This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. This is a special bonus episode of the podcast.

This October marks five years since the news broke in the New York Times and in the New Yorker

of Harvey Weinstein's appalling history of sexual

misconduct in the equally shocking ways that his victims were silenced for so long. That story

opened the floodgates of the Me Too movement. The reckoning that followed transformed

workplaces and upended entire industries. But MeToo went beyond the workplace, questioning ideas about sex, consent, and power

relationships more broadly.

Five years on, storylines inspired by Me Too have shown up in films, books, television,

and most recently in the movie Tar, starring Kate Blanchette.

Three of the New Yorkers critics got together recently to look at whether or how Me Too has changed the cultural landscape.

Here's Alexandra Schwartz, Vincent Cunningham, and Nomi Fry.

Alex kicks off the conversation.

So, Vincent, Nomi, let's try to think back, if we even can.

You know, what were some of the first Me Too storylines, you know, as opposed to stories,

just cultural processes that you remember really making a splash after MeToo started?

You know, it's really interesting. I was thinking

about this and I have to say that what I remember from the first months and even I want to say like

the first year or two, you know, post Me Too, is that cultural production was occluded by the actual stories or like took a

backseat, let's say. There was such an emphasis on the real stories, rightly rightly so that I can't totally look back and like

oh okay this was like the defining text so what would you say if I were to trigger your memory

a bit and tell you that cat person the infamous short story that our very own magazine published around the story of a young

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