Charli XCX Misses the Moment

19:30Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

19:30Vinson Cunningham:This all kind of seems to me like an elaborate way of dodging the real issues that came up. Like the big scandal in the movie, which I thought was a funny gag, is that she is approached by Atlantic Records, her actual record company with whom she has a famously difficult history, to release a brat credit card that will help a failing bank.

19:52Alexandra Schwartz:Really funny gag.

19:53Vinson Cunningham:It's a good gag. I like that. It's a vomit green. It's the brat green credit card. And it's for queer people. It's aimed at young gays. Yeah, it's aimed at young queer people. There's a line about like, how do we know they're gay, like to qualify for the card?

20:04Alexandra Schwartz:Like, you know, just like you can tell, you know, there's some funny stuff.

20:07Vinson Cunningham:There's some funny stuff in here. But it also does seem because this is a totally apolitical movie when Brad actually just entered political discourse at, you know, the weirdest political time.

20:20Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. And I also think it's just like an kind of by positioning the whole thing as a kind of parody of what a pop star does when she gets big and then has a hard time finding her way. And how does she deal with this newfound, you know, kind of surge of fame, et cetera. The critique, it's kind of like a straw man critique, right? It's sort of like, oh, what if she did this brat card? And it's like, oh, how hilarious. But in fact, the things she does in real life aren't that different. In the Super Bowl, there was a big ad that she did with Rachel Sennett for Poppy for this, you know, soda, which is fine, whatever.

21:00I have no qualms. You know, I personally have no problems with it. But this is like literally your life. Like you're not this. It's not funny. It's it's real.

21:16Vinson Cunningham:When we're back, we dive into the long history of the music doc and the authenticity it promises. I watched Gimme Shelter again this morning. Heroin. I know, but what a palate cleanser. What a palate cleanser. Because it's authenticity, baby. Because it's like actually... No, we don't say no. Okay. Hold it like a little apple, remember? Do your little apple dance.

21:53Vinson Cunningham:Hi, I'm Nicole Phelps, Global Fashion News and Features Director at Vogue and co-host of the Run-Through podcast. Each week on the show, our listeners get an all-access pass into the world of Vogue. On Tuesdays, join me as I interview influential designers like Calvin Klein, Rachel Scott, and Simone Belotti. On Thursdays, join Chloe Mao, head of editorial content at Vogue US, and Choma Nadi, British Vogue's head of editorial content, as they explore fashion through the lens of culture with guests like Doja Cat and Margot Robbie. Listen and watch the run-through with Vogue wherever you get your podcasts and Vogue's YouTube channel.

22:35Vinson Cunningham:Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford. And I'm John Ross. And we're the hosts of Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's podcast for film, TV, and awards lovers. And just because the Oscars are done, for now, doesn't mean we are. Join us every week for coverage of the biggest stories in Hollywood, interviews with today's brightest stars, and so much more. Listen to Little Gold Men every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.

23:02Who is going to win control of Congress this November? And what is it going to mean for the final two years of Donald Trump's disruptive presidency? I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osnos. We host the Washington Roundtable on the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. We're following what key races could tip the balance of power in Washington this fall. We're also going to go deep on the influence of dark money and tech billionaires. So join us in the run-up to the midterms in 2026. Subscribe to The Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

23:46Vinson Cunningham:We've been talking about the moment, the Charlie XCX movie that parodies to perhaps not the degree that one might wish the usual path of pop star branding via concert movie. And we're going to talk about a few examples in this genre so we can get a sense of what the moment is trying to do. So Taylor Swift, just this last December, released yet another Eras Tour product, which is called The End of an Era. It's a six-part series on Disney+. Yes, I re-subscribed to Disney +, just to watch the first two episodes of this thing. I wanted to over-serve the fans in terms of the amount of songs they were going to hear.

24:31and how far I was going to push myself.

24:35Alexandra Schwartz:It's not the movie chopped up into parts. It's a different thing.

