Critics at Large | The New Yorker

In 2010, Time magazine’s Person of the Year was not a world leader or entertainment icon but Mark Zuckerberg, the twenty-six-year-old creator of Facebook. That same year, Zuckerberg got the Hollywood treatment in the bio-pic “The Social Network,” directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz revisit “The Social Network,” which put forward an origin story for the company, captivating audiences and becoming a cultural touchpoint in the process. They compare it to Sorkin’s new film, “The Social Reckoning,” which dramatizes whistle-blowing by the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and the resulting bombshell investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal in 2021. In the earlier film, Jesse Eisenberg played Zuckerberg as a lonely, ambitious genius—a stark contrast to Jeremy Strong’s portrayal, in “The Social Reckoning,” of a man who puts profits before people at every turn. At its best, the new film functions as its own form of whistle-blowing. “The best reason to watch ‘The Social Reckoning’ is that a lot of people still don't understand some of these things about this company,” Cunningham says. “I do wonder if a kind of news-giving or news-bringing, however belated . . . is a salutary effect of these portrayals.”  Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “The Social Network” (2010) “The Social Reckoning” (2026)  “The Facebook Files” (The Wall Street Journal) "Succession” (2018-23) “Aaron Sorkin Made a Movie About Her. She Just Hopes Mark Zuckerberg Watches.” by Seija Rankin (The Hollywood Reporter)  "As Big Tech Takes Over Hollywood, the Picture Onscreen Gets Darker," by Alissa Wilkinson (The New York Times) “Silicon Valley” (2014-19)  “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” by Sarah Wynn-Williams “Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech,” by Claire Stapleton “Edward Snowden and the Rise of Whistle-Blower Culture,” by Jill Lepore (The New Yorker) “Data center opposition a rare issue uniting Americans across the political divide,” (60 Minutes)  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 that 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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the perennial appeal of survival stories. They trace the theme of man versus nature from early novels like Daniel Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” to new releases like “Heart of the Beast,” in which Brad Pitt plays a grizzled veteran traversing the Alaskan wilderness with a canine companion. Survivalist themes are common in reality franchises like “Survivor,” now in its fifty-first season, and the History Channel show “Alone.” But a new offering from Channel 4, “Apocalypse,” takes the format in a darker direction: contestants profess their fears about societal collapse as they compete for food and shelter on an abandoned military base. As anxiety rises about the climate crisis and the potential for an A.I. takeover, the question of survival seems more pressing than ever—and yet these tales of rugged individualism can seem out of step with the times. “They don’t really describe our condition,” Cunningham says. “Unless you are in fact marooned somewhere, there are other people. It’s harder to dramatize surviving together than it is surviving alone.”  Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Heart of the Beast” (2026)  “A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck,” by Sophie Elmhirst “All is Lost” (2013) “Hatchet,” by Gary Paulsen “My Side of the Mountain,” by Jean Craighead George “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” by Scott O'Dell  “Cast Away” (2000) “Rescue Dawn” (2006)  “The Ecstatic Truth,” by Daniel Zalewski (The New Yorker) “The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson and Fielding,” by Ian Watt “The Revenant” (2015)  “Little House in the Big Woods,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder “Alone” (2015-) “Survivor” (2000-) “Apocalypse” (2026)  “Tuesday, and After” (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 that 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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the school year resumes, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the work—and pleasure—of teaching and learning, reflect on their own experiences in the classroom, and counsel listeners on scholastic concerns. One teacher calls in asking for texts she could assign to combat apathy among her high-school students; another is looking for works that depict the highs and lows of her chosen career; and a graduate student seeks works of poetry to convince skeptics of the form’s artistic value. The hosts discuss the ways in which teaching is itself a kind of art form. “Teaching is so much a kind of performance,” Cunningham says. “You have to be the one out on the ledge . . . to establish a new frontier of, ‘You are allowed to be excited about this.’ ” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Less Than Zero,” by Bret Easton Ellis Homer’s Odyssey “Black Boy,” by Richard Wright “The Great Gatsby,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald “A Complicated Kindness,” by Miriam Toews “Black Swan” (2010) “The Holdovers” (2023) “Democracy and Education,” by John Dewey “The Class” (2008)  “The Simpsons” (1989-) “Are You My Mother?,” by Merve Emre (The New Yorker) “Dead Poets Society” (1989) “Theme for English B,” by Langston Hughes “Llull,” by Ariana Reines “Odes,” by Sharon Olds “The Red Poppy,” by Louise Glück 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 that 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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In May, two low-budget movies from début filmmakers opened in theatres and quickly made box-office history. “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” which together have grossed nearly a billion dollars, defied conventional industry wisdom and inaugurated the burgeoning genre of “Gen Z horror.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz are joined by New Yorker culture editor and horror enthusiast Alex Barasch to discuss this new canon, beginning with the most recent entry, Alex Ullom’s “It Ends.” Like Curry Barker and Kane Parsons—the directors of “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” respectively—Ullom is a twentysomething who honed his craft on YouTube. This content pipeline has already become a model for Hollywood executives who are scrambling to cash in on the phenomenon. But these films’ sensitivity to the predicaments of young viewers, who grew up online and came of age during the pandemic, may be the real key to their commercial success. “It’s people responding to another member of their generation speaking directly to them,” Barasch says. “I hope that that is what is sought and funded and rewarded in this new era.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Why Horror Still Haunts Us” (The New Yorker) “Obsession” (2026) “Backrooms” (2026) “It Ends” (2026) “The Twenty-Six-Year-Old Behind ‘Obsession,’ a Terrifying Tale of a Crush Gone Awry,” by Alex Barasch (The New Yorker) “No Exit,” by Jean-Paul Sartre “Weapons” (2025) “Portal” (2007) “Iron Lung” (2026) 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 that 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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation applies in the culinary realm. The two discuss specialty ingredients that appear on menus for only the briefest of moments, out-of-print cookbooks that go for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and once niche restaurants that have blown up in the TikTok era. Then, Goldfield makes her case for the particular staying power of Judy Rodgers’s “Zuni Café Cookbook,” which has influenced countless chefs and food writers—including Samin Nosrat, whose  “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” immediately soared to the top of best-seller lists upon its release, in 2017. “The Zuni Café Cookbook,” though less accessible, has attracted such illustrious devotees for a reason. “It’s text-heavy. It’s huge in size. It’s a bit intimidating at first,” Goldfield says. “But if you are interested in cooking—or if you have a curiosity about it, even—it’s an incredible resource.”  Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “Heartburn,” by Nora Ephron “The Joy of Cooking,” by Irma S. Rombauer “Cooking with Love,” by Ruth Sirkis “The Surprising Endurance of Martha Stewart’s ‘Entertaining,’ ” by Hannah Goldfield (The New Yorker) “Entertaining,” by Martha Stewart “The Zuni Café Cookbook,” by Judy Rodgers “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” by Samin Nosrat New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”—both of which were awarded Pulitzer Prizes—his œuvre also includes a mystery set amid rival schools of elevator inspectors, a zombie novel, and an autobiographical coming-of-age story. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz survey Whitehead’s wide-ranging body of work. The hosts are joined by their fellow staff writer Julian Lucas, who recently profiled Whitehead for The New Yorker. Together, they discuss three central works: “The Underground Railroad,” which catapulted its author from literary darling to mainstream celebrity; “Sag Harbor,” which fictionalizes, barely, Whitehead’s summers in the Hamptons and the family dramas that played out there; and “Harlem Shuffle,” the first installment of the crime trilogy that concluded this month, with the publication of “Cool Machine.” On the page, Whitehead is a true Gen X ironist, transmitting heavy histories and themes with levity. Despite the occasional darkness of his subject matter, he’s also one of our funniest novelists. “He has this way of, almost like a standup comedian, drawing you into this playful patter,” Lucas says. “Then your defenses go down, and that’s when he hits you with something that grabs you emotionally, or that pulls you into a story.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics: “The Elusive Promise of the First Person” (The New Yorker) “The Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead “Colson Whitehead’s Big Score,” by Julian Lucas (The New Yorker) “The Colossus of New York,” by Colson Whitehead “The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead “Sag Harbor,” by Colson Whitehead “Harlem Shuffle,” by Colson Whitehead “Cool Machine,” by Colson Whitehead “Why Bother?” by Jonathan Franzen (Harper’s) “The Odyssey” (2026) “Who Owns the Odyssey?” (The New Yorker) “Don’t Use A.I. to Do This,” by Colson Whitehead (The New York Times) “John Henry Days,” by Colson Whitehead 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 more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices