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The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Profiles, storytelling and insightful conversations, hosted by David Remnick.

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00:26:10

Sheryl Lee Ralph on Confronting Hollywood

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/03/01

Sheryl Lee Ralph has been a staple of Black entertainment for decades. She played Deena Jones in the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls,” and was in “Sister Act 2” alongside Lauryn Hill and Whoopi Goldberg. She’s currently starring in the new ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary.” Her decades-long career gives her a unique perspective on how the industry has changed since she started—and how it hasn’t. “I think that, sometimes in order for institutions like Broadway to truly make room for others,

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00:28:55

How Black Creators Are Changing Hollywood

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/25

In the past few years, it seems a floodgate has opened, releasing a deluge of tremendously successful media that centers the Black experience. “Get Out,” “Black Panther,” and HBO’s “Watchmen” are just some of the big-budget prestige projects that have drawn huge audiences and dominated the cultural conversation. The New Yorker Radio Hour looks at this moment in Black entertainment and investigates the industry forces behind it in a special episode, produced by Ngofeen Mputubwele. A film scholar

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00:26:41

How Should President Biden Respond to Putin’s War on...

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/24

Since last summer, Russian troops have been amassing on the Ukrainian border, and, in recent weeks, President Vladimir Putin warned that he intended a military takeover of Ukraine. This week, Russia began the war, with widespread attacks, including in the capital, Kyiv, aimed at crippling the Ukrainian military. The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, has called on civilians to enlist in the military to fight the invaders. The U.S. and nato are levying heavy sanctions against the Russians, but

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00:16:43

Peter Dinklage on “Cyrano”

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/22

Joe Wright’s film “Cyrano,” nominated for an Academy Award for Best Costume Design, was based on Erica Schmidt’s 2018 stage musical of the same name. Peter Dinklage starred in both, as the unattractive but lovestruck swashbuckler of the 1897 play “Cyrano de Bergerac.” Dinklage spoke with Michael Schulman in 2019, and said that Cyrano’s predicament is not really about his famously giant schnoz; it is about “everyone’s capacity to not feel worthy of love.” Dinklage also spoke about the ending of “Game

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00:18:07

Nicholas Britell on the Art of the Film Score

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/18

Nicholas Britell has emerged as one of the most in-demand film composers working today, creating original music for projects that hew to no style or model. He wrote the infuriatingly catchy theme of HBO’s “Succession”; he is nominated for an Academy Award for the score of Adam McKay’s manic apocalypse comedy “Don’t Look Up”; he was previously nominated for his score for Barry Jenkins’s “Moonlight.” In 2017, Britell spoke with the New Yorker editor Henry Finder on the occasion of the release of

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00:48:24

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the Path Forward for the...

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/14

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of the most prominent progressives in Washington. Her political ascent began with her shocking 2018 defeat of a longtime incumbent in a New York district that includes parts of Queens and the Bronx. She is a strong advocate of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. With her party’s razor-thin majorities now in peril, many of her priorities seem out of reach. Can the agenda she was elected to advance survive? Ocasio-Cortez reflects on her time in Washington with

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00:49:28

On Cancel Culture and the State of Free Speech

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/11

Every few weeks, it seems, another example of so-called cancel culture is dominating the headlines and trending on social-media platforms. The refrain “you can’t say anything these days” has become a slogan of cultural politics, particularly on the right. And yet there’s a wide gulf of opinion on what the term “cancelling” means—and whether the phenomenon even exists. In this special episode, we examine the issue with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the YouTube video creator Lindsay Ellis,

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00:30:14

David Remnick Talks with Lee Child, the Creator of...

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/08

Lee Child didn’t start writing novels until he lost a prestigious job producing TV in England during a shakeup that he attributes to Rupert Murdoch. He tried his hand at writing a thriller, and found that the new career suited him: with a hundred million copies of his books in print in forty languages, Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels make up one of the most successful series in print. Every September 1st, he sits down to write a new one. He tells his longtime fan David Remnick that his all-American

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00:19:44

Black Thought Takes the Stage

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/04

Tariq Trotter, best known in music as Black Thought, the emcee of the Roots, is regarded by many hip-hop fans as one of the best freestyle rappers ever. His work changed shape when the Roots became the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show, and again when he began performing standup comedy. “I’ve spent most of my career with my sunglasses and my hat pulled down low, very many layers of defense,” he tells Jelani Cobb. “You’re up there as a comedian, it’s just you and your ideas and a

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00:19:29

Guillermo del Toro and Bradley Cooper on the Enduring...