24:38Vinson Cunningham:It's a different thing. It's a six-part different thing, which documents the Aeros tour. Guys, I've seen parts one and two. Those are the parts I'm going to speak to. Okay, please. May I share with you? Yes, please. So I am an alien when it comes to Taylor Swift. I have, you know how like some people taste cilantro and then for other people it tastes like soap?

24:57Alexandra Schwartz:Yes.

24:57Vinson Cunningham:Like I don't think I have, I think I'm a freak, basically. I don't really have the Taylor Swift gene. Yeah, I don't have the enzyme. Some of her music I like totally fine and enjoy. You know, I yearn to be holding hands, crying, making half a heart, and someone comes up next to me makes the other half of the heart with our crooked fingers. It just struck me that the apple dance, I know it's supposed to be having an apple, but in fact... Thank you. It's breaking apart... Thank you. The Taylor Swift heart. Thank you.

25:31Alexandra Schwartz:Oh. Okay. I mean, I don't know.

25:34Vinson Cunningham:I see these hearts, these apples, these symbols, and I think it's all the same. This is like major cryptology happening on this podcast right now. I think we could make headlines with this.

25:44Alexandra Schwartz:It might be our own moment. Reading the signs of the times, yes.

25:46Vinson Cunningham:Exactly. It might be the moment for us. Okay. So, guys, talk about executive function. If you want competency porn, watch Taylor Swift pressing a wax seal into like 800 envelopes into which she's going to hand out handwritten letters. You're kidding. In its own baggie. And I was thinking we can lay them out. Oh, let me see the wax seal. You wax sealed every one of these things? telling every member of her production team, her crew, her dancers, her backup, everyone, that they're about to get, you know,$100 ,000 bonuses because her tour is doing so damn well.

26:26Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah. The wax seal, of course, the, to me,

26:29Vinson Cunningham:utterly odious scene of her actually handing out the bonuses, which is like, please, stop with the envelopes. So it's just a little too much Patty on the back kind of situation. But yeah, the whole, you know, what I got from the first two episodes, at least, is like, we know that the Ares tour was the greatest success of all time of any tour era. We got it. We know. How do we make that dramatic anyway?

26:54Alexandra Schwartz:There is a huge change in the kind of economy of this kind of work, which is that it used to be, at least it was a documentary crew, a documentarian with her or his own vision coming into your world, intruding and hopefully finding something that you didn't plan. Right. that the star herself was not in control of the means of production of the documentary. More recently with streaming and the proliferation of this kind of one-person documentary, increasingly it's the person commissioning it. They've hired the crew. They're always being taped all the time. And then they kind of chop it up. Like, you know.

27:39Chop, chop.

27:40Alexandra Schwartz:It's like, oh, yeah, I got enough to like, oh, I'm going to make a little documentary. I'm going to chop this one up and make it into a series. And I'm the one with that's got all the stuff. And therefore, it's always a commercial for me, which is less a documentary and more of a sort of elongation of something like an Instagram reel, except, you know, much more, much better made or whatever. Yeah. So, for example, and sometimes when you nowadays, if you get something real, it's because somebody slipped up and didn't pay their camera person their camera person and somebody else got the footage with the Kanye with the recent with Sean Combs.

28:18Alexandra Schwartz:Puffy, I hired this cameraman. I haven't paid him yet. Somebody else slips in, buys the footage and uses it towards purposes that I didn't mean. So like the fact that if someone's in charge of the film about them, unless this person is really trying to achieve some, you know, self-scalding vision or something like that, it's just hard for that to be interesting.

28:40Vinson Cunningham:It's hard for that to be interesting. I do want to just, because I'm courting danger, Beyonce, an artist I hugely enjoy, who I've like, you know, whose music resonates a lot more for me than the music of Taylor Swift, whose film Homecoming I watched twice, loved it. I definitely was crying, whatever. Was I the target audience? No. But I love that shit about her Coachella performance. It's my first time back home on the stage after giving birth. I'm creating my own Homecoming. And it's hard. there were days that I thought, you know, I'll never be the same. I'll never be the same physically.

