The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episodes
How “Saturday Night Live” Reinvented Television, Fifty Years Ago
24 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
“Saturday Night Live” turns fifty this year. Profiling its executive producer, Lorne Michaels, the New Yorker editor Susan Morrison sheds light on...
The Political Scene: Big Money and Trump’s New Cabinet
21 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Washington Roundtable—with the staff writers Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos—discusses this week’s confirmation hearings for Pe...
Antony Blinken’s Exit Interview
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As President Biden took office in 2021, he aimed to rebuild alliances that Donald Trump had threatened during his first term. That effort was challeng...
One Environmental Journalist Thinks that the U.S. Needs More Mining
14 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump loves mining, and he would like to expand that effort in the U.S. At least one environmentalist agrees with him, to some extent: the jour...
Representative Ro Khanna on Elon Musk and the Tech Oligarchy
10 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Representative Ro Khanna of California is in the Democrats’ Congressional Progressive Caucus. And although his district is in the heart of Silicon V...
Sara Bareilles Talks with Rachel Syme
07 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Sara Bareilles broke out as a pop-music star in the late two-thousands. But she’s gone on to have a very different kind of career, writing music for...
Rachel Aviv on Alice Munro’s Family Secrets
03 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Rachel Aviv reports on the terrible conundrum of Alice Munro for The New Yorker. Munro was a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and perhaps the m...
Julianne Moore Explains What She Needs in a Film Director
31 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Introducing Julianne Moore at the New Yorker Festival, in October, the staff writer Michael Schulman recited “only a partial list” of the director...
The Art of Cooking with Ina Garten
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
With the Food Network program “Barefoot Contessa,” Ina Garten became a beloved household name. An essential element of her success is her confidin...
Christmas in Tehran During the 1979 Iran Hostage Crisis
24 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 1979, as Christmas approached, the United States Embassy in Tehran held more than fifty American hostages, who had been seized when revolutionaries...
Willem Dafoe on “Nosferatu”
20 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Willem Dafoe has one of the most distinctive faces and most distinctive voices in movies, deployed to great effect in blockbuster genre movies as well...
From the Archive: James Taylor Will Teach you Guitar
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
James Taylor’s songs are so familiar that they seem to have always existed. Onstage at the New Yorker Festival, in 2010, Taylor peeled back some of ...
From the Archive: St. Vincent’s Seduction
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Annie Clark, known as St. Vincent, launched her career as a guitar virtuoso—a real shredder—in indie rock, playing alongside artists like Sufjan S...
From the Archive: Elvis Costello Talks with David Remnick
18 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Elvis Costello’s thirty-first studio album, “Hey Clockface,” will be released this month. Recorded largely before the pandemic, it features an u...
From Critics at Large: After “Wicked,” What Do We Want from the Musical?
17 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The American musical is in a state of flux. Today’s Broadway offerings are mostly jukebox musicals and blatant I.P. grabs; original ideas are few an...
Rashid Khalidi on the Palestinian Cause in a Volatile Middle East, and the Meaning of Settler Colonialism
13 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Power dynamics in the Middle East shifted dramatically this year. In Lebanon, Israel dealt a severe blow toHezbollah, and another crucial ally of Iran...
Audra McDonald on Stephen Sondheim, “Gypsy,” and Being Black on Broadway
09 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Gypsy,” a work by Stephen Sondheim, Jule Styne, and Arthur Laurents, is often called the greatest of American musicals; a new production on Broad...
Inside Donald Trump’s Mass-Deportation Plans
06 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Immigration has been the cornerstone of Donald Trump’s political career, and in his second successful Presidential campaign he promised to execute t...
Pick 3: Justin Chang’s Downer Movies for the Holiday Season
03 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If “Wicked, Part I” and “Gladiator II” are not getting you into the theatre this weekend, Justin Chang, The New Yorker’s film critic, offers...
A Lakota Playwright’s Take on Thanksgiving; Plus, Ayelet Waldman on Quilting to Stay Sane
29 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“The Thanksgiving Play” is a play about the making of a play. Four performers struggle to devise a Thanksgiving performance that’s respectful of...
