“Michael”—a new film, directed by Antoine Fuqua, charting Michael Jackson’s rise to fame—just had the best opening weekend in the history of bio-pics, proving that audiences are still eager to celebrate the King of Pop. The movie also ends, pointedly, before the first in a series of allegations of child sexual abuse that have tainted Jackson’s reputation ever since. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and their fellow staff writer Kelefa Sanneh consider how the unprecedented highs and horrific lows of Jackson’s life and career have made him a prism for modern ideas about stardom and power. Sanneh’s recent Profile of Fuqua details the Jackson estate’s involvement in the production, which resulted in a sanitized portrait of a deeply complex figure. Other works have assessed Jackson’s legacy more critically: the 2019 documentary “Leaving Neverland” lays out, in granular detail, the claims of two of Jackson’s accusers. “It’s just such a dissonance, seeing these two texts in such close proximity,” Fry says. “The thing with ‘Michael’ is, it doesn’t separate the art from the artist. It separates the artist from the wrongdoing entirely.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Michael” (2026)
Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”
Michael Jackson’s “Dangerous”
“The Action-Film Director Who’s Taking On Michael Jackson,” by Kelefa Sanneh (The New Yorker)
“Quiet on Set: The Dark Side Of Kids TV” (2024)
“I’m Glad My Mom Died,” by Jennette McCurdy
“On Michael Jackson,” by Margo Jefferson
“Leaving Neverland” (2019)
Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall”
“Justin Bieber, Pop Music’s Fallen Angel, Rises Again at Coachella,” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)

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.

Cynicism is widely considered a defining quality of our conspiracy-addled, irony-poisoned age. But audiences and creatives alike now seem ready to cast it aside in favor of an attitude that’s long been out of style: earnestness. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace this trend from the outer-space buddy comedy “Project Hail Mary” to the real-life Artemis II mission, whose crew has spoken movingly about Earth as a “lifeboat” in the middle of a vast, mysterious universe. The hosts also consider two buzzy new books—Lena Dunham’s “Famesick,” and “Transcription,” by Ben Lerner—which find their authors turning to earnestness in midlife, after precocious beginnings. In this era of political, economic, and environmental precarity, younger generations, too, have come to celebrate big feelings, rather than living in fear of seeming cringe. “We’ve just seen too much awful stuff, and it's impossible to ironize,” Cunningham says. “The only sane response to that is to kind of sober up and say, ‘All right, what resources do humans still have?’ ”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Project Hail Mary” (2026)
“The Pitt” (2025-)
“Love on the Spectrum” (2022-)
“Heated Rivalry” (2025-)
“Famesick,” by Lena Dunham
“Girls” (2012-17)
“Transcription,” by Ben Lerner
“Climbing Cringe Mountain With Gen Z” (The New York Times)
“Amos & Boris,” by William Steig
László Krasznahorkai’s Nobel Prize lecture

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.

In 2019, marriage rates in the United States hit their lowest point in a hundred and forty years. They still haven’t rebounded. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how recent cultural offerings mirror this increasing dissatisfaction with matrimony. They discuss the new season of the Netflix anthology show “Beef,” which centers on two couples locked in a feud that gradually exposes the cracks in each relationship, and the A24 film “The Drama,” about a wedding that goes off the rails in spectacular fashion. They also consider real-life examples, including Lindy West’s recent memoir, “Adult Braces,” which has sparked a flurry of discourse about polyamory and open marriages. As such alternative ways of organizing our love lives enter the mainstream, the narrative around one of our oldest institutions is shifting, too. “I think we’re in a place where we’re trying to make marriage seem more like a positive choice, rather than an obvious obligation,” Schwartz says. “It’s a fascinating fiction that those who get married subscribe to, hoping that the fiction becomes true.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Beef” (2023-)
“The White Lotus” (2021-)
“The Drama” (2026)
“Strangers,” by Belle Burden
“A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides,” by Gisèle Pelicot
“Madame Bovary,” by Gustave Flaubert
“Parallel Lives,” by Phyllis Rose
“Adult Braces,” by Lindy West

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.