Last week, it was announced that Polymarket—a site where you can bet on basically anything, from the likelihood of a government shutdown to the winner of New York City’s mayoral race—will be allowed to operate in the U.S. The decision was the culmination of a broader trend: since 2018, some thirty-nine states have legalized sports betting, and the rise of online gambling has made the practice a part of daily life. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz consider how platforms like Polymarket and DraftKings have changed our relationship to what we’re wagering on. They also examine the way games of chance have been depicted in literature and film—and our enduring susceptibility, in art and otherwise, to the promise of a hot streak. “Gambling is a way for the individual to test themselves,” Schwartz says. “It comes back to this fundamental question everyone has about themselves, which is: do I got it, or don’t I?”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“Shayne Coplan’s Big Bet Is Paying Off,” by Jen Wieczner (New York Magazine)
“Online Gambling Is Changing Sports for the Worse,” by Jay Caspian Kang (The New Yorker)
“Daniel Deronda,” by George Eliot
“The Noble Hustle,” by Colson Whitehead
“Rounders” (1998)
“War and Peace,” by Leo Tolstoy
“The Sopranos” (1999–2007)
“Uncut Gems” (2019)
“The Big Short” (2015)
“To Catch a Thief” (1955)
“Casino Royale” (2006)

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

Though the character known as Labubu has been around for a decade, the toy version—around six inches tall, sporting bunny ears and a demonic grin—is only just becoming a must-have accessory. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz join the trend and unbox their very own Labubu before diving into the history of such fads. They draw a distinction between collecting and speculating, from the seventeenth-century Dutch tulip mania through to the eBay-fuelled Beanie Baby craze of the nineteen-nineties and the far more recent rise and fall of non-fungible tokens. And they attempt to understand why this slightly unsettling children’s toy is now inspiring such intense reactions. “People were flooding my D.M.s, like, ‘This thing is the end of culture,’ ” Schwartz says. “This thing is not the end of culture. It’s a point on a line.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The Monsters,” by Kasing Lung
“Where the Wild Things Are,” by Maurice Sendak
“What the Labubu Obsession Says About Us,” by Jia Tolentino (The New Yorker)
“A Dubai Chocolate Theory of the Internet” (“Search Engine”)
“IRL Brain Rot and the Lure of the Labubu,” by Kyle Chayka (The New Yorker)
“Little House on the Prairie,” by Laura Ingalls Wilder
“Toy Story” (1995)

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

In the early days of the Hollywood studio system, producers exerted far greater creative control than any individual director. Then, in the mid-twentieth century, a group of young French critics issued a cri du coeur that gave rise to the figure of the auteur: visionary filmmakers ranging from Jean-Luc Godard to Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson. In the final installment of this year’s Critics at Large interview series, Vinson Cunningham talks with fellow staff writer Richard Brody about the origins of auteur theory, and about the lengths to which directors have gone for artistic freedom in the decades since. They take Spike Lee’s body of work as a case study, considering his new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” and how his filmmaking sensibility reflects his singular view of the world. “Style is a funny thing in movies,” Brody says. “If it’s any good, it’s not inseparable from substance. It is substance.”

Read, watch, and listen with the critics:

“The 400 Blows” (1959)
“Breathless” (1960)
“Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962,” by Andrew Sarris (Film Culture)
“Circles and Squares,” by Pauline Kael (Film Quarterly)
“Martin Scorsese on Making ‘Killers of the Flower Moon,’ ” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
“The Wolf of Wall Street” (2013)
“Spike Lee Comes Home,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
“Da Sweet Blood of Jesus” (2014)
“Red Hook Summer” (2012)
“A Great Film Reveals Itself in Five Minutes,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
“Highest 2 Lowest” (2025)
“ ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Marks a Conservative Pivot for Spike Lee,” by Richard Brody (The New Yorker)
“Do the Right Thing” (1989)

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