As traditional media grapples with this digital age and professional criticism loses its prominence, new forms of curation arise. Three colleagues of Chayka’s at The New Yorker, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry and Alexandra Schwartz, have adapted by adding a weekly podcast to their beats. Critics at Large is much more digestible but offers no less brainfood than the dense intellectual workout of the magazine (I can’t be the only poser who got more use from the free tote bag that comes with a subscription).

Though double acts dominate the podcast form, in this case three is not a crowd. Cunningham, Fry and Schwartz are a warm and erudite trio as they translate the highbrow criticism they write for the magazine into the chit-chat of this medium. It’s like being invited to a convivial literary dinner party once a week where the hosts “make sense of what’s happening in the culture right now, and how we got here”.

The trio pick a current cultural obsession to analyse from a unique perspective by drawing from their deep wells of eclectic knowledge. Much has been made, for example, of Apple TV+’s workplace satire and dystopian thriller Severance – but I hadn’t heard anyone use it as a jumping-off point to trace the artistic trope of the “double” across centuries of art and ideas.

Starting from its emergence in 19th-century Gothic literature, Schwartz offers a convincing psychoanalytic reading of Severance using Freud’s notions of the “doppleganger” and repression. Then, via a Gwyneth Paltrow romcom, we move right up to the modern horrors of our own “social media avatars” – self-optimisation and AI. “Every era gets the ‘double’ it deserves,” concludes Schwartz.

The team are particularly good at analysing the macrotrends that emerge across the culture. In Joe Rogan, Hasan Piker and the Art of the Hang, they delve into new media such as Rogan’s podcast and Piker’s political Twitch stream. In what has become a regular bonus, they are joined by another staff writer who specialises in the subject. In this case it’s Andrew Marantz, who recently profiled Piker for the magazine.

He is fascinating on how this new media has enshrined in our politics the ability to “hang out in an unscripted way”; Trump’s election victory has been partially credited to his embrace of such podcasts.

In a recent taping of a live show celebrating The New Yorker’s centenary, the hosts discussed reviews from the archives that have aged badly. Among them was Terrence Rafferty’s takedown of When Harry Met Sally…, now widely seen as one of the greatest ever romcoms. “It made the movie come alive for me again to have to dispute it with the critic,” said Schwartz.”

These three critics at large are so well informed and their arguments so well reasoned that it would be hard for any of us relative philistines to “dispute” them. And I can guarantee that they will breathe more life into the culture around you than a doomscroll through your “For You page”.