Critics at Large | The New Yorker

The protagonist of the new film “Club Kid” never meant to become a dad. Peter, played by Jordan Firstman, who also wrote and directed the film, is a gay party promoter whose years in the New York club scene are finally catching up with him. When his ten-year-old biological son unexpectedly comes into the picture, Peter is forced to reckon with his new role in life. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how depictions of fatherhood in the culture have evolved over time. After the women’s-liberation movement, postwar Don Draper-esque patriarchs gave way to a cohort of lovable sitcom dunces, laying the groundwork for the ultimate satire of American fatherhood: Homer Simpson. Today, dads seem to be more pals than patriarchs. Since 1965, partnered American fathers have nearly quadrupled the time they spend with their kids, resulting in a host of new ideas about what a dad is and how to be a good one. Amid seismic cultural shifts, one thing remains unchanged: paternal figures loom large in our lives, and yet there’s no such thing as a perfect dad. “Once you’re a parent, the performance of the role . . . it’s like nobody can actually inhabit it,” Cunningham says. “You think of the father as the person who ruined you or the person who saves you. And of course, you’re always both.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Club Kid” (2026)

“Who’s the Boss” (1984-1992)

“The Cosby Show” (1984-1992)

“The Simpsons” (1989–)

“Married... with Children” (1987-1997)

“Little Women,” by Louisa May Alcott

“Mad Men” (2007-2015)

“The Dead Father,” by Donald Barthelme

“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen

“One Battle After Another” (2025)

“Hamnet” (2025)

“Sentimental Value” (2025)

hellodimeji’s Instagram

“They Want to Be Better Fathers, One Braid at a Time,” by Isabella Kwai (The New York Times)

“Transcription,” by Ben Lerner

“Men at Work,” by Luke Winkie (Slate)

“A Great Leap Forward for American Fathers,” by Jessica Grose (The New York Times)

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 that 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.
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The HBO series “The Gilded Age,” created by the period-drama maestro Julian Fellowes, took a moment to find its audience. But several seasons in, the lush sets, immaculate costuming, and soapy plotlines have attracted a robust viewership, making it must-watch television. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider the show’s appeal and whether its focus on high-society dramas makes it, as some critics have said, insipid or trivial. In his effort to bring the titular period to life, Fellowes both dramatizes and sanitizes the social tensions of the day, particularly in the case of the ruthless capitalist George Russell, whom viewers have affectionately nicknamed Train Daddy. Why are we so ready to cozy up to these historical avatars, even as anger toward modern billionaires’ meddling seems at an all-time high? “This show creates an avenue for viewers who politically are really opposed to that to actually indulge in it,” Schwartz says. “This is the sneak attack of Julian Fellowes.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Gilded Age” (2022–)

“The Age of Innocence”

“The Custom of the Country”

“OpenAI’s Hollywood Whisperer,” by Charlotte Klein (New York)

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 that 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.
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On this episode of Critics at Large, recorded live at the twenty-seventh annual New Yorker Festival, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz bring their advice series to the stage for the first time. They advise on a range of topics, including films to introduce children to the magic of movies, art to rekindle a feminist spark, and whether trying to optimize one’s inner life can diminish the capacity for genuine taste.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Gangs of New York” (2002)

“West Side Story” (1961)

“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” (2000)

“Casablanca” (1942)

“Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981)

“Playtime” (1967)

“Duck Soup” (1933)

“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)

“Spirited Away” (2001)

The music video for Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time”

The music video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”

“War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy

“Plays: The Seagull; Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard,” by Anton Chekov

“The Dolphin Letters, 1970-1979,” by Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell

“The Black Outside,” by Joy Priest

“Pricks in the Tapestry,” by Jameson Fitzpatrick

“The Morning of the Poem,” by James Schuyler

“Mommie Dearest” (1981)

Hole’s “Live Through This”

“Women Talking,” by Miriam Toews

“Women Talking” (2022)

“How to Say Babylon: A Memoir,” by Safiya Sinclair

“The Substance” (2024)

