Over the course of his three-decade career, the director Paul Thomas Anderson has dramatized the nineteen-seventies porn industry (“Boogie Nights”), the Californian oil boom (“There Will Be Blood”), and a mid-century London fashion house (“Phantom Thread”). Now he’s trained his gaze on present-day America. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss Anderson’s latest: the sprawling, surprisingly political blockbuster “One Battle After Another.” They contextualize the new work within his œuvre—and debate what his portrayal of militant left-wing activists and the white-supremacist right has to say about the state of the nation. “I think our present reality has far outstripped most depictions of it,” Schwartz says. “Slipping it into this kind of caper—is that delivering us to somewhere that gets people to think or to look or to feel?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“One Battle After Another” (2025)
“Vineland,” by Thomas Pynchon
“Inherent Vice” (2014)
“Boogie Nights” (1997)
“The Master” (2012)
“Punch-Drunk Love” (2002)
“There Will Be Blood” (2007)
“Phantom Thread” (2017)
“ ‘Eddington’ and the American Berserk” (The New Yorker)
Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not be Televised”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

In contemporary cookbooks—and in the burgeoning realm of online cooking content—there’s often a life style on display alongside the recipes. Samin Nosrat is a fixture of this landscape, and her new book, “Good Things,” aims to pick up where her mega-best-seller “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” left off, giving people a new framework for feeding themselves and loved ones. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz share their personal experiences making dishes from “Good Things.” Then, New Yorker staff writer Helen Rosner joins them to explain the state of home cooking today, from the rise of culinary influencers and the New York Times Cooking app to the aspirational dimension of what’s on offer. “Not only is cooking supposed to be part of a life, but, specifically, it can be a part of the life of the mind,” Cunningham says. “Your choices in the kitchen can be deeply connected to your desires outside of the kitchen.”

Read, watch, and cook with the critics:

“Tender at the Bone,” by Ruth Reichl
“Heartburn,” by Nora Ephron
“Good Things,” by Samin Nosrat
“Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat,” by Samin Nosrat
“The Joylessness of Cooking,” by Helen Rosner (The New Yorker)
“All-Consuming,” by Ruby Tandoh
@wishbonekitchen
“Jerusalem,” by Yotam Ottolenghi
“Ottolenghi Simple,” by Yotam Ottolenghi
“Dining In,” by Alison Roman
“Nothing Fancy,” by Alison Roman
“Alison Roman Cooks Thanksgiving in a (Very) Small Kitchen” (The New York Times)
“Let’s Party,” by Dan Pelosi
“How to Cook Everything,” by Mark Bittman
“Serial Monogamy,” by Nora Ephron (The New Yorker)

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

In the past twenty years, more than a third of all American newspapers have shuttered; trust in media institutions is now at a historic low. And yet we’re still drawn to depictions of reporters onscreen. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss two recent entries into the genre: “The Paper,” a workplace comedy from Greg Daniels and Michael Koman set at a failing local newspaper, and “The Lowdown,” a crime noir from Sterlin Harjo about a freelancer and self-styled “truthstorian.” They compare these new works with earlier examples to illuminate how the practice—and perception—of journalism has changed. In classics such as “All the President’s Men,” Fry notes, “The airing of the facts via the news, via this character of the journalist, makes us feel like it’s gonna be O.K. Like, the truth is out!” Today, she says, “I’m not sure we treat newsmaking the same way.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Paper” (2025–)
“The Lowdown” (2025–)
“All the President’s Men” (1976)
“The China Syndrome” (1979)
“Citizen Kane” (1941)
“The Gilded Age” (2022–)
“The Office” (2005–13)
“‘The Paper’ Is Old News,” by Inkoo Kang (The New Yorker)
Brian Stelter’s Reliable Sources newsletter
“Spotlight” (2015)
“Succession” (2018–23)
“My Undesirable Friends” (2025)
404 Media

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.