The New Yorker Radio Hour

Angélique Kidjo and David Byrne on “Remain in Light”

05 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When a young Amanda Petrusich, now a staff writer who covers music, first heard Talking Heads’ “Remain in Light,” she felt “almost like it wa...

Glenda Jackson Onstage, and Marco Rubio on “Modernizing” Conservatism

01 Jun 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Glenda Jackson, who has played both Queen Elizabeth and King Lear, served as a humble member of Parliament for more than two decades in between those ...

Malcolm Gladwell on the Sociology of School Shooters

29 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Malcolm Gladwell spoke with The New Yorker’s Dorothy Wickenden in 2015 about the social dynamics of school shootings. Studying the literature of soc...

Paul Schrader: Movies as Religion

25 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Schrader made an auspicious début as the screenwriter of “Taxi Driver” and the director of “Blue Collar” and “American Gigolo.” But ...

The Breeders on Sexism, Drugs, and Rock and Roll

22 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This year, the original members of the Breeders—indie-rock royalty—are back together, twenty-five years after “Last Splash,” an album that fan...

Diplomacy on the Rocks in Iran and North Korea

18 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Susan B. Glasser, a staff writer for The New Yorker based in Washington, speaks with Wendy Sherman about the Trump Administration’s withdrawal fro...

Dunya Mikhail on the Lives Stolen by ISIS

15 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Before she was placed on the list of Saddam Hussein’s enemies, the poet Dunya Mikhail worked as a journalist for the Baghdad Observer. In her new bo...

How to Contain the Threat of Russia

11 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Senator Mark Warner is the vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is trying to explore the possibility of Russian collusion with th...

Glenn Close Doesn’t Play Evil (with One Exception)

08 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Last year, Glenn Close was on Broadway as Norma Desmond in “Sunset Boulevard,” reprising a role she had originally played in 1993. Since 1974, whe...

Robert Caro on the Fall of New York

04 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In a career spanning more than forty years, the biographer Robert Caro has written about only two subjects.  But they’re very big subjects: Robert ...

Apocalypse Prepping, on a Budget

01 May 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Inspired by “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” by The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, Patricia Marx gets herself ready for the apocalypse. The only pr...

ICE Comes to a Small Town in Tennessee

27 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

This week, a reporter looks at a rural town where the largest immigration raid in a decade has ripped apart a community; Ronan Farrow talks about his ...

Andrew Sean Greer’s “It’s a Summer Day”

24 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Last week, Andrew Andrew Sean Greer's novel "Less" won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.  "Less" about a novelist in mid-life named Arthur Less, an...

James Comey Makes His Case to America

20 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In a long career in law enforcement, the former F.B.I. Director James Comey aimed to be above politics, but in the 2016 election he stepped directly i...

A Trans Woman Finds Her True Face Through Surgery

17 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The staff writer Rebecca Mead recently observed the seven-hour surgery of woman she calls Abby.  (To protect her privacy, Abby’s real name was no...

Pope Francis the Disruptor

13 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As a conservative columnist at the New York Times, Ross Douthat fills the post once held by no less a figure than William Kristol.  A devout Catholic...

Frank Oz on Miss Piggy’s Secret Backstory and Jim Henson’s Legacy

10 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Frank Oz was a teenager when he started working with Jim Henson, the puppeteer and filmmaker behind the Muppets. Oz went on to create characters like ...

Emma González at Home, and a Crown Prince Abroad

06 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Emma González is a survivor of the Parkland attack, and a leader of the #NeverAgain movement. She talks with David Remnick about the ways her life ha...

How Not to Write a Caption

03 Apr 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Every week, a New Yorker cartoon is posted online and printed in the magazine without a caption, and thousands of people write in with their suggestio...

John Thompson vs. American Justice

30 Mar 2018

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...

The American Bombs Falling on Yemen

27 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Abdulqader Hilal Al-Dabab was the mayor of Sana’a, a politician with a long record of mediating disputes in a notoriously fractious and dangerous co...

Scott Pruitt, the “Originalist” at the E.P.A.

23 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As the Attorney General of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt sued the Environmental Protection Agency fourteen times, claiming that the Obama Administration had ...

A Homemade Museum in a Refugee Camp

20 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tens of thousands of refugees from the civil war in Yemen have fled across the narrow Mandeb Strait to Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. Nicolas Niarch...

Armando Iannucci on “The Death of Stalin”

16 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As the fourth season of “Veep” came to an end, director Armando Iannucci turned from chronicling the foibles of cynical western democracy to somet...

In Secret, a North Korean Writer Protests the Regime

09 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Bandi is the pen name of a North Korean writer. He is believed to be a propaganda writer for the government who began to write, secretly, fiction and ...

Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Dossier

06 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The dossier—a secret report alleging various corrupt dealings between Donald Trump, his campaign, and the government of Russia, made public after ...

Alone and on Foot in Antarctica

06 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Henry Worsley was a husband, father, and an officer of an élite British commando unit; also a tapestry weaver, amateur boxer, photographer, and colle...

Jennifer Lawrence on “Red Sparrow” and Times Up

02 Mar 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for her first Oscar at twenty, and since then she has balanced the biggest of big-budget franchises, like the “Hunge...

The New Yorker presents “The Brodies”

27 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Brody hosts an alternative Oscars show — “The Brodies” —  and recommends some of his favorite films from the past year, and the write...

Masha Gessen on Trump and Russia, and a Former Border Agent on the U.S.-Mexico Border

23 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Masha Gessen was born in the Soviet Union and has written extensively about Russian politics. She talks with David Remnick about the similarities betw...

Director Ava DuVernay on “Selma” and “A Wrinkle in Time”

20 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

No film adaptation of “A Wrinkle In Time,” Madeleine L’Engle’s beloved, and often banned, children’s book, published in 1962, has ever made...

A Reckoning at Facebook

16 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We now know that Russian operatives exploited Facebook and other social media to sow division and undermine the election of 2016, and special counsel ...

Ian Frazier Among the Drone Racers

13 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Frazier, who has chronicled American life for The New Yorker for more than forty years, recently travelled to a house in Fort Collins, Colorado, w...

Extremists on the Ballot, and America’s Endless War in Afghanistan

09 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The 2016 Presidential primaries were a rebuke to moderates in both parties. Bernie Sanders, a sometime Democratic Socialist, built a grassroots moveme...

Ryan Zinke’s Deregulation Quest, and the Future of Meatless Burgers

06 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As a congressman from Montana, Ryan Zinke was considered a moderate—he resisted radical suggestions, for example, to turn over federal land to the s...

Laura Kipnis on the State of #MeToo, and a Night at Richard Nixon’s

02 Feb 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Laura Kipnis is a professor at Northwestern University and a provocative feminist critic. Her book “Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Camp...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Discovering America

30 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has had commercial and critical success: Her best-seller “Americanah” won a National Book Critics Circle Awa...

Nathan Lane, Getting Serious, Plays Roy Cohn

26 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Nathan Lane may be best known for supplying the voice of the fun-loving meerkat in “The Lion King,” but in recent years he’s turned his focus to...

The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan

23 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Ku Klux Klan was originally focused on maintaining the old racial order in the postwar South, chiefly through the violent suppression of African-A...

David Attenborough’s Planet (We Just Live on It)

19 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

David Attenborough’s films for the BBC—impeccably researched, ambitiously filmed, and executed with style and imagination—have set a high bar fo...

Deportation in America

12 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

A tougher stance on immigration is the signature position of the Trump Administration, and the President’s first year in office has been marked by s...

Tracee Ellis Ross on Being a “Black-ish” Woman and Jon Hamm Gets His Life Back from Don Draper

09 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tracee Ellis Ross, who plays Dr. Rainbow Johnson on ABC’s “Black-ish,” joins Doreen St. Félix for a conversation about television, race, and se...

Jerry Seinfeld Gets Technical

05 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jerry Seinfeld talks with David Remnick about his Netflix special “Jerry Before Seinfeld,” which is part standup show, part memoir. They discuss h...

Trolling the Press Corps

02 Jan 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Lucian Wintrich, a young blogger, was recently appointed as the White House correspondent for the conservative political site Gateway Pundit. He has n...

Jon Stewart’s Children

29 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In the years after September 11th, Jon Stewart’s “Daily Show” made political satire a central part of the media landscape. This hour, we hear fr...

Leonard Cohen: A Final Interview

26 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Leonard Cohen was one of the world’s greatest songwriters, and a figure of almost cult-like devotion for generations of fans, including Bob Dylan. D...

Bonus: Holiday Greetings from Ian Frazier

24 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

For decades, The New Yorker has published a poem on or around Christmas -- a look back at the events and people that have shaped the past year, genera...

Children’s Letters to Satan, and a Changing of the Guard at the New York Times

22 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Every year, countless poor spellers accidentally address their Santa letters to Satan.  Satan—played by Kathleen Turner—always replies Matt Pass...

Nicolás Maduro on the Brink of Dictatorship

19 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Nicolás Maduro was an unlikely successor to Venezuela’s popular and charismatic Hugo Chavez. And, since his election, the country has been wracked ...

The Alabama Fallout, and Louise Erdrich on the Future

15 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Roy Moore was a classic Trumpian candidate: a political outsider of extreme positions, rejected by the establishment and plagued by accusations of sca...

