Hi, this is David Remnick. I'm excited to introduce a new podcast from my colleagues here at the New Yorker, critics at large. You've almost certainly heard Vincent Cunningham, Nomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz on the radio hour before. There are three writers I always turn to when I want to understand what's happening in books and theater, TV, film, music,

and pop culture. Their writing is incisive, and their takes always surprise me. Critics at large

is a show about picking apart big ideas, reexamining classic texts, and understanding new cultural

obsessions. So expect to hear about everything from Salman Rushdie

to the real housewives, and maybe the connections between the two. In an early episode, they tackle

the new biography of Elon Musk, looking at ideas about power, money, cults of personality,

and they ask why we collectively mythologize the tech founder to such a huge

degree.

Here's a preview, and if you enjoyed, I hope you'll consider following Critics at Large, wherever

you're tuning in now.

Welcome to Critics at Large, a new podcast from The New Yorker.

I'm Vincent Cunningham.

I'm Alex Schwartz, and I'm Nomi Fry.

Each week, the three of us come together to make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here.

So today we're going to discuss a new biography of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson.

It's an interesting read because it comes at a time where Musk is like everywhere.

His cars are on our roads.

His satellites are in our skies.

Deciding war outcomes, by the way.

His tweets are on our phones.

But it also struck me as I read this book that it doubles as a study of the myth of the tech founder.

That's so much with us these days.

...