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/02/01

Guillermo del Toro has been called the leading fantasy filmmaker of this century. His movies include “Pan’s Labyrinth,” “Hellboy,” and “The Shape of Water,” which won four Academy Awards in 2018, including Best Picture and Best Director. He joined David Remnick to talk about his new film, “Nightmare Alley,” along with Bradley Cooper, who plays Stanton Carlisle, a grifter who seems to want to do the right thing but is unable to resist the pull of the con. Based on a 1946 novel by William Lindsay

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00:30:48

Russia’s Intentions in Ukraine—and America

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/28

“They push buttons,” says Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale. “What button of ours are they pushing here? What are they trying to get us to do?” Vladimir Putin is posturing toward a costly invasion of Ukraine, on the false pretext of protecting Russian-language speakers in the country. Why? In a wide-ranging conversation, Snyder talks with David Remnick about how to understand Russia’s aggression, the idea advanced by Putin that Ukraine historically and rightfully belongs to Russia, and

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00:27:09

The Trials of a Whistle-blower

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/25

As a nurse at the Irwin County Detention Center—a Georgia facility run by LaSalle Corrections, a private company operating an immigration-detention contract with ICE—Dawn Wooten became aware of some frightening violations, including numerous hysterectomies and other medical procedures performed without patient consent. When she asked questions, she was demoted and eventually pushed out. Wooten supplied critical information for two complaints about I.C.D.C., which were submitted to the Office of

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00:22:11

The Olympic Games Return to China, in a Changed World

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/21

Much has changed since China last hosted the Olympics, during the 2008 Summer Games. Those Games were widely seen as greatly improving China’s international reputation. But the 2022 Winter Games have put a spotlight instead on its human-rights abuses, most notably the genocide taking place against Uyghurs and Kazakhs. Peter Hessler, for many years The New Yorker’s China correspondent, asks David Remnick, “When an athlete says something about the internment camps in Xinjiang, and the oppression of

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00:18:03

Hilton Als and Emma Cline on the Late Joan Didion

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/18

Joan Didion tried and failed, she said, “to think”; that is, to write about abstractions and symbols, and make grand arguments in the manner of the New York intellectuals of her time. Instead, the California native—who died in December, at the age of eighty-seven—built her work around close observation of American life as she saw it, withholding judgment. And while many of her intellectual contemporaries belong now to a bygone era, “for my generation,” Emma Cline notes, “her influence is so

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00:31:51

The Biden Presidency, Year One

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/14

President Biden took the oath of office in a moment of deep crisis—the pandemic in full swing and just weeks after an unprecedented attempt to overturn the election by violence. Merely a return to normalcy would have been a tall order. But Biden was promising something more: a transformational agenda that would realign American economics and life on a scale rivalling Franklin Roosevelt’s long Presidency. Yet Biden never commanded Roosevelt’s indomitable popularity and electoral advantages. A year

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00:23:32

Nnedi Okorafor on Sci-Fi Through an African Lens

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/11

Nnedi Okorafor, a recipient of the prestigious Hugo Award, is a prolific writer of science-fiction and fantasy novels for adults and young adults. She spoke with Vinson Cunningham about how her Nigerian American heritage influenced her interest in fantastical worlds. “It’s part of the culture—this mysticism,” she says. “I wanted to write about those mystical things that people talked about but didn’t talk about because they were mysterious and interesting, and sometimes forbidden.” Her novel “Akata

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00:26:45

A New Civil War in America?

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/07

When rioters, encouraged by the President, stormed the Capitol, one year ago, to overturn the results of the election, the idea that such a thing could play out in America was stunning. But the attack may have been just the beginning of an ongoing insurrection, not a failed attempt at a coup. David Remnick talks with Barbara F. Walter, the author of the new book “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.” Walter is a political scientist and a professor at the University of California, San Diego,

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00:24:16

The Power of Police Unions

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2022/01/04

The repeal of Section 50-A of the New York State Civil Rights Law was no technical change. Passed in the wake of the George Floyd protests, it was a big victory for police-reform activists. 50-A shielded the disciplinary records of police officers, meaning that, in an officer-involved killing, for example, neither lawyers, journalists, nor the victim’s family could determine if the officer had a history of disciplinary incidents. Laws like 50-A—and there are similar laws in many states—have played a

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00:25:38

Amanda Gorman on Life After Inauguration

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2021/12/31

One year ago, Amanda Gorman delivered the inaugural poem on the day that Joe Biden became President. Gorman was just twenty-two years old, and it was just two weeks after Trump supporters had assaulted the Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying the election. At the ceremony, Gorman herself seemed to cast light on a dark situation. Her poem “The Hill We Climb” reads, “When day comes, we ask ourselves: / Where can we find light / In this never-ending shade? / The loss we carry, a sea we

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00:21:23

For a French Burglar, Stealing Masterpieces Is Easier...

The New Yorker Radio Hour ·

2021/12/28

Vjeran Tomic has been stealing since he was a small child, when he used a ladder to break into a library in his home town, in Bosnia. After moving to Paris, he graduated to lucrative apartment burglaries, living off the jewels he took and often doing time in prison. He became known in the French press as Spider-Man, and he began to steal art. Tomic has a grand sense of his calling as a burglar; he considers it his destiny and has described his robberies as acts of imagination. He eventually carried

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