Don’t Worry, the Robots Can’t Do Your Job—Yet

12 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The business reporter Sheelah Kolhatkar has recently written for The New Yorker about a wave of advances in robotic technology that will have dangerou...

Susan Orlean on the Trail of Tonya Harding

08 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

 When the Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan was kneecapped in an attack by friends of her rival Tonya Harding, the scandal riveted the nation; twenty-fou...

Barry Blitt’s Rogues’ Gallery of Presidents

05 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Barry Blitt wasn’t into politics—music and hockey were more his things—but as an artist he’s become one of the keenest observers of American p...

Praying for Tangier Island

01 Dec 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Residents of Tangier Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, live through each hurricane season in fear of a major storm that would decimate their land. With i...

Bruce Springsteen Talks with David Remnick

24 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In October, 2016, Bruce Springsteen appeared at The New Yorker Festival for an intimate conversation with David Remnick. (The event sold out in six se...

Noah Baumbach’s Unhappy Families

21 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In his review of “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected),” the New Yorker critic Anthony Lane paraphrased no less an author than Leo Tolstoy. “...

Will the Harvey Weinstein Scandal Change America?

17 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The allegations against Harvey Weinstein have opened the floodgates for women in other industries and walks of life to go public with claims of sexual...

Love, War, and the Magical Lamb-Brain Sandwiches of Aleppo, Syria

14 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

When Adam Davidson was a reporter in Baghdad during the Iraq War, he started dating a fellow-reporter, Jen Banbury, of Salon. On a holiday break, the...

Tina Brown on Vanity Fair, the Eighties, and Harvey Weinstein

10 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Tina Brown is a legend in New York publishing. She was barely thirty years old when she was recruited from London to take over a foundering Vanity Fai...

Voter Fraud: A Threat to Democracy, or a Myth?

07 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump memorably claimed, without a shred of evidence, that millions of votes cast by undocumented immigrants had given Hillary Clinton the popu...

Jeffrey Toobin on “The Most Important Supreme Court Case in Decades”

03 Nov 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Jeffrey Toobin tells David Remnick that, despite the mounting indictments against members of Donald Trump’s Presidential campaign, Trump is almost c...

“Slut: The Play,” an Empowering Story for Young Women

31 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In “Slut: The Play,” Katie Cappiello captures the trauma of sexual assault, based on the stories of teen-agers in her theatre company. (Hilton A...

How OxyContin Was Sold to the Masses

27 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

When OxyContin came on the market, in 1995, physicians were understandably wary of the addictive potential of a powerful new opioid. As Patrick Radden...

Riz Ahmed Gets the Job Done

24 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The British writer, activist, and rapper Riz Ahmed has had a very public life since leaving drama school to star in “The Road to Guantánamo.” He ...

Chelsea Manning on Life After Prison

20 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In 2010, the Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, sent nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand classified militar...

My Mother’s Career at “Playboy,” and the Politics of N.F.L. Protest

17 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The death last month of Hugh Hefner reopened a conversation about the “Playboy” founder and the world he created. Hefner said that his magazine’...

St. Vincent’s Seduction

13 Oct 2017

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...

Roz Chast and Patricia Marx, Ukelele Superstars; Jennifer Egan on Cops and Robbers

10 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Patricia Marx is a longtime staff writer for The New Yorker, and Roz Chast is a celebrated cartoonist. Chast’s book “Can’t We Please Talk A...

The Trump Children Were Investigated for Fraud, But Avoided Indictment

06 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The Trump SoHo was supposed to be a splash for the Trump Organization and for Ivanka and Donald Trump, Jr., who were leading the project. Instead, the...

Karl Ove Knausgaard on Near-Death Experiences, Raising Kids, Puberty, Brain Surgery, and Turtles

03 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

A crime reporter and a business writer try to figure out how the government can charge a bank a sixteen-billion-dollar fine for wrongdoing yet fail to...

David Simon’s “The Deuce” Charts the Rise of Pornography

29 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

David Simon believes in the dignity of labor, “even when it’s undignified.” What “The Wire” (which he created) did for the drug trade in Bal...

Julia Louis-Dreyfus Wins Again

26 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Julia Louis-Dreyfus recently won her sixth consecutive Emmy for Best Actress in a Comedy for the role of Selina Meyer, the hapless Vice-President turn...

At the Brink with North Korea

22 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Donald Trump mocked Kim Jong Un by calling him “rocket man,” and threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea if the U.S. or its allies were at...

For Teen Activists, What Good Is a Protest Song?

19 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Since the Inauguration, in January, there’s been a kind of protest renaissance for those on the left and some in the center of American politics; at...