29:21Alexandra Schwartz:My strength and endurance would never be the same.

29:25Vinson Cunningham:Like, I still remember her talking about, like, her body, dealing with her body and her baby weight and trying to perform again. So, guys, I watched another entry in this genre, her Renaissance movie, which it's stultifying. It makes you feel, what's interesting to me about that movie is it makes you feel how not the experience of being at the concert you're having. Like, you're watching people have a religious experience, seeing Beyonce crying, feeling connected to one another, similar to the Errors tour. And really, none of that is coming through the screen. And there's a weird moment in the middle of the movie when it goes to black and white in a kind of, like, you know, artsy, but also, like, futuristic way.

30:05Vinson Cunningham:And Beyonce is just saying the most obvious stuff about how many people go into making a huge concert tour. and it could have come right out of the Taylor Swift or any of these.

30:14Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

30:14Vinson Cunningham:Like they want you to see the enormous effort and you do, but there's still this demand to be amazed by the spectacle after like revealing the behind the scenes. Yeah, so you have to be very, very, to pull that off, which is the main point. Yeah. You know, the beauty, the glory. Yeah. You have to kind of minimize the other stuff. I was thinking about, you know, other documentaries, other music documentaries that I've loved or been interested in in the past, and I was like, okay, I'm going to rewatch the Maisel's Brothers' Gimme Shelter from 1970. I've mentioned this, I believe, in previous episodes.

30:51Is documents, The Stones, 1969, American tour, and the lead-up, and then the disaster of their show in December 1969, Altamont Speedway near San Francisco, where a man was murdered by the Hells Angels, a black man named Meredith Hunter, in front of the Stones as they played. And that is captured on film. Of course, nobody knew that this would happen. And then there are clips after the Altamont concert of the Stones watching footage from the concert and the actual footage, which is kind of like the second half of the movie.

31:33Alexandra Schwartz:People, I mean, who's fighting what for? who's fighting and what for why are we fighting why are we fighting and the absolute chaos that is captured on film it creates um something the likes of which we'll you know never see again and which we have rarely seen since you know because you see just the you know the myzell's brothers just the the way they capture faces in the audience just like people totally having bad trips on acid you know people there's like one of the hell's angels there's this like stunning frame where you see like mc jagger like singing getting through the concert and the focus is on one of the hell's angels just looking at him just like so menacing, you know, so full of doom.

32:37And it's just like one of the most stunning documents of an era.

32:41Alexandra Schwartz:Honestly, I think I was just listening to all that great stuff you said. I mean, it's like that era, it's so clear the porousness between the world, the political dimension, and the star. Completely unprotected. Insanely so. Each one is sort of impinging directly on the other and changing it in a certain way. So everybody is affected by the existence of the other. On maybe the far side is maybe Taylor Swift or even the totally apolitical reality that Charlie XCX is inhabiting the corporate superstar who is really kind of aloof from the world of politics and like everyday people. Thinking about all this, I did rewatch a movie that maybe shares more in DNA with the moment, which is the Spice Girls movie Spice World.

33:31Vinson Cunningham:Oh, yes.

33:32Alexandra Schwartz:The Spice Girls, it's like the 90s. And therefore, it's maybe in between this continuum. And the whole point of the movie is them dealing with, again, a kind of machine around them. Look, Clifford, we're old enough to take responsibility for our own lives. Do you know what I mean? You don't have a life. You have a schedule. You are part of a well-oiled global machine. There are people everywhere working their butts off for you.

33:54Vinson Cunningham:People like Deborah here. Can you leave my butt out of this, please? Oh, just don't be so uptight, Clifford. Uptight? Uptight? You've got a live geek here tomorrow. It's my job to see that you turn up.

34:05Alexandra Schwartz:There's the truly evil figure of the label head who's like, I don't care if they need rest. No rest for them. Wait, who is Richard? Richard E. Grant. Richard E. Grant plays the villain. Yeah, but I think the villain, I think the head, he's the label head, right? He has incredible facial hair. Yeah, that's right. Meatloaf is their tour bus driver. There's so many funny little intrusions. But against that, it's about them trying to take back a kind of power. Girl power. Girl power. And it's crucial to get girl power. No, literally. No, it is true. It's true. And they're all sort of, you know, they've got these, you know, sporty spice, baby spice, et cetera.

34:45Alexandra Schwartz:They've got all these posh spice, scary. They've all got these personas that are tied to various visions of femininity. And they're saying, no, I don't want to inhabit these anymore. So they switch personas. They're all like joking around like Posh is going to be baby now, et cetera, et cetera. What the movie evinces is a total understanding, even through this kind of almost like Monty Python-ish rat-a-tat joke format. Like they're great jokes. And it's kind of a hard days night-ish too, right? They're running away from fans. I think they consciously talk about a hard days night. Yeah, it's so funny.

35:18Alexandra Schwartz:God bless.

35:19Vinson Cunningham:We didn't know how good we had it.

35:20Alexandra Schwartz:It's great. And all it evinces, though, is a total understanding of what they mean culturally. It's not funny if they don't understand what they mean in the real world. And just to bring it back to the moment for a minute, that's what I was like, okay, Charlie's this person, by all accounts, she works with the late, great producer, Sophie. The coolest, most sophisticated musicians in the world is who she works with. she's got great taste. And what this movie asked me to believe is she doesn't. Like, she just is nothing. Exactly. And so it's like either we have the— Yeah, there's no way. Like, what is this?

35:54Alexandra Schwartz:Either she's like who she is, the arch-sophisticate, or tell me that this person who's a creative director is actually the brain is behind it, and she actually is somebody with no taste. And now, like, it's funny because we're learning that her taste actually resides in somebody— like, something. But, like, we're just throwing away the whole archetype that her persona has given us. It's like, why don't you play with something that's real? Anyway, the Spice Girls are like, I know exactly how you see me. And the whole joke of this movie is that I'm going to subvert it without totally tossing it away.

36:22They embrace their own cartoonishness.

36:25Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

36:25Vinson Cunningham:Spice World may—I'm all about big statements today. It may be a work of genius. And I just want to add this in because looking at the letterboxed reviews of the moment, we have Charlie's own comment about the movie. and then she writes P.S. I'm being a good sport and not rating my own films from now on but obs I would be giving this five stars even if I wasn't in it because it's so Spice World coded how could I not? XX. So I do think she's you're very wise to go there Vincent.

36:56Alexandra Schwartz:She's going for it. And I will say with the brat card and other things when it was most Spice World-ish is when I liked the moment best.

37:04Vinson Cunningham:Yes. Totally.

37:10Vinson Cunningham:It is so hard to achieve authenticity, even though we all crave it. That's in a minute on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

37:29Alexandra Schwartz:This episode is supported by FX's The Shards, a seductive drama from executive producer Ryan Murphy. Set in 1980s Los Angeles, the series follows a group of glamorous, deeply entangled high school seniors drawn into a life of wealth, beauty, parties, and excess. At its center is Brett, whose reality begins to unravel when the arrival of a new student coincides with a series of mysterious murders. FX's The Shards premieres August 5th on FX and Hulu. ouch this knee is killing me but i can't stop training the marathon is in two weeks let's get on zoc doc and find a doctor to take a look at that for you okay here's a review dr crowderick really takes his time no i don't have time uh what about dr charles his patients say he can help find a quick fix and he's in network great now we're talking book it booked one mile down 19 to go.

38:25Bring it on.

38:26Alexandra Schwartz:You've got options.

38:28Vinson Cunningham:Download the ZocDoc app today. I'm Jazzy Sefcek. And I'm Shilpa Oskokovic. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe.

39:02Vinson Cunningham:And this month, we're making tiny tomato galettes. They are these adorable, maybe four-bite little galettes. So cute. Head to ba.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on the sub stack. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking!

