Hi, it's David Remnick, and I've got a quick but important note before we start.

Up till now, the podcast of the New Yorker Radio Hour has been the same hour-long program

that we put on the radio.

We're changing that.

We're going to give you two episodes, same contents, but we've rearranged it for the best podcast

listening experience, because we know an hour can be a lot to tackle sometimes. So we'll post

the second part of this show in a couple of days. If you want to hear exactly the hour that we

broadcast on the radio, no problem. You can always do that at new yorkeradio.org. You can play it

right off the homepage. And listen, this is important. Please let me know what you think of the new

format. Email us at New York you think of the new format.

Email us at New Yorker Radio at WNYC.org.

And here's the episode.

They're trying to answer questions about upward mobility in America. He was the military strategist.

It was profiled brilliantly by somebody.

So I think if you could, you know, find a subculture of people.

With a kind of form of life on this planet that we haven't really seen before.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is the New Yorker Radio Hour,

a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

I'm David Remnick, and on today's summer festival show, we're talking to two of the top performers in popular music.

In 2012, staff writer Aria Levy sat down with one of the most acclaimed American songwriters of recent years,

Lucinda Williams.

Williams has released 13 albums and wrote songs for everyone,

...