Hillary Clinton on the “Clear and Present Danger” of Collusion with Russia

13 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Hillary Clinton harbors no doubts, she tells David Remnick in a long interview, that political allies of Donald Trump astutely “guided” the releas...

What Was It Like Before the Internet?

12 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

A magical time of unfettered creativity but zero productivity, the days before the Internet were so strange that it’s hard to believe they were real...

After Charlottesville, the Limits of Free Speech

08 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

When is speech no longer just speech? David Remnick looks at how leftist protests at Berkeley, right-wing violence in Charlottesville, and open-carry ...

Neil Gorsuch and the Uses of History

05 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We have yet to learn just how closely the views of the Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch resemble those of the late Justice Antonin...

A Visit with Harry Belafonte, and an Isolated Tribe Emerges

01 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

We take for granted that popular entertainers can and should advocate for causes they believe in. But until Harry Belafonte pioneered that kind of act...

Nick Lowe Gets Better with Age

29 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Lowe made it big as a pioneer of what the English called “pub rock” and Americans usually call power-pop. Lowe had his biggest successes in t...

John Ridley on Charlottesville and the Legacy of Racism

25 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

John Ridley has been active in in film and television since the nineteen-nineties; he also has seven novels under his belt, as well as a play and seve...

Why Men Should Read Romance Novels

22 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The New Yorker’s Josh Rothman explains why men are missing out on romance novels, and Sherman Alexie reads a new story about a motel maid confrontin...

Russian Spies Never Go Out of Style

18 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

A former C.I.A. operative writes about the struggle between East and West, and Annie Dillard describes the awesome, frightening experience of a total ...

Foraging for a Salad in Central Park

15 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Patricia Marx goes foraging in Central Park, and Kathryn Schulz recommends a country music album, a poet, and a movie about magicians.  

Building a War-Crimes Case Against Bashar al-Assad

11 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Ben Taub shares his reporting on a group that’s building a war-crimes case against Bashar al-Assad, and a war-crimes expert explains how to run a fa...

Senator Al Franken Really Is Senatorial

08 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Senator Franken and David Remnick discuss the health-care vote, the Russia investigation, and how his sense of humor has been a liability    

The Scaramucci Call

03 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

David Remnick and Ryan Lizza listen back to the phone call from Anthony Scaramucci that ended his brief term as White House communications director. ...

An Irish Novelist’s Début Explores Friendship and Adultery in the Digital Age

01 Aug 2017

Contributed by Lukas

An Irish writer explores friendship and adultery in the digital age in her début novel. 

George Strait, on the Record with Kelefa Sanneh

28 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

 Country superstar George Strait’s search for the next hit, and Lawrence Wright’s exploration of how Texas is our future. 

A Rookie Reporter in Vietnam Captures the War’s Futility

25 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In 1967, a rookie reporter’s eyewitness account of the futility of the Vietnam War shocked readers.    

Maggie Haberman: Gang War in the White House

21 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Maggie Haberman and Donald Trump go way back.  

The Man Who Would Be King (of Mars)

18 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Dr. Phil Davies, a country doctor in England, says that he owns Mars. What if he’s right?

Trumpcare Revisited

14 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

An Obamacare veteran keeps fighting the fight—even into the White House. And Jill Lepore explains the century-long battle for universal coverage.

Lucinda Williams Talks with Ariel Levy

11 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Lucinda Williams talks with Ariel Levy about God, Flannery O’Connor, and her long and twisting path through the music industry.

James Taylor Will Teach you Guitar

07 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Adam Gopnik talks with James Taylor and tries not to go all Chris Farley Show: “Remember when you wrote ‘Fire and Rain’? That was great.”   ...

My Night at Mar-a-Lago

03 Jul 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Taking the political temperature of Palm Beach at a swinging party at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s palace away from home. 

"Okja" and Other Strange Stories by Jon Ronson

30 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Jon Ronson’s nonfiction has often seemed too strange to be true; in the screenplay for “Okja,” he goes all in for surreal fiction. Plus, Poet La...

Ai Weiwei, and Doing Business with China

23 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Ai Weiwei reflects on censorship and the refugee crisis, a congressman asks us to reconsider trade with China, and Chinese students explain the countr...

Virtual Reality, and the Politics of Genetics

16 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Siddhartha Mukherjee discusses the intimate and global implications of genetic science, and we look for the Orson Wells of VR.

Merchant Ivory’s Gay Love Story, and a Visit with Noriega

09 Jun 2017

Contributed by Lukas

James Ivory talks about E. M. Forster’s “Maurice,” a gay love story with a happy ending. Plus, Jon Lee Anderson talks about the rise and fall o...