Sarah McBride Wasn’t Looking for a Fight on Trans Rights
26 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sarah McBride just became the first transgender person elected to the United States Congress. A Democrat, she worked for the Human Rights Campaign bef...
Ketanji Brown Jackson on Ethics, Trust, and Keeping It Collegial at the Supreme Court
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the founding of the nation, just 116 people have served as Supreme Court Justices; the 116th is Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by President Bi...
Danielle Deadwyler on August Wilson and Denzel Washington
19 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Danielle Deadwyler, who first grabbed the spotlight for her performance as Emmett Till’s mother in the film “Till,” stars in a new film called “...
The Authors of “How Democracies Die” on the New Democratic Minority
15 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
American voters have elected a President with broadly, overtly authoritarian aims. It’s hardly the first time that the democratic process has brough...
Sam Gold’s “Romeo + Juliet” Is Shakespeare for the Youth
12 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Sam Gold has directed five Shakespeare tragedies, but his latest, “Romeo + Juliet,” is something different—a loud, clubby production designed to...
Donald Trump’s Reëlection, and America’s Future
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In the end, Donald Trump’s rhetoric of another stolen election, and his opponents’ warnings that he would once again attempt to subvert a loss, we...
Rachel Maddow on the Fascist Threat in America, Then and Now
04 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
It made news when the retired general John Kelly, Donald Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, said that the former President fit the definition o...
Liz Cheney on Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Jeff Bezos
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In recent weeks and months, dozens of prominent security and military officials and Republican politicians have come out against Donald Trump, declari...
How Alpha Kappa Alpha Shaped Kamala Harris; Plus, Bill T. Jones
29 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One aspect of the Vice-President’s background that’s relatively overlooked, and yet critical to understanding her, is her membership in the sorori...
Charlamagne tha God Has Some Advice for Kamala Harris and the Democrats
25 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In these final days of the Presidential campaign, Vice-President Kamala Harris has been getting in front of voters as much as she can. Given the polls...
The Stakes for Abortion Rights, from the Head of Planned Parenthood
22 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
If Vice-President Kamala Harris wins in November, it will likely be on the strength of the pro-choice vote, which has been turning out strongly in rec...
With “The Warriors,” Lin-Manuel Miranda Takes on Another New York Story
18 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the blockbuster success of his musical “Hamilton,” Lin-Manuel Miranda has been busy: acting, directing, and composing for Disney projects, i...
Bon Iver on “SABLE,” His First New Record in Five Years
16 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Bon Iver is the alias of Justin Vernon, who holds an unusual place in music as both a singer-songwriter in an acoustic idiom and a collaborator with t...
The Astonishing Rise—and Uncertain Odds—of Kamala Harris’s Presidential Campaign
11 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since July 21st, when Joe Biden endorsed her in the Presidential race, all eyes have been on Vice-President Kamala Harris. The New Yorker’s Evan Osn...
Brian Jordan Alvarez on “English Teacher”
08 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Between book bans, the movement for parental rights, the fight over cellphones, and budgets being slashed, life in a public school is stressful—and ...
Newt Gingrich on What Trump Could Accomplish in a Second Term
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Long before Donald Trump got serious about politics, Newt Gingrich saw himself as the revolutionary in Washington, introducing a combative style of pa...
Could the War in Gaza Cost Kamala Harris the Election?
01 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In Michigan, many voters—particularly Arab American and Muslim voters—remain deeply upset by the Biden Administration’s support for the Israeli ...
Young Donald Trump, Roy Cohn, and the Dark Arts of Power
27 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Actors and comedians have usually played Donald Trump as larger than life, almost as a cartoon. In the new film “The Apprentice,” Sebastian Stan d...
Timothy Snyder on Why Ukraine Can Still Win the War
24 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Since the war in Ukraine began, the historian Timothy Snyder has made several trips to Ukraine, and it was there that he wrote parts of his newest boo...
Can Trump Voters Still Change Their Minds?
20 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The political strategist Sarah Longwell has dedicated the last seven years to understanding why so many Republicans find Donald Trump irresistible, an...
Lake Street Dive Performs in the Studio
17 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lake Street Dive recorded their first album with money that their bassist won in a songwriting contest. They built a following the old-fashioned way, ...
Josh Shapiro on How Kamala Harris Can Win Pennsylvania
13 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2024, all eyes are on Pennsylvania: its nineteen electoral votes make it the largest swing state, and it’s considered a critical battleground for...
A Legend on Broadway, Patti LuPone Makes Her Début in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
10 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Patti LuPone has been a mainstay on Broadway for half a century. She’s appeared in some 30 Broadway productions and has won three Tony Awards for he...
Preparing For Trump’s Next “Big Lie,” with the Election Lawyer Marc Elias
06 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Of the sixty-five lawsuits that Donald Trump’s team filed in the 2020 election, Democrats won sixty-four—with the attorney Marc Elias spearheading...
Ian Frazier’s Tour of “Paradise Bronx”
03 Sep 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“I like to look at places that people aren’t seeing,” says Ian Frazier, the author of “Great Plains” and “Travels in Siberia,” and the n...
The Writer Danzy Senna on Kamala Harris and the Complexity of Biracial Identity in America
30 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In fiction and nonfiction, the author Danzy Senna focusses on the experience of being biracial in a nation long obsessed with color lines. Now that Ka...
A Pulitzer Prize Winning Take on Finance
27 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In honor of what is for many people the final days of summer, the New Yorker Radio Hour team presents a conversation that may inspire your end-of-summ...
From In the Dark: What Happened That Day in Haditha?
23 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
This program is drawn from a new season of the award-winning investigative podcast In the Dark. On a November day in 2005, in the city of Haditha, Ira...
For Republicans, the End of Abortion Rights Was a Dangerous Victory
20 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At the Republican National Convention in July, a platform plank in place for decades that called for a national abortion ban was removed—right at th...
Why Are More Latino Voters Supporting Trump?
16 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite a surge of enthusiasm for Vice-President Kamala Harris’s campaign, the 2024 race remains extremely competitive. And one factor very much in ...
R.F.K., Jr., and the Central Park Bear, with Clare Malone
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker staff writer Clare Malone’s Profile, What Does Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Actually Want? sheds light on Kennedy’s position in this Pre...
Nancy Pelosi, the Power Broker
08 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Nancy Pelosi, who represents California’s Eleventh Congressional District, led the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives for so long, and...
Israel’s Other Intractable Conflict (Part 2)
06 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River since 1967, after the third Arab-Israeli war, and ever since Israelis have settled on more and m...
Israel’s Other Intractable Conflict (Part 1)
02 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River since 1967, after the third Arab-Israeli war, and ever since Israelis have settled on more and m...
Kamala Harris, Race, and the Presidency; Plus, Louisa Thomas on the Paris Olympics
29 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
One of the big questions about Vice-President Harris’s candidacy is undoubtedly race. She would not be the first Black President. “I think that mo...
What Kamala Harris Needs to Win the Presidency, from a Veteran of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign
26 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kamala Harris will face barriers as a woman running for the Presidency. “Women constantly have to credential themselves,” Jennifer Palmieri, a vet...
Karla Cornejo Villavicencio on “Catalina,” the Tale of an Undocumented Student at Harvard
23 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Catalina Ituralde is the protagonist of the novel that bears her name, “Catalina.” In the summer before her senior year of college, she’s workin...
The Presidential Race Is in Uncharted Territory, but It’s Clear Who’s Winning
19 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The movement to persuade President Biden—long after the primaries—to drop out of the Presidential race is unprecedented. So is the candidacy of a ...
Jane Mayer, David Grann, and Patrick Radden Keefe on the Importance of a Good Villain.
16 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
During the 2023 New Yorker Festival, three legendary staff writers got together to discuss the craft of investigative journalism: digging for informat...
Julián Castro on the Biden Problem, and What the Democratic Party Got Wrong
12 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The panic that gripped Democrats during and after President Biden’s performance in the June debate against Donald Trump didn’t come out of nowhere...
Florence Welch Talks About Life on the Road
09 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Across five studio albums, Florence and the Machine has explored genres from pop to punk and soul. Florence Welch, the group’s singer and main songw...
Robert Caro on the Making of “The Power Broker”
05 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty years ago, in July, 1974, The New Yorker began publishing a lengthy excerpt of Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker.” When the book appeared, i...
The New Yorker’s Political Writers Answer Your Election Questions
02 Jul 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At the beginning of 2021, it seemed like America might be turning a new page; instead, the election of 2024 feels like a strange dream that we can’t...
John Fetterman’s Move to the Right on Israel
28 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Many Democrats saw John Fetterman as a progressive beacon: a Rust Belt Bernie Sanders who – with his shaved head, his hoodie, and the zip code of Br...
Emily Nussbaum on the Beginnings of Reality TV
25 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Reality television has generally got a bad rap, but Emily Nussbaum—who received a Pulitzer Prize, in 2016, for her work as The New Yorker’s TV cri...
Kevin Costner on “Yellowstone,” “Horizon,” and Why the Western Endures
21 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kevin Costner has been a leading man for more than forty years and has starred in all different genres of movies, but a constant in his filmography is...
Paul Scheer Picks the Very Best of the Very Worst Movies
18 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Scheer is a noted actor and comedian, and the author of the new memoir “Joyful Recollections of Trauma.” Off the screen, his true obsession i...
Is Being a Politician the Worst Job in the World?
14 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On July 4th—while the U.S. celebrates its break from Britain—voters in the United Kingdom will go to the polls and, according to all predictions, ...
After Serving Decades in Prison for Murder, Two Men Fought to Clear Their Names
11 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
For years, the staff writer Jennifer Gonnerman has reported on the case of Eric Smokes and David Warren. When they were teen-agers in Brooklyn, in 198...
Senator Raphael Warnock on America’s “Moral and Spiritual Battle”
07 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Raphael Warnock was elected to the Senate from Georgia in the 2020 election, he made history a couple of times over. He became the first Black De...
The Trans Athletes Who Changed the Olympics—in 1936
04 Jun 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In “The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports,” the journalist Michael Waters tells the story of Zdeněk Koubek, on...
Cécile McLorin Salvant Finds “the Gems That Haven’t Been Sung and Sung”
31 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When the jazz singer Cécile McLorin Salvant was profiled in The New Yorker, Wynton Marsalis described her as the kind of talent who comes along only ...
Ilana Glazer on Motherhood and Friendship, On- and Off-Screen
28 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In their breakout comedy series, “Broad City,” Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson played raucous and raunchy best friends who were the glue in each ot...
Love Is Blind, and Allegedly Toxic
24 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
On the reality-TV dating show “Love Is Blind,” the most watched original series in Netflix history, contestants are alone in windowless, octagon...
Miranda July’s New Novel Takes on Marriage, Desire, and Perimenopause
21 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Some time in her forties, something shifted in Miranda July. She started having “this new, grim feeling about the future, which was weird, because I...
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Isn’t Going Away
17 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has never held elected office but is related to many people who have, is emerging as a potential threat to Democrats and R...
How a Tech Executive Lobbied Lawmakers for the TikTok Ban
14 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David Remnick talks with a proponent of the TikTok ban that just passed in Washington. Jacob Helberg, an executive with the data giant Palantir who se...
Wired’s Katie Drummond: The TikTok Ban Is “Rooted in Hypocrisy”; Plus, Hannah Goldfield on Culinary TikTok
10 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
David Remnick talks with Katie Drummond, the global editorial director of Wired magazine, about the TikTok ban that just passed with bipartisan suppor...
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Could Swing the Election. Who Should Be More Worried—Biden or Trump?
07 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
When Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appeared on this show back in July, it was early in his run for President, and he was considered a fringe candidate. He h...
Israel, Gaza, and the Turmoil at One American University
03 May 2024
Contributed by Lukas
From Cambridge to Los Angeles and at dozens of schools in between, campuses are roiled by protest against American financial and military support for ...
Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, Who Refused to “Find” Votes for Donald Trump, Prepares for Another Election
30 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Brad Raffensperger, who holds the usually low-profile office of secretary of state in Georgia, became famous after he recorded a phone call with Donal...
Jerry Seinfeld on Making a Life in Comedy (and Also, Pop-Tarts)
26 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jerry Seinfeld used to have a comedy bit about the invention of the Pop-Tart, but when his friend Spike Feresten—who wrote the famous “Soup Nazi”...
Judi Dench on Bond and Shakespeare
23 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Probably far more people have now seen Judi Dench as M—the intelligence chief who’s the boss of James Bond—than anything she’s done in Shakesp...
Jonathan Haidt on the Plague of Anxiety Affecting Young People
19 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Both anecdotally and in research, anxiety and depression among young people—often associated with self-harm—have risen sharply over the last decad...
Maya Hawke on the Fear of “Missing Out,” and Jen Silverman on “There’s Going to Be Trouble”
16 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
At a band rehearsal in Brooklyn, Rachel Syme talks to Maya Hawke about switching gears between acting and music. In “Stranger Things,” Hawke plays...
How a Republican and a Democrat Carved out Exemptions to Texas’s Abortion Ban
12 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Texas has multiple abortion laws, with both criminal and civil penalties for providers. They contain language that may allow for exceptions to save th...
The Film Critic Justin Chang on What to See in 2024
08 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker’s newest staff member, Justin Chang, shares three films that he’s excited to see released in 2024: “Janet Planet,” the début f...
The Attack on Black History, with Nikole Hannah-Jones and Jelani Cobb
05 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Across much of the country, Republican officials are reaching into K-12 classrooms and universities alike to exert control over what can be taught. In...
Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, on Cultivating the Black Roots of Country Music
02 Apr 2024
Contributed by Lukas
By the standards of any musician, Rhiannon Giddens has taken a twisting and complex path. She was trained as an operatic soprano at the prestigious Ob...
Alicia Keys Returns to Her Roots with Her New Musical, “Hell’s Kitchen”
29 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Alicia Keys’ new musical is opening on Broadway about a ten-minute walk from where she grew up in Hell’s Kitchen. She describes the New York City ...
Percival Everett and the Reinvention of Mark Twain’s Jim
26 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In a new novel, Percival Everett offers a radically different perspective on the classic story “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” Everett tel...
Trump’s Authoritarian Pronouncements Recall a Dark History
22 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In 2016, before most people imagined that Donald Trump would become a serious contender for the Presidency, the New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik wr...
March Madness 2024: College Basketball at a Crossroads
19 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
As this year’s annual March Madness tournament kicks off, there’s a sense of malaise around men’s college basketball. The advent of the transfer...
Judith Butler Can’t “Take Credit or Blame” for Gender Furor
15 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
A legal assault on trans rights by conservative groups and the Republican Party is escalating, the journalist Erin Reed reports, with nearly five hund...
In “Great Expectations,” Vinson Cunningham Watches Barack Obama’s Rise Up Close
12 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Like most Americans, Vinson Cunningham first became aware of Barack Obama in 2004, when he gave a breakout speech at the Democratic National Conventio...
Bradley Cooper Contends for Best Actor in “Maestro”
08 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
“Maestro,” about the legendary conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein, is nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as...
What Biden Is Thinking About the 2024 Election
02 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Despite hand-wringing among Democrats about Joe Biden’s age and his discouraging poll numbers, the President’s campaign for reëlection displays a...
Kara Swisher on Tech Billionaires: “I Don’t Think They Like People”
01 Mar 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Kara Swisher landed on the tech beat as a young reporter at the Washington Post decades ago. She would stare at the teletype machine at the entrance a...
Lily Gladstone on Holding the Door Open for More Native Actors in Hollywood. Plus, the Brody Awards
27 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Lily Gladstone had been in several films, but unknown to most moviegoers, when she got a call for Martin Scorsese’s period drama “Killers of a Flo...
Ty Cobb on Trump, Putin, and the Death of Alexey Navalny
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ty Cobb represented the Trump White House during the height of the Mueller-Russia probe, so he has a unique insight into the former President’s admi...