The Season for Obsessions

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker: "The Season for Obsessions" Summary

Release Date: May 22, 2025

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Introduction

In the episode titled "The Season for Obsessions," hosts Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz delve into the phenomenon of summer obsessions. They explore how the balmy months amplify our engagement with various forms of art and culture, leading to deep, personal, and sometimes collective fixations. The episode weaves together listener voicemails, personal anecdotes, and insightful discussions to unravel the intricate relationship between summer and our passionate engagements.

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Defining Summer Obsessions

The hosts begin by reflecting on what defines the start of summer, humorously noting unconventional markers like Justin Timberlake’s DUI incident (00:14). They set the stage for the episode by emphasizing how summer uniquely fosters intense engagement with books, movies, music, and other cultural artifacts.

Key Quote:

Naomi: “This summer definitely started with Justin Timberlake getting a DUI in the Hamptons.” [00:14]

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Listener Voicemails on Summer Obsessions

The episode features several listener voicemails, each highlighting unique summer obsessions that range from pop culture phenomena to deeply personal experiences.

1. Christian Slater and "Pump Up the Volume"

   • Speaker: Listener Nomi (Voicemail) [05:03]
   • Summary: Nomi recalls her teenage obsession with Christian Slater's controversial roles, particularly "Pump Up the Volume." She shares memories of clandestine movie viewings and the rebellious allure Slater embodied.
   • Quote:

     Nomi: “He was a bit of a bad boy. I could not identify more.” [07:06]

2. GoldenEye 007 Video Game

   • Speaker: Listener Vincent (Voicemail) [13:20]
   • Summary: A nostalgic look back at the "GoldenEye 007" video game for Nintendo 64, emphasizing its role in childhood friendships and competitive play.
   • Quote:

     Vincent: “Being good at GoldenEye was a mark. It was almost as important as sports.” [14:03]

3. Baz Luhrmann's Elvis Biopic

   • Speaker: Isabel from Bogotá, Colombia (Voicemail) [15:21]
   • Summary: Isabel discusses her profound connection with Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" after her father's passing, highlighting how the film served as a coping mechanism during her grief.
   • Quote:

     Isabel: “It was a distraction for grief as well as a way I learned how to cope with my grief.” [16:27]

4. Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan Novels

   • Speaker: Listener [19:50]
   • Summary: A reflection on Ferrante's novels during the pandemic, illustrating how literature provided a sense of connection and understanding of complex friendships.
   • Quote:

     Nomi: “It's about friends, the good and the bad.” [19:50]

5. Led Zeppelin’s "Ramble On" and Hurricane Katrina

   • Speaker: Nomi [20:12]
   • Summary: Nomi recounts how a Led Zeppelin song embodied her summer in New Orleans, culminating in the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and its profound impact on her life.
   • Quote:

     Nomi: “I have to ramble on.” [21:38]

6. Pirates of the Caribbean

   • Speaker: Sasha from Auckland, New Zealand (Voicemail) [41:51]
   • Summary: Sasha and her friend’s obsessive engagement with "Pirates of the Caribbean," culminating in an impromptu reenactment of the film during a power outage.
   • Quote:

     Sasha: “We just got up to the front of the movie theater and started to do the rest of the movie ourselves.” [42:31]

7. Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"

   • Speaker: Listener Alex [38:34]
   • Summary: Alex shares her teenage obsession with "Atlas Shrugged," exploring how the book influenced her self-directed reading journey despite later diverging political views.
   • Quote:

     Alex: “Reading errors are crucial.” [40:39]

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Personal Obsessions of Hosts

Each host shares their own summer obsessions, providing a personal lens to the broader theme.

1. Naomi on Jim Morrison and The Doors

   • Timestamp: [28:51]
   • Summary: Naomi reveals her enduring obsession with Jim Morrison and The Doors, describing a poignant moment visiting Morrison’s grave in Paris and the lasting emotional impact of his music.
   • Quote:

     Nomi: “I was very much enamored with Jim Morrison himself, who was a magnetic lizard king riding the snake.” [29:48]

2. Vinson on Brandi’s "Never Say Never"

   • Timestamp: [25:58]
   • Summary: Vinson discusses his summer camp experience and his deep connection with Brandi’s album "Never Say Never." He highlights how music, particularly Brandi's vocals, provided solace and a sense of identity during his formative years.
   • Quote:

     Vincent: “Listening to the sweet sounds of Brandi Norwal was my way of reconnecting.” [27:21]

3. Alex on Martin Scorsese's "The Last Waltz"

   • Timestamp: [34:11]
   • Summary: Alex shares her obsession with "The Last Waltz," Martin Scorsese’s documentary on The Band’s final performance. She reflects on its emotional resonance and its role in her transition from adolescence to adulthood.
   • Quote:

     Alex: “The Last Waltz is about saying goodbye to something. It’s about ending this period of youth.” [34:48]

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Discussion on the Nature of Obsessions

The hosts transition into a deep discussion about what makes summer a fertile ground for obsessions, exploring both personal and cultural dimensions.

• Cultural vs. Personal Impact:

  • Naomi emphasizes how cultural artifacts can profoundly shape individual lives, noting that certain works leave an indelible mark that defines personal identity.
  • Quote:

    Nomi: “Culture can really change a life and affect a life deeply in ways where you're just not the same after encountering a particular text.” [43:11]

• Shared and Private Obsessions:

  • The conversation highlights the balance between private, individual fixations and shared, collective experiences. They discuss how some obsessions are intensely personal, while others bring people together, fostering a sense of community.
  • Quote:

    Vincent: “Obsession is a mark. It’s like a parallel universe where you have your own journey.” [General understanding]

• Obsession and Personal Growth:

  • The hosts explore how obsessions contribute to self-discovery and personal evolution. They discuss the idea that engaging deeply with a cultural work can lead to profound self-reflection and growth.
  • Quote:

    Vincent: “They set you on a trajectory where you could learn something else and change yourself.” [48:19]

• The Influence of the Internet:

  • Alex raises concerns about how the internet shapes modern obsessions, making it easier to find niche interests but also exposing individuals to externally imposed trends.
  • Quote:

    Alex: “The internet... sometimes trends are basically foisted upon us.” [46:43]

• Self-Directed vs. Algorithm-Driven Obsessions:

  • Vinson cautions listeners to remain vigilant in ensuring their obsessions are self-directed rather than driven by algorithms and external pressures.
  • Quote:

    Vincent: “You have to look around with a certain level of paranoia to be like, am I sure this was me?” [47:57]

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Conclusion

The episode wraps up with the hosts reflecting on the sacred intersection where cultural and personal obsessions meet. They underscore the lasting impact that summer fixations can have on individuals, shaping identities and memories. The conversation also touches on the dual nature of obsessions as both affirming and transformative experiences.

