The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episodes
Roomful of Teeth Redefines Vocal Music for the Future
22 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For a new music ensemble, Roomful of Teeth has made an extraordinary impression in a short time. Caroline Shaw, one of its vocalists, received the 201...
Ronan Farrow on a Campaign of Silence
18 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Farrow’s reporting on Harvey Weinstein and other accused perpetrators of sexual assault helped opened the floodgates of the #MeToo movement. In his ...
Nancy Pelosi: “Timing Is Everything”
14 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a lot of fights on her hands. After she led the Democrats to victory in the 2018 midterm elections, her legislative age...
New Yorker Writers on Hong Kong, and Nixon After Tiananmen Square
11 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The months of protests in Hong Kong may be the biggest political crisis facing Chinese leadership since the Tiananmen Square massacre a generation ago...
New Yorker Reporters on Impeachment
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
David Remnick asks five New Yorker contributors about the nascent impeachment proceedings against the President. Susan Glasser, the magazine’s Was...
Adam Gopnik on Aging, and a Visit to Maine with Elizabeth Strout
04 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In fifteen years, people of retirement age will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history. But, the staff writer Adam Gopnik finds, the el...
Cory Booker on How to Defeat Donald Trump
27 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Senator Cory Booker burst onto the national scene about a decade ago, after serving as the mayor of the notoriously impoverished and dangerous city of...
The Green Rush
20 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It was just seven years ago that Washington and Colorado became the first states to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. Today the drug is lega...
Brittany Howard, of Alabama Shakes, Talks with David Remnick
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Alabama Shakes started out playing covers at local gigs but quickly found a unique personal voice rooted in rock and soul. The band came to national a...
A Texas Republican Exits the House
13 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
An exodus is under way in the House of Representatives: not even halfway into the congressional term, fifteen Republicans have announced that they wil...
For a French Burglar, Stealing Masterpieces Is Easier Than Selling Them
10 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Salman Rushdie’s Fantastical American Quest Novel
06 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker’s fiction editor, Deborah Treisman, talks with Salman Rushdie about “Quichotte,” his apocalyptic quest novel. A few years ago, wh...
The New Norms of Affirmative Consent
03 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Mischele Lewis learned that her fiancé was a con man and a convicted pedophile. By lying about who he was, did he violate her consent, and commit ass...
Marianne Williamson Would Like to Clarify
30 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Marianne Williamson, the self-help author associated with the New Age movement, has never held political office. But the race for the Presidency, she ...
Jia Tolentino on the Rise and Fall of the Internet
27 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jia Tolentino writes for The New Yorker about an extremely wide range of topics, but a central concern is what it has meant to her to have grown up...
Roger Federer Opens Up
23 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The winner of twenty Grand Slam titles and the top-ranked men’s player for three hundred and ten weeks, Roger Federer remains a dominant force in te...
Derren Brown’s Big Secret
20 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Derren Brown wants you to know that he is not a magician. The term he prefers to use is “psychological illusionist,” and his acts mix psychology, ...
Maggie Gyllenhaal on “The Deuce” and #MeToo
16 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s first starring role was in the 2002 movie “Secretary,” a distriburbing romantic comedy about a troubled woman in a sadomasoc...
Ian Frazier Among the Drone Racers
13 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ian Frazier, who has chronicled American life for The New Yorker for more than forty years, travelled to a house in Fort Collins, Colorado, where thre...
The Rippling Effects of China’s One-Child Policy
09 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Nanfu Wang grew up under China’s one-child policy and never questioned it. “You don’t know that it’s something initiated and implemented by th...
Toni Morrison Talks with Hilton Als
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Toni Morrison read The New York Times with pencil in hand. An editor by trade, Morrison never stopped noting errors in the paper. In 2015, during a co...
Living in the Shadow of Guantánamo, Part 2
06 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In January, The New Yorker’s Ben Taub travelled to Mauritania to meet with Mohamedou Salahi. An electrical engineer who had lived in Germany, Salahi...
Living in the Shadow of Guantánamo
02 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When Mohamedou Salahi arrived at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, in August of 2002, he was hopeful. He knew why he had been detained: he had cro...
Summer, By The Book
30 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The cultural critic Doreen St. Félix goes to Madame Tussauds with Justin Kuritzkes, the début author of the novel “Famous People,” to talk about...
Tana French on “The Witch Elm”
26 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tana French was an actor in her thirties when she sat down to write about a mystery that took the lives of two children, which became the global block...
Jelani Cobb Talks with the Artist Fahamu Pecou
23 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Fahamu Pecou has shown work in museums all over the country and appeared on television shows like “Empire” and “black-ish.” The men the artist...
Watching the Moon Landing
19 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Some people have always believed that the moon landing was a government hoax, and, in the age of the Internet, that conspiracy theory continues to thr...
Tom Hanks Reads His Tale of Going to the Moon
18 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2014, Tom Hanks—the star of “Apollo 13,” among many other accomplishments—wrote a short story about going to the moon. But his was not a ...
Carly Rae Jepsen Talks with Amanda Petrusich
16 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
“I can remember, even four months after [“Call Me Maybe” ’s] release, being claimed in the press as a one-hit wonder,” Carly Rae Jepsen says...
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the 2020 Presidential Race and Why We Should Break up Homeland Security
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
It’s hard to recall a newly elected freshman representative to Congress who has made a bigger impact than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her primary vict...
Aaron Sorkin Rewrites “To Kill a Mockingbird”
09 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As he set about adapting “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the stage, Aaron Sorkin found himself troubled by its protagonist, the small-town lawyer Atti...
As Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith Hit the Road
05 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Tracy K. Smith was named Poet Laureate, in 2017, right after the most divisive election of our time. She could have spent her two-year appointment wri...
Valeria Luiselli on Reënacting the Border
02 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Valeria Luiselli first travelled to the U.S.–Mexico border in 2014, when the current immigration crisis began to heat up. Under the Trump Presidency...
Emily Nussbaum Likes to Watch
28 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, critical praise for a TV show was that it was “not like TV,” but more like a novel or a movie. That ingrained hierarchy always bugged...
The Trump Administration’s Plan to Deport Victims of Human Trafficking
25 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker contributor Jenna Krajeski recently met with a woman who calls herself Esperanza. In her home country, Esperanza was coerced and threat...
Dexter Filkins on the Dangerous Escalations between the U.S. and Iran
21 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After a U.S. drone was allegedly shot down by Iran last week, relations between Tehran and Washington are again approaching a low point; on Thursday,...
David Remnick Talks with Robert Caro about “Working”
18 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robert Caro is a historical biographer unlike anyone else writing today, with the Pulitzer Prizes, National Book Awards, and other honors to prove it....
Will the Government Get Tough on Big Tech?
14 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (which owns Google), and Facebook—known in the tech world as the Big Four—are among the largest and most profitable compan...
From Stonewall to the Present, Fifty Years of L.G.B.T.Q. Rights
07 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Masha Gessen co-hosts this episode of the New Yorker Radio Hour, guiding David Remnick through the fifty years of civil-rights gains for L.G.B.T.Q. pe...
Ava DuVernay on “When They See Us,” About the Boys Who Became the Central Park Five
04 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Ava DuVernay doesn’t like using the term Central Park Five—a moniker created by the press in the aftermath of the notorious and brutal assault of ...
Emily Nussbaum on TV’s “Deluge” of #MeToo Plots
31 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The #MeToo movement of recent years started in the entertainment industry, with revelations about moguls such as Harvey Weinstein and CBS’s Les Moon...
Who Should Receive Reparations for Slavery and Discrimination?
28 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The idea of reparations—real compensation made to the descendants of slaves or the victims of legalized discrimination—has gained traction since t...
Is America Ready to Make Reparations?
24 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Late in the Civil War, the Union general William T. Sherman confiscated four hundred thousand acres of land from Confederate planters and ordered it r...
Lucinda Williams Talks with Ariel Levy
21 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Despite winning a Grammy for her song “Passionate Kisses,” which was performed by Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lucinda Williams spent many years overloo...
James Taylor Will Teach you Guitar
17 May 2019
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 ...
What the Constitution Means to the Playwright Heidi Schreck
14 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Few Americans dispute the centrality of the Constitution as a statement of our country’s goals; it is as though holy. But what the Constitution actu...
Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert: Is It Too Late to Save the World?
10 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After years of languishing far down the list of voters’ priorities, climate change has moved to the top of many voters’ concerns, according to a n...
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and Comedian Pete Holmes
03 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand been fierce on the issue of sexual assault and harassment, especially in the military and government; as a champion of the ...
Rhiannon Giddens, Americana’s Queen, Goes Global
03 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
By the standards of any musician, Rhiannon Giddens has a twisting and complex path. Trained as an operatic soprano at the prestigious Oberlin Conserva...
A New Approach to Dementia Care
30 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In the field of memory care, there is a fierce debate around the question of honesty. Lying can, under certain circumstances, alleviate or avert distr...
Julián Castro Is Not Afraid
26 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In a crowded Democratic field, the candidate Julián Castro is eager to stand out. One way he’s tried to do that is by taking on the issue of immigr...
The Green New Deal, and an Unusual Night at the Orchestra
23 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Green New Deal is coming to the table during the one of the most divisive periods Washington has ever seen. Two advocates of the environmental pla...