39:37Vinson Cunningham:We've been talking about concert documentaries, music films, reference points for The Moment, the Charlie XCX movie. So it does have me thinking about this question of authenticity and, again, the paradoxical idea of authenticity in something like pop music, which is, of course, total artifice. I mean, what do you guys make of that when it comes to this kind of image making? Yeah, I mean, I think there is, it is really hard to both reveal and conceal at the same time or reveal enough in order to make the concealment seem not like cock blocking, you know, but to make, to kind of like invite the fan in, but not in a way that feels unsafe or feels like you are going to be showing something that can get you canceled.

40:30that can get you, that can make you sell less, that can make you unloved. You know, it's a real trick. And I think maybe the best example of the kind of like concealing, revealing thing that I've seen with like an enormous star is Madonna's Truth or Dare from 1991, which Alec Kashishian directed and it documents her blonde ambition tour. and it's really one of the best documents about what it's like to be ultra famous that i've seen one of my favorite moments is where like she is being she's having some ear nose and throat trouble a doctor comes to her she kind of like sticks out her tongue you know and the doctor is like say ah and she's like ah you know meanwhile warren beatty who she is dating at the time of the of the making of the movie, is like he's very kind of like critical of her kind of like proto-reality TV attempt to kind of like record everything, flay it all open, supposedly.

41:35Do you want to talk at all off camera? You have nothing to say.

41:39Alexandra Schwartz:She doesn't want to live off camera, much less talk. I think that's what it is. There's nothing to say off camera. Why would you say something if it's off camera? He gets very upset about it, and it kind of shows these two paths, the kind of newer path of like, I'm going to show myself for real behind the scenes. Even though, of course, that is completely, you know, artificial, an artificial construct of what real is. And he's like, no, no, no, I am a star who's not going to reveal himself. BTS, like, you know, it's just it's just kind of an interesting like two roads, diversion, a wood moment.

42:18The old way and the new way.

42:20Alexandra Schwartz:Two paths for the novel. Two paths. Two paths for the novel. Two paths for the pop star. Yeah, there you go. Two paths for the pop star. I also think, you know, some of this goes to a real anxiety, and I think you can see it among pop stars of, like, more contemporary vintage, perhaps. that, you know, the early stars of the 50s and 60s and maybe even early 70s weren't really making reference to anything. You know, there were stars before, there were famous people before, but in the age of mass media, plus like the invention of the teenager and a certain kind of mass produced pop music, record labels and all this kind of stuff.

43:06Alexandra Schwartz:It was new what they were doing. And so while there was quality control and notions of that, there certainly wasn't, they weren't making reference all the time. And it does seem to me that someone like Beyonce or Taylor Swift is working with someone like Madonna, Michael Jackson, James Brown, whatever, of former notions of pop stardom in mind. And so their responsiveness sometimes is less to the world and more to an archetype that already exists. Their anxiety perhaps echoes ours, where it's like we are recipients of various forms of mass media. Are we responding to, do we have access to the real, the R-E-A-L, as opposed to the real, R-E-E-L, you know, Instagram feeding us images, ideas, sounds.

44:03Alexandra Schwartz:And we think we're responding to real conditions and really we're just being tossed in turn. I think the new pop star is kind of an avatar for us in this way. Am I, quote unquote, touching grass? Or am I just kind of navigating another cliche, a hall of mirrors of somebody's making other than my own? The idea of the pop star who's always in the bus, always watching videos, oh, I'm making a reference to this, reference to that. It does seem like there's a sort of diminishment of power and connection that I think these newer things. Do you guys feel that anxiety, first of all?

44:44Vinson Cunningham:The anxiety of getting to the real?

44:47Alexandra Schwartz:Yeah.

