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The New Yorker Radio Hour
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Profiles, storytelling and insightful conversations, hosted by David Remnick.
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Episodes
150
18 August 2025
A Palestinian Journalist Escapes Death in Gaza
Mohammed R. Mhawish was living in Gaza City during Israel’s invasion, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack. He witnessed the invasion for months and reported on its devastating consequences for Al Jazeera, The Nation, and other outlets. After his home was targeted in an Israeli strike, which nearly killed him, he fled Gaza. In The New Yorker, [he’s...
26 min
15 August 2025
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington on a Reunion Making “Highest 2 Lowest”
Spike Lee and Denzel Washington first worked together on “Mo’ Better Blues,” released in 1990. Washington starred as a trumpet player trying to make a living in jazz clubs; Lee, who directed the film, also played the musician’s hapless manager. They later worked together on “Malcolm X” and other films, but it has been nearly twenty years since their last collaboration, the hugely successful...
23 min
12 August 2025
Richard Brody Picks Three Favorite Clint Eastwood Films
With seven decades in film and television, Clint Eastwood is undeniably a Hollywood institution. Emerging first as a star in Westerns, then as the embattled cop in the Dirty Harry films, the ninety-five-year-old filmmaker has directed forty features and appeared in more than sixty. The film critic Richard Brody just reviewed a new biography of Eastwood. “What fascinated me above all are the...
16 min
08 August 2025
Your Questions Answered: Trump vs. the Rule of Law
From the attempt to end birthright citizenship to the gutting of congressionally authorized agencies, the Trump Administration has created an enormous number of legal controversies. The Radio Hour asked for listeners’ questions about President Trump and the courts. To answer them, David Remnick speaks with two regular contributors: Ruth Marcus, who writes about legal issues and the Supreme Court,...
34 min
05 August 2025
Jamaica Kincaid on “Putting Myself Together”
Jamaica Kincaid began writing for The New Yorker in 1974, reporting about life in the magazine’s home city. She was a young immigrant from Antigua, then a British colony; she had been sent to New York—against her wishes—to work as a nanny. Soon began a love affair with New York’s literary scene. “I had to change my name,” she tells David Remnick, “because Elaine Potter Richardson could not write...
25 min
01 August 2025
John Brennan, Former C.I.A. Director, on Being Targeted by Trump
In Donald Trump’s first term, he was furious that people were investigating his connections to Russia—“Russia, Russia, Russia,” he complained. Now, as Trump fulfills a campaign promise of retribution, his Administration has put the Russia “hoax” back into the headlines. They claim to have opened investigations into the former F.B.I. director James Comey and the former C.I.A. director John...
26 min
29 July 2025
Dexter Filkins on Drones and the Future of Warfare
Since the end of the Cold War, most Americans have taken U.S. military supremacy for granted. We can no longer afford to do so, according to reporting by the staff writer Dexter Filkins. China has developed advanced weapons that rival or surpass America’s; and at the same time, drone warfare has fundamentally changed calculations of the battlefield. Ukraine’s ability to hold off the massive...
21 min
25 July 2025
Mayor Karen Bass on Marines in Los Angeles
The city of Los Angeles has declared itself a sanctuary city, where local authorities do not share information with federal immigration enforcement. But L.A.—where nearly forty per cent of residents are foreign-born—became ground zero for controversial arrests and deportations by ICE. The Trump Administration deployed marines and the National Guard to the city, purportedly to quell protests...
29 min
22 July 2025
Director Ari Aster Explains His COVID-Era Western “Eddington”
“I’m personally desperate for art that at least attempts to grapple with whatever the hell is going on right now,” the writer-director Ari Aster tells Adam Howard, a senior producer of the Radio Hour. “ ‘Eddington’ is a film about a bunch of people who . . . know that something’s wrong. They just—nobody can agree on what that thing is.” Many of us would prefer to forget a fearful time like the...
25 min
18 July 2025
Michael Wolff on MAGA’s Revolt Over Jeffrey Epstein
The sense that the White House is covering something up about Jeffrey Epstein has led to backlash from some of Trump’s most ardent supporters. Even after the financier was convicted for hiring an underage prostitute, for which he served a brief and extraordinarily lenient sentence, Epstein remained a playboy, a top political donor, and a very good friend of the very powerful—“a sybarite,” in the...
26 min