TV Streaming On Demand y Rebecca raister p.16 Terry Gilliam / Ta-Nehisi Coates / Paul Cadmus / Pluss: Donald Trump’s Speed Dial March 18–31, 2019 ® the as b lain e d s to exp g ng ts ni d w od p pe ak ed it s a u s :H dy a e lr 0, Also: Learn to exercise your ear, and other teeny-tiny workouts p.47 m ? he By g ea ur n i t e for yo ere ST E B N R m nd A a K s i r Bo a d A atr’s te nt io n G R E K CH H A 0 rth lis the te po s ca wo march 18–31, 2019 features M A K E U P BY PA U L E T T E CO O P E R Stacey Abrams, ? She isn’t the governor of Georgia So what should she next? Abrams is conflicted By Rebecca Traister 16 The Great Pod Rush Has Only Just Begun But now that Big Money has its grubby hands on it, will podcasting ever be the same? By Adam Sternbergh and Boris Kachka 22 AACK! Cathy Guisewite broke through the glass ceiling by creating a character for whom disempowerment was a way of life She’s still facing down that paradox today By Rachel Syme 36 Stacey Abrams Photograph by Dan Winters intelligencer the culture pages 65 What the president’s compulsive phone habits say about him By Olivia Nuzzi 12 100-Person Poll Strangers on the street tell us how the presidency will end 14 Politics Ta-Nehisi Coates on race relations and the Dems in the Trump era By Eric Levitz the cut 40 Report From the Shows Goth boots, RBG, primary-color pantsuits, and Cathy Horyn on Karl’s swan song strategist 47 Best Bets Rocking chairs for a younger crowd; a store designed for big boobs 49 Look Book The Parsons student who summers at a larping camp 50 Micro-Workouts Forget abs and quads—show your ears and toes some love By Katy Schneider and Simone Kitchens 56 Food What to eat at Hudson Yards; Platt on Rocco DiSpirito’s second act; elevated hot pockets Comments 90 New York C b ey 92 The Approval Matrix n e w y o r k | nymag.com march 18–31, 2019 The Man Who Was Almost Killed by ‘Don Quixote’ Terry Gilliam’s 30 years spent tilting at windmills By Bilge Ebiri 70 The Painting Our Art Critic Can’t Stop Thinking About Paul Cadmus’s atlas of American violence By Jerry Saltz 72 Lady Killer Jodie Comer plays the kind of assassin you might like to go shopping with By Allison P Davis 74 The Hunter Becomes the Hunted A former critic, and co-creator of Beetlejuice on Broadway, can’t shake the fear By Scott Brown 76 Critics movies by David Edelstein With Us, Jordan Peele’s horror syntax keeps growing theater by Sara Holdren Be More Chill does high school with knowing wickedness tv by Matt Zoller Seitz Kingdom is resonant and disturbing 80 To Do Twenty-five picks for the next two weeks on the cover: Photograph by Bobby Doherty for New York Magazine this page: Terry Gilliam Photograph by Jim Naughten for New York Magazine For customer service, call 800-678-0900 O N T H E CO V E R : M A K E U P B Y R O B E R T R E Y E S F O R M A M - N YC The Swamp BLAZE NEW TRAILS INTRODUCING THE FIRST-EVER LEXUS UX We no longer travel great distances in the name of exploration Today, our frontier is all around us For those seeking this new frontier, the first-ever Lexus UX is a new frontier for crossovers Crafted purposefully for the city To nimbly handle corners with a best-in-class 17.1-ft turning radius.1 To easily navigate cluttered roads with Apple CarPlay®2 while connected to your iPhone.®3 And to inspire a sense of freedom with a class-leading estimated 33 MPG.1,4 Introducing the Lexus UX and UX Hybrid AWD,5 both available as F SPORT models Crafted for those who believe there is always something new to explore lexus.com/UX | #LexusUX UX 200 Options shown 2019 UX vs 2018/2019 competitors Information from manufacturers’ websites as of 9/17/2018 Apple CarPlay is a trademark of Apple Inc All rights reserved Always drive safely and obey traffic laws Apps, prices and services vary by phone carrier and are subject to change at any time without notice Subject to smartphone connectivity and capability Data charges may apply Apple CarPlay® functionality requires a compatible iPhone® tethered with an approved data cable into the USB media port iPhone is a registered trademark of Apple Inc All rights reserved 2019 Lexus UX 200 EPA 29/city, 37/hwy, 33/comb MPG estimates Actual mileage will vary UX AWD system operates at speeds up to 43 mph ©2018 Lexus Comments PETER BOGDANOVICH IN CONVERSATION The director on his films, marriage and infidelity, and the deaths he didn’t mourn By ANDREW GOLDMAN 46 n e w y o r k | m a r c h In New York’s latest issue, Simon van Zuylen-Wood asked, “When Did Everyone Become a Socialist?” (March 4–17) Susan Simon responded, “The answer to your cover question … resides on the cover of your [Hudson Yards] issue,” which featured stories that portrayed the new development as a gilded community for the one percent Of the socialism feature, Armin Rosen wrote, “Man, this is good Really illustrates the weirdness of environments where everyone more or less thinks the same.” Others took exception to the focus of the story, which opened at a party Maya Kosoff tweeted, “A more honest and incisive and less decadent story would have been one about organizers in New York and not media people at a party.” Emily Cameron wrote, “The stereotypes of ‘the nearly allCaucasian DSA left’ depicted in this piece give the wrong view of socialism As a 25-year-old queer Latina and co-chair of DSA Fresno in California’s rural Central Valley, I can assure you that the DSA I know is not a circus of ‘white, 21-to-36-year-old Tecate drinkers’ on dating apps, listening to podcasts, obsessed with BernieSanders I wish DSA chapters outside the media bubble got attention DSA is growing pre- cisely because the left as a whole is growing The American left is complex, diverse, and beautiful That’s why we’re winning.” In the story, van Zuylen-Wood explains that when social theorist Michael Harrington founded DSA in 1982, the “group occupied the ‘left wing of the possible,’ a sensible enough mantra that excited nobody and helped the organization stay minuscule for decades.” Harrington’s biographer and DSA charter member Maurice Isserman, challenged that assessment: “Harrington’s DSA was new york | march 18–31, 2019 peter bogdanovich is often held up as a cautionary ta e of Holly wood arrogance, Icarus with big frames and a nec ief In a hurry since adolescence, at 16 he talked his way into a g classes with Stella A ler; at 20, he persuaded C ifford Odets to him direct one of his p ays Off Broadway; and he went on to b end and write about the golden age movie directors he idolized, like Orson Welles, John Ford, and William Wyler As soon as Bogdanovich became a director in his own right, his assurance didn t endear him to some of the towns young aute old egends I don t judge myself on the basis of my contempo s, he told the New York Times in 1971 I judge myself against the directors I admire Hawks, Lubitsch, Buster Keaton, Welles, Ford, Renoir, Hitchcock I cer tain y don t think I m anywhere near as good as they are, but I think I m pretty good And so, as the story goes, Bogdanovich directed two arguab y perfect films, The Last Picture Show and Paper Moon, along with the h t screwball comedy What s Up, Doc?, only to see his career run aground after a ser es of flops But contrary to the legend, Bog danovich never disappeared or stewed in defeat for long, and he as enjoyed no fewer than three critical y hailed comebacks with Saint Jack (1979), Mask (1985), and Cat s Meow (2002), as well as signifi cant late career success as a documentarian, as with 2007 s Tom Petty documentary, R nnin Down a Dream Bogdanovich has also shown himself to be a surprisingly supple actor in such roles as The Sopr nos shrink to the shrink, Dr Ell ot Kupferberg, and Netflix recent y released a comp eted version of We less long unfinished The Other Side of the Wind, in which Bogdanovich, n the th ck of his 70s success, played a version of himself named Brooks Otter ake, a role Wel es wrote to explore the fraught Oedipal themes of their own relationship Now 79, Bogdanovich s noticeably frail as he recovers from a fa l he suffered while at a French film festival, where he col lected a lifetime achievement award; he shattered his emur We talk at a cluttered dining room tab e n the modest gr floor To uca Lake apartment he shares with his ex w fe Loui ratten and her mother Mid interview, a diminutive, grandmotherly woman with a Dutch accent sneaks behind him through the tight dini oom on her way to t itchen Bogdanovich mot at my copy he Killing of the Un n, the book he wrote abo e 1980 mur of his then girlfrien layboy Playmate Doroth ratten, Lou s ster Hide that bo ill you? he requests Th Doro thy s mother Nelly Hoogstraten appears several more times to de liver h m pi ls, to ask if he d like her to make coffee, to see when he d like h s dinner Thank you, darl ng, he answers every time Photograph by Robert Maxwell founded in the midst of the Reagan Revolution, not exactly a propitious moment for any left-wing group—reformist, revolutionary, or otherwise Harrington deserves a little credit for creating what proved to be the institutional base for today’s muchexpanded DSA Moreover, what is behind DSA’s recent growth, if not a variant of operating as the ‘left wing of the possible’? Isn’t that what Bernie Sanders repre- sents? And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? They are working within the Democratic Party to push it leftward.” Chicago journalist Alex Kotlowitz revisited a murder that exemplifies why so many violent crimes go unsolved in the city (“Ramaine Hill Bore Witness,” March 4–17) J Brian Charles called it an “amazing read … on an unsolved murder in Chicago and why the witnesses won’t testify It’s not some code of the streets; it’s fear,” and Gus Christensen added, “This is a solvable problem in the richest country in the world!” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler wrote, “Kotlowitz’s harrowing account of gun violence in Chicago highlights the absurdity of the NRA’s favorite shibboleths, like ‘A good guy with a gun is the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun.’ By using guns to silence and intimidate crime victims and witnesses, the bad guys ensure that lawlessness rules a community People know they will be tar- geted if they testify in court and, as a result, only one in four murders in the murder capital of the country is prosecuted Police know who most of the killers are But without cooperating witnesses, the wheels of justice simply don’t turn The community profiled by Kotlowitz’s insightful and reveal- ing article may best be described by another adage about guns, this one from the Wild West: ‘The only law that matters is the law you carry on your hips.’” Peter Bogdanovich, that notorious director of Hollywood’s last golden age, held nothing back in his interview with Andrew Goldman (“In Conversation: Peter Bogdanovich,” March 4–17) Bill McCuddy tweeted, “This you gotta read Cher can’t act Burt Reynolds is a prick The list goes on Really terrific And sad in a few spots.” Channing Thomson said, “This is fascinating He made a handful of great movies in the 1970s, but he strikes me as being an odd personality who hindered his own success through word and deed.” And Philip Concannon wrote, “There’s an Odd Couple– style sitcom to be made about the time Orson Welles spent living in Peter Bogdanovich’s house.” Other readers were less charmed @TheIndieHandbk tweeted, “Bogdanovich comes across as something of a scumbag in this interview, as at least half the people he talks about And all I can think is, Man, maybe the people of Hollywood deserve each other.” Susan Braudy took issue with the director’s characterization of his ex-wife and collaborator Polly Platt: “I arranged to meet Platt in the late 1980s partly because so many of my Hollywood friends told me she was instrumental in the making of Bogdanovich’s early and best films If Platt had outlived him, she would be much kinder about their collaboration The record speaks for itself: Bogdanovich did his best films working with her.” L Send correspondence to comments@nymag.com Or go to nymag.com to respond to individual stories Kingdom T V / MATT ZOLLER SEITZ P H OTO G R A P H : CO U R T E S Y O F N E T F L I X The King Eats Brains A zombie wears the crown in Netflix’s Kingdom all zombie stories come down to one basic question: If civilization suddenly began to fall apart, would you work to preserve whatever was left of it or act in ruthless self-interest and become a thinking version of a ghoul? This conundrum usually plays out onscreen with small groups of people wrestling with private moral dilemmas that affect whatever tiny community they happen to be a part of Even when the tale is told on a wider canvas—as in both Dawn of the Dead films, the book and movie versions of World War Z, and AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead (about the origins of the plague in The Walking Dead)—it’s rare that storytellers take a panoramic view of the systematic process by which a society collapses That’s what makes the South Korean series Kingdom, currently airing in the U.S via Netflix, so remarkable It’s a zombie epic that feels like one of those domino displays that cover the entire floor of a warehouse, dazzling you with the intricacy of its cause-and-effect mechanics until the very end, when the last tile falls and you’re left with a flattened remnant of what used to be Directed by Kim Seong-hun (Tunnel) and written by Kim Eun-hee, Kingdom was inspired by a historical plague that swept through Korea during the Joseon dynasty, killing thousands in days But in this telling, the disease is metaphorical as well as medical This is a story about the effects of corruption and KINGDOM official incompetence NETFLIX and how the powerful trample the powerless in times of crisis Set amid political struggles and famine after a string of military defeats, Kingdom starts by literalizing one of the oldest metaphors for societal decay: The country is rotting from the top down because its king has become a demented monster Everyone in the royal court is keeping the tragedy a secret, denying the obvious, or trying to leverage the situation for personal gain by acting in naked selfishness while claiming to implement the king’s orders The official story is that the king has smallpox, but this diagnosis is belied by his rotting face, glottal growls, and tendency to snooze all day and feed on servants at night (Like vampires and cockroaches, Kingdom’s zombies their business under cover of darkness, then scuttle into hiding when the sun comes up.) The crown prince, Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon), the offspring of the king and a concubine, is next in line for the throne, but he can’t claim it because everyone says his father’s not dying, just sick The king’s age-inappropriate wife (Kim Hye-jun) is pregnant with a child who will become the new heir—a scenario that strengthens the cover story about the king not feeling so well Meanwhile, in a clinic far from the palace, an ex-soldier patient named Yeong-sin (Kim Sung-kyu) and an intrepid female doctor named Seo-bi (Bae Doona), who trained with the king’s physician, watch as a faminewracked populace goes ghoul The infection rate accelerates when a well-meaning colleague makes what he thinks is a heroic decision to use the body of an outwardly dead person as meat for soup, telling the starving patients they’re tasting venison This early instance of nastiness establishes Kingdom’s distinctive aesthetic, which owes more to the satirical thrillers of directors like Luis Buñuel (The Exterminating Angel) and David Fincher (Fight Club, Gone Girl) than to the standard no-frills, fleshmunching horror flick Because we know this is a zombie story from reading the summary, we realize there’s no way the soup that this nervous, evasive man prepares is made from deer, yet the storytellers still delay the expected shock (the doctor goes for a bowl and discovers a thumb in it) When the gross-out moment arrives, it’s more of a sick joke than a jump scare, inviting gallows laughter at the wild unfairness of it all, as well as confirming that human judgment is every bit as bad as we thought As the series unfolds, growing more action-packed and conventionally exciting by the episode, it keeps employing this very effective strategy, driving home that this is not so much a story about what horrible thing will happen next as how the folks entrusted with running things keep allowing horrible things to happen in the name of short-term gain—or because they’re too petty, dumb, or vain to what’s right Some of the characters’ arguments over strategy have the sting of comic allegory, as in a scene in which the physician and the ex-soldier tell officials at a fort that the hundreds of slumbering zombies on the grounds need to be burned because they’ll dig themselves out if they’re just buried Onlookers from all social classes immediately object because they believe disfigurements get carried into the afterlife, so the idiot in charge entertains a compromise: They’ll burn the peasants’ corpses but bury the bodies of the nobles As the epidemic widens in scope, unleashing tsunamis of sprinting zombies on the land, Kingdom turns into a mordantly funny epic about how large-scale governmental mismanagement is amplified by class inequities There’s even a moment, after a zombie attack burns a seaside village to the ground and destroys most of its boats, when the survivors try to pile as many living people as they can onto the only remaining ship, and the peasants meet on the docks at the appointed time to discover that the ship has already set sail with only nobles onboard “Is there a ship for us too?” asks an adorable girl who has no idea how the world works When Kingdom depicts caravans of refugees racing through dark woods as fast as they can, monsters nipping at their heels, it’s an action-horror movie par excellence, but when it ramps down and deals with the particulars of its world, it becomes something more disturbing and resonant: a parable about a society with a death wish that allows rot to spread a bit further every day because stopping it would require systemic changes that the living can’t stomach ■ march 18–31, 2019 | new york 79 20 BOOKS Read Gingerbread 15 A fantastical bedtime story nymag.com/agend Riverhead T h e C U LT U R E PA G E S To Helen Oyeyemi is this generation’s torchbearer for revisionist fairy tales Here, she tackles “Hansel and Gretel” through the prism of Harriet, an immigrant to England from a fictional country; her teenage daughter, Perdita; and a dangerous gingerbread recipe All stories should have this much to say about resilience, politics, memory, and love boris kachka OPERA Hear Dido and Aeneas Via Virgil Metropolitan Museum, March 30 Twenty-five things to see, hear, watch, and read MARCH 20-APRIL Purcell’s opera about royal love amid ancient palaces combines intimacy and grandeur, laughter and treachery, plus some of the 17th century’s most seductive music Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society comes in for a single performance in the apt setting of the Temple of Dendur justin davidson TV Watch Jane the Virgin Team Michael The CW, March 27 THEATER THEATER See What the See The White Devil Constitution Means to Me Tony Kushner loves it Helen Hayes Theater, 240 West 44th Street, in previews, opens March 31 Dirty deeds Red Bull Theater at Lucille Lortel, 129 Christopher Street, through April 14 Heidi Schreck’s intimate, unsparing, fiercely funny exploration of her past as a teenage debater and her relationship with the U.S Constitution was my favorite show of 2018 Now it’s moving to Broadway sara holdren Director Louisa Proske brings John Webster’s twisted Jacobean tragedy to life in a world that looks a lot like our own Greed, deception, systematic misogyny, rigged trials, religious hypocrisy, and gallows humor run like poison currents through this story of voyeurism, betrayal, and murderous intrigue s.h