Vinson Cunningham
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author of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, a debut novel now in paperback. staff writer and critic, @newyorker. co-host, Critics at Large.
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Articles by Vinson Cunningham
250725-bari-weiss-2024-ac-716p-633d2a On Television CBS News’ editor-in-chief has pledged to “speak for the seventy-five per cent” of people on the center right and the center left; the reality is different.
The Bari Weiss Effect on “60 Minutes”
You can detect the strain of the effort to erect this cardboard version of the country in the early episodes of the new “60 Minutes,” helmed by executive producer Nick Bilton, whom Weiss hired away from her old digs at the Times. Visually, the show looks a lot like it did before.
The Bari Weiss Effect on “60 Minutes”
The city of Northport's long project to upgrade and transform Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is finally complete, and the road reopened on Friday …
The Bari Weiss Effect on “60 Minutes”
CBS News’ editor-in-chief has pledged to “speak for the seventy-five per cent” of people on the center right and the center left; the reality is different. Close to Christmas in 1968, the journalist Mike Wallace went to Atlanta, Georgia, to the home of Martin Luther King, Jr. Earlier that year, King had been assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
Footballese, the Most American Vernacular
On Sunday, the Washington Commanders and the Indianapolis Colts—two football teams with low expectations and capable but wobbly quarterbacks, both already seeking a fresh wind of momentum only four weeks into the still budding N.F.L. season—played each other in London.
Is What We’re Watching True or False?
The other day, I was watching a commercial and, before long, became sorely afraid. There was something about the person selling me the product—some supplement called Fatty15—facing the camera full on. I felt like I should know her, but of course I didn’t. Whose face was this? The pitchwoman’s high brow, her dark eyes, and her well-defined cheeks looked very familiar to me, like the features of a friend I hadn’t seen in many aging years.
Is What We’re Watching True or False?
Lifestyle 1 day ago Forget Gowns—Bras Took Over the 2026 VMAs Red Carpet Marie Claire - Kelsey Stiegman • 1d The way God and Miuccia Prada intended. Fashion month is still very much underway, but somehow this season's runway trends have already begun cropping up on the red carpet.
Grandmaster Flash’s Remix of Hip-Hop History
Anna, in Flash’s telling, was a kind of verbal virtuoso, a proto-rapper who rallied her similarly talented girlfriends to provide lines for the largely male m.c.s who rhymed over Flash’s soundscapes. The point of these anecdotes isn’t to direct sole credit to Anna—there are many rival accounts of the origin of the name “hip-hop”—but to illustrate the communal nature of the beginnings of the music and the culture. This teeming togetherness becomes evident even in Flash’s music.
Drake’s “Janice STFU” on Every Corner
On one level, this is simply more of the same from Drake. In summer as well as in winter, beneath a beach umbrella just as much as under the cold carapace of a Toronto sky in December, rap’s pretty boy little brother is sort of always talking about the many grievances he’s picked up along the way. “I got enemies, got a lot of enemies,” he proclaims almost triumphantly in the hook of the 2015 song “Energy,” as if the accumulation of adversaries were a badge inevitably accompanying great success.
The Knicks’ Championship Win Transforms the City
Before the sun had fully risen, the people were already coming. Around five-thirty in the morning, a man rode a commandeered CitiBike down a train platform in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, playing music from a speaker. Another guy was wearing a Knicks flag as a cape, two of its corners knotted at his throat. Everybody was waiting for the A—it was already full of bodies when it came. At almost all of the train’s stops, the doors would open and the new arrivals would start up a fresh cheer.
Lessons in Fanhood from the Knicks
When I try to describe my love of sports, especially basketball, to people who don’t share it, I tend to emphasize its similarities to the higher arts. As with dance or music or theatre, it is impossible to truly appreciate hoops without reference to style and beauty, the indelible marks of individual creative expression.
A Funeral for Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show”
Photograph by Scott Kowalchyk / CBS / Getty Vinson Cunningham A critic covering television Stephen Colbert had a pretty decent amount of time to plan the final broadcast of “The Late Show” last night. He got the news back in July, then shared it in turn with his audience, his face glistening with a still fresh coat of shock, betrayal, and wounded anger.
Justin Bieber, Pop Music’s Fallen Angel, Rises Again at Coachella
On the first Saturday of Coachella, Justin Bieber started his concert by looking down at a camera on the floor of the stage. If you were watching the show at home, on a laptop or a TV screen, via Coachella’s live stream on YouTube, he was, for a moment, looking you dead in the eye.
Savannah Guthrie’s Excruciating Story, on “Today”
Guthrie had agreed to do the interview as a desperate final appeal. Someone, she kept saying to Kotb—someone must know something. She’s right. You can’t just make a person disappear. Another camera, an eye tuned to the subtle strangeness of an otherwise ordinary day—someone or something, somewhere, must have caught a glimmer of the truth.
How Arsenio Hall Dreamed Up His Life
“The audience went crazy,” Hank Moorehouse says. Later, a fire at Hall’s grandmother’s house would destroy most of his magic act. But Moorehouse proved prescient: Hall followed his advice all the way to Hollywood. “Arsenio” tells that story—with “The Arsenio Hall Show” as its dizzying, occasionally harrowing zenith—with Hall’s characteristic good cheer.
How Arsenio Hall Dreamed Up His Life
19 hours ago The 25 worst movies of the '80s The 1980s began with the election of President Ronald Reagan, and the new administration's policies launched the country into an era of excess. From the malls to the shoulder pads and hairstyles, everything got bigger in the '80s as the country waved farewell to the …
Killers of the Flower Moon: A Formal Feeling
Essays— Mar 24, 2026 Toward the beginning of Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Martin Scorsese’s guileful masterwork of unguileful plunder, a few young members of the Osage Nation are shown in a moment of reverie. They’re jumping and yelling, all elation and sublime relief, their skin covered in rich black oil. The fruit of the earth has brought their people great material wealth, and that’s enough reason to have fun, get hedonistic, throw a party.
Killers of the Flower Moon: A Prayer from the Abyss
Essays— Mar 24, 2026 One summer, when I must have been around seven years old, my grandmother told me a story about a wealthy Native American family. It was during the annual road trip that we would make, from Arizona through western Oklahoma’s sea of grass, to a reunion of the side of my family that hails from the Kiowa Tribe. The family she described were so incredibly rich, they lived in a mansion, owned luxury cars, and even employed white servants.
“DTF St. Louis” Peers Into the Suburban Male Psyche
Starting in 2017, Bateman played Marty Byrde, an accountant turned cash launderer for a ruthless Mexican cartel, in “Ozark,” arguably his signature role. The show is lit in wan grays and murky browns—this has, over the years, become an irritating Netflix cliché, but, in the case of “Ozark,” the coloristic choice really works.
“DTF St. Louis” Peers Into the Suburban Male Psyche
19 hours ago Linda Cardellini joins TODAY’s Sheinelle Jones and guest co-host Darren Criss to talk about her role in the new series “DTF St. Louis” where she plays a married woman whose picture-perfect life starts to unravel as her secrets begin to catch up with her. Cardellini talks about filming an intimate …
The Quad God and American Reckoning at the Olympics
There's an American figure skater named Ilia Malinin, now perhaps better known, thanks to the brisk exposure of this year's Winter Olympics, by his self-bestowed nickname-the Quad God. He's from a town whose name straddles the Old World and the New: Vienna, Virginia. The kid's only twenty-one years old. He's got a mane of blond hair, blue eyes set close together under a dark brow, and a free, wild way of leaping, as if catapulted from the ice.
The Quad God and American Reckoning at the Olympics
4 days ago “We’ve been off for the last three months, and we have missed a lot. And I mean a lot, a lot." John Oliver returned to late night on Sunday with one hell of a Thomas Jefferson-style "so what'd I miss?" Last Week Tonight premiered Season 13 on Sunday night after a three-month hiatus, with Oliver …
Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis
"They killed another guy," someone announced, in my group chat. That message was followed quickly by a link to a video, shot from behind a pane of glass, level with the street. Sadly, you've probably seen that video by now: ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis surround a slim young man squirming helplessly on the ground. Then, suddenly, the indifferent crack of a gunshot. The man's body goes limp and falls to the ground. Someone near the camera starts to shout. "What the fuck," the voice says.
The Cruelty and Theatre of the Trump Press Conference
Playacting for journalists standing in an unruly huddle just off camera, Trump asked questions of the oilmen, wondering how soon they could suck the ground under Venezuela dry. "And you're very much set up for the heavy oil, right?" he asked at one point. There was an implicit cruelty behind the exercise. He wanted the cameras to see him place Venezuela on the table like a celebratory goose and start slicing.
Vinson Cunningham on Barry Blitt’s Obama “Fist Bump” Cover
I was in a yellow cab in high summer when I saw it. Twenty-three at the time, I sometimes skimmed articles about politics on my clunky BlackBerry while cruising through Central Park to my first real job, fund-raising for Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign. Usually, the ride was placid. This time, I opened a link to an article in Politico (still an upstart outlet at the time) about a quickly growing controversy. Apparently, the latest cover of The New Yorker was a doozy.
Read Max x Unpopular Front with Vinson Cunningham
Max Read and I were joined by Vinson Cunningham of TheNew Yorker, where he co-hosts the Critics at Large podcastand writes about media, culture, and the arts. Vinson is also the author of the novel Great Expectationsand was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2024 and 2025. We talked about the killing of Renee Good, the siege of Minneapolis, Venezuela, the combination of violence and spectacle in the Trump regime, and the mob, in all senses of the word.
Be Yourself
Good afternoon and welcome back to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. Happy New Year, friends. If you’re reading this, you survived, and that ain’t nothing. I was pretty sad the other day to hear of the abrupt firings of Ebro Darden, Peter Rosenberg, and Laura Stylez, the hosts of Hot 97’s “Ebro in the Morning,” a popular hip-hop morning radio show here in New York.
What to Do on New Year’s Eve
Few harbingers are more promising than the Swedish singer and producer Robyn. A sonic palate cleanser, she always seems to appear when we need her most. Her 1995 début, “Robyn Is Here,” signalled an alt-pop future. In 2005, her self-titled album bristled with a freedom from major-label concerns. 2010 brought the “Body Talk” era and its euphoric statement of purpose; she was a star dancing on her own. Nearly a decade passed before she reëmerged with her post-breakup opus “Honey,” in 2018.
What Kind of New World Is Being Born?
Don’t we need another one of those today? Some brave doula to help the world-to-come through the birth canal and to offer it an ethical path? I keep wondering: What kind of new moral being—good or bad—might be born in our time? One way to understand the worst actions and attitudes of Donald Trump is to recognize that he is auditioning with a cold cynicism for just this kind of role.
The New Yorker Daily Newsletter
The best movies of the year, according to our film critics Richard Brody and Justin Chang, may at first seem like an eclectic bunch. What could Leonardo DiCaprio as the perma-stoned, would-be revolutionary in “One Battle After Another” have in common with the Jim Crow-era vampires whom Michael B. Jordan (times two) battles in “Sinners”? Today, Brody and Chang join forces to discuss the big ideas in their favorite films of 2025.
Our House
Good morning and welcome to a Very Special Thanksgiving Edition of Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. My gift to you on this most caloric day of the year is a fresh playlist, just about double the size of the Storms I usually cook up. Maybe you can use it to make somebody in your family bust a move. If this is a hard time for you, I get it. Hold your head. Help is always on the way.
If You Leave Me Now
Good evening and welcome back to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. Not so much throat-clearing today: next edition will be chock full of (belated) answers to listener emails—plus a first brief attempt at some thoughts about D’Angelo, still such an unfathomable loss. For now, take a listen and look, if you please, to this interview I conducted at The New Yorker Festival with the brilliant St. Vincent. INDULGE.
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” Will Make You Feel Old
“The way this one happened seems particularly troubling,” Andrew Marantz says of ABC’s abrupt decision to indefinitely suspend Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. But, first, some thoughts on a decidedly lighter moment of television history: the series finale of the mega-popular Gen-Z show “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” Plus: • Robert Redford and the perils of perfection Vinson Cunningham A staff writer and critic covering television, theatre, and more.
Kash Patel Plays a G-Man on TV
There’s little worse than watching a nervous actor onstage—especially when the poor guy isn’t just skittish but seems genuinely unprepared for the role that he’s playing. Incompetence has a way of unnerving its witnesses. An insecure performer robs an audience of its belief in both the character and the entire enterprise. Take, for instance, Friday morning’s bizarre and disorienting appearance by Kash Patel, the manifestly unqualified F.B.I. director installed by Donald Trump.
Kash Patel Plays a G-Man on TV
Charlie Kirk's widow: 'You have no idea what you have just unleashed' Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and podcaster who was assassinated Wednesday, says her husband's college tour and radio show will continue. She said the "evildoers" responsible for his death "should all know this: If you thought my husband's mission was powerful …
Cannonball with Wesley Morris: Is Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Serving Pound Cake?
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Cannonball with Wesley Morris Is the New Spike Lee Joint Serving Pound Cake? Plus, Denzel’s best hairline yet. Back to Cannonball with Wesley Morris Previous More episodes ofCannonball with Wesley Morris August 14, 2025 • 55:33‘And Just Like That …’ Is Over Too Soon August 7, 2025 • 53:55Beyoncé Isn’t Giving Up on America July 31, 2025 • 42:42Don’t Let the Vampires In July 17, 2025 • 44:34Has Dining Gotten Too Fine on ‘The Bear’?
By Wesley Morris Verified, Vinson Cunningham Verified, Elyssa Dudley Verified, Janelle Anderson Verified
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The New York Times
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Cannonball with Wesley Morris: Is Spike Lee’s ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Serving Pound Cake?
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Cannonball with Wesley Morris Is the New Spike Lee Joint Serving Pound Cake? Plus, Denzel’s best hairline yet. Back to Cannonball with Wesley Morris Previous More episodes ofCannonball with Wesley Morris August 14, 2025 • 55:33‘And Just Like That …’ Is Over Too Soon August 7, 2025 • 53:55Beyoncé Isn’t Giving Up on America July 31, 2025 • 42:42Don’t Let the Vampires In July 17, 2025 • 44:34Has Dining Gotten Too Fine on ‘The Bear’?
By Wesley Morris Verified, Vinson Cunningham Verified, Elyssa Dudley Verified, Janelle Anderson Verified
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The New York Times
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Maybe I Deserve
Hello and welcome back to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. Continuing last week’s Eddie Palmieri talk, listener Bernard Schwartz—the visionary Executive Producer of Literary Programs at the Author’s Guild Foundation; one of the most creative people I know—shares this story from his time leading the Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y in New York: Thanks for reading Vinson Cunningham's Quiet Storm! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Sterling K. Brown’s Upstanding Archetype
There’s a certain face that only Sterling K. Brown can make. It is yoked to no particular emotional state, and emerges just as often when the actor is conveying deep glee or charming irony as when his character is lost in sorrow. Brown’s jaw gently churns, his eyes go glassy, and the muscles around his mouth slacken a bit. He’s lost in a reverie of intensity, absorbing life’s shocks and cruelties or its absurd beauties, processing it all by opening some spirit portal via his face.
A Long Walk
Hello and welcome back to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. The other day, at the coffee shop a block from home where I often try to write, a young woman walked in, guiding an older man who could not see. The man was tall and thin, with high bronze skin; he walked gingerly but with a smooth confidence, too, and his posture was very straight. This shop’s playlist usually has its feet firmly planted in Afrobeats—a vibe I always like—but on this day, it skewed a bit more Caribbean.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner and the Lessons of Theo Huxtable
A few hours after the news of Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s death began to spread, one of my closest friends called me. I knew before I picked up that he wanted to talk about Warner. We commiserated in low, disbelieving voices. This friend and I were not raised under identical circumstances, but we’d both felt the spectre of “The Cosby Show” ’s Theo Huxtable—easily Warner’s most famous role—hovering over the memories of our childhoods.
