Episode 429: Vinson Cunningham

Longform

Education, Arts, Books, News

4.7 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 17 February 2021

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer for The New Yorker.“I think the job is just paying a bunch of attention. If you're a person like me, where thoughts and worries are intruding on your consciousness all the time, it is a great relief to have something to just over-describe and over-pay-attention to—and kind of just give all of your latent, usually anxious attention to this one thing. That, to me, is a great joy.” Thanks to Mailchimp for sponsoring this week's episode. Show notes: @vcunningham vinson.nyc Cunningham on Longform Cunningham's New Yorker archive 04:00 "’The Suit’ at BAM" (Brooklyn Paper • Jan 2013) 04:00 "Label Maker: Edward Buchanan" (Nylon Guys • Mar 2015) 09:00 circlejerk.live 11:00 Jeremy O. Harris’ plays 11:00 "How Are Audiences Adapting to the Age of Virtual Theatre?" (New Yorker • Oct 2020) 18:00 "The Season of Russell Westbrook and a New Era in N.B.A. Fandom" (New Yorker • Apr 2017) 25:00 Cunningham's McSweeney’s archive 25:00 "The Flies in Kehinde Wiley’s Milk" (The Awl • Jun 2015) 25:00 "Can Black Art Ever Escape the Politics of Race?" (New York Times Magazine • Aug 2015) 25:00 "How Chris Jackson is Building a Black Literary Movement" (New York Times Magazine • Feb 2016) 27:00 "Stephon Marbury Has His Own Story to Tell" (New Yorker • Apr 2020) 28:00 "The Playful, Political Art of Sanford Biggers" (New Yorker • Jan 2018) 29:00 WTF with Marc Maron 32:00 "Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life into Comedy" (New Yorker • May 2019) 36:00 Redd Foxx party albums 38:00 Alexandra Schwartz’ New Yorker archive 41:00 Simon Parkin on Longform 41:00 Adrian Chen on Longform 42:00 "The Many Lives of Steven Yeun" (Jay Caspian Kang • New York Times Magazine • Feb 2021) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, and welcome to the Longform podcast. I'm here with my co-founder, Max Linsky. I don't
0:15.5	know where Evan is, but he couldn't be here. Evan's on vacation. You need to take vacation
0:19.9	during times like this, even if you can't really go anywhere. You need to take vacation.
0:24.2	My dear, dear co. Who is on the show this week?
0:27.2	I got to talk to Vincent Cunningham, who is technically one of the theater critics for
0:34.3	the New Yorker, but writes a lot about culture of all kinds. He's written some great profiles.
0:42.4	I think I became aware of him as a writer from a profile he did of the comedian Tracy Morgan.
0:50.1	I want to say like two years ago, which I think was on our best of the year list. And I
0:54.4	followed his writing ever since and really enjoy it. And I also really enjoyed this conversation.
1:00.3	Excellent. I'm a big Cunningham fan. I'm glad you got him on the show, man.
1:04.4	As always, the show is brought to you by MailChimp. They make this show possible. They also
1:09.8	make email newsletters possible for some of the biggest and best businesses in America.
1:16.4	Here's one to thanks to MailChimp. And now here's Aaron with Vincent Cunningham.
1:31.2	Welcome, Vincent Cunningham. Thank you for having me, Aaron. This is great.
1:35.0	You're narrative on the internet picks up where you're working at the Obama White House.
1:42.0	And then at some point after that, you started working at the New Yorker, you're technically
1:47.2	the theater critic there, right? I'm one of two theater critics. One of two theater critics.
1:51.8	So how did you end up working at the Obama White House in the first place? Sure. It was
1:58.6	this kind of a strange road. So I left college at Middlebury College, sort of in the middle of
2:07.3	my time there. I had just had a kid in what should have been my junior year. And I came home sort
2:14.4	of very days didn't confuse them not knowing exactly what to do. So I guess I'm about 20,
2:20.7	about to be 21 at this time. So I started working as a tutor for a kid. And I tutored this kid
	...

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