In a new installment of the Critics at Large advice hotline, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz field calls from listeners on a variety of cultural dilemmas, and offer recommendations for what ails them. Callers’ concerns run the gamut from the lighthearted to the existential; several seek works to help ease the sting of the state of the world. “I can’t say that we will solve those deeper issues,” Cunningham says. “But to share art with somebody is to offer them a companion.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:The New York Issue of The New Yorker (May 12 & 19, 2025)“Birds of America,” by Lorrie Moore“Eighth Grade” (2018)“Gilead,” by Marilynne Robinson“Danny, the Champion of the World,” by Roald Dahl“Midnight Diner” (2016-19)“Sentimental Education,” by Gustave Flaubert“Middlemarch,” by George Eliot“My Life in Middlemarch,” by Rebecca Mead“How the Method Made Acting Modern,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts”“First Reformed” (2017)“Better Things” (2016-22)“The Functionally Dysfunctional Matriarchy of ‘Better Things,’ ” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“Odes,” by Sharon OldsTJ Douglas’s “Dying”Mozart’s “The Magic Flute”“Peppa Pig” (2004—)Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid”Dennis Wilson’s “Pacific Ocean Blue”Caetano Veloso’s “Ofertório”Crosby, Stills & Nash’s début albumNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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