Critics at Large | The New Yorker

In recent years, as our culture has embraced therapy more widely, depictions of the practice have proliferated on screen. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the archetype from the silent, scribbling analysts of Woody Allen’s œuvre and the iconic Dr. Melfi of “The Sopranos” to newer portrayals in shows such as “Shrinking,” on Apple TV+, and Showtime’s “Couples Therapy,” now in its fourth season. The star of “Couples Therapy” is Orna Guralnik, whose sessions with real-life couples show how these tools can lead to breakthroughs—or, in some cases, enable bad behavior. Since the series débuted, mental-health awareness has only grown, and the rise of therapists on social media has put psychoanalytic language and constructs into the hands of a much broader audience. Is the therapy boom making us better? “There’s a way in which jargon or concepts when boiled down can be used to categorize both ourselves and others,” says Schwartz. “Maybe what I’m asking for is a reinvigoration of the idea of therapy—not to close down meaning, but to open up meaning.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The Sopranos” (1999-2007)“Couples Therapy” (2019-)“The Therapist Remaking Our Love Lives on TV,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“The Rise of Therapy-Speak,” by Katy Waldman (The New Yorker)“Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist” (1995-2002)“The Critic” (1994-95)“Annie Hall” (1977)“The Case Against the Trauma Plot,” by Parul Seghal (The New Yorker)“Shrinking” (2023-)“Ted Lasso” (2020-23)The Cut’s Overanalyzed series“21 Ways to Break Up with Your Therapist,” by Alyssa Shelasky (The Cut)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. 

It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular vacation spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Social media pushes hoards to places unable to withstand the traffic, while the rise of “last-chance” travel—the rush to see melting glaciers or deteriorating coral reefs before they’re gone forever—has turned the precarity of these destinations into a selling point. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore the question of why we travel. They trace the rich history of travel narratives, from the memoirs of Marco Polo and nineteenth-century accounts of the Grand Tour to shows like Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” and HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Why are we compelled to pack a bag and set off, given the growing number of reasons not to do so? “One thing that’s really important for me as a traveller is the experience of being foreign,” Schwartz says. “I’m starting to realize that there are places I may never go, and this has actually made other people’s accounts of them, in the deeper sense, more important.”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“The New Tourist,” by Paige McClanahanThe “Lonely Planet” guidebooks“The Travels of Marco Polo,” by Rustichello da Pisa“Of Travel,” by Francis Bacon“The Innocents Abroad,” by Mark Twain“Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson“Travels through France and Italy,” by Tobias Smollett“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (2013-18)“The White Lotus” (2021—)“Conan O’Brien Must Go” (2024)“It Just Got Easier to Visit a Vanishing Glacier. Is That a Good Thing?,” by Paige McClanahan (The New York Times)“The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere,” by Ed Caesar (The New Yorker)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. 

“Hit Man,” a new film directed by Richard Linklater, is not, in fact, about a hit man. The movie follows Gary Johnson (Glen Powell), a mild-mannered philosophy professor who assists law enforcement in sting operations by posing as a contract killer—and playing on the expectations stoked by Hollywood. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss the history of the archetype, from the 1942 noir “This Gun for Hire” to Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and the “John Wick” franchise, and explore why audiences have so enthusiastically embraced a figure that, contrary to the media’s depiction, is basically nonexistent in real life. “It’s a fantasy of what would happen if our rage was optimized, much like our sleep and our work day and our workouts,” says Fry. “And if it comes with a side of wearing a suit that looks great—even better.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Collateral” (2004)“Pulp Fiction” (1994)“No Country for Old Men” (2007)“Hit Man” (2024)“Dazed and Confused” (1993)“Hit Men Are Easy to Find in the Movies. Real Life Is Another Story,” by Jessie McKinley (The New York Times)“This Gun for Hire” (1942)“Le Samouraï” (1967)“The Killer” (2023)“Aggro Dr1ft” (2024)“John Wick” (2014)“Barry” (2018-23)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. 

In recent years, in the realms of self-improvement literature, Instagram influencers, and wellness gurus, an idea has taken hold: that in a non-stop world, the act of slowing down offers a path to better living. In this episode of Critics at Large, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace the rise of “slowness culture”—from Carl Honoré’s 2004 manifesto to pandemic-era trends of mass resignations and so-called quiet quitting. The hosts discuss the work of Jenny Odell, whose books “How to Do Nothing” and “Saving Time” frame reclaiming one’s time as a life-style choice with radical roots and revolutionary political potential. But how much does an individual’s commitment to leisure pay off on the level of the collective? Is too much being laid at the feet of slowness? “For me, it’s about reclaiming an aspect of humanness, just the experience of not having to make the most with everything we have all the time,” Schwartz says. “There can be a degree of self-defeating critique where you say, ‘Oh, well, this is only accessible to the privileged few.’ And I think the better framing is, how can more people access that kind of sitting with humanness?”Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation,” by Anne Helen Petersen (BuzzFeed)“How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” by Jenny Odell“Improving Ourselves to Death,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed,” by Carl Honoré“The Sabbath,” by Abraham Joshua Heschel“Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture,” by Jenny Odell“Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto,” by Kohei SaitoNew episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts. This episode originally aired on January 11, 2024.

From John Cheever’s 1964 short story “The Swimmer” to Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling 2006 memoir, “Eat, Pray, Love,” our culture has long grappled with what it means to enter middle age. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz examine depictions of that tipping point—and of the crises that often come with it. In the mid-twentieth century (and, depending on your reading of Dante and Balzac, long before that), the phenomenon was largely the purview of men, but massive societal shifts, beginning with the women’s rights movement, have yielded a new archetype. The hosts discuss how novels like Miranda July’s “All Fours” and Dana Spiotta’s “Wayward” have updated the genre for the modern age. “I think the crisis of midlife,” Schwartz says, “is just the crisis of life, period. You invent it for yourself.” Read, watch, and listen with the critics:“Miranda July Turns the Lights On,” by Alexandra Schwartz (The New Yorker)“All Fours,” by Miranda July“Me and You and Everyone We Know” (2005)“Inferno,” by Dante Alighieri“Mrs. Dalloway,” by Virginia Woolf“Cousin Bette,” by Honoré de Balzac“The Swimmer,” by John Cheever (The New Yorker)“The Swimmer” (1968)“The Women’s Room,” by Marilyn French“Wifey,” by Judy Blume“This Isn’t What Millennial Middle Age Was Supposed to Look Like,” by Jessica Grose (The New York Times)“Wayward,” by Dana Spiotta“Eat, Pray, Love,” by Elizabeth Gilbert “Eat, Pray, Love” (2010)New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.