The N.R.A.’s Financial Mess
19 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Last March, Wayne LaPierre sent a fund-raising letter to his members—an urgent plea for money. LaPierre described an attack on the Second Amendment ...
The actor Christine Baranski on “The Good Fight,” and Kurt Vile on Songwriting
16 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Christine Baranski was a successful theatre actor who would never stoop to do television in the old days. But when she got the pilot script for “Cyb...
Masha Gessen and Keith Gessen Debate Russian and American Politics
12 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Masha Gessen and Keith Gessen have, taken together, written more than a dozen books and a thousand articles. Keith Gessen is a founder of n+1, an infl...
The Neurology of Bias, and a Visit with Thundercat
09 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Most of us have biases and prejudices we don’t acknowledge—or aren’t even aware of. Admitting those biases is a baseline of political “wokenes...
The Presidential Candidate Pete Buttigieg on Coming Out: “I Realized I Couldn’t Go On Like That Forever”
05 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
During an exit interview with President Barack Obama in November, 2016, just weeks after the election, David Remnick asked who would be the leaders of...
How OxyContin Was Sold to the Masses
02 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Patrick Radden Keefe has reported on the Sackler family and their control of Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin. Among the sources for his article ...
Has the Mueller Report Changed Anything?
29 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Mueller investigation has been a two-year obsession for nearly everyone who cares about politics in America. For one side, the special counsel was...
U.K. Edges Closer to the Cliff of a No-Deal Brexit
26 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Since the minute that British citizens voted, in a 2016 referendum, to leave the European Union, confusion and disorganization has consumed the U.K. T...
Emilia Clarke on a Near-Death Experience Scarier than “Game of Thrones”
22 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Emilia Clarke was an unknown young actor when she landed the part of Daenerys, of the House of Targaryen, on a show called “Game of Thrones.” Afte...
The Hot Fashion Trends in Silicon Valley, and the Top Chef Niki Nakayama
19 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Silicon Valley has a reputation for being a place where young geniuses are too busy disrupting the world to buy clothes; jeans and a hoodie generally ...
Getting Detained by ICE—on Purpose
15 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In 2012, two young activists from the National Immigrant Youth Alliance went on an undercover mission to infiltrate the Broward Transitional Center, a...
American Exiles in East Africa (Part 2)
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pete O’Neal was a street hustler and small-time pimp who gave up crime to fight oppression, founding the Kansas City chapter of the Black Panther P...
American Exiles in East Africa
08 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Pete O’Neal was a street hustler and small-time pimp who gave up crime to struggle against oppression, founding the Kansas City chapter of the Black...
Jane Mayer on the Revolving Door Between Fox News and the White House
05 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Donald Trump has made no secret of his great admiration for Fox News -- which he praises by tweet nearly constantly -- and his disdain for other, “f...
A Moderate Republican Wants to Primary Donald Trump in 2020
01 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld is launching what looks like a political suicide mission. He recently announced an exploratory committee t...
A Writer Solves a Mystery, and Ruth E. Carter Steps into the Spotlight
22 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Committed during a period filled with bombings, killings, and disappearances, the murder of Jean McConville remains one of the most infamous unsolved ...
What Are We Talking About When We Talk about Socialism?
19 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
With the election to the House of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, following up on the surprising Presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders, ...
Teju Cole on Blackface and Valeria Luiselli on the Border Crisis
15 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When depictions of Virginia politicians in blackface surfaced this month, the New Yorker contributor Teju Cole was unsurprised. “A white man of a ce...
To Stop the Shooting, Lupe Cruz Gets Between the People with the Guns
12 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Conversations about gun reform are often galvanized by catastrophic mass shootings. But gun violence mostly unfolds as a matter of awful routine: dome...
Is the Tide Turning on Gun Reform?
08 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
This week, the House held hearings on gun violence, the first in eight years. In the 2018 elections, gun-reform groups outspent the N.R.A.—which app...
Marlon James Builds His Own Damn Universe
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When the cast of the film “The Hobbit” was first announced, Marlon James was dismayed—though hardly surprised—by how white it was. A long-stan...
The Mueller Investigation: What We Know So Far
01 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Washington is abuzz with rumors that the Mueller report is coming soon, and both sides are trying to strategize their next move. The reporter Adam Dav...
John Thompson vs. American Justice
29 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When police showed up to question John Thompson, he was worried that it was because he had sold drugs to an undercover cop. When he realized they we...
Jason Rezaian on Imprisonment in Iran
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Rezaian was born in California to an Iranian father and an American mother. After a failed effort to enter the Persian rug trade, he moved to T...
The Fall of a Chinese Pop Star, and Calvin Trillin’s Happy Marriage
22 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For some years, Denise Ho was one of the most popular singers in Asia. A Hong Kong native, she performed the style known as Cantopop in mainland China...
