New Yorker: Outloud

Growing Up in the Rodeo

In this week’s magazine, Burkhard Bilger writes about the children ...

In this week’s magazine, Burkhard Bilger writes about the children who compete in rodeo in his home state of Oklahoma. Bull riding is the most dangerous sport in the world, and it’s become even riskier in recent years, as bull breeders have begun selecting for extreme aggression. But in the families Bilger interviewed for his story, little boys as young as three or four years old participate in rodeo events, and begin riding bulls around the age of ten. Bilger and Mark Singer, another staff writer and Oklahoma native, join host Amelia Lester on this week’s Out Loud podcast to discuss the kids who compete in rodeo, the parents who let them do it, and the attraction of trying to ride an angry two-thousand-pound animal. As Bilger describes it, when the kids start out, riding sheep and calves, “it’s like the best bumper-car ride you’ve ever been on. And then what you’re doing is just gradually turning up the volume. Or another metaphor might be the frog in the water that’s getting turned up hotter and hotter until it dies.”

Elevating Excrement

In this week’s magazine, Emily Eakin reports on fecal transplantation, ...

In this week’s magazine, Emily Eakin reports on fecal transplantation, a medical procedure in which the stool from a healthy person is transferred to the bowel of a sick person to restore the balance of flora in the latter’s gut. On Out Loud, Eakin explains that it’s “a procedure that grew out of desperation”—patients suffering from certain untreatable conditions, such as infection with the superbug C. difficile, formed a D.I.Y. fecal-transplant movement. In a conversation with Nick Thompson, the editor of newyorker.com, Eakin and Alan Burdick—an editor at the magazine, as well as the editor of the Web site’s Elements blog—discuss the science world’s fascination with the microbiome, the F.D.A.’s attempts to regulate the procedure, and the reasons fecal transplantation caught their interest as a story worth reporting. Eakin says, “the notion that stool—something that we associate with aversion and repulsion—was being elevated into a substance that was lifesaving and precious was tremendously appealing.”

Music in the Age of Spotify

In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, John Seabrook ...

In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, John Seabrook writes about how the streaming service Spotify is changing the landscape of the music industry. On Out Loud, Seabrook joins Kelefa Sanneh, who also writes frequently about music for the magazine, and Nicholas Thompson, the editor of newyorker.com, to discuss how artists, record companies, and their own listening habits are adapting to the economics of streaming. They discuss how Spotify became the dominant streaming company, why Taylor Swift recently pulled her entire catalogue from the service, and how the industry is likely to evolve as the tech industry and the music business continue to converge. Seabrook says, “The tips of the two continents are just touching. And that is going to be a fascinating, enormous cultural change, conflict, and hopefully synthesis to watch.”

David Remnick's Reporting on Israel

In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, David Remnick ...

In this week’s issue of The New Yorker, David Remnick writes about Israel’s new conservative President, Reuven Rivlin, whose support for both a one-state solution and Palestinian civil rights has made him the country’s “most unlikely moralist.” On Out Loud, Remnick joins Sasha Weiss, the literary editor of newyorker.com, to discuss Rivlin’s role in Israeli politics, the evolution of the one-state/two-state debate, and his own experience reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the magazine. “No matter who you are and what you are and what you write, you will be reacted to with enormous emotional force, fury, and often abuse,” Remnick says. “The pitch of the battle is something to behold.”

A Sex-Abuse Scandal in a Hasidic Community

The Hasidic Jews of Borough Park, Brooklyn, rarely interact with ...

The Hasidic Jews of Borough Park, Brooklyn, rarely interact with outsiders—they rely upon their own education and justice systems and see their extreme insularity as a means of self-preservation. But Rachel Aviv, a staff writer, spent months among Borough Park’s Hasidim for her story in this week’s magazine, about a man named Sam Kellner who was ostracized after he accused a prominent member of his community of molesting his son. On this week’s Out Loud podcast, Aviv talks to Sasha Weiss, the literary editor of newyorker.com, about the practical and moral complexities of reporting the story. She describes the lengths she went to in order to interview Hasidic men—buying special clothes, finding meeting places that wouldn’t violate the restriction against men and women meeting behind closed doors—and what it was like to discuss sexual abuse with men who rarely interact with non-Hasidic women. Aviv acknowledges the dangers of a community policing itself, but adds, “I hope that the story also shows that there’s a lot of courage within the community.”

Two American Obsessions

Do we care too much about food? Do we care ...

Do we care too much about food? Do we care too much about Bob Dylan? Those are two of the questions our writers ask in this week’s week's magazine, which is a special issue on food. On Out Loud, the editor of the issue, Amelia Lester, talks to the journalist and reformed foodie John Lanchester about the value of professional restaurant critics, how food trends reflect anxieties in the wider culture, and whether our collective obsession with food has gone too far. Later in the episode, Sasha Weiss, the literary editor of newyorker.com, hosts a discussion about Dylan’s music with one ambivalent fan—Sasha Frere-Jones, the magazine’s pop-music critic, who writes about the basement tapes in this week’s issue—and two die-hards: the longtime New Yorker editor John Bennet and the editor-in-chief, David Remnick. Speaking of his first encounter with Dylan's music, Remnick says, “It set my hair on fire.”

Outsmarting Ebola

In a piece in this week’s magazine titled “The Ebola ...

In a piece in this week’s magazine titled “The Ebola Wars,” Richard Preston reports on a doctor’s efforts to combat the disease in Sierra Leone, and follows researchers at Harvard and M.I.T. as they study the virus’s genetic code. On this week’s podcast, Preston, the author of the 1994 best-seller “The Hot Zone,” about the origins of Ebola, joins Sasha Weiss, the literary editor of newyorker.com, to clear up misconceptions about the current outbreak and discuss the efforts of physicians and epidemiologists to contain the disease.

Out Loud: Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks looks back at his experiences with drugs in ...

Oliver Sacks looks back at his experiences with drugs in the early nineteen-sixties. Here Sacks talks with John Bennet and Sasha Weiss about some of his drug-induced hallucinations, how his interest in neurology connects to his experimentation with drugs, and how one drug experience led to his writing career.

Out Loud: Online Outrage

On this week’s podcast, Joshua Rothman and Rebecca Mead discuss ...

On this week’s podcast, Joshua Rothman and Rebecca Mead discuss the culture of public judgment and moral shaming on social media.

Ann Goldstein and D.T. Max on Elena Ferrante

Ann Goldstein and D.T. Max on Elena Ferrante