Cannonball with Wesley Morris

This is one of those “who knows what’s going to happen” years at the Oscars. And maybe the biggest question of the night is which movie will dominate: “Sinners,” with its record 16 nominations, or “One Battle After Another,” which is right behind with 13.

One is a zombie movie set in the Jim Crow South, featuring not one but two Michael B. Jordans. The other imagines a leftist revolutionary outfit led by Black women — Teyana Taylor! — facing off against a racist, sexist, authoritarian government.

No matter what, we’re talking about a pretty exciting night — including for many Black people. But you know how it is with race and the Oscars. It is never that simple.

Because there are some people who are not rooting for Paul Thomas Anderson’s version of Black feminist-driven revolution. And a lot of those people are Black feminists themselves. Including Wesley’s dear friend, the scholar Daphne A. Brooks. After leaving the theater, she sent him a text calling it “a Black feminist 911 emergency.”

So before the biggest awards of the industry are handed out, Wesley invites Daphne on the show to ask her, “What’s the 911 situation here?” Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and
Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here
https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.

Back in 2003, a new reality TV show hosted and co-created by Tyra Banks convinced an entire generation that they too might have what it takes to become America’s next top model. Now, a new Netflix docu-series wants us to know just how badly the contestants were treated — by the show and sometimes by Banks herself.

To Wesley’s surprise, Tyra Banks agreed to be interviewed for the series, “Reality Check: Inside America’s Next Top Model,” and to revisit some of the show’s most cringe and painful moments. Was it a genuine attempt at accountability? And are we satisfied by what we're hearing? Wesley invites Michaela angela Davis, a writer, editor and stylist, to talk about it. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and
Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here
https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.

Seven years after Toni Morrison’s death, we’re experiencing what the critic Parul Sehgal describes as a “wave of Morrisonia.” Eleven of her novels are being reissued by her publisher. There’s a new book of criticism about her novels. You can feel the effort to shore up her legacy.

It’s an understandable impulse. This is the woman who wrote “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that, as Parul writes, “invented a language for unassimilable pain, for the horrors of the Middle Passage, of bondage and its systematized torture and sexual brutality.”

The book can feel like a kind of miracle. And Morrison, therefore, like a kind of saint. But sanctification — both Parul and Wesley fear — has its own risks. It puts Morrison up in the sky, where we can’t quite reach her. Too far away to touch.

So in this episode of Cannonball, that’s what Parul, Wesley and their editor, Sasha Weiss, set out to do. Touch Morrison’s work — as she wanted us to.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Valentine’s Day weekend is over, and we’re left with a new film adaptation of Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” Audiences are hot, bothered and swooning. Can you blame them?

The trailer had promised — and the film delivers — a stunning Margot Robbie, a seductive Jacob Elordi and a lot of sticky substances (like, a lot.) Wesley Morris knows sex and shock to be the director Emerald Fennell’s specialty, and this flick is no different. But where’s the actual substance?

To confront his suspicion head on, Wesley takes a movie buddy, the culture editor Sasha Weiss, to see the film that’s got everybody and their lovers in knots. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and
Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here
https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. 

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
for information about our collection and use of personal data for
advertising.

“We’re living in protest-y times! Where are all the protest songs?”
That was a question that Wesley Morris was asking in the time leading up to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl LX halftime show. He thinks the scarcity of direct protest art in this moment contributed to the intense speculation and anticipation about what Bad Bunny would do on that stage. Would it be a protest? And if so, what kind of protest?
Well, now the show’s over. So what did it turn out to be? To discuss, Wesley Morris sits back down with his friend Sasha Weiss, culture editor at The New York Times Magazine.
They also think about the role of protest music more broadly. When does a song need to hit us over the head? And when is subtlety useful — or called for?

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.