Do We Need Saints?

Summary

Podcast Summary: Critics at Large | The New Yorker

Episode: Do We Need Saints?
Date: January 8, 2026
Hosts: Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, Alexandra Schwartz
Theme: The ongoing fascination with saints—historical and pop cultural—across film, music, and contemporary life. The critics explore the persistent allure of sainthood, the art and pop culture representations of saints, the distinction between reverence and irony, and why this archetype is reemerging now.

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the cultural resurgence of saints—both in traditional religious contexts and the broader, often ironic, ways figures are canonized today. Using new movies, music, television, and fashion as jumping-off points, the hosts dig into why saints—and the ideals or contradictions they represent—are resonant right now.

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Key Discussion Points

1. Naomi Fry’s Red Carpet Moment

• Naomi shares her cameo experience in Josh Safady's new film Marty Supreme, reflecting humorously on her brush with celebrity and the surreal nature of red carpet events.
• Notable quote:
  “I learned that it’s over before you know it. And I learned that you interact with the photographers in ways which I wasn’t...Some of them heckled me a little bit to get a smile.” — Nomi Fry [02:01]

2. Film Discussion: The Testament of Ann Lee

[Segment: 03:05–17:39]

• New film by Mona Fastvold dramatizes the life of Ann Lee, founder of the Shakers—a spiritual movement characterized by ecstatic worship and radical equality.
• The movie’s style: Divided into chapters, blending sincere, anti-modern spirituality with modern sensibilities (musical numbers and dance sequences grounded in Shaker traditions).
• Alex’s take:
  Loved the sincerity and anti-ironic tone; appreciated the egalitarian, modern aspects of Shaker theology.

  “You’re not coming to this movie for irony… If you go in trying to just bask in the presence of this both very earthly and otherworldly person…I thought Amanda Seyfried was great.” — Alex Schwartz [10:04]

• Nomi’s take:
  Couldn’t relate deeply due to a different spiritual background; admired Amanda Seyfried’s performance but found the spiritual fervor “alien.”

  “I’m too Jewish for this movie… I could see an externalization of her fervor, but somehow I couldn’t totally relate to it.” — Nomi Fry [10:40]

• Vinson’s take:
  Found it deeply familiar—ecstatic worship reminded him of Pentecostal church experiences. Praised the film’s embodiment and refusal to “explain” ecstasy.

  “The Shakers are a lot like Pentecostals… there’s a sort of ecstasy in the air… a narrative of togetherness and a narrative of shared experience between the people involved that is not easily communicable.” — Vinson Cunningham [13:08]

3. Saints in Art and Pop Culture

[Segment: 19:47–36:32]

• The hosts share their favorite artistic depictions of saints:
  • Alex:
    Michelangelo’s Temptation of St. Anthony (“You might be tempted to repost this with the caption ‘it me’… Who is not this St. Anthony just trying to go about his business… and instead the demons and the devils… are coming for him.” [22:28–23:07]) Also recommends Rossellini’s film The Flowers of St. Francis for its humble, face-value depiction of saintly life.
  • Nomi:
    Remembers Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” video—sexuality, rebellion, and Catholic iconography.

    “Saints are kind of sexy, which was the problem with it, of course, as far as the Catholic Church was concerned.” — Nomi Fry [28:21]

  • Vinson:
    Praises Rosalia’s concept album LUX: “Using female saints as the sort of vehicles for her idea… the eroticism of trying to reach some connection with the all knowing.” [29:06]
  • Discussion of Martin Scorsese’s Lives of the Saints on Fox Nation—over-the-top reenactments, overt piety, and kitschiness.
    • “Martin Scorsese presents the Saints is the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen… I’m extremely here for it.” — Alex Schwartz [33:56]

4. Saintliness as a Modern Obsession

[Segment: 37:39–47:28]

• Why are saints everywhere today?
  • External indicators: Saint/nun fashion—celebrities dressing as nuns (e.g., Lily Allen, Rihanna, Sydney Sweeney, Sabrina Carpenter).
  • Alex points to a cultural hunger for “moderation and self-denial,” a rejection of constant materialism:

    “The world is moving faster… Materialism is reaching every corner of the globe. It’s very hard to say no and say stop and say, ‘I will do without rather than I want more…’” — Alex Schwartz [38:59]

  • Nomi relates it to diet culture and wellness:

    “The draw of kind of like discipline, self-discipline, is so strong in our culture… I think the turn toward the cultural figure of the saint can be seen as part of that.” — Nomi Fry [41:38]

5. Humanizing Saints and Modern Sainthood

• Both the Testament of Ann Lee and Scorsese’s series humanize their subjects, moving them from the mystical into the everyday context of principle, struggle, and suffering.

• Vinson draws comparisons to contemporary secular sainthood, e.g., Nelson Mandela, and observes:

  “The bracing and sort of terrifying thing about them is precisely that they are human beings… If you had the juice, you could do it too…except they believe harder.” — Vinson Cunningham [42:40]

• The hosts reflect on “cancel culture” as the inverse of canonization—how figures are rapidly sanctified and just as quickly dethroned (e.g., Noam Chomsky’s fall from grace due to the Epstein files).

6. Saints as Political and Social Symbols

• The urge to canonize or demonize public figures as emblems for political or social anxiety (e.g., references to Charlie Kirk, Luigi Mangione, and Zoran Mamdani).
• Alex:

  “We are craving this kind of clarity where no such clarity exists. And we’re trying to… that’s obviously done with a code of irony that is very unsaint-like itself.” [46:59]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Maybe you have to kind of submit to it.” — Alex Schwartz on watching The Testament of Ann Lee [09:16]
• “This kind of zealotry… it’s a very solitary experience… part of what the movie is about… is how isolating an experience it is… to have this level of conviction.” — Alex Schwartz [15:02]
• “The hunger and thirst for the saint, I think, is part of the same thing…” — Alex Schwartz [46:38]
• “Making me think about something else… the haste to push people off these pedestals… the heights of, like, this person is a modern saint… and the downfall.” — Nomi Fry [43:35]

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Memorable Segment Timestamps

• Naomi’s Red Carpet Story: 01:21–03:01
• Testament of Ann Lee Film Discussion: 03:05–17:39
• Classic and Pop Culture Saints (art, movies, Madonna, Rosalia): 19:47–36:32
• Saintliness as Trend & Ideology: 37:39–41:38
• Humanizing Saints & Modern Sainthood: 41:38–47:28
• Concluding Recommendations (Favorite Saints): 49:15–50:25

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Conclusion

Do We Need Saints? The hosts conclude that the saint figure—religious, artistic, or ironic—embodies a hunger (and fear) for conviction, self-denial, and transcendence in a fast, fragmented world. The discussion ranges from the sincerely devout to the pop-cultural, from Amanda Seyfried’s Ann Lee to Rosalia’s multilingual saints, Madonna’s subversion, and Martin Scorsese’s earnest reenactments. Saints are both a safe container for longing and a mirror of anxieties; they’re back in culture because we’re still searching for meaning and guides—even if we do so with a wink and a meme.

Final thought: Let it be your Hildegard year—embrace creativity, moderation, and vision, without the need for sainthood-level self-denial. [50:29]

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Transcript

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[Alex Schwartz]

This is Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. Hi, I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. What's up, guys?

[Alex Schwartz]

Hello. Hello.

[Vincent Cunningham]

How's it going?

[Alex Schwartz]

Going great.

[Nomi Fry]

It's a new year.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's a new year. I got a new step.

[Nomi Fry]

A new step, a new pep.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A new pep in that step.

[Alex Schwartz]

Both a new step and new pep. It's really great.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We are back. It's a new year. And as usual over the holidays, prestige film offerings have been raining down upon us like so many flakes of snow. And we're gonna be hitting some of them today. One of them, though, before we go further, involves our very own Nomi Fry. Could you give us a report from the red carpet? Nomi?

[Nomi Fry]

Oh my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Explain yourself a little bit.

[Nomi Fry]

So, to our listeners, I have like a line or two, maybe in Josh Safady's Marty Supreme. Woo hoo. I am suddenly an actor.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The movie of the moment.

[Nomi Fry]

I know. And yeah, I play a very it's a bit of a blink and you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Miss it situation, but nobody's gonna blink.

[Nomi Fry]

But hopefully nobody blinks. It'll be a Clockwork Orange style situation. And up there in that theater.

[Alex Schwartz]

Thrilling.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Can you tell us one thing that you learned about what it's like to go to a Hollywood premiere and be on the red carpet? What did you learn that you did not know?

[Nomi Fry]

I learned that it's over before you know it. And I learned that you interact with the photographers in ways which I wasn't. Some of them heckled me a little bit to get a smile.

[Alex Schwartz]

Wow.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh.

[Alex Schwartz]

Of a mean heckling.

[Nomi Fry]

No, not a mean, but just like, hey, you know, the smile bows. Yeah. Where's that smile? I mean, nobody knew who I was, so that added to the confusion. But there was some interaction. Did you smile at the very end? I smiled.

[Alex Schwartz]

You look amazing in those photos.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you so much, you guys.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You really do.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you so much. I mean, it was really a night to remember and generally an experience to remember. And I hope those of our listeners who haven't yet seen Marty Supreme. I am, of course, a little bit biased, but I think it's a very good movie. I am not a hater as far as this movie goes for once.

[Alex Schwartz]

No. Not only do you comment on the culture, you now make the culture.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You are the culture.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, we are the culture.

[Nomi Fry]

We all make the culture. We all make the culture.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, that's beautiful. May this star turn beget many others.

[Nomi Fry]

Thank you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Another holiday movie that we're gonna talk about today is the Testament of Ann Lee, a rhythmic, intense, totally, in my experience, totally immersive film about the story of the titular Anne Lee, the woman who founded and led the Shaker movement.

[Alex Schwartz]

The time is near at hand.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

I know it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Do not be frightened.

[Vincent Cunningham]

How would you categorize this? I have a very. A very specific way to categorize it. What would you say, genre wise, it is.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, it is a biopic. I think it's divided into either three or four parts of Anley's life. And it basically goes from cradle to grave, showing her as she grows up, as she gets her revelations, as she moves to America. But it's a spiritual pic. Spirit. Spiritual.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Spiritual pic.

[Nomi Fry]

A bit of a hagiographic.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's exactly.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's what I was gonna say.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It is, like, almost classically the form of, like, let me tell you this person's life, and you're gonna glean lessons from it as we go. And this aspect of the film, this sort of hagiography, actually led us to our topic for today, Saints. The more we thought about it, we felt like there was this broader interest going on in the divine kind of humming beneath the surface of a lot of culture right now.

[Nomi Fry]

So one example that's happening right now that I was not aware of, but apparently is very popular, is the show about saints that Martin Scorsese has been producing and hosting on Fox Nation.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You believe you were saint by God?

[Anne Bogle]

Yes.

[Nomi Fry]

It is what I was born for.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's a saint thing. Rosalia's latest album, Lux, is a saints album. I think each song is inspired by a different saint.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Alex Schwartz]

On this album. So saints are all over that thing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right. And there's that and so much more. So today we're talking Ann Lee and the Shakers. We'll talk about. About our favorite art about saints, and we're talking about what's driving this interest in sainthood and divinity right now and what it reveals about our culture and our politics today. That's today on Critics at Large. Do we still need saints? All right. Let's start with the Testament of Ann Lee. This is a new film directed by Mona Fastfold, co written with her partner Brady Courbet, who she also worked with writing the Brutalist. It stars Amanda Seyfried in the titular role and it came out over the holidays. It's going into wider release in mid January. Who would like to give the gist of this? I must say, very strange, very affecting film.

[Nomi Fry]

I can try.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Please.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay.

[Nomi Fry]

So this, as we said, is the story, Cradle to grave of Ann Lee, who was born in Manchester in 1736. The very simple daughter of a very simple blacksmith. Many children, a hard working class. Life begins at a very early age to have these religious visions and kind of becomes associated with this sect in Manchester of the Shaking Quakers, who, as they pray and as a way to get closer to God, are kind of impelled to shake and pound their breasts and writhe around. Annley becomes a kind of preacher associated with this sect, much persecuted by the authorities and by the Anglican Church, and decides also along the way, thanks to a vision that comes to her when she is imprisoned, that no sex should be had. If you wanna be godly, no one should do it. Okay. If you wanna be a true person of God. Her husband doesn't like that and nor do the authorities. And she decides, along with her acolytes, to sail off to the new world in 1774, across the ocean. And establish and lead the new sect of the Shakers. In the movie, very interestingly, this is figured. This kind of gets like transfigured into sequences of dance and songs.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Alex, what did you think of it?

[Alex Schwartz]

Into it, into Ann Lee. Shake and quake me. Raise my hands to the heaven. You know, pound my breasts. Yeah, I've been running around singing all the songs.

[Nomi Fry]

Wait, really?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, they got stuck in my head.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, my God.

[Alex Schwartz]

They got stuck in my head. There's some good ones doing the dances because the music. The music, which is composed by Danielle.

[Nomi Fry]

Bloomberg, who also composed and received an Oscar for the Brutalist.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. The music is based on actual Shaker tunes. And yes, there's a bit of a modern spin on them, but, yeah, this movie. Oh, wow. What did I think of it? So, yes, I did like. I liked it. I liked it. I liked it. You're not coming to this movie, let's be very clear for irony. You're not coming to this movie to see the dark inner workings of a religious organization. And it all seems wonderful, but actually underneath there's a hunger for power. And it's not conclave. And as we all know.

[Nomi Fry]

Right. It's. No.

[Alex Schwartz]

I happen to also love conclave.

[Nomi Fry]

You were a bit of a conclave.

[Alex Schwartz]

Girly, as I recall. I did in 2024, personally identify as a conclave girly.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's fun.

[Alex Schwartz]

So this is a very sincere story, trying to really present viewers with this vision of Anne Lee, which is a really anti modern vision, and trying in some ways, just in terms of this personal religious experience, and trying to really take it at face value and depict this experience. And in other ways, it is a very modern vision because, of course, the thing about the Shakers was that they believed in total equality of the sexes of the races. There is something that is very modern and very egalitarian and very American in the good sense about this movement. And I think with this movie, I think it's probably best viewed by really trying to submit to it. Maybe you have to kind of submit to it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's like just a train, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah. Like, you're not. Again, like, if you go in looking for that kind of spark of irony that I think most audiences are very used to when dealing with this kind of spiritual discussion, you're not going to get it. But if you go in trying to just bask in the presence of this both very earthly and otherworldly person. I thought Amanda Seyfried was great. You know? Is it my favorite movie of all time? No. But I'm into it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Naomi, you synopsized. But did you?

[Nomi Fry]

I did synopsize. Enjoyed, you guys. I'm too Jewish for this movie. Yeah, I mean, I really am. I agree with. You know, Alex, I see the wisdom of your words. I also thought Amanda Seyfried is great. I think she's a really good actress. I felt really. I really wanted to support it because I really think, like, I would love to see more experiments such as these. You know, it's like, why don't we just like, suddenly, inexplicably burst into dance to suggest the fervor streaming from our spiritual fervor. Let us also suddenly, like, be like Bacheva or something on stage and kind of start dancing in tandem with each other. But I just. And this is why I'm saying I'm too Jewish. Like, I kind of didn't see the point. I was like, I could see an externalization of her fervor, but somehow I couldn't totally relate to it. And that might be my fault. Okay. Because I don't experience that sort of thing in my life or haven't. And I felt like the Movie somehow. Except for in its again, externalized forms of like, okay, I'm writhing around on the floor. I'm like, you know, beating my breast. I'm like, you know, huffing and puffing. I didn't understand it. I felt like I could relate. You know, there were some moments where, you know, she is grieving the death of her children. She is experiencing the horrible pains of labor. She is repelled by her husband's kind of domineering sexual need for her. So these things that are closer to the body and closer to kind of like, I guess, a kind of a universal women's experience. I'm scared to say universal, because who knows what people are feeling, but you know what I mean? I was like, oh, okay, yeah, I can understand some of the roots of her rejection of sex, of her. But the religious component of it. And again, this might be my. I might just not be the audience for it. I was like, I don't get it. And it's dragging on for me for 17,000 hours and I just can't relate to it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, it's interesting. I almost maybe over identify with it because the Shakers are a lot like Pentecostals. And I grew up in a place where, like, okay, we're doing this, we're doing that. We're welcoming a guest, there's a preacher. But all of a sudden there's 30 minutes where people are running around and dancing and there is a sort of ecstasy in the air that doesn't conform to any sort of plotline or timeline. It's like a different or an irrational kind of right. It's like extra liturgical. It's out there somewhere that creates a narrative of togetherness and a narrative of shared experience between the people involved that is not easily communicable. There's so many times in the sort of. There are scenes of kind of evangelism in this movie where they're like, hey. And we believed this. And explaining the Shaker theology. This happens by rote a lot of times. But it's basically like, you gotta come back and see Mother Ann and you gotta be with us. Trust me, you'll understand when you get there. You have to be there. It has to be sort of embodied. And that's what I admired about the movie was its sort of failty to experience and to embodiment. The logic, the strategy of the. The music is very similar. It's like. It's not the kind of musical where someone's thinking and then they burst into song to tell you more of what they're thinking, or the song is not, as some musical songs do, pushing the plot for it. No, it's just about a sort of expressionism, you know, it's just about like, painting a feeling, like flat on a canvas or something like that in a way that it's just rare to see in film. And that I thought was really stylish and beautiful, but also, to me, confirmed experience that I have very much had.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think, you know, Naomi, when you were talking about your feeling about the movie, you kept saying relatable. Like, you don't find it relatable. Well, naturally, you know, like, this is an experience of this kind of. Zealotry is one word that comes to mind. And also just faith, conviction. It's a very solitary experience. I mean, I think a lot of. Of what the movie is about and many things in it that I found beautiful have to do with how isolating an experience it is if you. To have this level of conviction. But what I like about this experience of watching something like the Testament Van Lee is precisely how alien it is and to try to reckon with the extremity of a life like that. You know, I'm thinking about this scene early because Anne joins this shaker group, the Shaking Quakers in Manchester and pretty soon comes to see herself as the second birth of God and is hailed as the second coming of God by her small community. And one pivotal moment is when she goes to jail. She's jailed for running into someone else's church and starting, much like Rosalia, to speak in a bunch of different languages all at once and to preach that she's the mother of God. And like, frankly, if you do that, like you're going. You're going to jail. Like, they don't like it. She knows she's going to jail and she refuses food and drink when she's in jail and starts to kind of waste away and then has her visions and sings this song where she says, I hunger and thirst after true righteousness.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

I hunger and thirst I hunger, hunger and thirst after true righteousness.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's this very beautiful moment to watch someone hunger and thirst after this true righteousness. You know, maybe someone will see this movie and connect to that experience. Or maybe, like, you know us, know me, there's no connecting to it, but to me there is a fascination with that kind of extremity of the human condition, this desire to transcend it.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

I hunger and thirst. An ocean I see without water or shore Feed me, I'm hungry Enrich me, I'm poor I cry Unto God, I'll never.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In a minute, Saints in Art. Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[David Remnick]

Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Cory Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Charlemagne, tha, God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Before we get back to the conversation, just a quick heads up. We are coming up on our 100th episode in a few weeks. Oh my God.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh my God.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's happening.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And we decided that to celebrate. And by the way, this celebration is just not for us. It's a celebration for you and of you, our listeners. We wanted to hear from all of you. We're working on a special edition of you guessed it, I need a critic.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah, you all know the drill at this point, but for anyone who doesn't, don't fear. All you have to do is record a voice memo on your phone with a specific cultural question that we can help you with. Maybe you're looking for the perfect book to read after you just had a baby and you have no attention span or time. Maybe you want to know whether book clubs are actually helpful. Maybe you want an example in media, the movies, what have you of an actually happy relationship.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, who can tell really what you come up with? And we can't wait to find out out. You've got questions, we've got answers. Hit us up. Send your voice memos, as always to themaileyorker.com with the subject line critics. And now back to the episode.

[Vincent Cunningham]

For me, the Testament of Ann Lee got me thinking about saints, because it's one way to pose a proposition that says if something about the world irks you, if there is some incomplete thing in the world and all of us in this room couldn't think of one right? How far are you willing to go on your principle to not change it, but to announce yourself as someone who says no? You know, the sort of determination to go to any lengths to cross a great big ocean on a ship pointed at nothing, to go to a brand new land and see your friends die, et cetera, just because of belief is, I think, something that plucks at chords in all of us. So of course, this opens up to a whole world of works of art about saints. What are some of your favorites and what are maybe some of the themes in those favorites that connected you to. To old Mother Anne.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay, well, old.

[Vincent Cunningham]

No, fucking Mother Ann.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yep, Mother Ann. I mean, the saints to me are about. They are art because I have no personal or religious connection to Christianity other than living in a Christian world. So there's. They came to me through art, like paintings, going to museums, going into churches, looking and observing and seeing this entire world and system built on the idea of kind of the exceptionalism of certain individuals and also their great, great suffering. So I have a couple forks I'd like to share that I particularly enjoy. One is this absolutely wonderful painting by a guy you may have heard of, Michelangelo, the temptation of St. Anthony. So the thing about this painting is that, first of all, it's a copy of another thing, a copy of an engraving. And Michelangelo did it when he was but a lad of 12 or 13. And we also don't know if it's by Michelangelo. So with all that in mind, gather round, my friends. And of course, the visual arts are not the best medium for. Not conducive for a podcast, but let's just say what we see. There's one very unperturbed man floating in the sky, a little halo around his head.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He's got a long beard and a yellow cherubic face, but not. But, but. And he is being pecked at and otherwise molested by a phalanx of, let's call it like we see it, goblins.

[Alex Schwartz]

Little demons.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Demons.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

Devils.

[Alex Schwartz]

Little demon.

[Rebecca Ford]

Devils.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Devils.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yep. If you came across this today, you know, you might. This painting, say if you were scrolling through a social media feed of some, you know, you might be tempted to repost this with the caption it me and leave it at that, because who is not this St. Anthony just trying to go about his business in his nice black dress? And instead, like the demons and the devils, I mean, one has a little ass face here and a normal face face. They're just coming for him. They're coming for him and he's just going to float about above his landscape, unbothered. So I love that painting because it's so funny.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Like, I get it. The saints are serious. They are holy people, and they are not letting the regular stuff of life and even the more extreme stuff of life, like being persecuted, burned at the stake, you know, twisted on some kind of horrible wheel, they're not letting it get to them. And this painting says that with a bang and one other thing that comes to mind, especially after seeing the Testament of Anne Lee, is the movie the flowers of St. Francis. Have you guys ever seen this movie, this Roberto Rossellini movie? No, it's very unusual.

[Nomi Fry]

It's called the stigmata of St. Francis.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's called the flowers of St. Francis.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, I think if you're into the Testament of family, and if you're not, totally fine. But you might wanna check this movie out. It's now. I think it's on hbo, interestingly. And what it is is it's vignettes from the life of Saint Francis of Assisi who famously was very, very humble in the way he conducted himself in the clothes he wore. He loved animals, birds, living in poverty. And this movie, like the Testament of Ann Lee, tries to take all that at face value and just perform this radical act of imagining what such a life could have looked like. And it's a great movie. They're just a merry band of brothers who are running around building huts. Not as handsome as the Shaker huts, boiling water, dealing with persecution. Very, very interesting film.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So before we move on, can I ask you, though. So you said. So this idea of sainthood really arrived to you from the outside? We've been talking about this idea of whether these ideas are sort of indigenous to your worldview or whatever. Do these works of art make you more amenable to the concept of saints? Yeah, I'm just wondering, like, more attracted to this kind of figure.

[Alex Schwartz]

To me, it's a complete. I mean, is it an attractive figure? Like, it's not something I see as worthy of emulation in my daily life. And again, because it's. Because I was raised in a totally different religious tradition in which sainthood is not a concept. It's alien and familiar at the same time. And I see it most appealingly as a kind of key to a certain mythology and a mythology that I find fascinating and also interact with regularly and prefer to keep in art rather than politics, say. But, yeah, the figure of the saint is a really interesting figure because, again, whether or not you believe that these people are holy or not, they're very real people who lived like this and did these things and had this intensity of conviction and often intensity of suffering. This is very real.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. I guess the first time I remember thinking about saints and this just came to me because my daughter, who is now 14, has been bringing me back to Madonna because she really likes 80s and 90s Madonna. And one of those hits is Like a Prayer, came out in 1989.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

When you call my name it's like a little prayer I'm down on my knees I wanna take you there in the midnight hour I can feel your power Just like a prayer, you know I'll take you there I hear your voice.

[Nomi Fry]

I remember watching the Like a Prayer video and the controversy around the Like a Prayer video in which famously iconoclastic. Famously iconoclastic Madonna lost her like big Pepsi deal because of it. The Pope condemned her. The video, for those of us who are too young to remember, don't, or, you know, have already forgotten, too old and have already forgotten, depicts Madonna seeing a crime, murder committed. A woman, a white woman murdered by a bunch of white thugs who escape. And a black man rushes to the white woman's aid. And of course the police, the racist police, you know, thinks this, arrests this black man as the perpetrator. And Madonna runs to a church, you know, full of kind of like shame and tumult and. And there she sees a black saint who is played by the black man that she just saw being arrested, but in the form of a statue of a saint. The statue is crying. He is behind bars. Madonna clings to the saint. It's very sexual. Madonna is wearing kind of like a revealing dress and a cross, but the whole thing of like a black saint Madonna in like a nip slippy, you know, dress, burning crosses. And I remember being like, Alex is like Michelangelo. I'm like, so remember that Madonna video?

[Alex Schwartz]

It was huge for me too. I watched a pop up video.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Years after the fact.

[Nomi Fry]

And I remember being very, as a young Jewish girl, I remember being very affected by it and thinking, oh, Catholicism, what a mysterious thing. But saints are kind of sexy, like, which was the problem with it, of course, as far as the Catholic Church was concerned.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The will intensity.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, yeah. And this is something also that I think is part of the deal. Right. I mean, it's obviously part of the deal. This is not a Catholic movie. The Testament of Anley. But it also is, you know, the sublimation of kind of like erotic energy into belief and worship is kind of a central part of the whole thing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And I think some of that using the figure of the saint as a vehicle to transmit other, as you say, energies is maybe the thing that we've been talking about that's kind of coming back. One of my favorite albums of the year is Rosalia's Luke's Light. And it is a polyglot work of sort of popular opera orchestration. She's speaking in, I think, 14 languages. 14 in this really great and really cinematic album. And using female saints as the sort of the vehicles for her idea. She talks about St. Teresa of Avila, St. Teresa of Jesus, Joan of Arc, who often shows up in these kinds of narratives. She's also got songs that really go to the erotic edge of this connection. My favorite song title is Dioces un Stalker. God is a stalker. And it's all about like, I know all of your inner thoughts. I know you know this, like the eroticism of trying to reach some connection with the all knowing or whatever.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

Please.

[Vincent Cunningham]

She's like this beautiful singer who uses every single sound at her disposal to, in a similar way to the. To the testament of Van Lee. Just like is trying to convey experience, absorption, surrender in this great way. Where else are we seeing it? We're making this claim. St. Hood is back. Where else is it coming across?

[Nomi Fry]

Let's talk about Marty's show.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, yeah, you guys.

[Nomi Fry]

I know both of you guys watch. I have to admit, I only watched one episode about Joan of Arc. There have been two seasons of Marty Scorsese produced and hosted series on Fox Nation about the lives of the saints. So Scorsese is a host of the show. He introduces it in the manner of kind of like a Masterpiece Theater. But then throughout the show, it's this like dramatization of whatever story of a saint is. Each episode is centered on, but kind of between scenes, as it were, Scorsese comes back in and gives a kind of little spiel about what things mean or what happened then, you know, kind of connecting the dots.

[David Remnick]

John the Baptist was born to be a holy messenger. His mother Elizabeth was descended from Aaron, who was the brother of Moses and the first priest of the Israelites, his father Zechariah.

[Nomi Fry]

To me, it suggests that this choice of his to do this, I mean, suggests a very strong belief in the kind of like, importance of these figures and importance of these figures for contemporary audiences. Almost like. Let us illustrate these stories for viewers who either are not completely familiar with them or who want to revisit them like a kind of favorite text because they are believers and they want to be fortified by this story.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This is like the classical use of the saints is precisely what you said.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know, we talk about the lives of the saints, the lives of saints. People write these hagiographies in order to say, somewhere in here, in this encyclopedia of figures is someone who is not just like you, but might be in a situation not different than yours, and so that you can use their lives, their lives become a Usable past, a usable history that you can rummaged through. And it's like a guide and applied to a life like yours. There's a young Italian boy I don't know if you guys have heard of, Carlo Acutis. He's a young kid. He died as a teenager. He had some terrible inflammation. And he is right now. He's one of the most recently canonized Catholic saints. And part of the reason for the Catholic Church to do this is to say, look, even if you're a kid who loves video games like Katlo, did you know you can be a saint in your situation? So on a certain level, Scorsese is being like an extreme traditionalist in the way that he's presented.

[Alex Schwartz]

Absolutely extreme. Extremely traditionalist.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Was this also your experience of watching?

[Alex Schwartz]

Guys, this is Martin Scorsese presents the Saints is the cheesiest thing I've ever seen.

[Nomi Fry]

I've never seen anything more cheesy in my life.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm extremely here for it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's so funny.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm extremely here for it. First of all, because, again, alien to me. Okay, let's keep this in mind. Just the comforting cheesiness of it. The fact that they cast in the Joan of Arc episode a French actress to play Joan because Joan was French. Even though the entire thing is in English, it's English.

[Nomi Fry]

It's crazy.

[Alex Schwartz]

Awesome. To me. It's awesome.

[Nomi Fry]

I must see the Dauphin.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's like she can barely connect the emotion of the acting role to the fact that she has to speak words in, like, at best, a second language. And I'm obsessed with it. Also, I'm a little bit over Joan of Arc, personally, because she is so archetypal. Yes, she's.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Her pockets have already been rummaged for materials, too.

[Nomi Fry]

On the nose.

[Alex Schwartz]

The entire legality of the whole thing and the, you know, the horrible interrogation that happens on the stage. It's a legal drama. Joan of Arc is a war story and a legal drama. How could you not love it? But what I loved in the Scorsese was the second episode, St. John the Baptist.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm a big John the Baptist fan.

[Alex Schwartz]

Because I. I'm thinking, who is this man? I'm there, primed to be taught by Martin Scorsese. Who. Papa, teach me here, teach me, Papa. All I know.

[Nomi Fry]

And he's so Papa mode.

[Alex Schwartz]

And he's so Papa mode who John was. Never knew it. Why he baptized Jesus. I've been wondering for years. Didn't understand it. Didn't, like, couldn't get it. So I will just Say this for the John the Baptist episode. There is a super Scorsese moment in it. Like, it's still the Marty we know and love. There's a moment where Sad, you see, comes to be baptized. And it's a classic Scorsese scene. It's violence by baptism. John is like, oh, you wanna be baptized? Let's go. Because the Sadducee is just messing with him. And he grabs him and violently dunks him in the water. And it's just. It could have been right out of Taxi Driver.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Beautiful.

[Alex Schwartz]

There's another great scene where Herod, who's a bit of a bitch, seems to be a bit of a bitch.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He was. He was.

