Critics at Large | The New Yorker

In the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to the topic of cult classics, Naomi Fry talks with the New Yorker staff writer Hannah Goldfield about how that designation applies in the culinary realm. The two discuss specialty ingredients that appear on menus for only the briefest of moments, out-of-print cookbooks that go for hundreds of dollars on eBay, and once niche restaurants that have blown up in the TikTok era. Then, Goldfield makes her case for the particular staying power of Judy Rodgers’s “Zuni Café Cookbook,” which has influenced countless chefs and food writers—including Samin Nosrat, whose “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” immediately soared to the top of best-seller lists upon its release, in 2017. “The Zuni Café Cookbook,” though less accessible, has attracted such illustrious devotees for a reason. “It’s text-heavy. It’s huge in size. It’s a bit intimidating at first,” Goldfield says. “But if you are interested in cooking—or if you have a curiosity about it, even—it’s an incredible resource.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Heartburn,” by Nora Ephron

“The Joy of Cooking,” by Irma S. Rombauer

“Cooking with Love,” by Ruth Sirkis

“The Surprising Endurance of Martha Stewart’s ‘Entertaining,’ ” by Hannah Goldfield (The New Yorker)

“Entertaining,” by Martha Stewart

“The Zuni Café Cookbook,” by Judy Rodgers

“Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” by Samin Nosrat

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When it dropped in January of 1997, Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night” thrilled some listeners and confounded others. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes devoted to resurfacing beloved cult classics, Vinson Cunningham talks with Hanif Abdurraqib, a contributing writer for The New Yorker and a diehard fan of the Camp Lo project. Abdurraqib describes “Uptown Saturday Night,” which leaned on Blaxploitation tropes to paint a strikingly cinematic picture of New York City, as “essentially a heist film” unto itself. Together, they discuss the album’s lukewarm reception at the time, and why its creative approach to storytelling seemed to land on deaf ears. One explanation is that the hip-hop marketplace of the era was increasingly demanding that musicians pick a lane: underground or mainstream, socially conscious or unapologetically opulent. “ ‘Uptown Saturday Night’ got lost in that because it didn’t really have a foothold in either world,” Abdurraqib says. “At a time when a lot of these guys with underground roots were bending to the hyper-commercialization of hip-hop, Camp Lo never changed who they were.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Camp Lo’s “Uptown Saturday Night”

Fugees’ “The Score”

“Uptown Saturday Night” (1974)

“Midnight Express” (1978)

“The Black Connection” (1974)Dynasty’s “Adventures in the Land of Music”

Elliott Wilson’s review of “Uptown Saturday Night” (The Source)

Slum Village’s “Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1)”

Puff Daddy’s “No Way Out”

Pete Rock and Camp Lo’s “80 Blocks from Tiffany’s”

Camp Lo’s “Black Hollywood”

Jay-Z’s “American Gangster”

Wyclef Jean’s “The Carnival”

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Colson Whitehead’s ascent in the literary world has seemed, like much of what he does, impressively effortless. Though he’s best known for “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys”—both of which were awarded Pulitzer Prizes—his œuvre also includes a mystery set amid rival schools of elevator inspectors, a zombie novel, and an autobiographical coming-of-age story. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz survey Whitehead’s wide-ranging body of work. The hosts are joined by their fellow staff writer Julian Lucas, who recently profiled Whitehead for The New Yorker. Together, they discuss three central works: “The Underground Railroad,” which catapulted its author from literary darling to mainstream celebrity; “Sag Harbor,” which fictionalizes, barely, Whitehead’s summers in the Hamptons and the family dramas that played out there; and “Harlem Shuffle,” the first installment of the crime trilogy that concluded this month, with the publication of “Cool Machine.” On the page, Whitehead is a true Gen X ironist, transmitting heavy histories and themes with levity. Despite the occasional darkness of his subject matter, he’s also one of our funniest novelists. “He has this way of, almost like a standup comedian, drawing you into this playful patter,” Lucas says. “Then your defenses go down, and that’s when he hits you with something that grabs you emotionally, or that pulls you into a story.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Elusive Promise of the First Person” (The New Yorker)

“The Nickel Boys,” by Colson Whitehead

“Colson Whitehead’s Big Score,” by Julian Lucas (The New Yorker)

“The Colossus of New York,” by Colson Whitehead

“The Underground Railroad,” by Colson Whitehead

“Sag Harbor,” by Colson Whitehead

“Harlem Shuffle,” by Colson Whitehead

“Cool Machine,” by Colson Whitehead

“Why Bother?” by Jonathan Franzen (Harper’s)

“The Odyssey” (2026)

“Who Owns the Odyssey?” (The New Yorker)

“Don’t Use A.I. to Do This,” by Colson Whitehead (The New York Times)

“John Henry Days,” by Colson Whitehead

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new game show “Nation’s Dumbest,” flips the classic “Jeopardy!” script on its head. The format: twelve famous-ish contestants are peppered with basic logic and trivia questions. The twist is that those who perform well are sent home, with the last one standing receiving the title of “Nation’s Dumbest.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how the figure of the idiot has evolved over time, from Shakespearean fools—whose position of apparent ignorance allows them to speak difficult truths—to more recent “happy fools” like Austin Powers and the goofy, stunt-obsessed heroes of the “Jackass” franchise. Once a laughingstock, the idiot has reached new heights of influence in the era of A.I. summaries and the infinite scroll. Resisting stupidity can feel like an uphill battle. “Whatever it is to be smart, I’m doing this Sisyphean thing of continuing to push it up the hill, and the rock feels heavy,” Cunningham says. “The question is: is society a wind at your back, or going in the opposite direction?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Nation’s Dumbest” (2026-)

“Jeopardy!” (1984-)

“Austin Powers” (1997)

“Seinfeld” (1989-98)

“The White Lotus” (2021-)

“30 Rock” (2006-13)

“Tracy Morgan Turns the Drama of His Life Into Comedy,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)

“American Humor,” by Constance Rourke

“Born Yesterday” (1950)

“Legally Blonde” (2001)

Green Day’s “American Idiot”

“Jackass: Best and Last” (2026)

Shakespeare’s “King Lear”

Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

“A Short History of Stupidity,” by Stuart Jeffries

“The Year in Stupidity,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)

“A Theory of Dumb,” by Lane Brown (New York)

“Naked Gun” (2025)

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In its nearly three-thousand-year history, the Odyssey has undergone as many twists and turns as its protagonist does on his journey home to Ithaca. Its origins as oral poetry suggest countless revisions before it was even put into text—and many more followed, as translators have wrestled with how best to express Homer’s ancient Greek verse in their own languages. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the latest rendition, a film adaptation by the director Christopher Nolan. The movie’s two-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar budget, A-list cast, and use of cutting-edge IMAX technology make it maximalist in every sense of the word. It’s elicited glowing reception from early viewers—and faced preëmptive criticism from the right. Drawing on the scholar Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of the epic, Nolan has modernized the dialogue; his focus on the erosion of societal values also speaks directly to the anxieties of our era, in which so many norms and institutions feel newly precarious. “The Odyssey persists because the world does keep on evanescing behind us,” Cunningham says. “The question of how to move on is always fresh.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Odyssey” (2026)

“Planet of the Apes” (1968)

“Oppenheimer” (2023)

“Troy” (2004)

“Why the Odyssey Keeps Defeating Filmmakers,” by David Denby (The New Yorker)

“L’Odissea” (1968)

Emily Wilson’s translation of the Odyssey

Robert Fagles’s translation of the Odyssey

Daniel Mendelsohn’s translation of the Odyssey

“The Dark Knight” (2008)

Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices