• Help, I Need a Critic!

  • Oct 24 2024
  • Length: 54 mins
  • Podcast

  • Summary

  • The art of advice-giving, championed over the years by such figures as Ann Landers and Cheryl Strayed, has lately undergone a transformation. As traditional columns have continued to proliferate, social-media platforms have created new venues for those seeking—and doling out—counsel, from the users of the popular subreddit “Am I the Asshole” to the countless “experts” who peddle their takes on Instagram and TikTok. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz try their hands at the trade, advising listeners on a variety of cultural conundrums. The hosts trace the form from early examples such as Advice for Living, the short-lived column written by Martin Luther King, Jr., in the late nineteen-fifties, through to the Internet age. The genre has long functioned as a forum for parsing the ethics of the era, and its enduring appeal might be explained by our inherent curiosity about the way others live. “There is a sort of plurality of approaches to life itself, which means that we are all passing into and out of other people’s moral universes,” Cunningham says. “I think it causes more trouble—causes more questions.”


    Read, watch, and listen with the critics:


    The Witch Elm,” by Tana French

    Crime and Punishment,” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

    Pride and Prejudice,” by Jane Austen

    Intermezzo,” by Sally Rooney

    The Guest,” by Emma Cline

    I’m a Fan,” by Sheena Patel

    My Husband,” by Maud Ventura

    The Anthropologists,” by Ayşegül Savaş

    Small Rain,” by Garth Greenwell

    Brightness Falls,” by Jay McInerney

    Richard Linklater’s “Before” trilogy

    William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet

    Ghost World,” by Dan Clowes

    The Ethicist (The New York Times)

    Dear Sugar (The Rumpus)

    The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” by Robert Louis Stevenson

    “Lisa Frankenstein” (2024)

    The Turn of the Screw,” by Henry James

    Carrie,” by Stephen King

    Little Labors,” by Rivka Galchen

    Matrescence,” by Lucy Jones

    The Mother Artist,” by Catherine Ricketts

    Acts of Creation,” by Hettie Judah

    r/AmItheAsshole

    Advice for Living (Ebony Magazine)


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

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