come to celebrate big feelings, rather than living in fear of seeming cringe. “We’ve just seen too much awful stuff, and it's impossible to ironize,” Cunningham says. “The only sane response to that is to kind of sober up and say, ‘All right, what resources do humans still have?’ ”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Project Hail Mary” (2026)
“The Pitt” (2025-)
“Love on the Spectrum” (2022-)
“Heated Rivalry” (2025-)
“Famesick,” by Lena Dunham
“Girls” (2012-17)
“Transcription,” by Ben Lerner
“Climbing Cringe Mountain With Gen Z” (The New York Times)
“Amos & Boris,” by William Steig
László Krasznahorkai’s Nobel Prize lecture
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

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In 2019, marriage rates in the United States hit their lowest point in a hundred and forty years. They still haven’t rebounded. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how recent cultural offerings mirror this increasing dissatisfaction with matrimony. They discuss the new season of the Netflix anthology show “Beef,” which centers on two couples locked in a feud that gradually exposes the cracks in each relationship, and the A24 film “The Drama,” about a wedding that goes off the rails in spectacular fashion. They also consider real-life examples, including Lindy West’s recent memoir, “Adult Braces,” which has sparked a flurry of discourse about polyamory and open marriages. As such alternative ways of organizing our love lives enter the mainstream, the narrative around one of our oldest institutions is shifting, too. “I think we’re in a place where we’re trying to make marriage seem more like a positive choice, rather than an obvious obligation,” Schwartz says. “It’s a fascinating fiction that those who get married subscribe to, hoping that the fiction becomes true.” 
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Beef” (2023-)
“The White Lotus” (2021-)
“The Drama” (2026)
“Strangers,” by Belle Burden
“A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides,” by Gisèle Pelicot
“Madame Bovary,” by Gustave Flaubert
“Parallel Lives,” by Phyllis Rose
“Adult Braces,” by Lindy West
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Last fall, a group of masked men broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and made off with some of France’s crown jewels. The stunt swiftly became an online phenomenon. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the sordid satisfaction of watching a heist play out, both onscreen and off. They dive into the debacle at the Louvre, along with a range of fictional depictions, from the fantasy of hyper-competence in “Ocean’s Eleven” to the theft that goes woefully awry in Kelly Reichardt’s  “The Mastermind.” Part of the fun, it seems, lies in rooting for those who identify and exploit the blind spots of an institution. “Someone else, just like me, is seeing that everybody is an idiot. But, unlike me, they’re able to best those people in charge,” Fry says. “It’s an alternative morality—a morality of wits.”
This episode originally aired on November 13, 2025.
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“The Mastermind” (2025)
“Ocean’s Eleven” (2001)
Stella Webb’s impression of “the Louvre heist Creative Director”
Jake Schroeder’s “Ballad for the Louvre”
“Showing Up” (2022)
“The Italian Job” (1969)
“How to Beat the High Cost of Living” (1980)
“Drive” (2011)
“Le Cercle Rouge” (1970)
“This Is a Robbery: The World’s Biggest Art Heist” (2021)
“Good Time” (2017)
“George Santos and the Art of the Scam” (The New Yorker)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In the new HBO miniseries “DTF St. Louis,” Jason Bateman plays a weatherman living with his wife and kids in a sleepy town just outside of St. Louis. He befriends a coworker, Floyd Smernitch (David Harbour), and the two sign up for a dating app that specializes in clandestine affairs. By the end of the first episode, Smernitch is dead. So begins a whodunnit set against the backdrop of suburban America and the discontents simmering beneath. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz survey how the setting has been used over the decades, from the films of Douglas Sirk and the stories of John Cheever in the nineteen-fifties and sixties to the fantasy of that era seen in 1985’s “Back to the Future.” Today, the locale is being assessed anew. Like “DTF,” the recent docuseries “Neighbors” strips the suburbs of their glamour, focussing instead on petty grievances and property disputes. “They are small stakes, but of course, everything that is quintessentially American—property, the right to violence, the right to protect land—are all intensely operative in this space,” Cunningham says. “And if something goes wrong, somebody pays for it.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“DTF St. Louis” (2026—)
“‘DTF St. Louis’ Peers Into the Suburban Male Psyche,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
“The Swimmer,” by John Cheever (The New Yorker)
“Judy Blume: A Life,” by Mark Oppenheimer
“Wifey,” by Judy Blume
“Back to the Future” (1985)
“All That Heaven Allows” (1955)
“Desperate Housewives” (2004-2012)
“American Pie” (1999)
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (1997-2003)
“Adventures in Babysitting” (1987)
“The Five-Forty-Eight,” by John Cheever (The New Yorker)
“Neighbors” (2026—)
“All Her Fault” (2025)
“Friendship” (2025)
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The K-pop group BTS—by many metrics, the most popular band of all time—had a meteoric ascent before its members were called away by mandatory South Korean military service. Now, nearly four years later, the group has returned with a new record, “Arirang.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz delve into the album as well as the live-streamed concert and documentary that have accompanied its release, both on Netflix. “Arirang” is being framed as a return to the group’s Korean roots, albeit one that signifies a new, more mature era for its members, who are now in their late twenties and early thirties. The hosts consider BTS’s meticulously crafted image and its relationship to its devoted followers, known as ARMY. Intense fandom is nothing new—just ask the Beatles—but K-pop stans are particularly invested in the lives (and livelihoods) of their favorite idols, even paying for the chance to message them directly. “This further privatization of what we call parasociality,” Cunningham says, “if that can be monetized and organized, it really is the final frontier of the pop star.”
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
BTS’s “Arirang”
“BTS: The Return” (2026)
“KPop Demon Hunters” (2025)
Justin Bieber’s “Swag”
“The K-Pop King,” by Alex Barasch (The New Yorker)
The music video for BTS’s “Swim”
“Judy Blume: A Life,” by Mark Oppenheimer
The Beatles’ “Let It Be”
New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices