From classic eighties films like “Wall Street” to Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel “American Psycho,” the world of finance has long provided a seductive backdrop for meditations on wealth and power. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the many portrayals of this élite realm, and how its image has evolved over time. Where earlier texts glorified Wall Street types as roguish heroes, the Great Recession ushered in more critical fare, seeking to explain the inner workings of a system that benefitted the few at the expense of the many. In 2024, as TikTokkers and personal essayists search for “a man in finance,” things seem to be shifting again. HBO’s “Industry,” now in its third season, depicts a cadre of young investment bankers clawing their way to the top of a soulless meritocracy—and may even engender some sympathy for the new finance bro. Why are audiences and creators alike so easily seduced by these stories even after the disillusionment of the Occupy Wall Street era? “We're talking about something—money—that is fun, and that we all on some level do want,” Cunningham says. “It’s always going to make us feel.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Industry” (2020—)

“Wall Street” (1987)

“You don’t have to look for a ‘man in finance.’ He’s everywhere,” by Rachel Tashjian (The Washington Post)

Joel Sternfeld’s “Summer Interns, Wall Street, New York”

“American Psycho” (2000)

“American Psycho,” by Bret Easton Ellis

“Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” (2010)

“The Big Short” (2015)

“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)

“Margin Call” (2011)

“The Case for Marrying an Older Man,” by Grazie Sophia Christie (The Cut)

“My Year of Finance Boys,” by Daniel Lefferts (The Paris Review)

“Ways and Means,” by Daniel Lefferts

“Custom of the Country,” by Edith Wharton

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

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Almost immediately after the publication of Sally Rooney’s “Normal People,” in 2018, Rooney-mania hit a fever pitch. Her work struck a cord among a generation of readers who responded to evocative descriptions of young people’s lives and relationships. Before long, Rooney had—somewhat reluctantly—been dubbed “the first great millennial author.” On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss “Intermezzo,” Rooney’s hotly anticipated fourth novel, which explores the dynamic between two brothers grieving the death of their father. The book is a sadder, more mature read than Rooney’s fans may have come to expect, but it retains her characteristic flair for making consciousness itself into a bingeable experience. “That is the great achievement of the realist novel for me,” Fry says. “The fact that Rooney is making this enjoyable for a new generation—amazing. Maybe it’s a conservative impulse, but there’s something reassuring for me about that.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Conversations with Friends,” by Sally Rooney
“Normal People,” by Sally Rooney
“Beautiful World, Where Are You,” by Sally Rooney
“Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney
“Those Winter Sundays,” by Robert Hayden
William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”
“Normal Novels,” by Becca Rothfeld (The Point)
“The Corrections,” by Jonathan Franzen
“My Struggle,” by Karl Ove Knausgaard
The Neapolitan novels, by Elena Ferrante
“Sally Rooney on the Hell of Fame,” by Emma Brockes (The Guardian)
“A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” by James Joyce
The Harry Potter novels, by J. K. Rowling
“Why Bother?” by Jonathan Franzen (Harper’s Magazine)
“Middlemarch,” by George Eliot
“Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot

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

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The writer Carl Sandburg, in his 1926 biography of Abraham Lincoln, made a provocative claim—that the President’s relationship with the Kentucky state representative Joshua Speed held “streaks of lavender.” The insinuation fuelled a debate that has continued ever since: Was Lincoln gay? On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss a new documentary that tries to settle the question. “Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” is part of a growing body of work that looks at the past through the lens of identity—a process that can reveal hidden truths or involve a deliberate departure from the facts. The hosts consider other distinctly modern takes on U.S. history, including the farcical Broadway sensation “Oh, Mary!,” which depicts Mary Todd Lincoln as a failed cabaret star and her husband as a neurotic closet case, and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s smash hit “Hamilton,” which reimagines the Founding Fathers as people of color. In the end, the way we locate ourselves in the past is inextricable from the culture wars of today. “It is a political necessity for every generation to be, like, No, this is what the past was like,” Cunningham says. “It points to a struggle that we’re having right now to redefine, What is America?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:
“Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln” (2024)
“Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years & The War Years,” by Carl Sandburg
Cole Escola’s “Oh, Mary!”
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton”
“The Celluloid Closet” (1995)
“Hidden Figures” (2016)
“I’m Coming Out,” by Diana Ross

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

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This summer, scrutiny of the figure of the “trad wife” hit a fever pitch. These influencers’ accounts feature kempt, feminine women embracing hyper-traditional roles in marriage and home-making—and, in doing so, garnering millions of followers. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss standout practitioners of the “trad” life style, including the twenty-two-year-old Nara Smith, who makes cereal and toothpaste from scratch, and Hannah Neeleman, who, posting under the handle @ballerinafarm, presents a life caring for eight children in rural Utah as a bucolic fantasy. The hosts also discuss “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” a new reality-television show on Hulu about a group of Mormon influencers engulfed in scandal, whose notions of female empowerment read as a quaint reversal of the trad-wife trend. A common defense of a life style that some would call regressive is that it’s a personal choice, devoid of political meaning. But this gloss is complicated by societal changes such as the erosion of women’s rights in America and skyrocketing child-care costs. “In American society, the way choice works has everything to do with child-care options, financial options,” Schwartz says. “When you talk about the idea of choice, are we just talking about false choices?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

@ballerinafarm
@gwenthemilkmaid
@naraazizasmith
“How Lucky Blue and Nara Aziza Smith Made Viral Internet Fame From Scratch,” by Carrie Battan (GQ)“The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” (2024)
@esteecwilliams“Mad Men” (2007-15)
The Little House on the Prairie series, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Wilder Women,” by Judith Thurman (The New Yorker)
“Meet the Queen of the “Trad Wives” (and Her Eight Children),” by Megan Agnew (The Times of London)

