Critics at Large will be back next week. In the meantime, you can hear Vinson Cunningham and Naomi Fry on a recent episode of The New Yorker’s Political Scene, hosted by Tyler Foggatt, where they consider several high-profile collisions of sports and politics. First, Cunningham talks to Foggatt about Donald Trump’s controversial appearance at a Knicks game during the team’s championship run. Then Fry and Foggatt discuss the U.F.C. fight that Trump hosted on the White House lawn—in celebration of America’s two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary, as well as his own eightieth birthday—and what it revealed about the President’s second term. Finally, the staff writer Louisa Thomas joins Foggatt to discuss how the Administration’s immigration policies, the war in Iran, and America’s precarious position on the international stage are impacting another major athletic event: the World Cup.

Tune in to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

When “Jaws” hit theatres in 1975, no one—neither the studio executives involved nor the film’s twenty-six-year-old director, Steven Spielberg—was betting on its success. But it dominated at the box office and promptly revolutionized the way movies were promoted, distributed, and merchandised. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz trace how Spielberg inaugurated a new phenomenon in Hollywood: the blockbuster. He would tap his own playbook again and again with such hits as “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “E.T.,” and “Jurassic Park,” all of which drew impressive audiences and profits. The hosts talk through his filmography, culminating in his new release, “Disclosure Day,” which both replicates and iterates on themes and techniques found in his earlier work. Though other directors may share his capacity for spectacle and action-packed set pieces, much of his appeal lies in his profound earnestness. “What Spielberg is so good at is bringing the human to the fore in these extreme, sci-fi circumstances,” Schwartz says. “And that’s what makes a great blockbuster.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Jaws” (1975)
“Disclosure Day” (2026)
“Minority Report” (2002)
“Oscar Wars,” by Michael Schulman
“What Went Wrong” ’s episode about “Jaws”
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977)
“Jurassic Park” (1993)
“E.T.” (1982)
“Alf” (1986-90)
“Schindler’s List” (1993)
“One Battle After Another” (2025)
“American Journal,” by Robert Hayden
“Heart of the Beast” (2026)
“Sinners” (2025)
“Nope” (2022)
“Barbie” (2023)
“Obsession” (2026)
“Backrooms” (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 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.

Since the days of Aesop, stories about animals have been used to explore distinctly human values, virtues, and vices. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider such childhood classics as E. B. White’s “Stuart Little” and C. S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” series, as well as “The Sheep Detectives,” a recent entry in this canon that centers on a flock who learn poignant lessons about life and loss. Works of adult literature, too, have explored the animal-human bond. Our tendency to project onto animals translates to the real world in strange ways, with figures like Timmy the Whale and Punch the Monkey going viral on our social feeds even as our day-to-day lives are more detached from the natural world than ever before. But the distance between us can be instructive, too. “Reckoning with their similarity to us and also their total strangeness to us . . . that’s where works about animals really get me,” Schwartz says. “Not just as a direct transfer onto the human experience but also this other thing that really does enrich our lives: to be in contact with species that are not our own.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

Homer’s Odyssey
“Stone Fox,” by John Reynolds Gardiner
“The Mare,” by Mary Gaitskill
“The Sheep Detectives” (2026)
“Stuart Little,” by E. B. White
“Bambi” (1942)
“The Lion King” (1994)
C. S. Lewis’s “Chronicles of Narnia” Series
“Tom and Jerry” (1940-67)
Aesop’s Fables
“Frederick,” by Leo Lionni
“ ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and the Whodunnit Renaissance” (The New Yorker)
“Zootopia” (2016)
“Why Earnestness Is Everywhere” (The New Yorker)
“Babe” (1995)
“Tiger King” (2020-21)
“Monkey Business in ‘Chimp Crazy,’ ” by Vinson Cunningham (The New Yorker)
I am Bunny on TikTok

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.