Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour

In this week’s episode, the activist Ai-jen Poo envisions a happier, more affordable alternative to nursing homes, and we meet a home health aide who’s formed a remarkable bond of friendship with her client. David Remnick talks with a rising star of the Democratic Party who is rumored to be a potential Vice-Presidential candidate; and, finally, the ugly truth about picture-perfect weddings.

Mikhail Baryshnikov talks about the playing the revolutionary choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, and T.C. Boyle shares a blues musician he discovered on a college radio station.

It’s time for the most anticipated of all awards shows: the Brodys, in which The New Yorker’s Richard Brody shares the best films of the year, according to Richard Brody. And the political commentator Ezra Klein explains why he thinks politics have gotten as polarized as they are: we care too much about party identity and not enough about policy.

Laura Poitras turns surveillance into art, David Bowie’s jazz band, and more.

What's the funniest way to spook a horse? Cartoonists Matt Diffee and Emily Flake give us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how jokes get made. Then, comedian Aziz Ansari critiques Hollywood’s casting habits. Journalist Rukmini Callimachi shares her insight into how ISIS views itself. And the screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman talks puppet sex and existential dread during a tour of the Whitney Museum.

In this episode, Patrick Radden Keefe on the drug dealers who may help bring El Chapo to justice, and David Remnick talks to Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza.

The Washington correspondent Susan Glasser has been covering the scene in the Capitol as Republicans rush to contain the damage of the John Bolton manuscript leak. Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, told Glasser that “if a Republican makes the argument that removing the President this close to an election isn’t the right response, [that] we should trust the American electorate to make the decision, then you have to support [calling for] more witness and more documents” in order for the electorate to make an informed decision. Glasser also spoke with Zoe Lofgren who is one of the House impeachment managers prosecuting the case against the President. Lofgren is an expert on the subject: she was on the House Judiciary Committee in 1998 during the Clinton impeachment, and, in 1974, as a law student, she helped to draft charges against Richard Nixon. Nixon, she points out, was far more forthcoming than Trump with Congress, directing his staff to appear for questions without a subpoena. If the Senate votes to acquit, endorsing a campaign of stonewalling by the executive branch, Lofgren says, “It will forever change the relationship between the branches of government.” Plus, the historian and staff writer Jill Lepore talks with David Remnick about how Americans rallied to save democracy in the nineteen-thirties, and how we might apply those lessons to a time when our own democracy has weakened.

A former prison counsellor discusses the abuse and torture of mentally ill inmates she suspected inside a Florida correctional institution—and the emotional price she paid for staying silent. Plus, Anohni, the former lead singer of Antony and the Johnsons, discusses her recent turn to pop music; Annie Dillard talks with David Remnick about a new collection of essays; and William Finnegan takes us surfing.

One of the nation’s most celebrated magazines comes together with New York’s flagship public radio station to create a new weekly radio program and podcast. What’s it all about?

The 2016 election gets the Hollywood treatment, and an evangelical minister contemplates the decline of the Christian G.O.P.

This week: Julia Louis-Dreyfus says that, in light of the 2016 Presidential race, “Veep” is now like a “sombre” documentary; Malcolm Gladwell looks at the subculture behind post-Columbine school shootings; and we explore the rumor that Alexander Hamilton’s ghost resides in an old house in Manhattan.

Mark Singer had the temerity to write about Donald Trump, and Trump wanted revenge -- but just who came out on top? Sofia Coppola talks about working with Bill Murray on a Christmas special. And we offer safety tips on how to operate your new drone.

Just over a week ago, Bernie Sanders seemed to be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. Then came some prominent withdrawals from the race, and, on Super Tuesday, the resurgence of Joe Biden’s campaign. (Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remains in the race, but has no chance of winning the nomination.) But the narrowing of the field only highlights the gulf between the Party’s moderate center and its energized Left.  David Remnick talks with Amy Davidson Sorkin, a political columnist for The New Yorker, about the possibility of a contested Convention. Then Remnick interviews Michael Kazin, an historian and the co-editor of Dissent magazine. Kazin points out that Sanders is struggling against a headwind: even voters sympathetic to democratic socialism may vote for a pragmatist if they think Biden is more likely to beat the incumbent President in November. But Sanders seems unlikely to moderate his message. “There is a problem,” Kazin tells David Remnick. “A divided party—a party that’s divided at the Convention—never has won in American politics.”

