Ari Aster’s wildly divisive new movie “Eddington” drops audiences back into the chaos of May, 2020: a moment when the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests, the rise in conspiracy theories, and political strife shattered something in our society. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz situate “Eddington” in the lineage of “the indigenous American berserk,” a phrase coined by Philip Roth in his 1997 novel “American Pastoral.” They consider an array of works that have tried to depict moments of social rupture throughout the country’s history—and debate whether the exercise is ultimately a futile one. “I think when you’re dealing with the realm of the American berserk, the big risk is getting the bends,” Schwartz says. “You're trying to describe a warping. So how do you not get warped in the process?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Eddington” (2025)
“Writing American Fiction,” by Philip Roth (Commentary)
“Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” by Tom Wolfe (Harper’s)
“American Pastoral,” by Philip Roth
“Natural Born Killers” (1994)
“Benito Cereno,” by Herman Melville
“The Bonfire of the Vanities,” by Tom Wolfe
“Apocalypse Now” (1979)
“Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse” (1991)
“War Movies: What Are They Good For?” (The New Yorker)
“Sorry to Bother You” (2018)

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

Audiences have been bemoaning the death of the romantic comedy for years, but the genre persists—albeit often in a different form from the screwballs of the nineteen-forties or the “chick flicks” of the eighties and nineties. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss their all-time favorite rom-coms and two new projects marketed as contemporary successors to the greats: Celine Song’s “Materialists” and Lena Dunham’s “Too Much.” Do these depictions of modern love—or at least the search for it—evoke the same breathless feeling as the classics do? “I wonder if the crisis in rom-coms has to do with a crisis in how adult women want to be or want to see themselves,” Schwartz says. “I think both of these projects are basically trying to speak to the fact that everyone's ideals are in question.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Sex, Love, and the State of the Rom-Com” (The New Yorker)

“Materialists” (2025)

“Too Much” (2025)

“Working Girl” (1988)

“You’ve Got Mail” (1998)

“When Harry Met Sally” (1989)

“Love & Basketball” (2000)

“The Best Man” (1999)

“Our Romance with Jane Austen” (The New Yorker)

“Girls” (2012-17)

“Adam’s Rib” (1949)

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

It’s a confusing time to travel. Tourism is projected to hit record-breaking levels this year, and its toll on the culture and ecosystems of popular vacation spots is increasingly hard to ignore. Social media pushes hoards to places unable to withstand the traffic, while the rise of “last-chance” travel—the rush to see melting glaciers or deteriorating coral reefs before they’re gone forever—has turned the precarity of these destinations into a selling point. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz explore the question of why we travel. They trace the rich history of travel narratives, from the memoirs of Marco Polo and nineteenth-century accounts of the Grand Tour to shows like Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” and HBO’s “The White Lotus.” Why are we compelled to pack a bag and set off, given the growing number of reasons not to do so? “One thing that’s really important for me as a traveller is the experience of being foreign,” Schwartz says. “I’m starting to realize that there are places I may never go, and this has actually made other people’s accounts of them, in the deeper sense, more important.”

This episode originally aired on June 13, 2024.

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The New Tourist,” by Paige McClanahan

The “Lonely Planet” guidebooks

“The Travels of Marco Polo,” by Rustichello da Pisa

“Of Travel,” by Francis Bacon

“The Innocents Abroad,” by Mark Twain

“Self-Reliance,” by Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Travels through France and Italy,” by Tobias Smollett

“Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” (2013-18)

“The White Lotus” (2021—)

“Conan O’Brien Must Go” (2024)

“It Just Got Easier to Visit a Vanishing Glacier. Is That a Good Thing?,” by Paige McClanahan (The New York Times)

“The New Luxury Vacation: Being Dumped in the Middle of Nowhere,” by Ed Caesar (The New Yorker)

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