ART TV See GdYW]ÇW 9mY Cabinet of curiosities Demisch Danant, 30 West 12th Street, through April A head-spinning assembly of the wildest art, furniture, design, and bric-a-brac is on view at one of the world’s best 20th-century-design galleries The groupings of objects, from seven collections belonging to well-known artists and connoisseurs (Huma Bhabha and Robert Gober among them), form an instant mystical Wunderkammer Folk paintings and American stone axes vie for attention with millenary mannequins and beauties like the Vulcan-ear forms used by Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek jerry saltz TV Watch The OA A new dimension Netfl Rem ippy Brit Marling series that you furiously binged in December 2016? Well, the second season is here, and yeah, you should probably refresh your season-one memories about “the movements” before watching jen chaney 80 n e w y o r k | m a r c h – , Watch bublé! In concert NBC, March 20 There should be space in popular culture for things that aren’t remotely cool and aren’t trying to be—like this, the seventh NBC special by Michael Bublé, in which the singer leads a 36-piece orchestra for a musical tour of his life and career, including the performance of covers from his latest album matt zoller seitz POP MUSIC Listen to American Football (LP3) Sad songs Polyvinyl, March 22 Midwest emo veterans American Football’s third studio album (their second since re-forming in e with its self-titled presongs represent lead singer–guitarist Mike Kinsella’s most concise and accessible writing to date Guest vocalists include Rachel Goswell of Slowdive and Hayley Williams of Paramore craig jenkins The fourth season ended on a cliffhanger with the reveal that Michael (Brett Dier), Jane’s husband, who died in season three, is actually—danaaaa!—still alive How? And what does this mean for Jane (Gina Rodriguez) and her relationship with Rafael (Justin Baldoni)? As the fifth and final season begins, we will find out j.c CLASSICAL MUSIC 10 Hear New York Philharmonic With an Italian master David Geffen Hall, March 27 Seventy-seven-year-old Maurizio Pollini remains the Usain Bolt of pianists, able to glide gracefully through a concerto at high speed He joins the Philharmonic and Jaap van Zweden for a sole performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto j.d MOVIES 11 See Meet Marlon Brando Behind the legend Maysles Cinema, 343 Malcolm X Boulevard, March 22 Meet the Maysles brothers’ Marlon Brando and gasp anew at the potency of their film—29 minutes of Brando taking questions at a junket for the 1965 dog Morituri Brando is the through-line Brando is the control Brando is our higher consciousness and an enigma A talk with screenwriter Ron Hutchinson, who will ruminate on “the privilege and pressure of working with genius,” follows david edelstein POP MUSIC 12 Listen to You’re the Man Lost and found Motown, March 29 P H OTO G R A P H S : CO U R T E S Y O F T H E N E T WO R K S ( M A R L I N G, H A D E R) ; T YS H AW N S O R E Y / W I K I M E D I A ( S O R E Y ) ; PAT R I C K M C M U L L A N ( R O D R I G U E Z ) ; J OA N M A R C U S ( W H AT T H E CO N S T I T U T I O N M E A N S TO M E ) For full listings of movies, theater, music, restaurants, and much more, see “CELEBRATES FEMALE POWER” - THE NEW YORK TIMES After the Motown Records classic What’s Going On, singer Marvin Gaye cut a second album of political songs A single was released, but the album vanished In time for what would have been Gaye’s 80th birthday, Motown has reconstructed the scrapped album, which includes lesser-known gems like “Where Are We Going?” and “The World Is Rated X.” c.j THEATER 13 See Oklahoma! Morning in America M A RT H A G R A H A M DA N CE CO M PA NY THE EVE PROJECT Circle in the Square Theatre, 1633 Broadway, in previews, opens April Daniel Fish’s sultry, sinister take on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s classic musical is moving its bright lights, chili Crock-Pots, and unmistakable menace to Broadway It’s gorgeous, unblinking, scary, and full of rapturous performances, especially Rebecca Naomi Jones’s cool and thoughtful Laurey and Ali Stroker’s irrepressible Ado Annie s.h ART 14 See Georg Baselitz: Devotion Meaningful portraits Gagosian, 555 West 24th Street, through March 23 Contemporary German master Georg Baselitz has frequently come under fire for outrageously disparaging the work of women artists Here his portraits of great women artists appear along with his male heroes in a gallery like a chapel of artistic overlords The sight is movingly beautiful and a step in the partial rehabilitation of an otherwise important postwar painter j.s CLASSICAL MUSIC 15 Hear Tyshawn Sorey A portrait of the composer Miller Theatre, March 28 Living composers mostly get attention with a commission here and a premiere there, but Columbia University’s Miller Theatre regularly presents entire evenings of their work Next up: the MacArthur-“genius”-award winner Tyshawn Sorey, a jazz drummer, bandleader, and composer of uncategorizable works j.d TV 16 Watch Veep Selina 2020 HBO, March 31 Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is back for one final season of the acclaimed and freakishly prescient political comedy, and guess what? She’s running for president again! Because if it didn’t work out the first time, surely it will go much more smoothly on the second attempt j.c BOOKS 17 Read The Other Americans A P R I L -14 Lalami’s most elaborate novel yet Pantheon, March 26 Laila Lalami turns to the contemporary U.S., spinning a kaleidoscope of first-person narratives around the mystery of a hit-and-run accident that 212 -2 - 0 O R M A R T H A G R A H A M O R G/ E V E Xin Ying in Martha Graham’s Chronicle © Hibbard Nash Photography kills a Moroccan immigrant All the members of the Guerraoui family have their say—including the patriarch whose death sets the story in motion— along with an incidental witness, a neighbor with grudges, and a detective b.k MOVIES 18 See New Directors/ New Films Festival The future of cinema Walter Reade Theater and MoMA, March 27 to April At 48, the joint Museum of Modern Art and Film Society of Lincoln Center festival is one of the most venerable New York film fests—but also the one that’s still most apt to challenge, vex, and explode your perceptions This year’s starts with a bang—the Sundance sensation Clemency, Chinonye Chukwu’s prison drama with Alfre Woodard and Aldis Hodge d.e THEATER 19 See King Lear She is the storm Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street, in previews, opens April Theatrical titan Glenda Jackson, 82, returns to the stage after a more than 20-year hiatus to take on the mountainous monarch King Lear Sam Gold’s production—which is crammed with acting chops alongside the recent Tony winner, from Jayne Houdyshell to Ruth Wilson—lands in New York, and the impact is bound to cause tremors s.h TV 20 Watch Barry The best actor on television is back HBO, March 31 Start Playing Test your pop culture knowledge and everyday wit with the New York Crossword, now online nymag.com/crossword In season one, every time the hit man attempting to turn actor played by Bill Hader tried to get out of the murder racket, something pulled him back in As the second season begins, he’s still trying to get out and still getting pulled back into some ugly business j.c CLASSICAL MUSIC 21 Hear The Knights An adventurous collective Zankel Hall, April This is one orchestra that plays whatever music its members are curious about, in this case an eclectic contemporary program plus a Vivaldi oldie One highlight is the local premiere of a Concertino Grosso, written and performed by incandescent Syrian clarinetist Kinan Azmeh j.d MOVIES 22 See Harmony Korine An unlikely favorite Metrograph, March 22 to 29 I’d rather watch a Jar Jar Binks outtake reel than Harmony Korine’s early work—and yet his nuttily self-indulgent scenarios in Julien Donkey-Boy and the all-star Spring Breakers have won more hearts than raspberries The Metrograph celebrates Korine in advance of The Beach Bum with Matthew McConaughey and Zac Efron Among the high- and lowlights is Ken Park, Larry Clark and cinematographer Ed Lachman’s skate-park ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH A trio of beloved Broadway hits are closing this spring Now’s your chance to catch them— or revisit them—before the final bow ANASTASIA ( closing March 31) Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street If you were a tween in the early aughts, you probably had a soft spot for the animated film about a spunky Russian girl on a mysterious journey to the past (John Cusack voiced the love interest, for Pete’s sake!) Darko Tresnjak’s production of the musical adaptation takes one more whirl around the ballroom through March THE BAND’S VISIT ( closing April 7) Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 West 47th Street David Cromer’s gorgeous production of this story of an Egyptian military band stranded in a sleepy Israeli town (with a witty, seductive score by David Yazbek) is an indie gem bursting with humor, quiet beauty, and oddball life Katrina Lenk’s Tony winning performance is still the smoldering center of the show, and it’s worth seeing as many times as possible KINKY BOOTS ( closing April 7) Al Hirschfeld Theatre, 302 West 45th Street Billy Porter is no longer sashaying across the boards in the joyous, bighearted Kinky Boots (the story of a drag queen who saves a failing shoe business), but you can still catch a killer cast in the Harvey Fierstein–Cyndi Lauper extravaganza until early April ensemble (from Korine’s script), which kicks off with a death by gunshot d.e POP MUSIC 23 See Ryley Walker Selling out in the Big Apple Union Pool, 484 Union Avenue, Williamsburg, March 26 Illinois singer-guitarist Ryley Walker is enough of a pastoral folk traditionalist to draw earnest comparisons to legends like Bert Jansch and John Fahey and enough of a prankster to sell an album of Dave Matthews Band