“Big Swiss,” by Jen Beagin

“Oreo,” by Fran Ross

“Life Itself!,” by Elaine Dundy

“Eureka Day,” by Jonathan Spector

“Middlemarch,” by George Eliot

“Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen

“Looking for Mr. Goodbar,” by Judith Rossner

“The Vanishing Half,” by Brit Bennett

“Show Me a Hero” (2015)

“Ocean’s Eleven” (2001)

“Heart of the Beast” (2026)

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 that 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.
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Nathan Fielder’s onscreen persona—flat, literal-minded, and seemingly baffled by ordinary social behavior—has made him one of our most distinctive cultural figures. On his Comedy Central series “Nathan for You,” his approach collided with the eagerness of ordinary people to be agreeable, and on the HBO series “The Rehearsal,” it became a kind of social science, as Fielder staged elaborate simulations of real life. Fielder’s latest project, “You Can See Everything,” a documentary he made with the director Lance Oppenheim, trains that deadpan gaze on Elizabeth Holmes, the disgraced founder of Theranos, who invited the filmmakers into her home in the weeks before she reported to prison for defrauding investors. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the film and the strange mirroring between its two central figures: Fielder, performing an unnerving bluntness, and Holmes, wide-eyed and doll-like, who seems to remember almost nothing and insists she did nothing wrong. The hosts also consider what the movie says about the documentary form itself, and whether it can, or should, get at the truth. And with “You Can See Everything” earning fifteen million dollars in its opening weekend, a remarkable figure for a documentary, they ask what it says about us as viewers that we’re so caught in Fielder’s web. Schwartz says it speaks to “our very human need to trust people while knowing that no one is really fundamentally trustworthy, but wanting everyone to be.” As she puts it, “We’re all kind of on trial here, too.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“You Can See Everything” (2026)

“We Can Never Understand Elizabeth Holmes, or Nathan Fielder,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)

“Lance Oppenheim Is Going Places,” by Alex Barasch (New York)

“Spoiler Alert: Keeping Movies Under Wraps,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)

“Nathan For You” (2013-17)

“The Rehearsal” (2022-)

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 that 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 2010, Time magazine’s Person of the Year was not a world leader or entertainment icon but Mark Zuckerberg, the twenty-six-year-old creator of Facebook. That same year, Zuckerberg got the Hollywood treatment in the bio-pic “The Social Network,” directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz revisit “The Social Network,” which put forward an origin story for the company, captivating audiences and becoming a cultural touchpoint in the process. They compare it to Sorkin’s new film, “The Social Reckoning,” which dramatizes whistle-blowing by the former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and the resulting bombshell investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal in 2021. In the earlier film, Jesse Eisenberg played Zuckerberg as a lonely, ambitious genius—a stark contrast to Jeremy Strong’s portrayal, in “The Social Reckoning,” of a man who puts profits before people at every turn. At its best, the new film functions as its own form of whistle-blowing. “The best reason to watch ‘The Social Reckoning’ is that a lot of people still don't understand some of these things about this company,” Cunningham says. “I do wonder if a kind of news-giving or news-bringing, however belated . . . is a salutary effect of these portrayals.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Social Network” (2010)

“The Social Reckoning” (2026)

“The Facebook Files” (The Wall Street Journal)

"Succession” (2018-23)

“Aaron Sorkin Made a Movie About Her. She Just Hopes Mark Zuckerberg Watches.” by Seija Rankin (The Hollywood Reporter)

"As Big Tech Takes Over Hollywood, the Picture Onscreen Gets Darker," by Alissa Wilkinson (The New York Times)

“Silicon Valley” (2014-19)

“Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism,” by Sarah Wynn-Williams

“Don't Be Evil: Bad Bosses, Fake Promises, and My Escape from Big Tech,” by Claire Stapleton

“Edward Snowden and the Rise of Whistle-Blower Culture,” by Jill Lepore (The New Yorker)

“Data center opposition a rare issue uniting Americans across the political divide,” (60 Minutes)

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 that 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