I Need a Critic: One-Hundredth-Episode Edition

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Society & Culture

4.4 • 679 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz celebrate the one-hundredth episode of Critics at Large with a special installment of the podcast’s advice series. Together, they counsel callers on everything from turning non-readers into bibliophiles to the art of curating the ideal road-trip playlist. They’re joined by David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, who shares some cultural dilemmas of his own. Finally, the hosts turn the tables and ask for guidance from their listeners.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Billie Holiday’s “Body and Soul”
Bob Dylan’s “Blonde on Blonde”
Joni Mitchell’s “Blue”
The music of Laufey
“I Regret Almost Everything,” by Keith McNally
“The Palm House,” by Gwendoline Riley
“Task” (2025—)
“Die, My Love” (2025)
“Carol” (2015)
“The Price of Salt,” by Patricia Highsmith
“Surface Matters,” by Naomi Fry (The New Republic)
Geese’s “Getting Killed”
“What Went Wrong”
Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy
“The Ambassadors,” by Henry James
“Marty Supreme” (2025)
“Why Football Matters” (The New Yorker)

See Critics at Large live at 92NY on February 19: https://www.92ny.org/event/vinson-cunningham-naomi-fry-and-alexandra-schwartz

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

Critics at Large is a weekly discussion from The New Yorker which explores the latest trends in books, television, film, and more. Join us every Thursday as we make unexpected connections between classic texts and pop culture.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're doing it now?
0:21.3	Yeah, of course. Oh. I'm going in. I'm a little scared. Okay. Okay. Ah. Woo! Okay, I guess I'll try popping mine. Pop your popper. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Okay, here we go. Here we go. You can do it. So satisfied. Free. That click.
0:22.0	There we go. It's a hundred episode.
0:23.9	Yay.
0:27.0	This is Critics at large, a podcast from the New Yorker.
0:31.2	I'm Vincent Cunningham.
0:32.3	I'm Alex Schwartz.
0:33.5	And I'm Nomi Fry.
0:35.1	Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening and the culture right now and how we got here.
0:41.6	It's not every day that a podcast celebrates its 100th episode.
0:47.6	For us, it's only one day.
0:49.2	It's only one day.
0:50.2	Today.
0:51.0	And it's, that day is today.
0:53.3	Unreal.
1:13.2	Our celebratory cake is, you know, a wash. It's got a dusting. It's got a dusting of confetti. It's simply covered in confetti. Oh my goodness. What a festive day. Confetti, baby. And listeners. We couldn't do it without you. You are the best in the game. We spent kind of a long time thinking about how we wanted to celebrate. And in the end, we decided that, you know, what makes this show really work is
1:20.6	our listeners and the fact that they keep you keep tuning in. And so we wanted to share this celebration with you. And one of our
1:30.4	favorite ways to do that has become our beloved, dare I say, I Need a Critic episodes. So here's what
1:40.0	we're up to in this very special installment of I Need a Critic. You guys have been great. You've been sending us
1:45.9	questions about various cultural dilemmas. And so today we're going to hear what you guys sent in.
1:52.4	We're going to give you hopefully some satisfactory answers to those questions. But we're going to be
1:58.0	flipping the script a little bit. And stick around to the end of the episode to see what we mean by that.
	...

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