covers Walker just moved to New York, and you can catch him every Tuesday in March at Union Pool c.j TV 24 Watch Action March madness Showtime, March 24 P H OTO G R A P H : PAT R I C K M C M U L L A N This doc-series explores the impact of a 2018 Supreme Court ruling that legalized sports betting on oddsmakers, gamblers, bookies, and the community around them Unsurprisingly, it’s filled with eccentrics and blowhards who could fit into a latter-day Damon Runyon story The only thing missing is musical numbers m.z.s BOOKS 25 Read I.M A Renaissance man Flatiron Books New York designer Isaac Mizrahi’s memoir of his rise to fashion fame is as you would expect “The book is so honest and funny and extremely touching in its clarity about the layered world of fashion, celebrity and family,” says New York design editor Wendy Goodman SOLUTION TO LAST ISSUE’S PUZZLE S P I E L T E T R A F L I P L A N A D E B R A I M O U T J A M B E L I E P A S S T H E B A R S P O T T I N E S S A T L E F R E C A H E R U L L E S A S E N E N T P R I T I L C L T H E H S I C N H A N I F E L S A S C F I E R Y H R S E L E C T L E O N E O N D A N O I L I N G I T I G A N N L E T S E R O G O M T O E N O O N D P O S S L O O O O L O W N D S P O W D E H U R L O P S E A L O N E N T X A S N H G Y O S E A E R Y E S S E U C P P D A E R C K E I T V I E N I N E S S E N C E M I R T H N E A R S S H I D R E T E S N O O T L T A O N S R P O E A A R D R E W V I A N D E S R N O C K I O N T R I L E T Y C A L O K A M A Z E E S L T E O N A D J U S T A B L E M I A S P E R T A T E I T L E N D S B A R R I S T E R S E L O N S K Y Y T H E R E E X P A T Stacey Abrams, _? CO N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E her braininess, unlike so many extremely smart women who’ve been told that their intellectual prowess is off-putting and unattractive She knows the perceived costs of this In her book, she writes about how “older women of every racial category” blame the fact that she is single on her achievements, while men cite her “tendency toward strong opinions” as a romantic turnoff (In our first conversation, back in 2015, she told me, “I like to be successful at things, and I was not good at dating and so I just stopped,” one of the most deeply human observations I’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of a politician Four years later, she says she is very open to the possibility of a relationship.) But I think she’s also counting on something else: Maybe her confessions about her cerebral predilections and the attendant social unease that besets so many smart little girls will resonate with a whole lot of smart grown-up girls The political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry told me about an “amazing interaction” with Abrams onstage at the Power Rising Summit When Harris-Perry lamented that a smaller percentage of black men than of black women voted for Abrams, the former candidate strenuously objected “She stopped me and said, ‘No, I not want conservatives to say that black men failed me The way exit polls are done undercounts black men.’ We had a big public discussion about statistics,” Harris-Perry marveled to me via text “I almost kissed her.” eslie abrams wasn’t allowed to be involved during her sister’s gubernatorial campaign because she’s a federal judge She briefly found herself in the news cycle, anyway, when she unexpectedly fell in love with a man she’d met through the Innocence Project and who had served 27 years on a wrongful rape conviction; the couple wed in November Now, while her sister is not running for anything, Leslie can talk to the press, and she and Stacey are having an animated discussion over lunch at a Cheddar’s in Albany, Georgia The two grew up nearly twinned: L 84 n e w y o r k | m a r c h – , look-alikes who were in different grades but the same Girl Scout troop and often— for economy’s sake—shared clothes Leslie describes herself as “more outwardly joyous and perky” than Stacey, who is “one of the sweetest people I know, but she doesn’t like you to know that You have to push to get to the soft mushy insides.” During lunch, the sisters trade barbs about Abrams’s unwillingness to take vacations “I can read at home,” Abrams balks “Why would I pay money to go read in someone else’s house?” “You feel my pain?” Leslie looks at me imploringly “It’s not just reading in a different place! Vacation is a time when no one is calling you, you clear your schedule I am teaching her.” After the election, her family persuaded Abrams to go to Turks and Caicos, deputizing her old friend Camille Johnson, who accompanied her, to make sure she ventured outside the hotel While Johnson assured Abrams they wouldn’t have to “climb a mountain” or “do something totally out of character” for her, they did try to jet-ski, in part because Johnson knew something about Abrams: She likes to drive fast Some years earlier, Porsche had moved its headquarters to Georgia, and Abrams brought Johnson along when she was invited to drive its cars at a nearby racetrack They’d listened to an instructor explain how to get out of skids and doughnuts at speeds of 90 mph, but when Abrams got into the Porsche, she just began to spin “After she was done, I was like, ‘Stacey, you were not paying attention!’ And she just looked at me and said, ‘Oh, yes, I was.’ ” In Turks and Caicos, a logistical snafu killed the jet-ski plan, though Johnson conceded that it was just as well, given how frequently her friend was recognized After being approached for a selfie her first day on the beach, Abrams never went back She retreated to the balcony of her room and happily read her way through N K Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy With Leslie, Abrams jokes about how she used to hope that she could find a way to be “secretly in charge,” before realizing that you couldn’t this stuff on the sly She didn’t run for student government when she was in high school Instead, she says, “I ran the yearbook I ran things where I could just get stuff done I never ran for things where you had to ask people to let you be in charge.” But running a campaign that netted record numbers of new voters necessarily entailed asking people—legions of them—to let you run the show I ask Leslie the degree to which she’s seen her sister change “I don’t know that she’s changed dramatically,” Leslie says, thinking about how to put this “We’re sciencefiction nerds, so: She’s not like a mutant, but there’s been an evolution Again, Stacey was fairly shy, so that she can walk up and just randomly speak to people—” “I’m not afraid of people!” Abrams interrupts “But back in high school and elementary school you were,” retorts Leslie “I wasn’t afraid of them I just didn’t like them I didn’t want to talk to them.” “Okay,” Leslie says “My take on Stacey is that she was shy, and that if she could figure out a way to things without having to engage other people, she would Now, she’s willing to show her charm to more than just the family ” When they were around 7, Stacey and Leslie often pretended to be imaginary sisters named Jeanine and Janelle Magnolia Sometimes Jeanine and Janelle were detectives solving cases; sometimes they were millionaires having adventures on their private jet Leslie is laughing “There was one I got to be the judge in it”—she pauses and looks for permission from Abrams, who nods and completes this confession of childhood ambition herself: “In that one, I was president of the world.” Later, conversation turns to whether Abrams might have become a physicist, a career she considered briefly in college Leslie shakes her head no, claiming that she “always knew she’d be a politician.” Abrams looks at her askance “I never thought you were gonna be a physicist, Stacey! Come on! What did you think you’d be?” “In charge,” Abrams replies o r m e r c a m pa i g n manager Lauren Groh-Wargo is slight, white, bespectacled, and terrierlike both in her devotion to Abrams and in the intensity of her objections to what went down in Georgia She is often referred to as Abrams’s “anger translator” and recalls with tight-lipped fury the state Democratic Establishment’s cynicism about Abrams’s chances: There aren’t enough black people; the state is not “ready”; white people will never vote for her; field work doesn’t matter; and—the contradictory concern—there won’t be enough money to field But Abrams has spent her life behaving as if her qualifications and education will serve her as well as a white man’s Some of that involves the simple projection of assurance and a willingness to run straight into the knives that are out for her, starting with the $200,000 of debt she racked up in student loans, credit-card bills, and helping her parents F P R O M OT I O N S E V E N TS F O O D S H O P P I N G E N T E R TA I N M E N T A R T EVENTS THE CUT’S HOW I GET IT DONE On March 4, the Cut hosted its fi rst How I Get It Done event, a day of honest, open conversations about how women make their lives happen Attended by 150 guests at Hotel Brooklyn Bridge, the event offered panels, workshops, and discussions designed to give women meaningful resources and connections for success The Cut’s president and editor-in-chief, Stella Bugbee, opened the day in discussion with SNL senior cast member Aidy Bryant, Olympic gold medalist Hope Solo, and Emmy-winning food expert Padma Lakshmi Additional speakers throughout the day included Natasha Lyonne, Robin Roberts, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, Topeka K Sam, Susan Miller, and more, ranging from best-selling authors to climate scientists Amazon Handmade sponsored How I Get It Done, specifi cally presenting a session titled “Starting Your Own Company.” In alignment with the brand goal to fi nd and support diverse creators, guests had the opportunity to choose Amazon Handmade products from the “I Found It at the Strategist” pop-up shop, featuring expert-approved goods selected by The Strategist editors How I Get It Done was a successful look at how to live