Key Quote:

Alex: “When you are younger, you are more open... When you find something that commands your attention, that is the deepest pleasure.” [47:13-48:19]

Final Thoughts: The hosts express gratitude to their listeners for sharing their voicemails and encourage future engagement, hinting at potential deep dives into specific obsessions in upcoming episodes.

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Behind the Scenes and Production Notes

The episode is produced by Rhiannon Corby, with Alex Barish serving as consulting editor. Executive production is handled by Stephen Valentino, and the theme music is composed by Alexis Quadrato. Special thanks are given to engineers James Yost and Mike Kutchman for their mixing expertise.

Advertising Note: The transcript includes advertisements for Progressive Insurance, LinkedIn Ads, and Quince, which are omitted from this summary as per instructions.

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Connecting with Critics at Large

Listeners are encouraged to engage with the show by submitting ideas for future episodes via email. The episode underscores the profound connection between cultural works and personal identity, making it a compelling listen for those interested in the depths of cultural criticism and personal narratives.

Transcript

[Nomi]

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[Vincent]

Hi, I'm New Yorker cartoonist and dog dad, Jason Adam Katzenstein. So why am I getting all of these ads for cat food? It's ridiculous. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. I'm the wrong audience for these cat food ads. When you want to reach the right professionals, you should use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, and that's where it stands apart from other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, company revenue, all the professionals you need to reach in one place. So stop wasting your budget on the wrong audience. Stop sending me cat ads and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign, so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com New Yorker. That's LinkedIn.com New Yorker terms and conditions apply. Only on LinkedIn ads.

[Nomi]

You guys, summer is around the corner. I can almost taste it.

[Vincent]

Oh, the hot dogs. Just the slight burn on the ends, right?

[Nomi]

The sweat dripping down my back. The chub rub chafing my thighs.

[Alex]

The jingle of the Mr. Softy van making its rounds.

[Vincent]

The tang of SPF that never quite rubs in. You know what I mean? You know what I'm talking about.

[Nomi]

Oh, we do. We do.

[Alex]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent]

Sand until freaking October.

[Alex]

We know. We know. And with summer almost here, we are taking this opportunity to revisit one of my favorite episodes of our show from last summer called Summer Obsessions.

[Vincent]

I love dipping back into this episode on the brink of summer. We hope you do, too. Enjoy.

[Alex]

You know, we love to define our terms on this show. So what for you is the start of summer?

[Nomi]

I don't know if it's generally the start of summer every year, but for me, this summer definitely started with Justin Timberlake getting a DUI in the Hamptons.

[Alex]

And why was that the start of summer for you?

[Nomi]

I mean, you know, it's just. It just signals the. The letting go, the slight falling apart, the loosening of the shackles of. Of laws and propriety.

[Alex]

Okay, I like it. So it's a time to take some chances.

[Nomi]

Exactly. Maybe not drunk Driving. We're not encouraging. No, no, no. Yeah.

[Vincent]

Anyway, for the spring, there's the groundhog. For the summer, there's celebrity malfeasance.

[Nomi]

Yes.

[Alex]

So today we have an episode we've been planning for a while now, well before the summer started. With your help, listeners.

[Vincent]

Today on Critics at Large, we are talking Summer obsessions.

[Nomi]

Yeah, we've been getting a bunch of voicemails from you guys in the past few weeks.

[Vincent]

Absolutely. We asked you, and you delivered, by the way, to talk about the way summer lends itself to a different, more intense level of reading or listening. Just a different kind of experience of art, really. That can only happen in these. These balmy months. That's right.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Alex]

So just to be clear, we have not been allowed to listen to these voice memos. We have not heard a single one.

[Nomi]

No. We have no idea.

[Alex]

But today's the day.

[Vincent]

Mm.

[Nomi]

Today's the day, my friends.

[Alex]

And we're also gonna share our own summer obsessions.

[Vincent]

We haven't heard each other's yet either, so lots of suspense.

[Alex]

Are you ready? Should we all hold hands?

[Nomi]

I'm not sure if I'm ready.

[Alex]

I'm always trying to hold hands with my co hosts.

[Nomi]

Trying and succeeding.

[Alex]

That's happened before. We can hold hands. Well, we promise, listeners, even though this is perhaps a vulnerable exercise, you will get the truth. Because this is an exchange. Us to you, you to us.

[Nomi]

Give and take.

[Alex]

So, you know, the big question we have today is, what is it about this season? We're getting philosophical here.

[Nomi]

This the season.

[Alex]

What is it about this season that lets us just go deep on a work of art, a movie, a book, whatever it might be that lets us really get into it and get it under our skin? So that's today on Critics at Summer Obsessions.

[Nomi]

Okay, Vincent, who will be our dj, will be playing us the voicemails.

[Alex]

Cue it up, Vincent.

[Vincent]

Here we go. Here is a voicemail from a Critics at Large listener.

[Nomi]

So I shouldn't even be doing this while driving.

[Alex]

Oh, my God.

[Nomi]

Justin Timberlake, is that you? Dangerous at the time of.

[Alex]

I'm sorry, we gotta back it up. We gotta back it up.

[Vincent]

This is gonna ruin the tour.

[Nomi]

What tour?

[Alex]

The world tour. What tour? Oh, my God.

[Nomi]

The world tour.

[Alex]

Yep.

[Vincent]

Okay. Okay.

[Alex]

We're all in shock. Absolute shock.

[Vincent]

I'm on. I'm on the controls. Here we go.

[Nomi]

My Summer Obsession was considered dangerous at the time of my obsession, the summer of 1991. I want to say Christian Slater was like the thing.

[Alex]

He'd been in Heather's in 1989 and.

[Nomi]

Pump up the Volume in 1990.

[Alex]

And by 1991 his movies were on VHS and I was 13 years old.

[Nomi]

So he was like fully accessible to me as long as I could get.

[Alex]

My mom to check out the movies at the video store.

[Nomi]

I remember having a sleepover.

[Alex]

Like, I was so like, everyone has.

[Nomi]

To know about Christian Slater.

[Alex]

Yeah. And spread that gospel.

[Nomi]

All of the girls moms were like, you cannot watch like Christian Slater movies. He was forbidden because Heather's was such a kind of controversial, like dangerous forbidden.

[Alex]

Fruit, as it were.

[Nomi]

He was a bit of a bad boy. I even remember like taking like an intermission between the movies to go outside.

[Alex]

And like run through the sprinklers because we were all probably like absolutely dying.

[Nomi]

For this ultimate bad boy.

[Alex]

Oh, my God, cool off.

[Nomi]

I get it.

[Alex]

And it helped probably that I had.

[Nomi]

Not been kissed or and boys did not like me. So I could put all of my fantasy energy into my date with Christian Slater. I could not identify more.

[Alex]

Yeah, Nomi is this listener. She is fully bonded with this listener.

[Nomi]

What if I, like. Actually I sent in this, you know, would my voice disguised by like putting a sock on the.

[Alex]

What if you paid a woman in the street to record your own obsession?

[Nomi]

No, but I mean. I mean, I feel like I'm probably about the same age as this listener. I moved to America for the year from Israel and I knew no one, I had no friends. And so I had to go see Pump up the Volume with My mom.

[Alex]

He's got a pirate radio station.

[Nomi]

Nobody knows who he is. I could be that, an anonymous nerd sitting across from you.

[Vincent]

And then you turn around and he just looks away.

[Nomi]

He never looks back at you. And it was so embarrassing because there's nudity in that movie. There's cursing. He was a bit of a bad boy, as the listener suggested. And, you know, he was just a dream. Yeah.

[Vincent]

I have no real association with Christian Slater, but this species of obsession, this thing of when you're just young enough to imagine that you have a unique connection with a celebrity, that pure hearted connection with someone who will never know your name, but you feel like almost fated to one day encounter this person. It's so deep, the unrequited pain of it, the pleasure of that. I mean, there's nothing better.

[Alex]

It's exquisite.

[Vincent]

It's exquisite. It's exquisite.

[Nomi]

Alex.

[Vincent]

Yeah.

[Alex]

We have a collective situation here which I think is also important.

[Nomi]

That's really important. Sleep over.

[Alex]

An obsession, any kind of obsession, especially a summer obsession, might be very private and Very individual. And sometimes it can be shared. And it is about that kind of group experience of everyone becoming enthralled at the same thing.

[Nomi]

I know. It was private for me because I had no friends.

[Alex]

I know. And I'm just gonna go to that.

[Nomi]

Particular point in time.

[Alex]

Your mom probably did not share your obsession.

[Nomi]

She did not. And I remember being also, like, a huge bitch to her. Huge bitch of like, ugh. I'm, like, forced to go. Forced. Like, my poor mom. Like, she didn't want to go see Pumpkin up the volume, you know, but she was like, I'll take you. And I felt resentment, but also deep embarrassment, which now, you know, is karmically is revisiting me as I now have a teenager.

[Alex]

It's a beautiful thing.

[Nomi]

It's a beautiful thing. It's a circle of life, my friends.

[Vincent]

All right, I think we're ready to hear another one.

[Alex]

Batter up.

[Vincent]

We're going to unearth all of our own childhood dramas if we keep on going. Another voicemail from a listener.

[Nomi]

I was 14 years old and as usual, my parents sent me to the summer camp. It was a usual practice in Soviet Union. All school children of all ages in summer went to summer camps to breathe some fresh air. So this when I started reciting the poems.

[Alex]

Okay, didn't expect this to go to poems. But of course we have to remember we're talking about Russia. So obviously, yes, poems.

[Nomi]

We were divided in the squads according to our ages. After the night curfew, we were not.

[Alex]

Allowed to do anything.

[Nomi]

It usually happened at 9pm the lights were off. The squad leaders, they made the last round. I was absolutely obsessed with Pushkin Lermont of Yesenin. Maybe you don't know this author this much in United States. The one thing I remember about Yesinen is I believe he committed suicide by slitting his wrists. And he wrote his last poem with his own blood.

[Alex]

That's obsession worthy.

[Nomi]

The Russians.

[Alex]

The Russians. I mean, I'm loving this right now because the love that the Russian people have for poetry is legendary. And here we're getting it straight.

[Nomi]

Yeah. So I started to recite this to the entire ward. And then the word of my reciting spread around the camp and some kids from other squads started coming to listen to my readings. And then the squad leaders secretly started coming.

[Vincent]

And so we all were immersed, incredible.

[Nomi]

In this amazing experience. This was my old times summer obsession.

[Alex]

I would like to meet you. I would like to hug you. I would like to have you read to me. Even though I would not understand it. I Mean summer camp. Classic place for obsessions. This is reminding me. Unfortunately, and let's hope to God we cut this from the show, that I had a similar experience at summer camp, except it was not around a work of art. It was around an actual cult I started at the age of 10.

[Nomi]

Wait, what?

[Alex]

Certainly centered on myself. What? Yes, and a made up ceremony. This is not the same thing as Pushkin.

[Vincent]

We just. What?

[Nomi]

How things are being revealed, things are coming out.

[Alex]

I wanted a cult and I made one happen. That's all I'm gonna say about that.

[Nomi]

And did you have many followers?

[Alex]

Oh, yeah.

[Nomi]

Wait, what?

[Alex]

Well, it was one night only.

[Vincent]

Oh, did you have to. Did you create a whole religion? Like, were there tenets to this?

[Alex]

There weren't tenets, no. It was more like, you know, rituals and fun stuff to do in a circle. The counselors were involved. It was all above board.

[Nomi]

I mean, the thing is, you know, one thing about this listener's voicemail. Thank you, dear listener. By the way, this is lovely. Is something that I think might tie together in my mind at least the youthful summer obsessions have to do with a flouting of rules, right? With. With some gesture, at least, towards rebelliousness. Right. Or kind of a breaking away from the norms. And in this case, you know, they had curfew, they had to turn off the lights. And yet the poetry was read and people were coming to listen to it.

[Alex]

Precisely.

[Vincent]

Here is another voicemail from a critics at large listener. Here we go. Hi, critics.

[Alex]

Hi.

[Vincent]

Hey. I love your show. I'm happy to try to contribute. Although My Obsession was not a film and it wasn't a book and it.

[Alex]

Wasn'T a band, so I don't know if it'll qualify.

[Vincent]

But my obsession was the GoldenEye 007 video game from on. On Nintendo 64. Oh, my God.

[Alex]

Yes. Of course it qualifies.

[Vincent]

Oh, my God.

[Alex]

It is now Vincent's turn to deeply identify.

[Vincent]

I'm looking it up now on Wikipedia and it says that it was released in 1997.

[Nomi]

Goldeneye. Load a rumble pack.

[Alex]

You know how to use one of these.

[Nomi]

And see how it feels when 007 meets N64.

[Vincent]

I have memories of, you know, childhood. There were four of us on the block and only one of us had a Nintendo 64. So we'd all just gather at my friend Chris's house and shoot each other in pixelated glory.

[Alex]

Yes.

[Vincent]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Well, hand me my gavel, because I'm ready to declare. GoldenEye 007 video game a text.

[Vincent]

It is a text. It's a text, of course.

[Alex]

Vincent, tell us about the text.

[Vincent]

I didn't. I was not, as we have established on this very podcast, a big James Bond person at all. At the time that this video game came out, I had not even seen goldeneye, the film.

[Nomi]

But Vincent, were you a gamer?

[Vincent]

I definitely was such an early adopter of the Nintendo 64 that I ordered it early. And yes, Goldeneye was one of the first great games of that console. I remember again, a bunch of friends, seven or eight of us in my friend Tim's attic across the street from school playing goldeneye. I would always end up looking at the ceiling cause somebody shot me in the back of the head. But being good at goldeneye was a mark. It was almost as important as sports.

[Alex]

The Greco Romans had wrestling, we had goldeneye. Let's hear the next voice.

[Vincent]

That's it. Yeah, here it is.

[Nomi]

Hello, critics. I'm a huge fan of the show. My Name's Isabel, I'm 22 years old, and I'm currently phoning in from Bogota, Colombia. Love it. Yay. Beautiful. My last significant summer obsession was in the summer of 2022, when I became obsessed with Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic. It was the summer after my father had passed away. Earlier that February. I went in with low expectations, but lo and behold, the film just washed over me.

[Vincent]

I'm on before the shoot and nobody's gonna remember me.

[Nomi]

It moved me so deeply that I cried thrice during my first screening. I subsequently watched it seven more times and then three more times at home. After its release on digital, I became obsessed with everything Elvis. I started listening to his music day and night. One threw a party in the county jail. I saw 10 of his films in the span of a month. My favorite is Jailhouse Rock.

[Alex]

Sing that Rock.

[Nomi]

And yes, I know the film is not entirely honest about Elvis. It overly sanitizes his life, particularly his relationship towards Priscilla. But I still very much, deeply cherish this film. It made me very happy in a very dark time in my life. It was a distraction for grief as well as a way I learned how to cope with my grief. So for that reason, I'm very thankful with Austin Butler, with Basler Men, and with everybody involved in the film and with Elvis for giving us a lot of great music.

[Alex]

Goodbye, Isabel. This is fabulous.

[Nomi]

I love it.

[Alex]

This is what it means to become obsessed. It's a very personal thing. We've been talking about group obsessions, but here is super personal obsession where the cultural item hits you in a particular Place. In the summer of 2008, when I was in college, I watched Keira Knightley's Pride and prejudice probably between 30 and 40 times. It was basically playing on a loop. I have no idea if it's a good movie or not, but I get it. It hits.

[Nomi]

I think, also, Alex, what you're saying, it makes me think about the kind of connection between, like, adaptation and original. And Isobel is telling us about watching Elvis, Bas Luhrmann's Elvis, and then going back to the original, you know, and watching all the actual Elvis movies, also kind of gaining an appreciation and an obsession for the original that begot this version totally.

[Vincent]

But it's also just so true that, like, grief can create obsession. You know, it is like, a way of coping. It's a way of, like, your brain does not work in the way that it used to work, and therefore, like, feeding it something new, like the shock of the new. The shock of a new obsession becomes just a new way to start, like, reformulating your mind. So, yeah, that's beautiful. And so true. So true. Here we are, critics at Large Radio, serving you up another summer obsession. Hi, critics. I just wanted to tell you about my summer obsession of sort of the dread summer of 2020. I was spending it, especially in that summer, just, like, driving around in my car on these, like, sparsely populated freeways, like, desperate to just, like, see something and try and feel connected to the world. And I remember feeling so far apart from my friends that the thing I became obsessed over listening to my car was the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. Of course, they decide to, like, get away from Naples, and Lanoux insists that they go to this island where she knows her crush lives and sort of everything. Spoiler alert. Turns against her, and her best friend Leila, starts having an affair with her crush. And it's just, like, so awful. It turns into, like, the worst beautification imaginable. But especially in that, like, horrible time of the pandemic, I remember feeling, like, what I wouldn't give to, like, have my crush be sleeping with my best friend. And in a weird way, like, what a gift those novels are that they feel like a connection to real friendship, the good and the bad.