[Alex Schwartz]

And Jon won't stop going on about Herod and his whores. Herod and his whores this, Herod and his whores that. Like, Herod is not.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's how he got himself.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, Herod and his goomaz. He's not. Herod is not happy. He takes this news while he's in a bath of his own. The water theme. We got it. And Herod's wife says to him, you know, when are you gonna avenge us? When are you gonna execute him? And Herod, in incredibly petty way, just says, I will decide who's to be avenged and when. I'm gonna do the avenging. I'm gonna do the executing. Okay, guys. It's great cinema. It pairs beautifully with, you know, light, edible, I would say. And just. And do it.

[Nomi Fry]

I see. I see what happens.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm willing to defend it in any state of consciousness.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Why are Saints making a comeback now? Critics at large will be right back.

[Rebecca Ford]

Hi, I'm Rebecca Ford, senior awards correspondent at Vanity Fair and co host of Little Gold Men. Oscar season is upon us. Little Gold Men takes you behind the scenes of the race for the biggest prize in Hollywood.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There's 100 wrestlers in the room, but only one can be awesome Oscar nominated.

[Rebecca Ford]

Whether you're a movie lover or an industry buff, Little Gold Men from Vanity Fair has everything you need to know about this year's Oscar race. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So do you guys feel that Saints are big right now? Saints are in right now. Am I making this up?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, something is going on.

[Nomi Fry]

Something's up.

[Alex Schwartz]

There's a saintly motion in the air. You know, Saints are always with us. They're always around in the. And I'm talking culturally, yes, not talking religiously, I'm talking culturally, no.

[Vincent Cunningham]

They're always around, kind of lurking at the edges of the imagination.

[Alex Schwartz]

I mean, I'm just looking at an article from a very well respected source, the Daily Mail right now.

[Nomi Fry]

One of my favorites.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. And it's a paper of record. And the headline I'm looking at is the Bizarre rise of convent drinks as Lily Allen and Sydney Sweeney lead celebrity fashion trend of dressing up as nuns. Nuns. Are they saints? No. Some of them may be and some of them may not be. And it's not for me to say who's who. No, but there is a trend. There is a trend. Here's Lily Allen with a nice sheer black tight, a very high heel, a habit. Okay, so nun dressing is a thing. This is. Here's Rihanna.

[Nomi Fry]

Rihanna was on the COVID of Interview dressed as a sexy nun.

[Alex Schwartz]

Dressed as a sexy, sexy nun. Sydney Sweeney, nun. Sabrina Carpenter, nun in feather. She filmed it in a Catholic church that caused a scandal, I think.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, these are all the daughters of Madonna.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. It's not hard to understand why there remains something subversive about dressing up in nuns clothing and doing something a little bit untoward. People do it every Halloween. I think the bigger thing about saints saintliness and why we're seeing it in the culture and kind of swirling around it. And to come back to a movie of Anne Lee, I mean, again, it's obviously ironic if you do it as Lily Allen did it by smoking a cigarette and making an album about your failed open relationship and do it dressed as a nun. But I think this kind of turn towards a sincere reckoning or sincere at least attempt to understand what is actually a very alien and lonely experience. It makes sense to me at a time when, look, I can spat off any number of cliches, but they're all true. The world is moving faster and faster. Materialism is now reaching every single corner of the globe. It's very hard to say no and to say stop and to say I will do without rather than I want more and more and more. And I think that explains some of the modern cultural appeal of that part of saintliness. The part that is not necessarily about the most, the strongest religious conviction, although we can talk about that too, but just a kind of insistence on moderation and self denial. I mean, sometimes maybe these things find too profane a form and go into something like, you know, as banal and kind of disturbed as diet culture.

[Nomi Fry]

Absolutely. I was just thinking, you know, we have in contemporary culture so many forms. It's like the kind of like pendulum swing between glut and self denial, as you said, is like really those are the two sides of the coin that we're so often dealing with. And it's like, you talk diet, but it can also be alcohol. It can also be like partying. And then after we're now in the New Year, New year starts. Resolutions. I'm never eating another grain of sugar again. I'm never smoking another cigarette. I'm never, you know, having one more drop of alcohol. Wellness will be my credo. It's like, even without talking about religion, the draw of kind of like discipline, self discipline, is so strong in our culture. And I think the turn towards the cultural figure of the saint can be seen as part of that.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, Nomi, you actually are making me think of something else which I think is connected, which I think is shared by the really different projects of the Testament of Anne Lee and the Scorsese Saints series, which is. They're very, very different, which is. I think both of them really are trying to remind us that these figures, these saintly figures who commune with God, who have special purpose, what have you, are people, are human beings. And that is the part that I think very often falls out. But I think, like, Scorsese talks about this in some of the clips that we see where he's discussing his own take on the lives of the saints that follow each of the Saints episodes. And it's very obviously there in the Anne Lee movie. It's about human struggles to live according to one's own principles and one's own beliefs. And again, that can be great. It can be frighteningly fanatical. It can go in any number of ways.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. I think we have sort of continued to make reference to the sort of classical Catholic sense of same. But really, I mean, you know, we can think of any number of people in the modern world. It's like, you know, Nelson Mandela. And the bracing and sort of terrifying thing about them is precisely that they are human beings because of what they say to us is like, if you had the juice, you could do it, too. They're working with the same apparatus as you, except they believe harder. And you could change your life right now if you had whatever this is.

[Nomi Fry]

Making, and you won't.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So there is a kind of abyss into which you stare when you think about a person like this.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. And that's the part at which it stops appealing to me in any particular way.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. I mean, it's making me think about something else, you know, the hunger and thirst.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I. Hunger and thirst. Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

For figures like this in our culture, and the haste to push people off these Pedestals. Putting them on these heightened pedestals and pushing them off. You know, whether it's through so called cancel culture or through, you know, where like, the heights of, like, this person is like a modern saint are reached very quickly. Mother obsessed with him. Whatever is the case and the downfall over, like something that's probably not even that bad always, you know, can't fail to come quick enough. And sometimes it's things that are, like, truly disappointing. You know, someone like, what is happening now with Chomsky, Right?

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, Noam Chomsky?

[Nomi Fry]

Noam Chomsky. You know, Professor Noam Chomsky, a longstanding hero to the left, and he showed up in the Epstein files. He wasn't implicated in any of Epstein's crimes or anything like that, but he was corresponding with him for years, even after Epstein was convicted, you know, of soliciting prostitution from a minor. So it kind of doesn't look great. And I've seen people around me, you know, post about it very heartbroken, and I totally understand it because it's like this was a figure for a certain subset of a kind of modern saint, and now it's like, oh, shit, he was like, consorting with this pedophile.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. An interruption in an otherwise kind of smooth surface.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But it's interesting, though, because this points to the way, in the same way that you can sort of be disillusioned. There are big events, great ruptures, often deaths that can do the opposite. You know, make someone who is, like, manifestly all over the place, whether ideologically, personally, whatever, ethically, and make them into one clean surface that has one legible meaning. We could talk about how that is being recently done in front of our faces about Charlie Kirk.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I mean, it's like someone dies. And speaking about a usable past, they can be made to represent things that they didn't necessarily manifest in life.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And especially, you know, Charlie Kirk obviously died in a horribly violent way. So you have. It's ready made for a sainthood story because there's an element, a big element of, you know, persecution in there. Yeah. I do think again, I'm so sorry, but my mind is going back to Martin Scorsese's Lives of the Saints, the John the Baptist episode, where they're all talking about how in the land there was a hungering for the Messiah and everyone is primed to see a messiah because there's such a desire for deliverance, because there's a political rot afoot. Guys, I'm not seeing things so differently in our Current moment. I think this is part of this.

[Nomi Fry]

The hunger, the thirst.

[Alex Schwartz]

The hunger and thirst for the saint, I think is part of the same thing. I mean, on a totally different part of the spectrum. I was walking around in my neighborhood in New York City recently and was kind of shocked to see Luigi Mangione's face. I wasn't shocked to see his face, but I was shocked to see it in the guise of a saint.

[Nomi Fry]

He.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, like you would see on a candle, an evotive candle posted to lampposts. Saint Luigi, like. But again, I think it's because we are craving this kind of clarity where no such clarity exists. And we're trying to. And that's obviously done with a code of irony that is very unsaint, like itself, but surprising unusual, this whole St. Luigi business.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, I think you're right. There was a. By time this podcast hits the airwaves, I will have you know my Christmas essay will be out. And this is what I have been kind of trying to think about, which is like, you know, these moments of, I don't know, whatever you call the Christmas story, arrival, are these times of, like, great hunger and desire. But of course, also just fear of what comes next. You know, fear of what the. You can feel an era ending. You can feel a world that you're familiar with ending. And it's like, how do I cross the bridge into something new? And often we sort of like, displace that anxiety or just place it into a figure. And it's interesting because sometimes it can be a really inconvenient symbol, like the symbol structure, as you mentioned, around Mangoni, you know, he's Saint Luigi. Whatever. Part of the reason that society grabbed this kid who had done this awful. Who had allegedly done this awful thing was because he symbolized higher ideas about can you afford to live in America? And what are the forces that are perhaps making it impossible to do so. And I think it's interesting that we don't hear about him so much now that there's been a resurgence in progressive politics. Better symbols for the same problem. So all of a sudden, the huge, I think, and positive salutary interest in Zoran Mamdani, maybe he's a more convenient, wholesome representative of who's managing the thing. Well, that's already on my mind. Someone who seems to be walking the tightrope well, crossing the bridge in a way that we can admire.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I think that's very true.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Are there saints that keep coming back to you? People who you'd like to take something from and bring it forward with you.

[Alex Schwartz]

I like Hildegard von Bingen. I'm just gonna say it. Are you guys familiar with this saint?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Very war?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I'm just. I profiled the writer Patricia Lockwood last year, and part of the piece in her latest book is about having had visions during long Covid. Like getting visions, getting things just popping into her brain as this 11th century German Abbess. And I keep seeing her as almost like this. Coming up across the culture, there's a new opera that's based on her life as a kind of patron saint from female creativity, like this. This is a saint I enjoy. I'm gonna get behind that. And the saint of writing, the saint of.

[Vincent Cunningham]

She's also mentioned by Rosalia in the inbox.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And of course, like artistic creation, have a vision. Sing and dance, do a little writing.

[Nomi Fry]

Beat your chest just a little.

[Alex Schwartz]

Just a little. And that's enough. That's enough. You don't have to give up sex.

[Nomi Fry]

That's really good. That's something I'll be taking with me into this new year.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Let it be your Hildegard year. This has been critics at large. Alice Barish is our consulting editor and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Vince Fairchild with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every single episode we've ever [e-mail] Critics.

[Guest Reader / Singer]

Foreign.

[Anne Bogle]

Hello listeners. This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading. Reading Next Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment, whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything. You'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website. What should I read next podcast.com to find out more.

[Nomi Fry]

From PRX.