44:48Vinson Cunningham:Of course. I mean, I think you're getting at it. Like, you're really getting at the thing. There is, I think there's even like one extra layer of confusion and chaos going on, which is the need for a huge celebrity to seem real. Nomi, I think you absolutely put your finger on it when you were talking about Madonna and, you know, kind of like presaging this reality TV world where cameras are always rolling. So everything is relevant. Everything is content. But then, of course, you are performing because the camera is rolling. So there is this new genre of real that is and isn't real. And now to make matters more confusing, all of us are implicated because everyone is their own little pop star of their own confection, even if that's not your thing at all, even if you're just, you know, whatever.

45:37Vinson Cunningham:The fact that there is a public persona that can readily be had, a public avatar that can readily be had for every ordinary person, it creates this problem in both ways where the famous people are trying to be real. The real people are trying to seem famous. Or maybe they're not, but that's its own kind of reaction. So I think like something like – like Vincent, I think you're just totally getting at the crux of it. And something like the moment is coming – is entering into a lineage of both things, of like the effort to explore like the reality of an artist and what goes into that with a kind of straightforward documentary.

46:13Vinson Cunningham:And also the playing with that that's already happened because there's also now a lineage of like fakery around this question of authenticity. Like to – that seems like total word salad. So I actually have like two things in mind specifically to make it more comprehensible because my own brain is spinning now. One thing I thought about a lot while watching the moment was the movie I'm Still Here directed by Casey Affleck starring Joaquin Phoenix as Joaquin Phoenix pretending to step away from acting and playing a version of himself that like do you guys remember this? He like famously committed to the bit.

46:49Vinson Cunningham:On Letterman. Yeah. And like for like two years. Yeah. Insisted that he was done with acting. He was going to become a rapper. He was like a slovenly asshole. Slovenly asshole. Yeah, that's the persona. And he really leaned into the slovenly asshole persona. And so there's one clip in particular that I was thinking of where Joaquin Phoenix is like walking around in this fake documentary, which wasn't clear was a fake documentary at the time, in this blue hoodie. And he's talking about how he doesn't want to play himself anymore.

47:20Alexandra Schwartz:It's like the chicken or the egg. I don't know what came first, whether they said that I was emotional and intense and complicated or whether I was truly complicated and intense and then they responded to it. Then once they responded to it, then I responded to what they were saying. And yeah, I utilized it in some ways. And I'm embarrassed about that. And that's what a lot of this is about. I mean, I guess that's why I agreed to do this documentary is because I don't want to play the character of Joaquin anymore. Like, I want to be whatever.

48:02Vinson Cunningham:No, I don't want to play Joaquin anymore. I just don't want to be playing that part anymore where, of course, that's exactly what he's doing. He's leaning into it. And so, like, should any of your heartstrings be pulled by that sense of, like, wanting to step outside the prison of a persona you've created? Joke's kind of on you. he's leaning into it.

48:21Alexandra Schwartz:No, I wanted to, I've been wanting to ask you because, you know, you are kind of an aficionado of a very related form that might like answer this question I have, which is like, what do we want when these people disclose things? You're really, you've read a lot of sort of artist biographies. You know, the books that they put out, autobiographies, memoirs, this form of, okay, now I'm going to tell you what it's like, what happened behind the spectacle. Yeah. what do what do you want from those and what is sort of like different than this kind of like this form they're talking about this movie thing i of course in my jealous you know kind of like my my desires my greedy jealous desires um i would want full revelation full disclosure i know that's not realistic yeah i think i've found that you tend to get that more with the people who aren't extremely famous which makes a lot of sense right yeah or people who are very past their prime you know so either people who are kind of like we're adjacent to fame character or something like that span a lot of time around famous people and we're maybe kind of in rooms you know that you know people behaved kind of like badly or honestly in or people who used to be famous and are now past that but is already you know kind of doesn't give a for instance you know like Motley Crue's The Dirt, which is like written many years past, you know, this heavy metal band, hair metal band's prime, is just kind of a no holds bar, like disgusting, but also like invigorating and interesting and honest look at what it was like when they were kind of like on top of the world.

50:10Right. But I do think it's very tricky when a person is still within their moment to get an actual honest take.