ambitiously, bringing together women of all backgrounds and aspirations to talk connections, personal growth, and productivity amazon.com/handmade | @AmazonHandmade Follow @NYFYI on Twitter for exclusive reports from NYC and beyond— curated by the New York Stories team and our brand partners cover the costs of raising her brother Walter’s daughter while also paying their own medical expenses It became the biggest piece of opposition research used against her: Should a woman who couldn’t manage her own budget be in charge of the state’s? Abrams now often mentions the debt, which she’s still paying off, of her own volition, as she did during her State of the Union response—where millions of Americans were introduced to her for the first time She knew it was an experience masses of voters could relate to She’s used the same approach to fend off the rap that she takes on too much at once—all the businesses, the books, the campaigns In Lead From the Outside, Abrams writes about one instance where she spread herself too thin in a work partnership “I’d prided myself on my ability to so many things well, and I excused missed deadlines as acceptable because my quality of work was good Turns out, not only was I the jerk in the business relationship, I had failed to tend to my friendship.” Abrams now describes how she very intentionally builds organizations and businesses that “can keep going without me even if I get hit by a bus.” It is long-range logistical planning that Abrams relishes most “Lots of people can say ‘I can fly,’ ” she tells me one night, referring to the generations of Georgia politicians before her who insisted they could draw new Democrats to the polls but failed “But when you claim you’re going to fly, does that mean you’re planning to jump? Or that you’re going to build a plane?” Abrams always knew she’d have to build the plane She made her first personal spreadsheet in the wake of a bad breakup in college, sitting in the Spelman computer lab laying out her goals for the next 40 years Back then, it was writing a best-selling spy novel and being the mayor of Atlanta “Though my list was … driven by grief and the need to reclaim my sense of self,” Abrams writes in Lead From the Outside, “the point was that I was letting myself experience the feeling of wanting itself: acknowledging in print … that I was allowed to dare to want.” She was already an activist who’d organized her Spelman peers to flood local television stations with calls after the campus was shut down in the wake of the Rodney King uprising; and at age 19, she addressed the 30th anniversary of the March on Washington as a youth supporter of the AFL-CIO Abrams has been building out her political strategy for what seems like forever, a very different approach from that 86 n e w y o r k | m a r c h – , of her fellow red-state photo-finisher Beto O’Rourke, who last week told Vanity Fair that he’s getting into the presidential contest the same way he got into the 2018 Texas Senate race, based on his gut He didn’t have a plan; he “just felt it.” In contrast, when she was 20, Abrams attended the selective Harry S Truman Scholarship program Chosen to give the class speech, she argued that one of the major tasks before her generation was to “register voters because we want them to know the power they hold.” As part of her decades-long project to assume high office, Abrams carefully studied the history of the Democratic Party in the South, and became convinced that Democrats have spent too much time focusing on middle-of-the-road or rightleaning voters at the expense of others “When you go after someone who has a deep ideological belief set that is contradictory with your own, it’s conversion,” Abrams tells me while sitting in the booklined living room of her townhouse in Atlanta’s Kirkwood neighborhood “Conversion is hard Conversion is miraculous We have entire religions built around the idea of conversion Politics is not a religion Politics is about persuasion.” Abrams believes that persuasion works best on those predisposed to share Democratic values, which doesn’t mean it’s easy “Your untapped population is people of color,” Abrams told me in September 2016, eight months before announcing her candidacy for governor Never having been asked to register, they don’t think they should, she says “You have to go knock on their doors Go to rural communities, to depressed communities, to communities where there is absolutely no trust in politics or in politicians That is an expensive endeavor.” And just registering them wasn’t enough Abrams developed another organization, this one partisan, designed to spur turnout When she became a candidate, she held Latino roundtables, Asian-American and Pacific Islander roundtables, LGBTQ roundtables She put ads on country-music and urban radio stations; hers was the first campaign in the state’s history to run Spanish-language television ads, and she printed campaign materials in Cantonese, Vietnamese, and Korean On Election Day, she and Groh-Wargo had a list of possible outcomes: outright victory to runoff to loss By nightfall, they found themselves in what GrohWargo had dubbed “scenario Z” and what Abrams called “a complete collapse of the systems.” It was either a collapse of the systems, or the system working exactly as its designers intended it to According to Abrams and Fair Fight, the State of Georgia, enabled by the Supreme Court’s 2013 disembowelment of the Voting Rights Act, erected numerous barriers to registration An “exact match” law meant that 53,000 voters whose names on their registration applications did not precisely duplicate their driver’s licenses were held up; a reported 70 percent of them were black Kemp purged more than 1.5 million already registered Georgians, 850,000 of them for not having gone to the polls in two consecutive cycles—a move that disproportionately eliminated the irregular voters Abrams had labored to reach Since 2012, Georgia has closed at least 214 polling locations in 53 counties, 57 percent of which have populations that are more than a quarter AfricanAmerican Fewer polling places meant difficulties for those without cars or flexible schedules, as well as overcrowded conditions at the sites that remained open, more than a few of which were also plagued by malfunctioning voting machines (Some simply lacked power cords.) In addition, there were reports of polling places running out of provisional ballots (used for people who believed they were registered but were turned away), Georgians requesting absentee ballots but never receiving them, and ballots that weren’t counted “The scale of the breakdown,” GrohWargo says, “was just beyond fixable.” On Election Night, Abrams’s goal was to communicate the extent of the mess without “dissuading all of these people who had begun to believe.” The psychological impact of voter suppression is as pernicious as the actual trashing of votes, she says: If you believe your vote won’t count, why bother to try anymore? When she finally came to a podium, at about a.m., she announced that the race was not over in clear and galvanizing words: “In Georgia, civil rights has always been an act of will and a battle for our souls.” She sounded like Obama, a prescient and gifted orator, but also like she was staging an act of civil disobedience Her refusal to admit defeat was akin to an electoral sit-in and felt, well, dangerously nonnormative, the kind of thing that the political Establishment might slam as unpatriotic—in a way that voter suppression itself somehow never is I ask Abrams what provoked her, in the moment, to challenge rather than accept “In our family, your job is to fix it Now, I don’t think they intended for me to fix the electoral system of Georgia But my DNA tells me that if something is wrong, you cannot make it right if you pretend it doesn’t exist.” After ten days of gathering absentee and provisional ballots, and of compiling stories from 40,000 callers to a voterprotection hotline, Abrams gave a speech in which she acknowledged that Kemp would “be certified as the victor,” but this was “not a speech of concession.” Anticipating that she’d probably take heat for not just shutting up and accepting the result, she declared, “Stoicism is a luxury and silence is a weapon for those who would quiet the voices of the people.” In the end, Abrams more than met all the numbers her doubters said she’d have to She tripled the turnout of Asian, Latin, Asian-American, and Pacific Islander voters The share of the nonwhite electorate in the state jumped from 33.75 percent to 36.9 percent; youth turnout increased 139 percent; more African-Americans (about 1.2 million) voted for her than the total number of Democrats (1.1 million) who voted for Michelle Nunn when she ran for the Senate in 2014 Abrams received just over a quarter of the white vote, a share no Democrat in a statewide race in Georgia had come near since Bill Clinton All told, 1.9 million people were counted as having voted for Stacey Abrams for governor, and she lost by 54,723 votes ver the years, Abrams has curated her spreadsheet “like Gollum tending his Precious,” she writes in Lead From the Outside, which is a little like Lean In for people who didn’t start with any power Now that she’s not the governor, she has to revise the document The trouble is, most of her ideas about how to fix broken systems have been geared toward running her state “Most of the seismic shifts in social policy occur on the state level,” she says “The erosion of the social safety net started with Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin; he was the architect of welfare reform Mass incarceration started with Ronald Reagan in California ‘Stand your ground’ started with Jeb Bush in Florida Jim Crow never had a single federal law It was all state law.” It’s not that “president” wasn’t on her spreadsheet In fact, she rather bravely admitted that it was to a Cosmopolitan reporter in 2017 (prompting the Republican Governors Association