What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” Means
On the night that he joshed around, perhaps fatefully, with Paramount, his corporate overlord, about its settlement with Trump, Colbert was in a particularly zany mood. He’d recently been on vacation in Turkey (“I’d heard so many great things from Mayor Adams about it,” he said), and had come back stateside sporting an olive tan and a thin, suavely trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache.
What the Cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” Means
Trump and Epstein Photo Is Placed Near U.S. Embassy in London as Protesters Rally Against President’s U.K. Visits Protesters across the United Kingdom are rallying ahead of President Donald Trump’s upcoming visits. In what has been referred to as an “unprecedented” honor by U.K. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, Trump is set to enjoy a second state visit to the U.K. in September, where he will be hosted by King …
THAT'S THE WAY LOVE GOES
The New Yorker | July 28, 2025 “Love Island USA” reaches its conclusion. The villa where the action goes down is styled like a hallucinated version of Miami. One good way to enjoy the latest season of “Love Island USA”—the seventh, in which new episodes aired on Peacock almost every day for six weeks and just wrapped up—is to imagine that you have made the questionable choice to pursue a new relationship by appearing on the show. You're flown to Fiji—nice clime, clear water.
Scenes in the City
Hello and welcome to Vinson Cunningham’s Quiet Storm. If you’re here among the initial subscribers, I owe you a special debt of gratitude. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My very modest goal here is to offer you some tunes to listen to and a small snippet of my weekly reading. Sometimes I’ll write a bit about the music or the writing, sometimes not so much.
The Trophy Abs and Soul Ties of “Love Island USA”
One good way to enjoy the latest season of “Love Island USA”—the seventh, in which new episodes aired on Peacock almost every day for six weeks and just wrapped up—is to imagine that you have made the questionable choice to pursue a new relationship by appearing on the show. You’re flown to Fiji—nice clime, clear water. Suddenly, you’re no longer allowed to wear the usual sort of torso-obscuring shirt, unless it’s totally unbuttoned in order to display your trophy case of abs.
What Do Commercials About A.I. Really Promise?
If a recent crop of commercials touting the benefits of artificial intelligence is any indication, lots of Americans these days feel unduly burdened by the demands of everyday cognition. Apparently, it’s asking way too much to expect a human to figure out how to make a small repair, or write a note to a friend, or plan a meal to feed a child. Let alone read. I’ve got a perverse favorite among these ads, for Apple Intelligence.
Peace Out, Knicks
Farewell to the 2024-2025 Knicks. I’m quite sure that I’ve never rooted so desperately, with such an uneasy blend of pleasure and pain, delight and despair, for such a confusing team. I could never figure out how to think about them—or, in fact, whether I even liked them—even as they zigged and zagged through a playoff run for the ages, which ended on Saturday night, with a pitiful 125–108 loss to the Indiana Pacers in Game Six of the N.B.A.’s Eastern Conference Finals.
Rashid Johnson’s Own “Poem for Deep Thinkers”
It’s an epic display of small ideas. But what gives the exhibition its coherence is Johnson’s consistent—if tonally varied—engagement with literature. “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” is named after a piece by the poet, playwright, and jazz critic Amiri Baraka, who is a kind of guiding spirit for the show.
What It’s Like to Root for the Knicks
I’m not always so good at taking notes on basketball games that I plan to write about, especially if my haunted team, the New York Knicks, is among the contestants. It feels like bad luck. But on Wednesday night, feeling fine, watching the fourth quarter of a game we seemed destined to win, I typed this jubilant nonsentence into a sparsely occupied Google Doc: If you’re reading this, you already know.
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