The Producer dream hampton Talks with Jelani Cobb about “Surviving R. Kelly”
18 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
For decades, it’s been an open secret that R. Kelly has allegedly kept young women trapped in abusive relationships through psychological manipulati...
For a French Burglar, Stealing Masterpieces Is Easier Than Selling Them
15 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
How “The Apprentice” Made Donald Trump, and a Boondoggle in Wisconsin
11 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe has reported on “The Apprentice” and its impact on Donald Trump—on how America saw Trump, and how Trump sa...
The Director Boots Riley on “Sorry to Bother You”
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Boots Riley’s directorial début, “Sorry to Bother You,” blends a dark strain of comedy with a sci-fi vision of capitalism run amok. The film’...
Live: Janet Mock and Chris Hayes
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Janet Mock first heard the word “māhū,” a Native Hawaiian word for people who exist outside the male-female binary, when she was twelve. She had...
Philip Roth’s American Portraits and American Prophecy
28 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The novelist and short-story writer Philip Roth died in May at the age of eighty-five. In novels like “Portnoy’s Complaint,” “The Human Stain,...
Christmas Music Reimagined with Kirk Douglas, the Guitarist for the Roots
23 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Kirk Douglas, the guitarist for the Roots, plays anything and everything as part of the “Tonight Show” band, so David Remnick put him to the test ...
2018 in Pop Culture
21 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The New Yorker staff writers Jia Tolentino, Doreen St. Félix, and Alexandra Schwartz all cover the culture beat from different angles. They talk with...
Kelly Slater’s Perfect Wave Brings Surfing to a Crossroads
18 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In December of 2015, a video appeared on the Internet that stunned surfers worldwide. Titled “Kelly’s Wave,” it showed Kelly Slater—arguably t...
Aaron Sorkin Rewrites “To Kill a Mockingbird”
14 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As he set about adapting “To Kill a Mockingbird” for the stage—the play opened this week on Broadway—Aaron Sorkin first wrote a version that h...
Robyn Talks with David Remnick
07 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
For the past twenty-five years, since she was a young teen-ager, the singer Robyn has been on the cutting edge of pop music. Her sound is sparse and c...
Helen Rosner Ferments at Home, Plus Dexter Filkins on Saudi Arabia
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of the hot trends in the food world is one of the oldest: fermentation. No longer just for beer and sauerkraut, fermentation—which Helen Rosner...
Voter Suppression in the Twenty-First Century
30 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the November midterm elections, Stacey Abrams, a gubernatorial candidate in Georgia, arrived at her polling place to cast a vote for herself, only ...
Bridget Everett Talks with Michael Schulman
27 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Appearing at the New Yorker Festival, in conversation with Michael Schulman , Bridget Everett brought her dog onstage. It was unconventional, but no m...
Jim Carrey Doesn’t Exist (According to Jim Carrey)
23 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As a young boy, Jim Carrey got in trouble for staring in the mirror. He didn’t do it because he was vain; he was practicing the comic skills that ma...
The Star Witnesses Against El Chapo
20 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Last year, the Mexican government finally agreed to extradite the notorious drug kingpin El Chapo to the U.S. Born Joaquín Guzmán Loera, he was once...
The Countdown to Brexit, Plus Adam Gopnik’s Turkey Zen
16 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
More than two years after British voters approved a measure to withdraw their nation from the European Union—a gigantic undertaking with no roadmap ...
After the 2008 Financial Crisis, the Economy Was Fracked Up
13 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act injected almost nine hundred billion dollars into the U.S. economy to help the nation recover from the 2008...
The Financial Crash and the Climate Crisis
09 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ten years after the financial crash of 2008, the economy is humming along, with steady growth and rising employment. Yet that crisis continues to shap...
Derek Smalls—Harry Shearer’s Character in “Spinal Tap”—Returns with His Solo Début
06 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Harry Shearer is known for doing many characters, including Mr. Burns and others from “The Simpsons,” but the most famous is Derek Smalls, the sat...
From Mexico, the Reality of the Migrant Caravan
02 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Jonathan Blitzer spent a week in Mexico with the so-called caravan—a group of about five thousand migrants, most of them from Honduras, who are maki...
Janelle Monáe, from the Future to the Present
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Janelle Monáe is an unlikely pop star. Her music is rooted in soul and R. & B., but also in pop, punk, and New Wave; her early releases were science-...
Daniel Radcliffe Gets His Facts Straight, and Pennsylvania’s Pipeline Politics
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The actor Daniel Radcliffe is on Broadway in a new play called “The Lifespan of a Fact”—perhaps the first-ever work of theatre in which a fact c...