to call her ambition “bizarre”—an example of how unusual and important it is for women to admit that, as Abrams would say, they want) But her White House aspirations were down the road, after she’d helped address the systemic representational problems that would, with further national demographic O shifts, boost her chances of landing the nation’s top job Even now, as a complement to Fair Fight, Abrams is launching Fair Count, to make sure underserved communities will be counted in the Census, which determines redistricting and, in turn, elections “I continue to grapple with where I could be most effective,” Abrams says, noting that the sweet-talking she’s been getting from Schumer and his buddies has certainly led her to think more about federal legislative, as opposed to state executive, leadership There are reasons to believe she might be Senate material As minority leader in the Georgia statehouse, Abrams compromised with her partisan foes—as when she cut a deal to preserve Georgia’s beloved Hope scholarship, which gives large college discounts to kids with high GPAs, albeit with drastic reductions It was controversial among Democrats but offers evidence that she can make her way within a fractious governing body Still, Legislator Abrams did not always enjoy a reputation for playing well with others The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called her management style “aloof and uncommunicative,” and she doesn’t seem to have abandoned her tendency to help the other children by telling them the answers Last year, Time’s Molly Ball reported on how, soon after getting to the Georgia house, Abrams passed “a helpful note, and then another, and another,” to a Republican lawmaker struggling to explain his own regulatory measure, until “finally he sat down next to her and let her explain it for him.” She then voted against the legislation, telling her surprised colleague, “Look, I think your bill is a bad idea I just don’t think it should be bad law.” These days, you can hear Abrams trying to talk herself into running for the Senate: “There are infrastructure issues across the South, the Southwest, and the Midwest Depopulation of rural communities … The notion that you solve for the effects of depopulation by just encouraging everyone to move does not work And that’s not just a Georgia issue This is a North Carolina issue, a Montana issue It’s going to be an Ohio issue Lack of access to the internet—this should be treated the same way we treated rural electrification in the 1920s.” “More than anything,” she says, “there are the courts.” She knows the composition of the Supreme Court is key to protecting voting rights, collective bargaining, reproductive and environmental rights—everything that matters to her constituency One more blue senator could make all the difference If she sits out that race, and another Democrat fails to unseat the Republican incumbent, she knows she’ll get some blame The choice to run could also take her out of contention for the VP spot or a Cabinet position And that’s to say nothing of the presidency itself There is certainly no shortage of White House wannabes; the field is full to bursting But in a Goldilocks world in which each has some obvious drawback— too old, too white, too mean, too centrist, too opportunistic, too wrote-the-crimebill-and-voted-for-welfare-reform—it is easy to imagine Abrams as just right, the real deal This may be especially true in a progressive climate that is—perhaps for the first time ever—open to supporting women of color, but in which Kamala Harris, the former prosecutor, will bump into some resistance on the left Of course, if she entered the race, Abrams wouldn’t be just right or, rather, just left, either While she supports reparations for African-Americans and Native Americans, she hasn’t specifically come out for the Green New Deal or Medicare for All or the aforementioned across-theboard increase in the minimum wage But that hasn’t stopped activists and donors from trying to woo her to run for president Among them is Jess Morales Rocketto, a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer “It’s a completely wideopen Democratic field,” she says, noting that changes in the primary calendar benefit Abrams because less-white, as well as southern, states now have more weight “Black women voters are the base of the primary electorate, and I believe that if Stacey got in, she would immediately catapult to the top.” Granted, it would still be a long shot But it’s also true that female candidates have gotten dinged for missing their moment—often, ironically, because they’re too aware of their own vulnerabilities and slim chances Hillary Clinton didn’t run for president in 2004 because she knew she’d be savaged for not serving her full Senate term, and Elizabeth Warren didn’t run in 2016 because she knew what it would cost to challenge Clinton Both women likely paid a price for their forbearance When I ask Abrams whether she’s been losing sleep mulling over the question of what’s next for her, she looks at me like I’m nuts “God, no,” she says, without elaboration So you’ll just wake up one day and know what your decision is? I ask Forget about respecting the silence “Yup,” Abrams says “I’ll know when ■ I know.” march 18–31, 2019 | new york 87 amazing! Why don’t people this?’ ” It’s an apt analogy and, in the era of podcasts, one you can take even further When Glass launched TAL on radio, it was as if he had imagined violin music and figured out how to play it on a banjo; then, ten years later, violins were invented With podcasts, that music has found its perfect instrument Podcasts CO N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E be novel-like S-Town was born when a random person named John B McLemore called Reed out of the blue with a tip about an overlooked murder But the heart of the story, it turned out, was McLemore himself In crafting the show, Reed and Snyder spent a lot of time discussing the novel Stoner, a propulsive portrait of a peculiar personality, and imagining how they might borrow from its structure They began privately referring to the podcast as a “nonfiction audio novel” until they realized that neither of them was sure exactly what that meant But as Reed explained during an appearance on the Longform podcast, “One of the conventions of radio is that you can’t rewind it.” As a result, he says, a certain didacticism is required to tell a story, since you have to constantly warn the listener when you’re digressing or heading off on an unexpected tangent “Julie was saying it would be nice if we could let things breathe a little bit,” Reed recalls In its elliptical structure, its carefully crafted metaphorical resonances, its finely drawn characters, and the cumulative effect of its expert scene building, S-Town adopts a novelistic approach infused with the intimacy of an oral tale One critic applied the label “aural literature.” When it arrived, S-Town sounded like no podcast that had come before It was also downloaded more than 40 million times that year In their interview on Without Fail, Blumberg and Glass don’t talk much about the future of podcasts or really about podcasts at all But Blumberg does ask Glass if he ever steps back and considers what, two decades later, TAL begot Glass recalls having the feeling way back in 1995 while working in public radio that there is a thing radio can be great at— telling stories—yet nobody was using it for that purpose Radio could provide news, sure, it could play music, it could transmit a voice barking opinions, but it wasn’t really telling human stories, let alone finding innovative ways to tell them “It’s as if violins existed but nobody played violin music on them, just tried to make them sound like something else,” Glass says “So you say, ‘You know what would be really great? If you take the bow across the thing It’s really pretty! And finger it here—it’s 88 n e w y o r k | m a r c h – , n the beginning, there was little money to be made in podcasts, so no one was making podcasts with the intent of making money People made podcasts because there was something in the world they found interesting and they had a hunch that someone out there might find it interesting too As a medium, podcasts have thrived because they intrinsically deliver one thing the internet and all its attendant gizmos haven’t proved to be very good at: intimacy Social media, which arrived in our lives around the same time as podcasts, had been heralded as a breakthrough in global connection, but it has become a machine that manufactures discontent Take a look at your Twitter feed It is, by literal design, a great leveler: a cacophonous conversation with all the humanity drained away The Nobel Prize–winning biologist tweets next to the random antivaxxer who tweets next to a Russian bot spreading disinformation Facebook is worse The connection promised by social media turned out to be an algorithmic ritual of posting, swiping, scrolling, and liking Then there are podcasts: cheap, niche, idiosyncratic, weird, and highly personal In their myriad varieties, podcasts have emerged as an audio analogue to the spirit of the early internet, Internet 1.0, the version that promised to provide a platform for every manner of obsession, no matter how specialized or obscure But podcasts have an additional appeal—they take that obsession and whisper about it in your ear in the real voice of an actual human The first person who ever tried to turn me on to podcasts—back when my initial reaction was “Why would I listen to podcasts? I don’t even listen to the radio”—was a friend of mine who, for medical reasons, had been confined to intermittent bed rest She’d become addicted to podcasts She loved them precisely because they could so comfortably colonize her mind Podcasts were constant company, audio portals into unexpected worlds She’d realized that the experience of podcasts is fundamentally different from being Extremely Online No one listens to a podcast and comes away feeling agitated and slightly guilty, the way you feel after an hour on Facebook If the internet is increasingly like a seedy business district you visit reluctantly then I regret, podcasts are an invitation you extend to another human being to hijack your consciousness Radio used to that, sort of, sometimes, but podcasts introduced portability, accessibility, and a nearly endless selection of subjects on demand And thanks to the hothouse strangeness of podcast evolution, the hits of the medium are nearly impossible to predict, let alone replicate Could you have guessed that the breakout podcast of a given year would feature a former Daily Show producer’s compulsion to find out whether Richard Simmons had disappeared? Or that the animating appeal of the true-crime genre would not be the details of the crimes themselves as much as a podcast’s ability to foreground its host as she puzzles through the investigation? Comedy was an early driver of podcasts because comedy is fundamentally about the pleasure of listening to funny people talk It’s also pleasurable, podcasts reminded us, to listen to experts talk Also panels of pop-cultural mandarins Also famous people, who for one reason or another have proved exceedingly willing to reveal themselves to an unprecedented degree once their lips are only inches from a microphone The one constant, though, through all the standout podcasts is that notion of obsession and connection Freed from the constraints of attracting a mass audience, podcast creators double down on their enthusiasms and invite you, the listener, to come along It’s a refreshingly democratic medium that, not incidentally, is driven by distinct personalities Dan Taberski has a background in television, and he realized early on with podcasts that a major difference is “it’s your voice It really is you There’s no way around it.” This combination of distinct voices dwelling on personal enthusiasms is addressing a collective desire we didn’t even know we had In a digital world in which we crave human contact so badly we’re willing to listen to ASMR YouTube videos by the millions, to hear people whisper gibberish and tickle microphones with feathers to provoke some kind of physical sensation in us, is it any wonder that the notion of a soothing voice in our ear for an hour has proved to be so popular? Technology makes podcasts possible, but the experience of consuming podcasts is an oasis from our indentured interaction with screens and passwords and keyboards Podcasts appeal to the twin modern manias for constant enrichment and constant escape Despite their low-tech origins, we should never have been surprised at podcasts’ modern allure They’re instant company with interesting people What could be more excit■ ing than that? Cathy CO N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E Tina Fey used it on 30 Rock, when Tracy Jordan told Liz Lemon, “I can’t believe they put what you said in the paper!” and he just turned out to be reading a “Cathy” cartoon Andy Samberg used it on SNL when he appeared on “Weekend Update” in a frizzy wig and a rumpled sweater and spat out lines like “Ladies, age is just a number, and mine’s plus-size brownies!” (Of that parody Guisewite said, “It was honest, I’ll say that.”) When I asked Guisewite about the deeper significance of AACK!, she told me she honestly did not know “It’s just how you feel, isn’t it?” For her, it’s all the confusion of being a woman, all the compounding pressures and expectations and hopes and thwarted desires rolled up into a nonsense word In Guisewite’s studio, she the word on the wall in oversize silver letters, the kind sororities use to mark their territory Guisewite got married in 1997 to the screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, from whom she is now divorced Seven years later, Cathy married Irving, much to the disappointment of her loyalists, who wanted her to be the Ur–single woman in perpetuity “I had promised I wouldn’t get married,” Guisewite said—meaning the character, she later clarified “I had said in public, on television, ‘I’m standing by single women.’ Look, when I was growing up, there was great pride in singleness for a long time I don’t know that I was so independent really as much as I was just obedient I mean, the deal at the time, in the late ’70s, was establish your career, then think about it Not that I didn’t lust after having a boyfriend and a relationship, but I wanted to be on my own, because they said we should.” In her 40s, Guisewite started to secondguess her ambition She worked so hard for two decades that she didn’t have a baby, then she realized she desperately wanted one She adopted her daughter, Ivy, in 1992 She met Wilkinson through a toddler playgroup: “I really wanted my daughter to have a father I thought it was cheating her to not have one.” She also said she liked Wilkinson because he had never heard of “Cathy” when they met Guisewite admitted that writing a daily comic about how bad she was at dating did not have a net positive effect on her romantic life “I wouldn’t have gone out with me knowing that the date was going to wind up in the comic strip,” she said “But I don’t think that the men I tended to date would be men who recognized themselves in a strip I was not usually attracted to men who were that aware of their … chauvinistic characteristics.” When Wilkinson moved out of the house in 2008, Guisewite put up the AACK! sign as a form of owning her accomplishments: a pristine home that would make filmmaker Nancy Meyers jealous, with its swimming pool and private tennis court and a room just for holding all her fan letters; her more than 10,000 nationally syndicated illustrations drawn despite never having taken a studio-art class, and her success in a male-dominated industry, achieved by making something for women And now she’s written a memoir Guisewite’s book is a series of humorous vignettes about those middle years, when a person is stuck between caring for their aging children and their aging parents Ivy is now 26 and trying to find a job at an aquarium (“My daughter has gotten two degrees now,” Guisewite said “The first one was in psychology, and when she graduated, she said, ‘You know, Mom, I don’t really like people; could I study fish?’ But now she’s moved to the desert with her boyfriend where there are no fish So she’s unemployed.”) Guisewite’s mother, who became a widow in 2015, putters around in Florida, though for a while she was a regular squatter in Guisewite’s guesthouse Fifty Things falls into the genre of “Postmenopausal Musings,” as popularized by Nora Ephron in her later years Guisewite writes essays like “Meditations on a Sweat Sock,” about how organizing her sock drawer brought her endless serenity, or “Diary of a Bubble Wrap Scrap,” in which she debates for an entire day whether to throw out a piece of packing material There is a gentle humor to these essays but also something a bit melancholy about them The primary joy of growing older, at least in an ideal world, is the ability to stop caring what other people think But what if, instead of the joyous zero fucks we were promised, we just kept on worrying? And yet there’s still something brave in Guisewite’s aggressive vulnerability “My voice is never going to change the world,” she told me “My voice will help women get through the next five minutes, and I’m fine with that.” After we met, Guisewite sent me a series of her favorite “Cathy” strips In one, called “Generations,” from 2002, she puts Cathy, dressed in a blue power suit, in conversation with a young woman wearing a leopardprint crop top and thigh-high boots There is a sneering mutual disdain between them “My generation worked from dawn until midnight to prove women are equals in the workplace!” Cathy yells The young woman yells back: “Of course I am equal, and I don’t have to dress like one of the boys to prove it!” After several frames of spirited debate, Cathy marches into a returns department and asks for the last 25 years of her life back I asked Guisewite if the sweeping changes of the past few years have softened her feelings about young women and what they, too, have to endure “I feel the exact same way,” she admitted “I feel that way every time I see the freedom that my generation fought for to be, for women to be free to express sexuality Those freedoms can make women more powerful, but they can also make them more naked.” It would be easy to dismiss Guisewite from across the generational chasm, as simply a by-product of her time, but Cathy’s struggles aren’t quite as far from our own as we’d often like to think Women may have more nuanced language for how they talk about the distance between what they choose to project and how they feel on the inside, but two minutes on Instagram is enough to prove that generating authentic confidence is still a confounding process “Women were doubly disappointed that the strip was created by a woman,” Guisewite said when I asked about her critics “And that I had this platform in which I could present a much more liberated, stronger female point of view than the strip often did Personally, I wished that I were the person who could march in to the boss and say the speech that I practiced in the bathroom I wished that I had been the woman who could drive to the man’s house when he said he was gonna show up and then he didn’t and it turned out he was with somebody else I wished that I could have said no to a box of Oreos as much as I wished I could have said no to being demeaned in the office this way or that way But the truth is, I wasn’t that woman, that wasn’t the truth of my experience.” There are other parts of “Cathy” that unequivocally still hold up, that seem almost prescient Cathy often gossiped about her boss, who was handsy in the office, and she took workplace sexual harassers to task She even created a whisper network She had big aspirations, when she wasn’t focused on fitting into her pants She wanted so much for her life, and she was willing to say so, even when she didn’t yet believe that she deserved it “She kept trying,” Guisewite told me “I think that’s her relevance today She was a ■ very resilient character.” march 18–31, 2019 | new york 89 Ready Player One New York Crossword by Matt Gaffney 19 24 41 47 33 43 44 48 63 45 74 70 88 94 83 89 50 51 52 53 55 79 80 114 115 62 78 92 93 98 101 102 105 109 119 120 106 110 111 121 107 112 113 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 Across 26 27 28 29 31 33 39 42 45 46 47 38 86 97 108 23 37 67 85 104 118 36 77 100 103 35 72 91 96 99 117 71 84 90 95 18 61 66 69 82 17 55 60 76 81 87 54 65 75 16 50 59 64 15 46 53 58 68 12 19 20 21 22 34 52 57 14 30 49 51 13 26 29 32 42 56 12 22 28 40 11 25 31 116 10 21 27 73 20 23 39 Part of WSJ Fine lines Ave crossers Went wild Number for one Council Bluffs is there Chain with jewelry Like the bird in a 1990 movie title Element named for a nuclear physicist Language in Lhasa Mediterranean stratovolcano Retain “Cocaine Cowboys” setting Digits on a form (abbr.) Noted discovery of 1799 Jackson and Diddley, for two Illinois touchdown spot Loosen, as a shoelace They’re orange on the road Team that plays at Canadian Tire Centre Unassuming Shoot the breeze Belts one out On a boat Promising words 56 58 60 62 63 65 66 68 73 76 77 Tic Tac alternative Vampire killers Some are steel-cut Spike from Brooklyn List of mistakes A long time Learned type Took a little from here, a little from there Workplace benefit “Free Solo” climber Honnold “Measure twice, cut once,” etc It may get a boost Maker of Swift laptops 2, 3, and 23, e.g Baby carrier Command on a door Grammarian’s concern Extremely fast-spreading Prefix for presence Lion _ Far from a drizzle 81 82 84 86 87 89 91 93 94 96 99 100 r of wishes 101 “That _ problem” 102 _ Plaines, Ill 103 Summer-camp equipment 106 Festival structure 90 n e w y o r k | m a r c h – , 108 109 112 116 120 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 Jargon Valley of vintners First word of a Spielberg title Tacit First player in a lineup … and the first letters of each theme entry Zero times Up-and-down path Product made by 14-Down _ mater Moxie Occupied a rocker Theater magnate Marcus Amorphous amount, as of honey Down Toaster-oven setting Stuck in _ Low-calorie, casually Christine of “Chicago Hope” Amazon school members Sound muttered upon hearing bad news Forest Moon of Endor resident Foal’s mother Fail to show up 10 Sigma follower 11 Feature of most crossword grids 12 Take turns 13 Jungian concept 14 125-Across producer 15 Wonder 16 Charles River sch 17 “Anywhere” singer Rita 18 Jeong or Burns 24 Donate money for 25 “The,” to Goethe 30 “Yeah-hunh!” 32 Stop with sand 34 Elitists 35 Hullabaloo 36 Impossible score in the NFL 37 Drink since 1948 38 “Alone Together” star Povitsky 39 Cousin of bowling 40 Besides 41 Drummer on “Something” 43 Wheels for a week, say 44 Try to have a discussion with 48 Go after 49 Tried to get information from 50 Tea from a powder 54 Toward the rising sun 57 “Might _ hole to keep the wind away”: “Hamlet” 59 Bogotá “to be” 61 Structures for greenkeepers 64 Clicking calculator 67 Inspirer of crowds 69 Rounds without play 70 Dull green 71 Star-studded pair 72 Puts forth 73 System for waste 74 Scaly pet 75 She won Best Actress last month 78 Finally snap 79 Comical Kovacs 80 Potato _ 83 Suitable for everyone 84 Hazard 85 Extremely kind person 88 Jay who loves motorcycles 90 Canal crossers 92 Colbert’s domain, with “the” 95 In a state of shock 97 Larp, sometimes 98 You can see Maui from it 100 Look 104 Magazine article 105 Dispirited 107 Playground game 110 Marco Polo setting 111 _-Caribbean music 113 “ _ all work out” 114 Verne captain 115 Take eagerly, as an opportunity 116 Plug- _ 117 Do the lawn 118 They meet at school (abbr.) 119 Captain’s journal 121 NOW issue 122 Cost for a service The solution to last week’s puzzle appears on page 83 March 18–31, 2019 VOL 52, NO New York Magazine (ISSN 0028-7369) is published biweekly, plus two special issues, Summer Weddings (March) and Winter Weddings (October), by New York Media LLC, 75 Varick Street, New York, N.Y., 10013 Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices Editorial and business offices: 212-508-0700 Postmaster: Send address changes to New York, P.O Box 420306, Palm Coast, FL, 32142-0306 Canada Post International Publications Mail Product (Canadian Distribution) Sales Agreement No 40612608 Canada returns to be sent to Imex Global Solutions, P.O Box 25542, London, ON, N6C 6B2 Subscription rates in the United States and possessions: 26 issues, $59.97 For subscription assistance, write to New York Magazine Subscription Department, P.O Box 420306, Palm Coast, FL, 32142-0306, or call 800-678-0900 Printed in the U.S.A Copyright © 2019 by New York Media LLC All rights reserved Reproduction without permission is strictly prohibited Founding chairman, Bruce Wasserstein; chief executive officer, Pam Wasserstein New York Magazine is not responsible for the return or loss of unsolicited manuscripts Any submission of a manuscript must be accompanied by an SASE crossword n ADVERTISEMENT k 2019 NECESSITIES agazine dubbed these magic pants ause they make you the slimmest mest you! 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Atomic Makeup makes the BEST liquid lipsticks you will ever wear – premium‐quality, vegan, made Buy now at in NYC www.nanotowel.com 10% off! code: NYMAG10 AtomicMakeup.com H2O Media inc | h2omediainc.com | info@h2omediainc.com Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies high brow The mafioso cadences of that alleged justice-obstructing “sleep well tonight” email to Michael Cohen Did coziness between the FAA and Boeing put a very unsafe plane in the air? MoMa’s “New Order” exhibition fixates on the technomuddle Eric Berryman’s The B-Side at St Ann’s: a patient, expansive stunner Smile and look patriotic! The government will soon scan your face at 20 of the country’s biggest airports Theresa May’s policy of Brexit chicken is cooked Trump’s 2020 budget doesn’t fund the terrifyingly necessary new Hudson train tunnels Will he give us rides on his chopper if the old ones collapse? Paul Manafort caught a sentencing break from a judge who said he’d lived an “otherwise blameless life.” How seriously can you take Corey Johnson’s proposed city takeover of the subways when he wants to call it “Big Apple Transit”? The Operation Varsity Blues college-admissions scheme: a very American Crime Related: State funding of higher ed has dropped by $9 billion over the past decade The Great Zambian American Novel: Namwali Serpell’s lush, intricate The Old Drift Esa-Pekka Salonen’s quietly wild cello concerto with soloist Truls Mørk Kelli O’Hara’s superhuman soprano in Kiss Me, Kate The pied-à-terre tax So now you might have to actually live in that $238 million penthouse! A proposed 39-story complex would block sunlight into the Brooklyn Botanic Garden Which plants need All that offscreen drama seems to have ruined American Gods Tucker and Jeanine: Who would have thought Fox would hire bigots? Jennifer Hudson’s sultry and soulful “Ain’t No Way” on CBS’s diva-filled Aretha Franklin tribute What’s weirder: Mitt Romney’s Twinkie birthday cake or the fact that he blew out the candles one by one? You can finally eat at Eataly without worrying about putting money in Mario Batali’s pockets Stuyvesant Town’s new “affordable” housing lottery offers a $2,975-a-month one-bedroom Harry Macklowe’s 42-foot-tall vindictive Valentine was a few weeks late The doc Everybody’s Everything’s heartwithering portrait of the late emo rapper Lil Peep Solange’s When I Get Home: hip-hop that doesn’t tell you what to think In Shrill, Aidy Bryant and John Cameron Mitchell deliciously play out the millennial–Gen-X divide All NYC public schools will serve no meat on Mondays starting next year Does that include the chicken nuggets? Those horny promo photos of Keri Russell and Adam Driver for Burn This lowbrow 92 n e w y o r k | m a r c h – , HBO’s The Case Against Adnan Syed at last makes this a story about Hae Min Lee Sexist trolls can’t keep Brie Larson–led Captain Marvel from box-office triumph Zinedine Zidane’s back at Real Madrid after only nine months away Really! We don’t really tune into The Bachelor to watch a man break down on national TV Just a day after J.Lo and A-Rod announ e Canseco een cheati x John Lanchester’s post-climatechange novel, The Wall, about how much future generations will hate us Cry it out with Polly Rosenwaike’s shortstory collection, Look How Happy I’m Making You Gayle King’s unflappable calm in the face of R Kelly’s outburst Café Loup looks like it’s gone for good this time Weinstein lawyer defends the casting couch: “You’re opening the door that anybody who’s rich or famous has a meeting where a sex act takes place, we’re labeling that sex trafficking.” The Met’s Aida closes with the original Radamès, Plácido Domingo, conducting Breakfast-sandwich champ C&B moves into the old Cafe Orlin space on St Marks brill iant despicable The “Fire” show at Company Gallery reminds us that nude-sunbathing season is almost back! 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B O O K BY TINA FEY M US IC BY JEFF RICHMOND LYR ICS BY NELL BENJAMIN Y DIRECTED & R A PH E D B C H O R EO G CASEY NICHOLAW MEANGIRLSONBROADWAY.COM AUGUST WILSON THEATRE, 245 W 52ND ST ... the place of democracy march 18 31, 2019 | new york 13 Yasmeen, 18, Jamaica, Queens truly feel like he will be impeached New York Magazine writer Frank Rich New York Magazine writer-at-large... up Michael Lewis to launch a new podcast, Against the Rules JACOB WEISBERG Left Slate Group to co-found Pushkin with Malcolm Gladwell in 2 018 march 18 31, 2019 | new york 25 THE GREAT POD RUSH... suppression (argumarch 18 31, 2019 | new york 19 ably) kept her from the governor’s mansion, Abrams was obsessed with the question of who was being counted In 2013, she founded the New Georgia Project,