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

Until recently, tarot, astrology, and spiritualism—practices often shorthanded simply as woo-woo—were the stuff of dusty psychic parlors and seventies nostalgia. But today, mysticism has permeated mainstream culture. In the third and final installment of the Critics at Large interview series, Vinson Cunningham talks with Jennifer Wilson, a contributing writer at The New Yorker, about this new age of magical thinking. They discuss how “woo” has seeped into our everyday lives through apps such as Co-Star, and how recent TV shows and novels have embraced supernatural themes. With the rise of cryptocurrency and sports betting, speculation about the future has become a fundamental part of our economy, too. “Maybe people would feel less uncertainty that pushes them to consult with astrology and tarot-card readers if there were more security in the present,” Wilson says. “In so many ways, this is a problem we’ve created.” And a bonus: Vinson gets a tarot reading of his own.
Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Curse” (2023)
@astropoets
“True Detective” (2014-)
“This Is Me . . . Now: A Love Story” (2024)
“The White Lotus” (2021-)
“Long Island Compromise,” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
“ ‘The Curse’ and the Magical Thinking of the Speculative Economy,” by Jennifer Wilson
“Look Into My Eyes” (2024)
“Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World,” by Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou

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

Cities have always been romanticized, but few of them have embraced—or actively engineered—their reputations as thoroughly as Las Vegas. On the second in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Alexandra Schwartz talks with her fellow staff writer Nick Paumgarten about how the desert town first branded itself as an entertainment capital, and how that image has been reified in pop culture ever since. The two consider seminal Vegas texts, from Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 novel, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” to the bro comedy “The Hangover,” and Paumgarten reflects on his recent pilgrimage to see Dead & Company, the latest iteration of the Grateful Dead, during the band’s residency at the Sphere. In theory, a Vegas residency should be a career high—but the expectations around them can also leave an artist trapped in amber. It’s a danger that applies to places as much as people. “How do you reinvent yourself when you’ve achieved this cultural-icon status?” Schwartz asks. “In some ways, I wonder if that’s also a question for the city itself.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Reckoning with the Dead at the Sphere,” by Nick Paumgarten (The New Yorker)
“Swingers” (1996)
“Double or Quits,” by Dave Hickey (Frieze)
“Learning from Las Vegas,” by Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, and Denise Scott Brown
“Viva Las Vegas” (1964)
“Leaving Las Vegas” (1995)
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” by Hunter S. Thompson
“The Hangover” (2009)
“Viva Las Vegas: Elvis Returns to the Stage,” by Ellen Willis (The New Yorker)
“Elvis” (2022)
“Hacks” (2021—)
“Sex and the City” (1998-2004)
“Friends” (1994-2004)
“Seinfeld” (1989-1998)

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

“ ‘BRAT’ summer”—so named for the Charli XCX album that’s become the soundtrack of Kamala Harris’s Presidential run—has given pop fans much to discuss, from Charli’s own flirtation with mainstream stardom to the meteoric rise of Chappell Roan. On the first in a series of Critics at Large interview episodes, Naomi Fry talks with her fellow staff writer Kelefa Sanneh about the state of the music landscape. The two consider the breakout successes of the moment—including “Espresso,” the Sabrina Carpenter song that launched a thousand memes—and the catastrophic failures, namely Katy Perry’s new single, “Woman’s World.” These highs and lows speak to the nature of the genre, in which artists can be cast aside as quickly as they were embraced. “Pop music, in particular, tends to be quite cutthroat,” Sanneh says. “If it’s not working, it’s flopping. And when it’s time for people to jump off the bandwagon, people jump off.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“BRAT,” by Charli XCX
“Woman’s World,” by Katy Perry
“ ‘Woman’s World’ Track Review,” by Shaad D’Souza (Pitchfork)
“Mean girls,” by Charli XCX
“Good Luck, Babe!,” by Chappell Roan
“I Kissed a Girl,” by Katy Perry
“SOUR,” by Olivia Rodrigo
“emails i can’t send,” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Espresso,” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Please Please Please,” by Sabrina Carpenter
“Not Like Us,” by Kendrick Lamar
“The Night We Met,” by Lord Huron

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

In her 1955 novel, “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Patricia Highsmith introduced readers to the figure of Tom Ripley, an antihero who covets the good life, and achieves it—by stealing it from someone else. On this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the long tail of Highsmith’s work, which has been revived in adaptations like René Clément’s 1960 classic, “Purple Noon”; the definitive 1999 film starring Matt Damon and Jude Law; and this year’s Netflix series, “Ripley,” which casts its protagonist as a lonely middle-aged con man. In all three versions, Dickie Greenleaf, a wealthy acquaintance of Ripley’s, becomes his obsession and eventually his victim. The story resonates today in part because we’re all in the habit of observing—and coveting—the life styles of the rich and famous. Social media gives users endless opportunities to study how others live, such as the places they go, the meals they consume, and the objects they possess. “One of the reasons that the character of Ripley is forever sympathetic is the yearning and striving to be something other than himself, following an example that’s set out to him,” Fry says. “For him, it’s someone like Dickie. For us, it might be someone online.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” by Patricia Highsmith

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999)

“Purple Noon” (1960)

“Ripley” (2024)

“Saltburn” (2023)

“The White Lotus” (2021—)

This episode originally aired on April 4, 2024. New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.