The New Yorker Radio Hour

Before becoming a podcaster, Jennifer Welch had a successful career as an interior designer and co-starred in a reality show on Bravo. But, since 2022, she and Angie Sullivan, her co-host on the podcast “I’ve Had It,” have gained millions of fans as a sounding board for left-leaning political frustrations. These aren’t only concerns about MAGA but also about the Democratic establishment that she views as captive to a corporate agenda. Welch talks with David Remnick about her contentious interviews with Cory Booker and Rahm Emanuel, her belief in “dark woke,” and how a white Oklahoma woman in her fifties emerged as one of the most provocative voices on today’s left.  

Prenups have gone from a tool of the ultra-wealthy, carrying a whiff of scandal, to a more widespread request for aspirational young couples with few assets. Wilson spoke with celebrity divorce attorney Laura Wasser, and found that generations who grew up in the era of universal no-fault divorce “just don’t trust marriage” as their elders did; “they want it in writing,” and they have developed apps that make it easy. Clauses calling for nondisparagement on social media are a common feature. But the boom in prenups, Wilson tells David Remnick, has led to couples trying to negotiate even intimate issues such as frequency of sex and body-mass index. Jennifer Wilson’s “Why Millennials Love Prenups” appeared in the December 29, 2025 & January 5, 2026 issue of The New Yorker.

U.S. intervention in other countries, whether overt or covert, is by no means new, and Daniel Immerwahr notes that the open embrace of expansionism by the President and associates such as Stephen Miller goes back to the nineteenth century. Immerwahr is a professor at Northwestern University and the author of the 2019 best-seller “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” He discusses Trump’s disdain for international law; tensions between the U.S. and Russia and China; and the historical link between imperialism and appeals to masculine pride.

Since she reëmerged as a star in the 2024 film “The Substance,” Demi Moore has been very busy. She has a major role in the current season of Taylor Sheridan’s “Landman” series, and she has two highly anticipated films coming out this year: a science-fiction film directed by Boots Riley, and “Strange Arrivals,” alongside Colman Domingo, about a couple who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. She sat down at The New Yorker Festival in the fall with the staff writer Jia Tolentino to discuss her varied career and how she has dealt with the pressures of the industry.This episode was recorded live at The New Yorker Festival, on October 25, 2025. New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.

For roughly half a century, the singer Rubén Blades has been spreading the gospel of salsa music to every corner of the globe. “You could say that Blades did for salsa what Bob Marley did for reggae,” says The New Yorker’s Graciela Mochkofsky. “He brought it into the global consciousness.” This year, Blades’s record “Fotografías” is up for a Grammy Award; should he win, it would be his thirteenth. Blades once ran for President of Panama and later served in the country’s cabinet; he’s also notable for bringing social commentary to the dance floor, from his earliest work to the recent “Inmigrantes,” a song about the impact of the climate crisis on refugees. And yet, he tells Mochkovsky, songwriters should beware of political messages. “Political songs are propaganda by definition. If you start singing about political ideology, you’re not an artist—you’re doing propaganda, basically. I try to be as close to a newspaper [reporter] as I can.”This segment originally aired on October 6, 2023.New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians.