The New Yorker Radio Hour

This week: A Manhattan bartender, prizefighter, and onetime bank robber returns to his ancestral mansion in Serbia; Michael Friedman brings us a new song written from the campaign trail; and a devastating play tackles rape culture. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week, Father Michael Pfleger, a white priest on Chicago’s South Side, holds a funeral for a young man who threatened his life; Larry David applies his passive-aggression to Missed Connections listings; and the authors of a new book on autism discuss “patient zero,” an elderly man in Mississippi who was the first person ever to receive the diagnosis. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. S...

This week, two stories out of Baltimore: “The Wire” creator David Simon drives the city with Jelani Cobb, and David Remnick talks to the thirty-year-old mayoral candidate DeRay Mckesson. Also, Maria Bamford discusses mental illness and comedy, and the engineering evangelist Limor Fried tries to convince you—yes, you—to build some electronics. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswi...

This week, Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Jeffrey Toobin revisit the O.J. Simpson trial, a songwriter hits the campaign trail, and the lifelong night owl Patricia Marx tries some gizmos to help her sleep. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The Oscar-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (“Citizenfour”) talks to David Remnick about her first solo museum exhibition, “Astro Noise,” which channels her investigations of government surveillance into immersive installation art. A group of jazz musicians recall how David Bowie found them in a hole-in-the-wall club and enlisted them to create “Blackstar.” And the poet Brenda Shaughnessy reads...

This week, stars of the stage, screen, and earbuds. Marc Maron tells Kelefa Sanneh why talking into a mic saved his life. The magazine’s TV critic, Emily Nussbaum, speaks with Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer about their raunchy and joyful TV comedy “Broad City.” And Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of “Hamilton,” takes comfort in knowing that dirty politics are as old as America. Hosted by...

In this episode, three epic battles: Jane Mayer recounts her experience investigating—and being investigated by—Koch Industries; Junot Díaz discusses his fraught relationship with his native Dominican Republic; and the undefeated boxer Heather Hardy prepares for a big fight at the Barclays Center. Finally, the astronomer who wrote “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming” lays out his evidence...

If Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, is extradited to the United States, he might face two formidable witnesses: identical twin brothers, former drug traffickers on a major scale, who gathered evidence against him for government prosecutors. Jack Handey tells some “Tales of Old Santa Fe,” where the cowboy past collides with the New Age present. And David Remnick talks with...

Sarah Koenig, the host of “Serial,” talks with David Remnick about why her podcast’s success caught her by surprise.  Robin Coste Lewis, who recently won a National Book Award, explains how a devastating injury damaged her brain, but aided her poetry. And Jelani Cobb goes back to his high school. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and...

What's the funniest way to spook a horse? Cartoonists Matt Diffee and Emily Flake give us a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how jokes get made. Then, comedian Aziz Ansari critiques Hollywood’s casting habits. Journalist Rukmini Callimachi shares her insight into how ISIS views itself. And the screenwriter and director Charlie Kaufman talks puppet sex and existential dread during a tour of the Whitney...

Lenny Shiller owns some of the most recognizable cars around; his vintage vehicles have been appearing in movies for years (often with Lenny at the wheel). We’ll visit the garage in Brooklyn they call home.  A black woman raised in a white family searches for the biological father she never knew, a man known as Big Brown, while coming to terms with her race. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz compan...

Mark Singer had the temerity to write about Donald Trump, and Trump wanted revenge -- but just who came out on top? Sofia Coppola talks about working with Bill Murray on a Christmas special. And we offer safety tips on how to operate your new drone.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

On shows as different as “Jessica Jones,” “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” and “Game of Thrones,” characters confront sexual violence in ways never shown before on television. Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker ’ s television critic, thinks this is probably a good thing. Robert Glasper is a jazz pianist who explains why sometimes you don’t need to take a solo. And a troubled man takes to the water for a s...

High school students in Queens mount a fraught election simulation, Salt Lake City’s  openly gay mayor-elect talks about the Mormon Church, and Roger Angell speaks to David Remnick about writing in his tenth decade. And Lena Dunham tries to make plans with Allison Williams in “Let’s Get Drinks” -- it shouldn’t be this hard, should it? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com f...

Two interviews recorded live at the 2015 New Yorker Festival: Patti Smith talks with David Remnick about how her writing and music are intertwined, with a live performance of “Because the Night”; the fiction writers Jonathan Safran Foer and George Saunders interview each other.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal...

George Booth started drawing cartoons when he was three-and-a-half years old. (His first was a race car stuck in the mud.) Now nearly ninety, he’s been contributing to The New Yorker for over forty-five years. He sat down with Matt Diffee, a fellow cartoonist who considers Booth his hero, to discuss the virtues of dogs versus cats, and other big questions of the cartoon world. “We are at war,” the...

What is it like to grow up with twenty siblings? When Sue and Hector Badeau considered the lives of children in foster homes, which are often traumatic, they felt that had to do something, and eventually adopted twenty in addition to their two biological kids. Larissa MacFarquhar reports on a family shaped by extreme compassion. When William Finnegan isn’t covering conflicts in places like Mexico,...

The hacker group Lizard Squad ruined Christmas for a lot of people last year when it hacked into Sony and Microsoft servers and rendered new PlayStations and Xboxes temporarily unusable for online gaming. Soon after, the hackers starting selling an inexpensive program that anyone could use to block a Web site. Vauhini Vara, a contributor to  The New Yorker ’s Web site, talked to Vinnie Omari, a ha...

Amy Schumer began her career playing a deranged, rich party girl. With three seasons of her Peabody Award-winning series  Inside Amy Schumer  now complete, Schumer has since shifted to a more deliberate agenda, one that’s earned her the favor of Hillary Clinton and her distant relative, Senator Charles Schumer.  The New Yorker ’s editor David Remnick spoke with Schumer about her evolution as a com...

In The New Yorker Radio Hour’s début episode, the magazine’s editor, David Remnick, speaks with Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of “ Between the World and Me ,” about the profound influence of James Baldwin on his writing and why he’ll always be wary of optimism. Jill Lepore, a staff writer at  The New Yorker,  introduces us to a childhood friend who was one of the only people of color in their small...

One of the nation’s most celebrated magazines comes together with New York’s flagship public radio station to create a new weekly radio program and podcast. What’s it all about? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.