[Nomi]

Yeah, it's a very kind of, like, the yearning as well as kind of the dashing of that desire and yearning. Fucking Nino.

[Alex]

Oh, my God. Yeah, don't even say his name in here.

[Nomi]

And, yeah, so that makes perfect sense to me. Yeah, I love those novels, too.

[Vincent]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Let's get the next voicemail.

[Vincent]

Let's get another one going. Okay.

[Alex]

I'm getting obsessed with the obsessions.

[Nomi]

I know. I love it so much.

[Vincent]

Here we go.

[Alex]

Hi, Critics at Large.

[Nomi]

I was just wanting to tell you.

[Alex]

About my summer obsession. The year was 2005.

[Nomi]

The place was New Orleans, and the song was Ramble on by Led Zeppelin.

[Alex]

You know, I had just ended.

[Nomi]

I was the breaker upper.

[Alex]

I had ended a really toxic relationship that, you know, went on far too long. And I found this song and it just infused that entire summer with just electricity.

[Nomi]

Everything was filled with meaning. I was on my way.

[Alex]

Thanks to you.

[Nomi]

I'm much obliged.

[Alex]

Such a pleasant stay.

[Nomi]

And then, of course, my birthday was in August that summer and, you know.

[Alex]

A couple weeks later, Hurricane Katrina came in and just kind of ruined everything.

[Nomi]

You know, I worked at Charity Hospital. The hospital never reopened.

[Alex]

My life completely changed. I literally had to ramble on.

[Vincent]

My way.

[Alex]

It just represents how a song can.

[Nomi]

Kind of change over time.

[Alex]

And it's just such a bittersweet memory.

[Nomi]

Of the summer of 2005 in New Orleans.

[Alex]

In a minute, we'll hear more of your summer obsessions and we three will all hold hands and brace ourselves and gather our courage and share ours. Critics at Large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[Nomi]

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Jeffrey Hinton or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts. Once the temps started rising, I realized I was back in the same worn out rotation.

[Alex]

So I gave my daily uniform an upgrade.

[Vincent]

With Quince.

[Nomi]

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[Alex]

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[Nomi]

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[Alex]

It's been an effortless staple for several summers now.

[Nomi]

If you're like me and you find.

[Alex]

The summer heat to be a little.

[Vincent]

Much, let me tell you that this.

[Nomi]

Dress makes summer look easy without being.

[Alex]

Hard on your wallet.

[Nomi]

Treat your closet to a little summer glow up with quince. Go to quince.com nycritics for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

[Vincent]

That's Q U I-n c e.com nycritics.

[Nomi]

To get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com nycritics.

[Alex]

Okay, it's our turn. Let's just. Let's do it. Let's go. I'm gonna just. I'm nominating Vincent.

[Nomi]

Okay. Vincent.

[Alex]

I'm nominating him.

[Nomi]

I feel like Vincent is maybe the least neurotic of all of us.

[Vincent]

You know, we all have our own.

[Alex]

I'm waving it away. I want to clean it. I want. Vincent. Vincent, come and clean. Don't let them assume anything about you. Don't. Let's hear it.

[Nomi]

Never let them see you sweat.

[Vincent]

I will tell you all about the summer of 1998, during which I went to a camp called Moussilaq.

[Nomi]

Okay. How old were you?

[Vincent]

I was 13 in the summer of 98 in Orford, New Hampshire, near a lake. And it was my first time. Often, I think these obsessions coincide with kind of first times in our lives.

[Nomi]

Totally.

[Vincent]

This is why the memories stick. I had finished my first year at a new school, a sort of fancier, wider school than I'd ever gone to. And then this summer camp also had just, like, whatever demographics of people that I had never really spent this much time with.

[Nomi]

You were developing, like, a new understanding and mapping of social.

[Vincent]

100%.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Vincent]

I had just learned about a new kind of New Yorker. And now I'm learning about a new kind of, sort of wider New England. Yeah. Rural camp environment experience. We had dances with the girls camp across the streets.

[Alex]

Okay. I wanted to know if it was a boys camp or girls. Okay, got it.

[Vincent]

Boys camp. But we were across abutting a girls camp. We would have these dances so provocative to abut the dances had. Songs like that don't impress me much, you know? You know what I'm talking about. But before I went to camp, my mother took me, like, CD shopping. And among the CDs I bought, one was by DMX, one was by Big Pun, People that I still love. But the one that stuck with me, the one that mattered the most to me and still matters to me today, was the album Never say Never by Brandi.

[Alex]

There it is.

[Nomi]

Brandy Norway.

[Vincent]

Brandy is a singer who I love more than any. She has amazing vocal range. She is the best, I think, sort of background singer as lead singer ever. Meaning, you know, she stacks her vocals doing all the ad libs, creates incredibly intense harmonies. The producer that she worked with, this guy named Rodney Jerkins, who's Like got a background a lot like mine. Like, grew up in church. His father was a preacher. And you can hear like little gospel rhythms and his background. And so I was learning a lot about music, about other people for the first time ever in my life. I heard the Red Hot Chili Peppers this summer for the first time. For the first time ever. It was huge and it was a big deal for me.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Vincent]

But my way of reconnecting to where I was from every night that I got back to my bunk and sort of like retreated back into myself. The way that I recentered myself every night was listening to the sweet sounds of Brandi Norwal.

[Alex]

It's your pushkin.

[Vincent]

It's my Pushkin. Except it was ultimate. I did not recite, I did not do renditions. And then, of course, this album, Never say Never is most famous for the great song, the Boy Is Mine. Dueling song, the Boy Is Mine, featuring Monica.

[Alex]

Let's hear it. This song is. This song is inscribed within me.

[Vincent]

This song is a classic. And this album is a classic to me. And it will always bring me back to my first summer of summer camp. Brandi, I love you wherever you are. Keep shining, keep singing.

[Alex]

Bravo. Bravo.

[Vincent]

That's enough of this memory for me.

[Alex]

Well, Vincent, I love that you did not share. That's very good and important that you did not share Brandi with those around you.

[Vincent]

It was all mine.

[Alex]

Yeah. This is what I'm saying. There are summer obsessions that are meant to be shared. There are summer obsessions that are meant to be hoarded.

[Nomi]

Totally. Yeah. I mean, my summer obsession is Mr. Jim Morrison. James Douglas Morrison, an American poet.

[Vincent]

He sounds like an American president.

[Nomi]

Mr. Mojo Rising.

[Alex]

Imagine what could have been.

[Nomi]

This was 1990, the same summer in which I forced my mother to take me to watch Pump up the volume and then was a huge bitch to her. So, as I already said, a famous summer. A famous summer. I was spirited away by my parents to the States. Seattle, because of my dad's job from Israel. And on the way to the States, we stopped in Paris for a week. Now, listeners and critics, I had already become quite into the Doors and Jim Morrison in the school year prior and was listening on my little Walkman all the time to some of the greatest hits of our friends from Los Angeles, California.

[Vincent]

The time to hesitate is through no time to wallow in the Mile Try.

[Nomi]

Now we can only lose and our love become a funeral pile. I was very much into the music itself, which sounded to me mysterious and poetic and dealt with big things. Themes of death and madness and sex and all of those really, really heavy topics that, you know, are especially attractive when you're a young girl of 14, certainly. But more than the band, I was very much enamored with Jim Morrison himself, who was a magnetic lizard king riding the snake.

[Vincent]

Wow.

[Nomi]

With his top off, wearing tight leather pants.

[Vincent]

Oof.

[Nomi]

And when we were in Paris, I was lonely. I was angry, I was alienated, I was horny. But I didn't really know it. The whole thing was a mess.

[Alex]

We were in Paris.

[Nomi]

We were in Paris. We were in Paris. I was skulking around, listening to my Walkman along the Seine as my parents were trying to be like, let's go to Louvre. You know, whatever. And then they were like, oh, do you wanna go to Pere Lachaise? And I was like, where Jim Morrison is buried?

[Alex]

The famous cemetery.

[Nomi]

The famous cemetery.

[Alex]

So had you connected it in your head?

[Nomi]

I had, yes. Somehow I knew that, you know, Jim Morrison was buried there. And we did arrive at the site, and I.

[Vincent]

The site. I love it.

[Nomi]

There were a bunch of sort of people sort of smoking around, skulking and smoking around the grave. Your people, My people. Older than me. I was kind of embarrassed that I. You guys, you know, are kind of like, recognizing a thread here, perhaps. So I tried to sort of, like, walk away from them and pretend that I wasn't with them. I was expecting to see Jim Morrison's headstone because, you know, I mean, there was this sort of bust of Jim Morrison classically on the grave. I had seen pictures, but either someone had stolen it, there was no bust. There was a lot of graffiti. It wasn't as impressive as I had hoped it would be, but I kind of went through the motions and listen to the songs on my Walkman. You know, I might have listened to the end.

[Alex]

This is the End, My only Friend.

[Vincent]

The end of our.

[Nomi]

You know, the classic song. And, you know, basically what I want to say about it is that it seems kind of like a joke. And I'm talking about it like a joke. But it was extremely meaningful to me at the time and in some ways, I think, remains meaningful to me, even while recognizing the kind of, like, humorous and comedic elements of both the story and the fact of the Doors in Jim Morrison, who's a little bit embarrassing with his kind of, like, theatrics and poetics, and yet, you know, really captures a mood.

[Vincent]

Yeah.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Nomi, I love that you've stayed true to this obsession. You have.

[Nomi]

I'll never forget it.

[Alex]

No, you have. And even as you May ironize it in an appropriate and humorous way.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Alex]

I think you, Honor Young know me.

[Nomi]

Thank you. Thank you. That's really meaningful. Thank you, Alex.

[Alex]

I do think so.

[Vincent]

And also classically, the great outpouring of any obsession worth its name is the pilgrimage.

[Nomi]

The pilgrimage that you like.

[Vincent]

You can't just feel you have to go.

[Nomi]

It was my Mecca. It was my Mecca, Alex.

[Alex]

Okay, my turn has come. So here's the truth. I have found this assignment really difficult. And I think it may be in part because of my somewhat literalist nature.

[Nomi]

Okay.

[Alex]

I've certainly had many obsessions that I'd be delighted to talk about, you know, embarrassing ones, ennobling ones, whatever it might be. But I was looking for the ones that intersected as the assignment called for with the summer.

[Nomi]

Yes.

[Alex]

And here's what I've settled on as emblematic of a certain summer of my life. And like you guys, it's music, you know, I think music clearly isn't it.

[Vincent]

It's one of the big ones.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Alex]

Okay. Summer of 2005, I had just graduated from high school, big transition moment. So the broader scope of my obsession over this period of time, the spring and the summer of senior year, was like Crosby, Stills and Nash adjacent. I wanna say I was listening to a ton of Crosby, Stills and Nash I went to. At least they had reunited with Young. I'm pretty sure he was in. At least. I went to like at least two, maybe three concerts. But in this case, the specific obsession all coalesced around Martin Scorsese's film the Last Waltz.

[Nomi]

Oh, God, yes, I love that.

[Alex]

The Last Waltz, the documentary movie that Martin Scorsese, one of a pod favorite made about the last big show that the band put on before they hung it up after 10 years of being on the road. Classic Thanksgiving concert in San Francisco.

[Vincent]

Mr. Can you tell me where a.

[Alex]

Man might find a bed?

[Vincent]

He just grinned and shook my hand.

[Alex]

No Was all he said Take a.

[Vincent]

Load off, fanny Take a load to.

[Alex]

Freeze so the Last Waltz, I think the reason why it became such a fixation was first of all, it's a smorgasbord, you know, it has the most. It has everybody like you have. Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, of course, Bob Dylan. My number one comes out at the end like you're not even expecting it. In there he is, Van Morrison doing an absolutely mad, coked up, beautiful rendition of Caravan. Think about this obsession is why, I ask myself, why was I going back in time to my parents era when I was just on the verge of like, going forth into my own time. Like, definitely there was music that I was into from my own time period. You know, I was all about the Strokes. Okay. I was going to see the White Stripes quite regularly. Like it was all happening. But those weren't summer obsessions. I think here there was something about 60s youth culture, and in this case, like 70s leaving youth culture. And maybe, you know, the. The Last Waltz is about saying goodbye to something. It's about ending this period of youth and kind of going off into whatever's next and something about finding your own thing, but also connecting maybe like subterraneanly with your parents thing.

[Vincent]

Yeah, yeah.

[Alex]

Before we break, should we hear a few more voicemails? Yes, let's do it.

[Nomi]

Hello, critics at large. Hi.

[Vincent]

Summer 2009 was defined for me by John Upton Dyke's novel the Witches of Eastwick.

[Alex]

Oh, wow.

[Vincent]

I was working for a party promoter on Fire Island.

[Nomi]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent]

And would walk around all day listening to Kate Redding's really flawless audiobook recording of the novel while I was tacking flyers to people's doors. The novel is really about a fleeting moment of power and abandon in its characters lives. And that's very much what summer on Fire island can feel like in a sense. Fire island became Eastwick for me. Another cloistered coastal village where sex and gossip and bitchiness were currency, where every margarita became both potion and poison, and every dance floor and hot tub party came to feel like a witch's Sabbath.

[Alex]

I'm getting a little updike in this voice memo.

[Vincent]

Yeah, you're good. First of all, my summer obsession is now what it must be like to be a party promoter on Fire Island. What the fuck did you just say to me? That sounds like so. Man, that sounds like so much fun. Okay, here we go.

[Alex]

As a teenager, I. For some reason that I'm still trying to figure out, Red Atlas Shrugged. Twice over two different summers, I had not had any consultation. Nobody had suggested this book to me. I simply found it at the library on one of those spinners. And it was maybe mysterious enough, character driven enough, and just big enough that it was the thing I was doing that I could be seen doing by my family. That meant I didn't have to interact with them.

[Vincent]

And.

[Alex]

And it wasn't obviously until years later that I realized that Ayn Rand and me had different political views. I think often on this experience because I'm sort of intrigued by how I didn't really have reading mentors, that the people I looked up to as to what to read were so varied. That I ended up charting my own course through books. And I see Atlas Shrugged, despite being an embarrassing choice now as me really committing to the act of reading itself. Listener, I'm gonna tell you something right now, which is if you did have the reading mentors that you may wish you had had, you would not be the reader you are today. Like, you can't just get the list and go trotting down it.

[Vincent]

That's right.

[Alex]

There is no Yellow Brick Road. And Ayn Rand can happen to anyone she's happened to a lot of.

[Vincent]

And famously has.

[Alex]

That's right. Yeah. And like and famous.

[Nomi]

And it's very famously has. It's very teenage too. And I sort of love reading mistakes, you know?

[Alex]

Oh, I love them.

[Nomi]

When you, like, read something and you don't know you're too young or maybe you're in a different context or something, so you don't understand, like, the cultural valence or status of what you're reading, whether good or bad. Right.

[Alex]

What you say is so true, Nomi. Reading errors are crucial.

[Nomi]

Yeah.

[Alex]

In a minute. Where does the cultural meet? The personal critics at large will be right back.

[Vincent]

We all have bad days and sometimes bad weeks and maybe even bad years.

[Alex]

But the good news is we don't.

[Vincent]

Have to figure out life all alone. I'm comedian Chris Duffy, host of ted's how to Be a Better Human podcast.

[Alex]

And our show is about the little.

[Vincent]

Ways that you can improve your life. Actual practical tips that you can put into place that will make your day to day better.

[Alex]

Whether it is setting boundaries at work.

[Vincent]

Or rethinking how you clean your house, each episode has conversations with experts who.

[Alex]

Share tips on how to navigate life's ups and downs. Find how to be a better human.

[Vincent]

Wherever you're listening to this.

[Nomi]

My name is Sasha and I currently.

[Alex]

Live in Auckland, New Zealand.

[Nomi]

And my summer obsession in the summer of 2003 was Pirates of the Caribbean, the first movie.

[Vincent]

If you spring me from this cell, I shall take you to the Black Pearl and your Bonnie lass. You're a pirate.

[Nomi]

My best friend and I at the.

[Alex]

Time were insanely obsessed. My favorite memory is that was the.

[Nomi]

Summer of the big heat wave in New York that knocked out a bunch of power. We were in the cinema when it happened, mid Pirates of the Caribbean. And we just got up to the front of the movie theater and started.

[Alex]

To do the rest of the movie ourselves. And there was only one other person in the cinema with us at the time. So until the ushers came to get us out of the building we just carried on and he just sort of sat and seemed to enjoy two 12 year olds going nuts. I love that. And one thing I'm getting from listening to the voicemails, from listening to you both, from thinking through my own obsessions, is that what we're really talking about is this important. And I would say, like, sacred place, probably where the cultural meets the personal, you know, Basically what I want to know is what you guys think about all this. Like, if this seems to you what the obsessions are about.

[Nomi]

Yeah. I mean, there's truly nothing more important, period, I think. I mean, when I think about why culture matters, obviously culture matters in kind of like enormous collective ways that can move enormous groups of people and make historical changes and so on. But on the personal level, culture can really change a life and can affect a life deeply in ways where you're just not the same after encountering a particular text or group of texts. And it makes its mark on you in a way that's really significant. I was just thinking about it last night where I was watching on Criterion right now. They have postcards from the Edge, the Mike Nichols.

[Alex]

Oh, I just watched that recently for the first time.

[Nomi]

Yeah. And I watched it for the first time, I believe it was in 1991. I had started going to movies on my own because I was alone, because I was a bit sophisticated and I was a bit of a rebel, you know, a little bit alienated. And I went to see that movie, which is based on the Carrie Fisher novel of the same name, but specifically the movie I remember going to see and feeling so strongly about it and thinking it was so amazing. And literally the movie ended. And I remember feeling really elated, elated that art is possible. You know, I remember coming out of that movie on high. I was like 15, and I watched it last night and I felt the same way. I hadn't seen that movie in at least 20 years.

[Vincent]

Wow.

[Nomi]

And I was like, I'm the same person. I'm the same. I'm exactly the same person I was. And I realized that because of this piece of culture that I remember watching and obsessing over when it came out and rewatching and feeling exactly the same about it. And it was a realization that hit me like a bolt of lightning.

[Alex]

Yeah, I think I love that and have often had that same experience. But also, I do want to just validate the idea. Like, I think both are wonderful. The idea of finding out that you are the same person is so exhilarating and affirming and exciting and Then sometimes finding out that you've moved away totally. And that's what I got from the listener voicemails too, about these obsessions. Sometimes I look back at a past obsession. I'll just briefly mention it, and hopefully we can do maybe five episodes on it in the future. My deep obsession as a late elementary schooler with the musical Rent. Oh, my God. And I think, what happened here?

[Nomi]

What went wrong?

[Alex]

What happened here? And yet I know what happened. And I feel a lot of love and affection for the person who, you know, went through it.

[Nomi]

But it's the same thing. It's like you.

[Alex]

And sometimes I stand by it and sometimes I'm horrified and often I'm in the middle.

[Nomi]

It's like you learned about the AIDS crisis through this.

[Alex]

Sure did.

[Nomi]

Connected to New York, downtown New York, at a certain period. Not part of it. No, but you know what I mean. It's like you watch a version of something and you connect and then you understand what's interesting to you in life and in art.

[Alex]

So here's another question. I have a lot of these obsessions, but not all of them, interestingly. I mean, the kind of looming force of the Internet is on my mind.

[Nomi]

Yes.

[Alex]

Because of course that can direct communities together and sort of especially like you want obsession, like, go to a Reddit board, you know, like if you're into something that seems obscure or whatever, like you will find your people. And that's really cool. But it also means sometimes that like these trends are basically foisted upon us. I mean, they always were. So it's different. That's different than an obsession. But. But do you think that there's anything about now, writ large, that is different, obsession wise, than then?

[Vincent]

I think your point is well taken. I think that you have to be a little bit more vigilant in discovering whether you are truly being self directed or not. More is discoverable than there ever has been. And therefore, you know, the classic like, I found this on my own thing is of course possible and maybe even more possible, but you just have to kind of look around with a certain level of paranoia to be like, am I sure this was me? But I think what I got from what you just said, Naomi, is like, not only are you the same person, but crucially, you made yourself that person.

[Nomi]

Totally.

[Vincent]

Like the sort of these twin themes of education and the kind of education that takes place on no one's watch but your own, and also self creation and even. And it's the same thing whether you're the same or you're not. Or you come back and you're different. It's because it sets you on a trajectory where you could learn something else and change yourself. Right?

[Nomi]

That's so true.

[Vincent]

So much of what we do on this show is, oh, this reminds me of this thing. We all have these banks of references that live inside of us and sort of are us. Whatever we quote, whatever we make reference to on so many levels is who we are and is a result of this self making that it seems to me so precious. And I think people still do that today.

[Alex]

I think so too. I absolutely agree. And maybe it was a bit of a red herring kind of question. The intro has its spoilers.

[Vincent]

I worry about it all the time.

[Nomi]

It's legitimate, the algorithm and so on. You know, the kind of like being led rather than leading oneself.

[Alex]

I think what maybe I feel is more pertinent in some way is one's own age. Because when you are younger, you are more open. Not saying that we're all like set in our ways, but you expect to discover. And that's part of what it is to go through the world. You expect to be just like swept off your feet by something or to discover something and suddenly it explains everything to you. And it is the. And it's so exciting. And then by the fall, like, well, you have a new keydol mythology. Yeah, you've moved on. And when that happens in adulthood, when that kind of loving attention clicks in and you find something not only worthy of it, but that indeed commands it, that is the deepest pleasure. And maybe it's because it goes back to what you were saying, Nomi, that it shows yourself to yourself again, that you're still there. There you are. This has been Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Conde Nast's Head of Global Audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from James Yost with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] Critics listeners, thank you so much for answering our call for Summer Obsessions. Even though we couldn't fit all your voicemails into the episode, we did listen to each and every one you sent in and talked about it at great length. And we loved hearing from you. Speaking of, if you've got an idea for an episode you'd like to hear, please do email [e-mail] with the subject line critics. We always keep an eye on our inbox. See you soon. I'm Jamilah Robinson, host of Food People. On Food People, we talk about how food and drink shape our society. I talk to the luminaries making big moves in the culinary industry, from chefs and entrepreneurs to celebrities and even activists. The combination between a school and a.

[Nomi]

Restaurant, the next generation of Ethiopian chefs. A lot more than food goes on in a kitchen. It's where you have your loudest arguments. It's often where you have your loudest laughter.

[Vincent]

I'm Italian, Mexican. I'm a comedian.

[Alex]

There's gonna be lots of opinions. So if you want to go deep on how food creates the world we live in, join me on Food People. Food People is available on the podcast app of your choice.

[Nomi]

From prx.