The Director Boots Riley on “Sorry to Bother You”

The Director Boots Riley on “Sorry to Bother You”

Boots Riley’s directorial début, “Sorry to Bother You,” blends a dark strain of comedy with a sci-fi vision of capitalism run amok. The film’s hero, Cassius Green, is a telemarketer who rises quickly in the ranks—eventually becoming a “power caller”—after he learns to use a “white voice” on the phone, mimicking the way white people are supposed to speak. As sharp as the film is on issues of race and identity, “Sorry to Bother You” ultimately takes capitalism, and the way it exploits labor, as its target. “There were a lot of things about capitalism that were forgiven by big media companies while Obama was in office,” Riley tells The New Yorker’s Doreen St. Félix in a live interview at the New Yorker Festival. “Things that we had said we were against under Bush.” “Sorry to Bother You” is, in part, a response to that loss of focus. Riley, who is forty-seven, got his start as a rapper; for many years, he led the political hip-hop band the Coup. He traces his interest in art as activism to an incident from 1989, when police officers in San Francisco beat two children and their mother in front of a housing project. Neighbors began protesting, spilling out onto the street and chanting lyrics from Public Enemy's “Fight the Power.” “It made me see what place music could have,” Riley tells St. Félix. “I knew, This is what I had to do.”

New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you. We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better. Take the survey here.

Episoder(1022)

The Evidence on Ozempic to Treat Addiction

The Evidence on Ozempic to Treat Addiction

Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs have had a major impact in their short time on the market—currently, one in eight Americans say that they have been on GLP-1 drugs. As tens of millions of people take the...

24 Feb 19min

Conan O’Brien on What Can Go Wrong at the Oscars

Conan O’Brien on What Can Go Wrong at the Oscars

Hosting the Academy Awards ceremony is a notoriously tricky gig, but Conan O’Brien nailed it in 2025, and he will return for this year’s event. Since leaving late-night television, in 2021, O’Brien ha...

20 Feb 31min

Richard Brody Presents the 2026 Brody Awards

Richard Brody Presents the 2026 Brody Awards

Every year, ahead of Oscar night, the film critic Richard Brody joins the New Yorker Radio Hour to discuss his picks for the year’s best films. David Remnick sits down with Brody and the staff writer ...

17 Feb 14min

What Donald Trump and “Everyone” Knew About Jeffrey Epstein

What Donald Trump and “Everyone” Knew About Jeffrey Epstein

In January, the Justice Department released over three million documents, including many redacted e-mails, related to Jeffrey Epstein. “Should we share the Julie Brown text with Alan [Dershowitz],” Ep...

13 Feb 35min

Jenin Younes on Threats to Free Speech from the Left and the Right

Jenin Younes on Threats to Free Speech from the Left and the Right

Jenin Younes rose to prominence on the right by defending medical professionals like Jay Bhattacharya who claimed that they were being censored over opposition to vaccination and masking mandates. You...

10 Feb 25min

Ben Shapiro Is Waging Battle Inside the MAGA Movement

Ben Shapiro Is Waging Battle Inside the MAGA Movement

Ben Shapiro, the host of his eponymous podcast and the co-founder of the conservative website the Daily Wire, has lambasted the left and the Democratic Party for decades. Recently, though, Shapiro has...

6 Feb 49min

The City of Minneapolis vs. Donald Trump

The City of Minneapolis vs. Donald Trump

The staff writers Emily Witt and Ruby Cramer discuss the situation in Minneapolis, a city effectively under siege by militaristic federal agents. “This is a city where there’s a police force of about ...

30 Jan 49min

How Bari Weiss Is Changing CBS News

How Bari Weiss Is Changing CBS News

Last October, Bari Weiss—best-known as a contrarian opinion writer who launched the right-leaning Free Press—was appointed the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Donald Trump has called her new regime “...

27 Jan 23min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
aftenpodden-usa
forklart
stopp-verden
popradet
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
det-store-bildet
nokon-ma-ga
rss-gukild-johaug
fotballpodden-2
dine-penger-pengeradet
aftenbla-bla
rss-ness
rss-espen-lee-usensurert
hanna-de-heldige
rss-dannet-uten-piano
e24-podden
frokostshowet-pa-p5
rss-penger-polser-og-politikk