Janelle Monáe, from the Future to the Present

Janelle Monáe, from the Future to the Present

Janelle Monáe is an unlikely pop star. Her music is rooted in soul and R. & B., but also in pop, punk, and New Wave; her early releases were science-fiction concept albums, influenced by Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and modern Afrofuturism, set far in the future, and starring herself as an android. She didn’t follow the Zeitgeist—she made her own Zeitgeist. Then, after gaining recognition as a major figure in pop, Monáe made an impressive acting début as one of the leads of “Hidden Figures,” and appeared in the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight.” Monáe sat down with David Remnick to talk about her latest album, “Dirty Computer.” Despite the title, it’s not at all science fiction. For the first time, she’s dealing frankly with the issues that she’s facing—and that our country is facing—right now. Plus, the staff writer Judith Thurman hits the streets of multiethnic Queens with a linguist who speaks so many languages that he’s lost count. Luis Miguel Rojas-Berscia says the trick is to be fearless, and shameless, about engaging strangers in conversation. “You have to get rid of that inhibition,” he says, “if you want to speak a language.”


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Episoder(1051)

A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

A Democrat and a Republican in Congress on the Blowback from Mass Detention

Though President Donald Trump came back to the White House with broad support for his border policies, his Administration’s immigration crackdown has been broadly unpopular. The staff writer Jonathan ...

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In 2025, as ICE was struggling to meet an impossible goal of three thousand immigration arrests per day, the agency took an unprecedented step: picking people up when they arrived at immigration court...

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Pick Three: Richard Brody on “The Odyssey” and Other Summer Films

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The film critic Richard Brody talks with David Remnick about three notable films this summer: Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” an epic adaptation of Homer’s poem, arriving amid buzz and huge advance...

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Rahm Emanuel is a Democratic Party elder, having served in the Clinton and Obama Administrations and as mayor of his native Chicago for two terms. He’s a centrist known for valuing political wins over...

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How an Estimated Seven Hundred Thousand People Have Died from DOGE’s U.S.A.I.D. Cuts

The Department of Government Efficiency, better known as DOGE, has officially been terminated. Its July 4th sunset date was part of Donald Trump’s original executive order that created the agency, whi...

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The World Cup, the Knicks, and LeBron James’s Fate: An All-Time Summer in Sports

With all the sports news at play this summer, from the New York Knicks winning the N.B.A. Finals to Donald Trump having a direct impact on FIFA’s decisions during the World Cup, it’s time for a deep d...

10 Jul 18min

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The comedian Fred Armisen has a thing for sound: he’s a former punk-rocker who gets a lot of comic mileage from doing accents, and he released an album of sound effects—a modern update of a novelty ge...

7 Jul 17min

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Alicia Keys’s New York Musical Goes on National Tour

The unofficial anthem of New York City is “Empire State of Mind,” the Jay-Z song with that unforgettable hook, sung by Alicia Keys. So it was only fitting that when New York celebrated the Knicks’ N.B...

3 Jul 32min

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