Two doctors describe how Trump’s policies may affect patient care, and a brief history of entertainers making political statements on Oscar night.

In this episode, F. Murray Abraham reads Arthur Miller’s essay about the sweltering summers of Miller’s youth; two writers talk fish and fiction; and a novelist recalls her childhood in idyllic Hong Kong.

As scientists learn more about how genes affect everything from hair color to sexual orientation and mental health, we’re faced with moral and political questions about how we allow science to intervene in the genetic code. In this episode, Siddhartha Mukherjee, the author of the new book “The Gene: An Intimate History,” talks with David Remnick about the intimate and global implications of modern genetic science, and speaks frankly about his own family history of mental illness. Plus, we visit the studio of a leading sound-effects artist, and a virtual-reality team struggles to make a V.R. experience that lives up to the hype.

The film critic Richard Brody regards Josephine Decker as one of the best directors of her generation, and picked her 2018 film “Madeline’s Madeline” as his favorite of the year. Decker, he says, reinvents “the very stuff of movies—image, sound, performance—with each film.” Decker’s new film is “Shirley,” starring Elisabeth Moss as the unique horror author Shirley Jackson. In it, Decker dives deeper into the themes that have also shaped her previous works: the creative drives and the relationships of women. Decker tells Brody that, though the film may be a step toward mainstream, she remains guided by “poetic logic.”

When it comes to the war on terror, bomb-sniffing dogs are essential companions. When it comes to your sex life, no animal provides blissful privacy like a cat. So which is the superior domesticated animal? In this episode, the canine partisans Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell duke it out with the feline lovers Ariel Levy and Anthony Lane to settle the debate once and for all. Also, Lauren Collins talks with the British actor Damian Lewis about playing the part of an American on “Homeland” and “Billions,” and the late architect Zaha Hadid speaks with John Seabrook about her early life.

This month, the Supreme Court is expected to decide a case with enormous repercussions: the Trump Administration’s cancellation of DACA, a policy that protects young immigrants commonly known as Dreamers. In November, Jonathan Blitzer spoke with two attorneys who argued the case, just before they went before the Court. Ted Olson, a noted litigator, is generally a champion of conservative issues, but he is fighting the Trump Administration here. Luis Cortes is a thirty-one-year-old from Seattle arguing his first Supreme Court case. He is himself an undocumented immigrant protected by DACA; if he loses, his own legal residency would be immediately threatened. Plus, the writer Bryan Washington, a native of Houston, remembers the social life of gay bars before the pandemic.

Amy Schumer began her career playing a deranged, rich party girl. With three seasons of her Peabody Award-winning series Inside Amy Schumer now complete, Schumer has since shifted to a more deliberate agenda, one that’s earned her the favor of Hillary Clinton and her distant relative, Senator Charles Schumer. The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick spoke with Schumer about her evolution as a comic and a feminist spokesperson, and how she’s reconciled the desire for laughs with a changing climate of political correctness.
In the second installment of staff writer Jill Lepore’s story “The Search for Big Brown,” Lepore’s childhood friend Adrianna Alty starts learning about her biological father, a black street poet whose time in Greenwich Village in the 1960s brought him the admiration of Bob Dylan. Some of the rumors seem to pan out, but the man remains elusive.
For many Americans, Univision journalist Jorge Ramos first came to public prominence after Donald Trump kicked him out of a campaign event in August. But for Spanish speakers, Ramos has been one of the most recognizable and respected voices in the media for decades. New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan asked Ramos about the Republican party’s stance on immigration, and why he engages with people who seem to hate him.
Then, writer Carolyn Kormann tries out Bird Genie, a new app that attempts to make birding easier by capturing snippets of songs in the field and comparing them to existing recordings. The app’s creator, Tom Stevenson, joins Kormann for some technologically assisted birding in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.