50:24Alexandra Schwartz:That's so great. I mean, it's almost like, you know, are we just looking in the wrong place? Like the pop star at the top of their pop stardom, is that just the wrong place to look for the goods that we want? I kind of think like, are we looking in the wrong places for authenticity?

50:40Vinson Cunningham:We might be. I do feel not to just like be, you know, getting him in here because he's very like hugely happening this moment. And the way you guys are talking, I'm thinking a lot about Bad Bunny, who is so involved right now, like on this huge stage of the Super Bowl, of the Grammys or whatever, in putting forward a version of authenticity that I think a lot of people are really relating to. And is very moving, especially because it's a time of such hardness and cruelty and fear. and I feel like right now that, I do feel Bad Bunny is tapping into like the perfect persona mix of huge megastar pop-dum mixed with this kind of like warm, personal, like here's what I'm really about.

51:25Vinson Cunningham:Let me bring you into my world, like in the way that he set up his set for the Super Bowl to be this like Puerto Rico of the mind, basically. It's not a concert documentary, but I feel like he is walking the line in a way that's working right now. So that funny is my answer, I guess, to the question.

51:43Alexandra Schwartz:And crucially, it's not a total transparency of biography.

51:48Vinson Cunningham:No, or even like what he had for breakfast. I don't care. I don't want to know.

51:51Alexandra Schwartz:It's like a clarity of intention. You know, it's somebody who's saying, here are my politics. Here's where I'm from. Here's what I care about. And yes, I will bring an enormous amount of polish to that. But someone who's like sort of sending a signal that has some, you know, crucially with the horrors of this ice moment. And then Bad Bunny, it seems, almost direct response to it in many ways. A sort of, again, grounding in the real, like, oh, this person is talking about something. And they have their mind in the world as opposed to someone sort of bouncing signals off of so many panes of glass.

52:39Vinson Cunningham:This has been Critics at Large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. A reminder, a very important reminder, you can still buy tickets to see us live next week at the 92nd Street Y. We're talking all things Wuthering Heights. If you're not in New York, guys, you can stream the event. Be with us. And more great news. We will be back in your feed next week with an episode about the legend, Toni Morrison.

53:16Vinson Cunningham:It's not like we needed an excuse to spend a whole hour talking about Morrison, but we do have one. There's a new book called On Morrison by Namwali Serpell, a set of really wonderful essays all about her work. So join us for that next week. And as always, you can find each and every one of our episodes at newyorker.com slash critics.

53:49Who is going to win control of Congress this November? And what is it going to mean for the final two years of Donald Trump's disruptive presidency? I'm Susan Glasser. I'm Jane Mayer. And I'm Evan Osnos. We host the Washington Roundtable on the New Yorker's Political Scene podcast. We're following what key races could tip the balance of power in Washington this fall. We're also going to go deep on the influence of dark money and tech billionaires. So join us in the run-up to the midterms in 2026. Subscribe to the Political Scene wherever you get your podcasts.

54:25Vinson Cunningham:The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wired's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jazzy Sefciak.

54:59Vinson Cunningham:And I'm Shilpa Oskokovic. And we're senior test kitchen editors at Bon Appetit and the hosts of the Bon Appetit Bake Club podcast. Bake Club is Bon Appetit's community of confident, curious bakers. We love to bake. Some might even call the two of us obsessive. And we love to talk about all the hows and whys and what didn't work that come with it. Every month, we publish a recipe on bonappetit.com that introduces a baking concept we think you should know. Then you'll go bake, send us any questions you have. And we'll get together here on the podcast to talk about the recipe. And this month, we're making tiny tomato galettes.

55:32Vinson Cunningham:They are these adorable, maybe four-bite little galettes. So cute. Head to ba.com and come and bake along with us. Send us your questions, pictures, and any thoughts to bakeclub at bonappetit.com or find us on the sub stack. Join us the first Tuesday of every month as we debrief about our latest bake. Find BA Bake Club wherever you get your podcasts. Happy baking!