Still Processing
The New York Times
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Wesley Morris and J Wortham are working it out in this weekly show about culture in the broadest sense. That means television, film, books, music — but also the culture of work, dating, the internet and how those all fit together.
Listen to this podcast in New York Times Audio, our new iOS app for news subscribers. Download now at nytimes.com/audioapp
Episode results
Still Processing
Nov 22, 2022
I'm That Girl
Beyoncé’s latest album, “Renaissance,” showcases a pop star letting go of all expectations. Wesley and J go deep into the album and this new era of Beyoncé. It’s an era of play, freedom, comedy and queerness — unlike anything we’ve ever heard from Beyoncé Knowles-Carter before.
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Still Processing
Nov 29, 2022
Plastic Off the Sofa
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” came into theaters with a huge responsibility: It had to address the death of Chadwick Boseman, the star of the first “Black Panther” movie, who died of cancer in August 2020.
Wesley and J discuss how the film offers the audience an experience of collective grief and mourning — something that never happened in the United States in response to the losses of 2020. They interrogate what it means that this gesture of healing came from Marvel and Disney, a corporate empire that is in control of huge swaths of our entertainment, and not from another type of leadership.
Additional resources:
* To hear what Wesley and J had to say about the first “Black Panther” movie, listen to this episode of “Still Processing” from 2018.
* Ryan Coogler, the director of “Wakanda Forever,” spoke to the author Ta-Nehisi Coates about the making of movie, and how it captured the real-life grief that people experienced after Chadwick Boseman’s death. Listen to their conversation here.
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Still Processing
Dec 6, 2022
America Has a Problem
Today: The undoing of Kanye West. “We’re in deeply vile territory, and I can’t make intellectual sense of that,” Wesley Morris says about West, who now goes by Ye.
In 2004, when Ye released “College Dropout," he seemed to be challenging Black orthodoxy in ways that felt exciting and risky. But over the years, his expression of “freedom” has felt anything but free. His embrace of anti-Black, antisemitic and white supremacist language “comes at the expense of other people’s safety,” their humanity and their dignity, J Wortham says.
Wesley and J discuss what it means to divest from someone whose art, for two decades, had awed, challenged and excited you.
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The Daily
Sep 12, 2022
Serena Williams’s Final Run
The U.S. Open crowned its winners this weekend. But for a lot of fans, this year’s competition was less about who won, and more about a player who wasn’t even involved in the final matches.
Serena Williams, who announced last month that she’d be retiring from tennis after this year’s tournament, has made an indelible impact on her sport and left a legacy away from the court that has very little precedent.
Guest: Wesley Morris, a critic at large for The New York Times and co-host of Times podcast “Still Processing.”
Background reading:
* At the U.S. Open, Serena Williams laughed, rocked sparkly shoes, rang the bell at the stock exchange, beat two opponents, teared up and said goodbye. Here’s an exploration of her magical last week in tennis.
* As Ms. Williams played her final matches, women have seen their own lives reflected in the triumphs and trials of the tennis superstar.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of ea…
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City Arts & Lectures
Jun 2, 2019
"Still Processing" Live, with Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris
Our guests are Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris, hosts of “Still Processing”... a culture podcast
from the New York Times. Each week, Wesley, a critic-at-large, and Wortham, a staff writer for the New York Times Magazine, lovingly debate pop-culture products and people, from queerness to unpacking black male privilege, Michael Jackson to Marie Kondo.
On April 10, 2019, Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris came to The Sydney Goldstein Theater in San
Francisco. The event was a co-presentation with The New York Times.
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